← Here We Go Again With Kal Penn
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- [00:01]
Cal Penn
It's been a couple years since I deleted Twitter or X or whatever you want to call it from my phone.
- [00:06]
Kalpen Modi
Mostly because it was. It had me super bummed out.
- [00:09]
Cal Penn
Like there was nothing good on it anymore. It was just people yelling and screaming even though I had all of the filters up of, like, no politics on either side of the aisle, etc. Etc. But what I realized is that it instead I just ended up spending tons of time watching Instagram reels. Like a lot of Instagram reels. I'm a little too old to watch TikTok reels. I just, like, wait for them to show up on Instagram.
- [00:30]
Kalpen Modi
And what I learned from these videos was absolutely nothing.
- [00:33]
Cal Penn
Nothing.
- [00:34]
Kalpen Modi
They're really fun.
- [00:35]
Cal Penn
It's a lot of dog content, a
- [00:37]
Kalpen Modi
bunch of Gujarati jokes, no news, no politics.
- [00:40]
Cal Penn
I still have those filters up, but I felt like a bit of a drug pusher because I'm sending these reels to my friends, wasting hours of their time. I do know they watch them because they send reels back to me.
- [00:50]
Kalpen Modi
But I couldn't help but wonder, does
- [00:52]
Cal Penn
this mean I'm getting dumber? It's not just those videos. It's also the ways in which I'm constantly using my phone in ways that reduce the necessity of brain function, like using Google Maps to get to a place that I legitimately do know how to get to, using just my brain. For all the good that technology has done, is it also scrambling our brains?
- [01:13]
David Eagleman
The circuitry of your brain is reconfiguring every moment of your life from cradle to grave. By the time you are several years old, you're already absorbing everything that all the Homo sapiens have done before us. And then, you know, you progress and you can springboard off the top of that.
- [01:31]
Cal Penn
David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Stanford University. He's the author of eight books. His most recent is called Live Wired,
- [01:39]
Kalpen Modi
which tells the story of brain plasticity.
- [01:42]
Cal Penn
And he's also heavily researched the brain's relationship to sensory substitution, time perception, vision, and synesthesia.
- [01:50]
Kalpen Modi
And he works with and advises tech
- [01:53]
Cal Penn
companies in the Silicon Valley, which is
- [01:55]
Kalpen Modi
why he's here today to help me understand the concept of brain rot. What is it? And have we been here before?
- [02:04]
Podcast Announcer
Here we go again, again, again, again.
- [02:10]
Cal Penn
Hey, I'm Cal Penn, and this is
- [02:11]
Kalpen Modi
Here We Go Again, a show that
- [02:14]
Cal Penn
takes today's trends and headlines and asks,
- [02:17]
Kalpen Modi
why does history keep repeating itself?
- [02:18]
Podcast Announcer
Here we go.
- [02:34]
American Family Insurance Announcer
This is an iHeart podcast.
- [02:36]
Meaningful Beauty / Cindy Crawford Announcer
Guaranteed Human.
- [02:38]
Kalpen Modi
If you love audiobooks or you just really love a great story, I want to tell you about my other podcast, Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks from Audible. Sci fi, comedy, romance, thrillers, you name it. No reading required, just listening. Because let's be honest, having a great story read to you is kind of next level. Check out Hearsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [03:08]
Public Investing Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets. Allow you to turn any idea into an investable index with AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year, you can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public
- [03:55]
Public Investing Legal Disclaimer
Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc, SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
- [04:05]
Public Investing Announcer
Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures Life's Better
- [04:09]
American Family Insurance Announcer
with Drive My Way from American Family Insurance because we know it's more than just a car. It's your escape pod, your adventure mobile, your memory maker, and we help protect the dreams that drive you. Personalize what you pay for auto insurance and you could save between 10 and 35% American Family Insurance Get a quote and find an agent@amfam.com products.
- [04:30]
American Family Insurance Legal Disclaimer
Pricing and availability vary based on the way you purchase insurance and by state. Unsafe driving behaviors may increase your rate. American Family Mutual Insurance Company SI and its operating companies 6000American Parkway, Madison, Wisconsin
- [04:39]
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- [05:56]
David Eagleman
All right. Hey, Cal. How you doing?
- [05:57]
Cal Penn
Good. How are you?
- [05:59]
David Eagleman
Good. Good to see you. Last time I saw you was in 2019. I don't know if you remember this, but you came to Palo Alto. I'm David Eagleman. I am a neuroscientist at Stanford, and I run a podcast called Inner Cosmos.
- [06:11]
Cal Penn
David, welcome. Thanks for coming on the show.
- [06:14]
David Eagleman
Great to see you again, Cal.
- [06:16]
Cal Penn
So I was excited to talk to you. We did do this documentary. I couldn't remember the location, but 2019, right before COVID in Palo Alto, this docuseries called this giant beast that is the global economy, which is still on Amazon. It's a limited series. So I couldn't remember if we did that in Palo Alto, in Cyprus, or in Germany, because we shot this show, I think, in, like, 23 different locations around the world. And this is now relevant to our conversation here because the fact that I
- [06:46]
Kalpen Modi
couldn't even remember that I had always
- [06:47]
Cal Penn
chalked up to just like, oh, it was pre Covid, and we, you know, we were in 23 different locations. But since we're here to sort of talk about brain rot, I was like, is that the reason, or is it just that I'm, like, living life through my fucking screen, that. That my brain is slowly decaying? But before we get into all that, just tell us quickly about yourself.
- [07:07]
Kalpen Modi
Where were you born? Did you come from a family of scientists?
- [07:11]
David Eagleman
Yeah, actually. So I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. My father was a psychiatrist, and my mother was a biology teacher. And so I thought that was the last thing I was going to do. But neuroscience ended up being this real gravitational pull for me, and I ended up there.
- [07:29]
Cal Penn
What's the gravitational pull? Did you have, like, a first memory of it, of wanting to do it?
- [07:34]
David Eagleman
Well, you know, the truth is, when I was a kid, I fell off of a roof and I Broke my nose very badly on the floor below. And the whole event seemed to have gone in slow motion. It seemed to have taken a very long time to fall. And when I got to high school physics and I calculated, turns out it's like 0.6 of a second to get from the top of the roof to the bottom. And I was really, I was really interested in that. How had it seemed to have lasted such a long time, even though it didn't. And it turns out when I grew up and became a neuroscientist, no one had ever done an experiment on that. And so I ended up running what remains the only experiments of putting people in life threatening situations and measuring what's going on with time perception there. The one sentence punchline of all this is that it has to do with when you're in a life threatening situation, you, your brain writes down everything, as in you're writing down all these memories. And therefore when you read it back out, when you say what just happened, what just happened? It seems to have taken a long time because you've got such detailed memories. Like when people get in car accidents and they say, look, I, I watched the hood crumple and the rear view mirror fall off and the facial expression of the other guy. And so your brain says, well, that must have taken several seconds, even though it was shorter. But anyway, all, all of these things are part of what got me into neuroscience. Plus I grew up watching Carl Sagan on pbs. And I know, I know you also are a Sagan lover and, and you know, it was so influential on me, I, that it turned me onto the beauty of science. And I thought, someday I'm going to do that.
- [09:15]
Cal Penn
When your brain does that and registers everything, is there a chemical that's released that allows it to happen? Why does that happen chemically or bile, whatever the word is.
- [09:25]
David Eagleman
Yeah, it's not a chemical. It's because of, you've got essentially an emergency control center in the brain called the amygdala which says, whoa, everything is hitting the fan. Everybody pay attention. So normally your brain is doing 50 things. You're thinking about what you're gonna eat for lunch and how you have this deadline and blah, blah. But when something, that, when something salient is happening, your brain recruits everything to pay attention to what's going on. And part of that paying attention has to do with writing everything down, which
- [09:56]
Cal Penn
is actually a great transition to this idea of brain rot. And I think about it the most in two, two scenarios. One, so I'm a New Yorker and I have been for quite some time and I remember I still prefer it a physical book to bring with me instead of reading on a screen. But I've noticed that over, you know, over like a decade and a half, people have gone from reading a physical book to reading a Kindle to just like scrolling through videos or playing games on their phones on the subway. And also then just the idea that you're in a public park or a place that is, that used to be for conversation and more human to human interaction. And half the people are sort of on their phones or taking pictures of their hot dog before they eat it and, and things like that. And so I guess my, my question is, as somebody who studies neuroscience, is there a fear that these things will change our short term perception? Does it change our ability to focus? Or am I just now old and think that these are real things that we actually shouldn't worry about?
- [11:04]
David Eagleman
Yeah, here's what I would say. I think it's much more nuanced than, than many people take. And one thing this podcast that you're doing is that it really asks the question of which things are new and which things are old. The fact is that people not paying much attention. Nothing new about that. We're probably about the same age. You know, if you can remember back to when people would take airplane flights, they'd play solitaire all the time.
- [11:30]
Cal Penn
Yeah.
- [11:31]
David Eagleman
Now they play solitaire on their phone, but it's not meaningfully different. I think that people did plenty of things to just waste time. So what I see is the big differences is we have much more choice now than we did. So when you're scrolling TikTok or Instagram, you can swipe if something isn't holding your attention. There are pros and cons to that. The pro, of course, being that there's just, there's a lot of wonderfully produced stuff out there and you can find the stuff that maximally floats your boat instead of having to sit through along, you know, watching the Brady Bunch or Gilligan's island or something and thinking, okay, well that's the only choice that I have. And so I'm just going to do that. Whether this affects attention span, I don't know. We all sort of share that intuition. But it's very difficult to test these things because in fact it's impossible to test these things. Here's why. There's no control group that you can find. So let's imagine you took kids growing up now and you said, hey, we want to know if their attention is you know better or worse than people who came a generation before. The problem is there were a hundred other differences the generation before. You know, differences in politics and diet and pollution and every, I mean there's just culture is different. And so you wouldn't be able to say, oh, it's because of the Internet, if you do find a difference and you can't find a control group within their generation because all kids are growing up with the Internet except for, let's say Amish kids or kids somewhere in the world who are incredibly impoverished. And there are a hundred other differences between those groups. And so you wouldn't be able to find something and say, oh, it's because of the Internet that they have this. Here's the thing, because of what's called brain plasticity, we are wired up by our culture, by our moment in time, by our neighborhood, by everything going on around us. And so it is the case that the brain is influenced by all the inputs that we're putting in. So that tells us that when we put in different inputs, we're going to get different outputs. It's just very difficult to know exactly how that is. And by the way, every generation has differences in that depending on whether there's a war going on or the radio gets invented or the steam engine gets invented or whatever, the printing press suddenly allows the proliferation of books, all these things change generations along the way. What interests me is how each generation thinks that the kids are now going to be worse off in some way. One example that I recently came across is, I hadn't realized this, but when the printing press was invented in 1440, immediately people started saying, look, this is a real problem. The kids of the next generation are going to be morons. Why? Because as soon as they want to know the answer, it's right there, they just pull the book off the shelf and there's the answer. And they're not going to memorize things, they're not going to understand things anymore, they're just going to find it right there. So what we see from that is in fact we all became much smarter as a civilization because of the availability of information. And I think the same thing happened 30 years ago with, with Google, the Internet more generally. Everyone said, look, these kids are going to become morons because if you ask them what's the capital of France, they'll just Google it. But in fact, the availability of information has made the whole society smarter. And you know, I run into 13 year old kids all the time who say something really smart. And I say, wow, how did you know that? And they say, oh, I saw it on a TED Talk, or, you know, I just looked this up and now we've got ChatGPT. And again, I think this is going to make kids even smarter. I'll tell you why I'm saying this, because back in the day when we were in school, we got a lot of just in case information, like just in case you ever need to know that the Battle of hastings was in 1066. There you go. And then we're testing on that stuff and so on. But what kids get now is just in time information. As soon as they are curious about a subject, they get the answer right then. And that makes an enormous difference from a brain plasticity point of view, because when you are curious about something, you have the right cocktail of neurotransmitters present so that the change actually sticks. So if you say, hey, how do I fix this bicycle tire? Or what's the answer about, you know, Venus and the temperature or whatever, all of this stuff sticks if you're the one asking the question. And so I think it's going to be a massive opportunity for education, and I'm quite sure that our children and grandchildren will be smarter than we are.
- [16:30]
Cal Penn
So how do you then, as a. How do you respond to the layperson who says, well, why are we getting dumber and dumber?
- [16:38]
David Eagleman
Here's what I would say is look at a graph of human history. So we invented agriculture many thousands of years ago that we, you know, and there was the invention of writing thousands of years ago. And then stuff moved along pretty slowly for a long time. And what's happened is essentially ever since the Industrial Revolution, the pace of discovery has gone up. And now we are on this part of the curve that is so steep. It, you know, you look at it, and so it looks vertical because everyone is getting an education or at least has the opportunity for education. So now, instead of having a few people on the planet who are educated and making the work happen, you've got almost 8 billion brains who have access to information. And the pace of discovery has outstripped anything that we've ever seen. I mean, in my field of neuroscience, and this is true across scientific fields, most of what we know has been discovered in the last five or 10 years. I mean, the huge majority of the data that we're sitting on, the new theories, the new everything, it's all happening right now. It's the most exciting time to have ever been alive. The pace of what's going on is so incredible that it would be very hard for me to accept any argument that somehow as a species we are getting dumber. And I understand that. What I've just been talking about is people who are making these discoveries and somebody might counter argue, yeah, but the average person is getting dumber. But I don't think so, because now the average person has access. They don't have to get over the momentum of driving over to the library and finding a book and seeing if they can find out about something. They can find out about stuff right away.
- [18:38]
Kalpen Modi
If you're listening to Here We Go Again, chances are you enjoy smart conversations, great stories, and maybe discovering something new along the way. Way that's exactly what we're doing on my other podcast, Irsay The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Each episode I'm diving into some of the most exciting new audiobooks on Audible. Everything from big sci fi adventures and unforgettable fiction to romcoms, thrillers and laugh out loud comedy. And I'm joined by great guests to help unpack why these stories are such great listens. Because there's just something different about listening to a story. When it's really good, it pulls you in. You start seeing it in your head and when it's over, you immediately want to talk about it with someone. That's what hearsay is all about. Listen to Earsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [19:30]
Public Investing Announcer
Support for the show comes from Public, the investing platform for those who take it seriously. On Public, you can build a multi asset portfolio of stocks, bonds, options, crypto and now generated assets which allow you to turn any idea into an investable index. With AI. It all starts with your prompt. From renewable energy companies with high free cash flow to semiconductor suppliers growing revenue over 20% year over year. You can literally type any prompt and put the AI to work. It screens thousands of stocks, builds a one of a kind index and lets you back test it against the S&P 500. Then you can invest in a few clicks. Generated assets are like ETFs with infinite possibilities, completely customizable and based on your thesis, not someone else's. Go to public.com podcast and earn an uncapped 1% bonus when you transfer your portfolio. That's public.com podcast paid for by Public
- [20:17]
Public Investing Legal Disclaimer
Investing Brokerage Services by Open to the Public Investing Inc. Member FINRA and SIPC Advisory Services by Public Advisors, llc. SEC Registered Advisor. Generated Assets is an interactive analysis tool. Output is for informational purposes only and is not an investment recommendation or advice.
- [20:28]
Public Investing Announcer
Complete Disclosures available at public.comDisclosures Life's Better
- [20:32]
American Family Insurance Announcer
with Drive My Way from American Family Insurance because we know it's more than just a car. It's your escape pod, your adventure mobile, your memory maker, and we help protect the dreams that drive you. Personalize what you pay for auto insurance and you can save between 10 and 35%. American Family Insurance Get a quote and find an agent@amfam.com Products, pricing and availability
- [20:53]
American Family Insurance Legal Disclaimer
vary based on the way you purchase insurance and by state. Unsafe driving behaviors may increase your rate. American Family Mutual Insurance Company SI and its operating companies 6000American Parkway, Madison, Wisconsin
- [21:01]
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- [22:02]
Cal Penn
youm touched on this idea of neuroplasticity. You wrote a book called Live Wired about the neuroplasticity of our brain. Can you explain what Live Wired means? Where it comes from? And then how does neuroplasticity of our brain speak to this notion colloquially of brain rot? If it does at all?
- [22:22]
David Eagleman
Yes. So neuroplasticity just means that the circuitry of your brain is reconfiguring every moment of your life from cradle to grave. And so this is what is special about brains and human brains in particular. We have more plasticity than any other species. So what Mother Nature figured out was hey, if I drop these creatures into the world half baked, they will absorb the rest from everything happening around them. And what that has led for Us as a species is that by the time you, you know, are several years old, maybe eight years old, whatever, you're already absorbing essentially everything that all the Homo sapiens have done before us. And then, you know, you progress, and you can springboard off the top of that. Contrast this with, let's say, an alligator who, you know, an alligator born 30,000 years ago and born now. They have the same life. They have certain neural circuits that just say, okay, eat, mate, swim, whatever. And there's no difference with alligator culture, but with human culture, we just keep getting better every single generation, precisely because we are able to absorb the lessons that people have figured out before us. So this is what has allowed us to build skyscrapers and compose symphonies and invent the Internet and get off of the planet. I call that live wiring. But it's the same idea. It's that every One of your 86 billion neurons, these are the specialized kind of brain cells. Every one of these, your whole life, they're plugging and unplugging and seeking and replugging. And it's like if you can imagine a circuit board that's actually alive and moving around. So what does this mean for brain rot again? Unfortunately, I think it's really difficult to know because people have always pursued goofy ways of wasting time, whether that is card games or watching Gilligan's island or whatever. People have always done that. And there's a lot of retrospective romanticization where we say, oh, when I was a kid, you know, we did this and that, and we, you know, we read Play DOH and discussed this at the dinner table, and it's generally not true. I mean, obviously that happened in some families, but not in most.
- [24:36]
Cal Penn
You know, when I think about younger people, the fact that research you can just do on. On ChatGPT, like you mentioned, obviously the. The benefits of, like, getting an answer right now, hoping it's accurate. You don't know for sure, but. But generally, the framework of something is. Is there. That's obviously a plus. The downside to that is I just remember because I had to look things up, whether it was on an early, early form of the Internet or physically going to the library and reading long articles with a highlighter, is that to me, it taught me both patience and critical thinking skills, because you had to sit with the information a lot longer than if you're just immediately typing it in, getting the answer, and moving on with your life. You had mentioned analog solitaire versus playing it on your phone, on a plane, for example. Is there a difference between how Screen time. Let's say scrolling on social media affects the brain versus let's say that same 30 minute period you listened to an
- [25:35]
Kalpen Modi
audiobook or a podcast like yours.
- [25:38]
Cal Penn
Is there a difference there?
- [25:40]
David Eagleman
You know what, that's a good question. The initial studies that we have right now don't seem to indicate one. For example, my colleagues at Berkeley did a study where they looked at what if you read a book versus listen to an audiobook, and they found no difference in the brain. Now, I actually found this not surprising, and I'll tell you why. It's because let's add a third group. Even though they weren't looking at this. People who are blind read with braille, so they're touching bumps with their fingertips. They're reading, let's say, the same book. All the brain is doing in any of these cases, whether you're taking it into your eyes or your ears or your fingertips, your brain is translating that into meaning. As in, oh, this character just said this and what did she mean by that? And oh, what's this next character going to do? And so on. When you're reading a book, your brain doesn't care whether it's coming in through squiggles that you're getting through, you know, photons through your eyes or air compression waves through your ears or bumps on your fingertips, because all it cares about is, okay, fine, how do I translate this into social meaning? And that's why I think it just doesn't make a difference.
- [26:49]
Cal Penn
So then the, the follow up to that is, I guess, relatedly, does the type of content make a difference? So for instance, is there a difference between watching a Wes Anderson movie versus Planet Earth or a reality TV show like, like Real Housewives? Is any of that valued differently by your brain? Does it impact your brain in different ways, AKA how should we be spending our time?
- [27:18]
David Eagleman
Yeah, great question. The truth is that what we always want to be doing with our brain is expanding the fence lines of our internal models. So let me explain. Internal models. Your brain is locked in silence and darkness and it's trying to build a model of what the world is. And we all have different internal models because we've had different trajectories through space and time. So we all have these, you know, slightly different models. But what you really want to do from the point of view of brain plasticity is constantly expand that often, you know, challenging that. One way to do it is to watch things that are really meaningful, things that are surprising and meaningful and, and you've never seen the documentary on this you had no idea that animals could do this or that people have done that. That stuff really matters. If somebody watches Real Housewives, of course, it's compelling because it plugs right into these very basic things about, oh, there's conflict, there's drama and so on, but you're not expanding your brain in any meaningful way. And I'll just mention that for people who retire, the most important thing you can do for your brain is to keep it challenged. I'll just mention, because I think this is really important. There's a study that's been ongoing for a few decades now where a bunch of nuns, Catholic nuns, agreed to donate their brains when they passed away. So for years, the researchers, when the nuns pass away, they autopsy the brain and they look at what's going on. And what they discovered is that some fraction of these nuns had Alzheimer's disease, but nobody knew it when they were alive. They didn't have the cognitive deficits that
- [29:06]
Cal Penn
you would expect because of God.
- [29:10]
David Eagleman
Sorry, that's one hypothesis. The other one is it's because they lived in convents till the day they died. And so they had social responsibilities. They were having fights and arguments with their fellow sisters, and they were doing chores and they were playing games and they were singing songs. They were doing things all the time. And therefore, even as their brain was physically degenerating with Alzheimer's disease, they were building new roadways and pathways. And so what this tells us is that it is just massively important to always challenge the brain. And by the way, I just want to say, for your listenership, it might be useful. It is so easy to do this. So one of the things do this tonight, Brush your teeth with your other hand. It's not hard. Easy to do. Drive a different route home from work every day. It's easy. You take a slightly different route, you see new things. Anything to keep novelty in your life. Just to make sure you're switching stuff up. There are a million ways to do this. Really important for the brain.
- [30:13]
Cal Penn
Awesome. Right on. So the 1970s key party crowd had it right. Just continue to switch things up.
- [30:22]
David Eagleman
There are probably other consequences.
- [30:24]
Cal Penn
Yes.
- [30:24]
David Eagleman
No, I know.
- [30:24]
Cal Penn
I'm just kidding.
- [30:32]
Kalpen Modi
If you're listening to Here We Go Again, chances are you enjoy smart conversations, great stories, and maybe discovering something new along the way. That's exactly what we're doing on my other podcast, Irsay, the Audible, and Iheart Audiobook Club. Each episode, I'm diving into some of the most exciting new audiobooks on Audible. Everything from Big Sci Fi Adventures and unforgettable fiction to rom coms, thrillers and laugh out loud comedy. And I'm joined by great guests to help unpack why these stories are such great listens. Because there's just something different about listening to a story. When it's really good, it pulls you in, you start seeing it in your head and when it's over, you immediately want to talk about it with someone. That's what hearsay is all about. Listen to Irsay, The Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [31:24]
Public Investing Announcer
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- [32:55]
Cindy Crawford
hi, I'm Cindy Crawford and I'm the founder of Meaningful Beauty. Well I don't know about you, but like I never liked being told oh wow, you look so good for your age. Like why even bother saying that? Why don't you just say you look great at any age, every age. That's what Meaningful Beauty is all about. We create products that make you feel confident in your skin at the age you are now. Meaningful beauty, beautiful skin at every age. Learn more@meaningful beauty.com.
- [33:30]
Cal Penn
I want to go back to the, to the Bay Area of it all. You're a neuroscientist at Stanford. You live in Silicon Valley. I love that you are a neuroscientist in that world. The tech giants are obviously in your backyard. And so I have the rare opportunity
- [33:46]
Kalpen Modi
to ask you, sort of, when you
- [33:47]
Cal Penn
engage in conversations with people who are at the forefront of leading all of these techniques, technological advancements, you have the skill set to not panic like the rest of us do. When you talk about the impacts of these things on the brain, what do you talk about? And have you found yourself like, is this also a job? Do you get to work with these tech companies or are they strictly like podcast or academic conversations?
- [34:14]
David Eagleman
I am a scientific advisor for several, you know, probably a dozen different startups doing things. Oh, cool. I generally lean optimistic about this stuff because, by the way, the only companies I advise for ones doing meaningful, amazing stuff. But there's plenty of ways to do that. A lot of it's going to really change education for the better.
- [34:38]
Cal Penn
In terms of the digital revolution. There was an interview, and correct me if I'm wrong, where I think you said there is a widespread feeling that the digital revolution has already changed the mechanisms of the mind in fundamental ways. And I was curious what you meant by that. Is it that we should be excited that our brains are moving in a particular direction?
- [35:00]
Kalpen Modi
Should we be worried?
- [35:01]
Cal Penn
Or is it what you mentioned earlier, that no matter what happens because we're humans, when we evolve, our brains are always going to move in a particular,
- [35:10]
David Eagleman
you know, that's exactly it. As you can see, I, I tend to lean optimistic on this. Yeah, One thing that is worth mentioning is this concept of misinformation or disinformation, which everybody loves to, to throw around as though it is a new thing. This is the oldest thing in the book. I mean, just look at, let's say, the last century, the 20th century. You look at Nazism in Germany or fascism in Italy, or you look at Pol Pot in Cambodia, or you look at the Hutu and the Tutsi in Rwanda, or the communist revolutions in China and Russia. What you see in all of these cases, pre Internet, pre digital revolution, is massive polarization, massive misinformation and disinformation. People taking up arms against their Neighbors, I mean, collectively, just with those things. I just mentioned this. Hundreds of millions of murders where we are now. We happen to be in a pretty polarized part of the cycle right now, but boy, there is nothing new about this sort of thing. But the part that I find hopeful about the Internet is people can find out. People can sort through the stuff and figure out, okay, well, what do I think? Given all these different claims, I totally
- [36:29]
Cal Penn
agree with you that, that the misinformation, disinformation is, is nothing new. But what I find deeply concerning is that the way these social media algorithms work is they continue to feed you the things you already agree with or that you've engaged on. So it's these private companies, many of which are well documented, run by hard right guys. And I'll say this independent of what somebody's beliefs are, because I would say the same. If it was run by somebody who was hard left and maybe a little more aligned with my politics, I would find it equally egregious that if, if the thing that you're getting pushed is the misinformation that you already agree with, then there's no debate. So that's kind of the piece of it, that it's not that misinformation is new, but to me and the people who I talk to about those, those are the concerns that people have, is that the mechanism of, of that silo being run for profit is equally concerning the way that it may have been when governments were controlling it. Do you find that in the work that you do with these companies? Does it concern them or what's their, what's their view on that?
- [37:34]
David Eagleman
I mean, look, the fact is, you're absolutely right. You know, Twitter was left leaning, then became X right leaning. Then Blue sky came along, which is left leaning, and so on. Nonetheless, on all of those, you can always find the other side. I totally agree that the algorithm tends to serve up to you what you already believe. But the Internet in general, and even those platforms in particular, you can always find other voices. And it's not that hard. Again, this comes back to education. The really important thing for us to be teaching in schools is how to not accept the particular story that your friends, or maybe your online people that you follow are saying. But how to, how to dig deeper
- [38:20]
Cal Penn
what you're pitching, I agree with, which is that we should each independently have the desire to fact check things. And I would say also to your point, that goes beyond just digital stuff, like when the New York Times says that Maduro and Mamdani are Both socialists, as if they're both the same type of politician, is like obviously egregious. And there's a reason they do that because of their own political slant. But it's up the fact that it's up to us to actually Google that or to look and research that. I feel like very few of us would do it because a New York Times or a source that you might keep getting pushed if you follow somebody on Twitter that already aligns with you or someone on Instagram is they've already built that trust with you. So the idea that you want to go and find some other point of view, I may do that because I'm a nerd, but I can understand how if this stuff is designed and I work, you know, I work in media, so I can say we, plenty of the stuff that we put out there is based on making you feel good or feel angry right away. Even old school, you know, nightly news broadcasts are like, they keep you around through the commercials by scaring the shit out of you on purpose. And there is, I promise there's a neuroscience question here, which is that since so much of that is based on the. I don't know if it's an actual dopamine hit or we just colloquially say that it is. But the, the thing that makes us feel good, like, okay, I'm angry at this and this is somebody who I agree with. And so this, this must be the facts. When I feel that way, I certainly don't immediately think like, let me go and read the opposing point of view. So I guess that's my, my concern. But also the question of does that affect our brains?
- [39:59]
David Eagleman
Yes. So again, as we've been discussing there, there is nothing new about it in the sense that in all, you know, if you lived in Rwanda and the state sponsored media is saying the Tutsi are cockroaches and doing that kind of stuff over and over, you could go and research and see if the Tutsi actually have, you know, nice things about them and so on. But this stuff does have an effect on us. That's absolutely true. And we are humans. But I want to come to this point about things making us feel good. This is, this is just a little hypothesis I've been working on on this side. But I definitely have been feeling lately like the things that attracts people to one political party or the other or one speaker or another isn't so much it makes me feel good. It actually has to do with anger towards the other side. That's the thing that seems to really hook us in to one side or another. So it wouldn't even colloquially be the dopamine hit, but it's something deeper. It's like, I hate those guys so much that then you're willing to listen to the things on your side and say, yeah, you know what? Maybe the thing that the person is saying is a little cruel and a little unfair, but I don't care. I like it anyway because I want to get at them. So let me pull all these threads together. So what? I. I recently patented a new social media algorithm that I think might be able to solve some of these points. So here's the whole way that it works. It's. It's very simple. It's just that people get connected with each other based on things they have in common that are not political. So let's just imagine you and I don't know each other, and, And. But we both happen to love surfing, and we have both happen to love this kind of dog, and we both happen to love this baseball team and whatever. So we get connected. I. You know, your stuff gets surfaced to me, and vice versa, the way that TikTok or Instagram works, where you see lots of strangers and so on. So the idea is we become pals, we become linked through all these great things that we have in common, and only later do we ever find out if there's something that we disagree on. There's some, we're on opposite sides of the aisle, or we have different opinions about abortion or gun control. Because the important part is once we've reached a certain connection threshold, then if I find out, whoa, you're on the left, I'm on the right, we can listen to each other, we can lean in and say, okay, I really want to understand this. The reason I came to this idea was because of this thing that I'm working on about complexifying relationships. I actually think this is the most important thing we can do to reduce polarization. Let me give you a historical example, which is the Iroquois, Native Americans, who live up in sort of, you know, New York, Wisconsin area. In the 1800s, there were five tribes. They were constantly killing each other. And what happened is they got a new leader who came in, this guy Danagawa, who came to be known as the Great Peacemaker. Because what he did is he took the five tribes and he assigned to each person within the tribes membership in a clan. So he said, you're a member of the Elk Clan, you're a member of the Beaver Clan, you're a member of the Eagle Clan and it was cross cutting. So I belong to this tribe, but this other clan, which other tribes might have that clan member also. So now you say to me, hey David, let's go over the hill and attack that other tribe. And I say, ah, you know what, I would, but that guy is a member of the Elk Clan and I'm a member of the Elk Clan. And so we're kind of connected. So what we've got is this cross cutting relationships now. And now it's not so easy to say us versus them. And that's the root of this social media algorithm is finding all the complexities, finding for people on opposite sides of the aisle, the places where they do have things in common.
- [43:50]
Cal Penn
I love that. Especially in a world where we are, we're, you know, all overused, whatever that that adage is, but we're, you know, we're more connected than we've ever been, but physically so, so distant that that's a very cool opportunity. So given all of this, why are our attention spans getting smaller and smaller? Is it just me or is it an actual thing?
- [44:14]
David Eagleman
I don't actually know if it is an actual thing and I don't know any way to test that. Everyone asserts that it is, but again, as I mentioned earlier, there's no way to test it. We don't have some sort of attention Spanish tests that we can use through
- [44:28]
Cal Penn
the ages that fascinate. Okay. The reason behind the reason I'm asking you is. So I had a book that came out in 2021 and one of the conversations with not with my editor, but with a couple of people in the book world was you should think about making your paragraphs shorter and your chapters shorter and divide up a longer chapter into three different parts so that the reader is more attracted to your book when they thumb through it before they buy it. And it keeps going back to people don't have an attention span anymore. So if there isn't actually a scientific basis for this, I'm assuming there's a dial group business basis for this. But the merger of the two, somebody could make bank on with your background.
- [45:14]
David Eagleman
Here's the thing. I don't know that there's any change in attention span, but what there clearly is is more pulls on our entertainment time. We have so much more content available to us than we ever did it used to be. I don't know, call it a hundred years ago. You know, your dad comes home with a book and it's like, wow, we have 30 books in the house now we have 31 books. And I'm gonna dive into this. Why? Because there doesn't exist a television, there is no phone and TikTok and Instagram, like that was a thing. And so you could write a big thick book with big long paragraphs. What we have now is like infinite channels of well produced stuff that people have really put effort into. What this means, I mean, look, I'm a book author. I've been writing books my whole life. And I do worry a little bit that I'm like a cathedral architect in an era where no one's building cathedrals anymore. Because writing a 500 page book, a book with really deep ideas and thoughts, like, who's got time? And I don't blame them. So what this means is, is it that we have a change in our attention span or there's just more on the table and we're all trying to figure out how to distribute our time.
- [46:32]
Cal Penn
All of which leads me to my last question. You're a cyber optimist, which is what makes talking to you refreshing. What makes you optimistic about the future of our brains?
- [46:43]
David Eagleman
I think it's everything that we've been talking about, which is just the amount of input and the instant access to our curiosity to saying, hey, I want to know this. Has anyone ever even thought this thought before? And then you ask ChatGPT and you find out, oh my God, there's a whole world to uncover here. This is the most incredible thing for our brains. And I know a lot of people are worried that we're just going to put stuff off to AI and not learn, but I found it, at least for myself, to be exactly the opposite, which is that you can get smarter at any topic that you want in a way that sticks. So this is what I think is so good for the human brain, is just the fact that we've been able to take all the knowledge, the data, the scattered facts in the world and compile them in this way where now you can just ask the question and get that information and feed the perfect data into your brain whenever you need it.
- [47:45]
Cal Penn
David, thank you so much. This was a real joy to see you again and to get to talk to you a little more.
- [47:51]
David Eagleman
Great. You too, Cal. Thanks so much for having me.
- [47:55]
Cal Penn
Next time on Here We Go again,
- [47:57]
Kalpen Modi
we're going to keep digging more into the idea of brain rot, but with particular ways to combat it. Stay tuned for part two of our Brainrot series with Manoush Zamorodi, a journalist
- [48:06]
Cal Penn
and host of the TED Radio Hour
- [48:08]
Kalpen Modi
podcast, as well as author of the books Bored and Brilliant and Body Electric.
- [48:13]
Cal Penn
Minouche has done lots of studies to try to understand the benefits of boredom
- [48:18]
Kalpen Modi
and movement for our brain and bodies,
- [48:21]
Cal Penn
things that might, to be honest, counteract all the rotting. So stay tuned and I'll see you next week. Here we go again as a production of iHeart podcasts and snafu Media in association with New Metric Media Media. Our executive producers are me, Cal Penn, Ed Helms, Mike Falbo, Alyssa Martino, Andy Kim, Pat Kelly, Chris Kelly, and Dylan Fagan. Megan Tan is our producer and writer. Dave Shumka is our producer and editor. Our consulting producer is Raman Borsalino. Tori Smith is our associate producer. Theme music by Chris Kelly Logo by Matt Gossen Legal review from Daniel Welsh, Caroline Johnson and Megan Halson. Special thanks to Glenn Basner, Isaac Dunham, Adam Horn, Lane Klein and everyone at iHeart podcasts, but especially Will Pearson, Kerry Lieberman, and Nikki Etor. Thanks for listening everybody.
- [49:14]
Kalpen Modi
Tell your friends, write a review. All of this helps. I appreciate you listening. And until we go again, I'm Kalpin. If you love audiobooks or you just really love a great story, I want to tell you about my other podcast, Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club. Every episode I nerd out with amazing guests and dive into the best new audiobooks from Audible, Sci fi, comedy, romance, thrillers, you name it. No reading required, just listening. Because let's be honest, having a great story read to you is kind of next level. Check out Hearsay on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [49:54]
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- [50:16]
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Martha Stewart
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Ryan Reynolds
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Meaningful Beauty / Cindy Crawford Announcer
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