Dan Siegel:
... we've had a case of mistaken identity. We've equated self with the individual, it sounds so logical, but if we just pause and empower everyone to realize yourself, yes, includes your body, and me, but also includes your relationships with everyone else.
Elizabeth Koch:
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box built by our genes, and the physical, social, and cultural environment in which we were born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder, and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear, and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts, two incredible and distinguished minds, Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. And Dr. Christof Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box.
Heather Berlin:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co-host, Dr. Heather Berlin.
Christof Koch:
And I'm your co-host, Dr. Christof Koch.
Heather Berlin:
So every week, we feature an aspect of Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research together with our expert guests. And this week on Science of Perception Box, we're joined by Dr. Daniel Siegel. He's clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and the founding director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He's also the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, which focuses on the development of mindsight, and teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families, and communities. He's authored numerous articles and books, and five New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Siegel studies the mind, and how it's connected to the rest of the body, and he even argues that the mind is broader than the brain, and bigger than the body. So Christof, how would you define the mind?
Christof Koch:
The mind has both conscious aspect, what I'm currently conscious of, like I know I'm a man, I'm sitting here in a chair doing this interview, but then also everything else my brain does, language, running, walking, thinking, all of those things.
Heather Berlin:
So is the mind everything you're conscious of, or does that include-
Christof Koch:
It's more.
Heather Berlin:
... the unconscious?
Christof Koch:
Like an iceberg, there's a conscious mind, but then there's this vast processing underneath that does much of what I do every day, all the time, but unconsciously.
Heather Berlin:
So is the mind the brain?
Christof Koch:
No, it's very different from the brain. It clearly relates to the brain. Without the brain, you're going to have a mind.
Heather Berlin:
Is the mind what the brain does?
Christof Koch:
Partly. The mind has a substrate, I would say, which is the brain.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Okay.
Christof Koch:
What do you think about the mind?
Heather Berlin:
What do I think the mind is? In a way, I think... I mean, that's obviously the most fascinating question, is, how does the brain relate to the mind? But I think the mind in my one sense is subjectivity. It's the things, it's the processes that the brain does, but when it gets to the unconscious, it gets a little murky.
Christof Koch:
But your liver doesn't do your unconscious, it's your brain that does it.
Heather Berlin:
Right.
Christof Koch:
Let's ask our guest.
Heather Berlin:
Well, actually, we are fortunate enough to be joined today by an esteemed colleague and friend, Dr. Dan Siegel. So thank you for being here, it's wonderful to have you. I wanted to start with a question for you. I mean, we're talking here about the minds, but you have this term called mindsight, so what exactly do you mean by that?
Dan Siegel:
Well, thank you for having me. It's really an honor to be here with you, Heather and Christof, and it's great to discuss these important issues. For me, that word, mindsight, was something that emerged around 1980. I had been a biochemistry college student, I went to medical school, and I dropped out of medical school because my professors seemed to not focus on the subjective experience, that you pointed out, Heather, the feelings people had, what you've written about, Christof, in the patient's experience. If they told them, "We've done the laboratory test, you're dying, there's nothing more we can do. Goodbye." I would stop them and say, "Don't you want to talk to them about how they feel?" And my professors of medicine would say, "Why would we do that?" And I would say, "Because there's something very meaningful that happened in you telling them they're dying." And they would just walk away.
So I dropped out of school, and in the course of trying out different other professions, I decided ultimately I would come back to medicine, and I needed something to protect me from this kind of mindless world I was entering. So I made up the term mindsight for how you perceive subjective experience. So those could be your feelings, your perceptions. So when we talk about a perception box, that might be very relevant, your attitudes, your beliefs, your longings, desires, your memories, all that stuff was underneath the word mind. And the only one who could know it, really, was the subject, so we call it subjectivity, or first-person experience. And the fact that these professors who were really devoted to caring for their patients somehow made the mind absent, they were mind blind, was intriguing to me.
So I kind of went back, almost like an anthropologist, studying the medical socialization process, which later, we'd learned students would enter as medical students with average levels of empathy, very devoted, but every year of medical training, medical school, and then training afterwards, they'd have less and less empathy, and we'd learn later on that they'd have more and more distress, even to the point where one time I was teaching at Stanford Medical School, when I was later on teaching mindsight, and I would try to teach the faculty there about the importance of mindsight in medicine. And the dean got up and said, "Why do we have a psychiatrist here teaching us about what we already know?" He was an internist. He said, "But here's why we need to have him." And the report from the hospital oversight committees showed that over 50% of trainees in medicine were severely anxious, depressed, and some thinking of killing themselves, and the rates of suicide were rising, and-
Christof Koch:
And you believe that's a consequence of the fact that they did not consider the patient really from a holistic point of view of brain and mind, and just focusing on the brain, on sort of the mechanistic aspect?
Dan Siegel:
Yes, and when you only look at the mechanistic aspect, you not only miss your patient's inner subjective experience, you miss your own. So when they were in a state of distress, and I had to speak to 3,000 veterinarians who asked me to come because they had achieved the highest status... The highest suicide rate were in veterinarians.
Christof Koch:
Vets?
Dan Siegel:
Vets. And so I had to do a survey of the veterinarians to say, "Well, in animal medicine, what's your experience of learning about the mind?" They go, "Zero." So in most medical schools, whether it's for humans or animals, we don't teach the caregivers to care for their own mental experience. So when the mind is absent for your patients, or the families that own the pets, the mind is absent for yourself. So then when you get distressed, if you can't monitor what's going on, you can't modify it. So regulation, which I think the mind is a regulatory process, we can talk about... When you can't monitor, you can't modify. So then if you're distressed, you don't even know you're distressed.
Heather Berlin:
But there is something also I think inherently almost therapeutic about genuinely connecting with another human, and when you're having empathy, it's almost... It's healing for yourself, right?
Dan Siegel:
Totally.
Heather Berlin:
I have some patients who are residents, and who are basically on the front lines in this patient care, and there's this... You're taught to be sort of removed from it, and to be clinical, but that almost does make it worse because you are human as well, and you want to have some level of empathy and understanding that... It helps you as well to have that connection.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. I mean, let's take the beautiful thing you just said, and let's look at the fantastic thing, Christof, you write about with integrated information theory, and just if we can throw a teeny bit of math in. Think about two people coming together, person A and person B. They each have their own level of complexity, and what's going on in their own systems as a whole. If person A is having an illness, and person B, let's say the physician, then is just saying, "Oh, here's your laboratory test, and this is it. Goodbye." Is not a joining of the two. There's a transmission of information, but not a joining. So they remain separate. But if that physician can be taught the presence to allow themselves to feel the feelings of the patient so that the patient A is having this experience that... My first therapy patient told me was she thought what helped her in therapy, she felt, felt, the feeling felt by another person-
Heather Berlin:
We're being seen.
Dan Siegel:
... or being seen of being seen is where there's now an A/B, there's a we.
Heather Berlin:
Is that what you call we?
Dan Siegel:
And that's we, yeah. Because you don't have to lose a me to become a we. But now, the system has achieved a higher level of complexity, which is a good thing from a system's point of view, and now what's happening is, you feel you belong. So that patient, even with the suffering, feels a deeper sense of meaning and connection, and the physician, just like you're pointing out, has a meaningful life, because they're increasing complexity levels.
Christof Koch:
In a situation like this, when you have all these patients who are undergoing suffering and some of them will die, how do I prevent burnout by becoming too identified with them?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. Well, what the research shows is really, really important. When we over-identify with a patient, and I'll give you an example in a moment, but when we over-identify, then we're at risk of burnout. So the better word than compassionate fatigue is over-identification fatigue, which some people reduce to the word empathy fatigue, which I think is an error. So over-identification fatigue is where you are too much aligning. If you think about the balance of differentiation on the one hand, and linkage on the other, which-
Christof Koch:
Integration and differentiation.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. For me, the use of the word integration combines those two, differentiation and linkage. So when I use the word integration in my writings, it may be a little different from IIT, but it's the idea of not just linkage, but you're maintaining some aspect of differentiation. The wording may be a little different. But that important distinction... Let me give you an example. I had a friend of mine's daughter, she became a therapist, she was really great at it, and then she was burning out for exactly the reason you're saying. Too many people who were abused, she cared about them so much, she said, "I've got to quit. I've got to go into a non-clinical profession." I said, "You work so hard to get here. I've known you since you're a little kid, why are you quitting?" She goes, "I'm burning out. I have no energy to give myself, to my husband. Nothing, I have nothing left."
I said, "What are you doing?" She goes, "I'm empathic with my patients." I said, "Tell me what that means." She goes, "What do you mean what does that mean?" I said, "What does it mean to you?" She goes, "Well, patient comes in, I ask them what's going on. They say, 'Oh, I'm realizing I was abused.'" Let's say, just to condense it all. And I say, "Well, then what do you do?" She goes, "Well, I'm empathic." I said, "What does that mean?" She goes, "What if my father had abused me like her father abused her?" I go, "Well, then what happened?" She goes, "Well, then I get totally upset, and distressed, and get really upset. I just burnout, and I can't function."
I said, "Okay, let me tell you about a brain study. And this study was done where they had people in brain scanners, they showed them a very horrific photograph of car accident. And they said, 'Imagine if that were you.' That's condition one. The other condition was, 'Imagine what it's like for that person to be that person in that situation.' Condition two. In condition one, the brain starts firing off like crazy, and completely shuts down. In condition two, the brain fires off, and it channels that energy to compassion, of saying, 'How could I be of service to support that person's reduction in suffering?' So compassion doesn't have a burnout to it."
So in terms of me, people ask me, "Why do you see so many patients?" 'Cause I still see patients. I say, "Because I feel so much meaning in this." And they say, "Well, how can you be joyful?" And I always quote the Dalai Lama, I was teaching once in Germany with him, and someone took the microphone and said, "What's wrong with you, your Holiness? You're teaching us to be more compassionate, and the world is full of suffering, and you laugh, and you seem so joyful. What's wrong with you?" And he said this amazing thing, he pauses, and he looks at the person, and he says, "It's not in spite of the suffering, it's because of it."
Christof Koch:
It's because.
Dan Siegel:
"I need to be joyful and laughing so that the suffering in the world doesn't win." When you realize that, you can be compassionate, and caring, and still have a joyful life. And that's, I think, the path.
Christof Koch:
And so the trick is not to identify myself-
Dan Siegel:
Over-identify, yeah.
Christof Koch:
... over-identify myself with a patient, but still, to have compassion with them?
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I've been a therapist for 40 years. I only feel like I'm 17, so I don't know how I can say those numbers, but I was adding them up the other day, I became-
Christof Koch:
Congratulations.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Dan Siegel:
... a therapist for the first time 40 years ago. So 40 years, I've been seeing patients. So, so far, almost every individual, when you can really see into their essence, and maybe... In some of your writings, Christof, you've called it the soul. When you could see their essence, you can see that there are blockages, whether you call them defense mechanisms, or personality patterns, whatever naming you want to call it, there are blockages to them reaching in and finding this access to wholeness, really. And so then what you do as a therapist is, you can find a way to work with them in the privacy of therapy.
Now, I'm also a workshop leader, an educator. So in those settings also, I would say, most people... We do this whole thing called the wheel of awareness, where people get into pure awareness versus what you're aware of, and... I can't wait to talk to you about some of the science of that. But when they get there, what's interesting is, for some individuals, they get terrified, and they get a panic reaction to pure awareness.
I've just finished a bunch of workshops down in Costa Rica where we did this. So far, every time someone's got panicked, and there hasn't been an exception so far at least, there might be in the future, I'll take some private time out of the workshop setting, I'll sit down with the person... And I'll give you one example, I'll just change some things for confidentiality. This person had a big panic reaction to pure awareness in the hub of this wheel, and he said, "I need to talk to you." So I said, "Fine, let's talk." And I said, "What's going..." He goes, "I don't know. I'm in therapy, but we never get to this kind of place of that openness. I had a glimpse of this timelessness, but then I freaked out, and it's so scary, it's so uncertain. I've got to have something I can hold onto."
So I said, "Okay, well, what comes to mind when you think about this terror?" And then he just looks at me, and he gets tearful, and he goes, "I was in an orphanage for six months before I was adopted, and I have no idea what that was about." I said, "Well, do you know about the difference between implicit and explicit memory?" He goes, "I don't know what you're talking about." So I explained to him, in the brain, how in the first 18 months before the hippocampus matures, we only lay down implicit memory. In fact, we lay it down even in utero.
Christof Koch:
Memories that we're not conscious of.
Dan Siegel:
Well, here's the way I would say it, Christof, and maybe we can play with this. Memories that when they get laid down, they're encoded, and then stored. But memories that when they're retrieved, you don't have the conscious experience of, "Oh, this is from the past." But they can enter consciousness.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, I would say, if they're totally implicit, that they don't explicitly enter my consciousness, yet they can profoundly influence my behavior, and my action, my emotions.
Heather Berlin:
But he's saying they can move from being implicit to explicit.
Christof Koch:
With therapeutic work.
Dan Siegel:
So let's unpack this, 'cause for this guy, this was the essential issue. And you may not agree with this, so this is what I proposed back in 1990, so you may not agree with it. But in post-traumatic stress disorder, unresolved states, you can have someone... And my first experience was working at the VA in the '80s. I had a soldier who was now a veteran, and something happened, and it sparked a whole flashback. And he grabbed me, and pulled me under the cot in the hospital, and he had blockaded the room, and he said, "We have to fight them. We have to fight them." And he had been in Vietnam, and he was fully in Vietnam. So in terms of his awareness, he was aware, "I," the soldier, "am in Vietnam. I'm with my colleague," which was me, "and we are going to fight the enemy."
Christof Koch:
And was really there?
Dan Siegel:
He was really there.
Christof Koch:
He was back in Vietnam?
Dan Siegel:
He was in Vietnam. He was sweating, he was looking out for them, he said, "Watch out, watch out, watch out." Like this. And he was terrified. So he was fully aware of that. When I went to my supervisor after that, I said, "What's a flashback?" And my supervisor said, "No idea." And that got me, for the first time... Even though I was trained by David Hubel about how the brain develops and stuff like that, he was my neuroscience teacher, that got me looking at the research on memory and the brain. And then I got to meet with Larry Squire down at UC San Diego, and what Larry had discovered, along with Dan Schacter in different systems, was that there's one layer of memory, one's called non-declarative, one's called implicit, but they're very similar, where it gets encoded, stored, and here's the key thing, when it's retrieved in pure form, it enters awareness, but you don't know it's a memory. So that could explain flashbacks.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, but he encoded that memory when he was already 18 years old, presumably as a young soldier, and not as 18 months. In general, any memory... I've never really seen good evidence that little babies can form reliable memories that they can recount later. Yes, they can tell you, "Oh, I remember the birthday of my... Or when my little brother got born." But what they remember is mom showing pictures of the brother, right?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Christof Koch:
So I'm more skeptical about, can you have implicit memories very early on-
Dan Siegel:
Okay.
Christof Koch:
... in the first year that you later on recall.
Dan Siegel:
Sure. Sure. So there's a couple of layers, let's just take it step by step. When a person's traumatized, let's say an 18-year-old who's in Vietnam, you can postulate, just conceptually, that two conditions exist during that trauma that help us understand what we're about to unpack. Number one, you have massive release of cortisol, and we know there are cortisol receptors on the hippocampus.
Christof Koch:
Stress, it's a hugely stressful situation.
Dan Siegel:
Stress. So you can shut off the hippocampus-
Heather Berlin:
That affects memories.
Dan Siegel:
... and affects explicit memory. But here's what the research shows, it's mind-blowing, at the same time, you have adrenaline, norepinephrine is being released, which sears in implicit layers of memory. So the physiology of it, the state of the body, the emotions, the behaviors, even the perceptions, those can get laid down in the brain, independent of the hippocampus. Now, here's the amazing thing, when you shut off focal attention, attention with awareness, you can drive things into these memory systems, but for explicit memory, you need focal attention, and you need the hippocampus to work. So the hypothesis that I wrote about in 1990 was, that condition of excessive adrenaline searing in implicit memory, and cortisol shutting off the hippocampus could allow an 18-year-old, just to use the example of the soldier, to actually burn in implicit encoding in a pure form, even though he's 18 years, not one year, where the hippocampus hasn't grown yet. Now, that gets encoded and stored, and then later on when there's a loud noise, and it's kind of like the helicopter blowing up where his friend was killed, which is this particular example-
Christof Koch:
Gets triggered.
Dan Siegel:
... it's triggered, so you can trigger an implicit-only memory. And here's what all the research shows from Dan Schacter and Larry Squire, that pure implicit memory when triggered from storage enters awareness, but you have no... I call it ekphoric sensation, you have no feeling of ekphory. Ekphory is where you say, "Oh, I'm remembering something from the past." You don't have that sensation-
Christof Koch:
For you it's the here and the now.
Dan Siegel:
It's the here and now. And so what I wrote about in 1990 was, here's a possible neurophysiology explanation of unresolved trauma, and then the pathway to resolving it would involve allowing this, what I call a window of tolerance, to be expanded. So you allow the hippocampus to now get involved with the part you're playing as a therapist, so now the conditions of the brain of that individual are changing so that they can hold the fear of their friend in these terrible things that happened to them, and the terror of that in the space.
So now going back to the workshop, so I say all this to that person who was freaking out, and I said, "What do you think uncertainty was like for you in that adoption place?" I'm an attachment researcher, so we have lots of evidence, Christof, that implicit memories laid down in infancy are remembered. Not explicitly, you never say, "Oh, I'm remembering it explicitly." But they affect your emotions, they affect your actions, they affect the way you feel in your body, they affect your sense of self even. We have lots of evidence from all of our research.
But for this person at the workshop, what he did was, he said, "Oh, you mean I can actually have a memory of how frightening uncertainty was, but when I'm remembering it, I don't realize I'm remembering it, I just think uncertainty is frightening." And I go, "That's right." And I show him this graph, which I had shown the workshop, which we could talk about later on, where there's hypothesis that awareness itself, what you describe as pure experience, seems to correlate with this... If you think about energy as the movement from possibility to actuality, you can graph it out, and we can get into the details of this, but where pure awareness is maximal uncertainty. So this guy couldn't go there, and then everything changed. And he goes, "Oh, I see. So this is just a memory I'm having my panic." I said, "Yeah, so try the wheel again, and when the panic comes up, just say, 'Oh, I'm remembering when I was in the orphanage.'" And everything changed for him.
Christof Koch:
So this was a transformative experience?
Dan Siegel:
For the workshop, not even in my patient, it was just a workshop participant.
Christof Koch:
A single experience, and then you changed his attitude. So talking about perception box-
Heather Berlin:
Back in the perception box.
Christof Koch:
... it's really-
Heather Berlin:
Yeah, it's very...
Christof Koch:
... you realize that you understand something bad about you, and suddenly, the world becomes more open, and you become healthier, more open.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly, exactly.
Heather Berlin:
'Cause this concept of the perception box is that when it's sort of contracted, the walls that we're more afraid, and we're more anxious, and if you can expand it, it brings in this more awe and wonder. And so these transformative experiences that can help change your perspective can get you outside of this very closed box, let's say, to a greater view. But in this case, it was more of an insight to say, "Okay..." Realizing this is just a memory, and isn't reality.
Christof Koch:
It was an insight that you helped bring about talking to this particular person.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, with the science behind it, which is kind of... I mean, as a scientist who's also a clinician and an educator, it's kind of mind-blowing how empowering communication can be, not just information, but communication around this, where at the moment, this person in the workshop is saying, "I'm terrified." And they go, "Well, let's look at your terror which feels intolerable, and let's look at how... Maybe it's the terror of a baby where it was intolerable, but now you're an adult, and you can reinterpret the perception box and get freedom."
Christof Koch:
[inaudible 00:24:39]
Heather Berlin:
But the question is, how long does that affect last?
Christof Koch:
Last.
Heather Berlin:
Right. So the next time-
Christof Koch:
Do you have contact with him?
Heather Berlin:
... next time it happens-
Dan Siegel:
Well, this just happened a few weeks ago, but I have contact-
Heather Berlin:
[inaudible 00:24:46]
Dan Siegel:
... with other workshop participants, and of course, my patients, where it changes their life.
Christof Koch:
Even a year later, this one experience that happened... This therapeutic experience, even a year or two later can still...
Dan Siegel:
Absolutely. Well, this is the weird thing, that... Whether you look at the psychedelic research of controlled psychedelic uses, it was one or two things, and the wheel of awareness has this practice which people have compared to using psilocybin. And in fact, when people get in the hub of the wheel, there's a practice where you're basically moving a spoke of attention around a metaphoric wheel, and on the rim are all the knowns of consciousness, the content, but in the hub is represented the knowing, or awareness, pure experience.
Christof Koch:
Pure experience.
Dan Siegel:
And we have this thing where... My patient actually suggested it 'cause we were doing this around a table just down the street here, and she said, "Well, why don't we bend the spoke into the hub?" I go, "Oh my God, that's a brilliant idea. Let's do it." And she bent the spoke around. This was a person with severe trauma. She bent the spoke around, and for her, unlike it being terrifying, she got this liberating feeling of timelessness, being connected to everyone and everything, this kind of feeling of love.
Christof Koch:
So that's like a mystical experience-
Dan Siegel:
And it was a mystical experience.
Heather Berlin:
Just to understand a little bit about when you're bending this-
Christof Koch:
The spokes.
Heather Berlin:
... the spokes into the center of this wheel, what does that actually... That's a metaphor, but what does that mean?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. So just to give you the very brief background in this journey to be... I was trained as a scientist, and then I became a clinician. I was disappointed by the way I was being trained to be a physician, I dropped out for a while, came back, and then realized the mind had to be real. And yet, even if it was absolute medicine. So-
Christof Koch:
The only thing there is, ultimately.
Dan Siegel:
Well, exactly, exactly. So that's a bizarre thing, just to talk about the medical world-
Christof Koch:
Yes, that's me.
Dan Siegel:
... but that's a whole nother topic. So then I went on a journey to say, "Okay, well, what would I study?" So I started in pediatrics, but went to psychiatry. And in the course of doing all that, I became a researcher in relationships, parent-child relationships and narratives, so that's my research background through the National Institute of Mental Health. But at that time, the question me was, as a therapist, was, "What's actually happening that's allowing people to change?" So it was the decade of the brain, 1990, and I thought, "Well..." David Hubel was my teacher, and David had gotten the Nobel Prize for showing that the kind of energy that streams into the brain changes its structure and function. So I thought, "Well, maybe a relationship has to do with energy flow, and maybe what the mind is, is some kind of emergent property of energy flow that's both in the whole body, not just in the brain, but in relationships."
So that was kind of exciting. And then I found that every one of my patients had either chaos, or rigidity, or both as their suffering. And I would ask my supervisors, "So what's with this chaos and rigidity?" And they go, "What are you talking about?" I go, "Well, every one of the patients I see without an exception has either chaos, like flooding feelings, or memories, or thoughts, or rigidity, they're shut down and depressed." And my supervisor would say, "We don't know what you're talking about." So I went looking for an answer to the question-
Christof Koch:
This was all Freudian?
Dan Siegel:
No. And I wasn't-
Christof Koch:
And then why did they all deny the existence of what's so obvious? It's most-
Dan Siegel:
I know, right.
Christof Koch:
... immediate given to us?
Dan Siegel:
Well, you tell me. I don't know.
Christof Koch:
Is this behaviorist influence?
Dan Siegel:
No. I don't know what they were. They were psychopharmacologically-oriented brains-
Christof Koch:
Yeah, so it's all about drugs. It's all about-
Dan Siegel:
[inaudible 00:28:16] about drugs. Exactly.
Christof Koch:
... [inaudible 00:28:17] and dopamine and serotonin.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
Well, 'cause you silo off these disciplines, and so like, "I'm studying the physiologic substrate." And then there's like, "Oh, the psychologists over there are studying the mind."
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
And never the twain shall meet. When I was doing my PhD, it was like that, and I was like, "Well, I want to understand the intersection between these students." It was like, "No, you either have to do pure neuroscience, or you do psychology." This field of neuropsychology was emerging, but it was really, still... And this was in the '90s, but novel to want to combine those things.
Dan Siegel:
No, totally. What happened with me was, I wanted to answer that question. Like the two of you, I love science, and so I started going to actually math books. Because in the '80s, of course, mathematicians has gotten together to study complex systems, and what those mathematicians and physicists, and I know you have a background in physics, had shown was that there's something called emergence. And one of the emergent properties of complex systems, which are systems that are open systems, they're capable of being chaotic, and they're nonlinear, meaning small inputs lead to large, and relatively difficult to predict outcomes, so if you have those three features, you're a complex system, and if you're a complex system, they showed, in the '80s, that you have emergent properties.
One of those emergent properties, which is kind of like the wetness of water, not any single water molecules wet, but when they interact, wetness emerges. So one of the emergent properties of complex systems is self-organization. So I'm reading about this, and it says, "When optimal self-organization is happening, you get a flexibility and adaptability, a coherence, an energy and a stability." That's the way I reorganize it, which spells the word FACES.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Dan Siegel:
But it's like a river, and-
Christof Koch:
See, it's obsession.
Dan Siegel:
I know, it's obsession. And then it says, "When you block this optimal self-organization, you go to either chaos or rigidity." And I screamed so loud that-
Christof Koch:
Bingo.
Dan Siegel:
... I said, "Bingo." I woke up my kids. I was going, "Oh my God, that's it. That's the best definition of well-being I've ever seen." In a math book of all places. So then I started looking for other places where they were defining mental health. Nowhere, really. There were descriptions, but not definitions. So that's when I came up with this definition of the mind, of course, includes subjective experience, it includes your awareness of subjective experience that we call consciousness, it includes information processing. But a fourth facet of mind which you could define is the embodied and relational self-organizing emergent process that regulates the flow of energy and information. Where's that happening? Within the whole body and within the relational world, our connections with people on the planet.
So with that definition, you could then say what a healthy mind was in terms of this fourth facet, and that's where the notion of balancing differentiation linkage came up. And I'm giving you all that as background to get to the wheel, because in my office, I had a table which had a glass center, we still have it, and a wooden rim. So I said, "Well, if integration is the basis of health..." Which is what I was pondering back then, where you're defining integration very carefully as differentiation plus linkage leads to integration. And in the integration, the way I'm using that word, you don't lose the differentiation, you still have features of it. So it's not blending, it's a different quality. It's more like a fruit salad, not a smoothie. So that in that process, you're optimizing self-organization. That's the basis.
So then I said, "Well, if the other conciliant idea is consciousness is needed for change..." Which I think it is, like the perception box, you really want to bring awareness into that question, how do we change that? So then what if you brought those two together? If integration is health, and consciousness is needed for change, what if you integrated consciousness? So I brought my first patient up off the couch, I said, "Here, come around the table." She goes, "What are we doing?" I said, "Let's try integrating consciousness." She goes, "What are you talking about?"
I go, "Check this out." I said, "If consciousness has the differentiable aspects of the knowing, which is pure awareness from the knowns, the content, let's put the knowns on the rim, and let's put the knowing in the hub." She goes, "Okay."
"And see this thing that holds up the table?" I said, "Let's just pick one of them. Let's call it the spoke. It's like a wheel. And let's move the spoke around to all the knowns. So we'll differentiate... There are four segments, it's energy flow from outside the body, which is your first five senses, energy flow from inside the body, which is introception, your bodily sense, energy flow probably from the head brain, which is your thoughts, and emotions, and memories, and perceptions, and beliefs, attitudes, longings, desires, all that stuff, call that mental activities, that's the third segment. And that's even go to a fourth segment of your sense of relational connections to people and nature." She goes, "Okay."
So then we start doing this thing, and she starts having this shift in her stability. And then she says, at another practice when we were doing this in the office, she said, "Can I bend that spoke around?" I hadn't even thought about it. I said, "Well, that's a great idea. Yeah, sure, bend it, see what happens." She enters this thing. And now I've done this with 50,000 people in-person. And I'm not exaggerating, I had my assistant double-check that number. Before the viral pandemic, 50,000, 50,000 people in workshops that I did this with, and then we get the reports for those who are willing to report. So I have a whole bunch of data I can give you about when you have this common stimulus, the wheel, what do people experience in the wheel, but in general, in the hub. And so what that patient experienced, which the parliamentarian experienced, which now thousands and thousands of people experienced, people in Costa Rica last week experienced it, they experienced timelessness, love, connection, God, a feeling of an expansion of a perception of-
Christof Koch:
So practically what do you get people to do that during this...
Dan Siegel:
Oh.
Christof Koch:
They sit for an hour and just contemplate the wheel?
Dan Siegel:
No, no, no, it's 22 minutes. I mean, it's on my website. We've had lots and lots of people. We give it away for free, so we had lots of people streaming-
Heather Berlin:
So go to the website, and look up the wheel-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, you can do it. I have a whole book on it.
Christof Koch:
But it's a form of sort meditation?
Dan Siegel:
Meditation. I never called it that, 'cause I didn't know about meditation when I invented it, but it's... I call it an integration of consciousness practice. <y friends now who I teach with who are meditation teachers say, "That's a meditation." I go, "Okay, fine. Call it a meditation, whatever."
Christof Koch:
And then very often, these people can have a transformative experience doing that, or afterwards when they share with-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, even before the sharing. The actual first-person immersion, especially when you move that spoke into the hub. And I do it every morning, so I can tell you, it's kind of like... When I read your writings Christof, I mean, we have so much to talk about, I know you used very erotic language about a blissful, orgasmic experience of-
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Dan Siegel:
... letting go of a separate self.
Christof Koch:
Yes, yes.
Dan Siegel:
Every morning-
Christof Koch:
You let go of yourself-
Dan Siegel:
Yes. I'm telling you, you bend the spoke around-
Heather Berlin:
Well, I think-
Dan Siegel:
... and not everyone has it, but many, many people practicing the wheel regularly-
Christof Koch:
You can have this on a daily basis-
Dan Siegel:
Every day.
Christof Koch:
... selfless, you leave planet self, planet ego behind?
Dan Siegel:
Yes, time and everything, and there's a whole... Yes. In fact, this book IntraConnected, talks about the neuroscience of that kind of expanded sense of self. And yes, every morning I do the practice, every morning I have that experience-
Heather Berlin:
So I think that there's-
Dan Siegel:
... and I'm not alone.
Heather Berlin:
... clearly there's some therapeutic value to getting to this place of pure consciousness.
Christof Koch:
Seriously, seriously.
Heather Berlin:
There are different ways to get there. One might be these kinds of meditative practices, sometimes psychedelics, flow states. Certain people get into a kind of flow state when they're being creative, where they lose their sense of time and self and place, and it feels very pure and blissful. And yes, and maybe even during sex and orgasm that you have these senses of pure consciousness. But there's something clearly very therapeutic about it, and we should think about how people, not just patients, but everyone, can strive to get to these places to achieve a greater sense of well-being, right?
Dan Siegel:
Totally. Well, and you can make an argument, and... I took five years to write this book, IntraConnected, which was a plea for our modern culture to look at how the self gets constructed in, maybe what you would call a perception box, where in modern culture, the self is considered the individual. And everyone who initially, like, "Here's the concept of this book." Says, "Of course the self is an individual." I say, "Well, hold on, just like we used to say the mind is the brain activity, let's just take a pause back." And they go, "How could you question self? Of course, self is this body." I said, "Well, let's see what people really mean. Let's see what people really mean by self."
And you look at all the research itself, and... Sorry, here's another acronym. I'm so sorry. But it's the word SSPA, it's subjective, sensation, perspective, and agency. So when you look at all the different research when people use the word self, that's really what they mean. If you take an identity lens and freeze it close up, you say, "Yeah, my subjective experience's only in my body. My perspective is only from through these glasses." Or, "My agency is only on behalf of this body." And then you're frozen in an identity lens that's really tight. But you can teach people, which I do in the book, to widen this identity lens to realize the three of us are here now, and you can begin to feel, in fact, the subjective experience of our three-personness. People listening to us might feel what it's like to be in our conversation. You can start to have a perspective of, "Oh, okay, we're trying to look at these deep issues of the brain, and awareness, the mind, self." All that stuff. So now we're widening our perspective and agency.
And what I try to do in the book is say, "When you start realizing you are more than just your body, that you are your relationships with people and all of nature, then the actions you take are to benefit, to increased integration basically, well-being, for all beings." So you care for animals and plants, you care for all living beings, you care for all of nature. And partly, you could say that the pandemics we face, whether it's racism and social injustice, or polarization, or the climate crisis, all these things, you can argue are because modern culture is defining the self as an individual, and then we can-
Heather Berlin:
But then-
Dan Siegel:
... have a pathway-
Christof Koch:
It's this is atomized... We're all these atoms in this large society.
Heather Berlin:
But maybe-
Christof Koch:
You stress the atom, the atomized aspects.
Heather Berlin:
... conceptually, if you're thinking about the perception boxes, if we can expand it wide enough, that we can maybe almost combine our perception boxes to create a larger box that we're all in for at least a moment in time, where we're connecting perspectives, and helping each of us individually expand, but create something more than just... We're greater than the sum of our parts-
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
... when we connect with people in that way.
Christof Koch:
So how can we do this, let's say at large scale in our schools? Or how can we achieve that?
Dan Siegel:
Well, I work with some people at MIT, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, and Mette Boll, to work in schools in something called Compassionate Systems Awareness, where we're literally trying to take these ideas of systems and emergence and teach kids. And kids can learn this, in fact, it's almost like kids unlearn it. They kind of have a natural intuition that we're all connected to one another.
Christof Koch:
Is it like mid-school, or...
Dan Siegel:
This is in elementary school, and middle school, and high school. The Brainstorm book you have there, I try to do that for adolescents. So you can work in schools. I work in Sweden with something called the Inner Development Goals, where we're trying to work with the United Nations, and we have hubs all around the world looking at this issue of how even though the United Nations had said, "Here are 17 sustainability goals." We have the knowledge on what to do, we have the resources to do it, and every year, we'd get the report card, it's worse, and worse, and worse.
So the Inner Development Goals is there to support the United Nations to say, "What's going on in the human mind in modern culture that's preventing the human family from waking up to the fact that it is creating its own misery, and the misery for all living beings on earth?" So what we're trying to do is take, I would assume what's with perception box, and say, "Let's look at the perception prisons of modern culture, and then work..." In this case, the United Nations, work with governments, work with companies, but myself individually, I'm also working with schools, I work with parents, so I try to teach parents this. Even here, I mean, this book is a graduate school textbook I wrote years ago, but this is in its third edition.
And in this book, even though it's for graduate students, what I do is, I say, "Look, let me walk you step by step with thousands of scientific, empirically established studies, peer-reviewed journals and all that stuff, let me show you how thinking of the self as separate is going to kill life on earth. But let me do this as a graduate school textbook and show you, developmentally, which builds on what IntraConnected shows, show you how we can have a different kind of world.
Now, this is for graduate students, but you can do this for everyone on the planet. We've had a case of mistaken identity, where we've equated self with the individual, it sounds so logical. But if we just pause, and empower everyone, a kid, an adolescent, an adult, a parent, a teacher, a person running a company, to realize yourself, yes, includes your body and me, but also includes your relationships with everyone else, people, plants, everyone, all of nature. That's the we. I have a funny term, mwe, M-W-E, to say, "Okay, you're both a me and we." You don't have to get rid of your me, but you want to add the we as part of your identity.
Heather Berlin:
So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests one of the perception box questions. So Christof, do you have a perception box question you'd like to ask?
Christof Koch:
Yes, Dan, the last time you were angry, what did you make it mean about someone else? Or what did you make it mean about yourself?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. I'm completing my next book, which is kind of all about this issue about subcortical structures in the brain that may be a part of our temperament. And some of them are about our agency for protecting bodily needs, some are about bonding for relational connection, some are about certainty. So there's a whole framework that I could go into about what I'm about to say, but I'll just give you the example. What I do in the book is overlay these temperament issues with attachment. So early on, we have a need for four S's, we need to be safe, seen and soothed. And if we get those on a reliable basis, and when there are ruptures and they're repaired, we can be the fourth S, secure.
Christof Koch:
Secure.
Dan Siegel:
So with my wife, I came back from a... I was away for a week for a retreat kind of thing, and I was so excited to see her, it was really great, and I was telling her about all these exciting things, so I was really revved up. And when we have a revved up emotion, we really need to be connecting then, whether it's even we're upset, or we're excited. When we don't get that, it activates the whole physiology of shame. And I had a very difficult childhood with the way my parents were for lots of complicated reasons, so I can be prone to having shame activated like that. And part of my reaction would be to withdraw with fear, I can get very sad, or I can get angry.
So you're asking about the angry thing. So in this case, we're walking around the block with the dog, I'm just back from being away from her for a week, there's all these exciting things, really upbeat things, and a neighbor walks by who helped us figure out how to do something with some rocks in front of our house in a really cool way, she goes, "Oh, we got the rock set up like you suggested." I'm in the middle of talking, and so a part of me is going, "Oh, she doesn't really love me. She's more interested in rocks than my emotions. What's going on here?" So I start feeling this anger bubble up, and she's busy talking to this neighbor about the rocks, and then she says, of all things, "You want to come over now and see the rocks?" And now I could feel my top about to explode, so I take a few steps away just to take some deep breaths, and I do maybe what you call a perception box shift, and I talk to myself, I talk to a younger part of myself, and I say-
Christof Koch:
In your head?
Dan Siegel:
In my head. 'Cause she's busy talking about the rocks. And I said, "You could get angry at her now, and you could go storming off, and you could be upset for a day or two, and think about how she doesn't love you, or you could realize there's a younger part of you inside of you, an aspect of you, a state of mind, an implicit memory of ways your dad was a raging maniac, and your mother withdrew, and that combination of a storm and a desert left you filled with all sorts of potentially shame-inducing disconnections. So she's just talking about rocks 'cause she's excited to see this neighbor, this is not about her not loving you." I say to myself. And so what I do is I take care of that little boy, and I don't expect her to be my mother that I never had.
And so I take a deep breath, and within 30 seconds, because I'm in awareness in this kind of hub of the wheel, really, 'cause maybe I've been practicing that because I had a great retreat, I can just say to myself, "It's okay. She got distracted by this, and this is not a sign of her not loving you, you don't need to be angry." And the anger dissipates.
Heather Berlin:
And that is also, I think, really important to have-
Christof Koch:
That's cool.
Heather Berlin:
... this sort of self-love, and self... Provide the security and safety for yourself if it's not being... Not depending on other people to provide it for you.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, and I would just make a minor edit, 'cause I have a little nutty about the word self.
Heather Berlin:
Okay.
Dan Siegel:
I would just put inner before that, because-
Heather Berlin:
Your inner self.
Dan Siegel:
Inner self.
Heather Berlin:
Yes.
Dan Siegel:
So that we don't say things like self-compassion, because you and you are this self 'cause we have this relational self inner. So just say inner self.
Heather Berlin:
There's inner self, and then there's the more expansive self.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
There are people out there that are working, not with you in this very... We were talking about this very idyllic way in which we all connect, and we're really being seen by each other, but there's some people that are working against you, that are people who are not good for you to be around, that are triggering these things within you constantly, these insecurities from childhood, and maybe they are not the kinds of people that you want to be spending your time with, right?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
We're talking about this idealistic world where we're all going to connect and help each other in these different ways, but sometimes there are people that are working against you, that are triggering these negative feelings in you that-
Christof Koch:
They're resistant to therapy.
Heather Berlin:
Resistant, or lack empathy. And the solution to that might be to not interact, or keep... 'Cause you keep trying to integrate with some people that are just not available for that.
Dan Siegel:
That's true. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
And I think it's important for some people in those kinds of relationships to consider that as well. So my question is, what are you most afraid that somebody else will find out about you?
Dan Siegel:
What am I afraid that somebody else might find out about me? You mean now or when I was younger?
Heather Berlin:
It could be when you were younger.
Dan Siegel:
'Cause I actually don't think I'm too afraid of that. I mean, these days, I feel pretty-
Heather Berlin:
Well, now that you're so evolved. This is the pre-evolved Dan.
Dan Siegel:
I don't know if I'm evolved, but I'm pretty relaxed.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Okay. Was there-
Dan Siegel:
[inaudible 00:48:03]
Christof Koch:
But when you were 18?
Heather Berlin:
Yeah, like sort of-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, when I was younger.
Heather Berlin:
... security or something where you would feel...
Dan Siegel:
I think there were all sorts of things that happened in my childhood that made me feel like I was potentially a very toxic person. And just to say it very briefly, when I was four, I got some rabbits, and I was so excited to have them, I gave them some water to drink, and then I got them some leaves to eat, and when I gave them the leaves to eat, they just died in my arms.
Christof Koch:
What?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, because-
Heather Berlin:
Why?
Dan Siegel:
... they were oleander leaves, and no one told me that the bush I was sitting next to was poisonous.
Heather Berlin:
Oh, gosh.
Dan Siegel:
So I had this feeling like, "Wow, my exuberance could kill someone." And then 10 years later, the same thing happened with a puppy I was taking care of.
Heather Berlin:
I thought you'd say with a person.
Dan Siegel:
No. Probably with a person too. But I always feared to be with a person. So I always feared that my-
Heather Berlin:
Wow.
Dan Siegel:
... exuberance for life, or love of somebody could actually hurt them. So I think when I was younger, I was really afraid to let someone know how much love I had for them 'cause it could hurt them. So it was-
Heather Berlin:
By killing people with kindness?
Dan Siegel:
Not even like that, just like there was something wrong with me. Somehow I implicitly learned that if I was too excited, it would kill something I loved.
Heather Berlin:
So how did you overcome that?
Dan Siegel:
Therapy helped, being in relationships helped. And then actually, recently, I did a whole thing called the Hoffman Process, which was this immersion in how stuff you experienced in your childhood made you feel unworthy of stuff. And stuff came up that I didn't even know that was really liberating, and I'm just finishing another book. In a book-
Christof Koch:
So you can overcome that-
Dan Siegel:
You can overcome that.
Christof Koch:
... with proper therapy, or friends, or reading, or...
Dan Siegel:
Absolutely. In the book called Mindsight, I talk about a patient called Stewart who was in his 90s, and he changed so much. His wife called me up, and said, "Dr. Dan, did you give Stewart a brain transplant?" And all we did was we identified what areas of his brain didn't develop because of the non-secure attachment. Once we could name that, like a laser beam, we could then focus... 'Cause where attention goes, neural firing flows and neural connection grows. So my job as a therapist is to figure out where the blockages to integration are. Once we figure out one of nine domains where it is, or all of them, then focus his attention to get his brain to get activated in areas that haven't been developed yet, even in his 90s. And you'll see in that story in Mindsight... Those are all completely true stories, you'll see the way he changes.
Christof Koch:
So this is something that neuroscience has learned over the last 40 years, that even in old age, your brain is still... I mean, healthy old age, it's different for dementia, your brain can still change, you can still learn new.... You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
I like to say you're a work-in-progress until your very last breath.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Christof Koch:
Amen.
Dan Siegel:
Amen.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. And on that note, thank you so much, Dan, for being here. This has been fantastic as always.
Dan Siegel:
Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Christof. It's really been a real pleasure. Thank you.
Heather Berlin:
And if you'd like to learn more about your own perception box, spend some time this week answering the same perception box questions that we asked your guest, and check out other questions on the website at unlikelycollaborators.com. And you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, and watch the show, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
A Case of Mistaken Identity with Dr. Dan Siegel
What is the mind? Does the mind exist only in your own Perception Box, or is there a greater connection of consciousness? In this episode of Science of Perception Box, cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch discuss the interconnectedness of the mind, the impact of implicit memories from infancy on childhood attachment, and the wheel of awareness with Dr. Dan Siegel. Dr. Siegel shares his research and practices on healing unresolved trauma, preventing burnout for caregivers and medical professionals, and channeling the Perception Box-expanding power of empathy.
Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute and Founding Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also Co-Principal Investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. He has authored numerous articles and books, including five New York Times bestsellers.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
Dan Siegel:
... we've had a case of mistaken identity. We've equated self with the individual, it sounds so logical, but if we just pause and empower everyone to realize yourself, yes, includes your body, and me, but also includes your relationships with everyone else.
Elizabeth Koch:
Hi, I'm Elizabeth Koch. We all live inside our own personal, private perception box built by our genes, and the physical, social, and cultural environment in which we were born and raised. In this podcast, we explore how although the walls of this mental box are always present, they can expand in states like awe, wonder, and curiosity, or contract in response to anxiety, fear, and anger. I'd like to introduce our esteemed hosts, two incredible and distinguished minds, Dr. Heather Berlin, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City. And Dr. Christof Koch, chief scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation, and the current meritorious investigator and former president of the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Welcome to the Science of Perception Box.
Heather Berlin:
Hi, everybody. Welcome to Science of Perception Box. I'm your co-host, Dr. Heather Berlin.
Christof Koch:
And I'm your co-host, Dr. Christof Koch.
Heather Berlin:
So every week, we feature an aspect of Science of Perception Box, highlighting the latest research together with our expert guests. And this week on Science of Perception Box, we're joined by Dr. Daniel Siegel. He's clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine, and the founding director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. He's also the executive director of the Mindsight Institute, which focuses on the development of mindsight, and teaches insight, empathy, and integration in individuals, families, and communities. He's authored numerous articles and books, and five New York Times bestsellers. Dr. Siegel studies the mind, and how it's connected to the rest of the body, and he even argues that the mind is broader than the brain, and bigger than the body. So Christof, how would you define the mind?
Christof Koch:
The mind has both conscious aspect, what I'm currently conscious of, like I know I'm a man, I'm sitting here in a chair doing this interview, but then also everything else my brain does, language, running, walking, thinking, all of those things.
Heather Berlin:
So is the mind everything you're conscious of, or does that include-
Christof Koch:
It's more.
Heather Berlin:
... the unconscious?
Christof Koch:
Like an iceberg, there's a conscious mind, but then there's this vast processing underneath that does much of what I do every day, all the time, but unconsciously.
Heather Berlin:
So is the mind the brain?
Christof Koch:
No, it's very different from the brain. It clearly relates to the brain. Without the brain, you're going to have a mind.
Heather Berlin:
Is the mind what the brain does?
Christof Koch:
Partly. The mind has a substrate, I would say, which is the brain.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Okay.
Christof Koch:
What do you think about the mind?
Heather Berlin:
What do I think the mind is? In a way, I think... I mean, that's obviously the most fascinating question, is, how does the brain relate to the mind? But I think the mind in my one sense is subjectivity. It's the things, it's the processes that the brain does, but when it gets to the unconscious, it gets a little murky.
Christof Koch:
But your liver doesn't do your unconscious, it's your brain that does it.
Heather Berlin:
Right.
Christof Koch:
Let's ask our guest.
Heather Berlin:
Well, actually, we are fortunate enough to be joined today by an esteemed colleague and friend, Dr. Dan Siegel. So thank you for being here, it's wonderful to have you. I wanted to start with a question for you. I mean, we're talking here about the minds, but you have this term called mindsight, so what exactly do you mean by that?
Dan Siegel:
Well, thank you for having me. It's really an honor to be here with you, Heather and Christof, and it's great to discuss these important issues. For me, that word, mindsight, was something that emerged around 1980. I had been a biochemistry college student, I went to medical school, and I dropped out of medical school because my professors seemed to not focus on the subjective experience, that you pointed out, Heather, the feelings people had, what you've written about, Christof, in the patient's experience. If they told them, "We've done the laboratory test, you're dying, there's nothing more we can do. Goodbye." I would stop them and say, "Don't you want to talk to them about how they feel?" And my professors of medicine would say, "Why would we do that?" And I would say, "Because there's something very meaningful that happened in you telling them they're dying." And they would just walk away.
So I dropped out of school, and in the course of trying out different other professions, I decided ultimately I would come back to medicine, and I needed something to protect me from this kind of mindless world I was entering. So I made up the term mindsight for how you perceive subjective experience. So those could be your feelings, your perceptions. So when we talk about a perception box, that might be very relevant, your attitudes, your beliefs, your longings, desires, your memories, all that stuff was underneath the word mind. And the only one who could know it, really, was the subject, so we call it subjectivity, or first-person experience. And the fact that these professors who were really devoted to caring for their patients somehow made the mind absent, they were mind blind, was intriguing to me.
So I kind of went back, almost like an anthropologist, studying the medical socialization process, which later, we'd learned students would enter as medical students with average levels of empathy, very devoted, but every year of medical training, medical school, and then training afterwards, they'd have less and less empathy, and we'd learn later on that they'd have more and more distress, even to the point where one time I was teaching at Stanford Medical School, when I was later on teaching mindsight, and I would try to teach the faculty there about the importance of mindsight in medicine. And the dean got up and said, "Why do we have a psychiatrist here teaching us about what we already know?" He was an internist. He said, "But here's why we need to have him." And the report from the hospital oversight committees showed that over 50% of trainees in medicine were severely anxious, depressed, and some thinking of killing themselves, and the rates of suicide were rising, and-
Christof Koch:
And you believe that's a consequence of the fact that they did not consider the patient really from a holistic point of view of brain and mind, and just focusing on the brain, on sort of the mechanistic aspect?
Dan Siegel:
Yes, and when you only look at the mechanistic aspect, you not only miss your patient's inner subjective experience, you miss your own. So when they were in a state of distress, and I had to speak to 3,000 veterinarians who asked me to come because they had achieved the highest status... The highest suicide rate were in veterinarians.
Christof Koch:
Vets?
Dan Siegel:
Vets. And so I had to do a survey of the veterinarians to say, "Well, in animal medicine, what's your experience of learning about the mind?" They go, "Zero." So in most medical schools, whether it's for humans or animals, we don't teach the caregivers to care for their own mental experience. So when the mind is absent for your patients, or the families that own the pets, the mind is absent for yourself. So then when you get distressed, if you can't monitor what's going on, you can't modify it. So regulation, which I think the mind is a regulatory process, we can talk about... When you can't monitor, you can't modify. So then if you're distressed, you don't even know you're distressed.
Heather Berlin:
But there is something also I think inherently almost therapeutic about genuinely connecting with another human, and when you're having empathy, it's almost... It's healing for yourself, right?
Dan Siegel:
Totally.
Heather Berlin:
I have some patients who are residents, and who are basically on the front lines in this patient care, and there's this... You're taught to be sort of removed from it, and to be clinical, but that almost does make it worse because you are human as well, and you want to have some level of empathy and understanding that... It helps you as well to have that connection.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. I mean, let's take the beautiful thing you just said, and let's look at the fantastic thing, Christof, you write about with integrated information theory, and just if we can throw a teeny bit of math in. Think about two people coming together, person A and person B. They each have their own level of complexity, and what's going on in their own systems as a whole. If person A is having an illness, and person B, let's say the physician, then is just saying, "Oh, here's your laboratory test, and this is it. Goodbye." Is not a joining of the two. There's a transmission of information, but not a joining. So they remain separate. But if that physician can be taught the presence to allow themselves to feel the feelings of the patient so that the patient A is having this experience that... My first therapy patient told me was she thought what helped her in therapy, she felt, felt, the feeling felt by another person-
Heather Berlin:
We're being seen.
Dan Siegel:
... or being seen of being seen is where there's now an A/B, there's a we.
Heather Berlin:
Is that what you call we?
Dan Siegel:
And that's we, yeah. Because you don't have to lose a me to become a we. But now, the system has achieved a higher level of complexity, which is a good thing from a system's point of view, and now what's happening is, you feel you belong. So that patient, even with the suffering, feels a deeper sense of meaning and connection, and the physician, just like you're pointing out, has a meaningful life, because they're increasing complexity levels.
Christof Koch:
In a situation like this, when you have all these patients who are undergoing suffering and some of them will die, how do I prevent burnout by becoming too identified with them?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. Well, what the research shows is really, really important. When we over-identify with a patient, and I'll give you an example in a moment, but when we over-identify, then we're at risk of burnout. So the better word than compassionate fatigue is over-identification fatigue, which some people reduce to the word empathy fatigue, which I think is an error. So over-identification fatigue is where you are too much aligning. If you think about the balance of differentiation on the one hand, and linkage on the other, which-
Christof Koch:
Integration and differentiation.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. For me, the use of the word integration combines those two, differentiation and linkage. So when I use the word integration in my writings, it may be a little different from IIT, but it's the idea of not just linkage, but you're maintaining some aspect of differentiation. The wording may be a little different. But that important distinction... Let me give you an example. I had a friend of mine's daughter, she became a therapist, she was really great at it, and then she was burning out for exactly the reason you're saying. Too many people who were abused, she cared about them so much, she said, "I've got to quit. I've got to go into a non-clinical profession." I said, "You work so hard to get here. I've known you since you're a little kid, why are you quitting?" She goes, "I'm burning out. I have no energy to give myself, to my husband. Nothing, I have nothing left."
I said, "What are you doing?" She goes, "I'm empathic with my patients." I said, "Tell me what that means." She goes, "What do you mean what does that mean?" I said, "What does it mean to you?" She goes, "Well, patient comes in, I ask them what's going on. They say, 'Oh, I'm realizing I was abused.'" Let's say, just to condense it all. And I say, "Well, then what do you do?" She goes, "Well, I'm empathic." I said, "What does that mean?" She goes, "What if my father had abused me like her father abused her?" I go, "Well, then what happened?" She goes, "Well, then I get totally upset, and distressed, and get really upset. I just burnout, and I can't function."
I said, "Okay, let me tell you about a brain study. And this study was done where they had people in brain scanners, they showed them a very horrific photograph of car accident. And they said, 'Imagine if that were you.' That's condition one. The other condition was, 'Imagine what it's like for that person to be that person in that situation.' Condition two. In condition one, the brain starts firing off like crazy, and completely shuts down. In condition two, the brain fires off, and it channels that energy to compassion, of saying, 'How could I be of service to support that person's reduction in suffering?' So compassion doesn't have a burnout to it."
So in terms of me, people ask me, "Why do you see so many patients?" 'Cause I still see patients. I say, "Because I feel so much meaning in this." And they say, "Well, how can you be joyful?" And I always quote the Dalai Lama, I was teaching once in Germany with him, and someone took the microphone and said, "What's wrong with you, your Holiness? You're teaching us to be more compassionate, and the world is full of suffering, and you laugh, and you seem so joyful. What's wrong with you?" And he said this amazing thing, he pauses, and he looks at the person, and he says, "It's not in spite of the suffering, it's because of it."
Christof Koch:
It's because.
Dan Siegel:
"I need to be joyful and laughing so that the suffering in the world doesn't win." When you realize that, you can be compassionate, and caring, and still have a joyful life. And that's, I think, the path.
Christof Koch:
And so the trick is not to identify myself-
Dan Siegel:
Over-identify, yeah.
Christof Koch:
... over-identify myself with a patient, but still, to have compassion with them?
Dan Siegel:
Exactly. I can't believe I'm going to say this, but I've been a therapist for 40 years. I only feel like I'm 17, so I don't know how I can say those numbers, but I was adding them up the other day, I became-
Christof Koch:
Congratulations.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Dan Siegel:
... a therapist for the first time 40 years ago. So 40 years, I've been seeing patients. So, so far, almost every individual, when you can really see into their essence, and maybe... In some of your writings, Christof, you've called it the soul. When you could see their essence, you can see that there are blockages, whether you call them defense mechanisms, or personality patterns, whatever naming you want to call it, there are blockages to them reaching in and finding this access to wholeness, really. And so then what you do as a therapist is, you can find a way to work with them in the privacy of therapy.
Now, I'm also a workshop leader, an educator. So in those settings also, I would say, most people... We do this whole thing called the wheel of awareness, where people get into pure awareness versus what you're aware of, and... I can't wait to talk to you about some of the science of that. But when they get there, what's interesting is, for some individuals, they get terrified, and they get a panic reaction to pure awareness.
I've just finished a bunch of workshops down in Costa Rica where we did this. So far, every time someone's got panicked, and there hasn't been an exception so far at least, there might be in the future, I'll take some private time out of the workshop setting, I'll sit down with the person... And I'll give you one example, I'll just change some things for confidentiality. This person had a big panic reaction to pure awareness in the hub of this wheel, and he said, "I need to talk to you." So I said, "Fine, let's talk." And I said, "What's going..." He goes, "I don't know. I'm in therapy, but we never get to this kind of place of that openness. I had a glimpse of this timelessness, but then I freaked out, and it's so scary, it's so uncertain. I've got to have something I can hold onto."
So I said, "Okay, well, what comes to mind when you think about this terror?" And then he just looks at me, and he gets tearful, and he goes, "I was in an orphanage for six months before I was adopted, and I have no idea what that was about." I said, "Well, do you know about the difference between implicit and explicit memory?" He goes, "I don't know what you're talking about." So I explained to him, in the brain, how in the first 18 months before the hippocampus matures, we only lay down implicit memory. In fact, we lay it down even in utero.
Christof Koch:
Memories that we're not conscious of.
Dan Siegel:
Well, here's the way I would say it, Christof, and maybe we can play with this. Memories that when they get laid down, they're encoded, and then stored. But memories that when they're retrieved, you don't have the conscious experience of, "Oh, this is from the past." But they can enter consciousness.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, I would say, if they're totally implicit, that they don't explicitly enter my consciousness, yet they can profoundly influence my behavior, and my action, my emotions.
Heather Berlin:
But he's saying they can move from being implicit to explicit.
Christof Koch:
With therapeutic work.
Dan Siegel:
So let's unpack this, 'cause for this guy, this was the essential issue. And you may not agree with this, so this is what I proposed back in 1990, so you may not agree with it. But in post-traumatic stress disorder, unresolved states, you can have someone... And my first experience was working at the VA in the '80s. I had a soldier who was now a veteran, and something happened, and it sparked a whole flashback. And he grabbed me, and pulled me under the cot in the hospital, and he had blockaded the room, and he said, "We have to fight them. We have to fight them." And he had been in Vietnam, and he was fully in Vietnam. So in terms of his awareness, he was aware, "I," the soldier, "am in Vietnam. I'm with my colleague," which was me, "and we are going to fight the enemy."
Christof Koch:
And was really there?
Dan Siegel:
He was really there.
Christof Koch:
He was back in Vietnam?
Dan Siegel:
He was in Vietnam. He was sweating, he was looking out for them, he said, "Watch out, watch out, watch out." Like this. And he was terrified. So he was fully aware of that. When I went to my supervisor after that, I said, "What's a flashback?" And my supervisor said, "No idea." And that got me, for the first time... Even though I was trained by David Hubel about how the brain develops and stuff like that, he was my neuroscience teacher, that got me looking at the research on memory and the brain. And then I got to meet with Larry Squire down at UC San Diego, and what Larry had discovered, along with Dan Schacter in different systems, was that there's one layer of memory, one's called non-declarative, one's called implicit, but they're very similar, where it gets encoded, stored, and here's the key thing, when it's retrieved in pure form, it enters awareness, but you don't know it's a memory. So that could explain flashbacks.
Christof Koch:
Yeah, but he encoded that memory when he was already 18 years old, presumably as a young soldier, and not as 18 months. In general, any memory... I've never really seen good evidence that little babies can form reliable memories that they can recount later. Yes, they can tell you, "Oh, I remember the birthday of my... Or when my little brother got born." But what they remember is mom showing pictures of the brother, right?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Christof Koch:
So I'm more skeptical about, can you have implicit memories very early on-
Dan Siegel:
Okay.
Christof Koch:
... in the first year that you later on recall.
Dan Siegel:
Sure. Sure. So there's a couple of layers, let's just take it step by step. When a person's traumatized, let's say an 18-year-old who's in Vietnam, you can postulate, just conceptually, that two conditions exist during that trauma that help us understand what we're about to unpack. Number one, you have massive release of cortisol, and we know there are cortisol receptors on the hippocampus.
Christof Koch:
Stress, it's a hugely stressful situation.
Dan Siegel:
Stress. So you can shut off the hippocampus-
Heather Berlin:
That affects memories.
Dan Siegel:
... and affects explicit memory. But here's what the research shows, it's mind-blowing, at the same time, you have adrenaline, norepinephrine is being released, which sears in implicit layers of memory. So the physiology of it, the state of the body, the emotions, the behaviors, even the perceptions, those can get laid down in the brain, independent of the hippocampus. Now, here's the amazing thing, when you shut off focal attention, attention with awareness, you can drive things into these memory systems, but for explicit memory, you need focal attention, and you need the hippocampus to work. So the hypothesis that I wrote about in 1990 was, that condition of excessive adrenaline searing in implicit memory, and cortisol shutting off the hippocampus could allow an 18-year-old, just to use the example of the soldier, to actually burn in implicit encoding in a pure form, even though he's 18 years, not one year, where the hippocampus hasn't grown yet. Now, that gets encoded and stored, and then later on when there's a loud noise, and it's kind of like the helicopter blowing up where his friend was killed, which is this particular example-
Christof Koch:
Gets triggered.
Dan Siegel:
... it's triggered, so you can trigger an implicit-only memory. And here's what all the research shows from Dan Schacter and Larry Squire, that pure implicit memory when triggered from storage enters awareness, but you have no... I call it ekphoric sensation, you have no feeling of ekphory. Ekphory is where you say, "Oh, I'm remembering something from the past." You don't have that sensation-
Christof Koch:
For you it's the here and the now.
Dan Siegel:
It's the here and now. And so what I wrote about in 1990 was, here's a possible neurophysiology explanation of unresolved trauma, and then the pathway to resolving it would involve allowing this, what I call a window of tolerance, to be expanded. So you allow the hippocampus to now get involved with the part you're playing as a therapist, so now the conditions of the brain of that individual are changing so that they can hold the fear of their friend in these terrible things that happened to them, and the terror of that in the space.
So now going back to the workshop, so I say all this to that person who was freaking out, and I said, "What do you think uncertainty was like for you in that adoption place?" I'm an attachment researcher, so we have lots of evidence, Christof, that implicit memories laid down in infancy are remembered. Not explicitly, you never say, "Oh, I'm remembering it explicitly." But they affect your emotions, they affect your actions, they affect the way you feel in your body, they affect your sense of self even. We have lots of evidence from all of our research.
But for this person at the workshop, what he did was, he said, "Oh, you mean I can actually have a memory of how frightening uncertainty was, but when I'm remembering it, I don't realize I'm remembering it, I just think uncertainty is frightening." And I go, "That's right." And I show him this graph, which I had shown the workshop, which we could talk about later on, where there's hypothesis that awareness itself, what you describe as pure experience, seems to correlate with this... If you think about energy as the movement from possibility to actuality, you can graph it out, and we can get into the details of this, but where pure awareness is maximal uncertainty. So this guy couldn't go there, and then everything changed. And he goes, "Oh, I see. So this is just a memory I'm having my panic." I said, "Yeah, so try the wheel again, and when the panic comes up, just say, 'Oh, I'm remembering when I was in the orphanage.'" And everything changed for him.
Christof Koch:
So this was a transformative experience?
Dan Siegel:
For the workshop, not even in my patient, it was just a workshop participant.
Christof Koch:
A single experience, and then you changed his attitude. So talking about perception box-
Heather Berlin:
Back in the perception box.
Christof Koch:
... it's really-
Heather Berlin:
Yeah, it's very...
Christof Koch:
... you realize that you understand something bad about you, and suddenly, the world becomes more open, and you become healthier, more open.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly, exactly.
Heather Berlin:
'Cause this concept of the perception box is that when it's sort of contracted, the walls that we're more afraid, and we're more anxious, and if you can expand it, it brings in this more awe and wonder. And so these transformative experiences that can help change your perspective can get you outside of this very closed box, let's say, to a greater view. But in this case, it was more of an insight to say, "Okay..." Realizing this is just a memory, and isn't reality.
Christof Koch:
It was an insight that you helped bring about talking to this particular person.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, with the science behind it, which is kind of... I mean, as a scientist who's also a clinician and an educator, it's kind of mind-blowing how empowering communication can be, not just information, but communication around this, where at the moment, this person in the workshop is saying, "I'm terrified." And they go, "Well, let's look at your terror which feels intolerable, and let's look at how... Maybe it's the terror of a baby where it was intolerable, but now you're an adult, and you can reinterpret the perception box and get freedom."
Christof Koch:
[inaudible 00:24:39]
Heather Berlin:
But the question is, how long does that affect last?
Christof Koch:
Last.
Heather Berlin:
Right. So the next time-
Christof Koch:
Do you have contact with him?
Heather Berlin:
... next time it happens-
Dan Siegel:
Well, this just happened a few weeks ago, but I have contact-
Heather Berlin:
[inaudible 00:24:46]
Dan Siegel:
... with other workshop participants, and of course, my patients, where it changes their life.
Christof Koch:
Even a year later, this one experience that happened... This therapeutic experience, even a year or two later can still...
Dan Siegel:
Absolutely. Well, this is the weird thing, that... Whether you look at the psychedelic research of controlled psychedelic uses, it was one or two things, and the wheel of awareness has this practice which people have compared to using psilocybin. And in fact, when people get in the hub of the wheel, there's a practice where you're basically moving a spoke of attention around a metaphoric wheel, and on the rim are all the knowns of consciousness, the content, but in the hub is represented the knowing, or awareness, pure experience.
Christof Koch:
Pure experience.
Dan Siegel:
And we have this thing where... My patient actually suggested it 'cause we were doing this around a table just down the street here, and she said, "Well, why don't we bend the spoke into the hub?" I go, "Oh my God, that's a brilliant idea. Let's do it." And she bent the spoke around. This was a person with severe trauma. She bent the spoke around, and for her, unlike it being terrifying, she got this liberating feeling of timelessness, being connected to everyone and everything, this kind of feeling of love.
Christof Koch:
So that's like a mystical experience-
Dan Siegel:
And it was a mystical experience.
Heather Berlin:
Just to understand a little bit about when you're bending this-
Christof Koch:
The spokes.
Heather Berlin:
... the spokes into the center of this wheel, what does that actually... That's a metaphor, but what does that mean?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. So just to give you the very brief background in this journey to be... I was trained as a scientist, and then I became a clinician. I was disappointed by the way I was being trained to be a physician, I dropped out for a while, came back, and then realized the mind had to be real. And yet, even if it was absolute medicine. So-
Christof Koch:
The only thing there is, ultimately.
Dan Siegel:
Well, exactly, exactly. So that's a bizarre thing, just to talk about the medical world-
Christof Koch:
Yes, that's me.
Dan Siegel:
... but that's a whole nother topic. So then I went on a journey to say, "Okay, well, what would I study?" So I started in pediatrics, but went to psychiatry. And in the course of doing all that, I became a researcher in relationships, parent-child relationships and narratives, so that's my research background through the National Institute of Mental Health. But at that time, the question me was, as a therapist, was, "What's actually happening that's allowing people to change?" So it was the decade of the brain, 1990, and I thought, "Well..." David Hubel was my teacher, and David had gotten the Nobel Prize for showing that the kind of energy that streams into the brain changes its structure and function. So I thought, "Well, maybe a relationship has to do with energy flow, and maybe what the mind is, is some kind of emergent property of energy flow that's both in the whole body, not just in the brain, but in relationships."
So that was kind of exciting. And then I found that every one of my patients had either chaos, or rigidity, or both as their suffering. And I would ask my supervisors, "So what's with this chaos and rigidity?" And they go, "What are you talking about?" I go, "Well, every one of the patients I see without an exception has either chaos, like flooding feelings, or memories, or thoughts, or rigidity, they're shut down and depressed." And my supervisor would say, "We don't know what you're talking about." So I went looking for an answer to the question-
Christof Koch:
This was all Freudian?
Dan Siegel:
No. And I wasn't-
Christof Koch:
And then why did they all deny the existence of what's so obvious? It's most-
Dan Siegel:
I know, right.
Christof Koch:
... immediate given to us?
Dan Siegel:
Well, you tell me. I don't know.
Christof Koch:
Is this behaviorist influence?
Dan Siegel:
No. I don't know what they were. They were psychopharmacologically-oriented brains-
Christof Koch:
Yeah, so it's all about drugs. It's all about-
Dan Siegel:
[inaudible 00:28:16] about drugs. Exactly.
Christof Koch:
... [inaudible 00:28:17] and dopamine and serotonin.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
Well, 'cause you silo off these disciplines, and so like, "I'm studying the physiologic substrate." And then there's like, "Oh, the psychologists over there are studying the mind."
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
And never the twain shall meet. When I was doing my PhD, it was like that, and I was like, "Well, I want to understand the intersection between these students." It was like, "No, you either have to do pure neuroscience, or you do psychology." This field of neuropsychology was emerging, but it was really, still... And this was in the '90s, but novel to want to combine those things.
Dan Siegel:
No, totally. What happened with me was, I wanted to answer that question. Like the two of you, I love science, and so I started going to actually math books. Because in the '80s, of course, mathematicians has gotten together to study complex systems, and what those mathematicians and physicists, and I know you have a background in physics, had shown was that there's something called emergence. And one of the emergent properties of complex systems, which are systems that are open systems, they're capable of being chaotic, and they're nonlinear, meaning small inputs lead to large, and relatively difficult to predict outcomes, so if you have those three features, you're a complex system, and if you're a complex system, they showed, in the '80s, that you have emergent properties.
One of those emergent properties, which is kind of like the wetness of water, not any single water molecules wet, but when they interact, wetness emerges. So one of the emergent properties of complex systems is self-organization. So I'm reading about this, and it says, "When optimal self-organization is happening, you get a flexibility and adaptability, a coherence, an energy and a stability." That's the way I reorganize it, which spells the word FACES.
Heather Berlin:
Yeah.
Dan Siegel:
But it's like a river, and-
Christof Koch:
See, it's obsession.
Dan Siegel:
I know, it's obsession. And then it says, "When you block this optimal self-organization, you go to either chaos or rigidity." And I screamed so loud that-
Christof Koch:
Bingo.
Dan Siegel:
... I said, "Bingo." I woke up my kids. I was going, "Oh my God, that's it. That's the best definition of well-being I've ever seen." In a math book of all places. So then I started looking for other places where they were defining mental health. Nowhere, really. There were descriptions, but not definitions. So that's when I came up with this definition of the mind, of course, includes subjective experience, it includes your awareness of subjective experience that we call consciousness, it includes information processing. But a fourth facet of mind which you could define is the embodied and relational self-organizing emergent process that regulates the flow of energy and information. Where's that happening? Within the whole body and within the relational world, our connections with people on the planet.
So with that definition, you could then say what a healthy mind was in terms of this fourth facet, and that's where the notion of balancing differentiation linkage came up. And I'm giving you all that as background to get to the wheel, because in my office, I had a table which had a glass center, we still have it, and a wooden rim. So I said, "Well, if integration is the basis of health..." Which is what I was pondering back then, where you're defining integration very carefully as differentiation plus linkage leads to integration. And in the integration, the way I'm using that word, you don't lose the differentiation, you still have features of it. So it's not blending, it's a different quality. It's more like a fruit salad, not a smoothie. So that in that process, you're optimizing self-organization. That's the basis.
So then I said, "Well, if the other conciliant idea is consciousness is needed for change..." Which I think it is, like the perception box, you really want to bring awareness into that question, how do we change that? So then what if you brought those two together? If integration is health, and consciousness is needed for change, what if you integrated consciousness? So I brought my first patient up off the couch, I said, "Here, come around the table." She goes, "What are we doing?" I said, "Let's try integrating consciousness." She goes, "What are you talking about?"
I go, "Check this out." I said, "If consciousness has the differentiable aspects of the knowing, which is pure awareness from the knowns, the content, let's put the knowns on the rim, and let's put the knowing in the hub." She goes, "Okay."
"And see this thing that holds up the table?" I said, "Let's just pick one of them. Let's call it the spoke. It's like a wheel. And let's move the spoke around to all the knowns. So we'll differentiate... There are four segments, it's energy flow from outside the body, which is your first five senses, energy flow from inside the body, which is introception, your bodily sense, energy flow probably from the head brain, which is your thoughts, and emotions, and memories, and perceptions, and beliefs, attitudes, longings, desires, all that stuff, call that mental activities, that's the third segment. And that's even go to a fourth segment of your sense of relational connections to people and nature." She goes, "Okay."
So then we start doing this thing, and she starts having this shift in her stability. And then she says, at another practice when we were doing this in the office, she said, "Can I bend that spoke around?" I hadn't even thought about it. I said, "Well, that's a great idea. Yeah, sure, bend it, see what happens." She enters this thing. And now I've done this with 50,000 people in-person. And I'm not exaggerating, I had my assistant double-check that number. Before the viral pandemic, 50,000, 50,000 people in workshops that I did this with, and then we get the reports for those who are willing to report. So I have a whole bunch of data I can give you about when you have this common stimulus, the wheel, what do people experience in the wheel, but in general, in the hub. And so what that patient experienced, which the parliamentarian experienced, which now thousands and thousands of people experienced, people in Costa Rica last week experienced it, they experienced timelessness, love, connection, God, a feeling of an expansion of a perception of-
Christof Koch:
So practically what do you get people to do that during this...
Dan Siegel:
Oh.
Christof Koch:
They sit for an hour and just contemplate the wheel?
Dan Siegel:
No, no, no, it's 22 minutes. I mean, it's on my website. We've had lots and lots of people. We give it away for free, so we had lots of people streaming-
Heather Berlin:
So go to the website, and look up the wheel-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, you can do it. I have a whole book on it.
Christof Koch:
But it's a form of sort meditation?
Dan Siegel:
Meditation. I never called it that, 'cause I didn't know about meditation when I invented it, but it's... I call it an integration of consciousness practice. <y friends now who I teach with who are meditation teachers say, "That's a meditation." I go, "Okay, fine. Call it a meditation, whatever."
Christof Koch:
And then very often, these people can have a transformative experience doing that, or afterwards when they share with-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, even before the sharing. The actual first-person immersion, especially when you move that spoke into the hub. And I do it every morning, so I can tell you, it's kind of like... When I read your writings Christof, I mean, we have so much to talk about, I know you used very erotic language about a blissful, orgasmic experience of-
Christof Koch:
Yes.
Dan Siegel:
... letting go of a separate self.
Christof Koch:
Yes, yes.
Dan Siegel:
Every morning-
Christof Koch:
You let go of yourself-
Dan Siegel:
Yes. I'm telling you, you bend the spoke around-
Heather Berlin:
Well, I think-
Dan Siegel:
... and not everyone has it, but many, many people practicing the wheel regularly-
Christof Koch:
You can have this on a daily basis-
Dan Siegel:
Every day.
Christof Koch:
... selfless, you leave planet self, planet ego behind?
Dan Siegel:
Yes, time and everything, and there's a whole... Yes. In fact, this book IntraConnected, talks about the neuroscience of that kind of expanded sense of self. And yes, every morning I do the practice, every morning I have that experience-
Heather Berlin:
So I think that there's-
Dan Siegel:
... and I'm not alone.
Heather Berlin:
... clearly there's some therapeutic value to getting to this place of pure consciousness.
Christof Koch:
Seriously, seriously.
Heather Berlin:
There are different ways to get there. One might be these kinds of meditative practices, sometimes psychedelics, flow states. Certain people get into a kind of flow state when they're being creative, where they lose their sense of time and self and place, and it feels very pure and blissful. And yes, and maybe even during sex and orgasm that you have these senses of pure consciousness. But there's something clearly very therapeutic about it, and we should think about how people, not just patients, but everyone, can strive to get to these places to achieve a greater sense of well-being, right?
Dan Siegel:
Totally. Well, and you can make an argument, and... I took five years to write this book, IntraConnected, which was a plea for our modern culture to look at how the self gets constructed in, maybe what you would call a perception box, where in modern culture, the self is considered the individual. And everyone who initially, like, "Here's the concept of this book." Says, "Of course the self is an individual." I say, "Well, hold on, just like we used to say the mind is the brain activity, let's just take a pause back." And they go, "How could you question self? Of course, self is this body." I said, "Well, let's see what people really mean. Let's see what people really mean by self."
And you look at all the research itself, and... Sorry, here's another acronym. I'm so sorry. But it's the word SSPA, it's subjective, sensation, perspective, and agency. So when you look at all the different research when people use the word self, that's really what they mean. If you take an identity lens and freeze it close up, you say, "Yeah, my subjective experience's only in my body. My perspective is only from through these glasses." Or, "My agency is only on behalf of this body." And then you're frozen in an identity lens that's really tight. But you can teach people, which I do in the book, to widen this identity lens to realize the three of us are here now, and you can begin to feel, in fact, the subjective experience of our three-personness. People listening to us might feel what it's like to be in our conversation. You can start to have a perspective of, "Oh, okay, we're trying to look at these deep issues of the brain, and awareness, the mind, self." All that stuff. So now we're widening our perspective and agency.
And what I try to do in the book is say, "When you start realizing you are more than just your body, that you are your relationships with people and all of nature, then the actions you take are to benefit, to increased integration basically, well-being, for all beings." So you care for animals and plants, you care for all living beings, you care for all of nature. And partly, you could say that the pandemics we face, whether it's racism and social injustice, or polarization, or the climate crisis, all these things, you can argue are because modern culture is defining the self as an individual, and then we can-
Heather Berlin:
But then-
Dan Siegel:
... have a pathway-
Christof Koch:
It's this is atomized... We're all these atoms in this large society.
Heather Berlin:
But maybe-
Christof Koch:
You stress the atom, the atomized aspects.
Heather Berlin:
... conceptually, if you're thinking about the perception boxes, if we can expand it wide enough, that we can maybe almost combine our perception boxes to create a larger box that we're all in for at least a moment in time, where we're connecting perspectives, and helping each of us individually expand, but create something more than just... We're greater than the sum of our parts-
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
... when we connect with people in that way.
Christof Koch:
So how can we do this, let's say at large scale in our schools? Or how can we achieve that?
Dan Siegel:
Well, I work with some people at MIT, Peter Senge, Otto Scharmer, and Mette Boll, to work in schools in something called Compassionate Systems Awareness, where we're literally trying to take these ideas of systems and emergence and teach kids. And kids can learn this, in fact, it's almost like kids unlearn it. They kind of have a natural intuition that we're all connected to one another.
Christof Koch:
Is it like mid-school, or...
Dan Siegel:
This is in elementary school, and middle school, and high school. The Brainstorm book you have there, I try to do that for adolescents. So you can work in schools. I work in Sweden with something called the Inner Development Goals, where we're trying to work with the United Nations, and we have hubs all around the world looking at this issue of how even though the United Nations had said, "Here are 17 sustainability goals." We have the knowledge on what to do, we have the resources to do it, and every year, we'd get the report card, it's worse, and worse, and worse.
So the Inner Development Goals is there to support the United Nations to say, "What's going on in the human mind in modern culture that's preventing the human family from waking up to the fact that it is creating its own misery, and the misery for all living beings on earth?" So what we're trying to do is take, I would assume what's with perception box, and say, "Let's look at the perception prisons of modern culture, and then work..." In this case, the United Nations, work with governments, work with companies, but myself individually, I'm also working with schools, I work with parents, so I try to teach parents this. Even here, I mean, this book is a graduate school textbook I wrote years ago, but this is in its third edition.
And in this book, even though it's for graduate students, what I do is, I say, "Look, let me walk you step by step with thousands of scientific, empirically established studies, peer-reviewed journals and all that stuff, let me show you how thinking of the self as separate is going to kill life on earth. But let me do this as a graduate school textbook and show you, developmentally, which builds on what IntraConnected shows, show you how we can have a different kind of world.
Now, this is for graduate students, but you can do this for everyone on the planet. We've had a case of mistaken identity, where we've equated self with the individual, it sounds so logical. But if we just pause, and empower everyone, a kid, an adolescent, an adult, a parent, a teacher, a person running a company, to realize yourself, yes, includes your body and me, but also includes your relationships with everyone else, people, plants, everyone, all of nature. That's the we. I have a funny term, mwe, M-W-E, to say, "Okay, you're both a me and we." You don't have to get rid of your me, but you want to add the we as part of your identity.
Heather Berlin:
So at the end of every episode, we like to ask our guests one of the perception box questions. So Christof, do you have a perception box question you'd like to ask?
Christof Koch:
Yes, Dan, the last time you were angry, what did you make it mean about someone else? Or what did you make it mean about yourself?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah. I'm completing my next book, which is kind of all about this issue about subcortical structures in the brain that may be a part of our temperament. And some of them are about our agency for protecting bodily needs, some are about bonding for relational connection, some are about certainty. So there's a whole framework that I could go into about what I'm about to say, but I'll just give you the example. What I do in the book is overlay these temperament issues with attachment. So early on, we have a need for four S's, we need to be safe, seen and soothed. And if we get those on a reliable basis, and when there are ruptures and they're repaired, we can be the fourth S, secure.
Christof Koch:
Secure.
Dan Siegel:
So with my wife, I came back from a... I was away for a week for a retreat kind of thing, and I was so excited to see her, it was really great, and I was telling her about all these exciting things, so I was really revved up. And when we have a revved up emotion, we really need to be connecting then, whether it's even we're upset, or we're excited. When we don't get that, it activates the whole physiology of shame. And I had a very difficult childhood with the way my parents were for lots of complicated reasons, so I can be prone to having shame activated like that. And part of my reaction would be to withdraw with fear, I can get very sad, or I can get angry.
So you're asking about the angry thing. So in this case, we're walking around the block with the dog, I'm just back from being away from her for a week, there's all these exciting things, really upbeat things, and a neighbor walks by who helped us figure out how to do something with some rocks in front of our house in a really cool way, she goes, "Oh, we got the rock set up like you suggested." I'm in the middle of talking, and so a part of me is going, "Oh, she doesn't really love me. She's more interested in rocks than my emotions. What's going on here?" So I start feeling this anger bubble up, and she's busy talking to this neighbor about the rocks, and then she says, of all things, "You want to come over now and see the rocks?" And now I could feel my top about to explode, so I take a few steps away just to take some deep breaths, and I do maybe what you call a perception box shift, and I talk to myself, I talk to a younger part of myself, and I say-
Christof Koch:
In your head?
Dan Siegel:
In my head. 'Cause she's busy talking about the rocks. And I said, "You could get angry at her now, and you could go storming off, and you could be upset for a day or two, and think about how she doesn't love you, or you could realize there's a younger part of you inside of you, an aspect of you, a state of mind, an implicit memory of ways your dad was a raging maniac, and your mother withdrew, and that combination of a storm and a desert left you filled with all sorts of potentially shame-inducing disconnections. So she's just talking about rocks 'cause she's excited to see this neighbor, this is not about her not loving you." I say to myself. And so what I do is I take care of that little boy, and I don't expect her to be my mother that I never had.
And so I take a deep breath, and within 30 seconds, because I'm in awareness in this kind of hub of the wheel, really, 'cause maybe I've been practicing that because I had a great retreat, I can just say to myself, "It's okay. She got distracted by this, and this is not a sign of her not loving you, you don't need to be angry." And the anger dissipates.
Heather Berlin:
And that is also, I think, really important to have-
Christof Koch:
That's cool.
Heather Berlin:
... this sort of self-love, and self... Provide the security and safety for yourself if it's not being... Not depending on other people to provide it for you.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, and I would just make a minor edit, 'cause I have a little nutty about the word self.
Heather Berlin:
Okay.
Dan Siegel:
I would just put inner before that, because-
Heather Berlin:
Your inner self.
Dan Siegel:
Inner self.
Heather Berlin:
Yes.
Dan Siegel:
So that we don't say things like self-compassion, because you and you are this self 'cause we have this relational self inner. So just say inner self.
Heather Berlin:
There's inner self, and then there's the more expansive self.
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
There are people out there that are working, not with you in this very... We were talking about this very idyllic way in which we all connect, and we're really being seen by each other, but there's some people that are working against you, that are people who are not good for you to be around, that are triggering these things within you constantly, these insecurities from childhood, and maybe they are not the kinds of people that you want to be spending your time with, right?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
We're talking about this idealistic world where we're all going to connect and help each other in these different ways, but sometimes there are people that are working against you, that are triggering these negative feelings in you that-
Christof Koch:
They're resistant to therapy.
Heather Berlin:
Resistant, or lack empathy. And the solution to that might be to not interact, or keep... 'Cause you keep trying to integrate with some people that are just not available for that.
Dan Siegel:
That's true. Yeah.
Heather Berlin:
And I think it's important for some people in those kinds of relationships to consider that as well. So my question is, what are you most afraid that somebody else will find out about you?
Dan Siegel:
What am I afraid that somebody else might find out about me? You mean now or when I was younger?
Heather Berlin:
It could be when you were younger.
Dan Siegel:
'Cause I actually don't think I'm too afraid of that. I mean, these days, I feel pretty-
Heather Berlin:
Well, now that you're so evolved. This is the pre-evolved Dan.
Dan Siegel:
I don't know if I'm evolved, but I'm pretty relaxed.
Heather Berlin:
Okay. Okay. Was there-
Dan Siegel:
[inaudible 00:48:03]
Christof Koch:
But when you were 18?
Heather Berlin:
Yeah, like sort of-
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, when I was younger.
Heather Berlin:
... security or something where you would feel...
Dan Siegel:
I think there were all sorts of things that happened in my childhood that made me feel like I was potentially a very toxic person. And just to say it very briefly, when I was four, I got some rabbits, and I was so excited to have them, I gave them some water to drink, and then I got them some leaves to eat, and when I gave them the leaves to eat, they just died in my arms.
Christof Koch:
What?
Dan Siegel:
Yeah, because-
Heather Berlin:
Why?
Dan Siegel:
... they were oleander leaves, and no one told me that the bush I was sitting next to was poisonous.
Heather Berlin:
Oh, gosh.
Dan Siegel:
So I had this feeling like, "Wow, my exuberance could kill someone." And then 10 years later, the same thing happened with a puppy I was taking care of.
Heather Berlin:
I thought you'd say with a person.
Dan Siegel:
No. Probably with a person too. But I always feared to be with a person. So I always feared that my-
Heather Berlin:
Wow.
Dan Siegel:
... exuberance for life, or love of somebody could actually hurt them. So I think when I was younger, I was really afraid to let someone know how much love I had for them 'cause it could hurt them. So it was-
Heather Berlin:
By killing people with kindness?
Dan Siegel:
Not even like that, just like there was something wrong with me. Somehow I implicitly learned that if I was too excited, it would kill something I loved.
Heather Berlin:
So how did you overcome that?
Dan Siegel:
Therapy helped, being in relationships helped. And then actually, recently, I did a whole thing called the Hoffman Process, which was this immersion in how stuff you experienced in your childhood made you feel unworthy of stuff. And stuff came up that I didn't even know that was really liberating, and I'm just finishing another book. In a book-
Christof Koch:
So you can overcome that-
Dan Siegel:
You can overcome that.
Christof Koch:
... with proper therapy, or friends, or reading, or...
Dan Siegel:
Absolutely. In the book called Mindsight, I talk about a patient called Stewart who was in his 90s, and he changed so much. His wife called me up, and said, "Dr. Dan, did you give Stewart a brain transplant?" And all we did was we identified what areas of his brain didn't develop because of the non-secure attachment. Once we could name that, like a laser beam, we could then focus... 'Cause where attention goes, neural firing flows and neural connection grows. So my job as a therapist is to figure out where the blockages to integration are. Once we figure out one of nine domains where it is, or all of them, then focus his attention to get his brain to get activated in areas that haven't been developed yet, even in his 90s. And you'll see in that story in Mindsight... Those are all completely true stories, you'll see the way he changes.
Christof Koch:
So this is something that neuroscience has learned over the last 40 years, that even in old age, your brain is still... I mean, healthy old age, it's different for dementia, your brain can still change, you can still learn new.... You can teach an old dog new tricks.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Heather Berlin:
I like to say you're a work-in-progress until your very last breath.
Dan Siegel:
Exactly.
Christof Koch:
Amen.
Dan Siegel:
Amen.
Heather Berlin:
Yes. And on that note, thank you so much, Dan, for being here. This has been fantastic as always.
Dan Siegel:
Thank you, Heather. Thank you, Christof. It's really been a real pleasure. Thank you.
Heather Berlin:
And if you'd like to learn more about your own perception box, spend some time this week answering the same perception box questions that we asked your guest, and check out other questions on the website at unlikelycollaborators.com. And you can also subscribe to our YouTube channel, and watch the show, or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Ever wonder why time seems to fly or crawl? From ancient philosophers to modern neuroscientists, the nature of time has captivated human curiosity. This week on Science of Perception Box, we investigate the relationships among time, memory, and perception. Dr. Davachi shares the mechanisms of how the brain encodes and retrieves memories, including why emotions and feelings play a role in our perception of time.
Lila Davachi is a prominent neuroscientist known for her research in the field of memory. She earned her PhD from Yale University in 1999 and currently holds a faculty position at Columbia University, where she leads the Davachi Memory Lab. Her work primarily focuses on understanding the processes of memory encoding, consolidation, and retrieval through behavioral and cognitive neuroscientific methods.
Dr. Davachi has made significant contributions to the understanding of how memories are formed and maintained in the brain. She has published extensively in academic journals, with her research being highly cited within the scientific community. In addition to her research, she is actively involved in teaching and mentoring students in psychology and neuroscience.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation as well as the current Meritorious Investigator and Former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app or tell a friend about the show.
When was the last time you felt absolutely mesmerized by something beautiful? Whether it’s seeing a breathtaking vista, losing yourself in a piece of music, or being in a crowd cheering for the same team, the feeling of awe can be all-encompassing and expansive. This week on Science of Perception Box, Dr. Dacher Keltner, one of the world’s foremost emotion scientists and a scientific advisor behind Pixar’s Inside Out, shares how we can cultivate more awe in our life and why we need this sometimes overlooked emotion.
Dr. Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the faculty director of the Greater Good Science Center. He has over 200 scientific publications and six books, including Born to Be Good, The Compassionate Instinct, and The Power Paradox. Dr. Keltner is involved with the education of health care providers and judges and has consulted extensively for Google, Apple, and Pinterest on issues related to emotion and well-being.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School Of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for The Tiny Blue Dot Foundation as well as the current Meritorious investigator and Former President of the Allen Institute For Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Wednesday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app or tell a friend about the show.
How can parents embrace science in order to give their children the best possible environment to thrive in? Cognitive development expert Dr. Alison Gopnik joins us to discuss how navigating challenges fosters healthier adults, likening caregiving to being a gardener creating an environment where various ”plants” can thrive in different conditions. Exposing children to diverse environments helps them develop better coping mechanisms, akin to how the immune system strengthens against viruses.
Dr. Gopnik is a professor at the University of California at Berkeley, where she has taught since 1988. She is a world leader in cognitive science, particularly the study of children’s learning and development. She is the author of over 100 journal articles and several books including the best-selling and critically acclaimed popular books The Scientist in the Crib, The Philosophical Baby, and The Gardener and the Carpenter. She is a fellow of the Cognitive Science Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
We long for love. We die for love. We kill for love. But why do we love? Cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch ask this question to Helen Fisher, PhD. who dedicated her career to researching romantic love. In this episode of Science of Perception Box, we explore how the act of being in love or out of love changes how we view ourselves and the world around us.
Dr. Fisher was a biological anthropologist, Senior Research Fellow at The Kinsey Institute, and Chief Science Advisor to Match.com. She used brain scanning (fMRI) to study the neural systems associated with the sex drive, romantic love, attachment, rejection, love addiction, long-term partnership happiness, and the biological foundations of human personality. She conducted extensive research on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery, and divorce.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
What happens when an irredeemable person receives love, gratitude, and respect? After decades of drug and alcohol abuse, chef and television personality Andrew Zimmern learned firsthand.
As a teenager, Andrew Zimmern experienced deep pain when his mother became permanently disabled, and his father enforced a rule to avoid discussing feelings. Without an outlet, that pain grew into resentment and substance abuse. By 14, Zimmern was drinking daily, and his addiction followed him into adulthood, ultimately costing him his career, relationships, and home.
In January 1992, after hitting rock bottom, Zimmern attempted to take his own life. When he woke up, something shifted. For the first time, he asked for help. His friends intervened, sending him to rehab, where he began confronting his emotions and embracing a mindset of learning and giving.
Zimmern rebuilt his life, becoming a celebrated chef, author, and TV personality. Today, he credits that one vulnerable moment with saving his life and inspiring him to live with purpose and gratitude.
About Andrew Zimmern:
Andrew Zimmern is a chef, food writer, and television personality best known for hosting Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel. A four-time James Beard Award winner, Zimmern has dedicated his career to exploring global cuisines and advocating for culinary diversity. Beyond television, he is a passionate philanthropist, focusing on hunger relief, food sustainability, and social justice. He founded the Andrew Zimmern Project to support food security initiatives and works with organizations like Second Harvest and Services for the Underserved. Through his work, Zimmern strives to create a more equitable food system and inspire cultural appreciation through cuisine.
The one phrase that changed Diana Nyad’s life, and set her on course to become the first person ever to conquer the 110 mile, 53 hour swim from Florida to Cuba.
At 64, Diana Nyad swam 110 miles from Cuba to Florida, facing jellyfish, exhaustion, and tough ocean currents for over 53 hours. But this feat was more than just physical - it was the result of a lifetime of mental endurance.
As a young swimmer, she faced sexual abuse from her coach, which derailed her Olympic dreams and left deep emotional scars. Instead of letting those experiences hold her back, she found a way to channel that pain into something powerful. She talks about developing a "steel trap mind," using her struggles as motivation to pursue her goals.
Diana's journey goes beyond breaking records. It’s a powerful reminder of the human spirit's ability to persevere and heal, no matter the odds. Her swim from Cuba to Florida, completed on her fifth attempt, showcases her incredible willpower and serves as an inspiration to people everywhere.
About Diana Nyad: Diana Nyad is an endurance swimmer, author, and motivational speaker best known for her 2013 record-breaking swim from Cuba to Florida at age 64. Completing the 110-mile journey without a shark cage, she demonstrated unparalleled resilience and determination. Nyad is also a bestselling author, journalist, and co-founder of EverWalk, a fitness initiative promoting community through walking. Her story of perseverance, chronicled in her memoir Find a Way, continues to inspire audiences worldwide.
“I saw that when I believed my thoughts, I suffered, and when I didn’t believe them, I didn’t suffer.”
Author and public speaker Byron Katie shares how she transformed her life after discovering ‘The Work’, a method for identifying the thoughts that cause pain and suffering. By asking herself four simple yet profound questions, she found a way to recover from her agoraphobia, reunite with her family, and begin teaching others how to heal.
Katie’s strategy for ending suffering lies in asking yourself four questions about the thoughts you’re having: Is it true? Can you absolutely know it’s true? How do you react when you believe it? Who are you without the thought?
By asking yourself these questions, Katie explains how you can begin to escape the mentalities that hold you back. Her method shows us that peace doesn’t come from changing the world—it comes from changing how we see it.
About Byron Katie: Byron Katie is an author and teacher who helps people find peace by questioning their stressful thoughts. In 1986, after years of depression, she experienced a life-changing realization that led her to create The Work, a simple process of self-inquiry. Her books, like Loving What Is and A Thousand Names for Joy, have touched millions. Through workshops and talks, Katie shares a path to clarity and freedom, helping people live with more acceptance and ease.
Our cultural lenses can expand our Perception Box or contract it, keeping us closed off to new opportunities. So how do we become aware of the personal influences that shape our perceptions? In this episode of Science of Perception Box, cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch discuss the impact of cultural differences on identity and mindsets with guest Dr. Daphna Oyserman. Dr. Oyserman shares her insights on how small changes in context can significantly affect our mindset and choices, impacting our health and academic performance.
Dr. Daphna Oyserman is a Dean’s Professor of Psychology and Professor of Psychology and Education at the University of Southern California. Dr. Oyserman received a PhD in psychology and social work from the University of Michigan and served on the faculty of The Hebrew University, Jerusalem, before returning to the University of Michigan where she last held appointments as the Edwin J. Thomas Collegiate Professor of Social Work, Professor of Psychology, and Research Professor in the Institute for Social Research.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
What is the mind? Does the mind exist only in your own Perception Box, or is there a greater connection of consciousness? In this episode of Science of Perception Box, cohosts Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christoph Koch discuss the interconnectedness of the mind, the impact of implicit memories from infancy on childhood attachment, and the wheel of awareness with Dr. Dan Siegel. Dr. Siegel shares his research and practices on healing unresolved trauma, preventing burnout for caregivers and medical professionals, and channeling the Perception Box-expanding power of empathy.
Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute and Founding Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA, where he was also Co-Principal Investigator of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and Clinical Professor at the School of Medicine. An award-winning educator, he is a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association and recipient of several honorary fellowships. He has authored numerous articles and books, including five New York Times bestsellers.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
Visit unlikelycollaborators.com for more information.
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Humans have a symbiotic relationship with plants. Plants coevolved to suit our desires for nourishment, beauty, and altering consciousness. Journalist Michael Pollan has investigated the human connection to plants. This week on Science of Perception Box, Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch ask Pollan about modern trends like ultra-processed foods, industrialized agriculture, and consciousness-altering drugs from plants including caffeine, cannabis, and psychedelics.
For more than 30 years, Michael Pollan has been writing books and articles about the places where the human and natural worlds intersect: on our plates, in our farms and gardens, and in our minds. Pollan is the author of eight books, six of which have been New York Times bestsellers. In 2003, Pollan was appointed the John S. and James L. Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism and the director of the Knight Program in Science and Environmental Journalism. In 2020, along with Dacher Keltner and others, he cofounded the UC Berkeley Center for the Science of Psychedelics.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Join us for new episodes every Thursday. Follow the show on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever podcasts are found.
Love the show? Write us a review on your podcast app, or tell a friend about the show.
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Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square, overcame a challenging upbringing marked by social isolation and family tragedy, channeling those experiences into a life defined by action, innovation, and iconoclasm. Though he’s undeniably earned his reputation as a business trailblazer, McKelvey remains uncomfortable with any attempts to mythologize his journey.
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As a child, Bob Stiller felt unmoored. His mother’s death was a loss that fueled anger, insecurity and, as a teenager, lots of partying. He founded rolling paper company E-Z Wider in 1971 and, a decade later, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters.
Sophia Amoruso (aka Nasty Gal) started a tiny online vintage clothing store that quickly turned into a $350 million business. Fame soon followed, but so did all of her insecurities.
Anxiety can make us feel like we’re trapped in our brain. So how do we open the door and gain freedom? This week in the inaugural episode of Science of Perception Box podcast, Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch invite Dr. Judson Brewer to delve into the roots of anxiety, its impact on our perception, and how curiosity can be the key to lasting change.
Dr. Judson Brewer studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness. He is the Director of Research and Innovation at Brown University’s Mindfulness Center, where he’s also an Associate Professor at the School of Medicine. Dr. Brewer is a leading expert in the science of self-mastery and breaking habits. His books include Unwinding Anxiety, The Craving Mind, and The Hunger Habit.
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City.
Dr. Christof Koch is Chief Scientist for the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation and the current Meritorious Investigator and former President of the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
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Join renowned scientists Dr. Heather Berlin and Dr. Christof Koch on the Science of Perception Box, where they delve into the Perception Box—a groundbreaking concept developed by Elizabeth R. Koch, that reveals how our beliefs, biases, and neural wiring shape our reality and define how we experience the world.
Through captivating conversations with expert guests like psychiatrist Dr. Judson Brewer, anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher, and journalist Michael Pollan, the show explores how the Perception Box expands in states of awe, curiosity, and love, and contracts during fear, anxiety, or anger.
From mindfulness and romantic relationships to psychedelics and human connection, each episode uncovers transformative insights into unlocking greater awareness, fostering curiosity, and reshaping how we perceive the world.
New episodes drop every Thursday on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Follow the journey and redefine your reality.
Don’t call yourself “a writer,” just write. Ryan Holiday on how the labels you give yourself can hold you back.
Who would you be without all the labels and identities you’ve collected over the course of your life?
Ego, titles, and societal expectations often shape who we think we are—or who we think we should be. Author, and for simplicity's sake, bookstore owner, Ryan Holiday explains the simple question “What do you do?” can turn into a trap, making us cling to roles that don’t really define us. But what happens when you let go of these labels? What if, instead of focusing on the identity of being a writer, you focused on the act of writing itself?
As Holiday got older, he learned that being busy “doing the verb” is far more valuable than obsessing over the noun. It’s easy to get caught up in trying to fit into the “right” categories and titles, but that often means copying, comparing, and losing sight of what really matters.
About Ryan Holiday: Ryan Holiday is a bestselling author, marketer, and one of today’s leading voices in modern Stoicism. He’s known for taking ancient wisdom and making it relatable and practical for everyday life. Before becoming an author, he led marketing at American Apparel. Now, he writes about strategy, self-discipline, and leadership, weaving history into real-world advice.
When a group of first responders were asked to confront the Perception Box question, "What need inside of yourself have you been neglecting?", their raw and honest responses were deeply moving and sparked profound reflection.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
“I feel like I had to lose my sight to fully gain my vision.” John Furniss on how becoming blind led him to drug abuse, rehab, woodworking, and finally, to a fulfilling life.
John Furniss, also known as the Blind Woodsman, opens up about his journey from a difficult past to finding peace and purpose. After losing his sight as a teenager, John struggled for years to accept his new reality, battling inner turmoil and substance abuse along the way. It wasn't until he discovered woodworking through a vocational rehab program that he found a way to channel his creativity and start healing.
Woodworking became more than just a skill for John; it allowed him to bring the designs he imagined in his mind to life. This craft also led him to meet his wife, Annie, who has been a constant source of love and support. Through his work and his relationship, John found a sense of belonging and a new way of seeing the world. He reflects on how losing his sight actually helped him gain a clearer vision of who he is and what he’s meant to do, ultimately finding peace in embracing his true self.
About John Furniss:
John Furniss, known professionally as The Blind Woodsman, is a skilled woodworker, author, and disability advocate recognized for his meticulous hand-turned creations. After losing his sight at 16, John faced significant challenges adapting to life with total blindness. In his 20s, he found his passion for woodworking through a class designed for the blind, which led to the development of his unique craft.
Today, John’s work has been featured on platforms such as Good Morning America and The Kelly Clarkson Show. He and his wife, Anni, who is also an artist, use their social media platforms to share their work and raise awareness about disability and mental health. John’s expertise in woodworking and his contributions to the art community have established him as a respected figure in his field.
Kaelynn Partlow shares her story about life with autism, ADHD, and dyslexia, and how finding the right diagnosis helped her embrace her neurodivergent identity.
Kaelynn Partlow, an author, autism advocate, and registered behavior technician, shares her own experiences living with autism, ADHD, dyslexia, and more. She talks about how these diagnoses shifted her self-perception from feeling "stupid" to understanding her unique challenges and strengths.
Kaelynn opens up about the misunderstandings neurodivergent people face and the difficulty of connecting in a world that often doesn't accommodate different ways of thinking. She also shares her fears—like wondering if her social difficulties will ever improve—and how she copes with loneliness, especially when not focused on work.
Through it all, Kaelynn emphasizes the value of recognizing your own strengths, even when it’s hard. By taking on challenges and thriving under pressure, she found new opportunities, from public speaking to creative writing. Her story shows that growth often comes from facing fears and redefining success on your own terms.
About Kaelynn Partlow:
In 2015, Kaelynn Partlow joined Project Hope Foundation as a Registered Behavior Technician. She is now a Lead Technician, providing services to middle and high-school-aged clients and contributing to staff training development.
In 2021, Kaelynn was featured on the Netflix series Love On The Spectrum. She has also been a guest on numerous national podcasts and has published several articles, offering insights from an autistic perspective.
With a large following on various social media platforms, Kaelynn uses her reach for autism advocacy, connecting with millions globally. In addition to her online work and role at Project Hope, she is an international public speaker, passionate about sharing tangible strategies for best practices when interacting with individuals on the autism spectrum
Your brain is wired to repeat the familiar. Change this wiring, and it will change your life.
Nicole Vignola, a neuroscientist and organizational psychologist, explains how deeply rooted beliefs can limit our potential and keep us trapped in patterns of thought. These perceptions, often shaped by our upbringing and environment, aren’t necessarily our own—but they can be changed.
Nicole shares how the brain’s natural biases, like negativity bias and confirmation bias, reinforce these limiting beliefs. However, with the right approach, it’s possible to reshape our mental patterns. By practicing metacognition—observing and naming our thoughts—we can start to rewire our perception and create new, empowering narratives.
Our brains are capable of change at any age. By focusing on small wins and challenging automatic thoughts, we can break free from old beliefs and begin using a mindset that better serves ourselves and our futures.
About Nicole Vignola:
Nicole Vignola is a neuroscientist, author and corporate consultant. With a BSc in Neuroscience and an MSc in Organizational Psychology, Nicole works with companies and individuals worldwide, educating them on the science of human optimisation, health and longevity, and how to enable employees to perform better in their daily lives and in turn, bring peak performance to the workplace. Recent clients include Lloyds Bank, Makers Mark and Smeg Ltd.
Expanding your worldview starts with understanding your brain. Stanford neuroscientist David Eagleman explains.
David Eagleman, a neuroscientist at Stanford and host of the Inner Cosmos podcast, explores how our brains shape the reality we experience and why we often accept our perceptions as the only truth. From a young age, we develop our understanding of the world based on limited experiences and biases, which can lead us to form narrow views about what's true.
Eagleman explains that our genetics and life experiences wire our brains in unique ways, meaning that each of us sees the world a little differently. He introduces the idea of "perceptual genomics," which looks at how slight genetic differences influence our perception of reality. He also discusses how our brains naturally create in-groups and out-groups, a tendency rooted in evolution that affects how much empathy we feel for others.
To overcome these biases, Eagleman suggests that we start by recognizing our own prejudices, understanding the tactics of dehumanization, and connecting with others through shared interests. This approach helps us appreciate the diverse realities others experience, ultimately contributing to a more empathetic and understanding society.
About David Eagleman:
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University and an internationally bestselling author. He is co-founder of two venture-backed companies, Neosensory and BrainCheck, and he also directs the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit institute. He is best known for his work on sensory substitution, time perception, brain plasticity, synesthesia, and neurolaw.
Challenging the loneliness stigma can change your life. Here’s how to start.
From a young age, many of us are taught that being alone means something is wrong, leading to negative thought patterns that reinforce feelings of isolation. Kasley Killam, author of The Art and Science of Connection and an expert in social health, explains how these perceptions of loneliness can shape our experiences and influence our lives.
According to Killam, this stigma around loneliness can trigger a stress response in the body, affecting both mental and physical well being. However, by challenging these narratives and reminding ourselves of how much control we really have, it’s possible to redirect our mindsets. It also helps, she says, to understand the difference between individualistic and collectivist cultures, and how each one can influence the way we interpret and discuss our feelings with others.
For those who have struggled with loneliness or felt trapped in a cycle of negative thinking, this perspective can help us break free. By shifting our thought patterns, we can transform our relationships, enhance our sense of connection, and improve our overall well-being.
About Kasley Killam:
Kasley Killam is a social health expert, author, and advocate focused on strengthening connections and enhancing community well-being. With a background in behavioral science and public health from Harvard University, she is a leading voice on the impact of social relationships on mental and physical health.
As the founder of Social Health Labs, Killam collaborates with organizations to develop innovative solutions for combating loneliness and social isolation. Her work has been featured in major publications, and she is a sought-after speaker on the importance of social well-being in creating healthier, more resilient communities.
Ever wonder why your partner goes Tasmanian Devil in traffic jams while you just shrug? Or why you have such a hard time setting boundaries with parents when your sibling has no problem saying "hell no!" Everyone has something that triggers panic or turns their blood cold…and it all starts with the story you made up about yourself when you were too young to know the difference…your Perception Box Seed Story.
A group of LGBTQ+ individuals courageously answered the Perception Box question, "Who or what have you left behind on your journey to become who you are today?" Their honest and insightful responses were deeply moving.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
How has Kel Mitchell navigated self-doubt, isolation, and the desire to “hit the off button”? He says it’s all faith, community, and personal forgiveness.
After his debut on Nickelodeon, Kel Mitchell began a life-long career as an actor and comedian. He got married, started a family, and basked in professional success. However, behind the scenes, he faced intense personal hardships that pushed him to the brink, testing his resilience and strength in ways he never imagined.
Kel guides us through the lowest points of his life, showing us how faith in himself and his religion helped him rebuild and achieve a fulfilling existence. He reminds us that blessings can often be hidden in hardships and that mistakes play a crucial role in shaping who we are.
By expressing his pain and opening up to others about the things he was struggling with, he was able to find unity, community, and support from those who had experienced similar drawbacks. Mitchell stresses the importance of understanding others, and how deep relationships can change – and even save – lives.
If you or someone you know is considering suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255), text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 or go to suicidepreventionlifeline.org.
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Kel Mitchell is a two-time Emmy Award-nominated actor, producer, comedian, and youth pastor hailing from Chicago, Illinois.
Mitchell executive produced and appeared in the new iteration of the beloved Nickelodeon series All That, bringing him full circle to the original award-winning show that was his big break. All That was Nickelodeon's longest-running live-action series, with 171 episodes across ten seasons from 1994 to 2005. The franchise paved the way for a number of successful spin-offs, including Kenan & Kel, The Amanda Show, The Nick Cannon Show, and the feature-length film Good Burger, all of which cemented Mitchell's impact on pop culture.
A two-part visualization to help you gain distance from any overpowering emotion so you can respond to the true need of the moment with something closer to calm.
Harvard physician Aditi Nerukar explains how to rewire your brain’s stress response to live a more resilient life.
If you’ve ever heard the phrase “pressure makes diamonds,” this video is for you.
Harvard physician Aditi Nerurkar was working 80 hours a week, and, despite what she was telling herself about resilience, the stress was taking a major toll. She explains how there are two different kinds of stress, aptly named “adaptive” and “maladaptive.” But how can you tell the difference between the two?
Dr. Nerukar explains that healthy, adaptive stress moves your life forward, while unhealthy, maladaptive stress wears you down and diminishes your productivity. When experiencing maladaptive stress, you may find yourself plummeting closer to burnout, or a complete shutdown. To combat these consequences, Dr. Neurkar offers two easily achievable methods for resetting your brain in high-stress situations.
Whether you're navigating a demanding job, balancing multiple life roles, or simply looking to improve your stress management, this information can help you thrive without compromising your well-being. Remember to slow down, take deep breaths, and regularly check in with yourself to ensure your stress remains healthy and manageable!
Neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor explains the 4 key ”characters” of the brain, and how understanding each can expand your perception of yourself, and the world, forever.
At age 37, neuroanatomist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor suffered a stroke that would take her eight years to fully recover from. This is how it changed her understanding of the brain.
In this interview, Dr. Jill draws a map of the human brain, explaining how it is comprised of four distinct modules, each serving a unique role in function and personality. This combination of cognitive and emotional components gives rise to the multidimensional characters within each of us.
Are you looking to be more rational, more creative, more forgiving, or perhaps less rigid in your thinking? Dr. Jill suggests that by becoming aware of the four modules of our brains, we can consciously choose to engage specific parts. This awareness allows us to harness the true power of our brains and shape who we want to become, ultimately fostering less anxiety, more inner peace, and a vastly more purposeful life.
Carrie Berk reveals how she transformed her struggle with anxiety and internet fame by changing her perception and finding her true voice as a writer.
Carrie Berk, author, journalist, and social media influencer with nearly 4 million TikTok followers, shares her journey through anxiety, internet fame, and personal growth.
Amid the pandemic and sudden online fame, Carrie faced intense anxiety, receiving harmful threats from strangers and grappling with the pressures of social media. Sharing her most vulnerable moments, including her first heartbreak at sixteen, Carrie emphasizes the importance of authenticity. Through therapy and self-discovery, she learned that while she couldn’t switch off her anxiety, she could change her response to it.
Carrie’s story is a perfect example of the resilience it takes to be a young person in today’s social climate, and proves how powerful self-confidence and inner strength can be.
This group of people who have experienced homelessness were asked the Perception Box question, "In moments of deep solitude, what major concerns and questions about YOU tend to dominate your thoughts?" Their honest answers were deeply moving and insightful.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
In this episode, a group of formerly incarcerated individuals was asked the Perception Box question, "What are you most afraid is true about you?" Their candid responses were incredibly moving and thought-provoking.
This series (a collaboration with Jubilee Media) is designed for communities with shared experiences to spark deeper self-understanding and connection by sharing their answers to specially selected Perception Box questions. This highlights the power of vulnerability and the importance of creating safe spaces for honest conversations.
Jewel says denying the truth cost her years of her life. This is how she shifted her perception to see truth more clearly and regain her strength.
“My number one job was to be a happy, whole human — not a human full of holes.” Jewel Kilcher, singer-songwriter, and visual artist, opens up about her childhood, the start of her career, and what makes Jewel, Jewel.
After being discovered during a coffee shop gig in the 1990’s, folk singer Jewel began the life-long endeavor of being a performer. Jewel went on to gain worldwide recognition for her talent and creativity. But who is she at her core? What are her greatest fears, her deepest aspirations?
In this interview, Jewel shares the personal struggles and triumphs that have shaped her, the importance of truth on her life and well-being, and the lessons she's learned along the way. Through this conversation, Jewel offers an up-close look into her journey, revealing the experiences and hard-won insights that have shaped her as both an artist and a person.
Experience Jewel’s latest exhibit at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, The Portal: An Art Experience by Jewel ► https://crystalbridges.org/calendar/the-portal-an-art-experience-by-jewel/
About Jewel:
Jewel Kilcher, known mononymously as Jewel, embodies the quintessential story of resilience and artistic integrity. From her humble beginnings in the rugged landscapes of Alaska to her rise as a multi-platinum recording artist, Jewel's journey is a testament to the transformative power of art. Homeless at 18, she honed her craft performing in coffee shops, blending folk, pop, and country influences with her ethereal voice and introspective songwriting.
Her debut album, "Pieces of You," captured hearts worldwide, achieving remarkable commercial success while delivering profound, soul-stirring messages. Beyond music, Jewel's talents extend to poetry and acting, with her literary works and performances reflecting her deep empathy and authenticity.
Jewel's commitment to social causes, including mental health advocacy and her foundation, the Inspiring Children Foundation, underscores her dedication to making a positive impact. In a world often dominated by transient fame, Jewel stands out as a beacon of enduring creativity and compassionate leadership.
Alyssa and her ex-boyfriend Trey have successfully transitioned from lovers to best friends. But can she recreate that same dynamic with her most recent ex, Adal? Alyssa, Trey, and Adal dive deep into their pasts and their relationships with each other by answering a series of thought-provoking Perception Box questions. Watch their honest reflections, uncover their perspectives on love and friendship, and discover what the future holds for this unique trio.
What happens when men shed their armor and embrace their emotions? Men from diverse backgrounds share their stories of overcoming trauma, redefining masculinity, and finding strength in vulnerability. This is a must-watch for anyone seeking deeper connections and understanding.
Emma and Nick both swiped "yes" in person. Now that they have a chance to get to know each other and themselves more deeply by answering Perception Box questions, are they compatible?
Arielle & Ella met on a Nectar dating show. Was it meant to be, or are they destined to be just friends? They will find out when they get to know their true selves and each other by answering Perception Box questions.
Participants are invited to sit down to ask each other Perception Box questions to see if two strangers could sit down and get vulnerable with one another.
This powerful episode features a group of individuals with disabilities opening up about their deepest fears and struggles. Their experiences highlight the unique challenges they face, from concerns about independent living to mental health struggles and navigating social stigma, and ultimately how they can relate to one another.
Michael Oher gained widespread recognition through Michael Lewis's book "The Blind Side" and its film adaptation, which depicted his difficulties in early life and time playing college football. After attending the University of Mississippi, he played in the NFL for the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans, and Carolina Panthers, winning the SuperBowl with the Ravens in 2013.
Shaka Senghor spent 19 years in prison, 7 of them in solitary confinement. This is how he found true freedom.
Watch the full video here.
Watch what happens when this group of strangers bravely share their unspoken truths. Will these women find connection in the unexpected? Could sharing your secret be the key to unlocking a powerful sense of belonging?
Curious about tools for fostering deeper self-awareness? Check out the latest episode of Tea for Two by Nectar. Former high school sweethearts, Diane & Justin, use Perception Box questions to explore their individual needs and communication styles. Great insights for anyone in a relationship, whether personal or professional.
Hailey and Travis first met on the Nectar channel, now they are going on their first date and things get deep.
Do you ever feel like you have something to prove?
Scientific experts explain how each person's perception is skewed by various factors such as beliefs, biases, and narratives.
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A collection of interviews dedicated to sharing unique perspectives and challenging our preconceived notions.
Jim Lee, President, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics tells us how his childhood obsession with Superman changed his life.
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Explore how overcoming the limiting beliefs that hold us back, can expand the possibilities of our perception, and open us up to new ways of seeing and being seen.
The Osbournes was MTV’s biggest show – and it almost cost Jack Osbourne his life. Here’s how his family’s reality TV fame stole his childhood, and how he’s been able to heal since.
Meet Jordan and Rana. These two undergrads have been in an exclusive situationship, but are ready to confront where their relationship is going and what might come next.
Tea for Two explores how daters show up in a relationship by first taking a look at their relationship with themselves. Through a series of Perception Box questions, Tea for Two questions, and challenges, these daters get to know each other and themselves on a whole new level. This allows them to dig deeper, uncover more meaningful connections, and figure out if they are ready to be in this relationship.
This is how rejection made executive producer and director Julie Plec an undeniable leader.
Creator of the popular series “The Vampire Diaries,” Julie Plec is proof imposter syndrome never goes away, no matter how big you make it. The writer and producer answered our questions about self-doubt, getting “blacklisted,” and how we can alter our perceptions to better appreciate our successes.
About Julie Plec:
Julie Plec is a creator, showrunner, executive producer and director, most notably responsible for the complete Vampire Diaries Universe (The Vampire Diaries, The Originals, and Legacies), which spanned thirteen years and more than 300 episodes of television.
Plec is co-creator and co-showrunner of the upcoming series Vampire Academy, based on the popular book series, which recently wrapped production in Spain and is debuting September 15, 2022, on Peacock. She is also co-creator of the new series Dead Day, along with her Vampire Diaries partner Kevin Williamson, which was recently picked up to series at Peacock as well, and executive producer of Girls on the Bus, which was picked up straight to series at HBO Max.
Plec is creator and executive producer of Legacies, which recently aired its fourth and final season on the CW, along with serving as an executive producer of Roswell, New Mexico, which recently aired its fourth and final season on the CW as well. In addition, Plec served as executive producer of The Endgame, starring Morena Baccarin and Ryan Michelle Bathé, which recently aired on NBC.
She is currently under an overall deal at Universal Television, where she and Emily Cummins, president of her production company, My So-Called Company, are developing projects across all platforms for the studio. Plec and Cummins recently announced a new project at Peacock, Clifton, along with a slate of several other projects in development.
Along with directing multiple episodes of The Vampire Diaries, Legacies, and Roswell, New Mexico, for which she also directed the pilot, Plec directed an episode of the CW’s hit series Riverdale, and most recently directed an episode of her new series Vampire Academy.
Plec developed and executive produced Containment, which aired as a limited series on the CW in 2016.
She got her start as a television writer and co-executive producer for the series Kyle XY, which she produced for the show’s three-year run. Other television credits include Dawson’s Creek, on which she collaborated with creator/executive producer Kevin Williamson, and The Tomorrow People, on which she collaborated with fellow executive producers Greg Berlanti and Phil Klemmer.
In the early part of her career, Plec worked with both Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson during the run of their hit Scream franchise. She also co-produced Berlanti’s directorial debut film, The Broken Hearts Club.
Your emotions do not reflect an irrefutable truth. Psychologist Kristen Lindquist explains how important that is for connecting across cultures.
When it comes to obtaining an objective understanding of the world around us, emotions may not be as reliable as we think, explains Kristen Lindquist, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Lindquist explores the concept of "affective realism," a term that describes how our feelings shape our reality, both of which are influenced by cultural nuances. She unravels the connections between emotions, culture, and the brain, challenging the notion that our emotional experiences always mirror objective truths.
About Kristen Lindquist:
Kristen Lindquist, PhD. is a Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Her research seeks to understand the psychological and neural basis of emotions, moods, and feelings. Her on-going work uses tools from social cognition, physiology, neuroscience, and big data methods to examine how emotions emerge from the confluence of the body, brain, and culture.
Robert Waldinger is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst and Zen priest. He is Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, where he directs the Harvard Study of Adult Development. His TEDx talk on this subject has received nearly 44 million views, and is the 9th most watched TED talk of all time. He is the co-author of The Good Life with Dr. Marc Schulz.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Robert Waldinger about the secret to a happy life. Robert shares the recent findings of The Grant Study, which is the longest scientific study of happiness ever conducted. It’s been ongoing for more than 80 years now, and has had high profile participants like US President John F. Kennedy. Robert and Scott get into the details of how they continue to conduct research and how to make sense of both the new and old data. Sure enough, what the study has found consistent is the power of connection. They also touch on the topics of psychodynamic therapy, defense mechanisms, attachment, and psychological research.
Website: www.robertwaldinger.com
X: @robertwaldinger
The divisive gold/blue dress that almost broke the internet in 2015 is a relatable example of how a Perception Box works. How each of us having our Perception Box, own subjective reality, affects the way we experience the world.
Expert James Fadiman explains how psychedelics have the power to expand consciousness, enhance creativity, and deepen our connections to the world.
James Fadiman, a distinguished figure with over six decades in psychedelic research, examines the profound impact psychedelics have on consciousness, creativity, and connectivity.
Fadiman shares insights into how these substances shift perception, offering perspectives that challenge and expand our understanding of reality. He also delves into the scientific underpinnings of psychedelics, their therapeutic potential, and the societal benefits of fostering deeper empathy and open-mindedness. Highlighting the importance of integration post-experience, Fadiman sheds light on the transformative power of psychedelics to not only alter individual consciousness but also to enhance community bonds and personal relationships.
Through a focus on responsible use and the expansion of human awareness, Fadiman's expertise offers a compelling view into the capacity of psychedelics to redefine our interaction with the world and ourselves.
About James Fadiman:
Dr. James Fadiman is a leading scientific expert on the use of psychedelics for personal exploration, healing, and transformation. He has been researching, writing and lecturing on the topic for more than fifty years. His research focuses on exploring the potential of psychedelics to help individuals achieve a more meaningful, balanced and enlightened life. He has written numerous books on the topic, such as The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide and Your Symphony Of Selves, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential figures in the field.
There are three kinds of memory that all work together to shape your reality. Neuroscientist André Fenton explains.
Neuroscientist André Fenton discusses the intricate relationship between memory, perception, and reality, shedding light on the complexity of human cognition.
Fenton believes memories are not fixed but are continually modified by our experiences and mindsets.
This, in his mind, underscores the importance of humility and empathy in acknowledging the fallibility of our memories and the need to consider different perspectives in our quest for truth.
About André Fenton:
André Fenton, professor of neural science at New York University, investigates the molecular, neural, behavioral, and computational aspects of memory. He studies how brains store experiences as memories, how they learn to learn, and how knowing activates relevant information without activating what is irrelevant. His investigations and understanding integrates across levels of biological organization, his research uses genetic, molecular, electrophysiological, imaging, behavioral, engineering, and theoretical methods. This computational psychiatry research is helping to elucidate and understand mental dysfunction in diverse conditions like schizophrenia, autism, and depression. André founded Bio-Signal Group Corp., which commercialized an FDA-approved portable, wireless, and easy-to-use platform for recording EEGs in novel medical applications. André implemented a CPAP-Oxygen helmet treatment for COVID-19 in Nigeria and other LMICs and founded Med2.0 to use information technology for the patient-centric coordination of behavioral health services that is desperately needed to equitably deliver care for mental health. André hosts “The Data Set” a new web series on how data and analytics are being used to solve some of humanity’s biggest problems.
Nothing is real and everything is an illusion. Neuroscientist Heather Berlin explains why that’s not exactly a bad thing.
Neuroscientist Heather Berlin likens each person's perception to a unique box shaped by their own experiences. Perception, Berlin explains, arises from a blend of internal expectations and external sensory input, creating a subjective experience.
Berlin believes our mental state can also profoundly affect our perception; a pessimistic mindset might skew it negatively, for example. The brain filters information, relying on preexisting schemas that can lead to cognitive biases. She notes that these biases can be altered through changing inputs over time, which can expand our empathy.
Understanding perception's illusory nature empowers us to shape our experiences and find joy despite life's challenges.
About Heather Berlin:
Dr. Heather Berlin is a neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and associate clinical professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York. She explores the neural basis of impulsive and compulsive psychiatric and neurological disorders with the aim of developing novel treatments. She is also interested in the brain basis of consciousness, dynamic unconscious processes, and creativity. Clinically, she specializes in lifespan (child, adolescent, and adult) treatment of anxiety, mood, and impulsive and compulsive disorders (e.g., OCD), blending her neural perspective with cognitive-behavioral therapy, mindfulness, and humanistic approaches.
You know Steve-O. Now meet Steve Glover, as the professional stuntman talks to us about pain, insecurity, and never finding contentment.
In this deeply personal and revealing interview, Steve Glover, better known as Steve-O, the daredevil entertainer known for his jaw-dropping stunts and unflinching willingness to face pain, shares the untold story of his journey from a childhood craving for attention to becoming an icon of wild antics and extreme performances.
Opening up about his struggles with alcoholism, the relentless pursuit of fame, and his battles with feeling 'not good enough', Glover offers an introspective look into the complexities behind the laughter and the screams.
With raw honesty, he discusses the pivotal moments that shaped him, the drive to document his existence through stunts, and the liberating power of sharing the secrets he once vowed to take to his grave.
This interview is not just a glimpse into the life of a professional idiot; it's a candid exploration of human vulnerability, the cost of fame, and the ongoing quest for self-acceptance.
About Steve-O:
Steve-O (a.k.a. Stephen Glover) was willing to do whatever it took to become famous, even if it meant stapling his ball sack to his leg. After failing miserably at the University of Miami and couch-surfing with friends, he decided that in order to further his goal of becoming a stuntman he would enroll in Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. But it was his relentless attention whoring that ultimately led to working with Johnny Knoxville on a new stunt-based reality show called Jackass.
In 2000, MTV aired the first season and the rest, as they say, is history. Since then, he's had continued success, as a New York Times best-selling author with the release of his memoir, 'Professional Idiot', as well as establishing himself in the world of stand-up comedy. With fourteen years of sobriety under his belt, Steve-O shows no signs of slowing down.
Former SNL star @JayPharoah answers our most challenging questions about life, self-esteem, and changing his mind.
Jay Pharoah is known best for his impressions, but he’s got a lot more going on. The actor, comedian, and rapper sat down with us to talk about embracing triumphs, overcoming setbacks, forgiveness, and the way all of it shapes who you are.
About Jay Pharoah:
Jay Pharoah is an actor and stand-up comedian. With six seasons as a cast member of NBC's Saturday Night Live, Pharoah is best known for his wide array of uncanny celebrity impressions, including President Barack Obama, Will Smith, Denzel Washington, Stephen A. Smith, Kanye West and Chris Tucker, as well as his recurring character, school principal Daniel Frye.
Over 250 million records sold and more than 70 platinum hits later, @JasonDerulo sits down with us to talk about goals, insecurities, and why he still doesn’t feel like he’s “made it.”
Jason Derulo's career flashed before his eyes when he broke his neck in 2012. Despite fearing the worst, he used positive self-talk and daily routines to recover and create hit songs like “Marry Me” and “Talk Dirty.” Overcoming childhood insecurities, he emphasizes the power of self-improvement. Now a global superstar with 250 million singles sold, Derulo prioritizes family time since becoming a father in 2021.
Cindy Gallop answers our questions about sex, identity, and why we need to stop giving a damn.
Cindy Gallop, the founder and CEO of MakeLoveNotPorn, answered our questions about self-worth, the weight of other people’s expectations on women, and hope.
She shares her mission to normalize and destigmatize conversations about sex, including the negative consequences of using pornography as a substitute for sexual education.
Cindy hopes for a world where we’re all unburdened by societal judgments and true equality is achieved.
About Cindy Gallop:
Cindy Gallop is a graduate of Somerville College, Oxford, whose background is over 30 years in brand-building, marketing and advertising — she started up the US office of ad agency Bartle Bogle Hegarty in New York in 1998 and in 2003 was named Advertising Woman of the Year.
She is the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld, co-action software launched in beta at TED 2010 and subsequently written up and taught as a Harvard Business School case study, which enables brands to implement the business model of the future — Shared Values + Shared Action = Shared Profit (financial and social).
She is also the founder of MakeLoveNotPorn – ‘Pro-sex. Pro-porn. Pro-knowing the difference’ — a social sextech platform designed to promote good sexual behavior and good sexual values, which she launched at TED 2009, and for which she has just raised $2 million to build out MLNP.tv as ‘the Social Sex Revolution’.Cindy recently partnered with AARP on their Disrupt Aging initiative to challenge and change ageism.
Cindy has also published ‘Make Love Not Porn: Technology’s Hardcore Impact on Human Behavior’ as one of TED’s line of TEDBooks.
You can follow her on Twitter @cindygallop.
He co-created one of TV’s funniest shows. He still felt like a failure in his 30s. This is comedian Neal Brennan’s story about conquering toxic self-talk.
We all tell lies to ourselves about ourselves, usually in the form of vicious inner criticism. Neal Brennan, seasoned comedian and one of the brilliant minds behind “Chapelle’s Show,” confronted his inner critic on video for our entertainment.
Despite being instrumental in one of the most successful comedy shows of all time, there was a time when Brennan didn’t think he had much to show for himself, especially not as a solo entertainer. The eventual demise of “Chappelle’s Show” led him down a dark path of self-doubt and, then, rediscovery.
Brennan worked 12-step programs, ventured into the world of psychedelics, and even tried magnetic brain manipulation to break out of his despair. Now, he has a new perspective on the value of going it alone. Turns out, it isn’t quite so bad.
About Neal Brennan:
Three-time Emmy nominated writer, director, producer, and standup comedian Neal Brennan has become a force in the comedy world. An across-the-board talent, Neal has found success in almost every creative vein in the comedy landscape. Hailed by The Hollywood Reporter as “Hollywood’s Comic Whisperer” and lauded by The New York Times as having a “hip-hop and Frontline aesthetic,” he has collaborated with top talent both in front of and behind the camera for three decades.
Neal’s most recent one-man show Neal Brennan: Unacceptable enjoyed a sold-out run in NYC in 2021 with The New York Times offering “Brennan starts off with a regular joke format before turning toward introspection as he exposes his doubts, neuroses and vulnerabilities. And he remains very funny as he does so.” Neal’s critically acclaimed first off-Broadway one-man show 3 Mics also enjoyed a sold-out NYC run in 2016 with musician John Legend serving as Executive Producer with Paste Magazine gushing “It will floor you in the best way possible.” In a break from traditional standup comedy, 3 Mics saw Brennan alternating between three separate microphones; one for traditional stand-up, one for one-liners, and one for short confessional monologues covering everything from managing his depression to his difficult relationship with his father. Both one-man shows were taped as stand-up specials and premiered on Netflix to much fanfare and critical acclaim.
Neal co-created Comedy Central’s legendary Chappelle’s Show, for which he received three Emmy nominations. Together, Brennan and Dave Chappelle wrote and produced virtually every sketch on the show themselves. A longtime writing partner of Chappelle, Neal was a standout speaker in his televised Mark Twain Prize ceremony, wrote on his Emmy-winning 2016 Saturday Night Live hosting turn, and co-wrote the cult hit feature Half Baked. Neal also served as a Creative Consultant and on-air correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Trevor Noah, for which he was personally picked by Noah to be his final guest. He was Executive Producer on Chris Rock’s special Chris Rock: Tamborine, Consulting Producer on Ellen Degeneres’ special Relatable, and collaborator with Seth Meyers on his White House Correspondents Dinner speech. In addition to standup, writing, directing, and producing, Brennan has also directed popular commercials for Sprite, Netflix, Best Buy and Nike.
The Osbournes was MTV’s biggest show – and it almost cost Jack Osbourne his life. Here’s how his family’s reality TV fame stole his childhood, and how he’s been able to heal since.
About Jack Osbourne:
Jack Osbourne is well known for participating in reality TV shows with his celebrity family, like The Osbournes and Ozzy and Jack’s World Tour. Jack has also overcome and dealt with great difficulties in his life, such as dyslexia, drug addiction, an MS diagnosis, depression, various medical scares in his family, and more. His ability to bounce back from these challenges has served as inspiration for others undergoing difficulties in life. Jack uses his platform to advocate for people living with MS.
Jim Lee, President, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer of tells us how his childhood obsession with Superman changed his life.
Jim Lee is synonymous with DC Comics now, but when he was first charting his path, his family pushed him towards medical school. In this interview, Jim shares how he reasoned with his parents and bought time to pursue his dream of being a comic book artist over the span of a gap year.
About Jim Lee:
Jim Lee, a world-renowned comic book artist, writer, editor and publisher, is currently Chief Creative Officer of DC (DC) and Publisher for the company.
Known for his incredibly detailed and dynamic artistic style, Lee is one of the most revered and respected artists in American comics. A veritable legend in the industry, he has received numerous accolades and recognition for his work, including the Harvey Special Award for New Talent in 1990, the Inkpot Award in 1992, and the Wizard Fan Award in 1996, 2002 and 2003.
Shaka Senghor spent 19 years in prison, 7 of them in solitary confinement. This is how he found true freedom.
The way Shaka Senghor tells his story, he found himself incarcerated long before he officially went to prison for second-degree murder, and he experienced freedom long before completing his sentence at the age of 38.
Senghor ran away from home and got drawn into the crack cocaine trade at the age of 14. After a series of traumatic events, he felt trapped in a narrative that dictated his life could only lead to limited outcomes: an early grave or a prison cell.
In our intimate interview, Senghor shares the three "keys" that transformed his perspective on life and have enabled him to live as a genuinely free man today.
“The Blind Side” only told part of Michael Oher’s story. Now, he tells us the rest.
You might know Michael Oher as the subject of “The Blind Side,” the 2009 movie starring Sandra Bullock and Tim McGraw. The film was based on the true story of Oher, a young Black football player, who gained a second chance at life after being adopted by white parents.
But Oher’s version of the story is a lot different, and it starts long before the Tuohys entered the picture.
In this interview conducted with our partner Unlikely Collaborators, Oher paints a picture of the crack epidemic in the ‘80s and ‘90s, a broken and tumultuous family, and a young boy determined to climb out of it.
About Michael Oher:
Michael Oher gained widespread recognition through Michael Lewis's book "The Blind Side" and its film adaptation, which depicted his difficulties in early life and time playing college football. After attending the University of Mississippi, he played in the NFL for the Baltimore Ravens, Tennessee Titans, and Carolina Panthers, winning the SuperBowl with the Ravens in 2013.
Michael has also written two books: I Beat The Odds and When You’re Back’s Against The Wall, which detail his struggles and successes in life, imparting wisdom on how to overcome adversity. Michael has also contributed to the book Blindsided, where he outlines his experience of early-stage CTE, how he walked away from the NFL, and his urgent recommendations to reform football and make it a safer sport.
Built from the material of your beliefs (aka, the bullshit you tell yourself and collect from those around you over the course of your life), the Perception Box™ has the power to distort your reality and leave you feeling isolated, disconnected, and fearful. By asking sometimes contradictory but always consequential questions, we’ll show you how to understand and work with your Perception Box—how to overcome the limiting beliefs that hold you back, expand the possibilities of perception, and invite in new ways of seeing and being seen.
A guided body awareness mediation to help you get out of your head and into your body. Learn to tune into your body for a heads up on what you’re feeling before you explode. It’s literally your friend on the inside.
Simple, easy, and faster than chasing down that driver that cut you off.
Orin Davis earned the first doctorate in positive psychology, and is a self-actualization engineer who enables people to do and be their best. As the Principal Investigator of the Quality of Life Laboratory, he conducts research on flow, creativity, hypnosis, and mentoring. Dr. Davis consults for companies from startups to multinationals on hiring strategies, culture, innovation, and employee well-being. He is the author of Team Flow: The psychology of optimal collaboration.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Orin Davis about the new science of flow. A lot of people are familiar with the concept of flow, but according to Dr. Davis, the experience of it is not very common. They discuss Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s work and how Dr. Davis is expanding the research of flow by studying it at a group level. Dr. Davis talks about how we can increase the chances of experiencing flow for both individuals and teams. Orin and Scott also touch on the topics of microflow, hypnosis, absorption, positive psychology, and self-actualization.
Website: https://qllab.org/
X: @DrOrinDavis
Robert Sapolsky is professor of biology and neurology at Stanford University and a research associate with the Institute of Primate Research at the National Museum of Kenya. His research has been featured in the National Geographic documentary "Stress: Portrait of a Killer". At age 30, Robert received the MacArthur Foundation's "genius" grant. He is author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers, A Primate's Memoir, The Trouble with Testosterone and Monkeyluv. His latest book is called Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Robert Sapolsky about life without free will. Humans like the idea of having control over their lives, but Robert asserts that free will is just an illusion. Life beyond free will may sound unpleasant, but Robert explains the profound consequences of this belief in reforming the justice system, meritocracy, and education. Robert and Scott also touch on the topics of philosophy, quantum physics, mindfulness, grit, and responsibility.
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/robertsapolsky/
For over 40 years, Bob Mankoff has been the driving force of comedy and satire at some of the most honored publications in America, including The New Yorker and Esquire. He is the founder of Cartoon Collections, parent company to CartoonStock.com, the world’s most successful cartoon licensing platform. For twenty years as Cartoon Editor for The New Yorker, Bob pored over thousands of submissions each week, analyzing, critiquing, and selecting each cartoon. In 2005, he helped start the “New Yorker Cartoon Caption Contest.” Bob is the author of numerous books, including his New York Times bestselling memoir, How About Never – Is Never Good For You?: My Life In Cartoons.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Bob Mankoff about the psychology of humor. Looking back at his illustrious career as a cartoonist, Bob talks about his early beginnings and the people he's mentored in the field. He explains the anatomy of a joke and reveals his all-time favorite cartoons. While humans are creative creatures, Bob believes that using AI and technology can further augment our intelligence and humor by opening up worlds of possibilities.
Website: www.bobmankoff.com
X: @BobMankoff
Joseph Goldstein is a co-founder and the guiding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society (IMS) along with Jack Kornfield and Sharon Salzberg. He is one of the first American vipassana teachers and has been teaching Buddhist meditation worldwide since 1974. A contemporary author of numerous popular books on Buddhism, his publications include Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening, One Dharma, Insight Meditation and others.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Joseph Goldstein about Buddhism and the impermanence of life. Being too attached to the self can bring suffering. However, this doesn’t mean that we need to forego our identities or self-care. Joseph explains that enlightenment can be achieved when the mind is free from clinging. He talks about the different states that can help us realize the insight of impermanence and selflessness. Scott and Joseph also touch on the topics of mindfulness, compassion, creativity, and wisdom.
Website: www.dharma.org
X: @onedharma
Dan Siegel is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine and the founding co-director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA. Dr. Siegel is also the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute. He’s authored numerous articles, chapters, and books including the New York Times bestsellers Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human and Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence. His latest book is called IntraConnected: MWe (Me + We) as the Integration of Self, Identity, and Belonging.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Dr. Dan Siegel about expanding the notion of the self. Modern culture has taught us that the self is all about individual identity and personal experiences. But Dr. Siegel posits that who we are is not limited to the brain or body. He argues that the self is not isolated, it’s composed of our relationships to other living beings and to the natural world. This expanded view of the self has important implications for the trajectory of humanity. Dan and Scott also touch on the topics of consciousness, neuroscience, quantum physics, and the flow state.
Website: drdansiegel.com
Instagram: @DrDanSiegel
Michael Slepian is the Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. Associate Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Columbia University. A recipient of the Rising Star Award from the Association for Psychological Science, he is the leading expert on the psychology of secrets. He’s authored more than fifty articles on secrecy, truth, and deception. Michael’s research has been covered by The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, BBC, The Wall Street Journal and more. He is the author of The Secret Life of Secrets.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Michael Slepian about the psychology of secrets. Everyone has secrets that they keep from others—how does this affect our relationships and well-being? According to Michael, maintaining privacy is not the most burdensome aspect. Carrying a secret all by ourselves is what weighs us down. Michael and Scott explore the different categories of secrets and we talk about when to reveal the deepest parts of ourselves and who to reveal them to. Scott and Michael also touch on the topics of personality, morality, trauma, developmental psychology and communication.
Website: michaelslepian.com
X: @michaelslepian
Monica Parker is the founder of global human analytics and change consultancy HATCH, whose clients include blue-chip companies such as LinkedIn, Google, Prudential, and LEGO. Her career has been nothing short of colorful, having been an opera singer, a museum exhibition designer, a policy director, a Chamber of Commerce CEO, and a homicide investigator. She is also a world-renowned speaker, writer, and the author of The Power of Wonder.
Scott Barry Kaufman talks to Monica Parker about the power of wonder. In today’s fast-paced world, most people fail to notice the richness of life. To become more wonder-prone, Monica encourages us all to slow down and pursue meaningful exploration. When we pay more careful attention to the world, we become more empathetic, resilient, and exuberant. Monica shares with her cycle of wonder framework and how we can be more open and present in our daily lives. Monica and Scott also touch on the topics of personality, post-traumatic growth, mindfulness, and education.
Website: www.monica-parker.com
Instagram: @monicacparker
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