Arthur C. Brooks: Are We Happy Yet?

This week, Trevor and Eugene are joined by author and social scientist Arthur C. Brooks to unpack the science of happiness and why we’re so good at looking for it in all the wrong places. What begins as a breakdown of the macronutrients of a good life turns into a funny, wide-ranging conversation about the necessity of failure, the search for human connection, and the surprising wisdom hiding inside our most embarrassing moments. Along the way, Brooks makes the case that the road to happiness isn’t neat, polished, or linear. Rather itt’s messy, imperfect, and usually learned the hard way.

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

• 0:04Trevor Noah?

  I've often thought one of the worst things that happened to society was a series of movies, whether it was kids' movies or adult movies, rom-coms, but that were happily ever after. Like, they ended at the moment where the people met. And I always wondered what that did to people's brains, growing up in a world where they went like, "Oh, if you meet the person you love, that's the end." And then it's like, "This is it."

• 0:31Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 0:31Trevor Noah?

  What is that?

• 0:32Speaker 02

  Pac-Man did that to us as well.

• 0:34Trevor Noah?

  I never finished Pac-Man.

• 0:35Speaker 02

  They meet and then...

• 0:37Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I've never seen the end of Pac-Man. I saw Junior Pac-Man, so I know what they did, but I don't know...

• 0:43Speaker 02

  But there's Junior Pac-Man?

• 0:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Junior Pac-Man happened for sure. There was Junior Pac-Man.

• 0:47Speaker 02

  Junior Pac-Man?

• 0:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Junior Pac-Man.

• 0:48Speaker 02

  Like Baby Pac-Man?

• 0:49Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like a tiny little Pac-Man had a little bow and then... But like a tiny little Pac-Man.

• 0:52Speaker 02

  There was a girl Pac-Man.

• 0:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there was a boy and a girl.

• 0:55Speaker 01

  Miss Pac-Man.

• 0:56Trevor Noah?

  No, there was Miss Pac-Man, but then there was also Junior Pac-Man.

• 0:58Speaker 01

  Junior Pac-Man.

• 0:59Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, no, they...

• 1:00Speaker 01

  The whole family.

• 1:00Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Pac-Man had...

• 1:01Speaker 01

  I like these family values in video games like that.

• 1:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, Pac-Man did it, bruh. I was like, "Okay."

• 1:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mario and Luigi did it well.

• 1:07Trevor Noah?

  They were brothers, bruh. I think you're mixing up the story.

• 1:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were family members.

• 1:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, they were.

• 1:11Speaker 01

  My kids, my kids are, you know, they'd be like, "What are these guys? Pac-Man?"

• 1:15Trevor Noah?

  Okay, Elden Ring, fine, we'll bring in Elden Ring.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  Super Mario?

• 1:18Trevor Noah?

  Call of Duty, we'll go... We got every game covered here. You tell us the generation...

• 1:23Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 1:23Trevor Noah?

  And we've got you. We've got you. We got you. It doesn't matter what it is.

• 1:40Trevor Noah?

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• 2:15Trevor 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 on 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.

• 3:00Trevor Noah?

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• 3:46Trevor Noah?

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• 4:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no. I mean, so you're on, you're on tour all the time?

• 4:24Trevor Noah?

  Not on tour, but just like life takes me, you know? I've had the gift and the curse of planting, you know, many trees in many different places. So oftentimes they call me to go and tend to them.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:39Trevor Noah?

  This is not a euphemism for families, Eugene, please, please.

• 4:42Speaker 01

  How many children do you have?

• 4:43Trevor Noah?

  Eugene was about to. Please, Eugene, I have zero.

• 4:49Trevor Noah?

  None of these things. Oh, yes.

• 4:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's ready, man, shit.

• 4:54Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  Do you speak Zulu?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  It turns out I don't.

• 5:00Speaker 02

  Because the way you, the way you turn like, yeah.

• 5:02Speaker 01

  It's like, yeah, yeah. It's like, I gotta, my, my grandparents.

• 5:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 5:07Speaker 01

  My, my great grandparents, actually, they, they, they were Danish. And they had this, they believed the Holy Spirit spoke to them. That they should go become missionaries, Lutheran missionaries to the Zulus.

• 5:20Trevor Noah?

  No way, no ways.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they didn't speak a word of the Zulu language, which is problematic.

• 5:26Trevor Noah?

  Big problem.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  But they knew that the Holy Spirit would teach them the Zulu language. And he didn't.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  And he didn't. And so they.

• 5:34Speaker 02

  Holy Spirit was like, do I go for who?

• 5:37Speaker 01

  So they left after 10 months and they came, they didn't go back to Denmark. They came to the United States and started a farm in South, in South Dakota.

• 5:44Trevor Noah?

  Do you understand how this one moment in, if your grandparents just learned Zulu, you could have been South African? This would have been a totally different conversation now.

• 5:57Speaker 01

  Completely different conversation. And you and I would have had, you know, these sort of parallel.

• 6:02Trevor Noah?

  This is what, I mean, look at this connection. The other day I was at Carnegie Hall and I was thinking you fell off the stage.

• 6:07Speaker 01

  I did.

• 6:08Trevor Noah?

  At Carnegie Hall.

• 6:08Speaker 01

  You heard about that?

• 6:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 6:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did.

• 6:11Trevor Noah?

  What happened?

• 6:11Speaker 01

  That was my Carnegie Hall debut. It was beautiful. I was 22.

• 6:16Speaker 02

  What happened?

• 6:17Speaker 01

  I was um doing my Carnegie Hall debut in chamber music. I was like a professional French horn player.

• 6:23Speaker 02

  You?

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Alterated through my twenties. I left, I left college at nineteen. I dropped out.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  Just to confirm, which one is the French horn?

• 6:31Speaker 01

  The round one.

• 6:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, the one you put under you, then you.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  It's the round one and then it has the bell in the back that you put your hand in.

• 6:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. Huh.

• 6:39Speaker 01

  And so the bell is going backwards.

• 6:40Speaker 02

  Okay, okay, okay, got it, got it, got it.

• 6:42Speaker 01

  And I wanted to be the world's greatest French horn player since the time, since I was eight years old.

• 6:47Speaker 02

  You knew this is what you wanted to do?

• 6:48Speaker 01

  I knew.

• 6:48Speaker 02

  What did you see that made you think French horn player me?

• 6:52Speaker 01

  Well, I, I was a good musician. I started violin at four and piano at five. And then the French horn at eight, and that's what I was really good at. And when you're a little kid, I mean, it's not like I loved music. I loved having people tell me that I was

• 7:07Speaker 02

  Doing well.

• 7:07Speaker 01

  worthwhile.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  And I got a lot of attention and affection, which is what all people who are addicted to success later in life have. And all, anybody who's a workaholic later in life, ordinarily their, their, their childhood is characterized by getting attention from adults because of what they do. And feeling like love is earned, which is characteristic, because people I work with all the time, I say, let me tell you something about your childhood, and they say, how did you know? Because every striver has a different version of that same story. And, and so that's what I loved. I loved the attention that I actually got for being better than everybody else at one particular weird thing. And so I went pro at nineteen, playing chamber music and, and, and trying to become a soloist.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  And at twenty-two, I got my big break, which was my Carnegie Hall debut.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  No way.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And at one point in the concert, the most stressful point of the concert, I had to walk to the front of the stage and talk to the audience to tell them about the next piece. And that's what stressed me out the most.

• 8:08Speaker 02

  Were you holding the French horn at this time?

• 8:10Speaker 01

  Of course, but you know, playing the French horn didn't stress me out. Talking to people in public stressed me out, because I'd never done it. So, and I was, I was rehearsing it in my line and rehearsing, going through it and going through. And it came time and I was really nervous. And I walked to the front of the stage and I wasn't looking at my feet. And I fell off this part of the stage.

• 8:29Trevor Noah?

  How I've always wondered about.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  French horn in hand.

• 8:31Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 8:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and that's what I've always wanted to ask somebody about falling off of a stage.

• 8:37Speaker 01

  The worst.

• 8:38Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, because it you watch videos of people who do it all the time, whether it's a catwalk, whether it's a performance or they just disappear. You know, they do that thing like one minute they're there one minute, then it's like gone.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:48Trevor Noah?

  How how painful is it?

• 8:50Speaker 01

  It's very well, it's about six feet. I landed on my elbow. So so it was very painful and I did a lot of damage to my instrument as well. And and of course, I did what anybody would do, any any twenty two year old man would do. I jumped up and said, I'm OK, folks.

• 9:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Instruments mangled. I'm clearly in pain.

• 9:13Speaker 01

  And there's a gasp from the audience.

• 9:15Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 9:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:16Trevor Noah?

  It's so funny that humans do that. Why are we more concerned with like assuaging the like, like everyone out there is having their own like fear, everyone out there is going, are you OK? And we're like, no, no, no. I am OK.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 9:31Trevor Noah?

  Do not worry about the arm that's dangling in the wrong.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Clearly something broken.

• 9:35Trevor Noah?

  You do not worry.

• 9:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:36Speaker 02

  I also think.

• 9:37Trevor Noah?

  Let's move on.

• 9:37Speaker 02

  A group, are you OK? Is not about you. It's about them.

• 9:40Trevor Noah?

  But that's what I'm saying. Why do we care about you've just fallen off a stage?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  No, it's just about them. How is this concert gonna continue? Is it still gonna be able to do this thing for us at some point?

• 9:49Trevor Noah?

  Where does that come from in society? What do you think that is?

• 9:51Speaker 01

  So that's a natural human tendency to show strength. That's the natural human tendency to show resiliency, and it's especially true for men. They don't want to look as if they're vulnerable in any way. They don't want to look like they're weak in any way. It's very, very embarrassing to to to show that something has hurt you.

• 10:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 10:09Speaker 02

  OK.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  For a young man, especially in front of a whole bunch of people that I'm trying to impress. I'd been spending the last hour and a half trying to impress them as deeply as I possibly could. This is my New York debut.

• 10:18Trevor Noah?

  Carnegie Hall.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Carnegie Hall, baby. I mean, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Well, trying not to fall off the stage, one of the things. And and and so during that, what you don't want is that to your weakness to characterize your New York debut. That's not what you want. And so the result is you're trying to wind back time, you know, trying to wind back the time. I say, I'm OK, folks. Let's just go back to the concert. It's like, we're never going back.

• 10:42Trevor Noah?

  We've just lost a French horn.

• 10:45Speaker 01

  So. That has happened to you, some version of that, right?

• 10:48Trevor Noah?

  Never.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  There's never been anything in your life that has been?

• 10:51Trevor Noah?

  Oh, you mean like on a stage?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Your version of falling off the stage?

• 10:54Trevor Noah?

  No, I mean, we've all had that somewhere.

• 10:56Speaker 01

  But tell me.

• 10:57Trevor Noah?

  No, yours.

• 10:58Speaker 01

  Tell me the story.

• 10:58Trevor Noah?

  We, we want to know particularly yours.

• 11:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:01Trevor Noah?

  Let me think of one.

• 11:02Speaker 01

  You're next, Eugene.

• 11:05Speaker 02

  I thought you were Zulu Brothers, what's going on?

• 11:12Trevor Noah?

  Oh, wow. I'm, I'm hoping, so this is gonna bring us closer to happiness, right? Okay.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  I promise.

• 11:17Trevor Noah?

  So we've got to find the, this unhappy memory and then you're gonna bring us closer to happiness.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Cause we're gonna laugh like crazy about it now.

• 11:22Trevor Noah?

  Let me think, where was one? Okay, I'll tell you where was, where one was. Um, the earliest I can sort of remember in my life was I was in a school play and.

• 11:31Speaker 02

  Your school had plays?

• 11:32Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Your, your school didn't have plays?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  Hey, hey.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  No?

• 11:37Trevor Noah?

  So I was in a school play.

• 11:38Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 11:39Trevor Noah?

  And I was six or seven years old.

• 11:42Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:43Trevor Noah?

  And in the play, I was, I was portraying a tortoise, right? And so I had a big shell on my back and a whole thing. And there was one part of the play where we all had this like march dance thing where it was like da, da, da, da, da, da, da. And we walk off the stage and then we walk back onto the stage and we walk off the stage on, on the stage. And then I was walking back onto the stage. And as I got up onto one of the steps, one of my tortoise feet caught the step. Cause I hadn't walked much on stairs with tortoise feet. Human feet are pretty much.

• 12:15Speaker 02

  You didn't have much rehearsals?

• 12:16Trevor Noah?

  I, I mean, even then, I didn't.

• 12:18Speaker 02

  Also rehearsals don't happen with costumes on.

• 12:20Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, they don't. You just, you just do it with like your, you know?

• 12:22Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 12:23Trevor Noah?

  And I, I tripped, but it was one of those like, you know where you save yourself from tripping and so it makes the trip worse?

• 12:29Speaker 01

  So you're just like, you're just flying on the stage?

• 12:30Trevor Noah?

  If you just trip and fall down and get up, it's, it's not bad. But sometimes you go, I'm not tripping, I'm not tripping. And then it draws attention to the trip.

• 12:36Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 12:37Trevor Noah?

  So it was like.

• 12:39Trevor Noah?

  And then while this was happening, everyone's turning and the whole school. When I tell you the whole school, cause it was in the hall, laughed at the same time. And you know the laugh that kids have, young kids? It's not just like a ha, ha, ha, like.

• 12:55Speaker 02

  Horrible, haunting.

• 12:56Trevor Noah?

  It's that one of like.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:01Trevor Noah?

  They love that laugh.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  What the hell?

• 13:02Trevor Noah?

  Whole school, maybe it was like.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Teacher's day.

• 13:06Trevor Noah?

  Three hundred kids, you'd, man. And that happened. And I remember the blood left my head and left my, I just, I just wanted to disappear.

• 13:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:16Trevor Noah?

  Right?

• 13:18Trevor Noah?

  And then. As I'm walking on the stage, because we have to do the parade multiple times. As we walking down the other side, we come back up. And then I did it again, but this time I did it on purpose. And then they laughed.

• 13:33Speaker 01

  Well played.

• 13:34Speaker 02

  I did it as a bit, Charlie Chaplin.

• 13:35Trevor Noah?

  Then they laughed again.

• 13:37Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 13:38Trevor Noah?

  And then after the show, the, when he just came, it was like, that was comedic genius. Oh. Well done. That was brilliant.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  Like a star is born.

• 13:46Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. It was literally, and, and that, but I remember the, the shift in that moment from that, that. There's few moments in my life that I think have had more of an impact on me than that specific moment.

• 13:55Speaker 01

  The presence of mind that that takes at six years old to figure out that this is a comedic bit.

• 13:59Trevor Noah?

  I don't think, I thought it was a comedic, I don't think I thought it was a comedic bit. I think I thought to myself. If I can be the person who is creating this. Then you can't hold it against me. Does that make sense?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  It makes sense. It actually explains a lot.

• 14:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I was going like, oh, okay. No, no, I'm, I'm the one who did it. I'm the one.

• 14:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:17Trevor Noah?

  I, I did it. I did it. I did it.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the second time is interesting. So you, it was surprising to them, but funny at the same time. The second time, actually, so there's this really interesting thing about comedy.

• 14:26Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  There's a little part of the limbic system of your brain. It's called the para hippocampal gyrus. And what it does is that that's what mediates surprise. That's the reason that all humor is based on surprise. It's all based on surprise.

• 14:38Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 14:39Speaker 01

  And, and so what, what'll happen, I mean, any stupid, I could tell you a stupid dad joke.

• 14:42Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And it's all based on it. So. I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my grandfather. Not screaming in terror like his passengers. Right, right, so. That's a pride. Thank you.

• 14:55Trevor Noah?

  That's a good one.

• 14:55Speaker 01

  No, no, no. That's great. You'll have all my kids. So, so what that does is that flicks the parahippocampal gyrus. And, and if it's too much, you're gonna like, why are you making, making fun of hurricane victims?

• 15:07Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, right.

• 15:08Speaker 01

  And if it's too little, it's a pun. And you're like, ah. You see?

• 15:12Trevor Noah?

  But it, but it's because it's, it's basically what, is that part of the brain responsible for predicting something, though?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:17Trevor Noah?

  What is, what is happening there?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Sorts out cognitive dissonance.

• 15:21Trevor Noah?

  Got it.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  It sorts it out. That, you know, the parahippocampal gyrus is like you're going in one direction and then you say, what happened? Oh, that. And that makes you laugh. That's what makes you laugh. That's why surprise is funny. It's inherently funny. And then not the kind of surprise like the lawyer's on the phone, not that kind of surprise.

• 15:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  It's, and so that's how all humor works, right? And so that's what you did at six. You have a nose for it. You basically said, I'm gonna come around the other time and I'm gonna surprise them. Because the last thing that they're expecting is that Trevor trips a second time.

• 15:53Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 15:53Speaker 01

  And that's why they cracked up. But honestly, the first time they mocked you, the second time they actually laughed.

• 15:58Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, no, the second time they were.

• 15:59Speaker 01

  It was actually hilarious.

• 16:00Trevor Noah?

  I had taken control of the thing.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, but you did it to, to flick their little parahippocampal gyrus. When you control the parahippocampal gyrus, you control the world.

• 16:11Speaker 01

  Actually, maybe that's a little bit too.

• 16:12Trevor Noah?

  The gyrus part doesn't have anything to do with the gyroscope? Nothing. Okay. So what's yours, Eugene?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, we're, we're getting to the, the good stuff here.

• 16:19Trevor Noah?

  We'll get, what's your, what's your moment? Why are you looking at me like you expect me to tell me, to tell you guys something embarrassing about my?

• 16:25Speaker 02

  No, it's not embarrassing.

• 16:26Trevor Noah?

  Okay, here we go. What's your moment?

• 16:27Speaker 02

  So, this was my first year of school. So my parents had bought me a school uniform, right? So everyone is excited about me going to school. Personally, I've been looking at these great flannel pants for the longest time. I'm gonna wear these pants, my uniform, my white shirt. I'm gonna do this thing. So it came with a belt. Ironically, that's what I forgot this time on my trip. And I've gone to shops so many times, almost bought the shysti, but not a belt. In any case, so I go to school for the first week on Friday. And remember, it's orientation for us. So they're teaching us the songs that we must sing at assembly. We had assembly, but it was outside, no hall.

• 17:00Trevor Noah?

  You what, like six years old?

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Six years, yeah, first year of school. So all of this is happening. I lose my belt playing football after school. So on Friday, I have to go to school without a belt. My mom notices I don't have a belt on. What does she do? She had bought a pair of suspenders for Christmas clothes.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  This is not the fashion statement you're trying to make. Is this what I gather?

• 17:28Trevor Noah?

  Maybe.

• 17:28Speaker 01

  He's reliving this horrible moment, this moment of trauma because of you.

• 17:31Trevor Noah?

  No, wait, maybe the professor will explain to me.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  You are a tripping turtle, yes.

• 17:34Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, bro.

• 17:35Speaker 02

  And I didn't go.

• 17:36Trevor Noah?

  No, let me explain. Wait, wait, wait. Let me explain. Let me explain to you. Wait, let me explain what happened to my brain. What happened there?

• 17:43Speaker 02

  My hippocampus gyro.

• 17:44Trevor Noah?

  My hippocampus gyro.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  Para hippocampal gyrus.

• 17:47Trevor Noah?

  That one.

• 17:47Speaker 02

  You found a new one?

• 17:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 17:50Trevor Noah?

  Hippocampal gyro. You see the hippocampal gyro? It got flicked in my brain.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 17:55Trevor Noah?

  Because of all the things I thought you would say, I did not think the word suspenders was gonna come into this story at all. You said, then my mom find out and then, I thought you, my mom's gonna get angry, my mom was gonna shout, my mom was, there were many things.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  Well, she did, she was.

• 18:08Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no. But then you said, my mom had bought a pair of suspenders.

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Yes, for my Christmas clothes that I avoided.

• 18:15Trevor Noah?

  Sorry. Now, carry on.

• 18:16Speaker 02

  Because Christmas clothes are a big deal.

• 18:17Trevor Noah?

  I wasn't laughing at you. I was laughing at the suspenders that were just in the mix.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  He was laughing with you.

• 18:24Trevor Noah?

  Or about you, but not at you. Sorry, I apologize. Carry on. So, your mom had bought us Christmas suspenders.

• 18:30Speaker 02

  That I avoided.

• 18:31Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  Throughout the whole entire December.

• 18:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  And I managed to go through Christmas, start wearing them. And then she said, you're gonna put on these suspenders, because these pants are gonna fall, because they're not the exact size, you have to wear them, you have to grow into them a little bit.

• 18:43Trevor Noah?

  Grow into your clothes, yeah.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  This is two years' worth of pants here. They've hemmed them up at the bottom, they're loose fitting. So, I wear the suspenders and, mind you, I have to walk to school. There's no drop offs here. So, all the way, I'm wearing a jersey in the heat, going to school.

• 18:57Trevor Noah?

  Hiding the suspenders.

• 18:57Speaker 02

  Hiding the suspenders. I get to school, we're in assembly, I'm the shortest kid, so they put me right at the front. So, we're singing this song, right?

• 19:06Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  Our Father who art in heaven.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  But we had a version, an English version, and an Isizulu version. So, I went to a Catholic creche.

• 19:14Speaker 01

  I can tell.

• 19:15Speaker 02

  So, I knew the song very well.

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  So, the teacher that's been teaching us at assembly to sing this song for the longest time

• 19:20Trevor Noah?

  No, Eugene.

• 19:21Speaker 02

  noticed that I was actually hitting all the notes and switching between the two languages. And then he said to me, You guys are idiots. There's this kid here, he, four days in the school, fifth day today, and he's hitting all the right notes. This is our school song, Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy king.

• 19:40Trevor Noah?

  Yes, and this kid's nailing it.

• 19:41Speaker 02

  This kid is nailing it, guys. He's the shortest here, he's the youngest here, he's the newest here. There's people who've been here for four years. The song is not working for you, but this kid is nailing it. So what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna ask this kid.

• 19:53Trevor Noah?

  I knew it.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And you went up in front of the school?

• 19:58Speaker 02

  I'm gonna ask this kid to come in front.

• 20:00Trevor Noah?

  Yo.

• 20:01Speaker 02

  Start the hymn from the beginning and sing this thing. Then I'm like, eh? So this traumatic look that I have whenever something, when you spring something on me and my hippo Jairas campus is affected. There's the same, this look I've been having since I was six. So he takes his time instructing the biggest kid in the school to go fetch a desk in one of the classes to put as a stage for me.

• 20:24Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  Then as this stage, my Carnegie Hall is being erected in front of me or behind me, he says to me, this jersey in this heat, this is South Africa in January, it's hot. So he says, you can't be wearing a jersey, take off. I'm like, don't trust me, I'm fine. He goes, you are not going to do that. And mind you, this was with a belt, that Taylor made sure, Taylor being my mom, that the hemming up of these pants fitted perfectly to my ankles. Now suspenders, on the other hand.

• 20:52Speaker 01

  They pull it away.

• 20:52Speaker 02

  They were suspending my ankles. That's what they were doing.

• 20:57Speaker 02

  And then he says to me, the jersey's coming off. So now I'm six years old, small kid, I'm trying to argue with this teacher as he grabs the shoulders and pulls off this jersey while he's plucking me up and putting me on stage.

• 21:07Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  See that laugh?

• 21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 21:12Speaker 02

  All of that, the happened. And I knew I had one option here, because the other option was if I jump off stage, I'll make a bigger idiot of myself, because this rickety desk might actually be the end of me.

• 21:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  Then I stood there and I continued singing the song. Our Father, who art, went on and on and until they all kept quiet, and I switched between the two songs, Zulu version, the English version, and it ended. Then from then onwards, everyone called me our father for that year. Then I was like, it's ironic because.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  Instead, they didn't call you suspenders.

• 21:47Speaker 02

  So that was, that was, that was my story. And then I went home and I told my mom that story. And you know, I was so embarrassed because it felt like a long day, obviously, of what happened. The nicknames that happened afterwards on my way home, playing soccer afterwards there. And my mom said, you know, where, where, okay, in Zulu, she said, means where were you broken? Then I said, no, they hurt my feelings. She said, yeah, yeah, I hear that. But is there any part of you that they took away from you physically? Then I said, nothing. She says, life is gonna be like that. People are gonna try. You mustn't let them. Someone can surprise you about something that you are. They will say many things about you, but don't believe them because it won't break any bit of you.

• 22:30Speaker 02

  And the other thing was my name. People didn't know how to pronounce my name or write my name. And she taught me how to teach people how to pronounce my name. Said you must say, because if they want you to pronounce it like that, it means they're slow and you're not. So I learned all of those little things. And when it came to stage and performing, after a bad show, you're like, this is nothing compared to standing in a, on top of a desk in an assembly with suspenders on.

• 22:52Trevor Noah?

  Beautiful. I'm basically picturing like, like an African forest gump now.

• 22:55Speaker 02

  Yep, hundred percent.

• 22:56Trevor Noah?

  Literally, like the suspenders and your mom being like, slow is a stupid does.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  You can't sit here, our father. You can't sit here. I haven't accessed that memory for the longest time. In fact, never.

• 23:11Trevor Noah?

  That is so powerful. And most powerful for me. Thank you.

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 23:14Trevor Noah?

  You know, you, you know what? The happiness you've brought to me. One, you've brought me closer to my friend.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:20Trevor Noah?

  But two, and more importantly, in your story, I noticed you were playing football.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  I was good at football. What do you mean I was playing football?

• 23:28Trevor Noah?

  But now I see like you, you're playing football. The football made you lose your belt. And this is another reason that you now hate football. I'm slowly piecing this together, my friend.

• 23:36Speaker 01

  But for both of you guys, you think about this. These are the formative experiences that make us who we are. So here's the deal. And this is a real problem, especially today. A lot of young people watch you, big fans.

• 23:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  The biggest mistake that a lot of young people make today is they think that the pain that they have must be eliminated. And the truth is that these experiences and the on the day to day suffering that they're going to inevitably face, that's their teacher and makes them who they actually are. So to the extent that we that we resist the pain in our lives to try to lower the suffering that we face, the worse off we are, the worse off that we are. The fact is, I asked you about something that was a really bad day for you.

• 24:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 24:16Speaker 01

  You turned it into a good day. This was an unambiguously bad day for you. And for me, it was the worst day of my young adult life.

• 24:23Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  And in point of fact, these things made us who we are. In a very fundamental way, this was these were turning points, these were inflections. I realized that day that I didn't actually have to be this person, that it didn't matter. It didn't matter. That that wasn't who I was, was the guy fallen off the stage? That wasn't who I was. I sure, here's the deal. It's funny, I was talking to this young guy, I was talking to, I do a lot of talks for young adults. And I was talking to a group of young adults in Washington DC. They were all working on the on Capitol Hill. And Washington DC is the world's most dysfunctional dating market. It's it's it's a nightmare.

• 25:01Trevor Noah?

  In what way?

• 25:02Speaker 01

  That, you know, everybody's kind of climbing and they want power and everybody's jockeying for position.

• 25:07Trevor Noah?

  Okay, okay.

• 25:08Speaker 01

  It's socially dysfunctional. And I'm talking to this group, they're all in their 20 somethings on the Senate side. And I was talking about, you know, you got to treat your life like a startup. You got to be an entrepreneur in the business of your own life. Your life is an enterprise. You're the founder. And the number one most entrepreneurial thing that you can do, you know what it is? Fall in love and put your heart at risk, give your heart away. Right? And I thought it was pretty clever. Anyway, a couple of weeks later, I'm on a plane and a kid comes up, a kid, 26, kid compared to me, comes up and he says, Professor Brooks. I said, yeah. He said, I saw you give that talk on Capitol Hill, I can't get it out of my head. I'm on my way right now to tell a woman that I've been in love with secretly for two years

• 25:52Speaker 01

  that I love her because of your speech. And I'm like, it's only a speech.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  I don't want to ruin your life.

• 26:06Trevor Noah?

  I want hippocampus gyrus.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  I was like, oh, boys, I heard parietal hippocampus gyrus about to get flipped pretty hard. Anyway, so and so I said, well, you know, let me know how it goes. And I give him my email. You don't hear from him, which is a bad sign. I see him several months later a- at a party in DC. I was running a company in those days. He comes up to me and he says, remember me? And I'm like, yeah. And I says, and I said, yeah, on the plane, right? I said, yeah. I said, so what happened with that girl? He said, she shot me down. She didn't just not love me. She introduced me to the guy that she was in love with. It was the worst day of my life. And I was very contrite. I said, I'm sorry. I'm not trying to ruin your life. And he said, no, no, no, I'm here because I wanted to tell you that I meant to get in touch and thank you.

• 26:49Speaker 01

  And I said, what are you, a masochist? Why do you want to thank me? And he said, because that was the thing I was literally most afraid of in my life. And it happened and I didn't die. I didn't die.

• 27:01Trevor Noah?

  Did you break? No way.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Like my mom said.

• 27:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. I didn't look. I broke my horn, but I didn't break my life. This is the thing. It's so funny because all these things that you break through, you had to, you had to stand up to your embarrassment, stand up to your shame. My, my first day lecturing, when I was a brand new professor, I was nervous. And, and I had to give a three hour lecture in, in front of graduate students. These are, this is hardcore. I was at Syracuse in those days. I had just come to Syracuse, early on, very early on in my career, actually. So, and I'm giving this three hour lecture and I'm noticing they're very, they're kind of laughing at my jokes and they're really all smiley. And they were very, very, very pleasant. And I thought, why is it that they're so amused by everything?

• 27:43Speaker 01

  But it went really well. I was kind of patting myself on the back. I had been very nervous and I walk out of the lecture hall and I'm walking down the hall. And I see one of my colleagues coming toward me and he starts laughing. I said, what are you laughing at? And he said, your fly's down. I had just given a three hour first lecture and I was trying to impress them with my fly down. And a little piece of my like shirt coming out of the fly.

• 28:04Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's perfect comedy.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 28:06Trevor Noah?

  That's flawless comedy. When it does that little peak thing.

• 28:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's.

• 28:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's beautiful. So, okay. But that's the point. And the whole point was I wasn't nervous anymore for any lecture after that ever.

• 28:16Trevor Noah?

  Yes. Got many HR complaints, though. They were like, I mean, we would like you to zip the fly up. And he's like, this is the new me.

• 28:22Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 28:22Trevor Noah?

  This is the new me, Professor Fly.

• 28:24Speaker 01

  I gotta be me.

• 28:26Trevor Noah?

  I found myself, baby.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  That's my suspenders. But, but this is the thing.

• 28:31Trevor Noah?

  But this is what I guess so.

• 28:33Speaker 01

  Face your pain, face your fear, face your suffering. You hear suffering.

• 28:36Trevor Noah?

  Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Let's, let's do this step by step. Cause I, cause I, you know, the thing I, I wanna be careful of is, you, you actually taught me this in many ways. But it's like, sometimes when you speak to somebody who has mastered something or has a certain mastery of something, they can gloss through it and move through it in a way that sounds correct. But then sometimes it doesn't connect with how people are hearing it. So let's, let's take these things step by step. Because you study happiness.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:04Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? And you've studied it for how long now?

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Uh, I wrote my first book on happiness about 25 years ago.

• 29:09Trevor Noah?

  Right. So you, you've really been in the game.

• 29:11Speaker 01

  But I've been the seven, last seven years, writing, speaking and teaching full time, nothing else.

• 29:15Trevor Noah?

  So, so let's, let's start with the, the core idea. Because I, I think it's important for us to build from the ground up, understanding you and understanding your work. The first thing I, I realized we need to think about is, what is happiness? Cause every, everyone says they want to be happy. Everyone, America, the pursuit of happiness.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Which is not the promise of happiness.

• 29:37Trevor Noah?

  No, but the pursuits.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:39Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? The pursuits. So I, I, I wanna know from you as somebody who's studied it, how do you define happiness?

• 29:45Speaker 01

  So first, what is it not? It's not a feeling. The biggest mistake that we make is misunderstanding emotions. Most people think that happiness is a feeling. But happiness is a feeling kind of like the, your Thanksgiving dinner is the smell of your turkey. It's not. The smell of the turkey is evidence of, of Thanksgiving dinner. And your, the feeling of happiness is evidence of actual happiness. Happiness has, like your Thanksgiving dinner, has three macronutrients. Three constituent parts that you need to get really good at understanding and changing your habits around. Number one is enjoyment, which is not the same thing as pleasure. If you're pursuing pleasure, you're not gonna find happiness. You're gonna find rehab. And it's very different, understanding the difference between pleasure and enjoyment.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Second is satisfaction, which is the joy that you get from an accomplishment after struggle. And the accomplishment is not more important than the struggle for satisfaction. And the third is meaning. That's what I'm doing most of my work on for now years. Meaning, the meaning of life. You know, what is the why of your existence? You need to become an elite athlete in enjoying your life, taking satisfaction in your accomplishments and your achievements, and understanding the why of your existence. Those are your three big jobs.

• 30:54Trevor Noah?

  And enjoying it.

• 30:54Speaker 01

  If you want to be a happier person. That's what it comes to. And then, a lot of the time, you'll get the feeling of happiness.

• 30:58Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Not all the time, but that's not what you can rely on.

• 31:01Trevor Noah?

  So happiness is the byproduct of the actions that you are taking?

• 31:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the feeling of happiness is a byproduct.

• 31:07Trevor Noah?

  The feeling, right.

• 31:07Speaker 01

  The happiness itself is the amount of enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning that you're experiencing in your life.

• 31:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  That's kind of like the, the, the, the amount of protein, carbohydrates, and fat that you eat is the amount of food and calories that you're getting. That's what it comes down to. That's how to think about it. And each one of those things is really important. Some people, the good news is, nobody's great across all of these things. I have tests that I give my students to find out where, in which macronutrient they need work. I know a lot of people who take tons of satisfaction in what they do because they have a lot of achievements and they've worked hard and they've struggled.

• 31:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 31:41Speaker 01

  But they don't know why they're doing it. They have a low sense of meaning. And I know a lot of really big executives, you know, hedge fund managers and private equity people, people make a ton of dough.

• 31:49Trevor Noah?

  People that everyone, like, sort of aspiring.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they don't enjoy their lives at all because they don't know how to enjoy.

• 31:55Trevor Noah?

  And what are they, what are they lacking in those instances? So somebody steps, somebody comes into your world who says, Professor Brooks, I, man, I'm, I'm nailing it. I'm satisfied in, in this realm, you know, I'm, I'm doing it. But man, I just, I just don't feel good. What, what do you find they're missing? Or why is, why is it so difficult to experience that happiness if they're missing meaning?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  So if they're missing meaning, then there will be no reason for what they're doing. So meaning really has three, meaning is the most, is the heaviest, most philosophical part of it all, but it's the most important of these macronutrients. It's the protein. It's basically the protein of your happiness is your reason.

• 32:28Trevor Noah?

  Driver.

• 32:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, so meaning is, is really a combination of being able to answer three questions. Why do things happen the way they do in life? That's coherence. And some people answer that with religion.

• 32:38Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 32:38Speaker 01

  And some people answer that with science. I'm both religious and. A scientist, both some people. Here's a funny thing. You know, people who follow a lot of conspiracy theories. It's very common today going down the rabbit hole. Are you a conspiracy theorist? Generally speaking.

• 32:51Speaker 02

  Love your Batman voice. The best one I've heard yet.

• 32:55Speaker 01

  The what?

• 32:55Speaker 02

  We had Mamdani trying. It was okay.

• 32:57Trevor Noah?

  You rate this one more?

• 32:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:59Trevor Noah?

  Nah, Mamdani's still with me.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  The Batman voice?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  You're a conspiracy theorist.

• 33:05Trevor Noah?

  It's not bad. It's actually not bad. Yeah.

• 33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right. I'm actually, I did, I'm additioning to be the next Batman. I realize. It's like, it's called bald Batman.

• 33:16Trevor Noah?

  No, you wear the, that's why.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I know, I know, but like. I know, but they, but Bruce Wayne, he has a beautiful hair, head of hair.

• 33:22Trevor Noah?

  This is true.

• 33:23Speaker 01

  I know, but not now. It's a new day.

• 33:26Trevor Noah?

  Could change. Could change. But okay. So yeah. So you're saying.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Okay, so.

• 33:30Trevor Noah?

  Conspiracy theorists.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Conspiracy theorists are looking for coherence. They're looking for an answer to the question, why do things happen the way that they do? So when I meet somebody who's ruling down the rabbit hole of weird conspiracy theories, that is a dead giveaway. That what they're looking for is coherence because they want meaning, because they want to get happier. That's where I'm going to actually work with that person. I'm going to work with that person in alternative ways. And I'm not going to say you're an idiot. I'm not going to say that's not true. I'm not going to say, you know, go read the paper for God's sake. I'm going to say, let's work on different ways to understand why things happen the way that they do. I'm going to try to reconnect them with the faith of their youth. I'm going to try to get them really interested in science, you know, different nutritious ways to actually understand why things happen the way they do.

• 34:11Trevor Noah?

  So it's not erasing their curiosity nor their need to find coherence, but it's finding a healthier balance of those ingredients.

• 34:18Speaker 01

  It's a redirection.

• 34:18Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 34:19Speaker 01

  It's a redirection towards something that will truly bring you sense of coherence. While not alienating you from, you know, the people at your Thanksgiving table. So that's number one. It's just one element.

• 34:27Trevor Noah?

  But while you're still on that though, let's talk on that one element. Does that apply to everything? So can you meet somebody who, for instance, is so religious that they're not having a good time in life? Or can you meet somebody who is so science based that they're not having a good time in life? Or does it only apply to like conspiracy?

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Well, conspiracy theories is tends to be kind of antisocial. And so if something that your, your sense of coherence is pulling you away from your love relationships.

• 34:49Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 34:49Speaker 01

  Then that's going to be militating against another one of the elements of meaning, which is significance. Significance is that your life matters to someone. Your life has to matter to someone.

• 35:00Speaker 02

  So here's the significant other part.

• 35:02Speaker 01

  It has to be your spouse, your kids, your parents, your friends, God.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  You need to be significant. And when you're doing something with your sense of coherence, like conspiracy theories, that's ruining your relationships. Then coherence goes up, a significance goes down, and you're defeating the purpose. Those are different elements that have to be in balance.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  You become an expert in that subject, but alone in it.

• 35:22Speaker 01

  And if you.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  My mom said this a lot.

• 35:24Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  My mom said this a lot.

• 35:25Speaker 01

  I gotta meet your mom, because already your mom has made two appearances.

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yes, my mom used to say, if you love being right, you'll be right alone. It makes so much sense now.

• 35:35Speaker 01

  You'll be certainly unmarried.

• 35:41Speaker 01

  It's a good way to stay a bachelor.

• 35:46Speaker 01

  I've been married thirty four years. I'm wrong a lot.

• 35:51Trevor Noah?

  But I guess that's the foundation of all relationship, right? Is.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  Significant.

• 35:55Trevor Noah?

  In fact, all society, funny enough, even if you just keep expanding on it, it becomes the like, how much do you care about being right?

• 36:01Speaker 01

  I mean, that's the whole basis of our, you know, culture of contempt. That's a whole basis of the fact that we can't get along politically, that we have ideological wars, cancel culture, all of it. Is this grievance about having to be right all the time as opposed to huh? I wonder, I wonder if somebody actually is saying something interesting to me. Inquiry is not about being right. Inquiry is about learning.

• 36:22Trevor Noah?

  But the system isn't designed to reward that.

• 36:24Speaker 01

  Activism is about being right.

• 36:26Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 36:26Speaker 01

  And so when you get the wrong balance of inquiry and activism, it turns the ship over.

• 36:30Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, and that's why I'm saying the system is important, though. Because what you just said about like our childhoods.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:35Trevor Noah?

  Something forms you.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:36Trevor Noah?

  Something shapes you.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:38Trevor Noah?

  And oftentimes, it's how the people around you responded to an action that you took.

• 36:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 36:42Trevor Noah?

  Right? So now because of your suspenders, they respond to you a certain way. Because of the way you sing, you responded to us. Because of the way I tripped, they responded to me a certain way. Because of the way you felt, people respond to you a certain way, you respond. When we're living in a world where the systems themselves are rewarding people for one versus the other, you don't get rewarded for compassion online. Let's be honest. You don't.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  There's a, it's an entirely different scale of reward that you get. You get rewarded, but you don't get the same scale of reward, the same intensity of reward.

• 37:14Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Which is really, really important. You get a slow burn of what you're actually able to have. You have a different kind of impact. You have to, you have to, to, um, become, I guess, comfortable with the idea that you're not going to get the same intensity of reaction. And part of the reason for that, by the way, is the limbic system of the brain has more tissue dedicated to negative emotion than to positive emotion.

• 37:34Trevor Noah?

  Why is that?

• 37:35Speaker 01

  Because in the evolutionary environment, in a place to see, you needed negative emotions more than you needed positive emotions. Negative emotions are an alarm.

• 37:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, to avoid danger.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  That, that, so fear, anger, disgust and sadness, those are the four negative emotions.

• 37:48Trevor Noah?

  You're good, man. He's a professor. He's a professor. I love the idea that Eugene would be in your class like, yo, this guy. Yo, hey, my man, I think you're gonna ace this class. This guy, this guy in the front. By the way, I love your fly.

• 38:06Speaker 01

  Keep it down.

• 38:12Speaker 02

  You're a horrible friend.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  Now he's yours, Arthur.

• 38:19Speaker 01

  You know, I got students who are big fans of yours, like, I was there that day.

• 38:23Speaker 01

  I felt threatened. I felt unsafe.

• 38:26Trevor Noah?

  Actually, let's, by the way, let's, I'm gonna hold that as.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  We're going back to, we're going down.

• 38:31Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no, this is good.

• 38:32Speaker 01

  This is like a nesting doll of science. This is like a Matryoshka Russian.

• 38:36Trevor Noah?

  You figured it out. This is exactly what it is. Yes, but no, no, we'll hold that and we'll, let's, so keep, let's move.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  So, so the negative, the negative emotions, so the negative emotions exist because those are alarm systems for the things that can kill you. You know, you have sadness so that you will not be rejected by your kin. We're in the Pleistocene, human Homo sapiens, lived in bands of thirty to fifty individuals.

• 38:56Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 38:57Speaker 01

  Kin-based hierarchical bands of individuals. And the Pleistocene, starting two hundred fifty thousand years ago, was when we got the modern brain. Our brains are the same. And so all the weird stuff that we do today is because it was suitable to being in hierarchical kin-based bands of thirty to fifty individuals. It explains almost everything. It explains how genders work together. It explains why we have envy, why we try to climb in hierarchies, why we want to be famous. All that stuff is actually explained by this, the Pleistocene brain, is what it comes down to. But also, that Pleistocene brain had a lot more space for the negative emotions. Positive emotions are nice to have. Negative emotions keep you alive. And so if you hear a little snap of a twig behind you, your first reaction is not,

• 39:42Speaker 01

  "I bet that's my friend Trevor, who's come to say hi." You know, like, you run and ask questions later. And, you know, you want to make sure that you're not going to be abandoned. You want to make sure you're not going to get killed. You want to make sure you don't ingest poison. That's what disgust is for. There's a beautiful little place in the limbic system called the insular cortex. And that little thing is your disgust mechanism. And that's all that kept you from ingesting poison before there was like vaccines and antibiotics.

• 40:09Trevor Noah?

  It was just a signifier that this thing could kill you.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's why something that smells dead, something that smells rotten, that's why it disgusts you. And that's why your dog, who's very disgusting, by the way, that's why he licks the floor. Because he is actually not going to be exposed to the same kind of pathogens because of, you know, the constituent parts of his saliva that can neutralize some of the germs that you can't. That's why he's like, "That's not disgusting." And yet you think that's disgusting and you tell your kids not to lick the floor. Anyway, I digress. The whole point is, thank God for negative emotions. They've kept you alive again and again and again and again.

• 40:42Trevor Noah?

  But now you wanna be in a place where your negative emotions are in control?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  Well, you wanna manage them so they don't manage you, cuz we're not in the place to sing. And that's why we have this great big prefrontal cortex, all this tissue behind the forehead, thirty percent of your brain by weight, that gives you consciousness. Right? Your dog doesn't have consciousness. Your dog doesn't know it's alive. Your dog doesn't know it's gonna die. Your dog doesn't have future ideas or past ideas. Your dog's just here now. It's why your dog's happier than you.

• 41:09Trevor Noah?

  It can't tell time, yes.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Cuz your dog.

• 41:12Trevor Noah?

  It's why your dog is happier than you.

• 41:14Speaker 01

  Cuz your dog's mindful. Your dog is like, you're thinking about, well, I gotta do this thing. I hope my flight's on time tomorrow. And you know, it's like, I got this thing. It's, oh, man, I haven't had a falling out with somebody I really care about. And what's gonna happen next year? And what if the economy tanks? And your golden retriever's like, I'm sitting here with Trevor.

• 41:32Trevor Noah?

  You're remembering, your dog is enjoying.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  Your dog is here now. Here now. You're not. You're in the future.

• 41:39Trevor Noah?

  So, does that also mean that your dog can experience a lot more stress and pain? Because the now can last forever for it?

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Well.

• 41:48Trevor Noah?

  Like, let's say your, your dog is experiencing an adverse experience.

• 41:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:52Trevor Noah?

  Is that thing lasting forever in its mind?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Well, the limbic system for the dog is pretty, the, the homo sapiens and canines have, they, they, they, they actually evolved in parallel.

• 42:01Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 42:01Speaker 01

  So they have very, very similar emotions. So when you think, when your dog looks at you with love, you have a dog?

• 42:06Trevor Noah?

  No, I had one.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, and your dog looked at you with love, right?

• 42:10Trevor Noah?

  Absolutely.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  Your dog was feeling love. Your dog actually gets oxytocin, which is a neuropeptide in the brain, the bonding hormone, the sense of love that you get when you look at your kids and your friends and your, your, your beloved. Your dog looks at you and you stroke the dog and give your dog eye contact. It gets a fifty-six percent bump in oxytocin, just like you.

• 42:28Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Your cat, twelve percent.

• 42:30Trevor Noah?

  I knew it, assholes. I always say this.

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Your, your dog loves you. Your cat.

• 42:34Trevor Noah?

  We shouldn't even say your cat. You should say the cat. Can't do without you. Hey, let's say the cat you live with. Please, let's stop perpetuating this myth. It is not your cat. It is a cat that lives at your house.

• 42:43Speaker 01

  Eating your, eating your food.

• 42:44Trevor Noah?

  Those things do not, that is not your cat. There are a few cats that are exceptions. I know some cat owners will be like, my cat's nice. That's your cat. It's an outlier. Most cats, they're not your friends.

• 42:52Speaker 01

  Cats are takers.

• 42:54Trevor Noah?

  My man.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Anyway.

• 42:58Speaker 01

  We digress again. So that's about, you know, negative emotion is really, really interesting and useful. The whole point about that. Where were we at? We're talking about meaning, right?

• 43:06Trevor Noah?

  Meaning was the thing we talked about.

• 43:08Speaker 01

  I did coherence and significance.

• 43:09Trevor Noah?

  Yes.

• 43:09Speaker 01

  But there's one more.

• 43:10Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 43:10Speaker 01

  The most important one, purpose. Purpose. So everybody thinks meaning and purpose are the same and not. They're not the same. Purpose is a subcomponent of meaning. That's your goals and direction and sense of what you're doing with your life. It's the answer to the question, why am I doing what I'm doing?

• 43:25Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 43:26Speaker 01

  And if you don't know the answer to the question, why am I doing what I'm doing? You're not going to have meaning and you're not going to be happy. That's why if you have kids, the one of the most important ways to actually motivate them to do things with more joy is to give them a sense of purpose, which is goals and direction for a better future.

• 43:42Trevor Noah?

  Give me an example of that at like different age levels for a parent, for instance. So let's say, let's say it's a five year old, a 15 year old and a 25 year old.

• 43:50Speaker 01

  So a five year old is the way that you motivate a five year old is that you say, if you're a good little boy, Santa Claus is going to bring you some nice presents. You're motivating them to behave in a particular way happily. Because that's their kind of little kid purpose.

• 44:05Trevor Noah?

  Got it.

• 44:06Speaker 01

  Is getting to getting to Christmas morning and getting a bunch of stuff under the tree. You get a little bit older, it's like get good grades in school. You're going to get to go to a good university and you're going to have a better life. When you get a little bit older in life, it's going to be, if you actually behave in a particular way, you're going to meet the love of your life and that's really going to complete you.

• 44:24Trevor Noah?

  So it's always reward based?

• 44:25Speaker 01

  It's always reward.

• 44:26Trevor Noah?

  Are we just like reward?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  It's kind of goal based. It's kind of getting to a particular goal and making progress toward the goal. So what, how we're really wired, which is really interesting.

• 44:33Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 44:33Speaker 01

  We think that what we really want is the reward. What we really want is progress toward the reward.

• 44:38Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 44:39Speaker 01

  And if we think that we're going to be in bliss when we get to the reward, we're going to, we suffer from a syndrome called arrival fallacy. It's a funny thing. It's very common at Olympic athletes to win the gold, suffer a clinical depression in the two, two months after they win the gold. Because they've been suffering, suffering and suffering. And they think that all this progress, which was awesome, is actually going to lead to permanent bliss when they win the gold. And it's just another day. They go back to their hotel, they're like, you know, looking at the wall.

• 45:07Trevor Noah?

  With this thing around their neck.

• 45:08Speaker 01

  Yeah. With the thing around their neck and it's just another day. And they're looking at the rest of their lives when they're no longer winning Olympic gold medals. And it's very, very depressing. So this is a funny thing about dieting is another example of this. All diets will make you lose weight. I mean, except for the all candy corn diet or something, right? I mean, it's like any sensible diet. You can cut fat, you can cut carbs, you can cut, right? You'll lose weight. And, and it's awesome, right? If you're trying to lose weight because the scale goes down. It's a reward every single day in progress toward the goal. But what, what's the reward when you actually hit your target weight? And that's never getting to eat what you like ever again for the rest of your life. Congratulations.

• 45:43Trevor Noah?

  Damn.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  That's why diets don't work. They got about an 80% failure rate. And 30% of people who go on strong diets and hit their goal developing eating disorder because they want to keep making progress. Because progress is everything in life.

• 45:59Trevor 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.

• 46:44Trevor 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 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.

• 47:27Trevor Noah?

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• 48:09Trevor Noah?

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• 48:42Trevor Noah?

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• 49:22Trevor Noah?

  I think about, like, conversations I have with my younger brother are always fascinating to me because of how he sees the world. He's one of the smartest people I know, and I always tell him at his age, he's way smarter than I ever was, maybe even now, you know? But we have this conversation about video games, and I said to him... There's a, there's a video online that, that I really loved and it was some kid who made this video said, how you play video games is how you live your life, right? And I was so intrigued by this because he, he did this whole breakdown. He said, some people play video games to finish the video game. Right. They get in, they try and finish the story as quickly as possible, get to the end, save the princess, you know, end the story. Thank you very much. And he said, some people play video games and then get bored and quit. Some people, all, everyone has different

• 50:06Trevor Noah?

  methods, but he said, but you can learn a lot about yourself. Because playing a video game, especially in today's games, like a simulation of how you are. And I realized for myself, and I realized for what a good game is. Great games are the ones that make you feel like you're trying to finish the game, but constantly trick you into doing things along the way, the side quests, that make you feel like you're actually trying to get to the end, but you get so swept up in these mini moments along the way that you enjoy the game itself. Cause it's the progress. But those are the great games. Journey. Yeah, they do it for you, but I've realized. They do say it like that, it's progress. You get progress points. They're literally right, progress. But I've noticed in the games where they don't do that for you.

• 50:51Trevor Noah?

  If you're not careful, you can, and I'd love you to speak to this, like beyond gaming, but it's like, if they don't do it for you, there's some games where you can literally just go straight to the end as quickly as possible. Right. And be done. And I find you can be very depressed, as you say, you get there and you're like, ah, I don't know about this. I don't like this game. This was it, you know? Disappointing game. And it was too hard, by the way, because you didn't like level up the way you should have. Or there's the, the inverse, where's you spend so much time in the side quests that you don't move towards progress. Because nothing's pushing you, nothing's propelling you, not, you know what I mean? Right. And then what happens is you quit the game. Right. So you play like forty percent of the game. You do everything around getting to the end, but then you don't get to the end because the game didn't.

• 51:36Trevor Noah?

  It's I forget what they call it, but essentially some games will dole it out in the right amount. You're moving forward, now you're moving sideways, sideways, moving forward sideways. Some go do whatever you want, and it's interesting how that flips. And I wondered how how that applies to life in what you're saying.

• 51:49Speaker 01

  Almost everything is like this. People who who truly are all about enjoying the journey, they enjoy their lives. Because they understand that life is all about making progress toward particular moral goals. People who are all about actually getting to the end. So what what's the the best predictor of having a crummy marriage is having a destination wedding. Why? Because your wedding isn't a destination. Your wedding is just like the beginning of a journey. Destination wedding, destination. My destination is actually.

• 52:18Trevor Noah?

  You're beginning something with an N.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Locking that person down forever. No, there's no there's no destination in your wedding. Elope, justice of the peace. I'm Catholic, don't do that, we're Catholics, we don't do that. Priest, go to a priest, go to a priest.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  There you go, I wanted it in Zulu.

• 52:37Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, no.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Zulu, because you know, my grandparents didn't lose it on the Zulu.

• 52:43Trevor Noah?

  This man is ten months Zulu, you don't forget that.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Epigenetic expression, you know, it's gonna come out. So so so this is really important, right? You got to see your wedding day as a step in progress toward the eternal bliss that actually comes from a a relationship, your soulmate, with whom you can actually experience the divine. And on whose face you'll be gazing as you take your dying breath. That's marriage.

• 53:10Trevor Noah?

  That's poetry.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Marriage isn't wedding day.

• 53:13Trevor Noah?

  So then, do you do you think the worst thing we've done, and I'm not trying to incept you, because this is what I think. But I'll tell you what I think, and you tell me if you agree. I've often thought one of the worst things that happened to society was a series of movies. Whether it was kids movies or adult movies, rom coms.

• 53:33Speaker 02

  Rom coms.

• 53:33Trevor Noah?

  But that were happily ever after, like they they ended at the moment where the people met. And I I always wondered what that did to people's brains, growing up in a world where they went like, oh, if you meet the person you love, that's the end. And then it's like, this is it, like, what what is that?

• 53:50Speaker 01

  That is the same idea.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  As well.

• 53:52Trevor Noah?

  I never finished Pac-Man.

• 53:53Speaker 02

  Was they meet and then.

• 53:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I never, I've never seen the end of Pac-Man. I saw Junior Pac-Man, so I know what they did, but I don't know.

• 54:01Speaker 02

  But there's Junior Pac-Man?

• 54:02Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Junior Pac-Man happened for sure. There was Junior Pac-Man.

• 54:05Speaker 02

  Junior Pac-Man?

• 54:05Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Junior Pac-Man.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  Like baby, baby Pac-Man.

• 54:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, like a tiny little Pac-Man had a little bow and then the but like a tiny little Pac-Man.

• 54:10Speaker 02

  So it was a girl Pac-Man?

• 54:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, there was a boy and a girl. There was a girl and a boy. No, there was Ms. Pac-Man, but then there was also Junior Pac-Man.

• 54:16Speaker 01

  Junior Pac-Man.

• 54:17Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, no, they.

• 54:18Speaker 01

  The whole family.

• 54:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, Pac-Man had.

• 54:19Speaker 01

  I like these family values in video games like.

• 54:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, Pac-Man did it, bro. I was like, okay.

• 54:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mario and Luigi did it well.

• 54:25Trevor Noah?

  They were brothers, bro. I think you're mixing up the story.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they were family members.

• 54:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah, they were, they were.

• 54:30Speaker 01

  My kids, my kids are, you know, they'd be, they'd be like, what are these guys? Pac-Man?

• 54:33Trevor Noah?

  Okay, Elden Ring, fine, we'll bring in Elden Ring.

• 54:35Speaker 02

  Super Mario?

• 54:36Trevor Noah?

  Call of Call of Duty, we'll go, we got every game covered here. You you tell us the generation.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 54:41Trevor Noah?

  And we've got you, we've got you. We got you, it doesn't matter what it is, but but help help us on like.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a problem. Heavily ever after actually gives you distorted understanding of what brings happiness in life. It's the journey, it's the journey, it's the it's walking into the future together with your beloved. It's actually the the the process of actually Lewis and Clark looking for and going down the Missouri rivers. They're going toward the Pacific Ocean. It's not the Pacific Ocean. You just have to have, there's a, there's a really great word in Spanish. That's a metaphoric word, it's a sailing word, it's called rumbo.

• 55:14Trevor Noah?

  Rumbo.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Rumbo, el rumbo.

• 55:16Trevor Noah?

  El rumbo.

• 55:17Speaker 01

  El rumbo, el rumbo is the, the word in English is rum line, R H U M line. And it's a sail, I know, but it's not a metaphor that we use typically. That is the the the destination, that's a Euclidean straight line from here to there. It's like the the piece of yarn at the with a pin on the end of it, right?

• 55:35Trevor Noah?

  Flying like, what do they call it, straights, as the crow flies, as the crow flies.

• 55:39Speaker 01

  As the crow flies, exactly right. So and and and that's that's an important concept because you say, I want my life to have. El rumbo, I want, yo quiero que mi vida tenga un rumbo.

• 55:49Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Stay in Spanish, right? And, and what that means basically is I wanna have a destination. I wanna have a, I wanna have a, uh, something that is the arrival so that I can make progress. The point is not that you're gonna be on this line the whole time.

• 56:02Trevor Noah?

  Mm-hmm.

• 56:02Speaker 01

  The point is that you gotta, you have to have it. But because you can make, you can't make the journey without it. Otherwise, you're gonna be like a, you know, so depressing about cruises.

• 56:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 56:11Speaker 01

  There's a cruise ship. Neeeee. I don't want that. I don't wanna get in a boat and just go in circles.

• 56:18Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 56:18Speaker 01

  Because that doesn't feel like you're making progress.

• 56:20Trevor Noah?

  Oh, now you're a rumba, very different.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Nice.

• 56:23Trevor Noah?

  Not going in one straight line.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  That's like the, the vacuum cleaner, right?

• 56:26Trevor Noah?

  Yes, that little, that little, have you seen how that thing moves? You don't want your life like that.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Didn't they just go bankrupt? Didn't the company go bankrupt?

• 56:30Trevor Noah?

  I wouldn't be shocked because I mean, have you seen that thing?

• 56:32Speaker 02

  These kind of reviews.

• 56:33Trevor Noah?

  I mean, no wonder.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  It's a, it's a metaphor of unhappiness. So what do you want?

• 56:39Trevor Noah?

  So that's, so that's interesting. You, you, you wanna be in a place where, I mean, this is, this requires a total rewiring of the brain though. Like how I, I even think about myself. I, I don't know how you'd think about it for years, but I, I think a lot of people would relate to this idea of going, wait, wait, wait. But, but Professor Brooks, I've been told, get the job and then life.

• 56:58Speaker 02

  No, get the grades.

• 56:59Trevor Noah?

  Get the grades and then I'm gonna get the job. Like the grades is the job.

• 57:02Speaker 02

  And then get the house?

• 57:03Trevor Noah?

  Get the job.

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:04Trevor Noah?

  You're gonna be, then you get the house, you're gonna be happy. Get the person you live in the house with.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get the marriage.

• 57:08Trevor Noah?

  You get the marriage.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  It's like, guys even say, like, if you marry me, you'll make me happy for the rest of my life. That's what they say. And I got, look, I got data on that. No, it doesn't matter what you say on your wedding day. It matters what you say every day after that.

• 57:23Trevor Noah?

  So what should you say to somebody not, if you marry me then?

• 57:27Speaker 01

  Let's go on a journey together.

• 57:28Trevor Noah?

  Ah.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Help complete me.

• 57:31Trevor Noah?

  Hmm, oh.

• 57:32Speaker 01

  Because together, we'll wire our batteries together. We'll create an antenna to God.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, teach me something.

• 57:37Speaker 01

  That's, let's work, let's, let's, uh, let's walk through life together.

• 57:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 01

  Let's walk, I wanna walk through life together.

• 57:43Trevor Noah?

  Damn, that's different.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a completely different perspective, but it actually makes perfect sense and people kind of know that that's the case. And, and if you don't do that, by the way, there's a easy neurobiology on why this happens. We think that if we get that thing, that burst of, of, of positive emotion, there's this funny little part of the brain called the ventral tegmental area, when you tap it, it gives you this, this sense of euphoria. And so you can get it from, you know, your girlfriend says, I love you, or you can get it from a huge bump of cocaine. We have very thrifty brains.

• 58:13Trevor Noah?

  What a broad spectrum.

• 58:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, totally. Like, and, and it gives you the sense of immediate ebullience, joy, right? And we think we get that thing that we really want, that the ventral tegmental area is going to get tapped over and over and over again. But let me tell you, if you do something that taps your ventral tegmental area continuously, you're gonna wind up in rehab.

• 58:32Trevor Noah?

  You're on drugs, yep.

• 58:33Speaker 01

  You're gonna, you're gonna, you're an addict. I mean, that's exactly.

• 58:36Trevor Noah?

  Is that, so is that because we weren't designed to have the ventral tegmental tap that many times?

• 58:41Speaker 01

  We're not designed to feel emotion continuously.

• 58:44Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 58:45Speaker 01

  Remember, emotions are an alarm, that there's something good for you or something bad for you, that you should, you should approach or avoid. The, the reptilian part of your brain, the back of your head, is sensing stuff, sensing stuff, sensing stuff. That sends data to the limbic system, which is between two and 40 million years old. It, it predates Homo sapiens. And that's what creates emotions. Emotions are reactions, a, a universal language to you, that there's something out there that there's a threat or an opportunity. And the opportunities give you positive emotion, and then, and the threats out there give you negative emotion, and they clear really quickly, so you're ready for the next thing.

• 59:19Trevor Noah?

  So should we be in nothing states?

• 59:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, we should actually say, understand our emotions, not chase them as if we're gonna keep them forever. For example, if you're looking for continuous positive emotion on the basic basis of what you have or experience, you get on what we call the hedonic treadmill.

• 59:35Trevor Noah?

  Ah, yes.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  You've heard about this.

• 59:37Trevor Noah?

  Hedonic adaptation.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, hedonic adaptation, which is basically, I get the, I get the, you know, the person that I love, I get the money, I get the, the millionth Instagram follow, whatever my thing is.

• 59:47Trevor Noah?

  You're, you're, yeah.

• 59:48Speaker 01

  And you're just running, running, running, running, running, and that treadmill starts speeding up until it's, it's going with terrifying speed. And then you're afraid to step off it because you're gonna face plant if you try to step off a speeding treadmill.

• 59:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 59:58Speaker 01

  And that's no way to live. And you're hedonically adapting, which is called homeostasis, where the brain is adapting emotionally back to the baseline state. So you're ready for the next set of circumstances.

• 1:00:07Trevor Noah?

  One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in my life came from my best friend's dad when we were still in school. And they had grown to do well for themselves. They didn't, you know, he didn't grow up doing well. And so he had a nice car. They had a very decent house, but it wasn't like super wealthy. It wasn't a mansion or anything. But I remember speaking to him once and I said, um, I asked him, I was like, yo, Bob, can I ask you a question? How much money do I need to earn to be like happy and to be set and to be good?

• 1:00:36Speaker 01

  What did he tell you?

• 1:00:36Trevor Noah?

  And he said to me, he said, yes, Trevor, he said, can I tell you something? He said, I know some people, and this was, I mean, now 20 years ago, he said, I know some people who earn. And he said, like, he said, I know some people who earn 5,000 rand a month, $500, let's say, or 250, whatever. And he's like, and I know some people who earn 50,000 rand a month. I was like, 50,000 rand a month?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  That's insane.

• 1:00:57Trevor Noah?

  No one can earn that kind of money. And he's like, no. He said, let me tell you now.

• 1:01:02Trevor Noah?

  He said, I know more of my friends who earn the 5, 10,000 rand a month, who are happy, than I do the ones who earn the 50,000. He said, because with them, they spend that money and more every month, then get depressed that they only have it, and then they try and move it to 60. Then they spend 60, then they move it to 70, then they spend 70. Then he said, I've watched them move up that ladder. And, and he said, he's genuine, and I'm, I'm like 16 years old. And he said to me, I know it seems like a myth, but there is no number. He said, I've seen everyone in my life. He said, they just, there is no number. And I was like, I, I just, I can't believe anyone wouldn't be happy with 50,000 rand a month. My brain is like, that's not possible.

• 1:01:42Speaker 01

  And the same thing is true with power, and the same thing is true with pleasure, and the same thing is true with fame. Fame is the worst, by the way. Fame is the only one of life's rewards that you can only ever be happy in spite of, never because of. But you wanna be famous, everybody wants to be famous, because fame is rising in the hierarchy of your band of thirty to fifty individuals. Where more people are thinking about you than you're thinking about, because you'll get more, you're more likely to survive, get your caloric needs met, and get lots of mates. The trouble is that we can't accommodate that tendency to a world in which we can actually be famous in front of millions of people. That will make you literally insane.

• 1:02:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:02:19Speaker 01

  It will make you literally insane unless you're very self-governing, unless you're really self-managing. And you know tons of people in show business.

• 1:02:26Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  That are pretty nuts. They're pretty nuts, because they're on this treadmill of more and more and more, and I can't have enough. It's like drinking seawater, the more that I drink, the thirstier I get.

• 1:02:35Trevor Noah?

  The more dehydrated they get.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 1:02:36Trevor Noah?

  It's also, it also does this thing to you where, you know, when you think about like the fame of it all and how powerful it is, I've often thought one of the most genius things that TikTok did, that I don't think any other social media platform ever did, but I, I watched it on TikTok. TikTok allows everyone to go viral.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:02:58Trevor Noah?

  If you look at old social media, there was sort of like the hierarchy that existed in old media moved into it. So on Instagram, it was still like, oh, the most video, the most watchers, the Kardashian, there's this actor, you know what I mean? It was very difficult to just be.

• 1:03:11Speaker 02

  Random.

• 1:03:11Trevor Noah?

  Random.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:12Trevor Noah?

  And have, no, no, no. TikTok, go to people's accounts, watch how this one video, almost everyone has, that is an outlier, that's a blip in their world, and then watch how their usage and posting exponentially jumps off of that.

• 1:03:26Speaker 01

  This is Vegas. It works, it works the brain in the same way.

• 1:03:29Trevor Noah?

  Las Vegas?

• 1:03:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, the way to get rich is to work really hard and get a good education and, and be responsible and show up and, and create value and create some more value and, and then, and then, dot, dot, dot, thirty or forty years later, you got a bunch of money. Or, go to a casino.

• 1:03:45Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:03:46Speaker 01

  And get, and get a hit. And so the result is, I want the easy way.

• 1:03:51Speaker 02

  Play the lottery.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, right. Roulette. That's TikTok. That's how the algorithm works. I'm gonna get a hit. I'm gonna hit fast. Because the money actually wants it.

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  More and more extreme.

• 1:04:02Trevor Noah?

  Yo, man, they give you one. And I've watched people.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  Never been on TikTok.

• 1:04:06Trevor Noah?

  I've watched people, like, so crazy stories. This is the random thing, thank God for me. My friend signed up to TikTok for me when it first came out. I was like, I can't keep up anymore. He was like, no, no, no, I'll just do it for you because you don't want to lose your account. It's gonna be the biggest thing. He was right. And um. Because, because he was on it for me, he was just using it. And he lived in like West Virginia and all the content was to him. And so till this day, our algorithm, the algorithm is not like completely correct. And it didn't hook me.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:04:34Trevor Noah?

  So I, I get to enjoy TikTok as a pop, but I've never.

• 1:04:38Speaker 02

  Bystander.

• 1:04:38Trevor Noah?

  I've literally never been on TikTok for more than like more than six minutes, seven minutes. I deleted them because of that.

• 1:04:44Speaker 01

  Ah, yeah, because it hooked you.

• 1:04:45Trevor Noah?

  So I had to put as many.

• 1:04:47Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 1:04:48Trevor Noah?

  Inconveniences, any of them could.

• 1:04:50Speaker 01

  Twitter?

• 1:04:51Trevor Noah?

  Twitter could get me like all day, every day.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:04:53Trevor Noah?

  Twitter?

• 1:04:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no, no, he said Twitter's very.

• 1:04:56Trevor Noah?

  News, news from here, information, information. Did you know this about that? Did you know that?

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Very political.

• 1:05:00Trevor Noah?

  Any information, it's, it's got you. And then Instagram, ah, got you, got you, got you. It doesn't matter what it got, got you, got you, got you.

• 1:05:05Speaker 01

  So you took the apps off your phone?

• 1:05:06Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, I deleted them. And then now what I do is I log in on a browser, which is painful.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:11Trevor Noah?

  It doesn't render correctly.

• 1:05:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:05:13Trevor Noah?

  The images are off. Sometimes it doesn't load, just that, that block.

• 1:05:17Speaker 01

  You're trying to actually increase the transaction cost.

• 1:05:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's, that's all I do genuinely. Cause I, I don't, I don't believe, I've tried many times to go like, I can handle this. I even put a block on my phone, five, like 10 minutes, 20 minutes. I was like, I got this. And then my phone will be like, you've reached your limit. And I'm like, shut up, phone.

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:05:32Trevor Noah?

  And I'll just go back in.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  One good way to do this, by the way, is put your phone on black and white. Because it'll actually make your brain work differently as you interact with social media.

• 1:05:40Trevor Noah?

  Like you, when you change the color scale, grayscale on the phone.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Grayscale on the phone.

• 1:05:43Trevor Noah?

  It actually, that actually works.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  You'll be significantly less addicted.

• 1:05:46Trevor Noah?

  That actually, wait, how, how does that work?

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  So it's basically like drinking three two beer. I don't know what that means. That means three point two percent alcohol. Oh, okay, got it. Right, and you'll be like bloated and peeing and and and you'll be like, I'm gonna stop drinking beer. It just doesn't have enough alcohol in it too. Oh, to keep you buzzing. Yeah, yeah, to keep you buzzing, you have to do something that's way beyond your level of boredom. And so my oldest son, for example, has, I mean, my two, I have three kids, twenty seven, twenty five, and twenty two. My twenty five and twenty two year old, they're in they're in in the military. Yeah. So, no, I mean, they're not, they're not active on social media, they can't be. My oldest son, he figured out that it wasn't gonna be good for his life, so he put it. The army? No, Marines. I'm saying, what was not gonna be good for his life, social media or the military?

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  No, oh, no, no, no, my oldest son, who isn't in the military, he put grayscale on his phone for social media. Yeah. A long time ago, and he's never been addicted. He's never been addicted. What is what is that doing to the brain? Explain that. So, there's that, your brain interacts with visually with social media and the stimuli with social media in a lot of ways. So, anything that you get addicted to is is involving dopamine. You know, dopamine is the is the neuromodulator of liking, learning, wanting, craving. And we have it because we need to learn, we need to be more effective as a species. So when something comes along, you get a little reward from it, it's like, and the next time you think about it, you get a minor reward, which will send you in search of doing that thing again. But if it's just like it was the day before, it's not gonna be as much, and you wanna get a little bit more sprits of dopamine

• 1:07:17Speaker 01

  from the locus ceruleus, it goes in your brain, so you gotta get more of it. Fuel injected to the engine. Is how this works, right? Yeah. And the stimulus, the more visually stimulating something actually is, more beautiful, the more animated it is, the more that it looks kind of like real life. Yeah. The more dopamine you get, is what it comes down to. So my son, my oldest son, very wise, he just gets less dopamine from this thing. And since he's getting less dopamine from it, it's less rewarding, and so he does it less. He's drinking.

• 1:07:44Trevor Noah?

  Were you always happy?

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  I'm not happy at all.

• 1:07:48Trevor Noah?

  Oh.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  That's why I study happiness.

• 1:07:50Trevor Noah?

  Oh, there we go, folks. Now we're getting to the crux of it.

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, no. I'm much happier than I used to be because I study it. Because.

• 1:07:57Trevor Noah?

  Wait, so what were you like before?

• 1:07:59Speaker 01

  Well, I mean.

• 1:08:00Trevor Noah?

  Like, where do we meet you now in life and where were you before?

• 1:08:03Speaker 01

  So I I left. I did a lot of different things in my career. I was a professional classical musician. I was an academic. I I ran a company for a long time. I was a CEO for a long time. And I left and came back to academia because I wasn't happy. And I realized I needed to go back to my roots as a behavioral scientist. Because I needed to sort some stuff out.

• 1:08:22Trevor Noah?

  What were you? Help me understand what made you realize you weren't happy. What were you not happy about?

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Um, so.

• 1:08:29Trevor Noah?

  How did you know you were unhappy? What were you experiencing?

• 1:08:32Speaker 01

  Um, from day to day, my life felt gray. And I didn't feel like I was making progress toward any metaphysical goals. I felt like my relationships were suffering. I had a lot of sort of anhedonia, which is another way of saying that I didn't really feel very much pleasure. And that nothing, nothing delighted me. You know, nothing delighted me. And my wife, who's been with me for decades.

• 1:08:55Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, thirty four years, you said.

• 1:08:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. And she said, uh, you, why don't you use your PhD for something useful?

• 1:09:02Trevor Noah?

  Hilarious. That's a good part.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  And I said, like, what? And she said, study yourself. You know, heal thyself. And and so. And so I actually, I went on a on a pilgrimage. I retired. I mean, I just stepped away, quit my job.

• 1:09:15Trevor Noah?

  How old were you at the time?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Fifty five, okay. And I had been running this think tank, this big nonprofit think tank in Washington DC for almost eleven years. Great job. Great job. But I was, and it had nothing to do with the job, but I was just empty, man. I was spent. Part of it was that I was, you know, I didn't sleep very well and I was, I was working all the time. And I worked eighty hours a week. I missed a lot of my childhood. And I was unhappy. And so I did a pilgrimage, which I recommend to everybody, by the way. When you don't know what to do, go for a really long walk.

• 1:09:44Trevor Noah?

  I did that.

• 1:09:45Speaker 01

  Did you?

• 1:09:45Trevor Noah?

  Well, yeah.

• 1:09:46Speaker 01

  Which one? You walked for a year?

• 1:09:48Trevor Noah?

  No, no, no. He just disappeared from where we all knew him.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Stopped social media, stopped work.

• 1:09:54Trevor Noah?

  Went and lived by the beach. Was just gone from everyone's lives.

• 1:09:58Speaker 01

  I recommend.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Best decision I've ever made.

• 1:09:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I walked the Camino de Santiago, which is across northern Spain.

• 1:10:03Trevor Noah?

  Oh, you did like the actual pilgrimage, like walk, walk pilgrimage?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what Catholics have been doing for 1,100 years.

• 1:10:09Trevor Noah?

  How long is this walk?

• 1:10:10Speaker 01

  It depends on how long you do. I wanted to do the whole 33 days, which is 800K.

• 1:10:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And my wife's like, no. So we did what she was able, what was willing to put up with, which was the last 160 kilometers.

• 1:10:21Trevor Noah?

  Oh, that's a lot to put up with.

• 1:10:22Speaker 01

  A lot of blisters, you know? And you walk yourself into a vulnerable state. You walk yourself into weakness. You gotta be weak if you're gonna find the truth. I mean, that's why Saint Paul said, when I'm weak, then I'm strong. You can't connect with anybody. We talked, we started this whole conversation talking about embarrassment, shame, suffering.

• 1:10:41Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Only then, I mean, it's like, here, here's the thing. You guys told these stories and this is when the audience is like, I'm like Eugene and Trevor. Because that's how people actually connect with you and that's how you connect with yourself. Is by beating yourself down. Then when the aperture is open to actually find the truth. And, uh, and so I had a complete, by the end of, by the end of the walk, I had a completely new life mission, which is I was gonna spend the rest of my life lifting people up and bringing them together and bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Do you have a memory of what your thoughts were in the first few miles versus the last few miles?

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  The first few miles were, you know, uh, uh, my feet hurt. Um, this is boring. It's too hot. What am I doing? Maybe this was a mistake. And only when I walked myself into a kind of a submission to it. When I beat myself into a kind of a submission, which is what a pilgrimage is all about. And life is a pilgrimage. It's also a metaphor. You know, you enter into Santiago de Compostela, which is this city in northern Spain where you end up at a cathedral. It's this medieval cathedral where, where Saint James, the brother of Saint John, is, where his remains are. And, uh, and, and that's where you're supposed to get this sort of sacred knowledge. But that's a metaphor for heaven.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Because that's what life is supposed to be for many, for anybody in Abrahamic religions, for sure, and many of the karmic religions as well, is the whole idea is being reunited with the Godhead.

• 1:12:08Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  Being reunited with the divine. That's the only, see, here's the thing. For a lot of religious people, evidence of the divine is that you crave the divine and can't get it on earth.

• 1:12:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:19Speaker 01

  That's evidence of heaven is that you really believe that there's heaven, but you can't get it on earth, and the harder you try, the further away you get from it.

• 1:12:26Trevor Noah?

  And the day you see it, you won't be able to tell anyone about it.

• 1:12:28Speaker 01

  And then.

• 1:12:28Trevor Noah?

  It'll be just for you, because you can't die and go to heaven and come back again and say, "It was nice."

• 1:12:33Speaker 01

  And that's the metaphor of this, of this, of this, I'm walking to the cathedral, I'm walking to the cathedral, I'm walking to the cathedral. And then when you actually, but people have been saying for a thousand years that they're, they're blessed with sacred knowledge.

• 1:12:45Trevor Noah?

  And so what, what were some of your thoughts towards the end of it now, as you?

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  It was becoming clearer. It was becoming clearer. It's like the clouds were lifting a little bit and, and, and.

• 1:12:54Trevor Noah?

  Was your wife on the walk with you?

• 1:12:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:12:56Trevor Noah?

  Did her life change? Because it doesn't sound like she was on the same quote unquote journey that you were. She seems like she was a little bit more clear.

• 1:13:02Speaker 01

  She's an adroit, she's an adept, she's a spiritual adept.

• 1:13:05Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:13:06Speaker 01

  So, yeah, for sure, for sure. And, and she didn't have the same issues. I mean, my wife, like, so, so the way that you measure happiness with self evaluated happiness is called Cantrell ladder. One to 10, or zero to 10, where zero is the unhappiest person you've ever met, the worst SOB, the person who's just miserable.

• 1:13:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:23Speaker 01

  And 10 is this annoyingly happy person, you know, right?

• 1:13:27Trevor Noah?

  Joseph Opio.

• 1:13:28Speaker 01

  And, and, and your number is all things considered at this point in your life, where you've more, not right now, because you slept poorly last night, or you got in a fight with your girlfriend or whatever. It's more or less in your life what your number is. That's incredibly stable and accurate, it turns out. And my wife's a nine, and I was always like a three and a half.

• 1:13:46Trevor Noah?

  Wow.

• 1:13:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, that's right. And I, and I was doing, you know, all my work, I was doing all kinds of cool, kind of interesting things and trying to create value and succeeding in my career and the whole thing. And my wife said, "Why did you become a behavioral scientist? Why?" And I said, "Well, I want to, I guess, make life better for other people. Start with you." Start with yourself because you're not going to lift other people up unless you actually start to get your mind around this. And so that was it. I did a pilgrimage and then I left my old work and this is what I do now. Look, we get to talk about this in front of millions of people.

• 1:14:19Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but I'm fascinated by how you came to that conclusion. And I'll tell you why. I've met many men who have been CEOs and have run companies and have been in powerful positions. And oftentimes, when they hit that brick wall, oftentimes when their world turns gray, they don't turn to something that's more spiritually fulfilling. They just search to more.

• 1:14:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:14:44Trevor Noah?

  They turn to more. They go, maybe I should merge my company. Maybe I need to buy a bigger company. Maybe I need to find. So I want to know what it was that you bumped into. And maybe it was just your wife telling you. But like, what was it that made you go, oh, no, this hedonic treadmill is not taking me anywhere?

• 1:15:00Speaker 01

  So it was a realization that I guess I can explain this with a metaphor, which is that I used to go to Taiwan a lot for work for when I was running this think tank.

• 1:15:10Trevor Noah?

  Is the food as good as they say?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Food's great.

• 1:15:12Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, food's great. I mean, the people are awesome. Every single person, you get a like a taxi driver gives you the business card and it says CEO, because everyone is a CEO.

• 1:15:22Trevor Noah?

  I love it.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it's really entrepreneurial. Phenomenal. But every time I would go, politicians and leaders and CEOs would tell me every time I was in Taiwan, before you leave, you got to go see the National Palace Museum, which is the world's greatest collection of Chinese art and artifacts in the world. It was spirited across the Taiwan Straits during the revolution. And it would take you weeks to see the entire collection. You can't see the whole thing. And I never had time. And I know perfectly, I've been in a lot of museums in my life, that if you've only got an hour, then you're going to, the only thing you're going to remember is the snack bar.

• 1:15:53Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:54Speaker 01

  The gift shop.

• 1:15:55Trevor Noah?

  Breeze through it.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  Like, exit through the gift shop. Right. So finally, I knew this was never going to happen unless I took matters into my own hands. And I hired a guide. I had two hours. And I hired a guide and said, here's what I want you to do. I want you to teach me in depth about 10 things in this museum. 10 things. I promise I'm going someplace with this.

• 1:16:14Trevor Noah?

  No, no. What do you mean?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  I'm with you. 10 things. And I want to know the history and the providence and the philosophy. And I want to know the artists. And this is stuff from 8,000 years ago until the present. And it was phenomenal. So I'm standing in front of this two ton block of jade that had been carved into a Chinese village. And I said, Even if I had never left the United States, just looking at this, I would say, this looks Chinese. Right? Why does this look Chinese? And he said, that's because of the philosophy of art in China. I said, oh, tell me more. And he said, he said, he answered my question with a question. It was very eastern. He said, when you, as a Westerner, think of a work of art yet to be started, what image pops into your head? And I said, an empty canvas.

• 1:16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, painting.

• 1:16:58Speaker 01

  He said, that's because you think of things as starting from nothing and through your own initiative coming into existence. He said, okay. He said, I think about a work of art not being started as an uncut boulder of jade, where the sculpture is inside it, and I have to take everything away until I find it. And he said, and now here's the important part. He said, that's also the difference in philosophy between east and west. About life, about success. He says, you Westerners, you think that if you're going to have enough, add more, add more, add more, add more, add more, then it's going to be perfect. But by the time you're 45 years old, if you're remotely successful, more brushstrokes means a denser, darker canvas, and you're not, it's not getting better, it's getting uglier.

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  But you think more, more paint, more paint. You're sloshing paint on, you're getting a boat at 75 or whatever, and you're not getting happier. He said, we understand that the job on your last day is to chip away the last piece of jade when it's perfect. And that means that we chip away, we take away, we're subtracting. He said, that's the difference. And I thought, ah, that's what I was thinking about on that Camino. That's what I was thinking about that Camino. What do I need to chip away? I've been adding brushstrokes and adding brushstrokes, and my canvas is not getting more beautiful. I need a different metaphor.

• 1:18:16Speaker 02

  It's about sharing and giving.

• 1:18:17Speaker 01

  So what do I need to do? I need.

• 1:18:20Speaker 02

  Chip away.

• 1:18:21Speaker 01

  So I started chipping away. Started chipping away.

• 1:18:25Trevor Noah?

  It's about giving and not taking.

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is, you know, thinking and and now I don't have a bucket list on my birthday. I have a reverse bucket list on my birthday. Like, what is my gonna stop doing this year? What are the relationships that don't serve me? What are the possessions that are tying me down?

• 1:18:38Trevor Noah?

  You're taking things out of the bucket, throwing them away.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  Reverse bucket list, like, you know, my last birthday, you know? Actually, my my on my sixtieth birthday, which was in twenty twenty four, right? It was in the middle of an election year. And I'm like, what do I need to chip away? And you know what it was? It's my political opinions. I needed more political opinions because I need a fewer political opinions because I need more friends. Right? And I was adjudicating friendships on the basis of my political opinions.

• 1:19:03Trevor Noah?

  A lot of people are.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  Like, no, no. And so I wrote down my strongest eight political opinions and I crossed them out. Not because I think they're wrong. They might be wrong. I for sure I believe things that are wrong. But I'm not gonna know which until I'm hanging out with people who disagree with me as friends. Hmm. It changed my life.

• 1:19:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's that's something we spoke to Robert Putnam about on the show. Still one of my favorite human beings.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  My colleague at the Kennedy School.

• 1:19:28Trevor Noah?

  No, really?

• 1:19:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:19:29Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man. Bob Putnam is just like.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  He's wonderful.

• 1:19:31Trevor Noah?

  He's one of my favorite human beings because of how he synthesized what's lacking in humanity today. And it's that we think that good politics creates good relationships in society. And he was like, no, the good relationships in society is what creates good politics. And so we live in a world now where we go, we don't agree, so we don't spend time. And if we get if I get my politics good enough and I get my worldview good enough, we will all come together. And it's like, no, no, if we all find ways to come together, not around the politics, the politics starts to build itself in the most meaningful, beautiful ways, which is which is counter to how people think. And it's it's beautiful that you said it that way.

• 1:20:08Speaker 01

  If relationships are downstream from politics, you're gonna be miserable.

• 1:20:11Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  If if politics is downstream from relationships, it's funny because I've actually seen and participated in these studies where when you when you bring people who are really diametrically opposed politically together, like. Bernie Sanders voters and Donald Trump voters. It's actually they have kind of a lot in common, but anyway, there you and you say, okay, you're going to talk about politics. It's like daggers drawn, right? Yelling. But if you tell them, you're going to talk about politics, but first you got to talk to each other about your kids. You got to tell each other about your kids. And they're laughing and they're sharing stories about the people that they love the most. And if they have, both have teenagers, it's like you have a common enemy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just, and they, and then they talk about politics and it's like they don't

• 1:20:53Speaker 01

  hate each other. Why? Because there's no way to get to hate if you start with love. And that's the point. That's Bob Putnam's point.

• 1:21:01Speaker 02

  I think we've placed such a, I think from the conversation that we're having now and realizing what you're saying, we've placed such little value on community and the people that we have around us, right? And we, we don't have a giving spirit when it comes to opinions and what the likes of other people are. For example, I hate pickleball, but there's these two friends of mine that I can't shake off.

• 1:21:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:19Speaker 02

  That love pickleball, but I've realized.

• 1:21:21Speaker 01

  Relationship ender.

• 1:21:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:21:23Speaker 01

  Is that you? Are you the pickleball guy?

• 1:21:26Speaker 02

  I wasn't gonna name names and out people.

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  One of them is at this table and it's not, and it's not me.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  My process of elimination.

• 1:21:40Speaker 02

  But I realized that the first time I watched them playing pickleball, I was like, oh, this is boring. This sucks. The second time I went, I was like, they look so happy doing this. And the third time I saw them growing within the game that they were playing from the first time that I'd seen them, which is three games ago, you know? And I thought to myself, if I'm able to take myself away from what I think is entertaining and watch others who I care about being entertained, that makes me happy.

• 1:22:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:05Speaker 02

  It was almost like being there and I started enjoying the snacks there. I enjoyed the little walkabouts there. I enjoyed the people that worked there and overhearing conversations. Then I realized it wasn't just about seeing them happy. It was, once I realized that they were happy, I could go out and find my own happiness.

• 1:22:20Speaker 01

  That's classic.

• 1:22:21Speaker 02

  And I end up with happy friends in the car.

• 1:22:22Speaker 01

  What you did was you stopped doing this and started doing this. So, so there's the, you're two people. Eugene is two people.

• 1:22:31Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:22:31Speaker 01

  There's me self Eugene, looking at yourself, and there's I self.

• 1:22:36Speaker 02

  Our father.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  There's, there's suspenders.

• 1:22:39Speaker 02

  Too soon.

• 1:22:39Speaker 01

  So there's.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  I don't expect that from you.

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  Sorry.

• 1:22:43Speaker 02

  Him!

• 1:22:43Speaker 01

  Low blow, low blow.

• 1:22:45Speaker 02

  Turtle feet here.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  And there's I self Eugene, which is looking out, looking outward. And it's funny because you know that the most popular class on most college campuses, you know what it is? Astronomy 101.

• 1:22:59Speaker 02

  Why?

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  Exactly. Why? Finally, I ask a student, why do you, are you, because they're like English majors, communications majors, they're not astronomers, they're not physicists. They say, why do you love this so much? And this girl says, well, you know, I don't know. But on Thursday morning, I got my astronomy class at nine o'clock and I go in, I'm super stressed out because because I had a big argument with my mom and I think I'm going to break up with my boyfriend because I got a B, which Harvard is like the end of the world. And, and, and she says, and I sit in that class for an hour and a half and I come out and I'm a speck on a speck on a speck. That's the I self. We can actually, that's the I self. It's looking outward, looking outward, looking outward. That's the reason that

• 1:23:37Speaker 02

  Zooming out and out and out.

• 1:23:39Speaker 01

  Standing in awe, watching people who are enjoying themselves, serving other people, worshiping God, being in nature, listening to the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, whatever your thing is, that's the I self. Looking in the mirror, notifications on social media, pure torture.

• 1:23:56Speaker 02

  I had been there three times, to tell you the truth, Arthur, three times. And I didn't realize that they had ginger ale.

• 1:24:03Speaker 02

  While, when I was the happiest yesterday about what they were doing and what we were going to do afterwards, which was going to go eat steak at Peter Luger's, which was in my bucket list forever. I discovered in that fridge that they had ginger ale.

• 1:24:15Speaker 01

  Do you love ginger ale?

• 1:24:16Speaker 02

  Love ginger ale.

• 1:24:17Speaker 01

  Do you really?

• 1:24:17Trevor Noah?

  But you couldn't have seen it before because you were focused on how much you didn't like pickleball.

• 1:24:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  And yesterday I saw it.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you looked out and saw something beautiful, which is people that you loved, doing something that they truly enjoyed. And love is the basis of happiness and enjoyment is a macronutrient of happiness. And when you witness that, it changed your life, it changed your perspective. It wasn't about pickleball. It could have been anything.

• 1:24:40Trevor Noah?

  So how do we find this balance? Because

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  Pickleball, by the way, was invented in my city where I grew up.

• 1:24:46Trevor Noah?

  You grew up in Washington?

• 1:24:47Speaker 01

  I grew up in Seattle, Washington.

• 1:24:48Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, wow, look at that.

• 1:24:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, I grew up in Seattle, Washington. And when I was a kid, which was a long, like seventies and eighties, people were playing pickleball. It was like a local thing. Now everybody's playing pickleball.

• 1:24:56Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, it's fast.

• 1:24:56Speaker 02

  Was it found upon then or was it always a thing of cool people playing it?

• 1:25:01Speaker 01

  It was, I don't know who played it.

• 1:25:03Trevor Noah?

  It was all, it was all, it was all age homes. All age homes invented it as a, as a low risk sport.

• 1:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly right. Actually, we wouldn't wipe out your knees or something.

• 1:25:10Trevor Noah?

  Yep.

• 1:25:11Speaker 01

  I used to go

• 1:25:11Speaker 02

  No one said anything about your wrist.

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  I used to go to the only Starbucks in those days. I used to walk to the only Starbucks.

• 1:25:18Trevor Noah?

  Oh, because that's the capital of it, right?

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was like, I lived, I grew up on Queen Anne Hill and I would go over the top of Queen Anne Hill.

• 1:25:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:25:24Speaker 01

  And down to the Pike Place Market.

• 1:25:26Trevor Noah?

  This is back when it was, so this is when it was like Boeing Town, basically, is when you were, when you were growing up there. This is when Boeing ran the town.

• 1:25:33Speaker 01

  Warehouse and Boeing.

• 1:25:34Trevor Noah?

  I know what warehouse is.

• 1:25:35Speaker 01

  Warehouse is a, is a logging, logging.

• 1:25:38Trevor Noah?

  I did not know that.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  It's an extractive industry and so sort of low, low education.

• 1:25:43Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:43Speaker 01

  High skill was warehouse or high education, high skill was Boeing when I grew up. My dad taught at a local college there.

• 1:25:50Trevor Noah?

  So the technicians are up there, lumberjacks are down there.

• 1:25:52Speaker 01

  My dad had a PhD in biostat. Yeah.

• 1:25:55Trevor Noah?

  And your mom taught?

• 1:25:56Speaker 01

  My, my mother was an artist, was an artist of like, like a minor acclaim in the Pacific Northwest.

• 1:26:02Trevor Noah?

  What a beautiful combination, right? The arts and the sciences. Yeah, no, it really is.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  They were wonderful people, wonderful people.

• 1:26:09Trevor Noah?

  You, you just saying that this is just my anecdotal amateur, no, no science-based research, nothing brain. I feel like I have noticed a decrease over the years in people, and maybe this is socioeconomic, whatever it is, but I've noticed a decrease, just from my perspective, disclaimer, disclaimer, in the amount of people who are with somebody who's like from a completely different discipline to them. Do you know what I mean? I feel like a previous generation was like, my dad was a scientist, my mom was an artist. Uh, my dad was a this, my mom was a that, my dad was a, and then like these days people are like, we're accountants, we're lawyers.

• 1:26:45Speaker 01

  I know, that's called homogamy. Homogamy is a really, is a very, is a, it's a phenomenon that's growing in prevalence where people.

• 1:26:52Trevor Noah?

  Oh, so this is happening.

• 1:26:53Speaker 01

  Oh, totally, totally, completely. And by the way, it's socioeconomic too, which is a real problem.

• 1:26:57Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's what I, that's what I feel like.

• 1:26:59Speaker 01

  Sorting, it's a, it's sorted, it's sortative mating where people are, are meeting, it's like they go to college and they, they meet, they marry people from other fancy colleges that do the same thing that they do.

• 1:27:09Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:27:09Speaker 01

  And, and you know, that's just, I mean, great, fall in love with whoever you want, right? But it's.

• 1:27:14Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, but meet more people that you can fall in love with.

• 1:27:16Speaker 01

  But there's another problem in here. There's another, it isn't like a neurochemical problem.

• 1:27:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:27:20Speaker 01

  Here's the, here's the wrinkle in this. And this is exacerbated, by the way, by dating apps. Dating apps allow you to curate the relationships, curate the people that you meet on the basis of your comp uh uh your compatibility. So you say, I want somebody who, you know, is votes like I do. And somebody who likes the same kind of music that I do and somebody who thinks that, you know, Austin, Texas is really awesome and and somebody who likes to eat sriracha. I don't know, whatever.

• 1:27:45Trevor Noah?

  You want to date yourself.

• 1:27:46Speaker 01

  And and that's not hot. It turns out that what's most hot is a baseline of compatibility and tons of complementarity. And you don't find it. You don't find it on on on most apps. Some apps are getting much better about this because they're trying to not maximize time in app. They're trying to maximize time in person, which is really important. But there's this whole literature on this. There's these this physiology experiments where do you have you ever heard about the T-shirt sniffing?

• 1:28:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, yeah. That's one of my favorite experiments of all time.

• 1:28:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, so.

• 1:28:14Trevor Noah?

  Oh, it happens to my T-shirt.

• 1:28:17Trevor Noah?

  Did you? It is one of my favorite experiments of all time.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Eugene, so what so Trevor and I'll tell you about the T-shirts.

• 1:28:23Trevor Noah?

  Yes, please. No, you go, you go because you know, I'm sure you won't mess up the details. I I think I know all of them, but I you can go.

• 1:28:28Speaker 01

  It's a mid nineties thing. So and what the the the researchers did was they they they use they have an experiment with undergraduates because that they'll do anything for 20 bucks. And they had guys who would wear these T-shirts around for 48 hours.

• 1:28:41Trevor Noah?

  But no deodorant and no cologne.

• 1:28:42Speaker 01

  Nothing. They would do the thing to play sports or walk around, just go to class, whatever. Then they took their T-shirts off and they put them in shoeboxes and drilled holes in the shoeboxes. And they gave them to random women who didn't know the guys necessarily. But then there was no identifying marks on the boxes. And they would sniff the T-shirts through the holes. And then they had to rate them on the hotness of the guy. And it turns out that the hotness was inversely correlated to the similarity genetically of the men and the women. And the reason is.

• 1:29:09Trevor Noah?

  Wait, is that what it was?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the more different somebody is from you genetically, the hotter you find their smell because the olfactory bulb in the brain picks up what's called the major histocompatibility complex, which is a measurement of how much genetic or or how much um um how how resistant you're going to be to diseases. You want people, somebody really different than you that you have kids with.

• 1:29:31Trevor Noah?

  You're getting the best chance.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Kids get a better repertoire of defenses.

• 1:29:34Trevor Noah?

  Right.

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  And that's how you sense it, one of the ways that you sense it. That's why you should never pick your that you should you should never pick your own perfume. Women should never pick their own perfume. Because if women pick their own perfume, they like something, right? That smells like, that smells attractive to them, which is like their boyfriend. And their boyfriend smells it and says, that smells like my sister. Not hot. Always let your beloved pick your boy, pick your perfume.

• 1:30:02Trevor Noah?

  Because you, you're trying to smell good for them, not for yourself.

• 1:30:05Speaker 01

  But what you're doing is you're trying to smell good for them. So you pick something that smells delicious to you. And something that smells delicious to you, you've already. You've already picked that person on the basis of your olfactory bulb, because that person is right for you, that a a huge amount of attraction comes from smell. Like I met my wife and I'm like, I don't know, it's like. It's like cantaloupe on an August afternoon.

• 1:30:26Trevor Noah?

  Hey.

• 1:30:28Speaker 01

  It's just like, I can't get enough of it. I'm in thirty four years and I can't get enough of my wife's smell. Can't get enough of it.

• 1:30:34Trevor Noah?

  That's beautiful.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  Because it doesn't smell like me.

• 1:30:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's, it is the right kind. Is it, is it true? And I, I, correct me if I'm misremembering this in the study. I also remembered that they um showed the people pictures of the guys.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Trevor Noah?

  So they give you the box, you sniff, and then you go rate from one to ten. But then they would also give them a picture of guys and go rate them from one to ten. And the numbers that they chose were almost exactly like, so the guys they gave a seven was the picture they gave a seven, the guys they gave a three was the picture they gave a three. And people were like, how is this?

• 1:31:05Speaker 01

  So Love is Blind is great, as long as there's like holes in the wall that you.

• 1:31:09Trevor Noah?

  That you can sniff through.

• 1:31:10Speaker 01

  Through, because you're, it's basically, you're gonna, you're gonna get a lot of the same information.

• 1:31:14Trevor Noah?

  So now, let, let, going back to sort of what you were saying earlier about us finding this balance, you know, you talk about your wife, you talk about your relationship, you know, applies to kids, families, societies, etc.

• 1:31:27Trevor Noah?

  Are we in danger of living, you know, when you talk about east versus west, are we in danger of living in a world where we are so encouraged to pursue individualism? That we then end up losing happiness? Like, is there an extreme that you can go to where it's like your rights, your freedom of everything, your house, your car, your swimming pool, your, you know what I mean, like? Does that limit your happiness in a way that we don't really understand?

• 1:31:54Speaker 01

  For sure. Absolutely for sure. And this, the balance that we're trying to get, this is like the dark side of the Enlightenment in its way. I mean, the Enlightenment's phenomenal, it's great. You know, we, we've gone from might makes right to trying to persuade each other, rule of law, markets, individuality.

• 1:32:12Speaker 01

  Democracy, all this good stuff that we count on, but the other truth about this is this individuality, it it makes us into islands. And that's something that we have to, it's it's it's something that we have to be aware of and be taken care of in our own lives. I have this super ultra, my my favorite, my favorite philosopher is Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• 1:32:32Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Have you ever read Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson?

• 1:32:35Trevor Noah?

  I don't know that I have.

• 1:32:36Speaker 01

  It's just like the sturdy lad who always does it on his own, who farms it, who mines it, and who always lands on his feet like a cat. That's the stuff that I want. I mean, I bailed out of my hometown when I was a kid, never came back. It's me, man. It's me against the world. That's not the secret to happiness. It just isn't. And I have to be really, really aware of that all the time. I have to be clear on the fact that my impulse is toward individuation, toward radical individualism. I I get it. I'm I'm I'm an American by birth. You guys are Americans by choice.

• 1:33:11Trevor Noah?

  Oh, we're not. We're South Africans all the way, baby.

• 1:33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. I will notice that we're in New York.

• 1:33:20Trevor Noah?

  New York doesn't count.

• 1:33:24Speaker 01

  Trevor Noah just said that New York's not part of America. Anyway.

• 1:33:26Trevor Noah?

  Ah, New York said New York's not part of America. You can't, that one you can't get me on. New York will protect me. They'll be like, yeah, what you gonna do about it, bros?

• 1:33:34Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 1:33:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, no, so so.

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  But this is important because like, like, a lot of people watching us are are really, really individualistic. But the point is that you can't, you can't actually find love by becoming more and more isolated.

• 1:33:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Speaker 01

  And that means that there are so many things that we have a tendency to do that we actually have to self-govern, that we actually have to manage. You have to walk back from, I mean, look, there's many tendencies that everybody knows about. I want to, you know, go get drunk because it's awesome.

• 1:34:01Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  But I'm not gonna do that because it's not the right thing to do.

• 1:34:03Trevor Noah?

  But that's like an obvious one.

• 1:34:05Speaker 01

  That's sort of obvious, not obvious to everybody. I mean, that's the pursuit of pleasure is really deleterious, as it turns out. People do all kinds of things, and I think if I get, it goes back to what we're talking about. If I get enough money, there's gonna be a number. I'm gonna meet my number. I'm gonna scratch the itch so hard that finally I'm not gonna itch anymore. That's true for money. It's also true for individuality.

• 1:34:26Trevor Noah?

  Hmm.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  We need people. We're social animals, right?

• 1:34:30Trevor Noah?

  What does it do to our brains when we? Because I think I've heard you speak about this, or I've read something about this. But I'm intrigued by what it does to our actual brains when we need people and we actually express that need. Why does that make us happier? I don't understand that.

• 1:34:47Speaker 01

  So we're effectively, we're emotionally completed. And there's a lot of, you know, we could talk about this neurobiologically, but it makes sense that we actually don't feel ourselves when we're all by ourselves. That we really are, and you know, we're made to live in kinship. We're made to live in kin groups. And that makes perfect sense, because if you truly were an individual, you'd be walking the savanna and getting hunted down in minutes. So you need to actually feel complete when you're around your people. That's, and that's an evolutionary imperative, is to be around your people. Because you know, the members of the species that didn't have that, they're gonna die off. They're gonna die off. You know, that's just the way it is. And that's one of the reasons is there are very, very, very few people.

• 1:35:32Speaker 01

  I've met a hermit. I met a hermit in the Himalayas, and he hadn't lived with anybody for 27 years. He saw people very infrequently. He granted me, and what he does every day, he wakes up 6 o'clock in the morning, and he, you know, makes himself a little breakfast by himself, and then he reads a bunch of, you know, texts in Tibetan, and, and, you know, and then, and he sees nobody. And he, he, you know, he'll say, he'll talk to the monkeys, a lot of monkeys. And he says he's blissfully happy, blissfully happy. That's very unusual. That's an aberration. That's not, that's not the norm, as it turns out. Now, some people are more introverted, and some people are more extroverted, but introverts need people too. We need people. We don't feel like ourselves.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  You don't know who you are unless you actually have somebody who mirrors your back to yourself.

• 1:36:18Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. Oh, that's deep. Mm-hmm. Don't press anything. We've got more. What now, after this? 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.

• 1:36:59Trevor Noah?

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• 1:37:45Trevor Noah?

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• 1:38:28Trevor Noah?

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• 1:39:09Trevor Noah?

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• 1:39:27Speaker 03

  Hey everyone, it's Stavros Halakis and I'm here to tell you about my podcast, Stavvi's World. Each week, we're joined by great guests like Josh Safdie, Eric Andre, Caleb Heron, and more. It's sort of an interview show, but really, we're just messing around, making each other laugh, and hopefully making you laugh while you're washing the dishes, or grocery shopping, or on a long drive. Plus, I take listener calls where we have honest conversations about dating, life, and everything in between. Imagine if your therapist was a vulgar degenerate whose office was in a Greek diner. No scripts, no polish, and absolutely no holding back. Listen to Stavvi's World wherever you get your podcasts.

• 1:40:11Trevor Noah?

  There's something Eugene will often bring up that I think is important to get into, and it's how we talk about this, how we talk about these ideas whilst also acknowledging the positions that people are in their lives. You know, so I would love to know, when you're teaching people about happiness, is there a way to break it down according to how people are living their lives? And this is what I mean. You know, sometimes people go, hey, money's not everything. But it's often the people who have money who are saying it. And I'm literally borrowing this from you. It's like, but you have the money. It's a lot easier for someone to say it when they have the money. And it's a lot easier for somebody to say, like, hey, man, don't let work be your life. And it's like, yeah, but I have to work for my life. And this has to be my life. So how do you think of happiness in those ways?

• 1:40:56Trevor Noah?

  Is there, is there a, you know, is there like a shifting wheel that clicks? Is it, you know, is there a way to think of it differently? Or does it just apply to everyone the same, regardless of what's happening to them?

• 1:41:06Speaker 01

  So everybody needs enjoyment, satisfaction, and meaning. The macronutrients, for sure. But there are habits that everybody actually, that the happiest people are dedicated to. And and those basic habits fall in the categories of faith or life philosophy.

• 1:41:20Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:41:21Speaker 01

  Friendship, uh, family and meaningful work. Those are the four big buckets. The happiest people are doing.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  What our grandmothers did, fun enough.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, kinda.

• 1:41:30Speaker 02

  No, they really nailed that. Everything you said, I was like, these are grandmothers.

• 1:41:33Speaker 01

  And what's actually pushing us away from this, by the way, is the misuse and overuse of technology. That's one of the reasons that the the big, the the big problem, the crisis that we're having in happiness today for particularly for people under thirty five is that they don't know meaning. The number one predictor of depression and anxiety is saying my life feels meaningless. And the reason for this is because the misuse and overuse of technology have changed the way that people use their brains and pushed them away from the old ways. So the old ways, you know, it's like, I I I guarantee you that, you know, Grandpa Noah never came home to Grandma and said, honey, I had a panic attack behind the mule today.

• 1:42:13Speaker 02

  And then Grandma said, you have a mule? I was picturing, I was picturing the same thing. I was like.

• 1:42:18Speaker 01

  Mule?

• 1:42:19Speaker 02

  No, but I was just like, you're not wrong, though.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  But the reason is because, you know, I I don't wanna go live like Grandpa Noah. I need it to you.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:27Speaker 01

  I don't wanna live like my grandfather and smoke a pack of Winstons a day. I don't wanna do that. But I do want my brain to work the way it's supposed to work.

• 1:42:34Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:42:35Speaker 01

  And and the truth of the matter is that we've hemispherically lateralized our brain. We've moved activity to the left hemisphere of the brain, which is all about what and how and efficiency and grinding and achievement and and and reels and apps and tech. And the right side of the brain, when you're bored and when you're in love and when you're suffering and when you see beauty, that that right side of the brain gives you mystery and meaning. And all the stuff that you actually can't quite articulate. So that's the, this is the big difference that I actually see. The unhappiest people that I meet today are all living on the left. And the people who are happiest are doing a bunch of old weird things

• 1:43:15Speaker 01

  that are weird now, that would have been ordinary life before, that are helping them to be on the right side of their brains.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  You know, also what you're explaining helps me rationalize my hate for conversations about AI.

• 1:43:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:30Speaker 02

  Because when when I hear people who despise the thought of AI coming more and more into our lives. It makes me understand that they are more and more addicted to this technology that they feel like AI is gonna take. AI won't replace you making breakfast or taking a walk with your loved one or with your child or writing a book. It has no interest in that. But if you have made technology your con- the cornerstone of your happiness and of your purpose and what keeps you busy and what keeps you entertained, of course, you're gonna worry when someone or something comes and threatens that, right?

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Of course. No, no, for sure. And you know, the way for people to understand this for AI, can AI make me happy? What will you love? Your cat? I know you won't. Or a mechanical cat? Uh, and, and, and it's a, it's a question that answers itself. Mechanical cat can be really, really, really amazing, but you're always gonna know it's actually not alive.

• 1:44:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:44:20Speaker 01

  So what does alive mean? I don't know. It's, uh, I can simulate it, I guess. No, no, no. You know what alive means. You know it. So that's why AI, by the way, can bring you greater happiness if you're solving how to and what technical problems, freeing up your time and going big with the people you love. But it will lower your happiness if you're using it for right brain functions by making it your therapist and your lover and your friend. I mean, it might fool you for a minute, but it won't fool your brain. You can't simulate meaning.

• 1:44:49Speaker 02

  It can give you high resolution of what Central Park looks like, or you can be in Central Park.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's a point. This is an important point. You can't, so when, when I was a relative much younger man, twenty five years ago now, was the most popular movie of the year was The Matrix.

• 1:45:05Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:45:06Speaker 01

  That's a great movie.

• 1:45:06Speaker 02

  Still my most popular movie.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  It's a great movie.

• 1:45:08Speaker 02

  Still my most popular movie.

• 1:45:09Speaker 01

  It's twenty six years ago now. Depending on when we air this, it's gonna be twenty seven years ago.

• 1:45:14Speaker 02

  Twenty six years ago?

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  It was nineteen ninety nine.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Wow. I don't feel like The Matrix is that. Wow.

• 1:45:19Speaker 01

  Sorry, dude. Yeah.

• 1:45:20Speaker 02

  Damn. No, not in a bad way. I'm just like.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  It's like, imagine how I feel. Anyway, so.

• 1:45:27Speaker 01

  So, and, and in The Matrix, the, the plot of the movie, obviously, is that there's this super intelligent machine life, like fake life in a machine that has to, it's, it's a super intelligence.

• 1:45:39Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  And it has to power itself on human endeavor. And it does so by putting people in pods and simulating a real life that's really, really pleasant and distracting and, and kind of narcotic.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  And and that's like crazy science fiction. We're in the matrix. We're in the matrix. I mean, it's like I'll get up, you know, and I check my phone and then I go to work, which is on a zoom screen. And all my friends are kind of on social media and then I'm gonna date. And a lot of my accomplishment is gonna come from gaming. It's the matrix. Which is getting you stuck in the left side of your brain and the one thing you'll never get from that is meaning.

• 1:46:15Trevor Noah?

  Isn't it weird that we go, I'm bored, swipe, I am hungry, I wanna get from A to B. And I want some company.

• 1:46:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:23Trevor Noah?

  But we're doing all of it is here.

• 1:46:25Speaker 01

  And the great irony of this is that your grandfather, he his day to day existence was pretty damn boring. It was he did a lot of a lot of stuff was his job was pretty boring.

• 1:46:37Trevor Noah?

  Worked in the railway, so he was pretty bored, yeah.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  But he never, at the end of his life, he wouldn't have said, my life has been very boring. Cause his life wasn't boring. But here's the thing. If you live like modern people do today, not using your brain the way it's supposed to. You're never actually bored moment to moment, but your life is unbelievably boring.

• 1:46:56Trevor Noah?

  I always say it's the elimination of friction. That that we take for granted, like as as you increase convenience.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  Implemented that so many times.

• 1:47:03Trevor Noah?

  The cost, remember when we spoke.

• 1:47:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:05Trevor Noah?

  Like the cost of convenience is one that we haven't fully understood yet in life. And it's it's actually interesting to see, and I've spoken about this before, but. Go and look at the tech entrepreneurs who make technology in India, all over Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, you name it. Look at the tech that they make. They make tech that solves a problem that was otherwise unsolvable.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:47:30Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? So they'll make an app that enables farmers to know when to plant their crops. So that they have the highest yield and they don't lose, you know, forty percent of their crops or whatever. And then you look at the Western world, the US in particular, most of the apps, they don't solve a problem.

• 1:47:49Speaker 01

  You can find a closest pizza than the.

• 1:47:52Trevor Noah?

  Exactly. Do you know what I mean? And and I think of.

• 1:47:55Speaker 01

  Meaningful.

• 1:47:55Trevor Noah?

  No, and and I think of I think of what you're talking about now, what it's robbed us of is. The walk to go find the pizza place, the conversation, remember asking somebody for directions?

• 1:48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48:07Trevor Noah?

  How crazy those moments were, or asking someone where you you're trying to get somewhere and that might spark something. And then because you're in a place, then someone else talks to you and then a thing happens and where did you bump into each other? All of the most wonderful things, or many of the most wonderful things that will happen to you in your life are inconvenienced.

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:48:24Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. That's, that's why they happen.

• 1:48:26Speaker 01

  A pilgrimage is induced inconvenience.

• 1:48:28Trevor Noah?

  Oh, I love that. Induced inconvenience.

• 1:48:30Speaker 01

  Totally. I mean, you're putting a bunch of friction in your life. Like, I'm gonna walk, even though I could fly, I could drive, I could take a train, I'm gonna walk hundreds of miles. I'm gonna walk, and it's gonna hurt. I'm gonna do that.

• 1:48:44Trevor Noah?

  It's gonna take time.

• 1:48:44Speaker 01

  Why? Because I want to, I wanna get access to this special information that comes to me when I'm not actually arriving.

• 1:48:53Trevor Noah?

  So, let me ask you this, as somebody who, who's written multiple books about this. I'm always intrigued by the things that scholars keep learning about a subject that you would think they would have otherwise conquered.

• 1:49:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:49:06Trevor Noah?

  You know what I mean? Now, I wanna know what, what you are newly discovering, or what's newly exciting you in the field of happiness that you haven't previously delved into.

• 1:49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, so my background is behavioral science.

• 1:49:19Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 1:49:20Speaker 01

  And behavioral economics, psychology, et cetera. I had to retrain, learning a lot of neuroscience. Because the vanguard is this realization that psychology is biology. That if you don't understand the brain, you don't understand the mind. And I'm not a radical physicalist. I'm a religious person. I'm a traditionally religious person, so I'm not a radical physicalist, where it's, it's all...

• 1:49:42Trevor Noah?

  It's all here and nowhere else. No.

• 1:49:44Speaker 01

  I don't, I don't actually believe that. But the truth is, I'm not gonna understand what's going on with my emotions unless I understand what's going on with my limbic system. And that's the vanguard. That's super fun and exciting. It's unbelievable. For my writing, I'm reading ten to twenty neuroscience articles a week. And I've had to really retrain in it. I'm not, I'm not an expert. I have a PhD in neuroscience. I mean, I, I talk to neuroscientists, and it's like, oh man, this is so far above me. You know, I listen to, like Huberman. He's truly, is a great neuroscientist. And, and I don't hold a candle to that, but the more that I'm learning, the more excited that I actually get. And that's the, that's a, that's a learning pilgrimage that I get to be on for the rest of my life.

• 1:50:22Trevor Noah?

  It's just discovering new parts of...

• 1:50:24Speaker 02

  You're pumping that limbic now.

• 1:50:25Trevor Noah?

  How the, how the thing, one thing connects to the other thing, connects to the other thing.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  What, so, so it's the same thing I could ask you, though. So you've been at the top of your profession. What are you doing to stay fresh and to learn? What is thrilling your heart these days that you're learning?

• 1:50:41Trevor Noah?

  So, now I'm trying to be a professional at living.

• 1:50:44Speaker 01

  Tell me more.

• 1:50:46Trevor Noah?

  Sort of going back to what we spoke about earlier. Um, I realized I'm very good at working.

• 1:50:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:52Trevor Noah?

  I've worked my entire life.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Super hard.

• 1:50:54Trevor Noah?

  That I've been allowed to work, you know? So I've, I've worked my entire life. I'm very good at working. I'm very good at adapting to that work, understanding it and getting to a level of proficiency that allows me to earn a living in that work. What I've never been particularly good at is living.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 1:51:09Trevor Noah?

  You know, so recently I went to my first wedding ever. At, at the age of forty one years old, I went to a wedding.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  It wasn't yours, right?

• 1:51:16Trevor Noah?

  No, it wasn't. I accepted an invitation, I attended, and for the first time I was like, oh, this is what a wedding is. I see. And we sit like this and then those people, wow, this is, you get what I'm saying?

• 1:51:28Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:51:29Trevor Noah?

  I've never done that. And I've never done it because I think for the most part, it's been wo- work. Work comes, most people don't know when their weddings are before I know my schedule.

• 1:51:39Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:51:39Trevor Noah?

  So by the time you know your wedding, I'm like, I'm already working that day. You know, and now this one was a combination of me saying, I will make the space, but I, luckily the person told me.

• 1:51:47Speaker 01

  Why, why, why, why the, the preoccupation with work?

• 1:51:50Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. So why the preoccupation with work? No, it was.

• 1:51:53Speaker 01

  Because you love your work.

• 1:51:54Trevor Noah?

  I think it was a combination of two things. One, um, survivability. So the first one was just like, earn a living.

• 1:52:00Speaker 01

  Right, yeah.

• 1:52:01Trevor Noah?

  There was no like

• 1:52:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got it.

• 1:52:02Trevor Noah?

  choice. And I always tell people, people are like, why did you become a comedian? I'm like, because it's the only job they weren't interviewing for. You know what I mean? I didn't need to come with qualifications. Otherwise I would have done other things.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  No dates.

• 1:52:12Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, really. Um, the other thing was that I enjoyed it and I started developing and I still work on a master.

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  And you have a super high achievement orientation.

• 1:52:22Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, yeah. So I go like, this is great, this is great, this is great.

• 1:52:24Speaker 01

  Your number one macronutrient is satisfaction. Is achievement that you get after struggle. Achievement.

• 1:52:31Trevor Noah?

  Oh, it's the best.

• 1:52:31Speaker 01

  Satisfaction from achievement. So, so, and you're like a virtuoso at satisfaction.

• 1:52:36Trevor Noah?

  So what I love is I'm, I'm a big fan of luck theory.

• 1:52:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:39Trevor Noah?

  Right? And when I discovered this, it changed my whole life. So there was a, a French philosopher who wrote a whole book about luck.

• 1:52:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:46Trevor Noah?

  And the principles of luck. And he said, we always just talk about luck as if it's this one flat idea. So lucky, unlucky, terrible, good things, not bad for you, huh, lucky. And he wrote this whole book and he broke luck down into these four quad- quadrants. And he said, we need to understand what luck is to understand how we welcome.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:05Trevor Noah?

  Or dissuade luck from coming into our lives. So, so he said.

• 1:53:08Speaker 01

  It's not luck.

• 1:53:09Trevor Noah?

  Yeah. So he said, the first thing is.

• 1:55:21Trevor Noah?

  People here, you haven't even advertised, but I've noticed that you're starting a new store. You know, that's awareness. And then the last one, which I find most interesting is the luck of uniqueness. Specialization. When you choose to delve into something and really, really, really get into it, it doesn't matter what it is. A sport, a hobby, a profession, it doesn't matter what it is. It presents unique opportunities to you that'll make you feel lucky. But they aren't necessarily just lucky. So by you being a professor who specializes in happiness, you are more likely to be lucky to bump into Oprah Winfrey. I'm so lucky. Oprah liked me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's a lot harder to meet Oprah. When you're not in this world, do you get what I'm saying?

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  No, for sure.

• 1:56:06Trevor Noah?

  It's a lot easier to meet LeBron James if you specialize in basketball. It's just a lot easier. I'm not saying it'll happen, but it's easier.

• 1:56:13Speaker 01

  So this is, this stuff is great. And there's the best psychologist on this, a British guy named Richard Wiseman.

• 1:56:18Trevor Noah?

  Richard, oh, I mean, if your name is Wiseman, I mean, you've got to now you.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  You can't be, you can't be stupid.

• 1:56:23Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's like, oh, old wizy over here.

• 1:56:26Speaker 01

  And then his cousin, Henry idiot.

• 1:56:28Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's just like, oh, man.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Didn't do us well.

• 1:56:33Speaker 01

  So, so, and the fact that you think about this an awful lot, because you've got this heavy achievement orientation.

• 1:56:39Trevor Noah?

  Yes, but what, to wrap it up in terms of the life thing, what I realized was, I was like, oh, Trevor, you think to yourself, you're like, oh, man, I, I wish, you know, I had more wedding stories. I wish, and I was like, oh, instead of wishing for them,

• 1:56:55Trevor Noah?

  why not try and work on the luck that makes these things happen?

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56:58Trevor Noah?

  So create more space in your diary.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  And this is, this is your project now?

• 1:57:03Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, this is my, this is, he knows, this is my actual project. We, and he's been a great friend in this. I'll go, Eugene, what are you doing? Nothing? Great. Pick something for us to do. And then we just drive. And we go have lunch, or we don't, or we walk, or we don't, or we, but we, but I, I now create the space that I didn't, hoping that maybe something can come into that space that couldn't otherwise if I hadn't filled it with work. Does that make sense?

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it does. So, so this is really important. So, um, remember, there's three parts of happiness.

• 1:57:36Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:36Speaker 01

  And so based on this, and you know, we've met before.

• 1:57:40Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:40Speaker 01

  But we didn't like grow up together.

• 1:57:42Trevor Noah?

  No.

• 1:57:42Speaker 01

  And we haven't played pickleball together.

• 1:57:43Trevor Noah?

  No, we have not.

• 1:57:49Speaker 01

  I would say of the three of the three macronutrients of happiness, you're a 10 on satisfaction.

• 1:57:59Trevor Noah?

  Probably yes.

• 1:58:00Speaker 01

  You're probably a six on meaning.

• 1:58:04Trevor Noah?

  Oh, you think it's that low?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  No, it's not low.

• 1:58:06Trevor Noah?

  You think six is high?

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  I think so. Six is pretty moderate. It's pretty, pretty normal.

• 1:58:09Trevor Noah?

  Alright.

• 1:58:10Speaker 01

  And I think you're a three on enjoyment. I think that you never learn how to enjoy your life. And so if I were working with you on this, that see, then you say, I want to be better at living. I want to be better at living. The problem is that when I'm doing these things to be better at living, I'm not putting points on the board. I'm not making progress in my life. That's what all strivers think.

• 1:58:29Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:29Speaker 01

  Right? And so the way to deal with this is to understand how enjoyment works. So I've, you and I were working together, we were talking about this every week, right? That's okay. We got to have an enjoyment plan. We're going to have a strategic plan for enjoyment. Because we need to reframe it, kind of like you do with getting good at this whole thing.

• 1:58:46Trevor Noah?

  Funny you say this because I never, remember, I never learned it. I was talking to my mom about this the other day and I, I said to her, because my mom is like the ultimate worker.

• 1:58:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:53Trevor Noah?

  And I said, Mom, have you noticed that you work yourself to death? Then you rest, but you don't rest.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:58Trevor Noah?

  You're just exhausted.

• 1:58:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:00Trevor Noah?

  And she was like, yeah, how else could I be? And I was like, well, I think you and I both could practice enjoying before we're exhausted. And she was like, you do it and let me know how it goes. And if it's good, I'll join you. And so I'm on that journey and she's not against this. She's just like, hey kid, she's like, look, man, the life I lived, I didn't have sort of the luxuries you had. So work hard and I'll, I'm, I'm open to it, but, but so carry on. So you, so work on and learning to enjoy.

• 1:59:24Speaker 01

  So let me make a suggestion.

• 1:59:25Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:26Speaker 01

  Alright. There's a great book that was written by a German philosopher in the middle of the 20th century named Josef Pieper.

• 1:59:33Trevor Noah?

  Uh huh.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  And Pieper, he wrote this book called Leisure, The Basis of Culture. You're like, okay, so he's going to write a whole book about chilling on the beach. No, no, no, chilling on the beach isn't leisure. That's, that's, that's assidia, which means kind of a laziness. And, and there's nothing wrong with chilling on the beach from time to time, but that's not actual leisure. Leisure, you have to be excellent at, to be excellent at leisure.

• 1:59:54Trevor Noah?

  I'm already in.

• 1:59:55Speaker 01

  Leisure is something you're truly good at.

• 1:59:57Trevor Noah?

  This guy here? Might be an expert, but carry on.

• 2:00:00Speaker 01

  Okay, that, that, that they don't pay you for. But you're just really, really good at. And so he talks about in categories of spiritual depth, going deeper and deeper and deeper in your spiritual life. It's developing your relationships with your closest friends, developing relationships at a real level where you go out to dinner. It's like, go deeper, go home, go deeper, go home. And it's like, here's the first question. Trevor, what are you most afraid of? That's the first question because we're gonna, we're gonna learn about each other here. That's leisure, that's actual leisure. It's about getting an aesthetic sense. It's about going deep into the works of.

• 2:00:36Trevor Noah?

  So it's not, how's things been?

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  No, no, that's nonsense. Who cares? It's like, I don't care about the weather. I don't care how the Jets did on Sunday. No, no, no, no. I want to know what you're afraid of. I want to know you. That's leisure. And that's what you, that, that will create enormous, strivers can enjoy their lives only when they understand the truth about leisure. And when they're like, if you don't, you're gonna be like, yeah, so, so I guess I'm on vacation. I gotta go someplace and sit on a beach bored. No, you don't want to do that. I know you don't want to do that. That sounds horrible to you, right?

• 2:01:13Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, it's, it's always been horrible. It's like, the sound of that has always been like.

• 2:01:16Speaker 02

  The irony of it all?

• 2:01:17Speaker 01

  And it's like, and, and the problem is that a lot of strivers.

• 2:01:21Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:21Speaker 01

  Who have families, they're like total killjoys. Because their kid, you know, their, their, you know, their spouse is like, let's go to the beach. Let's take the kids to the beach. And you're like, I don't, sweetheart, I can't tell you why, but I hate it. I can't tell you why, but I hate it. And that's because you in your heart know that real leisure is something that, that has incredible value. That creates value for you and value for the universe. But it doesn't pay you. So what?

• 2:01:47Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, that's not the point.

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:48Trevor Noah?

  But the enjoyment, now do Eugene, do Eugene. What's, what would you say Eugene's numbers are?

• 2:01:52Speaker 01

  So higher on enjoyment, higher on enjoyment.

• 2:01:57Speaker 01

  Um, I don't know about the satisfaction numbers, because we actually haven't, you're, you're, I don't know as much about your career.

• 2:02:03Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  I don't know about it. Yeah, so tell me.

• 2:02:06Speaker 02

  So I started off doing comedy, but comedy introduced me to television, to doing a bit of radio, and now it's led me to this path. And we've had guests here that asked me, so do you miss comedy? I'm like, I can't miss comedy, because I'm happy here.

• 2:02:18Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 2:02:18Speaker 02

  Like, I'm enjoying this. This, this was part of my visualization. Six, seven years ago, I wrote this all down in a book. I said, I wanna do something, and I wanna do it here, and I wanna earn in this currency. Wrote it all down. So when I'm here now, when someone asks me, don't you miss the other thing? I'm like, it doesn't, it doesn't come into my world. You know, when other comics ask me, now that you're in New York, are you gonna go do a club? I'm like, I don't, I'm not even thinking about it.

• 2:02:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:02:41Speaker 02

  I'm thinking about eating pig's feet and hang out with my friends.

• 2:02:44Speaker 01

  His higher enjoyment.

• 2:02:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I'm like, no, no, no. I don't think that far. And we've, we've also had this conversation. I'm like, no, no, this, for me, is the World Cup of it all, for now. This is what's happening, and I'm enjoying this.

• 2:02:55Speaker 01

  So tell me, um, what's the mission statement of your life?

• 2:03:00Speaker 02

  I do not want to regret not doing things. For a while, I forgot the philosophy that my mom taught me, that no matter who says what, and how uncomfortable it is, you didn't break anywhere, you must just keep going. Her other philosophy was, you can always start over, you know? Try again, and try again, and try again. And there was a time where, besides the sabbatical that I took, I just paused. I stopped doing things that made me happy, and I started doing things that made other people happy. And when I, when I wasn't really, really a bad place, I'd lost my son, things were just horrible emotionally, those people that I tried to satisfy were nowhere to be found. In fact, I would find out when I came out of it, that they were the first people that would call me unreliable, that would call me, I don't show up for places, I don't show up for work, and they didn't even bother knowing what was wrong in the first place.

• 2:03:43Speaker 02

  So that alone freed me and gave me the independence to just ride bikes by myself, uh, go to shooting by myself. So I learned to do these hobbies, and those side quests, as my daughter calls them, you know? By myself.

• 2:03:56Speaker 01

  Hmm. So you have. Low, what we call positive, negative affect. Negative affect is intensity of negative emotions. And half the population is above average and half the population is below average. Mm hmm. Right? So you're, you're low in negative affect. And which is one of the reasons that you can, terrible things can happen to you and you feel crummy about it, but it doesn't ruin your life. It doesn't ruin your life. Suspended in a desk again. Huge amount of resilience because of this, which is really great. I would say that you've got what we call the temperament of the cheerleader. High positive, neg-, high intensity positive emotions and low intensity negative emotions. It doesn't mean you don't feel these particular things, but that's just the functioning of the limbic system. I know it's gonna work out. Yeah. You, on the other hand, are high, high. High positive emotion, high negative emotion. You feel things really strongly.

• 2:04:42Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. You feel things strongly. That's the mad scientist profile. Mad scientist. The mad scientist profile is like, everything is like.

• 2:04:50Speaker 01

  Oh. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Text this laboratory. So you're the cheerleader. I love to text her. And you're the mad scientist, right? Okay, so there's two other profiles, which is low intensity positive and high intensity negative. That's the poet. That seems rough. That's rough. That's rough. That's the poet. But those people, yeah, those are the poets. And then there's low, low. Low amplitude emotionality. Those are the judges. Those are the judges. They're not freaking out. Incredible. They, they don't, they don't, they're not freaking out. And this, it's quarters of the population, but you find people in different, in different lines of work that tend to crowd into one of these, into these, into these quadrants. So you find that CEOs and entrepreneurs, they tend to be mad scientists. Hmm. Right? Cause they're just taking a bite out of life. You just told me you're taking a huge bite out of life all the time. Yeah. That's like, time's ticking, dude.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Let's do this. Mm hmm. Right? And sometimes it sucks and you understand that and you feel that deeply and, and you got bad days, but you're gonna keep going, going, going, going, going. And you, on the other hand, you're actually able to stop. You're actually able to stop doing things. Why? Because you're a cheerleader and the, the amplitude of your negative emotionality is not gonna impel you to be constantly in motion, doing something. You're actually, and, and that's, that is the happiest, that is the happiest profile. It doesn't mean crummy things aren't gonna happen to you, like, or they do and you don't care. That's not it at all. What it means is that you're highly, highly, highly resilient. You're a highly resilient person. And now, what does this mean? This means that you can bring, I mean, this is, this is, you're perfect. I mean, you're perfect here.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  You're, you're, it's interesting, comics who are, who are cheerleaders. There's kind of two kinds of comedians. They're comedians who have really high intensity, negative emotion. And what they get is they do a lot of emotional substitution where they figured out when they were little kids. I'm, I pal around with Rainn Wilson a lot.

• 2:06:35Trevor Noah?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:35Speaker 01

  And he had a really, really rough childhood. He grew up five miles away from me in Seattle and we're about the same age. We didn't know each other as kids, but we bonded over this, right? Watching the same shows on TV and, you know, fifth grade. And, and, and what they do when they have a rough childhood, he really struggled, is that they figure out that they're smart and funny. And when they make a joke, everybody else laughs and then life feels better.

• 2:06:57Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:06:57Speaker 01

  That's the first kind of comic. They're really good at, with a straight face, making everybody else laugh. Then the other kind make everybody laugh because they, they use emotional contagion. That's you. So you, you do this. You use emotional contagion. You laugh all the time. Which makes me laugh and makes me happy.

• 2:07:15Trevor Noah?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  And there's a kind of comic that does that.

• 2:07:17Trevor Noah?

  We can hear you coming.

• 2:07:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, this is great. And there's two kinds of comics like this, but you have figured out you've, you've, you've, you've unlocked this success as somebody who's going to bring happiness to everybody else around you by sharing your happiness. And you've even done it by laughing and being a comic who laughs a lot. It's an amazing thing.

• 2:07:41Trevor Noah?

  It's crazy.

• 2:07:41Speaker 01

  It's an amazing thing.

• 2:07:42Trevor Noah?

  It's amazing reading.

• 2:07:42Speaker 01

  It's an amazing thing.

• 2:07:43Trevor Noah?

  Before, before you go, what's your quadrant? What's your?

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  I'm a mad scientist.

• 2:07:46Trevor Noah?

  Oh, mad scientist.

• 2:07:47Speaker 01

  I was like, I was there. Mad scientist. I was there, I was there. Mad scientist unite. This is laboratory. And what this means, by the way, that for you, you don't need to worry so much about raising your happiness. You need to manage your unhappiness. You need to manage your unhappiness more than raising happiness.

• 2:08:05Trevor Noah?

  No, can I say this is so crazy? Maybe it's, maybe I'm, I wrote down, I remember in one of my journals, I said, especially for me, I said, I just need to worry about what I do not like.

• 2:08:19Trevor Noah?

  I I believe this for most people because I go, we do not know what we want. We only remember what we enjoyed and then we want to replicate it. But I was like for myself, for me, me, me. I went just find the nots and just minus the minus the minus because those things. Because I I I did not know how much fun I would get have getting to know you.

• 2:08:36Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:08:36Trevor Noah?

  I did not know how much you would influence me when I first met you. So I'm always open to those things where I'm like, wow, you never know what will happen, what happened, happened. But the nots, hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally.

• 2:08:46Trevor Noah?

  Hey, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you try this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Ah, there you are. You see, you're in now.

• 2:08:52Speaker 01

  I got it.

• 2:08:52Trevor Noah?

  You're in. You are much closer than your grandparents were instantly. You were flawless there.

• 2:08:57Speaker 01

  The Holy Spirit just worked through me.

• 2:08:59Trevor Noah?

  It worked straight through you, my friend.

• 2:09:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So but this is important because you know what? There's all kinds of people who have really high negative affect. There's all kinds of destructive ways to manage your negative affect.

• 2:09:09Trevor Noah?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  Drugs and alcohol, classic way to manage your limbic system, which is overactive on the negative side.

• 2:09:14Trevor Noah?

  Okay.

• 2:09:15Speaker 01

  That's why people do that. You know, there's sort of two reasons that people become, you know, addicted to alcohol, for example, is boredom and anxiety.

• 2:09:22Trevor Noah?

  Oh, man.

• 2:09:23Speaker 01

  But for high achievers, it's always anxiety because they're highly anxious people. Which means they have a really active amygdala.

• 2:09:29Trevor Noah?

  And that's the only way they can like instantly calm it down.

• 2:09:32Speaker 01

  Connection between your amygdala and your prefrontal cortex. You're actually really stressed out, but you don't know.

• 2:09:37Trevor Noah?

  Who?

• 2:09:37Speaker 01

  Which is why two drinks, you're like, oh, okay, I'm all right. And and so they're self treating for that. It's a very destructive way to deal with negative affect. Another is workaholism, just, just, just like this, I know how to do this. This, I know how to do. And they ruin their marriage because they're trying to get away from their negative affect by staying at the office for the fourteenth hour before the first hour with their kids. I'm guilty. I'm guilty. That's the problem when I was running the company.

• 2:10:02Trevor Noah?

  How do, how do we work on these things as people? Like, how do you?

• 2:10:05Speaker 01

  You find better ways to manage your negative affect.

• 2:10:07Trevor Noah?

  Yeah, so how do, but how do people even begin? How do you even know that you are doing it? And then how do you begin to work on it?

• 2:10:13Speaker 01

  You got to know yourself. You actually have to do the work, as they say, which doesn't necessarily mean going, you know, getting tangled up in the therapy industrial complex. That's good for some people, but it's not, it's not necessary for everybody. The reason I teach this stuff is because I want people to think about their lives. I want them to understand because you're. Your laboratory, it's time to go experiment in all these different ways. You've been telling me about experiments that you're doing already. Like, I'm gonna get better at living. What you're telling me is that you're a living lab. And why? Because you're treating these different things to be a more effective, happier person that can lift other people up more effectively, which is a beautiful thing. And so, what are two great ways to treat negative affect? Get deep, more deeply into your spiritual life. More deeply into your spiritual life. Hugely effective.

• 2:10:56Trevor Noah?

  You see that finger?

• 2:10:57Speaker 01

  And we recommend Catholicism, by the way.

• 2:11:03Speaker 01

  I'm gonna learn it, Zulu.

• 2:11:06Speaker 01

  And the second is really, is really simple. It's run around and pick up heavy things.

• 2:11:11Trevor Noah?

  Ah, that's simple.

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  It's that simple.

• 2:11:14Trevor Noah?

  Run around and pick up heavy things.

• 2:11:16Speaker 01

  It's like exercise, exercise. And so, I, you know, I'm a mad scientist and I have to treat my negative affect. I start every day. I get up, I do an hour in the gym and I go to mass.

• 2:11:26Trevor Noah?

  That's every day.

• 2:11:26Speaker 01

  Every day.

• 2:11:27Trevor Noah?

  Take care of the physical, take care of the spiritual.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Because, and, and it's just self-defense. You know, it's not like I'm some great guru sitting in a cave in the Himalayas. It's just I have super astronomically high negative affect. I'm at the 90th percentile in negative affect and I don't want it to interfere with my life. And that's what I figured out by studying this stuff when I left that job. And that's what I've been doing for the past seven years. And that's what I want to bring to everybody.

• 2:11:50Trevor Noah?

  And you are.

• 2:11:50Speaker 01

  This information.

• 2:11:51Trevor Noah?

  You are and you have and you continue to. We've got to do this again.

• 2:11:55Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 2:11:56Trevor Noah?

  This is so much fun.

• 2:11:57Speaker 01

  Thank you. I loved it.

• 2:11:58Trevor Noah?

  Did I, did I not promise you this as well?

• 2:12:00Speaker 02

  I was not gonna say this, but on our way here, he was like, you're gonna absolutely love this guy.

• 2:12:07Speaker 01

  Do you?

• 2:12:08Speaker 02

  Man, you're a wizard.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  I love you too, Eugene.

• 2:12:11Speaker 02

  Love you too, man.

• 2:12:12Speaker 01

  No, man, Professor Brooks, thank you so much. This has really been great.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Fire, guys. Thank you.

• 2:12:19Speaker 02

  Man, you were the conversation we needed.

• 2:12:23Trevor 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?

• 2:12:57Speaker 04

  Football season is here and the Fantasy Footballers are back to help you dominate your league. And this season, we're bringing you five episodes every week. That's more starts, more sits, more waiver wire wins, and more trades. From draft day all the way to your fantasy championship, we've got the rankings, the matchups, the news, and the advice you need to win. The Fantasy Footballers Podcast, five episodes a week all season long. Watch on YouTube or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

• 2:13:27Speaker 05

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