How to Improve Your Memory & Cognitive Function at Any Age | Dr. Alan Castel

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Good learning happens through making mistakes. Just seeing something many
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times doesn't mean you'll remember it well. You've seen the
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Apple logos so many times. Of course you know all
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the features. But then when you quiz people and test them,
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and I do this in my class, people aren't sure
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as the bite on the left or the right hand side?
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Is there a stem or a leief? The best way
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to remember something is to again failures. I'll have you
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draw it without looking at it, and you struggle and wait,
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is it on the left or right? And says a
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stem or relief? And you're trying to question all of
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these things. Then when you look at the logo again,
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you're going to engage in better learning than if you
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hadn't done that error full kind of trial beforehand.
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Welcome to the Huberman Lab podcast, where you discuss science
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and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman,
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and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford
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School of Medicine. My guest today is doctor Allan Costell.
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Doctor Alan Costell is a professor of psychology at the
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University of California, Los Angeles. He is one of the
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world's most experts on human memory and cognitive aging. Today
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we discuss what determines if we remember something like a name,
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or an event, or how to do something, and we
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discuss how to improve our ability to remember information of
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all kinds at any age. We also discuss how anytime
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we plan or imagine something about our future, we are
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always building that on memories of our past, and what
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that means for our ability to come up with new
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ideas and plans for our lives. And we discuss how
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our memory changes across the lifespan and why some people
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retain exceptional cognitive abilities well into their eighties and nineties
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and even beyond, and what any of us can do
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to improve our chances of maintaining or even getting better
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at memory as we age. Indeed, while most people assume
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that memory decline is an inevitable consequence of getting older,
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doctor Castell explains research that tells us the story is
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far more nuanced and more optimistic. In fact, we cover
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one of the more powerful and perhaps surprising influences on
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our rate of cognitive aging, which is your beliefs about aging.
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It's olaf. And finally, we discuss so called superagers, which
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is the name given to older adults whose memory performance
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rivals that of people decades younger. He explains which superagor
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protocols are accessible to anyone and how they can be
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incorporated into everyday life to benefit our mental and our
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physical health. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that
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this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles
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at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and
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effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science
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and science related tools to the general public. In keeping
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with that theme, today's episode does include sponsors, and now
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for my discussion with doctor Alan Costell. Doctor Allan Castell, welcome,
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thank you, nice to be here. You're going to tell
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us how to build up and keep our memory. But
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let's start by asking what is memory, or rather, how
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do you conceptualize memory from the standpoint of we move
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through life, we experience things, let's call it passively, or
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we try to remember certain things. What determines what information
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we hold on to, how long and so on.
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It's a great question, and memory is really a mental
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representation of the past, and by its very nature, it's reconstructive.
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It's never always accurate, and I think that's why it's
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so mysterious and fascinating that you and I can see
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the same event and then remember it differently a week
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or a day later. And it starts kind of almost
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at the sensory level. And sometimes our mind plays tricks
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on us. And that's how I got interested in this field,
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that how can I think I know something and yet
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not know it as well as I do? And this
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is something that's called metacognition, our awareness of our own cognition.
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And as a personal anecdote, when you know, as in
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fifth or sixth grade, I had one line in the
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play The Wizard of Oz. It's a line I practiced
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again and again. Listen everyone, there's a cyclone on the way,
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Hurry and get into the cellar. And of course on
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opening night, listen everyone, there's a seller on the way.
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Hurry and get into the cyclone. Nice And I'm thinking,
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how did I manage that having memorized this line. Most
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of the audience probably didn't even notice. But that to
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me was an early exposure to memories, not always kind
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of a function of what you do with the information.
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And then, you know, in high school I had another
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exposure to memory where I just memorized a lot of things,
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and that got me pretty far in algebra and chemistry.
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In fact, I almost memorized the entire periodic table. But
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this was using mnemonics, you know, little rhymes or songs.
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And I realized in my first year of college that
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I really didn't have a strong understanding of chemistry, even
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though I could use all these terms. And thankfully I
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took an introductory psychology class, and I realized people studied
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learning and memory and kind of false memories and why
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memory can and cannot be accurate. And I was hooked.
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I found that so fascinating, and I still do today.
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I'm both impressed and intrigued. Us more about memorization of
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the periodic table. First question is about mnemonics and ways
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that we try and batch and learn information by pairing
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it to other things. Trying to remember a room full
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of people's names and you know, you could compare the
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first letter of their name with a fruit or what.
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You know, people do these things. To me, that seems
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like a very inefficient way to learn, because you're adding
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more information that you need to store away. So the
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first question is is that the best way to learn
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large batches of information?
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I think it's almost a workaround. And that's the first
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kind of problem people say is I can't remember names.
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And by their nature, names used to be descriptive of
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person's occupation. Someone's a baker, we call them mister baker.
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But that's of course evolved with time and names. You know,
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I tell people, if you can't remember someone's name, that's
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probably a natural forgetting. But you remember if you had
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an interesting conversation, or you remember if you can trust them,
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that's probably more important. So then to engage our kind
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of knowledge base so that we can remember names, we
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need to make this arbitrary link. And so I tell
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people my last name is Pastel Castell. You know, Castell
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rhymes with pastel, and my grandfather used Pastel's let's say.
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And so people can then make this link. But like
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you say, that's effortful. It takes time. It takes time
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away from kind of the essence of something else we
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could talk about, and it also leads to these kind
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of predictable memory errors. So people say, oh, I remember
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his name was Pastel, or in fact it's Castell. So
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I think we have to almost trick our memory into
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remembering things that might be somewhat arbitrary, and that becomes
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more pronounced as we get older. You know, there's more David's,
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there's more Andrews, and it's just more interference. And so
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to get around that, we have to, you know, use
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deliberate practice, retrieval practice, use the name several times. But
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I tell my students whose names I often forget that
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I'll still remember topics we've talked about, or you know,
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you know, how they felt about something, And I think
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that's more important sometimes just remembering a.
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Name, to remember chemistry or some other subject that involves nomenclature,
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I mean, not everyday terms unless you're a chemist, but
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to really understand the deeper mechanics of that thing and
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remember that. What are some better tools? I want to say,
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and I'm not a memory researcher, that it might be
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helpful to think in terms of verbs, not labels, So
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rather than thinking about a particular element just in terms
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of its name, but think about how it interacts with
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something else, or how it gives or receives a charge
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in certain conditions.
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Absolutely, I think that's what you're looking for is deeper learning,
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deeper semantic learning. And this has been referred to as
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levels of processing. So I was working at a very
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low level of processing when I'm making up happy henry
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for hydrogen and helium. But if you can start to
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visualize things or interact with them, and that's why we
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want to have chemistry labs or places where I found
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chemistry very abstract. I think that's why I didn't really
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engage with it. But I found psychology to be something
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that we were interact with every day I was making
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these memory airrors. I saw my parents and grandparents remembering
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and forgetting things, and I thought, you know, how does
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that happen? And the brain is so complex that I
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don't think we'll ever completely understand, you know, why this
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memory era might happen. But I think this awareness is
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really important. And a lot of good learning happens through
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making mistakes.
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You know.
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I you know, I play piano and I, you know, struggle,
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but I know when I make a mistake, I'm going
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to have to work on this. And I see that
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with my children, you learn a lot by making these mistakes.
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And I think that illustrates also how our memory works,
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that just seeing something many times doesn't mean you'll remember
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it well. And this is a classic demonstration that you
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know you've seen a penny many times, you don't remember
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all the features on the penny. I've updated that to
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the Apple logo. You know you've seen the Apple logo
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so many times. Of course you know all the features.
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But then when you quiz people and test them, and
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I do this in my class, people aren't sure it's
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the bite on the left or the right hand side?
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Is there a stem or a? But if you make
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people draw it while they're looking at it, they're going
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to remember.
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It better while they're looking at the actual.
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While they're looking at it, or if they actually the
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best way to remember something is to again failures. I'll
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have you draw it without looking at it, and you
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struggle and wait, is it on the left or right?
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And says a stem relief, and you're starting to question
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all of these things. Then when you look at the
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logo again, you're going to engage in better learning than
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if you hadn't done that error full kind of trial beforehand.
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Even if you don't redraw it correctly exactly.
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Yeah.
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So this sort of thing is you know, in an
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academic setting, we don't want failure.
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We want people to do well.
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But I think this sort of retrieval failure with some
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you know, corrective feedback is really beneficial, and that's kind
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of how you learn through life. You know, you make
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mistakes and then you correct them. But if you're constantly
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just doing it the right way, you're not really noticing
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these features. And we've tried to extend this to other domains,
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Like you know, it's called habituation. You stop noticing things
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around you, Like we're in the nearest fire extinguishers, let's say,
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and I guarantee hopefully there's one somewhere nearby, and you've
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probably walked by it many times, but you stop noticing it.
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And it's only until you'll need it you'll realize, wait,
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where is it? And so we've done this study where
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you have to instead of me telling you where it is,
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you have to get up and find it. And so
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now you're engaging with the environment. You're going to go
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look for it and be like, gosh, it's been there
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the whole time. I've walked by it so many times,
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I've never noticed it. And I think that's the difference
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between seeing something and noticing it.
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So someone who.
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Studies vision, we know a lot of information reaches the retina,
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But then how much of it reaches out a kind
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of more conscious level and not all of it does.
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And I think that's what makes psychology interesting.
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start earning four point zero five percent variable APY today.
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That's wealthfront dot com slash huberman to get started. This
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is a paid testimonial of wealth Front. Client experiences will
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vary well. Front Brokerage is not a bank. The base
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APY is as of January thirtieth, twenty twenty six and
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subject to change. For more information, please see the episode description.
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Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep.
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Com slash Huberman to get up to twenty seven percent off. Yeah.
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The big revelation for me when learning about neuroplasticity, and
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it was such an obvious one once I heard it,
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was that if you can perform a mental or physical task,
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there's no reason for your brain to change. You clearly
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already have the circuit. So it's the gap between desired
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performance and current performance that actually triggers the opportunity for plasticity.
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Yeah, and those going to be uncomfortable positions right where
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it's like I don't know this, am I? Am I
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going to be able to learn it? And I think
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that's this metacognitive aspect of when are.
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You aware of that?
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And a lot of learning now is unsupervised learning. You know,
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it's not that you're going in classrooms and teachers are
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telling you what to do. You want to learn a
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new instrument, you might do a lot of it on YouTube, right,
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you're going to try and figure it out. You want
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to learn a new language, you want to learn how
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to communicate with people, There's going to be a lot
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of trial and error, and I think kind of the
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best learners are the ones who persist, who are curious,
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because that's how you're going to get a lot of
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feedback asking not just lots of questions, but the right questions.
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Yeah, and I think the frustration and agitation, I do
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believe that's the you know, the release of cin means
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you know, epinephrine or a penephyrine, and those change the
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milieu around synapses and let them change, you know, all
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the things that you want to avoid, right, the things
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that actually allow us to learn. It could be that
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people that are very good at learning and have this
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willingness to embrace so called beginner's mind, like you know,
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like Okay, they're excellent in one domain and they're perfectly
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happy to be a raw beginner in a different domain.
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I always wonder if they experience agitation the same way
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that anyone else would, but that they don't have the
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same relationship to it, like oh, here's that autonomic arousal again.
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You know, here it is, And maybe they don't conceptualize
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as frustration, so in terms of getting better at learning
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and remembering things. You or any other laboratories parsed kind
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of people's framework around it, Like, I know there's a
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vast literature around growth mindset, but I'm thinking more in
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terms of how people think about their own levels of frustration,
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because if you go like here, I am frustrated again, Awesome,
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let's go. Now's the opportunity versus like, I'm terrible at this.
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I know I should push through. I just wonder whether
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or not mindset can actually make a difference.
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I think it can.
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I think our goals can play a big role a
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lot of the learning we do. Sometimes, you know, learning
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to take a test, or learning you know something because
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it'll be on a test. But as we get through life,
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we realize you're interested in birdwatching or music or skateboarding.
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You know, a lot of this is going to be
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observational learning. It's going to be talking to other people.
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So I think it comes down to curiosity, which is
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almost closing this knowledge gap where here I am, but
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I want to be here? How can I get from
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here to hear? And some of it is there's a
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strong motivation there, and that's something we've started to study
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with older adults as well, because we know memory declines
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happen with age, but not all things change equally, and
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in fact, there are certain memory systems that might actually
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remain stable or even improve. And I think some of
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the keys here are curiosity, being interested in, you know,
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listening to a podcast, talking to someone else, closing that
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knowledge gap, and then kind of extending that and going further.
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And I sometimes find there's topics that I'm not so
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interested in, but then there's some that I will almost
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become obsessive about that. It's like I'm going to watch
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that YouTube video and the next one and the next one,
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and then it's forty five minutes later. And I think
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that that can be, you know, kind of a waste
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of time in some ways, but it shows that our
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brain is craving this information and that's something that I'm
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really curious about how that will change as we get older.
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And some of our research suggests that as we get older,
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we're more selective about what we focus on, and I
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think that can be beneficial. So maybe you don't waste
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as much time on trying to learn everything, but you're
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more focused on the things you want to learn about.
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Do we know that it's important to continue to seek
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out new information as we get older in order to
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maintain our memory. Or is it sufficient to just make
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some effort to remember the past what we need to
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do to get through our day? You know, I think
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this gets down to the question people think I really
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should be striving to keep my memory. Everyone wants to
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keep their memory. Sure, that makes sense, but how hardship
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people push to learn new information as opposed to maintaining
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what they've got.
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Yeah, it's a great question. I think it's a little
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bit of both, and you want to have that sort
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of balance. So if you know, if you play piano,
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My father in his eighties and nineties still plays piano.
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I don't think he's learning new pieces, but he's strengthening
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the pieces he knows, and that keeps him sharp. On
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the other hand, being exposed to new things, if you're traveling,
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if you're talking to different people, that can be really
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important for things like even neurogenesis. You want to develop
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new brain cells, which we know doesn't just stop as
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we reach a certain age. So it's probably a bit
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of both. And people ask me, you know, what's the
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best thing to keep my brain sharp? Is a crossword puzzles.
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And that's interesting because I think as we get older,
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our actual verbal knowledge is maintained, if not improved. So
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in a way, you're strengthening a strength and I think
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that can be beneficial. But probably the other things to
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do or do new things, you know, go outside and
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appreciate the birds, or talk to someone who has a
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different perspective, or you go to a different restaurant, even
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all of these things. I find as I get older,
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I have a lot of routines, but it's when I
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start to violate these routines, take a different way to work,
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or you know, try something different at a restaurant, I
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can almost feel like, wow, that was a different experience.
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Today I did something else, and I think so. I
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think both are really important.
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We do get set in our ways. It's a yeah thing.
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You know, habits can be healthy and we can talk
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more about that because those routines. You know, I drove
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this way and I didn't get into a car accident.
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Or I even noticed my students in my classes after
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the first couple of weeks they all sit in the
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same seats. I'm always like, why is that, And it's like, well,
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I didn't get attacked by a snake here, so it's safe.
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Maybe evolutionarily it makes sense, but I'll sometimes halfway through
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the quarter say okay, I want everyone to get up
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and switch sides and sit somewhere else, and students are like,
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this is terrible, Like I have to move. But there's
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some benefit to having a different perspective, both physically and
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possibly mentally, that you're going to then remember things differently.
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And I know, if I've taken a class in a
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different class room every year, I can almost revisit each
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of those rooms and try and recall what I learned.
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But if you learn all in the same spot, there's
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a lot of interference. So I think there can be
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benefits to changing our habits, but it can be uncomfortable,
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especially at first.
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I went to a lot of scientific meetings early in
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my career, and I would change seats at after every break.
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It was the only way I could stay awake through
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all the talks. Some talks would naturally keep me awake
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and some just wouldn't. I mean, they don't tell you this,
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but there are a lot of great talks at meetings,
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and they are often a lot of boring ones too,
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and you feel obligated to stay. Later in my career,
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I give myself permission to get up and take a walk.
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But so I do think that one learns differently even
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if you just change the novelty of seat position.
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Yeah, And I think that's a great example of as
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you've gotten older and more experience.
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First of all, you give yourself the leeway.
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Hey, I can get up if this isn't working for me,
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or I want to see something else. But I've also
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learned I learn better if I sit over here and
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then over here and then over here. And you know
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that's Those are some principles of memory that I think
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when you have this metacognitive insight, you can use it effectively.
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And I've learned, and I've seen my children learn sometimes
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through mistakes or sometimes this works better for me, and
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I think that's fascinating that we can do that.
438
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It is interesting that almost everybody has an experience of
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saying like a gaff, like saying something stupid or getting
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the wrong answer publicly, and the shame and the arousal
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that comes with that means a We're never going to
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forget the right answer, but we tend to remember the
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experience a bit of embarrassment more. Yeah, then it sort
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of swamps the information somehow, and it just raises this
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question for me. Is there a slight to severe emotional
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tag on every memory we have?
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I think, you know, part of our brain, like the
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amygdala that's involved in processing emotions, is very active and
449
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is maintained throughout age. It's other parts of the brains
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tend to decline. So I think you're right that there
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can be an emotional attachment to a lot of our memories.
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Some of them are bittersweet, some of them are things
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we go back to for comfort. Sometimes we even change
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them a little bit so they fit the way we
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might have thought they happened.
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I think that happens, So that can be large.
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Sure, and that's part of our emotional tuning, like what
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makes us feel good. Some memories we don't want to revisit.
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Some you know PTSD. There's a lot of research on
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how we can try and help people. So I think
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memory can be tuned that way, and a lot of
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it can have an emotional valance. And those are usually
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the memories that we cherish. They're the ones that we
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might be afraid of. I still remember, I'm not sure
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I remember it accurately this Wizard of Oz. And now
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when my daughter was in Wizard of Oz, I was like, oh,
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this is such a great play. So I was thinking
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positively about it, even though at that time of getting
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the line wrong, getting the line there, you know, it's
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probably just distracted. You know, you do a lot of
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these dress rehearsals. I'm not clearly, I'm not an actor,
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but you do a lot of these rehearsing and you
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don't see the audience. You don't appreciate what's going on,
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especially when you're young, and all of a sudden, like, oh,
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there's all these people watching me, and I know, I
476
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know what I'm supposed to say, but I kind of
477
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I'm not convinced most people even remembered it. I'm not
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even sure my parents were there, you know. So I
479
00:23:24.720 --> 00:23:26.880
think we then think of it as a very strong
480
00:23:26.920 --> 00:23:29.279
emotional memory. But it guides us and to me that
481
00:23:29.279 --> 00:23:32.400
that's a lasting memory in a sense, because it kind
482
00:23:32.400 --> 00:23:34.440
of forced me to think, how does memory really work?
483
00:23:34.480 --> 00:23:36.799
I thought I knew how it worked, and I see
484
00:23:36.799 --> 00:23:39.160
a lot of people, you know, studying in ways that
485
00:23:39.319 --> 00:23:40.640
aren't always as effective.
486
00:23:40.920 --> 00:23:43.680
You know, we know some of the.
487
00:23:42.759 --> 00:23:46.440
Work this is colleagues at UCLA have studied desirable difficulties.
488
00:23:46.480 --> 00:23:49.480
How can you make learning kind of uncomfortable but that
489
00:23:49.519 --> 00:23:52.480
you'll remember things better? And it goes against a lot
490
00:23:52.519 --> 00:23:54.920
of our intuitions. A lot of teachers will want to say,
491
00:23:54.920 --> 00:23:57.759
how can we make learning easier? And I think that's
492
00:23:57.759 --> 00:23:59.640
probably the first problem is you don't want it to
493
00:23:59.640 --> 00:24:01.880
be easy. You want it to be not a struggle
494
00:24:02.000 --> 00:24:04.440
but a challenge, so that you can appreciate just how
495
00:24:04.599 --> 00:24:07.319
difficult it is. So I learned nothing else from that
496
00:24:07.480 --> 00:24:10.160
Wizard of Oz is now when I do a presentation
497
00:24:10.359 --> 00:24:11.759
or talk to other people, I love to see the
498
00:24:11.839 --> 00:24:13.599
room I'm going to be working in, and maybe you
499
00:24:13.640 --> 00:24:16.640
know a scientific presentation, maybe you've done this too the
500
00:24:16.720 --> 00:24:18.920
night before you're like, oh, this is the auditorium and
501
00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:22.720
probably raises your arousal level, but it makes you feel
502
00:24:22.720 --> 00:24:24.400
more comfortable than the day of.
503
00:24:24.839 --> 00:24:27.160
I don't have a photographic memory. I wish I did,
504
00:24:27.279 --> 00:24:29.839
or maybe I wish i'd I didn't what A long
505
00:24:29.880 --> 00:24:34.079
time ago I decided I was in a really cool circumstance.
506
00:24:34.119 --> 00:24:36.400
I was on a picnic. It was my first girlfriend,
507
00:24:36.720 --> 00:24:38.920
and I remember thinking like, gosh, she's so beautiful. I'm
508
00:24:38.920 --> 00:24:40.599
just going to take a picture. We were just sitting
509
00:24:40.599 --> 00:24:43.319
at this park that's up in the hills behind where
510
00:24:43.359 --> 00:24:46.400
I used to live, and I just went and I decided, okay,
511
00:24:46.440 --> 00:24:47.920
like I remember the picture now. Of course in my
512
00:24:47.960 --> 00:24:51.400
mind now it's it's blurry, like I don't remember specific details,
513
00:24:51.400 --> 00:24:53.599
but I remember more or less. I think I remember
514
00:24:53.640 --> 00:24:56.480
that the angle was that. And then like a year
515
00:24:56.480 --> 00:24:59.160
and a half ago, I was in Manhattan. I was
516
00:24:59.160 --> 00:25:01.480
in an uber and I just say, maybe I could
517
00:25:01.519 --> 00:25:04.880
just do that for a like a trivial street scene.
518
00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:06.359
So I just like, look, there was that one of
519
00:25:06.359 --> 00:25:09.319
those scaffolds for construction, and I just decided, you know,
520
00:25:09.480 --> 00:25:10.799
just do that. And there was a guy walking by,
521
00:25:11.079 --> 00:25:12.680
and I'm like, I wonder if I'll remember it. And
522
00:25:12.680 --> 00:25:15.200
I still remember it now. The question I have is
523
00:25:15.559 --> 00:25:17.880
do I actually remember the content of what I saw
524
00:25:19.599 --> 00:25:22.559
besides just their crewd you know, the scaffold, the guy
525
00:25:22.640 --> 00:25:25.319
In one case, you know, my girlfriend. We were sitting
526
00:25:25.359 --> 00:25:27.720
on this nice big lawn above there's this lake there.
527
00:25:27.920 --> 00:25:32.359
It's a beautiful spot. Impalta is still there or is
528
00:25:32.400 --> 00:25:36.240
what's stamped in my decision to do that? And that
529
00:25:36.480 --> 00:25:40.880
and the sort of conscious collection of it is? Is it?
530
00:25:41.279 --> 00:25:44.839
These weren't like big, emotionally salient events. But the difference
531
00:25:44.839 --> 00:25:48.799
between these visual memories and other visual memories is that
532
00:25:49.880 --> 00:25:54.240
the emotional load wasn't that high. But I made the
533
00:25:54.279 --> 00:25:55.839
decision to do it. It was like it was coming
534
00:25:55.880 --> 00:25:58.079
from me. It was so I'm not just trying to remember,
535
00:25:58.160 --> 00:26:00.759
like like we also went to was her senior my
536
00:26:00.839 --> 00:26:03.480
junior prom? Like I don't I remember a few things
537
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:05.920
from that prom, but I can't remember. I don't have
538
00:26:05.960 --> 00:26:08.400
a visual picture of the prom. But the prom was
539
00:26:08.440 --> 00:26:13.480
also a lot more emotionally, you know, laden than anything
540
00:26:13.480 --> 00:26:15.319
I just described. Does that make sense?
541
00:26:15.400 --> 00:26:17.960
Yeah, it's this fascinating question because I think selection is
542
00:26:18.160 --> 00:26:20.839
the important thing here, that you're making a conscious decision
543
00:26:20.839 --> 00:26:22.880
like this is a special moment, can I just.
544
00:26:22.880 --> 00:26:23.759
Take a picture of it?
545
00:26:23.799 --> 00:26:26.160
And the work on visual memory is interesting. We are
546
00:26:26.400 --> 00:26:30.759
very visual people, but the research on photographic memory does
547
00:26:30.799 --> 00:26:33.599
show that even people who have very strong visual memory
548
00:26:33.640 --> 00:26:36.400
will make memory errors. So it's not that you know,
549
00:26:36.440 --> 00:26:40.240
it's exactly photographic, but their visual memories exceptional. I think
550
00:26:40.240 --> 00:26:43.160
what's interesting here, and this is something I think is important,
551
00:26:43.240 --> 00:26:45.640
is the selection process that you're choosing. This is a
552
00:26:45.680 --> 00:26:48.359
special moment. I'm going to time stamp it and remember it.
553
00:26:49.200 --> 00:26:52.319
You're not doing anything special other then realizing a lot
554
00:26:52.359 --> 00:26:55.000
is going on now, there's probably some emotional valance there
555
00:26:55.640 --> 00:26:58.519
versus taking this random picture in New York City. And
556
00:26:58.559 --> 00:27:00.279
it would be interesting to kind of test to your
557
00:27:00.279 --> 00:27:03.079
memory later, because we know, sometimes we think we remember
558
00:27:03.119 --> 00:27:06.279
something well and in fact we misremember things or details.
559
00:27:06.319 --> 00:27:09.440
And hopefully you know you've got the right girlfriend, of course,
560
00:27:09.440 --> 00:27:11.319
but maybe the hill looks a little bit different, or
561
00:27:11.400 --> 00:27:13.359
sometimes people are like, of course it was spring because
562
00:27:13.400 --> 00:27:15.279
we went to the prom, but it's like, no, actually,
563
00:27:15.359 --> 00:27:18.240
now that you know, it was a different season entirely,
564
00:27:18.279 --> 00:27:20.680
that was fall and confusing with the other picnic that
565
00:27:20.680 --> 00:27:23.759
I took. But I think that's important, especially as you
566
00:27:23.799 --> 00:27:26.160
know we get older, that there are some memories. These days,
567
00:27:26.160 --> 00:27:28.720
we have our phones for everything, so you probably probably
568
00:27:28.759 --> 00:27:30.519
couldn't then, but you could have pulled out your phone
569
00:27:30.519 --> 00:27:32.279
and actually taken a picture. And you see a lot
570
00:27:32.279 --> 00:27:35.440
of people offloading information. Now you know, I'm not going
571
00:27:35.480 --> 00:27:38.240
to remember this, I'll take a picture. There is some
572
00:27:38.319 --> 00:27:41.240
research showing that that act of deciding to take the
573
00:27:41.279 --> 00:27:43.839
picture actually improves your own memory.
574
00:27:43.880 --> 00:27:45.839
For the event for the event interesting.
575
00:27:46.039 --> 00:27:46.240
Now.
576
00:27:46.319 --> 00:27:49.400
It can also make your memory worse because you're realizing
577
00:27:49.480 --> 00:27:51.480
I want to I'm taking this photo so I don't
578
00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:54.359
need to remember it later, and so you could see
579
00:27:54.359 --> 00:27:57.839
it going both ways. But that selection process is important.
580
00:27:58.240 --> 00:28:00.960
So sometimes you're choosing this is and I'm going to
581
00:28:01.000 --> 00:28:03.480
offload it and take a picture, or this is a
582
00:28:03.519 --> 00:28:05.480
special moment. I want to take this picture and I
583
00:28:05.519 --> 00:28:07.480
see it. You know, when I take pictures of my family,
584
00:28:07.519 --> 00:28:09.799
this is a special moment. I want to take this photo.
585
00:28:10.319 --> 00:28:11.880
But there are times where I'm like, I don't have
586
00:28:11.920 --> 00:28:14.640
my camera. I don't want to interfere. This is going
587
00:28:14.680 --> 00:28:16.799
to be like an internal memory that I can take
588
00:28:17.720 --> 00:28:19.000
and hopefully it lasts forever.
589
00:28:19.559 --> 00:28:22.160
I tell myself that my mindset at the time was
590
00:28:22.680 --> 00:28:25.599
this is a special moment. I never want to forget this. Yeah,
591
00:28:25.920 --> 00:28:27.039
I hope I never forget it.
592
00:28:27.440 --> 00:28:30.160
Well, you know, memory is reconstructive, and I think you know,
593
00:28:30.240 --> 00:28:32.160
the more you retrieve it and go back there, the
594
00:28:32.160 --> 00:28:34.880
more you'll have this feeling of remembering it, and our
595
00:28:34.920 --> 00:28:37.240
brain does a lot of interesting things in terms of
596
00:28:37.400 --> 00:28:41.200
you know, reconstructing the past also has a similar brain
597
00:28:41.240 --> 00:28:44.799
signature as imagining the future, which you know, in some
598
00:28:44.839 --> 00:28:46.920
ways makes sense we shouldn't have separate parts of the
599
00:28:46.920 --> 00:28:49.240
brain for thinking about the past and thinking about the future.
600
00:28:49.680 --> 00:28:51.799
But that can kind of then predict why you might
601
00:28:51.880 --> 00:28:56.160
misremember something, why your imagination has to be based surely
602
00:28:56.200 --> 00:28:59.799
on the experiences you've had already, right Or you know,
603
00:28:59.799 --> 00:29:01.240
if I say, what would it be like to go
604
00:29:01.279 --> 00:29:04.400
to Mars, Well, you've never been to Mars, but you've
605
00:29:04.400 --> 00:29:06.079
seen movies in the past about it.
606
00:29:06.119 --> 00:29:07.359
So are you know?
607
00:29:07.839 --> 00:29:10.039
If I said, imagine a space alien, you and I,
608
00:29:10.440 --> 00:29:12.400
being similar age, are probably going to think of the
609
00:29:12.400 --> 00:29:16.319
et version of one, whereas someone who's younger than us
610
00:29:16.400 --> 00:29:19.200
might have a very different kind of representation of that.
611
00:29:19.400 --> 00:29:21.640
So it's interesting to think of memory as kind of
612
00:29:21.640 --> 00:29:25.160
a reconstruction of the past, but also imagining the future
613
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:27.680
involves you know, our past experiences.
614
00:29:28.319 --> 00:29:30.680
Never thought about it that way. It's the perfect time,
615
00:29:30.759 --> 00:29:34.440
I think to raise the quote that a former guest
616
00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:37.039
on this podcast put on social media the other day.
617
00:29:37.039 --> 00:29:40.519
They weren't his words, but this Morgan Hausel did a
618
00:29:40.640 --> 00:29:45.440
really wonderful episode on the psychology of money, and I
619
00:29:45.480 --> 00:29:47.720
really love his first book, but also a second book,
620
00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:51.599
The Art of Spending Money. He put out a He said,
621
00:29:51.599 --> 00:29:55.759
it's a Russian quote. The past is more unpredictable than
622
00:29:55.759 --> 00:30:00.839
the future. Yeah, goodness. That raises questions about I witness testimony,
623
00:30:01.960 --> 00:30:04.759
spousal arguments. You know. I occasionally we'll get an email
624
00:30:04.839 --> 00:30:06.599
my wife and I are have a debate, or my
625
00:30:06.680 --> 00:30:08.880
husband and I are debate, And I have a rule
626
00:30:08.920 --> 00:30:13.519
I don't get into uh spousaled uh debates or arguments
627
00:30:13.599 --> 00:30:16.839
of any kind. So do we remember things the way
628
00:30:16.839 --> 00:30:21.240
they happened? Or do we confabulate? Do we muck it
629
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:21.640
all up?
630
00:30:21.759 --> 00:30:23.240
You know, I don't think we muck it all up,
631
00:30:23.240 --> 00:30:25.640
and I don't think we do it intentionally either, But
632
00:30:25.720 --> 00:30:28.000
as a result of all the information we have in
633
00:30:28.039 --> 00:30:31.359
our memory, we're constantly interpreting, you know, the future and
634
00:30:31.599 --> 00:30:34.480
our current state. And you spoke a little bit about
635
00:30:34.480 --> 00:30:37.160
eyewitness memory. I think that's a really good example of that,
636
00:30:37.240 --> 00:30:41.160
where something horrible might have happened. And like your experience
637
00:30:41.200 --> 00:30:42.880
where you think you're taking a picture and you're going
638
00:30:42.960 --> 00:30:45.960
to remember everything, and it feels like you will. I
639
00:30:45.960 --> 00:30:48.119
can remember the shirt, I can remember the smell, I
640
00:30:48.119 --> 00:30:51.880
can remember the weather, and sometimes that can be accurate.
641
00:30:51.960 --> 00:30:54.480
But a lot of research shows that sometimes we misremember
642
00:30:54.559 --> 00:30:58.599
these things, and some of these classic cases, unfortunately, you
643
00:30:58.640 --> 00:31:00.920
know now that there's DNA evident, you can determine that
644
00:31:01.000 --> 00:31:04.119
maybe they got the wrong person. And when that happens,
645
00:31:04.160 --> 00:31:06.240
you want to look back and say, how could that happen?
646
00:31:06.640 --> 00:31:09.920
And some of it comes down to faulty eyewitness identification.
647
00:31:10.680 --> 00:31:13.640
And these are not cases where people are lying or
648
00:31:13.680 --> 00:31:18.039
intentionally changing things, but they'll identify someone, they'll say that's
649
00:31:18.079 --> 00:31:21.400
the person, and as a result of identifying that person
650
00:31:21.440 --> 00:31:25.880
in a lineup, that person then replaces what they actually saw.
651
00:31:26.240 --> 00:31:28.880
So our memory can be contaminated, just like any form
652
00:31:28.920 --> 00:31:31.880
of evidence could be contaminated. And then when you replay
653
00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:35.400
it again, you're replaying the person you identified, not the
654
00:31:35.440 --> 00:31:36.720
person you actually saw.
655
00:31:37.079 --> 00:31:39.960
Wow. So it's almost like we as we become more
656
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:44.440
familiar with this person that we identified, quote unquote, our
657
00:31:44.559 --> 00:31:48.680
knowledge about them facial features, etc. Is elaborated in our
658
00:31:48.680 --> 00:31:52.440
brain and we superimpose that on the actual experience.
659
00:31:52.640 --> 00:31:56.000
Yeah, and this is one of the most famous cases,
660
00:31:56.079 --> 00:32:00.480
Ronald Cotton case where really horrible event happened and the
661
00:32:00.519 --> 00:32:03.480
woman made a point of trying to remember her attacker.
662
00:32:03.599 --> 00:32:05.480
So it wasn't just she got a quick glance, but
663
00:32:05.519 --> 00:32:08.079
she had a long interaction with him in this, you know,
664
00:32:08.519 --> 00:32:10.960
a traumatic event, and she said, if I survived this,
665
00:32:11.400 --> 00:32:13.359
I want to remember his face so I can identify
666
00:32:13.440 --> 00:32:13.839
him later.
667
00:32:13.880 --> 00:32:15.079
So this is like the.
668
00:32:15.039 --> 00:32:19.359
Perfect situation where your memory should be sharp. And it
669
00:32:19.359 --> 00:32:22.079
was cross race identification, which we know is not as
670
00:32:22.400 --> 00:32:25.759
reliable as identifying someone of your own race. And when
671
00:32:25.799 --> 00:32:28.640
she saw a lineup she identified, she took her time
672
00:32:28.720 --> 00:32:31.480
and said, this feels like it's a multiple choice test,
673
00:32:31.559 --> 00:32:34.480
and I studied hard for it. She took her time,
674
00:32:34.720 --> 00:32:37.799
and she identified the person and she thought, in her mind,
675
00:32:37.839 --> 00:32:40.240
this is the person who was inches from my throat,
676
00:32:41.240 --> 00:32:43.920
and she identified him, and he had an alibi that
677
00:32:43.960 --> 00:32:47.400
didn't stand up, and he was you know then you know,
678
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:51.599
found guilty, and it was only you know, decades later
679
00:32:51.839 --> 00:32:55.440
that DNA evidence exonerated him, and she felt horrible.
680
00:32:56.400 --> 00:32:57.559
She felt like, you know.
681
00:32:57.559 --> 00:32:59.480
And there's a lot of reasons why this could happen,
682
00:32:59.559 --> 00:33:03.759
you know, whether leading questions or how the identification process
683
00:33:03.880 --> 00:33:07.000
was conducted. But she was trying to do what she
684
00:33:07.039 --> 00:33:09.359
felt was her job and take someone who she thought
685
00:33:09.400 --> 00:33:13.400
was guilty off the street. And later they got to
686
00:33:13.480 --> 00:33:17.920
meet in fact, and she you know, could apologize to him.
687
00:33:17.960 --> 00:33:21.039
She felt terrible. And so this is one case study,
688
00:33:21.079 --> 00:33:24.119
and you know, I wouldn't draw any conclusions, but it
689
00:33:24.200 --> 00:33:26.359
had a lot of the principles that we've talked about.
690
00:33:26.359 --> 00:33:29.480
Where you feel like you're taking a photo it's a
691
00:33:29.480 --> 00:33:33.319
cross race identification where your confidence might be high for
692
00:33:33.359 --> 00:33:36.920
a good reason, but accuracy might not be. And then
693
00:33:36.960 --> 00:33:40.279
this kind of changing of the face, whereas once you
694
00:33:40.319 --> 00:33:43.400
identify the face, that's what you start to remember. And
695
00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:45.839
so I think there's a lot of interesting memory principles
696
00:33:45.839 --> 00:33:46.480
at play here.
697
00:33:47.119 --> 00:33:49.319
How does the legal system deal with this kind of thing.
698
00:33:49.400 --> 00:33:51.839
I mean, nowadays there's so many more cameras and phones
699
00:33:51.920 --> 00:33:54.759
which can track location. I like to think those things
700
00:33:54.799 --> 00:34:00.559
have improved the courtroom scenarios that it's hard for people
701
00:34:00.640 --> 00:34:02.160
to make genuine mistakes.
702
00:34:02.480 --> 00:34:04.759
Yeah, I think it's you know, memory should be treated
703
00:34:04.759 --> 00:34:07.400
as one source of evidence, just like DNA, just like
704
00:34:07.440 --> 00:34:09.480
any sort of evidence. But also we need to be
705
00:34:09.519 --> 00:34:12.480
aware that it can be contaminated just like any other
706
00:34:12.559 --> 00:34:14.480
source of evidence as well. So we can't just say, oh,
707
00:34:14.719 --> 00:34:17.719
DNA evidence is perfect. Well, it can also be contaminated
708
00:34:17.760 --> 00:34:21.000
in predictable ways. And I think, you know, coming back
709
00:34:21.039 --> 00:34:23.440
to this idea of metacognition. Most people feel like they
710
00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:26.679
have a pretty good understanding of how memory works, but
711
00:34:26.920 --> 00:34:31.039
it's not always accurate and sometimes confidence high confidence doesn't
712
00:34:31.039 --> 00:34:34.440
necessarily mean high accuracy. And I think part of the
713
00:34:34.440 --> 00:34:36.719
reason we're fooled is usually, you know, the more you
714
00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:38.800
see something, the better you'll remember it, just like the
715
00:34:38.840 --> 00:34:42.639
Apple logo. But that's not always the case. And there's
716
00:34:42.679 --> 00:34:45.239
predictable reasons why the more you see something, the more
717
00:34:45.280 --> 00:34:47.639
you might stop it tending to the features or you
718
00:34:47.679 --> 00:34:49.960
don't need to use it, And so that is a
719
00:34:50.000 --> 00:34:53.840
more kind of predictable memory principle. But we don't have this,
720
00:34:54.119 --> 00:34:58.440
you know, always accurate metacognitive insight. And I think that's interesting.
721
00:34:58.480 --> 00:35:02.039
I think that's both concerning, you know, when it's memory case,
722
00:35:02.119 --> 00:35:04.320
but it's also important for learning. How can we be
723
00:35:04.559 --> 00:35:06.719
kind of effective and maximize our learning.
724
00:35:07.159 --> 00:35:09.679
I have a question about what I want to call
725
00:35:09.760 --> 00:35:12.119
medium term memory. I don't even know if that's a
726
00:35:12.159 --> 00:35:16.119
real term short term memory working memory. Listeners of this
727
00:35:16.159 --> 00:35:18.239
podcast may or may not be familiar with working memories
728
00:35:18.280 --> 00:35:20.760
like keeping a phone number online in your head or
729
00:35:20.760 --> 00:35:23.920
a string of numbers until you need it and then
730
00:35:24.199 --> 00:35:26.960
kind of you may or may not remember it long term,
731
00:35:26.960 --> 00:35:29.960
long term memory, obviously long term memory. But there's this
732
00:35:30.280 --> 00:35:32.960
thing that I do today. It's a bit of a confessional.
733
00:35:33.079 --> 00:35:41.119
So when I check into hotels, I always look at
734
00:35:41.159 --> 00:35:43.239
the map of how to get out in a fire,
735
00:35:43.360 --> 00:35:45.920
because once staying at a hotel in San Francisco for
736
00:35:46.000 --> 00:35:48.880
a donor event, the alarm went off the middle of
737
00:35:48.920 --> 00:35:51.320
the night. Everyone of course stuck their head out to
738
00:35:51.360 --> 00:35:53.440
look to see if anyone was leaving, and everyone like,
739
00:35:53.760 --> 00:35:56.719
we're not leaving, and then they called everyone's room. It
740
00:35:56.719 --> 00:35:58.280
was an actual fire, which taught me like when the
741
00:35:58.320 --> 00:36:04.199
alarm goes, go right, and it was pretty confusing. Wide hallways,
742
00:36:04.280 --> 00:36:07.559
wasn't clear. Exit sign was not to like the actual stairwell.
743
00:36:07.639 --> 00:36:10.119
It was you know, it's not a good situation. But
744
00:36:10.159 --> 00:36:13.719
of course got out fine. But from now on, before
745
00:36:13.719 --> 00:36:15.960
I go to sleep, I go and I look at
746
00:36:16.000 --> 00:36:19.039
the where you are here, I look for the exit.
747
00:36:20.320 --> 00:36:22.079
I occasionally walk the hall. I don't want to be
748
00:36:22.119 --> 00:36:24.079
in this situation again, especially in a high rise. I
749
00:36:24.159 --> 00:36:25.480
just do not want to be in a situation where
750
00:36:25.519 --> 00:36:27.280
I can't get out of a building that's on fire.
751
00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:30.119
I figure it takes like five minutes. People laugh at me,
752
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:32.519
and I do this, but I make a mental map. Okay,
753
00:36:32.559 --> 00:36:34.400
so let's assume it's smoky. I do this saying, okay,
754
00:36:34.400 --> 00:36:37.880
I would which is the closer door? I would go right,
755
00:36:37.960 --> 00:36:40.760
then left, right then okay. So I drill it in
756
00:36:40.800 --> 00:36:43.599
my head, good and I go sleep. I never remember
757
00:36:43.599 --> 00:36:46.320
the maps, but it's not working memory. It's not short
758
00:36:46.400 --> 00:36:49.079
term memory. I couldn't tell you for the life of
759
00:36:49.079 --> 00:36:52.920
me what the last hotel map looked like in my head?
760
00:36:53.320 --> 00:36:56.920
How do you are here? Red dot had doors at exit?
761
00:36:56.960 --> 00:37:01.119
So I had these component parts. But what memory is that?
762
00:37:01.719 --> 00:37:04.239
And thank goodness, I don't remember because it's going to
763
00:37:04.320 --> 00:37:06.920
change every time I'm in a different hotel. Yeah, so
764
00:37:06.960 --> 00:37:10.039
what are the mechanisms that allow for selective forgetting? That's healthy?
765
00:37:11.239 --> 00:37:14.880
And also is medium term memory and actual thing?
766
00:37:15.039 --> 00:37:17.159
Well, I think when you're saying medium term, that's your
767
00:37:17.199 --> 00:37:20.400
everyday basic memory function where you're like, I need to
768
00:37:20.440 --> 00:37:22.320
remember things, but I don't think I need to remember
769
00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:24.480
them that long, but I really need to remember them
770
00:37:24.480 --> 00:37:27.880
today or tonight, and it makes me sleep better at night.
771
00:37:27.880 --> 00:37:30.519
And I've had a similar experience. I was staying in
772
00:37:30.519 --> 00:37:32.960
a hotel with my family, and the fire alarm went
773
00:37:33.000 --> 00:37:35.519
off and we're like, what do we do? Well, we
774
00:37:35.559 --> 00:37:37.639
know we don't take the elevator, that's what you're always told.
775
00:37:37.639 --> 00:37:39.599
And I don't think I looked at the map, but
776
00:37:39.960 --> 00:37:41.719
I look down the hall, and I swear when I
777
00:37:41.719 --> 00:37:44.239
look down the hall, I saw smoke. And so I'm like,
778
00:37:44.320 --> 00:37:46.119
let's not go that way. So we went down the
779
00:37:46.159 --> 00:37:48.400
other way. We rushed down the stairs. We got outside,
780
00:37:48.440 --> 00:37:52.679
and the kids were pretty traumatic. And actually if one
781
00:37:52.719 --> 00:37:55.599
of our children was like eight stories ahead of us
782
00:37:55.719 --> 00:37:59.280
going down the stairs. But what's interesting is I thought
783
00:37:59.280 --> 00:38:01.719
I saw smoke, and that's maybe and my glasses on,
784
00:38:01.840 --> 00:38:04.239
But that's my mind playing tricks on me. So maybe
785
00:38:04.280 --> 00:38:07.840
that was my concern. But I think that you know,
786
00:38:07.920 --> 00:38:13.119
this everyday memory is is really relevant, and when you're
787
00:38:13.159 --> 00:38:15.519
studying that map, you're making notes of like, Okay, it's
788
00:38:15.519 --> 00:38:17.519
close by, it's down the hall, I have to go
789
00:38:17.599 --> 00:38:22.079
down here, And that can be very informative and useful
790
00:38:22.159 --> 00:38:25.039
for survival. And there's some research saying that that's basically
791
00:38:25.119 --> 00:38:27.559
what our brain is tuned towards is surviving. You know,
792
00:38:27.559 --> 00:38:28.880
where am I going to eat? How am I going
793
00:38:28.960 --> 00:38:29.280
to sleep?
794
00:38:29.360 --> 00:38:29.920
How am I going to.
795
00:38:30.840 --> 00:38:32.960
So when you say everyday memory, I think that's probably
796
00:38:32.960 --> 00:38:36.239
the most important thing. And part of that memory formation
797
00:38:36.320 --> 00:38:39.519
is also then forgetting it and updating it. It's as
798
00:38:39.519 --> 00:38:41.280
simple as that. You should you need to know your
799
00:38:41.280 --> 00:38:43.719
hotel room number when you're staying there, But if I
800
00:38:43.800 --> 00:38:46.760
ask you your hotel room number a week later, it's gone.
801
00:38:47.920 --> 00:38:50.519
But that's good in a way because you're going to
802
00:38:50.559 --> 00:38:52.960
have other numbers to remember, and other hotel room numbers
803
00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:56.719
to remember. So there's benefits of forgetting and you want
804
00:38:56.760 --> 00:38:59.199
to So I think that's an interesting insight. You're doing
805
00:38:59.239 --> 00:39:01.880
some processing to remember something, but then you need to
806
00:39:01.960 --> 00:39:05.280
update it and forget it, and you know it's the
807
00:39:05.320 --> 00:39:07.639
same thing. I think the best thing you can do
808
00:39:07.719 --> 00:39:09.599
in that case is, you know, studying the map is
809
00:39:09.639 --> 00:39:11.559
one thing, but some people aren't great with maps. And
810
00:39:11.599 --> 00:39:14.639
where am I in the hotel? Is doing that active
811
00:39:14.719 --> 00:39:16.960
learning of actually walking the halls of like, well, I
812
00:39:17.000 --> 00:39:19.280
go down here and there's the elevator, so I can't
813
00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:22.000
go there. Oh, they're the stairs. I'll remember that and
814
00:39:22.039 --> 00:39:23.760
then you can kind of encode it. So that sort
815
00:39:23.800 --> 00:39:26.480
of active learning is like us with the fire extinguisher,
816
00:39:26.519 --> 00:39:28.880
we made people get up and find it instead of
817
00:39:28.920 --> 00:39:31.519
telling people where it was. And I'm always you know,
818
00:39:31.559 --> 00:39:34.000
when you're on a flight, they'll always say there's six
819
00:39:34.039 --> 00:39:37.039
emergency exits on this plane, And then I think they
820
00:39:37.079 --> 00:39:37.920
do the wrong thing.
821
00:39:38.280 --> 00:39:39.679
They tell you where they are.
822
00:39:40.599 --> 00:39:42.760
I think the best thing would be to say, you know,
823
00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:46.599
there's six emergency exits on this plane. Well, I'm not
824
00:39:46.639 --> 00:39:48.840
going to think not where they are, but go find them.
825
00:39:49.079 --> 00:39:52.360
And I noticed maybe it's just myself being anxious. As
826
00:39:52.400 --> 00:39:54.599
soon as they say that, I'm looking behind me. I'm
827
00:39:54.639 --> 00:39:56.960
making sure I know where they all are, whereas most
828
00:39:57.000 --> 00:39:59.000
people are like, oh, they pointed here, here and here
829
00:40:00.079 --> 00:40:01.960
and say sometimes and yes, one is behind you, and
830
00:40:02.000 --> 00:40:03.400
I'm like, well, I want to see where it is
831
00:40:03.440 --> 00:40:05.840
behind me. And so I think that sort of act
832
00:40:05.880 --> 00:40:09.199
of learning, whether you call it everyday memory, is really important.
833
00:40:09.280 --> 00:40:11.760
And I think when we talk about memory, people are like,
834
00:40:11.800 --> 00:40:14.440
I can't remember names. I'm like, that's kind of a
835
00:40:14.480 --> 00:40:17.800
common thing. But if you need to sometimes remember like
836
00:40:17.840 --> 00:40:20.360
what medication are you taking, or how did you react
837
00:40:20.360 --> 00:40:22.519
the last time you saw this person in those sorts,
838
00:40:22.599 --> 00:40:24.480
I think it's really important to be in tune with
839
00:40:24.519 --> 00:40:27.159
what you're calling this kind of everyday average memory.
840
00:40:28.079 --> 00:40:30.519
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848
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867
00:41:48.320 --> 00:41:50.559
I'm going to use that as weaponry. And when I
868
00:41:50.599 --> 00:41:55.119
get teased for walking, the fire exits. But it was
869
00:41:55.159 --> 00:41:58.480
because in part because the first time people were asking,
870
00:41:58.519 --> 00:41:59.599
he do you know if we should leave? Do you
871
00:41:59.639 --> 00:42:00.800
know what? Do you know which way to go? And
872
00:42:00.840 --> 00:42:03.840
I realized, Okay, next time it might as well be me.
873
00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:05.679
I'll be the guy that knows which way to go,
874
00:42:06.119 --> 00:42:08.079
certainly for myself, and then I can tell other people
875
00:42:08.079 --> 00:42:10.519
which way to go. Nobody else here knows where to go,
876
00:42:10.559 --> 00:42:12.159
and most likely they're not going to know. The next
877
00:42:12.199 --> 00:42:14.639
time I do the thing on the plane too, I think, okay,
878
00:42:14.639 --> 00:42:16.599
I actually read the thing of how to take it
879
00:42:16.599 --> 00:42:19.800
out because I figured, well, I've experienced how under conditions
880
00:42:19.800 --> 00:42:24.480
a very high arousal, you just default to what almost
881
00:42:24.519 --> 00:42:28.519
feel like whatever was trained, whatever reflexes you have. I mean,
882
00:42:28.559 --> 00:42:31.199
I had a scuba diving accident years ago, and I
883
00:42:31.239 --> 00:42:33.119
don't like to say, you know, came close to the end,
884
00:42:33.119 --> 00:42:34.599
but it was an air failure and it was a
885
00:42:34.599 --> 00:42:38.159
whole mess, and you just default too. Yeah, we had
886
00:42:38.199 --> 00:42:39.840
to do the whole share air thing. It was a
887
00:42:39.880 --> 00:42:43.719
precarious situation to begin with, and you just default to
888
00:42:43.760 --> 00:42:46.679
these routines. Actually, recently I watch what I think is
889
00:42:46.719 --> 00:42:50.079
a spectacular documentary about Dean Potter, who was a He
890
00:42:50.199 --> 00:42:54.679
was a free solo climber, a predecessor to Alex Hanold.
891
00:42:55.760 --> 00:42:57.559
He was kind of the guy to beat and Hanld
892
00:42:57.960 --> 00:43:01.079
passed him up pretty early, and he got into wingsuiting
893
00:43:01.159 --> 00:43:02.800
and base jumping and the whole thing. And there was
894
00:43:02.840 --> 00:43:07.320
this there's a scene where, so be warned if you
895
00:43:07.360 --> 00:43:09.920
watch this amazing four part series, there's a scene where
896
00:43:10.840 --> 00:43:14.239
people are doing base jumping and Yosemite are advocating for
897
00:43:14.760 --> 00:43:17.280
it being legal. In Yosemite, it's illegal, and so there
898
00:43:17.280 --> 00:43:18.920
are a bunch of spectators there and they were doing
899
00:43:18.960 --> 00:43:22.320
this big demonstration jump and a woman who was a
900
00:43:22.440 --> 00:43:27.519
very very seasoned bass jumper. She didn't want to use
901
00:43:27.559 --> 00:43:30.800
her own gear because they were confiscating people's gear at
902
00:43:30.800 --> 00:43:33.159
the bottom, so she borrowed someone else's gear and she
903
00:43:33.320 --> 00:43:36.719
jumps and she's used to pulling from a leg pull.
904
00:43:36.880 --> 00:43:38.360
I guess it is. And you just see her the
905
00:43:38.400 --> 00:43:41.320
whole way down, the whole way down, and she's got
906
00:43:41.400 --> 00:43:44.320
you know, she's got a parachute on and just you know,
907
00:43:45.079 --> 00:43:46.840
not to give it away, but I guess you know,
908
00:43:48.239 --> 00:43:52.760
gave it away that she dies. But the whole way
909
00:43:52.760 --> 00:43:54.760
down you can see her just doing this routine movement
910
00:43:55.599 --> 00:43:58.119
and she put on a different pack. She knew that
911
00:43:58.199 --> 00:44:00.880
it was a different pole location. So when your conditions
912
00:44:00.880 --> 00:44:05.440
are very high arousal, even highly highly trained people for
913
00:44:05.760 --> 00:44:08.079
that condition, they just default to whatever it is that
914
00:44:08.119 --> 00:44:09.519
they're used to doing. And if you don't know what
915
00:44:09.599 --> 00:44:11.239
to do, your default in not knowing what to do.
916
00:44:11.360 --> 00:44:13.199
If you know what to do, your default of what
917
00:44:13.239 --> 00:44:15.079
you think you need to do in one situation. And
918
00:44:15.119 --> 00:44:17.559
I've had that experience scuba diving. It's very clear from
919
00:44:17.599 --> 00:44:20.519
this documentary, and I think we're all a little naive
920
00:44:20.559 --> 00:44:24.159
and thinking that, oh no, like when the alarm goes
921
00:44:24.199 --> 00:44:26.360
and everything is crazy, like I'm going to sort through
922
00:44:26.400 --> 00:44:29.079
this in a regimented way, like or I'll be so
923
00:44:29.159 --> 00:44:31.519
keyed up I'll have to figure it out. This is
924
00:44:31.599 --> 00:44:33.599
not quite the case. The brain seems to not work
925
00:44:33.599 --> 00:44:33.960
that way.
926
00:44:34.159 --> 00:44:36.360
Yeah, I think we discover that, you know, in these
927
00:44:36.400 --> 00:44:39.679
extreme situations, but also even kind of in some simple situations.
928
00:44:39.760 --> 00:44:42.360
There's there's a really concerning thing that happens that people
929
00:44:42.400 --> 00:44:46.559
will leave children, infants in the back of their car unattended,
930
00:44:46.840 --> 00:44:51.719
and you know, these infants will will die on hot days.
931
00:44:51.800 --> 00:44:54.280
And when you look at these investigations, the reason this
932
00:44:54.400 --> 00:44:57.440
happens is, you know, these are very responsible, very intelligent
933
00:44:57.519 --> 00:45:00.880
parents who will you know, put their child in the
934
00:45:00.880 --> 00:45:02.880
car and then get in the car, and then you
935
00:45:02.960 --> 00:45:04.800
just get in this mode of I'm going to work,
936
00:45:05.039 --> 00:45:07.159
I'm going to do my job, and you're in this routine.
937
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:11.159
The baby falls asleep, you drive to work, you go upstairs,
938
00:45:11.199 --> 00:45:12.800
you do it, and then you and then you get
939
00:45:12.840 --> 00:45:15.400
this phone call like whereas your infant or why haven't
940
00:45:15.440 --> 00:45:17.639
they been dropped off? And you're thinking, what what are
941
00:45:17.679 --> 00:45:18.400
you talking about?
942
00:45:18.440 --> 00:45:19.679
Whoa exactly?
943
00:45:19.840 --> 00:45:21.920
I'm sure many people listening to this are like, there's
944
00:45:22.039 --> 00:45:24.559
no way, there's no way.
945
00:45:24.760 --> 00:45:26.559
Well I think there's like, there's no way that could
946
00:45:26.559 --> 00:45:29.440
happen to me. This must be some person who's super
947
00:45:29.440 --> 00:45:34.320
distracted or has this. Sadly, it happens too often to people,
948
00:45:34.719 --> 00:45:36.679
you know, all sorts of people, and I think that's
949
00:45:36.719 --> 00:45:38.719
part of the issues, Like like you're saying, she's going
950
00:45:38.760 --> 00:45:41.000
to grab the strap where it normally is you drive
951
00:45:41.039 --> 00:45:42.840
to work one hundred times this way, but it's this
952
00:45:42.880 --> 00:45:45.480
one day where it's your turn to take the infant
953
00:45:45.480 --> 00:45:48.920
to day care, and you just get into this mode,
954
00:45:49.039 --> 00:45:52.119
this habit, this routine, and now we have to have
955
00:45:52.440 --> 00:45:53.960
you know, our car talking to us.
956
00:45:54.000 --> 00:45:54.960
You know, some cars will.
957
00:45:54.880 --> 00:45:57.079
Even say, you know, have you checked the backseat for
958
00:45:57.119 --> 00:45:59.679
an infinite It's like, gosh, have we come to that
959
00:45:59.760 --> 00:46:02.360
level where we need to be reminded of these things?
960
00:46:02.360 --> 00:46:04.719
So I think that's where you know, you're right, it
961
00:46:04.719 --> 00:46:07.719
becomes lethal that, you know. Sometimes it's talked about in
962
00:46:07.840 --> 00:46:11.000
terms of prospective memory, remembering to do something in the future.
963
00:46:11.039 --> 00:46:13.199
We think of memories usually as remembering to do something
964
00:46:13.199 --> 00:46:15.519
from the past, right, But a lot of it is
965
00:46:15.559 --> 00:46:17.000
you know, what do you have to do today? Are
966
00:46:17.079 --> 00:46:19.079
you meeting this person? We have offload this to our
967
00:46:19.119 --> 00:46:23.280
phones and get reminders, but we're prone to forgetting, and
968
00:46:24.000 --> 00:46:27.320
especially under you're talking about high arousal, this person's falling
969
00:46:27.880 --> 00:46:30.000
but it's even as simple as when you're in the car,
970
00:46:30.079 --> 00:46:31.920
and you're probably aware. When you're in the car, you
971
00:46:31.960 --> 00:46:34.719
start mind wandering, You're thinking of a million other things,
972
00:46:35.199 --> 00:46:37.360
and all of a sudden you've arrived somewhere. You missed
973
00:46:37.360 --> 00:46:39.639
your turn. So our brain kind of takes over in
974
00:46:39.679 --> 00:46:41.280
the ways that we might not be sure about.
975
00:46:42.280 --> 00:46:44.679
Yeah, one of the things that spooks me about scuba diving,
976
00:46:44.679 --> 00:46:47.079
and I love scuba diving is, you know, I got
977
00:46:47.119 --> 00:46:50.199
my patty certification because it's a bit more involved, but
978
00:46:50.280 --> 00:46:53.280
it worries me that you actually don't have to update
979
00:46:53.679 --> 00:46:57.400
and if you do, not very often. Right, It's been gosh,
980
00:46:57.400 --> 00:46:59.960
it's been four or more five years since i went
981
00:47:00.039 --> 00:47:01.880
scuba diving last time. But I've got my card, I
982
00:47:01.920 --> 00:47:04.119
have my gear, and if somebody wants to go scuba
983
00:47:04.159 --> 00:47:07.920
diving tomorrow, I can do it legally. But there's a
984
00:47:07.920 --> 00:47:10.519
lot involved, like you need to brush up and so,
985
00:47:11.079 --> 00:47:12.639
you know, I mean here in the United States, we
986
00:47:12.679 --> 00:47:14.960
have all this, like you know, people can sue each other.
987
00:47:14.960 --> 00:47:17.159
There are all these legal protections, but there's still a
988
00:47:17.239 --> 00:47:19.880
lot of ways in which we can do damage ourselves
989
00:47:19.920 --> 00:47:21.559
or others just by virtue of the fact that we're
990
00:47:21.679 --> 00:47:25.800
we don't have to brush up on driving skills. You know,
991
00:47:26.840 --> 00:47:28.599
it's kind of a shock to me that we don't
992
00:47:28.639 --> 00:47:31.760
have more more problems related to forgetting.
993
00:47:32.039 --> 00:47:33.679
It's true, I think the more you think about it,
994
00:47:33.679 --> 00:47:37.280
it's amazing how much we do remember, especially under some circumstances.
995
00:47:37.280 --> 00:47:39.079
But I agree that a lot of this, you know,
996
00:47:39.119 --> 00:47:42.559
scuba diving too, because you're underwater with you know, buoyancy,
997
00:47:42.760 --> 00:47:45.079
you have to figure things out. And I got certified
998
00:47:45.079 --> 00:47:47.719
too when I was twenty. I wouldn't trust myself to
999
00:47:48.119 --> 00:47:50.159
do it again. I'd want to probably take the entire
1000
00:47:50.199 --> 00:47:53.519
course again. And maybe, but when you're thirty, maybe you
1001
00:47:53.559 --> 00:47:56.800
feel confident and you know, especially drivers like new drivers.
1002
00:47:56.960 --> 00:48:01.000
You know, you give very little training to younger drivers
1003
00:48:01.039 --> 00:48:03.599
and then you're like, you're on your own. I've seen
1004
00:48:03.639 --> 00:48:07.000
it with my children learning to drive. I also realize
1005
00:48:07.039 --> 00:48:08.960
I'm not as good a driver as I thought I was.
1006
00:48:09.519 --> 00:48:12.559
I'm certainly passing on some habits that I probably should
1007
00:48:12.599 --> 00:48:15.239
be more aware of. And they're more rule based. They're
1008
00:48:15.239 --> 00:48:17.199
aware of how to do things. But I have this
1009
00:48:17.400 --> 00:48:19.679
feeling like this wisdom, well, you don't need to do that,
1010
00:48:19.880 --> 00:48:21.360
or you know, that's the rule but I do it
1011
00:48:21.400 --> 00:48:23.880
this way, so I think you're right. I think we
1012
00:48:24.320 --> 00:48:28.039
revisiting these things more often and being more cognizant probably
1013
00:48:28.039 --> 00:48:28.920
would make us safer.
1014
00:48:29.760 --> 00:48:34.880
On the lighter side, many people who are concerned about
1015
00:48:34.920 --> 00:48:40.480
their memory as they age will ask about forgetting. I
1016
00:48:40.519 --> 00:48:44.199
want to know why as people get older they tell
1017
00:48:44.239 --> 00:48:47.800
the same stories over and over again, same jokes, over
1018
00:48:47.840 --> 00:48:50.400
and over again. Have they forgotten that they've said the joke,
1019
00:48:50.480 --> 00:48:53.079
or they're just doing it for their own entertainment or
1020
00:48:54.119 --> 00:48:56.199
I don't know, Like what is this about? Like I
1021
00:48:56.199 --> 00:48:58.599
feel like someone needs to do that study, like, like,
1022
00:48:58.719 --> 00:49:01.719
why do people tell the same stories as they get.
1023
00:49:01.679 --> 00:49:03.840
Well, I think there's a lot of reasons. And you know,
1024
00:49:04.159 --> 00:49:06.400
a lot of memories do change with age, and some
1025
00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:10.039
forms of memory, like source memory, tends to decline with age.
1026
00:49:10.039 --> 00:49:11.280
You can't remember where.
1027
00:49:11.079 --> 00:49:13.639
You saw the headline or who you told the joke to.
1028
00:49:14.519 --> 00:49:16.639
And sometimes I'll even say, you know, have I told
1029
00:49:16.639 --> 00:49:19.119
you this before? But sometimes it's just such a good
1030
00:49:19.199 --> 00:49:21.039
joke or such a good memory. I'm like, I don't
1031
00:49:21.039 --> 00:49:22.639
really care because I'm going to tell it to you
1032
00:49:22.679 --> 00:49:25.440
again because I'm enjoying this. And my kids will be like, yeah,
1033
00:49:25.440 --> 00:49:27.719
We've heard that so many times. I'm like, yeah, but
1034
00:49:27.719 --> 00:49:30.800
it's so good. So it's probably a little bit of both.
1035
00:49:30.840 --> 00:49:33.159
But I think there's also some nostalgia, Like we do
1036
00:49:33.239 --> 00:49:36.199
share family histories this way, and I think you know,
1037
00:49:36.199 --> 00:49:39.199
when families get together for Thanksgiving, there's this rehashing of
1038
00:49:39.239 --> 00:49:41.000
do you remember when this happened? It's like, yeah, we
1039
00:49:41.079 --> 00:49:44.280
tell that story every time. A lot of our histories
1040
00:49:44.320 --> 00:49:46.400
used to be oral histories. We're you know, we're telling
1041
00:49:46.440 --> 00:49:49.239
stories and reminding people, and it's how we determine what
1042
00:49:49.360 --> 00:49:52.960
foods were safe. But yeah, I can see it's certainly frustrating.
1043
00:49:53.039 --> 00:49:55.320
I think we think, gosh, i'm talking to this older person.
1044
00:49:55.360 --> 00:49:57.480
They're telling me the same thing again, and you're nodding.
1045
00:49:58.119 --> 00:50:00.599
But I take a certain amount of enjoy from it.
1046
00:50:00.639 --> 00:50:02.639
There's a nostalgia.
1047
00:50:02.840 --> 00:50:03.920
There's also a feeling.
1048
00:50:03.719 --> 00:50:07.599
Of familiarity, and so probably it's a collection of things.
1049
00:50:07.639 --> 00:50:10.800
But you do see more pathological aging that people will
1050
00:50:10.800 --> 00:50:13.800
completely forget, you know, they'll say the same things. They'll
1051
00:50:13.800 --> 00:50:16.280
ask what's for dinner again? Five minutes later, what's for
1052
00:50:16.320 --> 00:50:18.960
dinner again? What's for dinner again? And that's where it's
1053
00:50:18.960 --> 00:50:23.280
probably more concerning, But it is an interesting thing to
1054
00:50:23.320 --> 00:50:26.159
note that as we get older, we might engage in
1055
00:50:26.199 --> 00:50:27.199
that sort of behavior.
1056
00:50:27.679 --> 00:50:31.960
What is the consensus now on Alzheimer's and memory loss generally?
1057
00:50:32.440 --> 00:50:36.039
Meaning is it inevitable that people lose some amount of memory?
1058
00:50:36.079 --> 00:50:40.199
And conditions like Alzheimer's are just a more rapid downward trajectory.
1059
00:50:40.519 --> 00:50:42.920
And we could talk about superagers, these people that seem
1060
00:50:42.960 --> 00:50:47.880
to maintain cognition well better than their peers. Anyway, are
1061
00:50:47.880 --> 00:50:50.159
there people who just you know, a sharp till the
1062
00:50:50.239 --> 00:50:52.280
day they take their last breath, and that last breath
1063
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:54.840
comes in their nineties or even past one hundred?
1064
00:50:55.079 --> 00:50:58.519
Yeah, I think just of diversity that a company's aging
1065
00:50:58.599 --> 00:51:00.519
is really interesting. You could look at a one hundred
1066
00:51:00.599 --> 00:51:02.679
year old who's doing really well and a sixty year
1067
00:51:02.679 --> 00:51:04.719
old who's not doing so well. So we can't just
1068
00:51:04.880 --> 00:51:08.440
use kind of biological age as the marker. And as
1069
00:51:08.480 --> 00:51:12.719
a psychologist, of course, I'm interested in psychological aspects. And
1070
00:51:12.760 --> 00:51:16.000
there's you know, an old study on nuns, who you know,
1071
00:51:16.039 --> 00:51:18.199
it's interesting to see how you can test different people,
1072
00:51:18.239 --> 00:51:23.280
but nuns are very committed to their profession. And you
1073
00:51:23.360 --> 00:51:25.519
found that these nuns, how they age, some of them
1074
00:51:25.559 --> 00:51:28.480
certainly when they passed away. Their brains had these kind
1075
00:51:28.480 --> 00:51:32.880
of hallmark signs of dementia plaques and tangles, but behaviorally
1076
00:51:32.920 --> 00:51:36.119
they were still high functioning. So it's really interesting that
1077
00:51:36.159 --> 00:51:40.719
the hardware shows what we see as dementia and specifically
1078
00:51:40.760 --> 00:51:44.960
Alzheimer's disease, but their behavior was that of a fairly
1079
00:51:45.039 --> 00:51:48.639
healthy cognitive person. So something else has to be going on,
1080
00:51:48.719 --> 00:51:50.599
and you know, it could be some people say it's
1081
00:51:50.599 --> 00:51:54.000
having a sense of purpose, could be having social connections.
1082
00:51:54.000 --> 00:51:56.800
We know that's incredibly important. I think we do have
1083
00:51:56.880 --> 00:51:58.880
a certain amount of control over it. And some of
1084
00:51:58.880 --> 00:52:02.159
that it might be based on physical exercise and sleep,
1085
00:52:02.280 --> 00:52:04.840
so I know, things you've talked about before, and some
1086
00:52:04.920 --> 00:52:06.719
of it is having a kind of a positive attitude
1087
00:52:06.719 --> 00:52:08.719
about aging that if you feel like you you know,
1088
00:52:08.840 --> 00:52:10.960
some people say, well, it's all genetics, so what do
1089
00:52:11.039 --> 00:52:11.559
I have to do?
1090
00:52:11.840 --> 00:52:14.920
Well, if you go on a walk, some really good.
1091
00:52:14.760 --> 00:52:17.960
Research shows that you know, walking three four times a
1092
00:52:18.000 --> 00:52:21.800
week can enhance hippocampal function, the part of the brain
1093
00:52:21.840 --> 00:52:25.199
that's very involved in declarative memory, and that part of
1094
00:52:25.199 --> 00:52:28.519
the brain you know, having turned fifty recently tends to
1095
00:52:28.559 --> 00:52:31.480
decline by about one two percent a year in terms
1096
00:52:31.480 --> 00:52:33.679
of volume, So this is kind of physical shrinkage of
1097
00:52:33.719 --> 00:52:36.679
the brain. But in the walking group, the group that
1098
00:52:36.800 --> 00:52:39.199
was randomly assigned to walk three four times a week
1099
00:52:39.239 --> 00:52:41.719
for forty minutes, compared to a stretching group who's still
1100
00:52:41.960 --> 00:52:46.559
engaging in exercise but not cardiovascular exercise, the walking group there,
1101
00:52:46.840 --> 00:52:50.320
you know, hippocamp is actually increased in volume by one percent,
1102
00:52:50.960 --> 00:52:54.360
So you're changing the brain, but you're also changing the behavior.
1103
00:52:54.400 --> 00:52:56.320
Their memory was much better a year later.
1104
00:52:56.960 --> 00:52:57.400
So I think.
1105
00:52:57.440 --> 00:52:59.239
You know, if you saw a doctrine said, you know,
1106
00:52:59.280 --> 00:53:02.159
I'm having some memory problems, what can I do? Most
1107
00:53:02.199 --> 00:53:05.199
people are looking for a pill or you know, sometimes
1108
00:53:05.280 --> 00:53:07.880
it's eat this or do that. But I think physical
1109
00:53:07.920 --> 00:53:11.920
exercise can be so important, and it probably a mechanism
1110
00:53:12.000 --> 00:53:14.239
we don't know exactly, but it probably trickles down to
1111
00:53:14.320 --> 00:53:17.079
things like improvements in sleep as well. You know, if
1112
00:53:17.079 --> 00:53:19.880
you're getting exercise maybe earlier in the day, you're going
1113
00:53:19.920 --> 00:53:22.119
to have better mood, You're going to sleep better. We
1114
00:53:22.199 --> 00:53:25.039
know a lot of memory formation happens when you're sleeping.
1115
00:53:26.079 --> 00:53:29.039
We know as we get older, our sleep quality tends
1116
00:53:29.119 --> 00:53:33.000
to decline, even if our quantity tends to increase. So
1117
00:53:33.039 --> 00:53:34.880
I think just knowing that there are some things we
1118
00:53:34.960 --> 00:53:37.719
can do, and I'm using physical exercise as the example,
1119
00:53:37.800 --> 00:53:42.760
and it doesn't have to be you know, the extreme version, walking, dancing.
1120
00:53:43.920 --> 00:53:47.519
A lot of people you know, enjoy being outside. That
1121
00:53:47.559 --> 00:53:50.199
can be incredibly important to offset some of the things
1122
00:53:50.239 --> 00:53:52.559
we do know can lead to dementia.
1123
00:53:52.840 --> 00:53:54.960
What's the walking vigorous you know?
1124
00:53:55.199 --> 00:53:58.079
In this group, I think it's really thirty or forty minutes,
1125
00:53:58.079 --> 00:54:01.519
And there's nothing special about walking, but it's something where
1126
00:54:01.519 --> 00:54:04.320
you can randomly assign people to either walk or engage
1127
00:54:04.320 --> 00:54:07.239
in stretching. So if you're biking, if you're swimming, if
1128
00:54:07.239 --> 00:54:09.760
you're dancing, any of these things can be beneficial. But
1129
00:54:09.840 --> 00:54:12.280
here it's you know, you can randomly assign people to walk,
1130
00:54:12.480 --> 00:54:14.519
and it should be at a rate where you're you know,
1131
00:54:14.559 --> 00:54:17.119
there's research showing that the people who walk slightly faster
1132
00:54:17.320 --> 00:54:18.519
actually live longer.
1133
00:54:19.719 --> 00:54:20.920
So we're you know, you're not.
1134
00:54:20.840 --> 00:54:22.440
Sure exactly causality.
1135
00:54:22.480 --> 00:54:25.119
There could certainly be that and a lot of this research.
1136
00:54:25.159 --> 00:54:27.000
It's tough to do aging research because it's hard to
1137
00:54:27.079 --> 00:54:31.199
randomly assign people to certain conditions. But I think as
1138
00:54:31.199 --> 00:54:33.119
a psychologist, knowing that you have a little bit of
1139
00:54:33.239 --> 00:54:36.880
control over the process is important, and I think you know,
1140
00:54:37.000 --> 00:54:39.360
most people when they talk about aging, they're so worried
1141
00:54:39.360 --> 00:54:43.119
about demensions. You know Alzheimer's disease as a specific form,
1142
00:54:43.480 --> 00:54:46.440
but balance is even more important, I think, and most
1143
00:54:46.440 --> 00:54:50.280
people aren't even aware of their balance. So one in
1144
00:54:50.400 --> 00:54:53.119
four people over the age of sixty five will experience
1145
00:54:53.159 --> 00:54:56.320
a fall, and that fall can be very detrimental. You
1146
00:54:56.320 --> 00:54:59.400
can break your hip, your collarbone. Often you know you're
1147
00:54:59.440 --> 00:55:01.800
getting up at night, more frequently you trip over a
1148
00:55:01.840 --> 00:55:04.400
carpet or a rug, and you know if you're in
1149
00:55:04.440 --> 00:55:07.880
bed just recovering from these falls, you're not walking, you
1150
00:55:07.920 --> 00:55:11.119
know your hip a campusiness drinking. If you ask people how,
1151
00:55:11.360 --> 00:55:13.519
how's your balance, most people are like, well, it's fine,
1152
00:55:13.599 --> 00:55:16.400
I don't haven't had a fall. But there's a very
1153
00:55:16.400 --> 00:55:18.360
simple test. We could do it now if you want it,
1154
00:55:18.360 --> 00:55:20.199
where you just stand up and see if you can
1155
00:55:20.239 --> 00:55:23.199
balance on one leg for at least ten seconds. And
1156
00:55:23.280 --> 00:55:25.239
I have you know, when I do presentations, I do
1157
00:55:25.320 --> 00:55:28.599
this ideally thirty forty minutes into the presentation. We shouldn't
1158
00:55:28.599 --> 00:55:31.519
be sitting for so long, and most people do pretty well.
1159
00:55:31.519 --> 00:55:34.039
It's a younger group and sometimes it's older adults. I'm
1160
00:55:34.079 --> 00:55:36.360
speaking too, and you can tell you know, I'm like,
1161
00:55:36.440 --> 00:55:38.079
make sure you have something you will hold on to,
1162
00:55:38.320 --> 00:55:42.400
and you can tell that balance changes considerably with age.
1163
00:55:42.960 --> 00:55:44.559
And then I say, okay, now try doing it with
1164
00:55:44.599 --> 00:55:47.760
your eyes closed. And I actually usually don't do this
1165
00:55:47.840 --> 00:55:49.719
with my older adult group because then you see the
1166
00:55:49.760 --> 00:55:52.320
younger people start to tip, and you know, it's very
1167
00:55:52.360 --> 00:55:54.559
we get a lot of cues from our visual environment for.
1168
00:55:54.559 --> 00:55:57.559
Balance, the young the older people tip everyone.
1169
00:55:57.719 --> 00:55:59.920
You'll see the younger people I start to That's why
1170
00:56:00.079 --> 00:56:01.360
it's even more surprising.
1171
00:56:01.440 --> 00:56:02.800
It's like a field sobriety.
1172
00:56:02.960 --> 00:56:06.119
It very much is. But it's again from this metacognitive
1173
00:56:06.119 --> 00:56:08.559
standpoint where you think your balance is fine because you
1174
00:56:08.559 --> 00:56:10.880
haven't had a fall, but you could be close to
1175
00:56:10.920 --> 00:56:14.199
falling at any given point, and so you know, the cerebellum,
1176
00:56:14.320 --> 00:56:17.239
the almost very primitive part of the brain, is involved
1177
00:56:17.239 --> 00:56:19.920
in a lot of this. What's interesting with balance is
1178
00:56:19.960 --> 00:56:22.639
it's very trainable, and so you know there's parts of
1179
00:56:22.960 --> 00:56:25.920
balance that are involved visual inner ear. But if you
1180
00:56:26.000 --> 00:56:27.880
engage in some training, and it can be as simple
1181
00:56:27.920 --> 00:56:30.599
as standing on one leg or doing yoga or tai chi,
1182
00:56:30.639 --> 00:56:34.079
you can improve your balance considerably. Within a month or two.
1183
00:56:34.119 --> 00:56:36.559
And so I think when I talk to older adults,
1184
00:56:36.559 --> 00:56:39.079
who you know, sometimes are even middle aged, worried about
1185
00:56:39.079 --> 00:56:42.360
their memory, I think balance is often overlooked and it's
1186
00:56:42.360 --> 00:56:45.280
something that's trainable. So I've started to do it a
1187
00:56:45.280 --> 00:56:48.400
little bit, and I've noticed changes in my balance sometimes.
1188
00:56:48.440 --> 00:56:50.360
Good I also know is that I don't sleep well.
1189
00:56:50.440 --> 00:56:54.000
My balance isn't as good, and I think that's probably
1190
00:56:54.039 --> 00:56:56.000
the most important thing to be on the lookout for,
1191
00:56:56.199 --> 00:56:58.360
because you know, these things are related. If you lose
1192
00:56:58.400 --> 00:56:59.800
your balance and you have a fall, you're not going
1193
00:56:59.840 --> 00:57:03.360
to be engaging physical exercise. Your memory is getting decline.
1194
00:57:03.960 --> 00:57:07.800
Yeah, the old skiers and the old surfers look to
1195
00:57:07.800 --> 00:57:12.440
be in pretty awesome shape. There are a million confounds there.
1196
00:57:12.599 --> 00:57:16.039
The sunlight, the social connection or water, the cold, the
1197
00:57:17.039 --> 00:57:19.880
you know. I mean, there are a bunch of things. Obviously,
1198
00:57:19.880 --> 00:57:22.679
it's not just the skiing or the surfing, but there
1199
00:57:22.719 --> 00:57:25.400
are certain sports where you look at the people when
1200
00:57:25.400 --> 00:57:28.199
you say, okay, they're not the biggest and strongest, nor
1201
00:57:28.199 --> 00:57:31.039
are they the ones with the most endurance, but on
1202
00:57:31.280 --> 00:57:36.639
balance they seem strong. Their posture looks good. Yeah, they
1203
00:57:37.559 --> 00:57:42.920
seem relatively happy. Who knows right. I'm intrigued by the
1204
00:57:42.960 --> 00:57:45.719
fact that I look at a lot of these videos
1205
00:57:45.480 --> 00:57:50.599
of superagers and athletes in their seventies, eighties, nineties who
1206
00:57:50.719 --> 00:57:54.039
are doing remarkably well. It's very rare to see a
1207
00:57:54.119 --> 00:57:58.119
video of athletes or non athletes past eighty where they're
1208
00:57:58.119 --> 00:58:00.880
breathing through their nose with their mouth shut almost always,
1209
00:58:00.920 --> 00:58:05.480
you see. Now, I'm not saying it's causal, but there
1210
00:58:05.480 --> 00:58:06.840
does seem to be a shift in the way that
1211
00:58:06.880 --> 00:58:08.800
people breathe as they get older. Just look at some
1212
00:58:08.840 --> 00:58:14.320
of the I forget his name now is a television personality.
1213
00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:16.679
It's been around alone, he's in his hundreds, and he's
1214
00:58:16.679 --> 00:58:20.599
been on YouTube in the news programs recently. But at
1215
00:58:20.679 --> 00:58:24.400
rest it's like a mouth open breathing pattern. You kind
1216
00:58:24.400 --> 00:58:26.320
of wonder whether or not they're getting enough oxygen to
1217
00:58:26.360 --> 00:58:29.199
their brain. And I do think that the shift in
1218
00:58:29.880 --> 00:58:32.679
how we breathe, spontaneous movement, these things all go together,
1219
00:58:33.400 --> 00:58:36.000
and I do think each component part needs to be
1220
00:58:36.039 --> 00:58:39.800
looked at individually. So okay, so it's the movement, it's
1221
00:58:39.800 --> 00:58:43.400
the exercise, the novelty, the social connection, but ultimately there's
1222
00:58:43.440 --> 00:58:45.519
a lot of other things going on, Like we know
1223
00:58:45.679 --> 00:58:48.840
older people just don't. They don't move spontaneously very much.
1224
00:58:48.880 --> 00:58:52.239
We had Twila tharp in here, the world famous choreographer,
1225
00:58:52.239 --> 00:58:54.159
and she's in her somewhere in her eighties. You know,
1226
00:58:54.239 --> 00:58:58.360
she can deadlift her twice her body weight, works out
1227
00:58:58.400 --> 00:59:01.639
at five am every morning for two hours. She boxed
1228
00:59:01.639 --> 00:59:06.199
for a while, but actual boxing because she's twilight, right.
1229
00:59:06.719 --> 00:59:09.199
She's a really uh she's got a lost spirit. But
1230
00:59:10.159 --> 00:59:13.360
she doesn't sit like I'm sitting, like kind of lazying back.
1231
00:59:13.440 --> 00:59:18.039
She's she's fully active and she's moving. She's nasal breathing
1232
00:59:18.039 --> 00:59:22.280
when unless she's speaking like she's she's her nervous system
1233
00:59:22.360 --> 00:59:25.440
is turned on. I notice that, and I know, God
1234
00:59:25.480 --> 00:59:27.519
willing I'll be I'll be like that. But I notice
1235
00:59:27.639 --> 00:59:30.079
with each passing year I take a few more opportunities
1236
00:59:30.079 --> 00:59:32.360
to lean against things, as opposed to standing up, not
1237
00:59:32.440 --> 00:59:36.840
leaning against them, or starting to resemble the bulldogs I've owned.
1238
00:59:37.119 --> 00:59:39.159
There's an opportunity to lie down. They lie down if
1239
00:59:39.159 --> 00:59:42.000
there's opportunity, you know, sleep, And I don't know that
1240
00:59:42.000 --> 00:59:44.719
that's good. Maybe we need to nudge ourselves to be
1241
00:59:44.760 --> 00:59:46.840
a little more active than we're comfortable now.
1242
00:59:46.880 --> 00:59:48.880
I think the insight is so important to be like,
1243
00:59:48.920 --> 00:59:51.119
I notice I'm doing more of this, or I'm looking
1244
00:59:51.159 --> 00:59:54.239
a lot like this, and I'm surprised that things starting
1245
00:59:54.320 --> 00:59:57.119
like posture or even breathing, and I think, you know,
1246
00:59:57.280 --> 00:59:59.039
I'm not an expert in this area, but just getting
1247
00:59:59.119 --> 01:00:01.480
more oxygen to the is so important. I think that's
1248
01:00:01.519 --> 01:00:04.480
probably the mechanism. You know, for physical exercise, you're go
1249
01:00:04.519 --> 01:00:07.559
getting more oxygen to your brain, which really as you
1250
01:00:07.599 --> 01:00:10.320
get older, it's harder to do that, and so exercise
1251
01:00:10.400 --> 01:00:13.280
might be kind of the mechanism that does that. And
1252
01:00:13.280 --> 01:00:15.920
maybe with the advances, we're going to find other ways
1253
01:00:15.960 --> 01:00:20.360
to do that. But I think that insight is really important.
1254
01:00:20.440 --> 01:00:23.679
And it's also you know, we have age based stereotypes
1255
01:00:23.719 --> 01:00:26.440
of what happens, like, oh, as you get older, you know,
1256
01:00:27.159 --> 01:00:29.639
let's say, you know, my knee hurts and some people
1257
01:00:29.679 --> 01:00:32.800
are like, oh, well you're just getting older. Well my
1258
01:00:32.880 --> 01:00:35.400
other knee is the same age and it feels fine.
1259
01:00:36.280 --> 01:00:37.599
So something's going on.
1260
01:00:37.639 --> 01:00:40.760
Maybe there's some problem, there's something, but it does give
1261
01:00:40.800 --> 01:00:42.679
you this feeling like, hey, there's something I can do
1262
01:00:42.880 --> 01:00:45.159
or maybe you know, I'm a firm believer like in
1263
01:00:45.159 --> 01:00:47.840
physical therapy, like a lot of the exercises we do.
1264
01:00:47.960 --> 01:00:50.280
You know, if you keep doing the same thing, that's great,
1265
01:00:50.280 --> 01:00:52.599
but then you lose a lot of the other you know,
1266
01:00:52.719 --> 01:00:57.119
muscle mass, and you know, I think exercise, even walking,
1267
01:00:57.159 --> 01:00:59.719
people say it's really like a controlled form of losing
1268
01:00:59.760 --> 01:01:02.119
your balance and regaining it, and losing your balance and
1269
01:01:02.159 --> 01:01:05.159
regaining it. And so you add that into hiking, which
1270
01:01:05.360 --> 01:01:08.639
has unpredictable surfaces, and all these muscles that are you know,
1271
01:01:08.679 --> 01:01:11.840
you're not using too often now have to be engaged.
1272
01:01:11.880 --> 01:01:14.039
And so I think I think that coming back to
1273
01:01:14.159 --> 01:01:17.039
like challenging yourself can be very important. Putting yourself in
1274
01:01:17.199 --> 01:01:20.159
uncomfortable positions. I mean, it's great to be on this podcast,
1275
01:01:20.280 --> 01:01:22.400
but there's a time where I'm like, I'm not sure
1276
01:01:22.400 --> 01:01:23.559
I want to do this right?
1277
01:01:23.800 --> 01:01:26.239
You know, how do you get that? No?
1278
01:01:26.239 --> 01:01:28.880
Now I feel fine, But I think as we put
1279
01:01:28.880 --> 01:01:32.360
ourselves in these uncomfortable positions, and I remember, you know,
1280
01:01:32.360 --> 01:01:35.719
when I first started teaching, you're like, gosh, three hundred people,
1281
01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:39.000
you know this, this is an uncomfortable situation. And one
1282
01:01:39.000 --> 01:01:41.840
of one of my mentors said, you know what, there's
1283
01:01:41.880 --> 01:01:44.239
only one thing you need to do, and that's breathe.
1284
01:01:45.320 --> 01:01:47.559
Because you start to forget that, you know, that is
1285
01:01:47.599 --> 01:01:50.280
the most primitive thing to get oxygen to your brain.
1286
01:01:50.360 --> 01:01:52.679
That then you can do what you probably can do
1287
01:01:52.760 --> 01:01:56.760
quite well. And that's a psychological oversight where we just
1288
01:01:56.960 --> 01:01:59.079
kind of start. I don't know if it's just mouth breathing.
1289
01:01:59.119 --> 01:02:01.760
But as we get older, you know, or there's more stress,
1290
01:02:01.840 --> 01:02:04.880
we stop being aware of, you know, the things that
1291
01:02:04.920 --> 01:02:05.960
can really help us.
1292
01:02:06.440 --> 01:02:09.159
Yeah. I notice with each passing year I get a
1293
01:02:09.199 --> 01:02:15.840
little more difficult with myself about the little things, you know,
1294
01:02:15.960 --> 01:02:18.000
Just like so I try and to this day, I
1295
01:02:18.199 --> 01:02:19.840
have to push myself and take the stairs a little
1296
01:02:19.840 --> 01:02:22.559
bit faster than I want to. I don't take escalators
1297
01:02:22.599 --> 01:02:27.320
unless there's no stairs available when I travel. I really
1298
01:02:27.400 --> 01:02:31.199
I find that. But I have to push, you know, yeah,
1299
01:02:31.559 --> 01:02:35.360
I have to. I mean perhaps, uh, you know, collateral
1300
01:02:35.400 --> 01:02:37.719
advantage of doing this podcast is I say things like that,
1301
01:02:37.760 --> 01:02:39.199
and now I don't want to get spotted in an
1302
01:02:39.239 --> 01:02:40.280
airport on escalator.
1303
01:02:40.360 --> 01:02:40.519
Right.
1304
01:02:41.400 --> 01:02:43.360
The other day, I normally train at home gym, but
1305
01:02:43.400 --> 01:02:45.559
I was in commercial gym and il seeing music on
1306
01:02:45.599 --> 01:02:46.960
my phone and this kid came up to me. Any
1307
01:02:46.960 --> 01:02:48.440
tabs he goes. I thought, you don't use your phone
1308
01:02:48.440 --> 01:02:51.159
when you work? Out, but I like sometimes I listen
1309
01:02:51.199 --> 01:02:53.400
to things. I just I'm not texting and sending messages.
1310
01:02:53.440 --> 01:02:55.559
And he was like, okay, you know, I said, wow, Well,
1311
01:02:55.800 --> 01:02:57.599
I have to be careful what I say, but it's nice.
1312
01:02:57.599 --> 01:03:01.159
It actually has a forcing function. And I think that
1313
01:03:01.360 --> 01:03:03.039
as we get older, there are a lot of things
1314
01:03:03.079 --> 01:03:05.480
where we're not being observed, We're not we know we
1315
01:03:05.480 --> 01:03:06.920
should do them, but then we don't do them. And
1316
01:03:06.920 --> 01:03:10.280
I think the injury thing is and the pain thing
1317
01:03:10.360 --> 01:03:14.280
is a big one. You know. I hear this all
1318
01:03:14.320 --> 01:03:17.440
the time, you know, like, yeah, I would exercise more,
1319
01:03:17.480 --> 01:03:19.519
but I got this shoulder thing. I got the same
1320
01:03:19.559 --> 01:03:21.679
And I think that's why there's so much excitement about
1321
01:03:21.960 --> 01:03:25.000
these peptides, and it's still very unclear, you know, what's
1322
01:03:25.039 --> 01:03:27.000
going to be useful or not. Actually, there's a study
1323
01:03:27.039 --> 01:03:31.480
out of Helen Blouse Lab at Stanford on mice and
1324
01:03:31.599 --> 01:03:34.960
humans where they found an inhibitor of the molecule that
1325
01:03:35.079 --> 01:03:39.079
inhibits cartilage regeneration. They knock out this inhibitor or they
1326
01:03:39.079 --> 01:03:42.000
have a drug of analog that can do this in
1327
01:03:42.079 --> 01:03:45.840
humans and they observe regeneration of knee cartilage. I'm sure
1328
01:03:45.840 --> 01:03:48.280
this is gonna be sourced to pharma. That's gonna be
1329
01:03:48.320 --> 01:03:50.159
the path because that's the typical path for labs at
1330
01:03:50.199 --> 01:03:52.679
Stanford if they have a discovery like that. But how
1331
01:03:52.679 --> 01:03:55.360
cool would that be? Right now, I'm not gonna win.
1332
01:03:55.400 --> 01:03:58.639
I have like no joint issues, But how cool would
1333
01:03:58.639 --> 01:04:00.760
that be? Because I think a lot of people just think, well,
1334
01:04:00.800 --> 01:04:04.079
the body wears out, yeah, you know, the hip wears out,
1335
01:04:04.159 --> 01:04:06.559
the knee wears out, and so when they have that pain,
1336
01:04:06.599 --> 01:04:08.840
they don't think they could overcome it by by movement.
1337
01:04:08.880 --> 01:04:11.599
They assume, well, you know, the chassis kind of going
1338
01:04:11.760 --> 01:04:12.679
and then yeah.
1339
01:04:13.000 --> 01:04:15.239
Well a lot of this, you know, comes down to habits,
1340
01:04:15.280 --> 01:04:17.199
and some of it is motivation. Right, It's hard to
1341
01:04:17.199 --> 01:04:19.320
get motivated to go to the gym, and as you
1342
01:04:19.360 --> 01:04:21.960
get older, more aches and pains. It's like harder to
1343
01:04:21.960 --> 01:04:24.440
get up, it's easier to sit down. But I think
1344
01:04:24.519 --> 01:04:27.440
knowing you have some control over it that you know
1345
01:04:27.480 --> 01:04:29.760
a lot of especially in midlife, people have back pain.
1346
01:04:29.880 --> 01:04:32.760
It's probably the most common thing, and it's probably from sitting.
1347
01:04:33.440 --> 01:04:35.760
You know, we work a lot, and especially in midlife,
1348
01:04:35.760 --> 01:04:38.440
there's some interesting you know, it's not always a linear
1349
01:04:38.559 --> 01:04:41.559
decline with age, and in fact, there's some interesting work
1350
01:04:41.599 --> 01:04:46.360
on you know, happiness being more curve linear like midlife
1351
01:04:46.400 --> 01:04:48.679
is actually some of the lowest levels of happiness and
1352
01:04:48.760 --> 01:04:50.199
life satisfaction.
1353
01:04:49.719 --> 01:04:50.639
Really like our age.
1354
01:04:50.800 --> 01:04:53.000
Yeah yeah, really, so I hope in some ways that
1355
01:04:53.039 --> 01:04:53.800
can go well.
1356
01:04:53.840 --> 01:04:54.880
In some ways it can be great.
1357
01:04:55.039 --> 01:04:57.239
Yeah, well, it can make you feel good because it
1358
01:04:57.440 --> 01:04:59.079
you know, a lot of people who might not feel
1359
01:04:59.079 --> 01:05:01.119
great at forty or fifth fifty if you said, well,
1360
01:05:01.159 --> 01:05:03.159
actually that's the lowest point in the graph, and it
1361
01:05:03.159 --> 01:05:06.440
can actually get better with age the title of my books.
1362
01:05:07.440 --> 01:05:09.360
But it makes you realize that as we get older
1363
01:05:09.400 --> 01:05:11.239
there are more aches and pains, and yet why are
1364
01:05:11.320 --> 01:05:13.880
older adults some of them who are fairly healthy and
1365
01:05:13.920 --> 01:05:17.159
active are doing really well, whereas kind of when you're
1366
01:05:17.199 --> 01:05:20.840
younger and your body's in decent shape, we're doing things
1367
01:05:20.880 --> 01:05:23.480
like sitting, we're working a lot, we're stressed, we're not
1368
01:05:23.599 --> 01:05:26.320
handling our emotions as well as we could. And so
1369
01:05:26.400 --> 01:05:28.679
I think that's why aging is an interesting thing that
1370
01:05:28.800 --> 01:05:31.679
you know, we think when we're young, that's you know,
1371
01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:34.480
the best times in our lives. It actually might be
1372
01:05:34.519 --> 01:05:35.960
some of the most confusing times.
1373
01:05:36.320 --> 01:05:39.159
Are you happier at fifty than you were at forty?
1374
01:05:39.320 --> 01:05:42.880
I think I am. I think I'm more content. But
1375
01:05:42.960 --> 01:05:44.639
when I was at twenty or thirty, I could do
1376
01:05:44.679 --> 01:05:47.159
whatever I want. I could scuba dive, I could play basketball,
1377
01:05:47.159 --> 01:05:50.000
I'd bounced back from anat.
1378
01:05:49.480 --> 01:05:51.639
Was your internal landscape more peaceful.
1379
01:05:51.360 --> 01:05:52.480
Or more Absolutely not?
1380
01:05:52.599 --> 01:05:54.960
And I actually see it in a lot of undergraduates
1381
01:05:55.119 --> 01:05:57.119
who are like, it's a confusing time. You're trying to
1382
01:05:57.119 --> 01:05:59.440
figure out what you want to do, trying, You're in
1383
01:05:59.519 --> 01:06:02.559
a different place, you have different partners, it's you know.
1384
01:06:02.920 --> 01:06:05.760
And yet we say, we almost romanticize that college is
1385
01:06:05.800 --> 01:06:06.960
the best time in your life.
1386
01:06:07.159 --> 01:06:11.519
Oh my god. No, yeah, I'll say I even though
1387
01:06:11.559 --> 01:06:16.079
I am very happy, forty was rough. My fortieth birthday,
1388
01:06:16.119 --> 01:06:18.679
I was like, this is rough, and coming up in
1389
01:06:18.760 --> 01:06:21.719
science is I loved doing it, loved the experience, but
1390
01:06:21.800 --> 01:06:24.480
it was very stressful raising money for your lab. But
1391
01:06:24.519 --> 01:06:27.519
postdoc is a very uncertain time, a lot of uncertainty,
1392
01:06:28.039 --> 01:06:28.880
a lot of stress.
1393
01:06:29.199 --> 01:06:29.480
Yeah.
1394
01:06:29.519 --> 01:06:33.159
And now, I mean I have stressors, but I view
1395
01:06:33.159 --> 01:06:37.519
them differently. I feel completely differently about stress in general.
1396
01:06:37.639 --> 01:06:39.039
I mean, I do a lot of things, but I
1397
01:06:40.360 --> 01:06:43.480
don't think teen years, certainly not for me, or twenties
1398
01:06:43.559 --> 01:06:45.840
or thirties are the best years of your life. Yeah,
1399
01:06:46.239 --> 01:06:49.440
I can attest like it didn't suck, but it was rough.
1400
01:06:49.599 --> 01:06:51.280
I mean, there's fun parts to it, and there's a
1401
01:06:51.280 --> 01:06:53.280
lot of novelty, and you did things then that you
1402
01:06:53.280 --> 01:06:56.480
probably wouldn't do now. But I think when we talk
1403
01:06:56.519 --> 01:06:59.280
about aging, we're talking about how negative it can be
1404
01:06:59.320 --> 01:07:01.840
in all these things that can happen physically. But a
1405
01:07:01.840 --> 01:07:03.760
lot of the old adults I talk through and I've
1406
01:07:03.800 --> 01:07:06.880
interviewed for my book are saying, actually, sixty or seventy
1407
01:07:07.000 --> 01:07:07.599
was probably.
1408
01:07:07.360 --> 01:07:08.480
The best time in my life.
1409
01:07:08.559 --> 01:07:08.840
Nice.
1410
01:07:09.119 --> 01:07:11.679
Yeah, that makes me feel I mean, it's a select
1411
01:07:11.719 --> 01:07:14.159
group who I'm talking to, but it's not like it's
1412
01:07:14.199 --> 01:07:17.400
the best time in terms of my aches and pains
1413
01:07:17.519 --> 01:07:19.519
or you know, sure, I wish I was forty for
1414
01:07:19.559 --> 01:07:22.639
some reasons, but those times can be very challenging and stressful.
1415
01:07:22.679 --> 01:07:25.519
So from a psychological standpoint, it's interesting to look at
1416
01:07:25.559 --> 01:07:28.559
these kind of non linear dynamics. It's not a linear decline.
1417
01:07:28.639 --> 01:07:31.639
It's not that happiness just gets better with age. There's
1418
01:07:31.760 --> 01:07:33.800
there can be this midlife dip and you know, some
1419
01:07:34.239 --> 01:07:37.639
I'm not a clinical psychologist, some people call this, you know, midlife. Well,
1420
01:07:37.679 --> 01:07:40.639
of course, there's a conflict at midlife. Well, there's really
1421
01:07:40.639 --> 01:07:43.599
conflicts at every stage. Some of the you know Ericsson's
1422
01:07:43.639 --> 01:07:46.760
work on said every decade there's a conflict, and it's
1423
01:07:46.800 --> 01:07:48.920
how you resolve it allows you to kind of move
1424
01:07:48.960 --> 01:07:51.519
on to the next stage of life. And I think,
1425
01:07:52.199 --> 01:07:54.920
you know, sometimes we don't think about midlife as much
1426
01:07:54.960 --> 01:07:57.079
as well, this is what happens when you're young, and
1427
01:07:57.079 --> 01:07:59.719
this is what happens when you're old, and it's probably
1428
01:07:59.760 --> 01:08:02.079
how you deal with what happens in the middle, which
1429
01:08:02.159 --> 01:08:03.159
allows you to age.
1430
01:08:03.199 --> 01:08:03.480
Well.
1431
01:08:04.559 --> 01:08:06.280
So when I'm you know, when I talked about aging,
1432
01:08:06.360 --> 01:08:08.119
most of the older adults I talk to, I'm not
1433
01:08:08.280 --> 01:08:11.159
educating them on how to age. Well, they've they're there
1434
01:08:11.199 --> 01:08:14.599
and they're doing it. It's often middle aged people are like,
1435
01:08:14.639 --> 01:08:17.840
well I have older parents. You know, how are most
1436
01:08:17.840 --> 01:08:20.239
people when they're twenty or thirty. They're not thinking what's
1437
01:08:20.359 --> 01:08:22.960
my life can be like when I'm seventy or eighty.
1438
01:08:23.119 --> 01:08:25.560
Even now, that's hard for me to concess. Sure, Yeah,
1439
01:08:25.640 --> 01:08:28.399
I just try and do the best I can to
1440
01:08:28.600 --> 01:08:32.079
take care of myself every day so that maybe i'll
1441
01:08:32.159 --> 01:08:35.560
hit hopefully i'll hit sixty seventy feeling great. I actually
1442
01:08:35.560 --> 01:08:38.039
feel better physically now than I did in my forties
1443
01:08:38.039 --> 01:08:42.560
and thirties, but I was working so much then. You know,
1444
01:08:42.560 --> 01:08:44.800
a lot of people, I'm not boasting. It's actually probably
1445
01:08:44.840 --> 01:08:46.319
should be more of a point of shame. I don't
1446
01:08:46.359 --> 01:08:48.039
know that I recommend it for most people. I mean
1447
01:08:48.079 --> 01:08:52.560
I I worked non stop, and I don't know that
1448
01:08:52.600 --> 01:08:54.640
i'd wish that on anyone. I think a little more
1449
01:08:54.640 --> 01:08:57.039
balance would have been healthy. Now I work a lot,
1450
01:08:57.119 --> 01:09:02.000
but I definitely take time to to meditate, to pray,
1451
01:09:02.119 --> 01:09:04.079
spend time with people in my life, Like I really
1452
01:09:04.159 --> 01:09:07.239
try to savor things a bit more. Yeah, the problem
1453
01:09:07.279 --> 01:09:09.279
with academic science, as you know, is there's always a
1454
01:09:09.319 --> 01:09:13.279
deadline or revision or something. There's always something. So once
1455
01:09:13.279 --> 01:09:15.359
you realize there's always something, I think it's.
1456
01:09:15.319 --> 01:09:17.319
In a lot of professions. You know, people are very
1457
01:09:17.399 --> 01:09:20.239
driven early. They have to prove themselves. You're either you're
1458
01:09:20.239 --> 01:09:22.640
trying to survive, make money, make a name for yourself,
1459
01:09:22.680 --> 01:09:25.079
and that puts a lot of stress on you. And
1460
01:09:25.199 --> 01:09:27.720
as you get further along, you might realize maybe it's
1461
01:09:27.760 --> 01:09:29.720
not worth it, or maybe I need to backtrack, or
1462
01:09:29.720 --> 01:09:32.279
maybe there's more important things. And I think it really
1463
01:09:32.279 --> 01:09:35.239
does come down to balance. And you know, John Wood
1464
01:09:35.239 --> 01:09:37.920
in the UCLA basketball coach. I got to interview him,
1465
01:09:39.159 --> 01:09:41.640
you know, he was in his nineties, and he said,
1466
01:09:41.800 --> 01:09:44.079
it really comes down to two things. And I thought, oh,
1467
01:09:44.079 --> 01:09:45.760
this is great. You know, coach wouldn't is going to
1468
01:09:45.840 --> 01:09:48.199
tell me, you know, the two things. And he thought
1469
01:09:48.239 --> 01:09:50.600
of himself as a teacher, not just a coach, So
1470
01:09:50.640 --> 01:09:53.319
he did, you know, a very effective thing. He had
1471
01:09:53.359 --> 01:09:56.119
me guess those two things. The two most important words
1472
01:09:56.119 --> 01:09:58.640
in the English language is how he said it. And
1473
01:09:58.720 --> 01:10:01.239
here I am a student and I'm thinking, gosh, he's
1474
01:10:01.319 --> 01:10:04.279
a coach, so I don't know success, teamwork, what is it?
1475
01:10:04.920 --> 01:10:07.680
And he said, you know, the most important thing is love.
1476
01:10:08.720 --> 01:10:11.199
Be around the people you love, do the things you love.
1477
01:10:12.520 --> 01:10:13.359
And you know, he.
1478
01:10:13.399 --> 01:10:15.920
Lost his wife well before he passed away. He wouldn't
1479
01:10:15.960 --> 01:10:17.840
sleep on her side of the bed. He would write
1480
01:10:17.840 --> 01:10:18.960
her a letter every month.
1481
01:10:19.520 --> 01:10:19.760
Wow.
1482
01:10:20.359 --> 01:10:22.840
You know he had report cards from his grandchildren's on
1483
01:10:22.880 --> 01:10:25.840
the on the wall right next to letters from presidents.
1484
01:10:26.079 --> 01:10:29.560
You know, so he's really surrounded by a great community,
1485
01:10:29.640 --> 01:10:32.800
former players calling his former players were by his bedside
1486
01:10:32.800 --> 01:10:36.079
when he passed away. And then the second most important
1487
01:10:36.119 --> 01:10:38.520
word is something I think a lot of people struggle
1488
01:10:38.560 --> 01:10:44.199
with we're talking about his balance, and it's partly physical balance.
1489
01:10:44.279 --> 01:10:47.479
He did have a fall, you know, like we were
1490
01:10:47.520 --> 01:10:49.479
talking about, and it's interesting because he had a life
1491
01:10:49.520 --> 01:10:52.800
alert around you know, that he could press around his neck.
1492
01:10:52.840 --> 01:10:54.840
And this is why I think technology is great. Maybe
1493
01:10:54.840 --> 01:10:58.000
there's ways we can prevent falls or but he fell
1494
01:10:58.039 --> 01:11:01.720
in the middle of the night. He broke his collarbone
1495
01:11:02.199 --> 01:11:04.840
and his wrist, and he had this life alert button,
1496
01:11:05.319 --> 01:11:06.439
but he didn't press.
1497
01:11:06.199 --> 01:11:10.199
It because of pride exactly. He didn't want to bother
1498
01:11:10.279 --> 01:11:11.800
at chromosome.
1499
01:11:11.960 --> 01:11:15.199
Yeah, it's very but you know, you give people all
1500
01:11:15.199 --> 01:11:17.439
this technology and you know, and then you realize there's
1501
01:11:17.439 --> 01:11:20.000
a psychological part too as well. He waited until the
1502
01:11:20.039 --> 01:11:23.840
morning his caretaker arrived, rushed into the hospital. Thankfully he survived.
1503
01:11:23.880 --> 01:11:27.279
But that's pride, guilt, shame, didn't want to bother someone.
1504
01:11:27.720 --> 01:11:29.960
So that's the physical balance, and then I think the
1505
01:11:30.039 --> 01:11:32.079
mental balance, as he said, like you were saying, is
1506
01:11:32.119 --> 01:11:36.000
he was a very driven person, very successful with his coaching,
1507
01:11:36.079 --> 01:11:38.079
but it meant a lot of time traveling, a lot
1508
01:11:38.079 --> 01:11:41.159
of time away from his family, not focusing on the
1509
01:11:41.159 --> 01:11:44.119
things that he found incredibly important. And as he got older,
1510
01:11:44.159 --> 01:11:47.000
he felt like he could achieve more balance, you know,
1511
01:11:47.079 --> 01:11:49.680
spend more time doing the things he wanted, be around
1512
01:11:49.680 --> 01:11:52.159
the people he wanted. And I think that's a struggle
1513
01:11:52.199 --> 01:11:54.399
for a lot of people. We get really into something
1514
01:11:54.479 --> 01:11:57.000
and you know, we forget about it. You know, we're
1515
01:11:57.039 --> 01:11:59.399
having a conversation. It's hard to stand up, you know,
1516
01:12:00.159 --> 01:12:03.359
it's you know, you get focused on things. But as
1517
01:12:03.359 --> 01:12:05.720
you get older, maybe you're a little bit better at
1518
01:12:05.760 --> 01:12:07.760
finding that balance and finding that piece.
1519
01:12:08.760 --> 01:12:11.880
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01:13:15.000 --> 01:13:17.399
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1551
01:13:43.159 --> 01:13:48.039
that's functionhealth dot com slash Huberman. Yeah. The notion of
1552
01:13:48.560 --> 01:13:52.720
having to prove to oneself or even to others that
1553
01:13:52.760 --> 01:13:55.399
one can do something that's a i'm a hallmark of
1554
01:13:55.880 --> 01:13:59.199
being younger. Yeah. I suppose some people escape that, but
1555
01:13:59.520 --> 01:14:02.800
I think most people struggle with that social comparison thing,
1556
01:14:03.479 --> 01:14:09.119
and it can be very useful as a leaver, can
1557
01:14:09.159 --> 01:14:13.439
generate a lot of hard work, great work through competition,
1558
01:14:14.359 --> 01:14:20.399
even competitions in one's own head. But eventually you realize
1559
01:14:20.439 --> 01:14:22.479
like you're the only one in this fight, you know,
1560
01:14:22.560 --> 01:14:27.279
and I don't know. This podcast has a very broad
1561
01:14:28.319 --> 01:14:32.520
audience in terms of age ranges, and so it's interesting
1562
01:14:32.600 --> 01:14:36.800
the younger crowd, let's just say thirty five and younger,
1563
01:14:37.600 --> 01:14:40.279
tend to have questions about how to pick direction, what
1564
01:14:40.720 --> 01:14:45.840
direction to go, and the older crowd generally is asking
1565
01:14:45.840 --> 01:14:48.560
about things related to keeping their memory, their health, and
1566
01:14:49.000 --> 01:14:51.800
these days asking a lot of questions about whether they
1567
01:14:51.840 --> 01:14:55.720
should revise their notions of what age appropriate physical ability
1568
01:14:55.760 --> 01:14:57.960
or mental ability should be. I think that's a big
1569
01:14:58.279 --> 01:15:03.159
shift out there right now, because you know, twenty years ago,
1570
01:15:03.199 --> 01:15:05.079
it was assumed, you know, people would hit seventy or
1571
01:15:05.119 --> 01:15:07.399
eighty and start to slow down, and you know, now
1572
01:15:07.680 --> 01:15:09.840
people are like, well, if I feel great at fifty,
1573
01:15:09.880 --> 01:15:11.399
maybe I could feel great at sixty. If I can
1574
01:15:11.439 --> 01:15:13.319
feel great at sixty, maybe I feel great at ninety.
1575
01:15:13.439 --> 01:15:16.520
You know, the possibility feels real. And I'm not talking
1576
01:15:16.520 --> 01:15:20.119
about living longer. I actually don't consider myself a longevity person.
1577
01:15:20.439 --> 01:15:22.640
Sometimes I'll get lumped there. It's like I've never actually
1578
01:15:22.760 --> 01:15:24.760
focused on that. Yes, I think it's great to live
1579
01:15:24.800 --> 01:15:27.680
as long as you can at a vibrant life. But
1580
01:15:28.840 --> 01:15:31.680
what do you think about the messaging that we could
1581
01:15:31.680 --> 01:15:34.760
go longer or could make more of our time. Do
1582
01:15:34.800 --> 01:15:37.560
you think it's net positive or do you think that's
1583
01:15:37.600 --> 01:15:41.039
creating a pressure for people to not live into the
1584
01:15:41.680 --> 01:15:45.800
reality that hey, they're like seventy and maybe slowing down
1585
01:15:45.840 --> 01:15:48.439
and maybe telling those stories two or three times may
1586
01:15:48.560 --> 01:15:50.880
maybe they're supposed to shed wisdom and not supposed to
1587
01:15:50.920 --> 01:15:52.560
be jogging around the block.
1588
01:15:53.000 --> 01:15:56.159
Yeah, it's so interesting to see these age age related differences,
1589
01:15:56.199 --> 01:15:58.319
but also to see how that's shifting and we're certainly
1590
01:15:58.359 --> 01:15:59.159
living longer.
1591
01:15:59.520 --> 01:16:01.159
You know, for the most part, if you look.
1592
01:16:01.000 --> 01:16:03.760
At our history, and there's a variety of reasons for that,
1593
01:16:04.319 --> 01:16:06.279
but you want to make sure those years that we're
1594
01:16:06.279 --> 01:16:09.239
adding are healthy ones, because the longer you live, the
1595
01:16:09.239 --> 01:16:13.359
greater the chance of developing dementia. I think from a
1596
01:16:13.359 --> 01:16:17.359
psychological perspective, it's interesting because you know, if you ask
1597
01:16:17.439 --> 01:16:20.399
someone how old do you feel, that's very different than
1598
01:16:20.439 --> 01:16:23.000
your biological age. Let's say you didn't have access to
1599
01:16:23.039 --> 01:16:25.680
your birth your parents actually said, sorry, we can't actually
1600
01:16:25.680 --> 01:16:26.720
remember how old you are.
1601
01:16:27.479 --> 01:16:28.800
How would you figure that out?
1602
01:16:28.840 --> 01:16:32.159
And perhapsuly not your parents? Yeah, surprise, definite, I'm sure
1603
01:16:32.159 --> 01:16:35.239
they're my parents. Yeah, that's an interesting question.
1604
01:16:35.439 --> 01:16:37.600
And this is known as subjective age. And you know,
1605
01:16:37.680 --> 01:16:40.920
there's a physical feeling, there's also this mental feeling, so
1606
01:16:40.960 --> 01:16:43.119
how do we assign that? And actually, after the age
1607
01:16:43.159 --> 01:16:45.880
of forty, most people feel about twenty percent younger than
1608
01:16:45.920 --> 01:16:49.880
their actual age, and so I don't know if it's deceptive,
1609
01:16:49.920 --> 01:16:52.520
but you know, if you're seventy, you know, we just
1610
01:16:52.560 --> 01:16:55.159
turned fifty, and I'm like, wow, that sounds so cool,
1611
01:16:56.319 --> 01:16:59.439
because I feel about forty forty seemed more recent. But yeah,
1612
01:16:59.479 --> 01:17:01.920
I can see things. But as you get further along,
1613
01:17:01.960 --> 01:17:03.800
it's like, gosh, I'm in this age group. Am I
1614
01:17:03.800 --> 01:17:06.119
supposed to do this now or behave like that? But
1615
01:17:06.479 --> 01:17:09.199
my parents are different than I was, and so I
1616
01:17:09.199 --> 01:17:12.920
think it's interesting. It's also interesting that that subjective age
1617
01:17:12.960 --> 01:17:15.279
is a better predictor of how long you'll live than
1618
01:17:15.319 --> 01:17:16.640
your biological age.
1619
01:17:17.159 --> 01:17:17.800
Fascinating.
1620
01:17:17.920 --> 01:17:18.199
Yeah.
1621
01:17:18.199 --> 01:17:20.800
So you know, you go to the doctor and you're told, like, so,
1622
01:17:21.079 --> 01:17:23.640
give me how old are you? Well that all of
1623
01:17:23.680 --> 01:17:25.680
a sudden it's like, well, I guess I should behave
1624
01:17:25.800 --> 01:17:27.840
like a seventy five year old or an eighty year old.
1625
01:17:28.000 --> 01:17:29.239
You're not going to the doctor is not going to
1626
01:17:29.279 --> 01:17:31.720
say how old do you feel? And in some ways
1627
01:17:31.720 --> 01:17:33.800
people do feel their age. I certainly feel my age
1628
01:17:33.800 --> 01:17:35.880
when I have an injury or when I'm like I'm tired,
1629
01:17:36.119 --> 01:17:37.720
or why am I again I'm at five in the
1630
01:17:37.760 --> 01:17:40.239
morning now when I can't get back to sleep. But
1631
01:17:40.279 --> 01:17:42.800
there's sometimes where it's like, no, I feel young. And
1632
01:17:42.840 --> 01:17:45.239
I'm not saying I'm running marathons, but I know when
1633
01:17:45.239 --> 01:17:48.239
I coach my son's baseball team, I feel young. I mean,
1634
01:17:48.279 --> 01:17:50.079
I feel old in some ways, but I'm like, oh,
1635
01:17:50.079 --> 01:17:51.960
I remember how much fun this can be, and it's
1636
01:17:52.000 --> 01:17:54.680
nice to be around kids, and you know, when I'm
1637
01:17:54.720 --> 01:17:56.560
on a college campus, I'm like, this is nice to
1638
01:17:56.600 --> 01:17:58.640
be around, you know, younger people, and I'm learning a
1639
01:17:58.720 --> 01:18:01.760
lot from younger group, and I'm seeing how they're confused
1640
01:18:01.840 --> 01:18:04.479
in different ways. So I think there's a lot of
1641
01:18:04.520 --> 01:18:07.920
age related stereotypes that are sometimes accurate, but we don't
1642
01:18:08.000 --> 01:18:11.279
need to necessarily, you know, subscribe to them at all times.
1643
01:18:11.319 --> 01:18:13.920
And in some ways you can have also And this
1644
01:18:13.960 --> 01:18:16.119
is partly the motivation for my book, kind of like
1645
01:18:16.800 --> 01:18:20.039
mentors for aging. And I think when I ask my class,
1646
01:18:20.159 --> 01:18:22.000
who are some people that you really look up to
1647
01:18:22.039 --> 01:18:25.520
who've aged well or successful aging, A lot of it
1648
01:18:25.560 --> 01:18:28.000
comes down to like a grandparent or a parent, or
1649
01:18:28.039 --> 01:18:28.720
an aunt.
1650
01:18:28.520 --> 01:18:29.119
Or an uncle.
1651
01:18:29.720 --> 01:18:32.640
And that's really interesting because you share like some genetic
1652
01:18:32.640 --> 01:18:35.439
overlap with them, but you know, the stories, the reasons
1653
01:18:35.479 --> 01:18:38.439
are really impressive, and not that they're running marathons, but like,
1654
01:18:38.520 --> 01:18:42.239
oh we have this recipe, or every holiday they do this,
1655
01:18:42.359 --> 01:18:45.039
or they're still walking and doing this, and sometimes it's
1656
01:18:45.039 --> 01:18:49.560
a public figure, but having these role models is really important,
1657
01:18:49.560 --> 01:18:52.399
and oftentimes it is a parent. So probably my favorite
1658
01:18:52.399 --> 01:18:56.359
podcast that I've watched recently yours is with Your Father, right,
1659
01:18:56.399 --> 01:18:59.439
because you can see this dynamic and you can see like, gosh,
1660
01:18:59.520 --> 01:19:01.600
it's this, this is an older person, This is the
1661
01:19:01.640 --> 01:19:04.159
younger version, but they're different in so many ways and
1662
01:19:04.760 --> 01:19:06.880
kind of you know, some people can retire and some
1663
01:19:06.920 --> 01:19:10.279
people clearly can't, and so I don't think there's any
1664
01:19:10.359 --> 01:19:12.800
secret to successful age and like you have to do
1665
01:19:12.880 --> 01:19:14.760
this or that. But there's certainly some people, and I've
1666
01:19:14.800 --> 01:19:17.840
seen in my family who can't retire or they have
1667
01:19:17.880 --> 01:19:18.800
a career shift.
1668
01:19:18.880 --> 01:19:19.039
You know.
1669
01:19:19.079 --> 01:19:21.920
I saw my dad go from being a theoretical physics
1670
01:19:22.079 --> 01:19:25.439
professor to being an editor of a literary arts journal,
1671
01:19:25.840 --> 01:19:27.760
and it's like such a shift, but I think it
1672
01:19:27.880 --> 01:19:30.479
revived him and allowed him to kind of like you've
1673
01:19:30.520 --> 01:19:33.760
gone from being a professor to kind of more public outreach,
1674
01:19:34.439 --> 01:19:36.920
and that keeps people going, and that can happen again
1675
01:19:36.960 --> 01:19:40.279
at sixty or seventy, and so I hope you know
1676
01:19:40.319 --> 01:19:43.079
there's not this. You know, there's certainly age discrimination. You're
1677
01:19:43.079 --> 01:19:44.840
not going to hire a seventy year old to run
1678
01:19:44.880 --> 01:19:47.960
your IT department. But I think there are, you know,
1679
01:19:48.239 --> 01:19:51.159
things that older adults can and want to do that
1680
01:19:51.239 --> 01:19:53.319
will kind of lead to this sense of purpose, which
1681
01:19:53.359 --> 01:19:54.880
is really important as you get older.
1682
01:19:55.479 --> 01:19:58.640
Do you map out your future? I meant, do you
1683
01:19:58.720 --> 01:20:02.720
have like a three year a five year plan? I
1684
01:20:02.760 --> 01:20:05.079
find that academics tend to operate on the three to
1685
01:20:05.119 --> 01:20:08.159
five year plan because grants generally are somewhere between three
1686
01:20:08.279 --> 01:20:11.600
and five years. That's pretty much all we can reasonably
1687
01:20:11.640 --> 01:20:14.159
predict about where we're going to go with our ideas,
1688
01:20:14.560 --> 01:20:18.760
update as we discover things and so on. But do
1689
01:20:18.840 --> 01:20:23.159
you ever recall having a plan currently? Do you plan
1690
01:20:23.319 --> 01:20:25.520
like where you're going? This is just really yea, But
1691
01:20:25.600 --> 01:20:28.560
as a as a template for people to ask themselves
1692
01:20:28.600 --> 01:20:30.760
the same question, I don't think I was ever sat
1693
01:20:30.760 --> 01:20:33.479
down and said, listen, you want to focus on day
1694
01:20:33.520 --> 01:20:35.079
to day, but you got to have a plan, and
1695
01:20:35.119 --> 01:20:38.479
the plan should be put the horizon at three years
1696
01:20:38.920 --> 01:20:40.800
or five years. It just I sort of defaulted to
1697
01:20:40.840 --> 01:20:43.880
that because of academics. Yeah, and it's very hard for
1698
01:20:43.880 --> 01:20:45.359
me to think past five years.
1699
01:20:45.560 --> 01:20:47.880
I think people often will say in business, to the
1700
01:20:47.960 --> 01:20:50.079
plan you have, And I think plans are important because
1701
01:20:50.079 --> 01:20:51.760
they can motivate you. And you know, when I first
1702
01:20:51.800 --> 01:20:54.319
got this job at UCLA, I was thrilled to leave
1703
01:20:54.359 --> 01:20:57.239
the cold weather of Toronto and live on the West coast.
1704
01:20:57.239 --> 01:20:59.720
But I also said, you know, it doesn't work out,
1705
01:21:00.239 --> 01:21:02.159
let's see in three to five years. So I don't
1706
01:21:02.199 --> 01:21:03.960
think I had this specific plan of I have to
1707
01:21:04.000 --> 01:21:06.439
do this, but I also had a plan like, hey,
1708
01:21:06.439 --> 01:21:09.079
I'd love to write a book that is accessible and
1709
01:21:09.159 --> 01:21:13.039
can kind of capture the lessons I've learned. And I
1710
01:21:13.079 --> 01:21:15.039
didn't put a timeline on that. But when I first
1711
01:21:15.119 --> 01:21:17.079
met my wife, I told her I was really interested
1712
01:21:17.079 --> 01:21:20.000
in doing this, and she was very encouraging, and you know,
1713
01:21:20.119 --> 01:21:22.399
ten years later that book finally comes out. So I
1714
01:21:22.399 --> 01:21:25.680
think when you articulate plans, it's definitely research saying that
1715
01:21:25.720 --> 01:21:29.119
you can realize them, and when other people are thinking
1716
01:21:29.319 --> 01:21:32.520
that's something you can or should do, I think it's beneficial.
1717
01:21:32.600 --> 01:21:35.840
But yeah, in the academic world there can be pressures
1718
01:21:35.880 --> 01:21:38.039
to get grants and publish, but I think that can
1719
01:21:38.079 --> 01:21:41.560
also hamper some creative outputs. I don't have a plan
1720
01:21:41.640 --> 01:21:43.119
of like in three to five years, I need to
1721
01:21:43.159 --> 01:21:44.760
do this and this, and it should be nice to
1722
01:21:44.760 --> 01:21:47.600
get another grant. But maybe if you don't have a grant,
1723
01:21:47.640 --> 01:21:51.079
you can have a little more freedom and flexibility. I'm
1724
01:21:51.119 --> 01:21:53.439
really interested in how you know. It's a concern now
1725
01:21:53.439 --> 01:21:56.119
with AI how people are subjected to a lot of
1726
01:21:56.119 --> 01:21:58.760
information and a lot of this can be used for
1727
01:21:58.920 --> 01:22:02.800
scams and fraud and so I'm interested in how older
1728
01:22:02.840 --> 01:22:06.000
adults can be kind of, you know, aware of these
1729
01:22:06.039 --> 01:22:09.880
scams that can take you know, can be devastating, and
1730
01:22:09.920 --> 01:22:12.000
how we can make kind of the world better for
1731
01:22:12.199 --> 01:22:14.520
older adults. And when I say older, it's like, you know,
1732
01:22:14.600 --> 01:22:17.199
we're not that far away from you know, why why
1733
01:22:17.199 --> 01:22:20.079
can that self driving car be so appealing to a
1734
01:22:20.119 --> 01:22:22.680
younger person but not an older person. And if we
1735
01:22:22.720 --> 01:22:25.600
can make you know, technology more accessible to older people,
1736
01:22:25.640 --> 01:22:28.119
that can certainly help. And I think there's simple ways
1737
01:22:28.159 --> 01:22:30.560
to do it. So it starts with attitudes about you know,
1738
01:22:30.640 --> 01:22:32.680
how do I engage with this, will it work? Will
1739
01:22:32.720 --> 01:22:35.239
I break it? Or the younger people will just they
1740
01:22:35.239 --> 01:22:37.800
get a new iPhone and they don't. There's no instruction manual.
1741
01:22:37.800 --> 01:22:41.079
They're just playing around with it. So I'm interested in that.
1742
01:22:41.119 --> 01:22:44.279
I don't think that has like a publication that I'm
1743
01:22:44.279 --> 01:22:47.159
going to get out of it. And maybe there's a grant,
1744
01:22:47.239 --> 01:22:50.760
maybe there's consulting, but I think it's having a broader
1745
01:22:50.920 --> 01:22:54.039
kind of approach might be beneficial. So these are more
1746
01:22:54.079 --> 01:22:56.880
abstract goals and hopefully some of them can be realized,
1747
01:22:57.399 --> 01:22:59.319
but it's not as tied to like you know, when
1748
01:22:59.319 --> 01:23:02.079
I was younger, Yeah, I wanted to get tenure at UCLA, right.
1749
01:23:02.119 --> 01:23:04.039
I was happy to have children and have a house
1750
01:23:04.079 --> 01:23:07.119
where we can be, you know, centrally located without a
1751
01:23:07.159 --> 01:23:09.880
long commute. So I think those were the practical goals.
1752
01:23:10.359 --> 01:23:12.600
But I think as I get older, I feel fortunate
1753
01:23:12.640 --> 01:23:15.039
that I've achieved some of these goals that make my
1754
01:23:15.079 --> 01:23:17.920
life more comfortable. But there's still things out there that
1755
01:23:18.039 --> 01:23:20.039
I'm like, are we really ever going to know how
1756
01:23:20.079 --> 01:23:24.119
memory works? Maybe maybe not, but maybe we can make
1757
01:23:24.199 --> 01:23:26.840
things easier to use, or now that we know memory
1758
01:23:26.880 --> 01:23:28.680
sort of works this way, maybe we can make this
1759
01:23:28.760 --> 01:23:31.439
technology deared to help us in some meaningful way.
1760
01:23:32.359 --> 01:23:35.239
Well, comment and then a question. My comment is, if
1761
01:23:35.279 --> 01:23:40.159
anyone needs self driving cars, it's older folks, right. I mean,
1762
01:23:40.439 --> 01:23:44.199
if you look at the accident data, look at the
1763
01:23:44.279 --> 01:23:47.039
visual data. I mean, there are people who are I
1764
01:23:47.039 --> 01:23:49.520
don't want to say legally blind, but their peripheral vision
1765
01:23:49.600 --> 01:23:52.840
is really lousy and they're driving, and most of driving
1766
01:23:52.960 --> 01:23:57.560
is peripheral vision, so, you know, for everybody's sake, But
1767
01:23:57.600 --> 01:24:00.159
of course very young people with new licenses there all.
1768
01:24:00.239 --> 01:24:04.640
You know, it's it's not a you know, a linear
1769
01:24:04.680 --> 01:24:08.960
distribution of accidents by age. It's uh, it's a U
1770
01:24:09.079 --> 01:24:14.119
shaped function. But the the other thing is nested in
1771
01:24:14.159 --> 01:24:16.760
my question about whether you set goals is the question
1772
01:24:16.840 --> 01:24:22.520
of whether setting goals helps us stay alive. You know,
1773
01:24:22.600 --> 01:24:26.319
I covered before some of the data on these superagers,
1774
01:24:26.760 --> 01:24:29.359
more of the neuroscience to say interiormid singulate cortex, which
1775
01:24:29.359 --> 01:24:34.439
seems to maintain or increase volume as superagers age and
1776
01:24:34.479 --> 01:24:37.520
they hold on to their memory, et cetera. And what
1777
01:24:37.520 --> 01:24:42.800
we understand of that structure, it's involved in pushing into friction,
1778
01:24:43.760 --> 01:24:46.880
pushing oneself to do something that's hard or not desirable
1779
01:24:46.920 --> 01:24:48.359
for oneself. It seems to come up on more and
1780
01:24:48.399 --> 01:24:50.760
more episodes of the podcast, and I think I teaching
1781
01:24:50.760 --> 01:24:53.399
her anatomy to medical students. When I started teaching your anatomy,
1782
01:24:53.439 --> 01:24:56.319
we didn't know what the antwermid singulate cortex does. But
1783
01:24:56.600 --> 01:24:59.399
my colleague Joe Parvezi probed it with electrodes in humans,
1784
01:24:59.399 --> 01:25:03.800
and every single one they got stimulated, they'd say, feels
1785
01:25:03.800 --> 01:25:05.680
like a big storm is coming. There's a challenge. I
1786
01:25:05.720 --> 01:25:07.800
want to lean into it. They would kind of come
1787
01:25:07.880 --> 01:25:09.960
up in their chair. They you know, they're not I mean,
1788
01:25:09.960 --> 01:25:11.840
they're in a halo they're getting the surgery, so but
1789
01:25:11.880 --> 01:25:15.520
they would get physically and mentally activated like I'm gonna
1790
01:25:15.560 --> 01:25:18.720
I can take this, i can do this. And it's
1791
01:25:18.800 --> 01:25:21.000
very clear that that's the brain structure that grows. And
1792
01:25:21.039 --> 01:25:24.399
so I feel like going after a goal, having goals,
1793
01:25:24.399 --> 01:25:27.279
something to look forward to. I wonder whether or not
1794
01:25:27.359 --> 01:25:34.239
this is the basic evolutionarily, you know, hardwired circuitry for
1795
01:25:35.199 --> 01:25:38.079
if you're striving means you're trying to get someplace. If
1796
01:25:38.079 --> 01:25:40.239
you're trying to get someplace, there's a concept of a future.
1797
01:25:40.279 --> 01:25:42.840
If there's a concept of a future, well then you
1798
01:25:42.920 --> 01:25:45.920
plan to be there or you want to leave something behind.
1799
01:25:46.000 --> 01:25:50.279
But that it might activate literally this kind of will
1800
01:25:50.399 --> 01:25:52.800
to live. And I want to sound mystical here, but
1801
01:25:52.880 --> 01:25:55.760
kind of at a cellular level, because when people don't
1802
01:25:55.800 --> 01:26:00.279
have plans, then there's really no I mean, you could
1803
01:26:00.319 --> 01:26:03.119
just enjoy the smell of the roses, but that becomes
1804
01:26:03.119 --> 01:26:05.439
a bit of a closed loop. I don't know many people,
1805
01:26:05.720 --> 01:26:08.560
maybe monks or something, who are really tapped into something
1806
01:26:08.560 --> 01:26:10.840
that just that they just want to live in the
1807
01:26:11.159 --> 01:26:14.239
bliss of the moment constantly. A lot of life is
1808
01:26:14.279 --> 01:26:17.039
about what comes next and trying to make that thing happen.
1809
01:26:17.159 --> 01:26:19.640
I mean, it's so interesting to look at cellular and
1810
01:26:19.680 --> 01:26:23.079
then anterior cingulate and then super agers and then sense
1811
01:26:23.079 --> 01:26:25.079
of purpose if you look at all those different levels,
1812
01:26:25.079 --> 01:26:27.520
and then what we look at in a Western culture
1813
01:26:27.560 --> 01:26:30.600
too is very different than some cultures that age much
1814
01:26:30.680 --> 01:26:33.600
better than Western cultures. And maybe there's lessons to be
1815
01:26:33.680 --> 01:26:35.560
learned there, because you know, a lot of it is,
1816
01:26:35.560 --> 01:26:37.880
like you're saying, goal setting and motivation, but the goal
1817
01:26:37.960 --> 01:26:39.920
is not just to live forever. It's to make the
1818
01:26:39.960 --> 01:26:42.640
most of these moments and have this sense of purpose.
1819
01:26:42.680 --> 01:26:44.319
And a lot of older adults do want to have
1820
01:26:44.399 --> 01:26:47.720
this connection to younger people, or connection to a hobby
1821
01:26:47.800 --> 01:26:50.520
or an interest, and it's not as professionally driven as
1822
01:26:50.800 --> 01:26:53.840
is in kind of midlife. And I think the super
1823
01:26:53.880 --> 01:26:56.439
ages is really interesting because you know, I've read about
1824
01:26:56.479 --> 01:26:59.239
that and I've seen this, and these are not people
1825
01:26:59.279 --> 01:27:01.560
who said, I want to live forever and I'm going
1826
01:27:01.600 --> 01:27:04.119
to you know that that's not their goal. And a
1827
01:27:04.159 --> 01:27:05.880
lot of them are not people who are like I
1828
01:27:05.960 --> 01:27:08.920
went to the gym four times a week. They built
1829
01:27:09.000 --> 01:27:11.640
into their you know, and it's the same with blue zones.
1830
01:27:11.680 --> 01:27:14.640
It's built into their daily life of they eat well,
1831
01:27:14.680 --> 01:27:16.880
because that's the food that you know they enjoy and
1832
01:27:16.880 --> 01:27:19.520
that they can find they exercise not from going to
1833
01:27:19.560 --> 01:27:22.640
the gym, but from having to walk uphill or on
1834
01:27:22.800 --> 01:27:26.359
uneven surfaces. So I think, I don't want to say
1835
01:27:26.399 --> 01:27:30.479
it's an American focus on goals and motivation and biohacking
1836
01:27:30.560 --> 01:27:32.680
and longevity, but if you can build this into your
1837
01:27:32.760 --> 01:27:35.520
daily life, it's so much easier, right, and then it
1838
01:27:35.600 --> 01:27:37.640
just becomes you know. I saw my father bike to
1839
01:27:37.720 --> 01:27:39.720
work every day. In fact, he wouldn't even call it
1840
01:27:39.800 --> 01:27:41.800
work because he didn't want to make it think like
1841
01:27:41.840 --> 01:27:42.399
it was work.
1842
01:27:42.960 --> 01:27:44.119
And I don't know why.
1843
01:27:44.439 --> 01:27:46.359
I bike to work too in Los Angeles, which is
1844
01:27:46.359 --> 01:27:48.680
probably not the best thing to do, but I've been
1845
01:27:48.720 --> 01:27:50.439
able to set up my life that I bike two
1846
01:27:50.439 --> 01:27:53.920
miles uphill to work and then two miles downhill is
1847
01:27:53.960 --> 01:27:56.760
probably sometimes it's the best time of my day. Sometimes
1848
01:27:56.800 --> 01:27:59.119
it's one of the best ideas come to me. I
1849
01:27:59.159 --> 01:28:01.840
also have to be vigil you know, just the only
1850
01:28:01.880 --> 01:28:03.359
thing you know, I do wear a.
1851
01:28:03.319 --> 01:28:06.560
Helmet about you today. But I feel like something that's
1852
01:28:06.600 --> 01:28:09.520
coming out where I'm thinking just I just having lived
1853
01:28:09.560 --> 01:28:13.439
in La a while, it's just doors shars opening that's just.
1854
01:28:14.000 --> 01:28:16.600
Other cities too. Right in Toronto it's even worse, you know.
1855
01:28:17.239 --> 01:28:19.680
But I think with the super agers it's also resilience.
1856
01:28:19.760 --> 01:28:21.920
And these are people when you look at their lives,
1857
01:28:22.359 --> 01:28:25.520
sometimes you know they've had you know, easier lives, and
1858
01:28:25.560 --> 01:28:28.000
that can be beneficial in some ways, you know, having
1859
01:28:28.560 --> 01:28:31.359
wealth and health, but often there's a lot of resilience.
1860
01:28:31.520 --> 01:28:33.720
You know, you bounced back. You saw this during COVID.
1861
01:28:33.840 --> 01:28:35.760
We at first thought, oh, COVID is going to be
1862
01:28:35.880 --> 01:28:38.520
terrible for older people, right, because they're going to be
1863
01:28:38.520 --> 01:28:41.880
socially isolated, they don't know how to use technology, and
1864
01:28:42.159 --> 01:28:44.920
there's certainly reasons why older adults could be more vulnerable.
1865
01:28:45.439 --> 01:28:47.920
But what we found, at least at the psychological level,
1866
01:28:48.000 --> 01:28:50.319
we did some of this research, older adults were much
1867
01:28:50.359 --> 01:28:53.279
more resilient than younger adults. And I think we've learned
1868
01:28:53.319 --> 01:28:55.760
younger adults went through a lot of difficult times being
1869
01:28:55.800 --> 01:28:59.960
socially isolated, being through probably their first major kind of say,
1870
01:29:00.000 --> 01:29:03.000
situation where they can't behave the way they're normally doing it.
1871
01:29:03.159 --> 01:29:05.920
And the older adults were the ones who are like, eh,
1872
01:29:06.079 --> 01:29:10.079
I've lived through X Y and Z war's financial meltdowns.
1873
01:29:10.239 --> 01:29:14.239
You know, changes in family structure, deaths of close people,
1874
01:29:15.079 --> 01:29:18.600
and older adults seem to show a lot more resilience here.
1875
01:29:18.720 --> 01:29:22.319
And you know, when I've interviewed people for this book,
1876
01:29:22.319 --> 01:29:24.600
it's sometimes the most interesting people you know, lived through
1877
01:29:24.640 --> 01:29:27.960
the Holocaust who are like I appreciate every day, you know.
1878
01:29:28.199 --> 01:29:31.039
I think the best advice I got from one person
1879
01:29:31.159 --> 01:29:34.960
was like, when you're going upper downstairs, think I'm going
1880
01:29:35.039 --> 01:29:39.039
upper downstairs. They're very present, right, they know if I'm
1881
01:29:39.039 --> 01:29:42.600
mind wandering or doing something else, something can happen. So
1882
01:29:42.640 --> 01:29:44.880
maybe I shouldn't be mind wandering on my bike ride.
1883
01:29:44.880 --> 01:29:46.039
I should be like, that's my head.
1884
01:29:46.079 --> 01:29:52.079
Well, but you're considerably younger and clearly you're mentally aware
1885
01:29:52.199 --> 01:29:55.039
to be able to use that time of a friend.
1886
01:29:55.199 --> 01:29:57.359
He was actually a guest on this podcast. His name
1887
01:29:57.399 --> 01:30:00.760
is Ryan Swave. He's a trauma therapists treats addiction in
1888
01:30:00.800 --> 01:30:05.560
a number of people. He said, occasionally he'll get a
1889
01:30:05.720 --> 01:30:12.239
patient who was suicidal or tried to attempt suicide, you know,
1890
01:30:12.319 --> 01:30:15.520
or who attempted suicide excuse me, because of a breakup,
1891
01:30:16.199 --> 01:30:20.880
like in high school or in their twenties. And you know,
1892
01:30:20.920 --> 01:30:22.880
he said, at first, when when he would get these
1893
01:30:22.920 --> 01:30:24.920
people coming through his clinic. He would think like, listen,
1894
01:30:24.960 --> 01:30:26.840
you want to sit this person down and just say,
1895
01:30:27.039 --> 01:30:29.239
look like you got your whole life out of you,
1896
01:30:29.319 --> 01:30:31.119
that you're going to have other opportunities. There are other
1897
01:30:31.239 --> 01:30:33.399
fish in the sea. But he quickly came to realize
1898
01:30:33.439 --> 01:30:37.039
that to these what you know by all arguments are
1899
01:30:37.079 --> 01:30:42.479
still like kids young adults. To them, it feels like
1900
01:30:42.520 --> 01:30:44.720
a loss of the entire future because they haven't had
1901
01:30:44.760 --> 01:30:47.119
that future yet. And when he started approaching it through
1902
01:30:47.159 --> 01:30:49.439
that lens, he was able to be more effective clinically
1903
01:30:50.199 --> 01:30:53.000
to just really acknowledge like, yeah, it really feels like
1904
01:30:53.079 --> 01:30:55.680
the whole world is coming to an end. They just
1905
01:30:55.720 --> 01:30:58.840
don't have the perspective of having had some relationship challenges
1906
01:30:58.880 --> 01:31:01.520
and found someone else, and so it really feels like
1907
01:31:01.560 --> 01:31:05.079
their whole life is over. Yeah, because their whole life
1908
01:31:05.159 --> 01:31:07.840
is up to that point. It's interesting to think, you know.
1909
01:31:07.880 --> 01:31:09.960
And I remember thinking like, oh, yeah, that makes total
1910
01:31:09.960 --> 01:31:12.279
sense when you say it. I mean obviously not the suicidality.
1911
01:31:12.560 --> 01:31:14.520
You know, one hopes that wouldn't be where people would
1912
01:31:14.520 --> 01:31:17.800
go with a breakup. But as we get older, yeah,
1913
01:31:17.800 --> 01:31:21.960
we can integrate over you know, Oh, I've been had
1914
01:31:21.960 --> 01:31:24.119
my ups, I've had my downs. You know, I'm still here.
1915
01:31:24.119 --> 01:31:26.560
I'm hard to kill. You know, as I sometimes tell myself,
1916
01:31:26.600 --> 01:31:28.000
I go, I have had some ups and downs and
1917
01:31:28.560 --> 01:31:31.439
I'm taking, you know, some heat. I just go, Okay, well,
1918
01:31:31.560 --> 01:31:33.960
I know one thing is I'm hard to kill. Yeah,
1919
01:31:34.000 --> 01:31:36.640
you know, I'm not under resilient exactly. Then you go, Okay,
1920
01:31:36.680 --> 01:31:39.039
we're cool, Like what did I learn. I'm just gonna
1921
01:31:39.039 --> 01:31:41.479
apply the same principles here again, and you know, and
1922
01:31:41.520 --> 01:31:43.720
then ten years later you go, I'm still here.
1923
01:31:43.840 --> 01:31:45.479
Yeah. I mean, it's just too bad. You have to.
1924
01:31:45.520 --> 01:31:46.520
I mean, in some ways you have.
1925
01:31:46.479 --> 01:31:50.079
To go through those struggles to realize that I'm still here,
1926
01:31:50.279 --> 01:31:53.439
or in retrospect it was bad, but now I'm onto
1927
01:31:53.439 --> 01:31:54.720
something else, and.
1928
01:31:54.640 --> 01:31:56.640
Or in some cases it's the best parts of life.
1929
01:31:56.720 --> 01:31:59.239
This I don't understand. And maybe this isn't more memory
1930
01:32:00.319 --> 01:32:04.479
disruption than it is accurate experience, whatever that is. But
1931
01:32:05.239 --> 01:32:09.840
I feel like our emotional selves integrate it in the
1932
01:32:09.880 --> 01:32:12.840
way that we compare, like things really really sucked in
1933
01:32:12.960 --> 01:32:16.319
a moment, which makes the moments afterwards that just don't
1934
01:32:16.319 --> 01:32:18.960
suck a little bit so much better. Yeah, there's some
1935
01:32:19.039 --> 01:32:22.760
adaptation or habituation or whatever, and then you look back
1936
01:32:22.760 --> 01:32:25.399
and you know, like, things are so good because things
1937
01:32:25.399 --> 01:32:28.000
don't completely suck, which is a very different perspective than
1938
01:32:28.039 --> 01:32:29.800
I need things to be, so you know, I need
1939
01:32:29.800 --> 01:32:31.520
a bunch of stuff. It's maybe it's just the absence
1940
01:32:31.520 --> 01:32:33.000
of suck and you can really savor that.
1941
01:32:33.159 --> 01:32:35.720
No. I think there's a memory component to that as well.
1942
01:32:35.800 --> 01:32:37.479
And you know, some people have studied this, looking at
1943
01:32:37.479 --> 01:32:40.319
what's called the positivity bias, that as you get older,
1944
01:32:40.680 --> 01:32:43.800
you're more likely to focus on positive things, positive information,
1945
01:32:43.960 --> 01:32:46.920
positive events, but when you're younger, you're more likely to
1946
01:32:46.960 --> 01:32:50.560
focus on negative things. And that might be for survival,
1947
01:32:51.279 --> 01:32:54.279
it might not benefit your mental health. But as you say,
1948
01:32:54.319 --> 01:32:56.199
you know, these are big events that happen when you're
1949
01:32:56.239 --> 01:32:58.159
twenty twenty five and you're like, this is horrible. How
1950
01:32:58.159 --> 01:33:01.000
I'm ever going to get through this? Well, people do
1951
01:33:01.119 --> 01:33:03.680
look at all these seventy eighty year olds who've gone
1952
01:33:03.680 --> 01:33:06.920
through breakups and horrible things that have happened.
1953
01:33:06.640 --> 01:33:10.279
Mancial losses, and about people in the tech and business world,
1954
01:33:10.319 --> 01:33:13.520
they're like, went from so high to so low and
1955
01:33:13.560 --> 01:33:16.039
then back again, and you just go, oh my, most
1956
01:33:16.079 --> 01:33:18.399
people would just be devastated, and they're like, well, this
1957
01:33:18.439 --> 01:33:19.039
is the rhythm.
1958
01:33:19.319 --> 01:33:20.560
Yeah, and it's tough.
1959
01:33:20.560 --> 01:33:23.399
But I think as we get older, you know, we
1960
01:33:23.479 --> 01:33:25.960
might focus more on the positive things to enhance our mood,
1961
01:33:26.039 --> 01:33:28.119
and maybe that's what leads to this kind of uptick
1962
01:33:28.119 --> 01:33:30.359
and happiness as we get older. It's not just rose
1963
01:33:30.399 --> 01:33:32.840
colored glasses, but it's also saying, you know, I'm going
1964
01:33:32.880 --> 01:33:36.159
to focus on the things that are positive or be
1965
01:33:36.239 --> 01:33:38.039
around the people that make me feel good.
1966
01:33:38.079 --> 01:33:39.920
I've also heard a lot of older and also.
1967
01:33:39.720 --> 01:33:41.760
Say, you know, as I get older, I just don't
1968
01:33:41.800 --> 01:33:43.760
have time for that anymore. You know, I don't want
1969
01:33:43.800 --> 01:33:46.439
to focus on those negative things or talking to people
1970
01:33:46.439 --> 01:33:49.199
who bring me down. But when we're young, you know,
1971
01:33:49.319 --> 01:33:52.640
we're all around different people and you know, might complain
1972
01:33:52.680 --> 01:33:55.159
about things, and maybe that's beneficial so you can see
1973
01:33:55.560 --> 01:33:58.640
the bad things and rise above that. But again, it's
1974
01:33:58.680 --> 01:34:01.239
interesting to see these nonlinear changes that, you know, and
1975
01:34:01.439 --> 01:34:04.680
I think there is definitely a memory component, and getting
1976
01:34:04.720 --> 01:34:06.960
back to that white older adults tell the same stories
1977
01:34:07.039 --> 01:34:10.319
several times. Well, you know, sometimes it's a negative story,
1978
01:34:10.399 --> 01:34:12.199
like I had to walk this far to school, but
1979
01:34:12.279 --> 01:34:14.840
it usually has a positive spin to it, and so
1980
01:34:14.960 --> 01:34:18.279
maybe we do this is because we have this positivity
1981
01:34:18.279 --> 01:34:21.479
bias or we want to relay this positive information kind
1982
01:34:21.520 --> 01:34:23.640
of to wash out some of the negative things that
1983
01:34:24.000 --> 01:34:26.920
probably happened. You know, some of the happier older adults
1984
01:34:26.960 --> 01:34:29.199
I spent time with in South Florida lived through some
1985
01:34:29.279 --> 01:34:33.560
of the worst times in Eastern Europe. Let's say, I'm like,
1986
01:34:33.640 --> 01:34:37.840
how is this possible? And it's you know, their brain
1987
01:34:37.960 --> 01:34:40.279
changes in ways that might make them look like they're
1988
01:34:40.279 --> 01:34:42.760
not as sharp as they used to be, but they're
1989
01:34:42.760 --> 01:34:45.640
telling jokes, they're less inhibited. I learned some of the
1990
01:34:45.720 --> 01:34:49.239
dirtiest jokes from these individuals, and I think that these
1991
01:34:49.279 --> 01:34:51.439
people are really interesting to talk to. And you know,
1992
01:34:51.680 --> 01:34:55.279
I love teaching at UCLA and being around students, but
1993
01:34:55.359 --> 01:34:57.600
it's very different than talking to older adults. And every
1994
01:34:57.600 --> 01:34:59.880
once in a while, we have this Senior scholars program
1995
01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:04.319
that you know, allows older adults to take these undergraduate classes,
1996
01:35:04.439 --> 01:35:06.600
and to me, that's probably the most enriching thing. I
1997
01:35:06.640 --> 01:35:09.359
teach a class on the psychology of aging and here
1998
01:35:09.560 --> 01:35:12.199
in the classroom there's four older adults. I mean, this
1999
01:35:12.279 --> 01:35:15.760
is a case study. And this year several of them
2000
01:35:15.760 --> 01:35:17.840
were therapists, and like, this is you know, they had
2001
01:35:17.880 --> 01:35:20.399
a lot of information to share. But they're even told
2002
01:35:20.439 --> 01:35:22.640
in the part of it is that they're not supposed
2003
01:35:22.680 --> 01:35:25.880
to ask questions, and I thought that's so strange. In
2004
01:35:25.920 --> 01:35:27.920
my class, I want them, you know, I assume if
2005
01:35:27.920 --> 01:35:30.960
they're in astronomy or art history, they could be asking
2006
01:35:31.000 --> 01:35:33.800
tons of questions. But I think this is such a
2007
01:35:33.840 --> 01:35:36.920
great way to have this kind of intergenerational component and
2008
01:35:37.000 --> 01:35:38.479
a lot of the students, you know, I tell the
2009
01:35:38.520 --> 01:35:40.159
students I have two tests, but I don't have a
2010
01:35:40.199 --> 01:35:42.960
final exam, and I tell them the final exam is the.
2011
01:35:42.880 --> 01:35:43.640
Test of life.
2012
01:35:44.520 --> 01:35:46.159
I know it sounds a little, you know, kind of
2013
01:35:46.359 --> 01:35:49.199
corny or hope, but I'm like, everything you learned about aging,
2014
01:35:49.239 --> 01:35:51.319
you're hopefully going to use in the future. Either your
2015
01:35:51.359 --> 01:35:53.680
parents might not be relevant when you're twenty, you're not
2016
01:35:53.720 --> 01:35:56.319
thinking about it. But it was the older adults in
2017
01:35:56.359 --> 01:35:58.600
the class that they often said were you know, I
2018
01:35:58.680 --> 01:36:00.520
like to think I'm a good professor, but they learn
2019
01:36:00.560 --> 01:36:03.840
the most from these older adults, and so I think
2020
01:36:03.880 --> 01:36:08.479
having more of this intergenerational interaction is really important. And
2021
01:36:08.520 --> 01:36:11.720
in different cultures that's built into the community. In Western
2022
01:36:11.760 --> 01:36:14.560
culture not so much. I mean, some people grow up
2023
01:36:14.560 --> 01:36:18.880
with their grandparents in the same household. I didn't, but
2024
01:36:19.159 --> 01:36:21.319
at times I did have with my grandparents were very
2025
01:36:21.359 --> 01:36:24.880
informative and you know, you share genetic overlap with these individuals.
2026
01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:27.520
Yet they also have wisdom and knowledge, some that is dated,
2027
01:36:27.600 --> 01:36:30.319
but I think that can be very beneficial being around
2028
01:36:30.359 --> 01:36:31.039
older adults.
2029
01:36:31.720 --> 01:36:35.199
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look into it. But the fact is that metabolic health
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Hellolingo dot com slash Huberman. There's a really cool course
2051
01:37:42.279 --> 01:37:44.840
at Stanford Medical School that I sat in on years
2052
01:37:44.840 --> 01:37:48.800
ago about neural regeneration, which was a topic of study
2053
01:37:48.800 --> 01:37:51.399
for my lab for a while, and they had a
2054
01:37:51.560 --> 01:37:55.479
young person that year. It was a guy in his
2055
01:37:55.560 --> 01:37:57.840
twenties who had a spinal cord injury. Came in, talked
2056
01:37:57.840 --> 01:38:01.239
about his spinal cord injury. He talked about what life
2057
01:38:01.279 --> 01:38:04.000
was like for him before and after, how he's thinking
2058
01:38:04.039 --> 01:38:07.479
about things. And then on a separate lecture, there was
2059
01:38:07.520 --> 01:38:11.119
an older individual who also had a spawnal cord injury,
2060
01:38:11.640 --> 01:38:15.239
and it was striking to see the divergence in attitude.
2061
01:38:15.800 --> 01:38:18.760
You could look at this as tragic or redeeming, depending
2062
01:38:18.760 --> 01:38:21.800
on how you think about these things. But the older
2063
01:38:22.560 --> 01:38:25.159
gentleman was saying that you know he had this injury,
2064
01:38:25.439 --> 01:38:28.840
he knows he's never going to walk again, but he's like,
2065
01:38:28.960 --> 01:38:30.720
you know, he's lived a lot of life and he's
2066
01:38:30.720 --> 01:38:33.479
done a lot of things, and you know, and here
2067
01:38:33.520 --> 01:38:35.119
he is, and so he's going to focus on what
2068
01:38:35.159 --> 01:38:38.680
he can do. Focus on what he can do. And
2069
01:38:38.760 --> 01:38:41.159
he actually noted, this was some years ago, that he
2070
01:38:41.239 --> 01:38:44.600
wasn't that much worse off compared to his peers unless
2071
01:38:44.600 --> 01:38:47.760
he let himself become a pessimist. So if he was
2072
01:38:47.800 --> 01:38:50.520
an optimist, then he actually was still doing better than
2073
01:38:50.560 --> 01:38:55.479
a lot of his walking able peers, whereas a younger
2074
01:38:55.479 --> 01:38:57.800
gentleman was talking about how, you know, there's just so
2075
01:38:57.800 --> 01:39:00.920
many things in the in the horizon that he's gonna
2076
01:39:01.000 --> 01:39:03.039
that he hasn't done that he really wanted to do,
2077
01:39:03.119 --> 01:39:05.840
they doesn't have access to, which is really heartbreaking to hear.
2078
01:39:06.039 --> 01:39:08.000
It was a very honest discussion, and this was of
2079
01:39:08.039 --> 01:39:11.279
course mainly focused on the biology and limitations of biology
2080
01:39:11.319 --> 01:39:15.720
to try and overcome regeneration. But they brought these people
2081
01:39:15.760 --> 01:39:19.039
in because I really wanted to highlight the differences in
2082
01:39:19.119 --> 01:39:22.960
terms of patient need, and I thought it, you know,
2083
01:39:23.000 --> 01:39:25.279
this comes to mind now in this conversation. I think
2084
01:39:25.399 --> 01:39:28.560
if you accrue enough experiences good and bad, it does
2085
01:39:29.119 --> 01:39:31.760
we kind of bucket list life. We're like, Okay, you
2086
01:39:31.800 --> 01:39:35.359
know I did this, and I did that, and maybe
2087
01:39:35.359 --> 01:39:36.800
I would have liked more of that, but I can't
2088
01:39:36.840 --> 01:39:39.159
do that anymore. And you know I definitely didn't want
2089
01:39:39.199 --> 01:39:41.039
more of that, And you know, we can kind of
2090
01:39:41.079 --> 01:39:43.560
bucket list life. Yeah, And I never had a bucket
2091
01:39:43.560 --> 01:39:46.600
list growing up. It would have been very useful, like
2092
01:39:47.119 --> 01:39:50.039
sit down and at any age, I guess and just
2093
01:39:50.239 --> 01:39:52.960
write out what are the things you absolutely don't want
2094
01:39:53.000 --> 01:39:57.319
to leave this life not having done, and trying to
2095
01:39:57.319 --> 01:40:00.159
make those happen, because God forbid if you have of
2096
01:40:00.159 --> 01:40:02.880
these injuries or you stroke out and die or have
2097
01:40:02.920 --> 01:40:05.399
a heart attack, not to sound morbid, but then you
2098
01:40:05.439 --> 01:40:08.239
know you've done the things. And I think that's the
2099
01:40:08.279 --> 01:40:11.239
real tragedy of when people are limited early on. And
2100
01:40:11.359 --> 01:40:13.319
I don't know what became of the younger guy, and
2101
01:40:13.479 --> 01:40:17.359
hopefully he figured it out, because I know a lot
2102
01:40:17.359 --> 01:40:21.479
of people because of that work that are blind or paralyzed,
2103
01:40:22.239 --> 01:40:25.239
who live very enriched lives with families and all that.
2104
01:40:25.319 --> 01:40:28.800
But it's curious. It's like, I didn't think we get
2105
01:40:28.840 --> 01:40:31.279
to like the meaning of life here, purpose, purpose in life,
2106
01:40:31.279 --> 01:40:36.479
but we should probably plan and carry out on those
2107
01:40:36.520 --> 01:40:40.520
plans and not just live by default until we're older
2108
01:40:40.560 --> 01:40:41.920
and then try and figure out how we can go
2109
01:40:42.039 --> 01:40:47.359
longer with a little less pain and a few more memories.
2110
01:40:47.720 --> 01:40:49.680
I mean, it's an interesting case study when you compare
2111
01:40:49.720 --> 01:40:52.079
those two individuals and then say, you know, what do
2112
01:40:52.119 --> 01:40:53.640
you want to get out of life? And it's kind
2113
01:40:53.640 --> 01:40:56.640
of a big picture question, but a lot of older
2114
01:40:56.680 --> 01:40:59.920
adults will say they have pretty good life satisfaction, you know, happy,
2115
01:41:00.039 --> 01:41:03.199
This life fast faction could be similar and related. And
2116
01:41:03.239 --> 01:41:05.800
it's again it's the midlife people who seem to be lacking.
2117
01:41:06.520 --> 01:41:08.119
And I don't know if we're at that stage, but
2118
01:41:08.159 --> 01:41:10.039
I feel like maybe I'm on the uptick. But I
2119
01:41:10.319 --> 01:41:11.720
don't know if I have a bucket list, but I
2120
01:41:11.760 --> 01:41:13.560
certainly would like to do more things, like, Hey, I
2121
01:41:13.600 --> 01:41:16.159
really enjoyed that trip to Sedona, Arizona. I'd like to
2122
01:41:16.199 --> 01:41:16.640
do that again.
2123
01:41:17.079 --> 01:41:19.319
Amazing I just went for the first time. Yeah, my
2124
01:41:19.319 --> 01:41:21.159
girlfriend and I went out there and we're like, this
2125
01:41:21.319 --> 01:41:24.640
place is awesome. It's awesome, so beautiful, the air feels
2126
01:41:24.640 --> 01:41:26.880
so good, the light is amazing.
2127
01:41:26.479 --> 01:41:28.600
And I definitely go back. My son and I climbed
2128
01:41:28.640 --> 01:41:30.079
up you know part rocks.
2129
01:41:29.800 --> 01:41:31.079
That we you know, you're a climber.
2130
01:41:31.119 --> 01:41:33.880
Wow, I'm not a climber. I climbed then, but we
2131
01:41:34.079 --> 01:41:36.159
you know, we went there five years ago when he
2132
01:41:36.199 --> 01:41:38.199
was too young to do that. He wanted to go back,
2133
01:41:38.239 --> 01:41:39.800
and I was like, these are the sorts of moments
2134
01:41:39.840 --> 01:41:42.439
I really enjoy. And it doesn't necessarily have to be Sedona.
2135
01:41:43.039 --> 01:41:45.239
Go up the coast here in California and get it.
2136
01:41:45.279 --> 01:41:47.479
So I feel like those are the moments that I'm like,
2137
01:41:48.000 --> 01:41:50.319
I'm not sure whether it has to be in Costa
2138
01:41:50.399 --> 01:41:53.439
Rica or Matador Beach, but I feel like those are
2139
01:41:53.439 --> 01:41:56.920
the moments that I really enjoy. You know, before it
2140
01:41:57.000 --> 01:41:58.680
was like, yeah, I want to fly an airplane. That
2141
01:41:58.680 --> 01:42:01.640
would be really cool. But I have friends who fly airplans,
2142
01:42:01.640 --> 01:42:03.600
and I'm like, you know, I have a family. Now
2143
01:42:03.640 --> 01:42:06.640
I don't need a fly an airplan anymore. I think
2144
01:42:06.680 --> 01:42:08.319
we look at these Maybe I shouldn't be riding my
2145
01:42:08.359 --> 01:42:10.720
bike either in LA but I think we start to
2146
01:42:10.720 --> 01:42:13.960
look at like what really captures you in matters and
2147
01:42:14.000 --> 01:42:16.199
some of it are like even some simple hobbies, like
2148
01:42:16.199 --> 01:42:18.920
we were talking about drawing earlier. It's something I wouldn't
2149
01:42:18.960 --> 01:42:20.800
have time for when I was twenty or thirty, like
2150
01:42:20.840 --> 01:42:25.039
I could be spending that time programming computer or writing something,
2151
01:42:25.680 --> 01:42:28.640
and now that those are very kind of important moments
2152
01:42:28.680 --> 01:42:31.960
and times that I enjoy. So yeah, having a sense
2153
01:42:31.960 --> 01:42:35.359
of purpose, I think sharing information. A lot of older
2154
01:42:35.359 --> 01:42:37.439
adults will say it's really nice to be a mentor.
2155
01:42:37.479 --> 01:42:38.960
They don't want to go back and go through the
2156
01:42:39.000 --> 01:42:41.359
grunt work of their job, but they'd love to share
2157
01:42:41.680 --> 01:42:45.600
experiences or be an educator. And you see big benefits
2158
01:42:45.640 --> 01:42:49.680
for older adults who volunteer. Again, it's correlational, but older
2159
01:42:49.680 --> 01:42:52.560
adults who are engaged in some sort of kind of
2160
01:42:52.640 --> 01:42:58.920
generativity like influencing the next generation, feel very connected and useful.
2161
01:42:59.520 --> 01:43:01.680
And that's that's something some I'm older to Alstoll say,
2162
01:43:01.680 --> 01:43:03.359
It's like, you know, I'm retired, but I still feel
2163
01:43:03.399 --> 01:43:06.439
like I'm useful. And I think, you know, certainly, how
2164
01:43:06.479 --> 01:43:08.840
can we you know that'll be us God willing one
2165
01:43:08.920 --> 01:43:10.439
day that we'll be older and be like, well, what
2166
01:43:10.479 --> 01:43:11.399
are we supposed to do?
2167
01:43:11.479 --> 01:43:11.680
Now?
2168
01:43:12.159 --> 01:43:14.600
Maybe that's what grandkids are about per apps, you know,
2169
01:43:14.680 --> 01:43:17.560
because then you're actually useful to Yeah, almost everyone in
2170
01:43:17.600 --> 01:43:20.760
a family has some unique skill set they can contribute. Yeah,
2171
01:43:20.800 --> 01:43:24.920
like my stepdad is he's a really impressive carpenter and
2172
01:43:24.960 --> 01:43:28.039
with tools, and he built my niece's dollhouses when she
2173
01:43:28.119 --> 01:43:30.279
was young. Like, if there's something to fix, like he's
2174
01:43:30.279 --> 01:43:33.279
the man, you know, or something to build. His tool
2175
01:43:33.279 --> 01:43:35.800
shed is insane. Yeah, it's incredible.
2176
01:43:35.840 --> 01:43:39.239
I think grandchildren, I mean it's family. People will often
2177
01:43:39.239 --> 01:43:41.880
say when they're you know, close to the end of life,
2178
01:43:41.920 --> 01:43:43.960
what were the most important things, And they'll say, you know,
2179
01:43:44.039 --> 01:43:48.479
family rituals. So there's Thanksgiving or Passover when everyone got
2180
01:43:48.520 --> 01:43:51.680
together and got to doing something, and so those are
2181
01:43:51.800 --> 01:43:55.039
kind of some very important memories. And I think you
2182
01:43:55.119 --> 01:43:57.880
realize you can also influence the next generation in a
2183
01:43:57.920 --> 01:44:00.760
meaningful way. I think some research, again it's relational, shows
2184
01:44:00.760 --> 01:44:03.600
that people who spend five hours a week with their
2185
01:44:03.640 --> 01:44:07.520
grandchildren have improved memory. So that seems we don't know
2186
01:44:07.520 --> 01:44:10.600
if it's causal, but it's interesting that those who spend
2187
01:44:10.640 --> 01:44:13.399
more than twenty hours a week don't show this benefit.
2188
01:44:13.439 --> 01:44:15.920
In fact, might show the opposite or exhausted. They're exhausted,
2189
01:44:16.039 --> 01:44:19.119
or they're in an unfortunate situation where they're forced into childcare,
2190
01:44:19.159 --> 01:44:22.800
there's a single parent, or someone's incarcerated. So it's interesting
2191
01:44:22.840 --> 01:44:25.319
to get that insight that, yes, being around younger people
2192
01:44:25.399 --> 01:44:29.079
or doing some meaningful interaction, whether it's mentoring, whether it's
2193
01:44:29.119 --> 01:44:32.399
grandchildren can be can be and I think it's bidirectional.
2194
01:44:32.520 --> 01:44:34.039
You know that the children learn from it.
2195
01:44:34.119 --> 01:44:34.399
I had.
2196
01:44:34.960 --> 01:44:36.640
I didn't spend a lot of time with my grandparents,
2197
01:44:36.680 --> 01:44:39.479
but I have very vivid memories of one grandfather showing
2198
01:44:39.479 --> 01:44:41.359
me how you can clean a penny in coca cola.
2199
01:44:41.960 --> 01:44:44.239
You know, that's like science, and it was like, that's crazy.
2200
01:44:44.239 --> 01:44:46.159
Should I be drinking this? You know, there's all sorts
2201
01:44:46.199 --> 01:44:49.840
of questions I had, And so I think that sort
2202
01:44:49.840 --> 01:44:52.560
of you know, interaction can be very useful for you know,
2203
01:44:52.600 --> 01:44:54.039
the grandparent and the grandchild.
2204
01:44:54.199 --> 01:44:59.039
So I think about what really enriches one's life in
2205
01:44:59.039 --> 01:45:02.199
addition to deliberately trying to build memories, you know that
2206
01:45:02.319 --> 01:45:05.359
the decision to not fly planes and but maybe to
2207
01:45:05.399 --> 01:45:08.680
get out to Sedona or Matador, Big Sur or something
2208
01:45:08.720 --> 01:45:11.119
like that. Yosemite. I'm putting in a strong voat for Yosemite.
2209
01:45:11.399 --> 01:45:13.239
You want to have an amazing experience in life. It's
2210
01:45:13.319 --> 01:45:15.640
very low cost. If you can get yourself to Yosemite,
2211
01:45:15.720 --> 01:45:18.239
drive up to the high country and hike Clouds Rest.
2212
01:45:18.279 --> 01:45:22.880
It's the It's the best thing you'll ever do. Look,
2213
01:45:22.960 --> 01:45:25.079
get there early because you'll be coming down in the
2214
01:45:25.159 --> 01:45:27.479
dark if you don't. And bring water because there's no
2215
01:45:27.560 --> 01:45:30.840
water along the way. Amazing place. I'm putting a big
2216
01:45:30.840 --> 01:45:33.880
plug for National Parks because I love Yosemite. The discussion
2217
01:45:33.920 --> 01:45:37.720
you had with Wooden, you said the two takeaways that
2218
01:45:37.800 --> 01:45:43.239
he offered were love and balance, and then ironically he
2219
01:45:44.479 --> 01:45:47.000
got harmed and eventually died from a fall because his
2220
01:45:47.079 --> 01:45:49.760
pride got in the way. Was there anything else in
2221
01:45:49.760 --> 01:45:53.680
that conversation that didn't get into your book or that
2222
01:45:54.319 --> 01:45:56.520
it's just maybe it was more subtle that you think about.
2223
01:45:56.600 --> 01:45:57.640
If not, no big deal.
2224
01:45:57.880 --> 01:46:00.119
I mean, first of all, it wasn't the fall that
2225
01:46:00.279 --> 01:46:02.399
led to his death. It was you know, he had
2226
01:46:02.399 --> 01:46:04.800
a fall, he didn't press this light. He was resilient,
2227
01:46:04.840 --> 01:46:08.279
he bounced back and you know eventually, you know, I
2228
01:46:08.359 --> 01:46:11.399
think nearly ninety nine is when he passed away, so
2229
01:46:11.880 --> 01:46:15.319
several years after the fall. That was such an inspiring interview.
2230
01:46:15.319 --> 01:46:18.000
And I remember when I first got my job at UCLA,
2231
01:46:18.199 --> 01:46:21.159
you know, growing up in Canada. I'll admit the reason
2232
01:46:21.199 --> 01:46:24.720
I knew UCLA was the basketball team the football team.
2233
01:46:24.880 --> 01:46:26.359
I remember watching the Rose Bowl.
2234
01:46:26.399 --> 01:46:29.199
It's okay, many people throughout the world think that UCLA
2235
01:46:29.319 --> 01:46:32.039
is a basketball team. Yeah, yeah, I'm not sure that
2236
01:46:32.119 --> 01:46:36.119
they know that, and they've had theirs a school there.
2237
01:46:36.199 --> 01:46:39.119
But I also thought, gosh, that place sure looks nice
2238
01:46:39.159 --> 01:46:43.760
in the winter, And so it was. I was thankful
2239
01:46:43.760 --> 01:46:45.840
to be connected to coach Wouldn't, who actually used to
2240
01:46:45.920 --> 01:46:50.159
lecture in a leadership class once a year, and he
2241
01:46:50.399 --> 01:46:53.920
was very interested in, you know, serving as a coach
2242
01:46:53.960 --> 01:46:56.119
but also as a teacher. So I think this sort
2243
01:46:56.159 --> 01:47:00.960
of generativity. You know, he was so kind, thoughtful, and
2244
01:47:01.000 --> 01:47:03.279
then you come into his you know, it's a two
2245
01:47:03.319 --> 01:47:06.600
bedroom condo and encino. This is not how a famous
2246
01:47:06.600 --> 01:47:09.600
basketball coach would live now, and he had no problem
2247
01:47:09.600 --> 01:47:09.920
with that.
2248
01:47:10.079 --> 01:47:12.520
He wasn't interested in wealth or anything like that.
2249
01:47:12.560 --> 01:47:15.520
I think partly he didn't have and led a very
2250
01:47:15.520 --> 01:47:18.199
fulfilling life in the absence of that, whereas now you
2251
01:47:18.319 --> 01:47:22.039
see professional sports and all. You know, wealth can lead
2252
01:47:22.039 --> 01:47:24.760
to all sorts of problems. But so I was impressed
2253
01:47:24.760 --> 01:47:27.960
with that and just all the you know, the pride
2254
01:47:28.039 --> 01:47:32.399
he had and you know, sharing the love and balance
2255
01:47:32.479 --> 01:47:34.840
quote I thought was helpful, and I tried to distill
2256
01:47:34.880 --> 01:47:37.680
it in the book to capture not just what Wooden said,
2257
01:47:37.680 --> 01:47:40.960
but others that what I call the ABC's of successful aging.
2258
01:47:41.039 --> 01:47:43.640
It's kind of an easier way to an A is
2259
01:47:44.079 --> 01:47:46.960
an attitude, having a positive attitude about what can happen
2260
01:47:47.000 --> 01:47:50.039
as you get older. And actually more recent research shows
2261
01:47:50.079 --> 01:47:53.279
that those who have a positive attitude live longer, they
2262
01:47:53.279 --> 01:47:55.920
are less likely to develop dementia, and so it's probably
2263
01:47:56.119 --> 01:47:59.520
maybe less stress, better behavior. But more recent research shows
2264
01:47:59.520 --> 01:48:02.960
that if you have have a more negative attitude overall
2265
01:48:03.039 --> 01:48:05.039
of what can happen as you get older, but a
2266
01:48:05.039 --> 01:48:07.680
more positive attitude about what you can do your own
2267
01:48:07.760 --> 01:48:11.880
personal kind of agency over the process, that leads to
2268
01:48:12.000 --> 01:48:13.920
kind of longer life.
2269
01:48:14.359 --> 01:48:15.359
That's that friction again.
2270
01:48:15.479 --> 01:48:17.359
It's the friction. There's sounding about.
2271
01:48:17.159 --> 01:48:18.840
That you don't want it things too easy, you don't
2272
01:48:18.840 --> 01:48:21.960
want them too hard, like landscape too EASi or too hard.
2273
01:48:22.199 --> 01:48:24.880
It's it, you know again and again I've just been
2274
01:48:24.920 --> 01:48:28.319
tracking during our conversation. It's the delta. It's the difference
2275
01:48:28.319 --> 01:48:31.119
between where you're at versus where you'd like to be
2276
01:48:31.239 --> 01:48:36.159
and not letting that turney into a cynic or a curmudgeon.
2277
01:48:36.199 --> 01:48:39.359
But like, yeah, but feeling that friction. Can't we can't
2278
01:48:39.399 --> 01:48:41.960
just like kick our feet up and all the.
2279
01:48:41.960 --> 01:48:44.119
Time, right, And I think if you notice look bad
2280
01:48:44.119 --> 01:48:46.239
things can happen as you get older, but I'm going
2281
01:48:46.279 --> 01:48:48.199
to have to rise above it by doing these things.
2282
01:48:48.319 --> 01:48:51.319
That's that's the adapt component. So you know, attitudes but
2283
01:48:51.359 --> 01:48:53.560
also adapting. There's a lot of you're not going to
2284
01:48:53.640 --> 01:48:55.159
have an easy time, and a lot of the older
2285
01:48:55.119 --> 01:48:57.039
adults I've talked to said, you know, I've had to
2286
01:48:57.079 --> 01:49:00.880
adapt to changes, whether it's physical, whether it's mental. So
2287
01:49:00.960 --> 01:49:04.640
I think you know, may call a adapt And also
2288
01:49:04.720 --> 01:49:07.760
attitude is very psychological. And then b is balance, which
2289
01:49:07.800 --> 01:49:09.960
is what we've talked about already. You know, I don't
2290
01:49:09.960 --> 01:49:13.199
think it's these superages are not extremists. They're not like
2291
01:49:13.319 --> 01:49:17.600
running marathons and eating you know, only blueberries. I think
2292
01:49:17.680 --> 01:49:20.079
it's usually something like yeah, I just do this or
2293
01:49:20.119 --> 01:49:21.479
that and it works out.
2294
01:49:21.800 --> 01:49:23.840
That suggest some sort of genetic component.
2295
01:49:23.920 --> 01:49:25.960
I think there is a genetic component, but I also
2296
01:49:26.000 --> 01:49:28.119
think it's not the extreme, Like it's not like you
2297
01:49:28.159 --> 01:49:31.680
need four cups of coffee day to you know, prevent dementia.
2298
01:49:32.039 --> 01:49:34.720
It's probably having some level of balance and some you know,
2299
01:49:34.800 --> 01:49:38.800
genetic component, but and then C is often overlooked as
2300
01:49:38.840 --> 01:49:42.039
a you know, from a psychological standpoint, is connection. And
2301
01:49:42.039 --> 01:49:44.880
that's also what Woodin was emphasizing. You know, be around
2302
01:49:44.880 --> 01:49:48.800
the people you love, do the things you love. Social connection,
2303
01:49:48.840 --> 01:49:50.680
I think we learned during COVID. All of a sudden,
2304
01:49:50.680 --> 01:49:52.520
people are like, oh my gosh, I can't be around
2305
01:49:52.520 --> 01:49:54.199
people or I can see them on zoom.
2306
01:49:54.199 --> 01:49:54.920
But it's different.
2307
01:49:55.439 --> 01:49:58.359
All of a sudden, it hits home that social connection
2308
01:49:58.479 --> 01:50:00.680
is important. Now it's different for different people, you know,
2309
01:50:00.760 --> 01:50:03.199
how they want to engage in it. But I think
2310
01:50:03.239 --> 01:50:06.279
that's often lost sadly because of technology. You know, you
2311
01:50:06.279 --> 01:50:08.720
can have tons of Facebook friends, but how many friends
2312
01:50:08.800 --> 01:50:11.479
could you call up once a week to ask how
2313
01:50:11.479 --> 01:50:15.079
their day is or their week is gone? Is probably limited.
2314
01:50:15.119 --> 01:50:18.600
And as we get older, our social circle tends to shrink.
2315
01:50:19.239 --> 01:50:22.680
People move away, people pass away. But some research shows
2316
01:50:22.720 --> 01:50:25.960
the quality of those fewer relationships can actually be improved.
2317
01:50:26.600 --> 01:50:29.199
And I think that's again an interesting kind of nonlinear
2318
01:50:29.359 --> 01:50:31.600
change that you know, when we're young, we know lots
2319
01:50:31.640 --> 01:50:34.479
of people and we're interacting a lot in a social way.
2320
01:50:35.000 --> 01:50:37.560
But as we get older, it's those more meaningful kind
2321
01:50:37.600 --> 01:50:39.680
of relationships that are important.
2322
01:50:40.239 --> 01:50:43.640
Yeah, the connection piece comes up again and again. I
2323
01:50:43.640 --> 01:50:46.520
think it. You know, we talk about all this like
2324
01:50:46.560 --> 01:50:49.560
it must be kind of daunting for people in their
2325
01:50:49.600 --> 01:50:52.399
twenties and thirties now, because there's like all this stuff
2326
01:50:52.439 --> 01:50:54.960
that you can do to make yourself better that frankly
2327
01:50:55.000 --> 01:50:57.560
what we weren't aware of back when it's like, oh,
2328
01:50:57.680 --> 01:50:59.479
I like run in, so I ran. We want to
2329
01:50:59.520 --> 01:51:03.439
get stronger, so I lifted weights. I wanted to pich neuroscience,
2330
01:51:03.479 --> 01:51:05.479
So I did it, Like I just sort of followed
2331
01:51:05.479 --> 01:51:09.319
my interest. There wasn't this idea that you could like
2332
01:51:09.479 --> 01:51:12.920
fundamentally transform how long you were going to live or
2333
01:51:12.920 --> 01:51:14.680
how great you were going to feel at a given age.
2334
01:51:14.720 --> 01:51:17.000
But so I kind of wonder if it's both good
2335
01:51:17.039 --> 01:51:20.760
and bad. I don't want to undercut the idea that
2336
01:51:20.800 --> 01:51:24.560
we can strive for those things, but I also don't
2337
01:51:24.560 --> 01:51:26.640
want to promote the idea that we should all be
2338
01:51:26.680 --> 01:51:28.479
thinking about what it's going to be like when we're seventy.
2339
01:51:28.520 --> 01:51:32.119
I mean, the unit of life being the day, I
2340
01:51:32.119 --> 01:51:35.720
think is true in the circadian sense. Our biology resets
2341
01:51:35.760 --> 01:51:39.560
every twenty four hours. Having recently pulled the first all
2342
01:51:39.680 --> 01:51:42.000
nighter in a while to finish some book at its
2343
01:51:42.439 --> 01:51:46.439
last minute, little Niptok stuff. With my producer and friend Rob,
2344
01:51:46.479 --> 01:51:48.880
we legitimately pushed through. It's like it's been like, okay,
2345
01:51:48.880 --> 01:51:50.239
we'll go to two and then it too. It's like
2346
01:51:50.239 --> 01:51:52.239
I get then we're like, looks like we're going through
2347
01:51:52.279 --> 01:51:54.199
and it's been a while. It was fun to just
2348
01:51:54.199 --> 01:51:55.800
be able, you know, as much as I talk about
2349
01:51:55.840 --> 01:51:59.000
the benefits of sleep, Yeah, it's like that was cool,
2350
01:51:59.520 --> 01:52:01.880
done that in a while, Still got it. It hurt
2351
01:52:01.920 --> 01:52:03.640
the next day we get a nap. Next day you
2352
01:52:03.640 --> 01:52:06.479
sleep a little longer, Like you know you're gonna did
2353
01:52:06.479 --> 01:52:08.199
I shorten my life? I don't know. I feel like
2354
01:52:08.239 --> 01:52:09.319
I got I'll remember that.
2355
01:52:09.640 --> 01:52:12.439
You'll remember it, and you're contributing to something that you know,
2356
01:52:12.560 --> 01:52:14.239
you think is important. You know, this is a book,
2357
01:52:14.279 --> 01:52:16.079
this is something that you want to make sure it's
2358
01:52:16.119 --> 01:52:19.199
accurate and you know, thoughtful, and you know, I think
2359
01:52:19.239 --> 01:52:21.079
when you work hard at something, it does make you
2360
01:52:21.119 --> 01:52:23.319
feel good. You're probably getting a lot of you know,
2361
01:52:23.439 --> 01:52:26.159
neurotransmitter reward mechanism kicking in.
2362
01:52:26.399 --> 01:52:27.479
Yeah, it was so much fun. This is why I
2363
01:52:27.479 --> 01:52:29.760
always say, you know, the occasional like late night out
2364
01:52:29.800 --> 01:52:32.239
or all night, as long as it's for the right reasons,
2365
01:52:32.279 --> 01:52:35.000
you know, I wish that for people occasional. Yeah, as
2366
01:52:35.039 --> 01:52:38.039
you can tell, I'm really intrigued by this idea that
2367
01:52:38.720 --> 01:52:43.560
there's something about pushing ourselves and as Woulden pointed out,
2368
01:52:43.560 --> 01:52:46.319
there's also something about coming off the gas, being able
2369
01:52:46.359 --> 01:52:48.399
to lean back and forth into those things like life
2370
01:52:48.439 --> 01:52:51.880
is an oscillation, it's a circadian oscillation. And then it's
2371
01:52:51.920 --> 01:52:53.560
like this push push, push, and then being able to
2372
01:52:53.600 --> 01:52:56.119
come off the gas. And it's an art. It's not
2373
01:52:56.199 --> 01:52:58.960
a it's not a science. There's science there, but it's
2374
01:52:59.119 --> 01:53:02.560
it's not trivial like and it actually raises this question
2375
01:53:03.479 --> 01:53:06.399
for me. You know, you're an interesting guy. You know
2376
01:53:06.439 --> 01:53:08.800
you you're young in my opinion, but I'm fifty also,
2377
01:53:08.920 --> 01:53:11.960
so you study memory, but you seem to have a
2378
01:53:12.479 --> 01:53:15.920
genuine interesting care for the older generation, like how are
2379
01:53:15.960 --> 01:53:18.520
we going to take care of them in the AI age?
2380
01:53:18.560 --> 01:53:20.760
How are we going to take care of them? Is
2381
01:53:20.760 --> 01:53:22.920
that something that's always been intrinsic to you? Like I
2382
01:53:23.520 --> 01:53:25.880
don't want this to sound glib, you know, but what's
2383
01:53:25.920 --> 01:53:30.439
the obsession with older folks? It's cool, it's very nurturing,
2384
01:53:30.520 --> 01:53:33.359
but it's not typical. You know, most people aren't thinking
2385
01:53:33.359 --> 01:53:36.279
about the older generation. It's natural for us as a
2386
01:53:36.319 --> 01:53:38.439
species to think about the younger generation, right. We just
2387
01:53:38.439 --> 01:53:41.560
have a what I think is a healthy reflex to like,
2388
01:53:41.680 --> 01:53:43.800
how can we make things better for kids that are
2389
01:53:43.880 --> 01:53:47.079
coming out? Young people? Make it better? Yeah, but you're
2390
01:53:47.199 --> 01:53:50.000
unique in this way. You know, you study memory in
2391
01:53:50.079 --> 01:53:54.960
the age Cohart that has arguably some of the worst memory.
2392
01:53:55.119 --> 01:53:57.399
I think it's maybe growing up around a lot of
2393
01:53:57.439 --> 01:53:59.560
older adults. Again, you know, I grew up in Canada
2394
01:53:59.560 --> 01:54:01.760
partly but also in Florida, and I was around a
2395
01:54:01.760 --> 01:54:04.439
lot of very interesting older people, you know, kind of
2396
01:54:04.439 --> 01:54:07.760
in their prime of their retirement life, who'd spend a
2397
01:54:07.800 --> 01:54:10.520
lot of time with me. And you know, I have
2398
01:54:10.640 --> 01:54:13.399
aging parents. I've seen that. So I don't know if
2399
01:54:13.439 --> 01:54:15.920
it's also like a respect for older adults, but it's
2400
01:54:15.920 --> 01:54:19.039
also I mean, maybe it's I don't want to say egocentric,
2401
01:54:19.119 --> 01:54:21.960
but in a good way. If we're lucky, we're going
2402
01:54:22.039 --> 01:54:22.800
to be there one day.
2403
01:54:23.039 --> 01:54:25.800
You're making the discoveries that you will yourself benefit, right.
2404
01:54:25.720 --> 01:54:27.560
I hope so, I hope so. And I think it's
2405
01:54:27.600 --> 01:54:28.359
an investment.
2406
01:54:28.479 --> 01:54:30.520
You know, we invest a lot in our children, and
2407
01:54:30.600 --> 01:54:33.880
it's you know, incredibly important and to be nurturing parents,
2408
01:54:33.960 --> 01:54:36.600
and you know, have government that can help, you know,
2409
01:54:37.279 --> 01:54:39.960
with education. But I think we look the other way
2410
01:54:40.000 --> 01:54:43.279
once people are well, you're on social security or you're retired,
2411
01:54:43.439 --> 01:54:46.520
and you know, and I think culturally there's you know,
2412
01:54:46.720 --> 01:54:50.359
other cultures that treat older adults with more respect. And
2413
01:54:50.399 --> 01:54:52.720
so I don't know what the reason is. And you know,
2414
01:54:53.279 --> 01:54:56.000
I teach a class on aging at UCLA. It's a
2415
01:54:56.039 --> 01:54:58.640
popular class, but it's not as popular as the class
2416
01:54:58.680 --> 01:55:02.319
on relationships or you know, things that I think younger
2417
01:55:02.359 --> 01:55:06.159
people would be interested in. But oftentimes after students take it,
2418
01:55:06.159 --> 01:55:08.600
they say, you know, I never thought i'd be interested
2419
01:55:08.600 --> 01:55:11.159
in aging, but I'm actually, you know, now that I
2420
01:55:11.199 --> 01:55:13.720
think about it, you know, it's really interesting to see
2421
01:55:13.720 --> 01:55:16.279
how my parents age. And I'm like, well, you know,
2422
01:55:16.319 --> 01:55:18.640
give yourself thirty or forty years, and I hope you'll
2423
01:55:18.680 --> 01:55:21.239
remember something from this class. And I think maybe that's
2424
01:55:21.319 --> 01:55:24.079
my early exposure made me think this is really kind
2425
01:55:24.079 --> 01:55:26.159
of an interesting thing that happens. And I remember, you know,
2426
01:55:26.199 --> 01:55:29.079
with my grandparents, they would forget you know, I get
2427
01:55:29.119 --> 01:55:31.880
my name confused with my brother's name, but they could
2428
01:55:31.960 --> 01:55:34.880
remember the price of bananas, right, So how are they
2429
01:55:34.920 --> 01:55:38.680
remembering this very detailed information versus forgetting things that are
2430
01:55:38.720 --> 01:55:41.720
presumably important? And I think it comes down to focus,
2431
01:55:41.800 --> 01:55:44.039
It comes down to you know, the era you grew
2432
01:55:44.159 --> 01:55:46.239
up in, and so I don't see it as very
2433
01:55:46.279 --> 01:55:48.560
different than you know, older adults are not different than
2434
01:55:48.600 --> 01:55:51.119
younger adults, and that they're like that's the old and
2435
01:55:51.159 --> 01:55:54.640
this is the new. But it's this progressive change. And
2436
01:55:54.720 --> 01:55:56.680
in some ways I can see in my own children.
2437
01:55:56.760 --> 01:55:58.000
I think, what are they going to be like when
2438
01:55:58.039 --> 01:56:00.720
they're eighty, What habits are going to stay with them?
2439
01:56:00.800 --> 01:56:02.800
And what things might change? And I think in some
2440
01:56:02.880 --> 01:56:04.880
ways there's a lot of things that you could see
2441
01:56:04.880 --> 01:56:06.920
it kind of as a seed that just gets more
2442
01:56:06.960 --> 01:56:10.239
pronounced as we get older. But also that where you're
2443
01:56:10.279 --> 01:56:13.119
better at, you know, regulating emotions and doing things that
2444
01:56:13.159 --> 01:56:15.720
when we're young we're not so good at. And we
2445
01:56:15.800 --> 01:56:18.279
often think of like, how can we make older people,
2446
01:56:18.439 --> 01:56:21.359
you know better by making them look younger? And in
2447
01:56:21.399 --> 01:56:24.039
fact I sometimes think, gosh, how can we instill some
2448
01:56:24.199 --> 01:56:27.319
that not just the wisdom, but make younger people feel
2449
01:56:27.319 --> 01:56:29.560
like older people? In some ways kind of from a
2450
01:56:29.640 --> 01:56:33.640
psychological standpoint, you know, better at regulating emotions, less likely
2451
01:56:33.680 --> 01:56:34.520
to take risks.
2452
01:56:34.880 --> 01:56:36.479
You know, it's the whole, like if you know, if
2453
01:56:36.520 --> 01:56:40.199
I knew then what I know now, it's right. It's
2454
01:56:40.239 --> 01:56:43.680
interesting that Wooden said that the two most important words
2455
01:56:43.720 --> 01:56:46.279
in life are love and balance. I a friend who's
2456
01:56:46.319 --> 01:56:48.920
a psychologist, and he said, you know, the two most
2457
01:56:49.000 --> 01:56:52.000
dangerous words in the English language are if and only,
2458
01:56:52.039 --> 01:56:54.520
and especially when they're next to each other. And it's
2459
01:56:54.560 --> 01:56:57.239
interesting to watch my mind. I'm just going to like
2460
01:56:57.279 --> 01:57:01.000
if only this, if only that. It's like we can
2461
01:57:01.039 --> 01:57:07.199
default there and it's yeah, it's dreadfully useless and maybe
2462
01:57:07.199 --> 01:57:13.159
even destructive. So yeah, I encourage myself to watch out
2463
01:57:13.199 --> 01:57:16.279
for the if only, thinking it's it's it's maybe even deadly.
2464
01:57:16.319 --> 01:57:17.960
You know, we've run a lot of simulations in our
2465
01:57:17.960 --> 01:57:19.640
brain like what if I did this, or what if
2466
01:57:19.680 --> 01:57:21.159
I didn't do that, or what if I met this
2467
01:57:21.199 --> 01:57:23.880
person or what if I took this job? And I
2468
01:57:23.920 --> 01:57:26.239
think at some point, when you're young, maybe that's helpful,
2469
01:57:26.279 --> 01:57:28.680
like trying to figure out what would work out best.
2470
01:57:28.680 --> 01:57:31.479
But as you're older, it's like, well, these things have happened,
2471
01:57:31.479 --> 01:57:35.720
and I've learned from them, and yeah, I think it's
2472
01:57:35.920 --> 01:57:38.600
you know, really interesting to think of that as what if,
2473
01:57:38.640 --> 01:57:40.640
what if this happened? And you can get yourself into
2474
01:57:40.680 --> 01:57:42.800
a lot of trouble thinking what if that happens and
2475
01:57:42.840 --> 01:57:45.560
what you know, the world can be an incredibly dreary
2476
01:57:45.640 --> 01:57:48.520
place when you when you think of it that way,
2477
01:57:48.600 --> 01:57:51.079
But it's also amazing to see. And maybe that's why
2478
01:57:51.119 --> 01:57:52.720
I'm interested in older and I'll just like, look at
2479
01:57:52.720 --> 01:57:56.239
these people's seventy eighty ninety. I'm not just looking at
2480
01:57:56.279 --> 01:57:58.279
the ninety year olds who are doing incredible things. I'm
2481
01:57:58.279 --> 01:58:00.720
looking at the ninety year olds who are and perhaps
2482
01:58:00.720 --> 01:58:05.159
at peace with themselves, you know, feel comfortable talking about
2483
01:58:05.159 --> 01:58:07.039
things that they want to talk about. I you know,
2484
01:58:07.079 --> 01:58:09.880
I enjoyed your father's podcast partly because I'm like, here's
2485
01:58:09.880 --> 01:58:12.800
a guy who's not afraid of saying some things, and
2486
01:58:12.800 --> 01:58:15.119
they appreciate it. Maybe maybe it's not always you know,
2487
01:58:15.159 --> 01:58:16.239
what people would expect.
2488
01:58:17.000 --> 01:58:19.000
He hasn't a reverence to him. I mean, he's very
2489
01:58:19.920 --> 01:58:26.359
polite and believes in etiquette, but he doesn't let people
2490
01:58:26.399 --> 01:58:27.119
constrain him.
2491
01:58:27.279 --> 01:58:29.520
Yeah, and you know, I just found that, you know,
2492
01:58:29.520 --> 01:58:31.520
there's a lot of these podcasts have a lot of
2493
01:58:31.520 --> 01:58:33.319
science in them. But he had a lot of, you know,
2494
01:58:33.720 --> 01:58:35.399
things that made me think, gosh, that's interesting.
2495
01:58:35.439 --> 01:58:37.800
Could we test that? Is that really? How? You know?
2496
01:58:37.880 --> 01:58:39.359
He curiosity.
2497
01:58:39.560 --> 01:58:42.319
One of our more recent studies has shown that as
2498
01:58:42.319 --> 01:58:45.600
we get older, you know, memory does decline in many ways,
2499
01:58:45.600 --> 01:58:49.479
but older adults can remember prices. Let's say that makes sense,
2500
01:58:49.600 --> 01:58:52.119
so you know, the bananas being you know, two ninety nine,
2501
01:58:52.199 --> 01:58:54.920
But as soon as we say bananas are eighteen forty nine,
2502
01:58:55.560 --> 01:58:58.439
that just doesn't make sense. And older adults quickly forget that.
2503
01:58:59.239 --> 01:59:01.720
And that's we were talking about that the benefit of
2504
01:59:01.760 --> 01:59:04.159
forgetting things that just don't fit your schemas, that just
2505
01:59:04.199 --> 01:59:08.039
don't make sense, or the younger adults. You know, a
2506
01:59:08.079 --> 01:59:10.640
lot of undergraduates will be like, you know, I highlighted
2507
01:59:10.680 --> 01:59:12.560
eighty percent of the textbook. Why did I get a
2508
01:59:12.600 --> 01:59:16.039
CEE on the exam? It's this inability to kind of
2509
01:59:16.359 --> 01:59:20.880
selectively focus on what's important. And I've seen that even myself, Like,
2510
01:59:21.039 --> 01:59:22.920
you know, when I was younger, I'd be taking notes
2511
01:59:22.960 --> 01:59:25.680
on everything. But by your fourth year you realize, you
2512
01:59:25.680 --> 01:59:27.199
know what, let me sit back and look for the
2513
01:59:27.239 --> 01:59:30.600
overarching themes that connect things. And that's almost how I
2514
01:59:30.640 --> 01:59:33.359
did well in psychology is I'm like, Okay, some of
2515
01:59:33.399 --> 01:59:35.880
these findings make sense, and so I can remember it
2516
01:59:35.880 --> 01:59:38.520
that way, but some of them are counterintuitive and a
2517
01:59:38.560 --> 01:59:41.279
lot of this like people aren't always rational, this connoment
2518
01:59:41.359 --> 01:59:44.119
and dioversky, you know, all these biases people have. Well,
2519
01:59:44.119 --> 01:59:46.720
that's fascinating. So I just remember it that way, the
2520
01:59:46.760 --> 01:59:48.960
things that made sense and the things that didn't make sense.
2521
01:59:49.079 --> 01:59:52.760
And that's kind of how you can organize things. And
2522
01:59:52.840 --> 01:59:54.600
I think that that can be kind of a useful
2523
01:59:54.640 --> 01:59:57.159
principle as you get older, is knowing what to overlook
2524
01:59:57.279 --> 01:59:59.479
and kind of knowing what to focus on. And so,
2525
01:59:59.760 --> 02:00:02.199
you know, old adults, even though they'll say my memory
2526
02:00:02.239 --> 02:00:04.359
is not as sharp as it used to be, as
2527
02:00:04.359 --> 02:00:06.000
long as you can remember the things that are kind
2528
02:00:06.000 --> 02:00:09.279
of critical, that's what's important. And so in the study
2529
02:00:09.319 --> 02:00:12.640
on curiosity, we found that old adults tend to remember
2530
02:00:12.680 --> 02:00:15.399
the things that they're most curious about, but they're also
2531
02:00:15.439 --> 02:00:17.439
really good at forgetting the things that they just didn't
2532
02:00:17.439 --> 02:00:18.520
care about in the first place.
2533
02:00:18.560 --> 02:00:20.960
Sounds great, Yeah, honestly, it sounds great.
2534
02:00:21.159 --> 02:00:21.239
Right.
2535
02:00:21.600 --> 02:00:24.920
Yeah, I can't wait, right, because I want to learn
2536
02:00:24.960 --> 02:00:27.640
more about certain things, remember certain people in certain things.
2537
02:00:27.640 --> 02:00:29.840
But there's a lot of stuff that rolls through my
2538
02:00:29.920 --> 02:00:33.720
phone or through my email, luckily not through my daily experience,
2539
02:00:33.760 --> 02:00:36.079
but that I don't want to think about that stuff.
2540
02:00:35.760 --> 02:00:37.600
And it captures your attention, and all of a sudden,
2541
02:00:37.600 --> 02:00:39.319
You're like, where'd the last ten minutes ago? I've been
2542
02:00:39.359 --> 02:00:43.119
reading about this? Now I'm remembering this useless thing. So
2543
02:00:43.119 --> 02:00:45.039
I think, if you can prune these things, and as
2544
02:00:45.039 --> 02:00:48.239
you get older, maybe you realize. I've even realized that, gosh,
2545
02:00:48.279 --> 02:00:51.319
I forget this. I need to focus more. It's not
2546
02:00:51.399 --> 02:00:54.079
just conscious focus, but it's like, I, you know, I'm
2547
02:00:54.119 --> 02:00:56.560
interested in this, Let's put more resources and time and
2548
02:00:56.680 --> 02:00:59.359
energy into that. It takes me longer to learn a
2549
02:00:59.399 --> 02:01:00.840
piano piece than you.
2550
02:01:00.800 --> 02:01:01.800
Know my daughter.
2551
02:01:02.039 --> 02:01:02.720
You play piano.
2552
02:01:02.800 --> 02:01:05.159
I try, but you know, I see my daughter like
2553
02:01:05.239 --> 02:01:07.359
picking these things up so quickly, and I'm like, I know,
2554
02:01:07.439 --> 02:01:08.960
I'm not going to be like that, but I can
2555
02:01:09.000 --> 02:01:11.239
be more selective about what I try and learn, what's
2556
02:01:11.279 --> 02:01:13.680
in my wheelhouse and what's just beyond it.
2557
02:01:13.800 --> 02:01:17.279
Developmental plasticity is amazing, right, it's amazing. But I know
2558
02:01:17.319 --> 02:01:18.000
she's younger than you.
2559
02:01:18.199 --> 02:01:18.840
Yeah, she's young.
2560
02:01:18.880 --> 02:01:20.840
You know, I've you know, two daughters and a son,
2561
02:01:20.840 --> 02:01:23.359
and I see them all excelling. Like my older daughter
2562
02:01:23.439 --> 02:01:27.239
is like, wow, her cognitive skills are probably beyond mind
2563
02:01:27.279 --> 02:01:29.399
and her speed of processing. She might even be a
2564
02:01:29.399 --> 02:01:32.439
better driver than I am. You know, she's good at
2565
02:01:32.479 --> 02:01:35.600
planning things. My daughter playing piano, it's like, gosh, if
2566
02:01:35.600 --> 02:01:38.520
I could have those skills, now, how I would practice more.
2567
02:01:39.119 --> 02:01:41.359
My son will hurt himself in baseball and I'm like, oh,
2568
02:01:41.399 --> 02:01:44.479
he's out for three weeks. Three days later he's pitching again.
2569
02:01:45.000 --> 02:01:47.000
And so those are things where it's like, yes, aging
2570
02:01:47.119 --> 02:01:50.319
sucks in some ways. I'll be upfront about it, but
2571
02:01:50.560 --> 02:01:53.119
I think we appreciate those things. As you get forty
2572
02:01:53.159 --> 02:01:55.640
fifty sixty, it's like, yeah, that's you know, it's hard
2573
02:01:55.640 --> 02:01:58.479
to recover from injuries. It takes you maybe longer to
2574
02:01:58.560 --> 02:02:01.640
learn something, but the things you really do care about,
2575
02:02:01.760 --> 02:02:04.159
you can use all this kind of knowledge and wisdom
2576
02:02:04.199 --> 02:02:07.239
and metacognition to focus on kind of what matters the most.
2577
02:02:07.960 --> 02:02:11.960
So it's almost as if as we are able to
2578
02:02:12.039 --> 02:02:16.800
do less with less pain or just do less, attitude
2579
02:02:16.960 --> 02:02:19.920
starts to become more and more important. That's what I'm hearing.
2580
02:02:19.960 --> 02:02:21.640
But I don't want to lead the witness.
2581
02:02:21.399 --> 02:02:23.720
As yeah, I think that's definitely the perspective. And you
2582
02:02:23.720 --> 02:02:26.800
know this is built on some developmental theories of social
2583
02:02:27.039 --> 02:02:31.199
you know, social learning, but also selective optimization with compensation.
2584
02:02:31.600 --> 02:02:33.399
You know that as you get older, maybe you're not
2585
02:02:33.439 --> 02:02:35.560
going to be doing all these things and scuba diving
2586
02:02:35.640 --> 02:02:37.640
and hiking, but you'll be like, you know that one
2587
02:02:37.720 --> 02:02:39.880
hike I really enjoy. I want to be able to
2588
02:02:39.880 --> 02:02:42.800
do it once a week. And so you're still doing
2589
02:02:42.840 --> 02:02:44.840
the things you like, but you're not doing kind of
2590
02:02:44.880 --> 02:02:48.079
the wide range of them. And another related theory is,
2591
02:02:48.279 --> 02:02:52.720
you know, socio emotional selectivity theory. Laura Carstenson at Stanford
2592
02:02:53.279 --> 02:02:55.840
another perspective, saying that as we get older are kind
2593
02:02:55.880 --> 02:02:58.479
of our mindset shifts that we don't have as much
2594
02:02:58.520 --> 02:03:01.239
time to live. We want to focus on the things
2595
02:03:01.239 --> 02:03:04.520
that are important, whereas when you're young, it's very abstract
2596
02:03:04.520 --> 02:03:06.680
to say save for retirement or what are you going
2597
02:03:06.720 --> 02:03:08.479
to do when you're sixty? It's like that, what am
2598
02:03:08.520 --> 02:03:09.479
I going to do next week?
2599
02:03:09.720 --> 02:03:09.880
Right?
2600
02:03:10.680 --> 02:03:12.640
But her work has shown that when you give people
2601
02:03:12.680 --> 02:03:15.520
different time perspectives, they make different choices. So if you
2602
02:03:15.640 --> 02:03:18.560
unfortunately tell someone who's younger that they only have five
2603
02:03:18.600 --> 02:03:20.920
to ten years left to live, they're going to make
2604
02:03:21.000 --> 02:03:24.039
choices very much like older adults too. So I don't
2605
02:03:24.079 --> 02:03:26.479
know if it's conscious that we're thinking these things, but
2606
02:03:26.680 --> 02:03:29.159
you know, as you get older, maybe you realize I
2607
02:03:29.199 --> 02:03:31.079
want to focus on the things that matter the most.
2608
02:03:31.119 --> 02:03:33.119
Maybe I won't worry so much about the things that
2609
02:03:33.159 --> 02:03:36.399
I used to worry about all the time, and that
2610
02:03:36.439 --> 02:03:38.800
can be kind of a healthy way to approach life.
2611
02:03:39.359 --> 02:03:44.640
This might sound a little mystical, but I've always wondered if,
2612
02:03:45.239 --> 02:03:50.880
barring accident or injury, whether people have some unconscious knowledge
2613
02:03:50.880 --> 02:03:54.319
about how long they're going to live. I grew up
2614
02:03:54.479 --> 02:03:56.479
near Steve jobs. He used to come into the skateboard
2615
02:03:56.479 --> 02:03:58.680
shop that I worked to get rollerblade wheels and things
2616
02:03:58.720 --> 02:04:00.279
like that, and he was around. He didn't have curity.
2617
02:04:00.279 --> 02:04:01.920
He'd walker. When I was a postdoc, you'd still see
2618
02:04:01.960 --> 02:04:04.000
him walking through downtown pal Aalto in the evenings. My
2619
02:04:04.079 --> 02:04:06.039
dad and I would walk about once a week, we
2620
02:04:06.119 --> 02:04:09.000
take a walk together, and i'd see Steve. He was young,
2621
02:04:09.319 --> 02:04:12.439
passed away I think in twenty fifteen or something like that,
2622
02:04:12.520 --> 02:04:14.159
but I sound about right. Yeah. In any case, he
2623
02:04:14.520 --> 02:04:17.399
was thinning out then, he was going through his various treatments.
2624
02:04:17.399 --> 02:04:21.000
But you know, if you listen to his biography with
2625
02:04:21.079 --> 02:04:24.560
Walter Isaacson written by Walter Isaacson, I mean, it was
2626
02:04:24.680 --> 02:04:26.880
very clear that he had a mission. He was on it.
2627
02:04:26.920 --> 02:04:29.359
That life was you had to maximize on your life
2628
02:04:29.399 --> 02:04:32.319
that you couldn't compromise. And okay, that led to some
2629
02:04:32.720 --> 02:04:35.159
kind of high friction personality traits in him too. But
2630
02:04:35.720 --> 02:04:39.840
I don't think anyone would argue that he didn't do
2631
02:04:39.880 --> 02:04:42.439
something super impressive in what he built. It transformed the world.
2632
02:04:42.600 --> 02:04:44.800
I mean, most everyone listening to this has an apple
2633
02:04:44.840 --> 02:04:48.159
product in their vicinity as I say this, right, and
2634
02:04:48.239 --> 02:04:51.119
it almost seemed like he had some deeper knowledge he
2635
02:04:51.159 --> 02:04:54.359
wasn't going to live that long. And when I think
2636
02:04:54.399 --> 02:04:56.760
about like the twenty seven club of you know, amazing
2637
02:04:56.840 --> 02:05:00.399
artists dying at twenty seven, and just like, it's almost
2638
02:05:00.399 --> 02:05:02.239
like that there's a life energy that's either packed into
2639
02:05:02.279 --> 02:05:04.159
a shorter period of time, a medium amount of time,
2640
02:05:04.199 --> 02:05:06.960
or a longer time. Now, of course, accidents, injuries and
2641
02:05:07.199 --> 02:05:11.239
things can happen too, But I wonder, like if we
2642
02:05:11.479 --> 02:05:13.840
have a sense based on our parents, our grandparents, our
2643
02:05:14.159 --> 02:05:16.279
life notion of like I'm gonna be around a while
2644
02:05:16.800 --> 02:05:19.800
or because it really seemed to benefit him to have
2645
02:05:19.880 --> 02:05:23.079
this attitude about life, like you get one life, you
2646
02:05:23.439 --> 02:05:26.840
have to live it on your terms. You don't want
2647
02:05:26.880 --> 02:05:30.840
to compromise your soul and your heart, and you just
2648
02:05:30.920 --> 02:05:32.960
go for it. And then there are these people that
2649
02:05:33.039 --> 02:05:34.520
sort of live life as if it's going to go
2650
02:05:34.520 --> 02:05:37.239
on forever, and for them it seems to go on
2651
02:05:37.279 --> 02:05:38.720
a long time, and it seems to be kind of
2652
02:05:38.720 --> 02:05:41.159
a lower, slower arc. I'm not saying one is better
2653
02:05:41.199 --> 02:05:46.000
than the other, right, it's impossible to compare, except you know,
2654
02:05:46.159 --> 02:05:49.800
to compare the objectively, just say, okay, one live shorter,
2655
02:05:49.920 --> 02:05:52.119
pack more in, one live longer. Maybe it didn't have
2656
02:05:52.159 --> 02:05:55.319
his intense a life. Do you think there could be
2657
02:05:55.399 --> 02:05:59.239
something in our biology that we have some awareness based
2658
02:05:59.279 --> 02:06:02.439
on our at a fingerprint that you know, I've probably
2659
02:06:02.439 --> 02:06:06.000
got about I think about my dad and mom. They're
2660
02:06:06.039 --> 02:06:08.000
doing well in their eighties. But you know, I probably
2661
02:06:08.039 --> 02:06:10.560
have about ninety hundred years, so I take care of myself,
2662
02:06:10.600 --> 02:06:11.720
so I'm going to live that way.
2663
02:06:12.199 --> 02:06:15.039
Yeah, it's an interesting conjecture.
2664
02:06:15.319 --> 02:06:17.520
In some ways, we probably do know, like our life
2665
02:06:17.520 --> 02:06:20.199
span is about this, But you're right, accidents can happen,
2666
02:06:20.279 --> 02:06:22.199
things can happen. And I've seen, you know, from my
2667
02:06:22.279 --> 02:06:24.760
own family. You know, I can take the average age
2668
02:06:24.800 --> 02:06:27.119
of my mother and father Sadly, my mother passed away
2669
02:06:27.119 --> 02:06:27.800
when she was young.
2670
02:06:27.880 --> 02:06:28.960
My father's still alive.
2671
02:06:29.039 --> 02:06:32.319
So I think I have this perspective of life can
2672
02:06:32.399 --> 02:06:34.520
be short, and when people are like, I'm fifty, but
2673
02:06:34.560 --> 02:06:36.560
I haven't done this this, and this part of me like,
2674
02:06:36.600 --> 02:06:39.880
I'm fifty and I've made it this far. I'm pretty
2675
02:06:39.920 --> 02:06:42.840
happy with things. But of course, you know, your perspective
2676
02:06:42.840 --> 02:06:44.800
could be different, and I don't know. In the case
2677
02:06:44.840 --> 02:06:47.880
of these, you know, high performing individuals, maybe they lead
2678
02:06:47.960 --> 02:06:49.840
every day like it could be their last, and they
2679
02:06:49.840 --> 02:06:52.760
want to stay up all night and transform the world.
2680
02:06:53.640 --> 02:06:55.840
I think a lot of the superages are probably not
2681
02:06:55.960 --> 02:06:59.720
doing that. They're probably like getting good rest, having some
2682
02:07:00.079 --> 02:07:00.960
teams and habits.
2683
02:07:01.279 --> 02:07:02.039
They're chill.
2684
02:07:02.119 --> 02:07:05.479
They're more chill. But maybe it's not intentional. It's like
2685
02:07:05.600 --> 02:07:07.920
I just don't want to, you know, ruin tomorrow by
2686
02:07:07.920 --> 02:07:11.039
not sleeping a lot tonight. So, you know, a lot
2687
02:07:11.039 --> 02:07:14.640
of people say, what's the secret to successful aging? And
2688
02:07:15.199 --> 02:07:18.119
I think the secret is not to look for one thing. Probably,
2689
02:07:18.279 --> 02:07:20.479
you know, we've talked a lot about you know, exercise, sleep,
2690
02:07:21.159 --> 02:07:23.439
and a lot of people say it's moderation, like it
2691
02:07:23.439 --> 02:07:26.199
doesn't mean like don't drink coffee or drink seven cups
2692
02:07:26.199 --> 02:07:28.000
a day. It's like, if you want a cup of coffee,
2693
02:07:28.119 --> 02:07:30.560
have one, but you can have realized maybe you don't
2694
02:07:30.560 --> 02:07:33.800
want it every day, get you know, eight hours of sleep,
2695
02:07:33.840 --> 02:07:36.159
well not every night. Clearly pulling an all night or
2696
02:07:36.399 --> 02:07:38.079
might have been a benefit for you, and even in
2697
02:07:38.159 --> 02:07:39.600
a good investment.
2698
02:07:39.159 --> 02:07:41.279
In the way again for a very long time, but
2699
02:07:41.319 --> 02:07:41.800
then you've.
2700
02:07:41.640 --> 02:07:42.439
Probably learned from that.
2701
02:07:42.479 --> 02:07:44.119
You're like, I don't want to be editing books late
2702
02:07:44.119 --> 02:07:47.319
at night once a week, right, but once every few years,
2703
02:07:47.439 --> 02:07:50.039
especially if it might pay off. That's that's part of
2704
02:07:50.079 --> 02:07:52.560
the you know, the deal I've made with myself.
2705
02:07:52.600 --> 02:07:55.039
So the friendship I'm realizing as you say this, the
2706
02:07:55.079 --> 02:07:57.359
fact that someone else was there is what kept me
2707
02:07:57.399 --> 02:07:59.720
out of like you know, swearing like this sucks or
2708
02:07:59.760 --> 02:08:02.159
what it's fun. It's remind me being in graduate school.
2709
02:08:02.199 --> 02:08:04.560
We used to run physiology experiments all night or imaging
2710
02:08:04.600 --> 02:08:07.520
experiments all night, and you get pretty loopy somewhere between
2711
02:08:07.560 --> 02:08:10.000
three and five am, and we just acknowledge like, oh
2712
02:08:10.039 --> 02:08:13.000
here we go again, Like mild psychosis because you're a
2713
02:08:13.039 --> 02:08:16.239
little bit psychotic in the sleep deprived state. You make
2714
02:08:16.279 --> 02:08:18.239
it through and you're like, hey, we did that. Was
2715
02:08:18.279 --> 02:08:18.760
that was fun.
2716
02:08:18.760 --> 02:08:20.760
Maybe that's why people say college is the best time
2717
02:08:20.800 --> 02:08:22.680
because you're going through a lot of things like that,
2718
02:08:22.720 --> 02:08:25.439
staying up late, working hard, struggling through this, trying to
2719
02:08:25.439 --> 02:08:27.560
figure out that. But there's a social component you're doing
2720
02:08:27.640 --> 02:08:30.079
with other people. And you know, even when I think
2721
02:08:30.079 --> 02:08:32.079
like the Steve Jobs thing, or even when I talk
2722
02:08:32.119 --> 02:08:34.279
to older adults, they're like, I like this part of
2723
02:08:34.319 --> 02:08:36.319
my work life when it was a challenge and we
2724
02:08:36.359 --> 02:08:38.560
had to travel here and do that, it was exciting.
2725
02:08:38.920 --> 02:08:41.039
They wouldn't say it was relaxing, and it's not something
2726
02:08:41.079 --> 02:08:42.000
they want to revisit.
2727
02:08:42.600 --> 02:08:43.279
And it's interesting.
2728
02:08:43.279 --> 02:08:45.119
If you ask people what age would you want to
2729
02:08:45.159 --> 02:08:47.640
go back to, not a lot of people will say
2730
02:08:47.800 --> 02:08:51.600
twenty or fifteen. It's usually kind of closer to midlife,
2731
02:08:51.600 --> 02:08:53.840
which is interesting because maybe everything's kind of firing on
2732
02:08:53.880 --> 02:08:56.479
all cylinders. Then your cognition is still pretty good, your
2733
02:08:56.560 --> 02:08:59.600
family's still around, you know, you have your job, your
2734
02:09:00.119 --> 02:09:02.520
enforced by a lot of things. But it's not going
2735
02:09:02.560 --> 02:09:04.880
back to this age. You know, when you're like twenty
2736
02:09:04.960 --> 02:09:05.520
twenty five.
2737
02:09:06.520 --> 02:09:09.520
Any experiments that your laboratory is doing now that you
2738
02:09:09.560 --> 02:09:12.159
can even just tell us about the design of the experiment,
2739
02:09:12.199 --> 02:09:13.119
if not the results.
2740
02:09:13.439 --> 02:09:13.720
Yeah.
2741
02:09:13.800 --> 02:09:16.840
Well, we've done some work on curiosity, and I think
2742
02:09:16.840 --> 02:09:20.000
that's something that from a lifespan perspective, is interesting. We've
2743
02:09:20.000 --> 02:09:22.960
been measuring different types of curiosity. One is known as
2744
02:09:23.000 --> 02:09:26.680
state curiosity, and one is known as trait curiosity. And
2745
02:09:26.760 --> 02:09:29.720
trait curiosity is just in general, are you a curious person,
2746
02:09:29.920 --> 02:09:32.079
you know, kind of get into things and have trouble
2747
02:09:32.079 --> 02:09:34.319
if you don't learn the answer, which I think a
2748
02:09:34.359 --> 02:09:36.399
lot of you know people can have. But as you
2749
02:09:36.439 --> 02:09:40.000
get older, that tends to decline with age, which I
2750
02:09:40.039 --> 02:09:41.960
thought was kind of perplexing because I you know a
2751
02:09:42.000 --> 02:09:45.159
lot of curious people. But we found that levels of
2752
02:09:45.199 --> 02:09:47.840
state curiosity when I give you some interesting bit of
2753
02:09:47.840 --> 02:09:50.600
information but I don't give you the answer if it's
2754
02:09:50.640 --> 02:09:53.960
something you care about, that actually increases with age your
2755
02:09:54.039 --> 02:09:57.079
level of curiosity and learning. We think this is interesting
2756
02:09:57.079 --> 02:09:59.560
because it probably guides our memory as we get older.
2757
02:09:59.680 --> 02:10:01.840
You know, we're going to remember the things we care about,
2758
02:10:02.039 --> 02:10:04.560
and if you're curious, especially so. And there's probably some
2759
02:10:04.680 --> 02:10:08.960
neurochemical pathway that is still engaged, even though we know
2760
02:10:09.000 --> 02:10:11.239
all sorts of things kind of declined with age. So
2761
02:10:11.279 --> 02:10:14.039
that's one and we've been testing it with trivia questions,
2762
02:10:14.039 --> 02:10:16.239
you know, things we have experimental control over. But I
2763
02:10:16.239 --> 02:10:18.880
think it has implications for lifelong learning that if you're
2764
02:10:18.920 --> 02:10:22.279
really interested in hiking or bird watching or skateboarding, that
2765
02:10:22.399 --> 02:10:25.760
might still percolate when you're seventy or eighty, which I
2766
02:10:25.800 --> 02:10:28.720
think is really interesting. And the other thing we're looking
2767
02:10:28.760 --> 02:10:31.279
at is kind of the flip side of the curiosity,
2768
02:10:31.319 --> 02:10:33.760
which could be a double edged sword. Is that I
2769
02:10:33.840 --> 02:10:37.000
mentioned scams and fraud, right, that's like it's almost like
2770
02:10:37.039 --> 02:10:40.279
opening Pandora's box. Right as soon as someone calls you
2771
02:10:40.279 --> 02:10:42.600
with an offer that's too good to be true or
2772
02:10:43.000 --> 02:10:46.880
limited time or something. It's that thing you always wanted
2773
02:10:46.960 --> 02:10:49.920
and now it's at this price or worse. You know,
2774
02:10:49.960 --> 02:10:53.720
we kidnapped your granddaughter and don't you know you need
2775
02:10:53.760 --> 02:10:56.560
to pay this amount of money and she doesn't want
2776
02:10:56.560 --> 02:10:57.880
you to call mom and dad, and all of a
2777
02:10:57.920 --> 02:10:59.960
sudden you hear her voice on the line and she's saying,
2778
02:11:00.119 --> 02:11:03.359
please help me. All of a sudden, you're wiring the money.
2779
02:11:03.560 --> 02:11:05.560
People are running those scams people are running.
2780
02:11:05.560 --> 02:11:07.319
And that's an old one that was when you know,
2781
02:11:07.720 --> 02:11:10.119
younger people are posting things on Facebook and all of
2782
02:11:10.119 --> 02:11:12.319
a sudden their voice is captured, and now their voice
2783
02:11:12.319 --> 02:11:14.680
is played to a grandparent who's like, oh my gosh,
2784
02:11:14.680 --> 02:11:16.920
I need to help this person, you know, my loved one.
2785
02:11:16.960 --> 02:11:20.680
And it's preying on you know, socio emotional selectivity theory
2786
02:11:20.680 --> 02:11:24.479
that we focus on family and feelings and emotions and
2787
02:11:24.560 --> 02:11:26.960
older adults get caught by this. And AI has just
2788
02:11:27.000 --> 02:11:30.199
made this even worse because you're going to get phone
2789
02:11:30.239 --> 02:11:32.159
You could get a phone call from Steve Jobs that
2790
02:11:32.239 --> 02:11:34.359
sounds just like Steve Jobs right now, even though you
2791
02:11:34.399 --> 02:11:36.359
know he's not around. And so we're looking at how
2792
02:11:36.560 --> 02:11:39.640
as we get older, are we able to distinguish between
2793
02:11:39.720 --> 02:11:43.359
kind of this fake information and what's real. And it's
2794
02:11:43.399 --> 02:11:46.000
not just older at all who are prone to this,
2795
02:11:46.119 --> 02:11:48.560
it's younger people too, who are you know, in a rush,
2796
02:11:48.640 --> 02:11:51.319
might not be paying attention to something more likely to
2797
02:11:51.319 --> 02:11:55.239
get identity theft, whereas older adults they have more money,
2798
02:11:55.920 --> 02:11:58.199
they have more to lose. And so I think that's
2799
02:11:58.520 --> 02:12:01.720
that's on the more practical side of being able to
2800
02:12:01.720 --> 02:12:04.600
identify how you know scams and fraud target people, but
2801
02:12:04.640 --> 02:12:08.680
there's a psychological component, you know, emotions again that you
2802
02:12:08.720 --> 02:12:12.960
know might engage older at Altimore, so whereas younger people
2803
02:12:12.960 --> 02:12:15.600
are more interested and you know, oh my loan is
2804
02:12:15.600 --> 02:12:17.640
going to be forgiven if I give some information.
2805
02:12:17.800 --> 02:12:18.079
Great.
2806
02:12:19.880 --> 02:12:23.279
So it's kind of using psychological mechanisms in a in
2807
02:12:23.319 --> 02:12:25.600
a very nefarious way. So I'm interested in how we
2808
02:12:25.640 --> 02:12:27.439
can try and kind of prevent that.
2809
02:12:28.199 --> 02:12:29.079
And I feel like.
2810
02:12:29.079 --> 02:12:31.359
There's a lot of amateur psychologists out there who are
2811
02:12:31.359 --> 02:12:34.840
engaged in this this kind of form of fraud, So
2812
02:12:34.880 --> 02:12:38.800
that's another area of interest and trying to design experiments
2813
02:12:38.840 --> 02:12:40.960
but also look at more practical implications.
2814
02:12:41.319 --> 02:12:43.920
It's cool you have a lot of care for the
2815
02:12:43.960 --> 02:12:47.520
older generation. Wow, you're protector. That's really great. Yeah, and
2816
02:12:47.760 --> 02:12:50.479
you know a lot of discussions on this podcast about
2817
02:12:50.640 --> 02:12:54.399
you know, youth and and and everybody, you know, every age.
2818
02:12:54.439 --> 02:12:58.399
But I don't recall a conversation anyone much less a
2819
02:12:58.439 --> 02:13:03.720
scientists who's interested in and protecting older folks. I know
2820
02:13:03.760 --> 02:13:06.800
you thought about and maybe you can tell us what
2821
02:13:07.000 --> 02:13:09.399
this wisdom thing is about, right, I Mean, it's like
2822
02:13:09.600 --> 02:13:13.840
I feel like I'm not trying to be facetious here
2823
02:13:13.880 --> 02:13:15.479
when I say, you know that there seems to be
2824
02:13:16.000 --> 02:13:20.880
a kind of transformation of advice from just advice to
2825
02:13:20.960 --> 02:13:25.399
wisdom after somebody dies. Right, It's like, when they're still around,
2826
02:13:25.439 --> 02:13:28.479
it sounds like advice, and they die and it's like wisdom,
2827
02:13:28.800 --> 02:13:30.640
you know. And and I'm not trying to make light
2828
02:13:30.680 --> 02:13:32.960
of it, but it does seem like we look at
2829
02:13:33.000 --> 02:13:37.119
knowledge from people that have passed away as different. Like
2830
02:13:37.520 --> 02:13:40.439
I haven't read much about when I like basketball, but
2831
02:13:40.479 --> 02:13:46.000
I'm like track enough that I read, you know, the
2832
02:13:46.199 --> 02:13:48.720
book about Bowerman, the coach up at Oregon, like the
2833
02:13:48.760 --> 02:13:50.840
Men of Oregon is a really he was another one
2834
02:13:50.840 --> 02:13:52.640
of these amazing coaches that was much more of a
2835
02:13:52.680 --> 02:13:56.000
mentor and teacher. He made all his runners get jobs
2836
02:13:56.640 --> 02:13:59.720
outside of school while in school and running for this
2837
02:14:00.039 --> 02:14:02.920
incredible track team, and he would place them in uh
2838
02:14:03.439 --> 02:14:06.680
not always manual labor jobs, but he made sure that
2839
02:14:06.720 --> 02:14:08.560
they understood that the talent that they were running in
2840
02:14:08.680 --> 02:14:10.640
was much more than a university. And you know, he
2841
02:14:10.680 --> 02:14:13.039
was like took the time to do this stuff. Yeah right, yeah,
2842
02:14:13.079 --> 02:14:15.640
and he was also hard knows guy. But you know,
2843
02:14:15.720 --> 02:14:18.800
so what I often wonder as I read these things, like, oh,
2844
02:14:19.119 --> 02:14:21.760
when he was alive. Was was everyone revering him? Because
2845
02:14:21.760 --> 02:14:24.119
as soon as you die, you're like a thing, right,
2846
02:14:24.720 --> 02:14:27.000
you know, it puts you in the one advantage of dying,
2847
02:14:27.319 --> 02:14:30.640
You know, your your words moved from advice to wisdom?
2848
02:14:31.279 --> 02:14:31.720
What is that?
2849
02:14:31.760 --> 02:14:33.720
I think wouldn't got a lot of play for his wisdom.
2850
02:14:33.760 --> 02:14:36.680
He retired in earlier age than most people do. He
2851
02:14:36.720 --> 02:14:39.319
didn't need to, he didn't. I don't think he made
2852
02:14:39.319 --> 02:14:42.000
as much money as you know coaches do now. But
2853
02:14:42.079 --> 02:14:45.520
I think you're right. It's interesting how knowledge goes into
2854
02:14:45.560 --> 02:14:48.119
to wisdom. And I think even when I was thinking
2855
02:14:48.119 --> 02:14:51.479
of like my own interest in wisdom and aging is
2856
02:14:51.520 --> 02:14:54.520
you know. I had an older math teacher who also
2857
02:14:54.680 --> 02:14:57.119
was my basketball coach, and I think he was formative
2858
02:14:57.119 --> 02:14:59.600
when I think of you know why? And he was
2859
02:15:00.079 --> 02:15:02.640
older and he said, listen, you're not going to be
2860
02:15:02.720 --> 02:15:05.760
starting this year if you don't put the time in
2861
02:15:05.800 --> 02:15:08.680
to your calculus class that you're putting the time into basketball.
2862
02:15:09.760 --> 02:15:11.680
And he was very clear about that. And I was like,
2863
02:15:11.720 --> 02:15:15.119
he said, you have tremendous potential in calculus. You didn't
2864
02:15:15.119 --> 02:15:17.760
say anything about basketball, but he's kind of saying, like,
2865
02:15:17.840 --> 02:15:20.199
you need to work harder. The motivations there. I've had
2866
02:15:20.760 --> 02:15:23.880
older rabbis who've given me advice you know, growing up
2867
02:15:23.960 --> 02:15:27.920
that I, you know, not even being religious, then still
2868
02:15:28.239 --> 02:15:31.399
resonates with me. And so I think, you know, even
2869
02:15:31.439 --> 02:15:35.600
at the practical level, the wisdom, sometimes it's nice to
2870
02:15:35.600 --> 02:15:37.560
hear it from the horse's mouth. You can read this
2871
02:15:38.079 --> 02:15:41.319
cute little quote or something, and that's reasonable. And then
2872
02:15:41.319 --> 02:15:44.640
I think wisdom also has a very practical kind of application.
2873
02:15:44.760 --> 02:15:48.760
So you know Sully Sullenberger, you know the pilot, you
2874
02:15:48.840 --> 02:15:50.279
know the plane. I don't know if you've seen the
2875
02:15:50.279 --> 02:15:52.720
movie either, if you remember the history is that, you know,
2876
02:15:52.760 --> 02:15:55.439
a plane takes off from New York City and both
2877
02:15:55.479 --> 02:15:57.760
engines go out, and he's over New York City and
2878
02:15:57.800 --> 02:16:00.800
he has to engage in an emerging see landing. And
2879
02:16:00.840 --> 02:16:02.479
he asked it, so, who do you want? Do you
2880
02:16:02.560 --> 02:16:06.479
want a younger pilot who is faster reaction times, better memory,
2881
02:16:07.079 --> 02:16:09.159
or do you want an older pilot who has more
2882
02:16:09.159 --> 02:16:12.560
experienced flying. But it's never landed a plane on water.
2883
02:16:13.479 --> 02:16:16.399
And we know how the story ends, thankfully, but most
2884
02:16:16.439 --> 02:16:19.000
people would probably you know, as I asked my class, this,
2885
02:16:19.000 --> 02:16:21.000
this is like the dilemma where you know, where's the
2886
02:16:21.039 --> 02:16:23.319
wisdom where is the knowledge? You know, if you're the
2887
02:16:23.359 --> 02:16:26.079
faster pilot, maybe you turn around and land at an
2888
02:16:26.119 --> 02:16:29.279
airport that makes more sense. But Sully eventually decided that
2889
02:16:29.319 --> 02:16:31.920
he had to make this water landing, and he said
2890
02:16:31.920 --> 02:16:33.840
the reason he knew he could pull this off is
2891
02:16:33.879 --> 02:16:36.920
he used to fly gliders, you know, and he said,
2892
02:16:37.000 --> 02:16:39.200
the principles are the same, but it's going to be
2893
02:16:39.200 --> 02:16:42.760
a very different you know, physics and weight management. But
2894
02:16:42.840 --> 02:16:45.799
he said he felt like he'd made a number of
2895
02:16:47.639 --> 02:16:50.799
investments over the years of kind of boosting his knowledge
2896
02:16:51.000 --> 02:16:54.600
so that he could make one enormous withdrawal, basically landing
2897
02:16:54.600 --> 02:16:57.239
this plane on the Hudson River, which is, you know,
2898
02:16:57.799 --> 02:16:59.000
an amazing feats.
2899
02:16:59.559 --> 02:16:59.719
Yeah.
2900
02:17:00.000 --> 02:17:02.319
So I think that's you know, it's a dramatic Hollywood
2901
02:17:02.360 --> 02:17:04.000
and there's a movie about it as well. But I
2902
02:17:04.040 --> 02:17:07.799
think it's a nice illustration of you can accumulate all
2903
02:17:07.840 --> 02:17:10.520
this knowledge not just so you apply what you've learned
2904
02:17:10.559 --> 02:17:13.879
it you're having to you know, transform that knowledge, say
2905
02:17:13.920 --> 02:17:16.559
now I'm going to apply it in this one emergency situation.
2906
02:17:17.440 --> 02:17:20.440
So maybe that's the difference between you know, knowledge which
2907
02:17:20.479 --> 02:17:22.799
is like I know so much, and then wisdom of
2908
02:17:22.920 --> 02:17:25.840
like how to carry it out or when it's appropriate.
2909
02:17:26.000 --> 02:17:28.799
It does help when the coaches have played or like
2910
02:17:28.840 --> 02:17:29.559
Steve Kerr.
2911
02:17:29.799 --> 02:17:31.319
But some of the best coaches are the ones who
2912
02:17:31.399 --> 02:17:33.799
are the worst, you know, Tommy Lasorda, you know, all
2913
02:17:33.840 --> 02:17:36.120
these people are like they struggled and they've seen it
2914
02:17:36.159 --> 02:17:38.840
and now they're going to go into coaching. And maybe
2915
02:17:38.840 --> 02:17:42.280
that's the same with older adult's you know again these
2916
02:17:42.319 --> 02:17:45.120
too older it'll who took my class? Who are therapists?
2917
02:17:45.840 --> 02:17:47.639
You know, it's like if you see a therapist, would
2918
02:17:47.639 --> 02:17:49.360
you want to see a twenty year old or would
2919
02:17:49.360 --> 02:17:51.680
you want to see a fifty or sixty year old? Right,
2920
02:17:51.719 --> 02:17:53.840
it just seems like there's going to be a difference
2921
02:17:53.840 --> 02:17:55.040
in what they bring to the table.
2922
02:17:55.920 --> 02:17:58.319
Nowadays, I think a lot of people are gonna say
2923
02:17:58.559 --> 02:18:02.920
chat GPT, you know which you know, I've found great
2924
02:18:03.000 --> 02:18:07.680
use of AI in the self testing, not looking for knowledge,
2925
02:18:07.680 --> 02:18:11.440
but having chat GPT generate a self self test. You
2926
02:18:11.559 --> 02:18:15.840
test me on my knowledge of something awesome because I
2927
02:18:15.840 --> 02:18:18.239
as we were talking about before we went on Mike,
2928
02:18:18.280 --> 02:18:20.399
you know, self testing is one of the best ways
2929
02:18:20.440 --> 02:18:23.319
to learn information, realize I got that wrong, I didn't
2930
02:18:23.360 --> 02:18:25.879
know that, and that's that's the delta. That's the difference
2931
02:18:25.879 --> 02:18:27.239
between where you're at and where you want to be
2932
02:18:27.319 --> 02:18:29.879
as opposed to just reciting things or highlighting things or
2933
02:18:29.879 --> 02:18:32.280
writing them down, although I do that also, But I
2934
02:18:32.319 --> 02:18:34.920
know a lot of people are going to the internet
2935
02:18:35.079 --> 02:18:40.159
for answers. And on the one hand, we could say, well,
2936
02:18:41.120 --> 02:18:44.319
those answers are the synthesis of a lot of wise
2937
02:18:44.360 --> 02:18:47.879
people potentially, but you could say, like I would like
2938
02:18:47.959 --> 02:18:52.079
the integrated advice of Mahatma Gandhi when you know Jane
2939
02:18:52.120 --> 02:18:58.760
Goodall and you know whoever, and for this particular situation
2940
02:18:59.399 --> 02:19:01.239
you know, and it was, I don't know what it
2941
02:19:01.239 --> 02:19:02.520
would say, should do that for?
2942
02:19:02.840 --> 02:19:05.000
It's a great question. I've tried.
2943
02:19:05.040 --> 02:19:07.200
You know, I'm not of the era that my children
2944
02:19:07.200 --> 02:19:09.040
are in terms of using AI, but I'd love to
2945
02:19:09.040 --> 02:19:11.520
be like, answer this like an eighty year old would
2946
02:19:12.319 --> 02:19:14.559
How would you present it differently if you were older
2947
02:19:14.639 --> 02:19:16.280
versus younger, because a lot of it is just so
2948
02:19:16.360 --> 02:19:19.319
much more information than I'm like, Wow, that's great. Could
2949
02:19:19.319 --> 02:19:21.920
you summarize I don't use it often, but sometimes I'm like,
2950
02:19:21.959 --> 02:19:22.920
can you summarize this?
2951
02:19:23.079 --> 02:19:23.319
Can you?
2952
02:19:23.760 --> 02:19:27.440
Sometimes it misses things and sometimes it's good, but yeah,
2953
02:19:27.440 --> 02:19:31.280
it's really fascinating how how that sort of synthesis can
2954
02:19:31.319 --> 02:19:33.799
be so transforming. And you know, even my son's like,
2955
02:19:34.239 --> 02:19:35.719
why do I have to learn this when I can
2956
02:19:35.799 --> 02:19:38.120
just ask Ai now? And it used to be when
2957
02:19:38.120 --> 02:19:39.360
I was a kid. Why do I have to learn
2958
02:19:39.360 --> 02:19:41.639
this when I can just look it up in an encyclopedia. Right,
2959
02:19:41.719 --> 02:19:43.799
It's like the information is always going to be there,
2960
02:19:44.239 --> 02:19:46.239
but it's like how you're going to use it kind
2961
02:19:46.280 --> 02:19:48.760
of in an informed way. And I always say, could
2962
02:19:48.760 --> 02:19:51.200
you imagine if the next president said, you know, I
2963
02:19:51.200 --> 02:19:53.600
don't know our foreign policy with Mexico, but I could
2964
02:19:53.600 --> 02:19:55.959
look it up. It's like, well, you want to know
2965
02:19:56.040 --> 02:19:58.760
a little bit about the foreign like friend or foe
2966
02:19:58.920 --> 02:20:02.319
or something, you have to have some basic level and
2967
02:20:02.440 --> 02:20:05.399
where would you look it up? Like do you have
2968
02:20:05.520 --> 02:20:08.159
aids that you trust? You have sources that you trust.
2969
02:20:08.639 --> 02:20:10.879
I don't think you need to know all of these details,
2970
02:20:10.920 --> 02:20:13.280
but you need to know kind of some general knowledge,
2971
02:20:13.559 --> 02:20:15.959
and usually that comes from learning all the details, Like
2972
02:20:16.000 --> 02:20:18.559
you've learned all these details in neuroscience twenty years ago
2973
02:20:18.600 --> 02:20:22.040
that you've probably forgotten, but it informs how you interpret
2974
02:20:22.079 --> 02:20:23.479
neuroscience findings today.
2975
02:20:23.719 --> 02:20:28.120
Yeah, I'm admittedly like such a nerd. I have this textbook.
2976
02:20:28.120 --> 02:20:31.239
There's a really great new textbook. Didn't plan to plug this,
2977
02:20:31.319 --> 02:20:34.319
but by Collie Leechin. Lowe wrote a Principles of Neurobiology
2978
02:20:34.360 --> 02:20:37.719
textbook that not as beefy as the Principles of Neuroscience
2979
02:20:37.760 --> 02:20:40.040
one that is out of Columbia. But I'm a West
2980
02:20:40.040 --> 02:20:42.680
Coast guy, so I like Leechin's book, and recently I
2981
02:20:42.760 --> 02:20:44.959
just started reading it. Yeah, I start flipping through it,
2982
02:20:45.079 --> 02:20:47.239
reading it fronts of back, and of course I recognize
2983
02:20:47.319 --> 02:20:49.360
every line right because this is the area I've spent
2984
02:20:49.399 --> 02:20:52.280
all these years. But I had not thought about a
2985
02:20:52.280 --> 02:20:54.440
lot of it. I'm thinking about it a little differently,
2986
02:20:54.479 --> 02:20:57.559
and maybe I'm lying to myself, but I tell myself, like,
2987
02:20:57.600 --> 02:21:00.239
there's some enrichment in this. I don't know what it is.
2988
02:21:00.280 --> 02:21:02.479
I'm not just brushing out. There's something that's going to
2989
02:21:02.520 --> 02:21:04.639
come of this. Yeah, I know it. But maybe I'm
2990
02:21:04.680 --> 02:21:07.120
just defaulting to the thing that's easiest, and maybe I
2991
02:21:07.120 --> 02:21:09.600
should be, you know, looking, maybe I should be learning
2992
02:21:09.639 --> 02:21:11.000
Latin or something like that, and sotuff.
2993
02:21:11.000 --> 02:21:13.719
It's almost like nostalgia. You're going back to you remember
2994
02:21:13.799 --> 02:21:16.760
learning this. It's also it's beautiful, it's more fun because
2995
02:21:16.799 --> 02:21:18.639
now you're like, I haven't thought about this in a while,
2996
02:21:18.639 --> 02:21:20.159
but now I can connect it to the other things
2997
02:21:20.200 --> 02:21:22.639
I've been thinking about. So it's like going back to
2998
02:21:22.680 --> 02:21:26.040
a language you're familiar with or a city you're familiar with.
2999
02:21:26.399 --> 02:21:31.200
The big question is are we deluding ourselves into thinking
3000
02:21:31.239 --> 02:21:34.239
that the brain somehow gets better as we age? Like,
3001
02:21:34.319 --> 02:21:36.159
is this a story we were telling ourselves so that
3002
02:21:36.159 --> 02:21:40.120
we can, you know, hold on to more. Obviously, if
3003
02:21:40.159 --> 02:21:42.719
we do the right things you've described in your book
3004
02:21:42.719 --> 02:21:45.120
and today, you know, get a bit more, maybe a
3005
02:21:45.120 --> 02:21:49.639
lot more meaning and experience or in keeping with the
3006
02:21:49.719 --> 02:21:52.559
ericson you know, stages of development where there's a core
3007
02:21:52.600 --> 02:21:55.040
conflict at every stage of life. You know, development doesn't
3008
02:21:55.079 --> 02:22:00.159
stop when we become young adults. Neuroplasticity continues throughout the lifespan. Maybe,
3009
02:22:00.239 --> 02:22:03.920
and I certainly prefer this answer, maybe our brains get
3010
02:22:03.959 --> 02:22:09.959
better in certain ways that afford us access to life experience,
3011
02:22:11.040 --> 02:22:15.799
internal feelings of well being and peace and things that
3012
02:22:15.840 --> 02:22:19.239
are outsized in comparison to what we can experience when
3013
02:22:19.280 --> 02:22:21.239
we're young. Like I like that, and like, maybe we
3014
02:22:21.280 --> 02:22:23.280
do get better in certain ways as we age.
3015
02:22:23.319 --> 02:22:25.959
I like that perspective. Too, of course, but maybe it's
3016
02:22:26.000 --> 02:22:28.360
hard to say like what's better or what's worse. It's like,
3017
02:22:28.399 --> 02:22:32.040
this is a qualitative difference. And if your expectation of
3018
02:22:32.120 --> 02:22:35.079
old age is quite low and you realize, wait, it
3019
02:22:35.120 --> 02:22:37.040
doesn't have to be like that. Or you know, I'm
3020
02:22:37.079 --> 02:22:38.680
not going to run as fast as I used to,
3021
02:22:38.799 --> 02:22:41.319
or maybe I won't be scuba diving, but hey, can
3022
02:22:41.360 --> 02:22:45.360
actually be very meaningful. It might encourage you to engage
3023
02:22:45.360 --> 02:22:47.799
in behaviors that'll allow you to get there and be
3024
02:22:47.879 --> 02:22:49.879
there in a you know, mobile way, a way that
3025
02:22:49.920 --> 02:22:50.680
you'll enjoy it.
3026
02:22:51.520 --> 02:22:54.200
Yeah, so maybe instead of striving to be a superager,
3027
02:22:54.479 --> 02:22:59.159
we should strive to be super content something like that. Yeah,
3028
02:22:59.159 --> 02:22:59.559
I don't know.
3029
02:23:00.120 --> 02:23:02.120
There's a quote people say, like, you know, aging is
3030
02:23:02.159 --> 02:23:03.719
better than the alternative, is.
3031
02:23:03.680 --> 02:23:05.799
Youth lost on the young? No, we're going to fire
3032
02:23:05.840 --> 02:23:06.360
back and forth.
3033
02:23:06.440 --> 02:23:08.799
I definitely feel like there's times where I'm like, Wow,
3034
02:23:09.399 --> 02:23:11.479
maybe I shouldn't call the book Better with Age because
3035
02:23:11.479 --> 02:23:13.600
they let's revise.
3036
02:23:13.280 --> 02:23:14.680
That because of your son's shoulders.
3037
02:23:14.719 --> 02:23:16.559
Well, you know, just all sorts of things you can
3038
02:23:16.600 --> 02:23:18.719
do when you're younger and you don't even appreciate it.
3039
02:23:18.799 --> 02:23:21.120
You don't even think twice like, Wow, it hurt yesterday,
3040
02:23:21.120 --> 02:23:23.520
but it doesn't hurt today. It's like, oh that's months
3041
02:23:23.559 --> 02:23:23.799
for me.
3042
02:23:24.159 --> 02:23:26.079
Yeah, but the social stuff is so stressful.
3043
02:23:26.280 --> 02:23:28.159
It can be, but I'm not sure at that time.
3044
02:23:28.159 --> 02:23:32.120
It's relative to what. And you know, I think, you know,
3045
02:23:32.159 --> 02:23:35.040
there's a lot of challenges with younger people today and
3046
02:23:35.079 --> 02:23:36.559
you know, going through COVID and so on. But I've
3047
02:23:36.600 --> 02:23:40.040
also seen kind of a more focus on mental health,
3048
02:23:40.280 --> 02:23:42.280
Like I've seen, you know, with my daughters. They're like,
3049
02:23:42.280 --> 02:23:44.639
I'm going to go for a walk. When I was seventeen,
3050
02:23:44.680 --> 02:23:46.360
I wasn't just going for a walk. I was like
3051
02:23:46.680 --> 02:23:50.040
walking to get somewhere or you know, running to get something.
3052
02:23:50.079 --> 02:23:52.280
But now there's this awareness of like maybe i'll take
3053
02:23:52.319 --> 02:23:54.399
care of myself or maybe I'll listen to that podcast
3054
02:23:54.440 --> 02:23:55.120
while I'm walking.
3055
02:23:55.159 --> 02:23:58.319
It's like, wow, that seems like very wise. And so
3056
02:23:58.559 --> 02:23:59.280
I'm impressed.
3057
02:23:59.280 --> 02:24:01.399
And I hope that you know, those sorts of habits
3058
02:24:01.799 --> 02:24:04.040
as you developed them earlier, can stay with you and
3059
02:24:04.079 --> 02:24:06.799
maybe buffer in this mid life where it's like I
3060
02:24:06.840 --> 02:24:09.000
always have to be busy, I can't you know, stop
3061
02:24:09.079 --> 02:24:12.520
and think about things. And I think maybe that's why
3062
02:24:12.840 --> 02:24:15.479
my interest or even obsession with aging is to be like, Wow,
3063
02:24:15.520 --> 02:24:17.360
there's this group of people that seem to be doing
3064
02:24:17.399 --> 02:24:19.719
pretty well and I really enjoy being around them. How
3065
02:24:19.760 --> 02:24:21.799
can I be like them? And oh, it so happens.
3066
02:24:21.799 --> 02:24:24.319
They're older adults. But you know, if you went to
3067
02:24:24.399 --> 02:24:26.120
a country and you're like, this is this group of
3068
02:24:26.159 --> 02:24:28.879
people are really cool and interesting and kind of quirky.
3069
02:24:29.239 --> 02:24:31.840
Maybe I'll live here, and to me, that might be
3070
02:24:31.920 --> 02:24:34.760
what older age can be. And sure they're sometimes frail
3071
02:24:34.879 --> 02:24:37.319
and have to rely on other people, but that's not
3072
02:24:37.360 --> 02:24:38.440
always such a bad thing.
3073
02:24:38.479 --> 02:24:40.440
If you have the right structure in place.
3074
02:24:41.040 --> 02:24:43.799
You're doing important work. And I'm grateful that you would
3075
02:24:43.840 --> 02:24:47.200
come here today and share your knowledge, your wisdom with us,
3076
02:24:48.360 --> 02:24:49.799
your book. I didn't know what You're going to give
3077
02:24:49.799 --> 02:24:52.200
me a book today? Better with age? Oh, I'm going
3078
02:24:52.280 --> 02:24:54.600
to read it, The Psychology of Successful Aging. I'm going
3079
02:24:54.680 --> 02:24:57.319
to encourage you to write more books, because clearly you've
3080
02:24:57.600 --> 02:25:02.120
gathered more knowledge since then. But it's a rare find
3081
02:25:02.159 --> 02:25:05.719
that somebody is doing really interesting science and their work
3082
02:25:05.760 --> 02:25:10.200
is immediately applicable, and that it taps into a segment
3083
02:25:10.239 --> 02:25:12.760
of our population that exists everywhere in the world, but
3084
02:25:12.799 --> 02:25:17.040
that frankly doesn't get quite as much attention research attention
3085
02:25:17.280 --> 02:25:20.879
as other areas. I know there's a big interest in longevity,
3086
02:25:20.920 --> 02:25:24.120
there's a big interest in aging and preserving what we have.
3087
02:25:24.239 --> 02:25:27.440
But in addition to studying all those things, you clearly
3088
02:25:27.719 --> 02:25:30.600
study other aspects of you know, what's unique and great
3089
02:25:30.639 --> 02:25:34.959
about people you know fifty dare I say and above
3090
02:25:35.000 --> 02:25:37.479
and what we can all learn because if we're lucky
3091
02:25:37.559 --> 02:25:41.719
enough to live into those decades, we're all going to
3092
02:25:41.760 --> 02:25:44.559
be benefiting from this knowledge. So thanks for coming here today.
3093
02:25:44.639 --> 02:25:47.959
Let's do it again as more comes off the mill
3094
02:25:48.000 --> 02:25:48.520
from your lab.
3095
02:25:48.639 --> 02:25:50.719
Thank you, Thanks for getting the word out. It's really
3096
02:25:51.440 --> 02:25:53.799
wonderful to hear kind of how to digest this and
3097
02:25:54.040 --> 02:25:56.639
gives me new ideas to what we can pursue as
3098
02:25:56.639 --> 02:25:57.399
we think about.
3099
02:25:57.200 --> 02:25:59.879
This great well, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. Thanks,
3100
02:26:00.319 --> 02:26:02.680
thank you for joining me for today's discussion with doctor
3101
02:26:02.719 --> 02:26:05.520
Alan Costell. To learn more about his research and to
3102
02:26:05.559 --> 02:26:08.000
find a link to his book Better with Age, The
3103
02:26:08.040 --> 02:26:11.040
Psychology of Successful Agent, please see the links in the
3104
02:26:11.040 --> 02:26:13.520
show note caption. If you're learning from and or enjoying
3105
02:26:13.559 --> 02:26:16.840
this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a terrific,
3106
02:26:16.920 --> 02:26:19.719
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02:26:25.159 --> 02:26:27.479
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02:26:27.520 --> 02:26:30.239
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3111
02:26:30.399 --> 02:26:32.799
Please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning
3112
02:26:32.799 --> 02:26:35.680
and throughout today's episode. That's the best way to support
3113
02:26:35.719 --> 02:26:38.479
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3114
02:26:38.520 --> 02:26:40.920
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3115
02:26:41.000 --> 02:26:43.680
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3116
02:26:43.680 --> 02:26:46.120
those in the comment section on YouTube. I do read
3117
02:26:46.200 --> 02:26:48.280
all the comments. For those of you that haven't heard,
3118
02:26:48.319 --> 02:26:50.159
I have a new book coming out. It's my very
3119
02:26:50.159 --> 02:26:53.879
first book. It's entitled Protocols and Operating Manual for the
3120
02:26:53.959 --> 02:26:55.799
Human Body. This is a book that I've been working
3121
02:26:55.799 --> 02:26:57.719
on for more than five years and that's based on
3122
02:26:57.760 --> 02:27:01.239
more than thirty years of research and experience, and it
3123
02:27:01.280 --> 02:27:06.239
covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control,
3124
02:27:06.440 --> 02:27:09.760
protocols related to focus and motivation, and of course I
3125
02:27:09.840 --> 02:27:14.239
provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included.
3126
02:27:14.360 --> 02:27:17.200
The book is now available by pre sale at protocolsbook
3127
02:27:17.239 --> 02:27:20.479
dot com. There you can find links to various vendors.
3128
02:27:20.559 --> 02:27:22.639
You can pick the one that you like best. Again,
3129
02:27:22.680 --> 02:27:25.680
the book is called Protocols, an Operating Manual for the
3130
02:27:25.760 --> 02:27:28.360
Human Body. And if you're not already following me on
3131
02:27:28.399 --> 02:27:31.840
social media, I am Huberman Lab on all social media platforms,
3132
02:27:31.920 --> 02:27:36.000
so that's Instagram, x, threads, Facebook, and LinkedIn, And on
3133
02:27:36.079 --> 02:27:39.079
all those platforms I discuss science and science related tools,
3134
02:27:39.200 --> 02:27:41.200
some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman
3135
02:27:41.280 --> 02:27:43.639
Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the
3136
02:27:43.680 --> 02:27:47.079
information on the Huberman Lab podcast. Again, it's Huberman Lab
3137
02:27:47.159 --> 02:27:49.920
on all social media platforms. And if you haven't already
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02:27:49.920 --> 02:27:53.239
subscribed to our Neural Network newsletter, the Neural Network Newsletter
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3140
02:27:56.680 --> 02:27:58.920
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3141
02:27:58.959 --> 02:28:01.799
of one to three page pe that cover everything from
3142
02:28:01.840 --> 02:28:04.600
how to optimize your sleep, how to optimize dopamine deliberate
3143
02:28:04.639 --> 02:28:08.040
cold exposure. We have a foundational fitness protocol that covers
3144
02:28:08.079 --> 02:28:11.680
cardiovascular training and resistance training. All of that is available
3145
02:28:11.680 --> 02:28:14.879
completely zero cost. You simply go to Hubermanlab dot com.
3146
02:28:14.879 --> 02:28:16.680
Go to the menu tab in the top right corner,
3147
02:28:16.760 --> 02:28:19.360
scroll down, to newsletter and enter your email, and I
3148
02:28:19.360 --> 02:28:22.479
should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody.
3149
02:28:22.719 --> 02:28:25.159
Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion
3150
02:28:25.159 --> 02:28:28.600
with doctor Alan Costell. And last, but certainly not least,
3151
02:28:28.920 --> 02:28:30.840
thank you for your interest in science.