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- [00:01]
David Eagleman
Here at Life Kit, NPR's Self Help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio. Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at the Daily show, which means he's also back in our ears on the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend Jon Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind. Listen to the Daily Show Ears edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. $1.4 billion in NFL quarterback Contracts the untold stories behind the biggest deals in football history AJ I'm AJ Stephens, Vice President of Client Strategy at Athletes first, introducing the Athletes First Family podcast, the Quarterback Series. My co host Brian Murphy, Athletes First CEO and I are sitting down with the agents who have negotiated contracts for Justin Herbert, Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Tuathungavailoa, and Jordan Love. Listen to athletes first family podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart women's sports production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party. That's P A R T E e on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [02:07]
Craig Ferguson
The Craig Ferguson Pants on Fire Tour is on sale now. It's a new show, it's new material, but I am afraid it's still only me, Craig Ferguson on my own, standing on a stage telling comedy words. Come and see me. Buy tickets, bring your loved ones or don't come and see me. Don't buy tickets and don't bring your loved ones. I'm not your dad. You come or don't come, but you should at least know it's happening. And it is. The tour kicks off late September and goes through the end of the year and beyond. Tickets are available at thecraigfergarsonshow.com tour. They're available at thecraigfergusonshow.com tour or at your local outlet in your region. My name is Craig Ferguson. The name of this podcast is Joy. I talk to interesting people about what brings them happiness. On the podcast today, my guest is David Eagleman. Professor David Eagleman, to be precise. Professor Eagleman, or David, as I call him, is a neuroscientist. He knows a lot about the human brain, but as it turns out, he knows a lot about artificial brains, too. He's just very brainy guy. So I'm going to sound a bit more stupid than usual. Enjoy. David, let me just say this before we start. Do I call you David? Do I call you Mr. Eagleman? Do I call you Dr. Eagleman? Or do you call you Professor Eagleman? Or sir?
- [03:46]
David Eagleman
Please call me David.
- [03:48]
Craig Ferguson
All right. Is it a doctorate the way you're a doctor?
- [03:51]
David Eagleman
Yeah. Dr. Eagleman would be what? Yes. What my mother would call me.
- [03:55]
Craig Ferguson
Yes. Now, I gotta apologize because I'm going to. Not so much to you personally, because I think you'll probably be able to handle it, but to people who already know and follow and understand what you do. I'm going to come across as someone who doesn't know anything about what you do. Now, let's just say that I actually do know what you do and I know everything about your studies and what you kind of do. And I'm not an idiot, but everybody knows I kind of am a little bit, because neuroscience is. I barely understand the dictionary definition of neuroscience. Correct me if I'm wrong, I think it is the study of how the brain works due to the physicality of the brain. Is that close.
- [04:48]
David Eagleman
Yeah, you don't even need the second half. It's just trying to figure out how the brain works, trying to figure out what's going on with the brain. And it can be anything from understanding how vision works or hearing, to understanding decision making, to understanding emotions, to understanding why we have consciousness or how we perceive time. Any of that falls under the umbrella of neuroscience.
- [05:10]
Craig Ferguson
Well, it's interesting because it seems to me to be something that. It's an interesting science because it seems to kind of wander into theology and metaphysics because everything is perception. Even the study of neuroscience is perception. So how do you. I feel like you kind of examining yourself from the inside.
- [05:30]
David Eagleman
Yeah, that's right. Well, I would say at the edges. Neuroscience scratches at lots of things. Certainly philosophy, maybe theology, but the, you know, the way you can do things is set things up objectively in the real world where you can verify. Look, I have, you know, three circles that are the color red. You know, projecting this wavelength on the screen and, you know, what are people seeing? That's a silly example. But the point is we can set things up in the world and understand what people are individually experiencing. I'll give you an example. One of the things I study is called synesthesia, and that's where people have a blending of the senses. So they might look at letters on the page and it triggers a color experience for them. So they'll see J is purple and Y is blue and M is red and so on. And, you know, it's just an internal experience that they're having. We can verify what's going on in the real world. We can compare people to each other. About 3% of the population has synesthesia. But there are lots of things like this that we do where we study across people to understand how perception differs. You know, there are other things. Like if I ask you, Craig, to imagine a, you know, an ant crawling a red and white tablecloth towards a jar of purple jelly, how do you perceive that in your head? Is it clear like a movie? Or is it. You don't really see anything at all. It's just conceptual.
- [07:03]
Craig Ferguson
Does it involve you then? And like, for example, you just gave me the. The ant on the. If you say, is it clear like a movie? It's such a. Weirdly, it's semantics because, I mean, if I do I imagine a clear iPhone film? Is it show on? Is it a 16 millimeter print? Is it. Do you know what I mean? Is it black and white?
- [07:25]
David Eagleman
Right? So if you had to have. If there was a spectrum from no picture at all in your head to a movie at, you know, at the other end of the extreme, where would. Where would you be?
- [07:35]
Craig Ferguson
With the ant on the paper? The ant on the tablecloth? I think I could get myself right up to imax with the ant on the paper.
- [07:43]
David Eagleman
Okay, that's amazing. So it turns out that there is a spectrum across the population. Everyone's spread pretty evenly across this in terms of how visually you imagine things on the inside. And again, this is something that we can test across the population. And we can also test it objectively, using brain imaging to see how much activity there is in the visual part of the brain. And we see that across anything we measure. People exist on. On a spectrum. For example, if I ask you how loud or intrusive is your internal voice? You know, everyone has a Dialogue with themselves.
- [08:21]
Craig Ferguson
Right, right.
- [08:22]
David Eagleman
Are you aware of your internal voice all the time or hardly ever?
- [08:25]
Craig Ferguson
No, I would say that that is very much situationally dependent. When I'm, you know, when I'm calm, not at all. When I'm angry, probably not at all. And when I'm, you know, when I'm trying to make a difficult or political decision, a lot, you know, so. Or am I thinking about the wrong thing?
- [08:49]
David Eagleman
No, no, that's. That's right. That's a good observation. That it differs moment to moment, but across the population, we also find, you know, some people are really overwhelmed by their internal radio. Other people have what's called an endophagia, which means no internal voice. They just. It's totally silent in there. Essentially, across anything we measure, we find that people have very different results. Or how about your memory? Are you. Do you have a great autobiographical memory? Can you remember exactly what you were doing at this time last year or five years ago?
- [09:21]
Craig Ferguson
Okay. And I think it's deteriorating as well, actually, as I age. I really am beginning to think there may be something in there.
- [09:29]
David Eagleman
Yeah, yeah, you just said that three minutes ago. No, I'm kidding. I'm kidding. The. Yeah, that. That's the thing. But, you know, some people, like Mary Lou Henner, the actress, and, you know, some have this, you know, untaxable autobiographical memory and everywhere in between.
- [09:45]
Craig Ferguson
I talked to Marlou Hennar, actually, and asked her about that, and she. I tested her because I had worked with her years before on a different show. This was. And I. I talked to her on Late Night, and she had been on the dru. You know what? I can't even remember why I was talking to her about it, but she really. She really could do that. It's kind of. It's like a weird trick. It's very. It's impressive. But I guess it's. Is it genetic? I guess it's genetic.
- [10:10]
David Eagleman
Yeah. Yeah. And so. And actually, so are all these things, at least as far as we can tell you know, all this. But what it. What it goes to illustrate is that people are very different from one another on the inside. And one of the. This has been. One of my areas of interest in neuroscience is figuring out why, what are the genes or what are the experiences or, you know, what is the thing that has led to different circuitry in Mary Lou's brain and your brain that would lead you to have different experiences of what memory is, what would happen.
- [10:42]
Craig Ferguson
Or have you ever encountered anything that would. I can imagine it could be potentially very Explosive. If you say, you know. Well, you know, because it could lead you into horrible areas of racism. Like you say Mediterranean people tend, their brains tend to be like this. Or Nordic people, their brains tend to be like this. Is that a real thing or is that made up by Nazis?
- [11:07]
David Eagleman
The general story is, you know, Homo sapiens have only spread around the earth very recently. So.
- [11:14]
Craig Ferguson
Right.
- [11:15]
David Eagleman
You know, we originated in Africa about 250,000 years ago. We came out the top and half the people turned left and half turned right and became, you know, Europeans or Asians. But on the inside, the organ that we have, that three pound mission control center hasn't changed. That's the same, same thing. Why? Because 250,000 years just isn't enough time. In the same way that people's hearts and lungs and kidneys are the same as you go around the world. So while there's an enormous amount of difference between people, there aren't between groups of people. On average, you find this giant distribution everywhere.
- [11:54]
Craig Ferguson
What about the idea? I mean, I presume this study, is it driven? I mean, it's knowledge driven. I guess it's science. But is it a medical. Is that what you're looking for? Is it to try and solve problems like one of the springs to mind is dementia, obviously, and Alzheimer's, which is a real of cognitive problem for a lot of people.
- [12:18]
David Eagleman
Yes, yeah, exactly right. So, you know, the field of neuroscience traditionally studies diseases and disorders and, and what happens with the brain to make a change, for example, in cases of dementia. I also study that a lot of the things I do have to do with those areas. But just personally, I got very interested in the topic of, you know, how does the brain run in everyone under normal circumstances? And again, what are the differences between people? And by the way, how does it matter for society? So one of the things I do, I run this center for neuroscience and law, which is all the things that we're learning in neuroscience. How does this affect the legal system and how we think about things there?
- [13:06]
Craig Ferguson
I mean, so if there's a behavioral problem, for example, excuse me, if you find out that someone reacts a certain way being triggered by a certain stimulus, like off the top of my head, I'm not a doctor and don't know what I'm talking about. But say that I have a brain that if you touch me, I get very, very upset. Is that something that you could bring into the legal world where you say, well, this person behaved very badly when they were being arrested, but now we found out they've got the Type of brain that if you touch them, they get very upset.
- [13:38]
David Eagleman
So here's the thing, Great question. It turns out none of this lets people off the hook. So if you break the law, if you cross a societal line, you still have to confront the legal system for it. But one of the things it tells us a lot about is new methods for rehabilitation. So what we do right now as a society, and this is true around the world, we treat incarceration as a one size fits all solution. But in fact, we know so much about the brain now that if you come in with this particular disorder where touching you on your shoulder makes you react badly, you know, maybe there's something we can do to help you out, at least such that, you know, don't.
- [14:17]
Craig Ferguson
Touch me on the shoulder.
- [14:20]
David Eagleman
Exactly what we're not going to do. And then it turns out that, you know, we, we might be able to help you for the next time. Now, again, it doesn't let people off the hook. It's not that you go without punishment, but that's, that's the idea. And there are lots of ways we can do this. Just one example, I've been a strong advocate for having specialized mental health courts. So what we do right now is everyone goes to the same court system. But if somebody has mental illness, which is a, you know, quite a high number of people with mental illness end up on the wrong side of the legal system. You know, you have judges and juries that maybe don't know anything about, let's say, schizophrenia or, or take drug rehabilitation. Yeah, most judges and juries don't know a great deal about what options are available. So having specialized mental health courts, specialized drug courts, things like this are really helpful where you have people with expertise, they know the strategies available.
- [15:10]
Craig Ferguson
It's an interesting thing that you mentioned. Excuse me, schizophrenia and drug rehabilitation. Because schizophrenia, remember, I know nothing about this. You know, you're the brain, I'm pinky, right. So that my understanding of it is, or the tiny amount I know about it is that schizophrenia is a condition which I develop from a genetic position. Right. It's. It's an illness that is born within you. Right.
- [15:38]
David Eagleman
It has a strong genetic component to it. It's not entirely.
- [15:42]
Craig Ferguson
Can it be brought on by, by outside stimulus?
- [15:45]
David Eagleman
It certainly can be exacerbated, brought on early by things like drugs, for example. So, for example, this is a real problem with young people using marijuana, which has a much higher percentage of THC now than it used to in earlier strains. A lot of young people are getting psychotic breaks as a result of that, a much higher percentage than used to.
- [16:07]
Craig Ferguson
That happened to me when I took marijuana when I was, when I was young, I stopped taking. I started, I took marijuana when I was about 18 through until I was about 20, which is all terrible thing to do. And I didn't do tons of it, but there was, at one point I took some and it was one of the most horrendous experiences of my life from marijuana. And it's very hard to explain that to people who don't get affected by it that way.
- [16:35]
David Eagleman
Right, right. Exactly. And there's probably a genetic component to that in terms of who gets affected and who doesn't. But. Yeah. So back to your question about schizophrenia, though. Right, Right. So what were you gonna. So it's mostly genetic, but there are environmental things that exacerbate it. Here at Life Kit, NPR's Self Help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life kit podcast on iHeartradio. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's gonna be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel.
- [17:24]
Craig Ferguson
Ooh.
- [17:24]
David Eagleman
And I am Matt. And we're the hosts of how to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt or you've got a sky high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending. Or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early. Well, how to Money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to Money comes out three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all, this is Reed from the God's country podcast.
- [18:13]
Craig Ferguson
We had the one and only Bobby.
- [18:14]
David Eagleman
Bones in the studio this week, and we cover everything from his upbringing to his outdoor experiences with a stepdad, AR Keith, to the state of country music.
- [18:24]
Craig Ferguson
We may even end the episode with.
- [18:25]
David Eagleman
A little jam session led by Bobby himself. Y'all be sure and listen to this.
- [18:29]
Craig Ferguson
Episode of God's country with Bobby bones.
- [18:31]
David Eagleman
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [18:36]
Craig Ferguson
Don't go shopping at Target with khaki pants and a red shirt on.
- [18:43]
David Eagleman
Don't go shopping at Target with khaki.
- [18:46]
Craig Ferguson
Pants and a red polo shirt on.
- [18:49]
David Eagleman
I switch up song, right. An old lady came up to me. She said, how much for this cream of Wheat? Hey, it's Alec Baldwin. This season on my podcast, here's the thing. I speak with musician, photographer and philanthropist Julian Lennon.
- [19:08]
Craig Ferguson
One of the really important things that.
- [19:10]
David Eagleman
Happened to me in my relationship with, with photography and the images was that I would have people write to me, people that couldn't financially afford to travel the world or go anywhere, couldn't or were disabled and couldn't travel the world or go anywhere.
- [19:26]
Craig Ferguson
And what they had all said to me is that you bring these stories.
- [19:29]
David Eagleman
To us, you bring the truth, you bring life to us of cultures that we would never necessarily know anything about.
- [19:37]
Craig Ferguson
Photography really does allow me to do that.
- [19:39]
David Eagleman
Have empathy for people on the other.
- [19:41]
Craig Ferguson
Side of the world that you'll never be ever meet. But you, you'll at least have some understanding of what their life is and.
- [19:46]
David Eagleman
What they went through or are still going through. Listen to the new season of here's the thing on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [20:02]
Craig Ferguson
Well, I was going to ask you about drug addiction, which I think, I don't know. Is that the same? Is it more percentage genetic for schizophrenia, that is, for drug addiction? Is it more environmental and learned behavior for drug and alcohol addiction? I can't imagine there is peer pressure to become schizophrenic. You know, it seems like it's almost accidental. Whereas, and I speak as a sober alcoholic. I mean, I didn't set out for that to happen. You know, I set out for the sober thing to happen eventually, but it kind of crept up on me. Is there a genetic predisposition to both of these things, is what I'm saying?
- [20:43]
David Eagleman
There is, although completely separate genetics on this, but yes, there is a genetic predisposition for addiction, for having an addictive personality.
- [20:52]
Craig Ferguson
Right.
- [20:52]
David Eagleman
That. That is clearly a thing. But there are very few things really, that can be separated cleanly into nature versus nurture, because there are influences on both. I'll just give you an example. It turns out that with Back to schizophrenia, right, one of the things that influences whether someone has a psychotic break in part has to do with whether they are living in a place where they are in their culture. In their language or whether they have immigrated somewhere else. And when you're living somewhere else, there are things like, you know, you can't, for example, you can't make jokes in your new language as well, or you can't fit in exactly as well. And it turns out that more people have psychotic breaks. In my book Incognito, I talked about this as, you know, one of the risks of getting schizophrenia is the color of your passport. So, you know, that's, that's a surprising social aspect of it that people have discovered.
- [21:47]
Craig Ferguson
Well, that's, that's kind of fascinating to me. Then it does that, does that lead you to study more mental illness? Because clearly there are things like it's not a mental illness, but clearly if someone's dyslexic, they're born dyslexic. Right. It's not something you learn as a little baby.
- [22:03]
David Eagleman
That's right.
- [22:04]
Craig Ferguson
But if someone's left handed or right handed, I was that. Do you learn that? I mean, how much information do you get Right at the beginning, I think is what I'm saying.
- [22:13]
David Eagleman
Yeah, yeah. These are great questions. The fact is, when it comes to nature versus nurture, the answer is almost always both. There are a very tiny number of things that are one or the other. For example, the first gene that was pulled for a disease was Huntington's disease. And everyone thought, great, if you have this gene, you're going to get Huntington's, that's it. And everyone thought, this is going to be easy. But it turns out it's one of the few monogenetic diseases that exist. Meaning, you know, if you have this gene, blah, blah, because everything turns out to be more complicated. Other diseases involve genetics. They involve lots of different genes, whole families of genes. We're still trying to get to the bottom of them. But also most everything involves what's going on societally too. Let me give you an example of this. This came out some years ago. The question is, are there genes for depression? Well, it turns out if you're a carrier of particular genes, the question is, okay, are you more likely to get depression? And the answer is that totally depends on the number of really traumatic life events you have. So let's say, you know, a terrible car accident or the death of a loved one, things like that. If you've had a lot of traumatic life experiences and you carry these genes, then your chance of getting depression is much higher than someone who's had the same number of traumatic life experiences but don't carry the genesis. But if you don't have, let's say, any or just a few life experiences that are bad, your chances are no different than anyone else. So this is. Now, we refer to this as gene times, environment, you know, gene X environment interactions. So it depends on both things.
- [23:51]
Craig Ferguson
So it's kind of like a recipe then, right?
- [23:53]
David Eagleman
Yeah, yeah, like.
- [23:55]
Craig Ferguson
So let me. I want to, like some. Some bit of this and some bit of that. You know, you get a little bit of sugar and a little bit of salt and a little bit of trauma, and you get, you know, you get a special thing.
- [24:06]
David Eagleman
Exactly. And what this points to is the complexity of both biology and life. Right. You know, born. Yeah. Things can happen to you that were unexpected and you can have genes that interact in unexpected ways. Yes.
- [24:18]
Craig Ferguson
And that's. So I imagine there's probably an almost infinite amount of variables and all these different things. So to pin down how someone is ever going to be, it just remains as elusive as ever then, right?
- [24:30]
David Eagleman
That's. That is exactly right. So you take a movie like Minority Report where the shtick was that you could predict who's going to commit a crime in the future. It's total fantasy, and it'll never happen. In other words, people think, hey, as we get better with brain imaging or with AI, won't we get to that point someday? But the answer is, it'll never happen. Why? Because your brain is changing and rewiring every second of your life depending on your interactions. So, for example, your brain and my brain are different than they were five minutes ago just from conversing with each other.
- [25:04]
Craig Ferguson
Right.
- [25:04]
David Eagleman
And so, and this is the notion of brain plasticity, which is that fundamentally what Mother Nature has done is built a system that absorbs the world and is constantly reconfiguring itself.
- [25:18]
Craig Ferguson
So it kind of. You mentioned the AI there. So I kind of find that fascinating because the idea, I suppose, of AI, again, I know nothing about either, but the. The idea is that it mimics the learning pattern of a human brain. Right. Because that's all it can do, given the fact that's all we have to build it with.
- [25:35]
David Eagleman
Sort of. So this is the really interesting thing. So. So AI launched many decades ago, and the idea was, okay, look, the brain is super complicated, but fundamentally, you've got these units and you've got these connections between the units in the brain. These are neurons, and these are all the connections between the neurons. So people said, look, what if we just make a cartoon version of this where you just have these, you know, little units and we've got these connections you're just changing the strength of those connections across a big network. So that's where artificial neural networks took off and went in that direction. And it turns out that's become incredibly successful. We've got this great renaissance going on of AI, but it's actually not that much like the human brain. It's quite different. So there are many, many things that the human brain does that AI simply can't and at least in its current architecture, won't do anytime soon. I'll give you an example of that. But I'll also say really quickly that it's not to say that we can't build artificial neural networks that are just like the brain. And someday, maybe five years from now, maybe 50 years from now, do everything a brain does. But our current stuff, like ChatGPT, for example, does not have an internal model of the world. So if I ask GPT, hey, when Craig Ferguson walks into a room, does his nose come with him? It won't know the answer to that because it has no model of the world. You know, does. Does his spleen come with him? Well, how does it know? It doesn't it? Why? Because the way ChatGPT is trained, it's read everything in the world and it's just doing statistical games on what word is likely to come next. That's all GPT does. It's an enormous, enormous network. Yeah, that's just.
- [27:21]
Craig Ferguson
I did ask, I asked ChatGPT to write me a short Craig Ferguson stand up comedy routine. And you know, I feel like either I'm a terrible writer, but my delivery is great, or are just a terrible comedian, or ChatGPT has got a way to go yet and should maybe, you know, work on his material in some clubs.
- [27:44]
David Eagleman
So, so, okay, this is a really good point. ChatGPT is terrible at humor, at making up new jokes. Okay. Why? It's because it's just a statistical parent. And what it realizes is that humor is all about the violation of expectation, but it doesn't know how to violate it. Well, so if you ask it, tell me a joke about, you know, three guys who walk into a bar and say, you know, and do blah, blah, blah, it'll say, the first guy does this, the second guy does this, and the third guy does this, and it'll say something that doesn't make any sense because it knows the third thing is supposed to break the pattern, but it doesn't know how to do it in a funny way.
- [28:20]
Craig Ferguson
I feel in Spain, I always, like, I think there's an argument to be made for having a comedy night in a club where comedians have to tell jokes written by computers. And in fact, I am going to put that together as soon as possible.
- [28:38]
David Eagleman
So this is funny that you mentioned this, because I'm actually working on, on, on a television documentary now. I'm, I'm writing this up with my colleagues. It's called Bits and Giggles. And it's exactly about this. It's about a comedian who goes on a road trip with AI. Yeah, we've actually built a little bot that does, you know, speech to text. It goes off to chat GPT and then does, you know, text to speech so you can have a dialogue back and forth with this little bottom. And the question is, what does AI mean for us? Will it be funny? Can it take the place of a comedian? Can it perform on stage with a comedian?
- [29:16]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah, I think it's quite interesting because of my own history with comedy. I love it and I feel that it's a very human connectivity thing in its odd way. It's very intimate thing even, although it's one person and an audience in the way that I do it anyway. And I wonder if that happens then. Do you have your robot lover? Do you have your robot husband, your robot wife, your robot spouse, your robot children? I mean, is it possible?
- [29:50]
David Eagleman
Yeah, so, okay, so this is funny. So my wife has been joking about this for a long time. She's been joking about the 5% better David, by which she mean, what if she had an AI David that had all my good qualities, but it never got distracted or hangry or, you know, looked when my phone beeps or whatever? So we've talked about this a lot and what this means. And, you know, the issue now is that lots of young people are getting AI girlfriends and to some lesser extent, AI boyfriends. Girls getting that in Japan. Apparently this is a becoming a bigger thing where people have these AI relationships. We can imagine perhaps the downsides of this. But I do want to note, I think an upside for young people is you might be able to learn how to navigate relationships a little bit better. And, you know, you kind of get your sandbox, your practice relationship, and if the AI is good and gives you good feedback, you might actually be a better person in relationships.
- [30:50]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah, but then you don't get the requisite amount of trauma to make you human. I mean, no one wants to wish trauma on anyone. But junior high school may be an essential component of making you a better person. It's. It's an interesting conundrum.
- [31:07]
David Eagleman
So I agree with you. And it Turns out the way to do this, I think, is to make the AI bot be traumatic in the sense of if you say something wrong to it, it's not kind or something, it gets its feelings hurt. Obviously it's just statistically impersonating this. But the point is, instead of having an AI that just says, oh, that was so good, that was so funny and nice, instead it gives you real feedback, tough love.
- [31:30]
Craig Ferguson
And that may actually work better than the parenting that my generation inflicted on the next generation, which I think was a little too positive. I don't know, something went wrong. So let me steer you around back to the brain and perception a little bit, because I'm fascinated by the idea. In my own life, I'm fascinated by the idea of. I think most people are. What is it all about? What is the meaning of life? Is there a God? You know, And I wonder if in the study of the brain, which is, you know, it's information central, it's information and control, everything's passing through there. Does it lead you in any direction, personally, for yourself? Does it lead you in an atheistic direction? Does it lead you in a faith based direction? Does it do anything to you personally?
- [32:22]
David Eagleman
Sure. I mean, I've spent my life in science and I feel like the main lesson that one can derive is to really understand the vastness of our ignorance. And so the more you reach down into science and the world and the cosmos, you find that there's so much that we don't know, we don't understand. So what does that meant for me? I am neither an atheist nor religious, because atheism, at least in its harshest form, in its strictest form, kind of often pretends, hey, we've got this all figured out. We know, we know what's going on here, but it's clear that we don't know what's going on here. On the flip side, all the traditional religions also pretend to have certainty about stuff, and they're all making it up. And so that puts me in the middle. I don't call myself agnostic because agnostic often means I don't know if there's a guy with a beard on a cloud or not. But I call myself something else. I call myself a possibillion. And the idea with possibilianism is an active exploration of the possibility space, trying to figure out what is going on in this great big cosmos that we're in. And so the idea is, you know, to take a scientific mindset to this question, which is to say, you know, science Always has a broad table and allows lots of hypotheses on and says, okay, maybe this, maybe that, Cool, I'll let anything on the table. But you know, we use the tools of science to rule out parts of the possibility space. So if you come and say, hey, look, I think, you know, this thing is going on with crystals or this or ESP or whatever, we can actually test that and rule things out. And we, and we, that's what we do all the time. There's lots of stuff that's sort of off the table at this point. For example, you know, if you were to say, like, you know, traditional religious books, hey, the earth is 6,000 years old, you know, that's a problem because, you know, the Japanese were, you know, making pottery 6,000 years before that. And so that can't be true. So we can use the tools of science to open up new folds in the possibility space and to rule things out. But, but what it allows is a big space where we can shine a flashlight around and say, all right, look, we're not going to pretend that we know for sure that nothing exists or that this particular made up story exists. Instead we're going to explore.
- [34:48]
Craig Ferguson
It's fascinating to me. I imagine at some point in your life you run across the varieties of religious experience. The William James lectures, did you ever run into them?
- [34:57]
David Eagleman
I have not read that. I've heard of it. Yeah.
- [35:00]
Craig Ferguson
It's interesting because I'm kind of like climbing through it right now for. I don't know, I guess it's what I do for entertainment. There is one of the lectures he gave when he talks about that when people believe something and it makes them feel good, then they are convinced it's true. He's talking and I thought, that's fascinating to me. I knew I was going to be talking to you today as well. And I thought that's an interesting position to be in, that the religious experience. If something, a ceremony or a story or a particular piece of dogma gives you a sense of euphoria. Is euphoria something that, that breeds verisimilitude? Is it something that you say, I feel good, therefore this must be true?
- [35:49]
David Eagleman
Yeah, I think there are lots of reasons why people believe things about any religious story. One of them, of course, is that often people don't apply real rigor in what they call true or not true in the first place. But secondly, there's a huge social component to this. If your friends, your family, your loved ones go and they pray to this deity at this situation, then People feel like, hey, you know, I. That's something that is meaningful to me too. So I think there are a lot of reasons why people believe in things. One of them is that people, you know, don't necessarily apply rigorous tools when they're deciding what to believe or not. But, but more than that, there's a huge social component to religion or faith of any sort, which is to say, if your friends and loved ones believe in a particular thing, we tend to be compelled that way. And if you live in a place where everyone around you believes whatever deity and whatever crazy thing, then you grow up that way. And you think, of course that must be true, because these people that I love and respect, they believe that. So there are many different things that compel people. And, you know, maybe someone says, okay, I'm gonna finally break from my religion and they go to some other religion and whatever, they're, you know, attractive people there or a compelling narrator who tells them something. And so they feel like, hey, that that fits with what I need in my life. That's the message I need right now. But, but none of this, yeah, none of this qualifies as good reasons to believe. It's just why people believe.
- [37:20]
Craig Ferguson
It's interesting, though, because the only. The ultimate measuring tool that you have in front of you or that you have to use is in fact, the. Your own perception and the perception of your contemporaries. Right? So if you set up even the most rigorous academic test, you're still looking at it with your eyes and thinking about it with your brain. I don't.
- [37:41]
David Eagleman
I don't think so. I think that we can actually use the tools of science.
- [37:44]
Craig Ferguson
Really?
- [37:45]
David Eagleman
So, yeah, so, for example, I mentioned the way that science opens up new folds in the possibility space as we discover things. For example, about the size of the. I mean, look, you know, poor. You know, Galileo had to spend the last part of his life imprisoned because he suggested that maybe the Earth is going around the sun and not vice versa. But as we discover more and more about the cosmos and understand the absolute enormity of it and that our galaxy has 100 billion stars, any number, you know, any one of which has number of planets rolling around it. And, and our galaxy is one of 100 billion galaxies in the cosmos. And as we, as we understand these things, I think that opens us up to a very different kind of faith so that we don't have to think about, okay, my little local deity can beat your local deity and so on.
- [38:36]
Craig Ferguson
Right.
- [38:36]
David Eagleman
First of all, science opens up these things. But then the other thing I mentioned is that science rules things out. You know, whether that's the age of the earth or the idea that, you know, your deity, you know, did. Did some little things, some little magic trick, and you can rule that stuff in or out. I think we probably have a very different perspective on the world than we did even 300 years ago when people considered, hey, do I think this deity represents the truth? And for example, we're so global now that we see there are 2,000 religions on the planet, and so it becomes harder to believe, oh, the thing that I grew up with has to be the right one because you now see that there are 2,000 other versions of this stuff. So anyway, all these things point to as we become smarter as a society, I think we can develop notions that maybe are more appropriate to a deeper view. Here at Life Kit, NPR's Self Help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life kit podcast on iHeartradio. 2025 is bound to be a fascinating year. It's gonna be filled with money challenges and opportunities. I'm Joel. Ooh. And I am Matt. And we're the hosts of how to Money. We want to be with you every step of the way in your financial journey this year, offering the information and insights you need to thrive financially. Yeah, whether you find yourself up to your eyeballs in student loan debt or you've got a sky high credit card balance because you went a little overboard with the holiday spending. Or maybe you're looking to optimize your retirement accounts so you can retire early. Well, how? The money will help you to change your relationship with money so you can stress less and grow your net worth. That's right. How to Money comes out three times a week, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. For money advice without the judgment and jargon, listen to how to Money on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, y'all, this is Reed from the God's country podcast.
- [41:01]
Craig Ferguson
We had the one and only Bobby.
- [41:03]
David Eagleman
Bones in the studio this week, and we cover everything from his upbringing to his outdoor experiences with a stepdad, AR Keith, to the state of country music.
- [41:12]
Craig Ferguson
We may even end the episode with.
- [41:14]
David Eagleman
A little jam session led by Bobby himself. Y'all be sure and listen to this.
- [41:18]
Craig Ferguson
Episode of God's country with Bobby bones.
- [41:19]
David Eagleman
On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.
- [41:25]
Craig Ferguson
Don't go shopping at Target with khaki pants and a red shirt on. Don't go shopping at Target with khaki pants and a red polo shirt on.
- [41:37]
David Eagleman
Switch up, songwriter.
- [41:41]
Craig Ferguson
An old lady came up to me.
- [41:44]
David Eagleman
She said, how much for this cream of Wheat? Can you hear it? It's the whisper of two wolves inside you. One says, you're not enough. The other says, keep going. You can do this. They're always talking. The one you listen to shapes your life. I'm Eric Zimmer, host of the one you feed on my podcast. We explore how to hear the voice that matters, the one that leads you courage, wisdom, and love. It's not about perfection, it's about direction. Millions of listeners have fed their good wolf. Now it's your turn. Listen to the one you feed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [42:50]
Craig Ferguson
Along the lines of what you were saying. I remember before my first kid was born, I said to the obstetrician, how much do you actually know? About what? Pregnancy. What's going on in pregnancy? And she said, if you'd asked me that question 10 years ago, I'd have said about 50%, but we've learned so much that now I would say about 25%.
- [43:15]
David Eagleman
Excellent. Very good.
- [43:17]
Craig Ferguson
And I think that that's a fascinating, though, because if you follow the logical mathematical root of that, literally, the more you know, the less you know.
- [43:29]
David Eagleman
Yeah, yeah, that's exactly. I mean, there used to be people called pansophists, which meant, you know, someone who knows everything to be known. And, you know, back in ancient Greece, it was plausible to have someone who was a pansifist. And now it's totally impossible and has been for centuries. So, you know, that's lovely. And what I love, by the way, about this moment in time right now is we've got AI that has consumed, you know, every single thing ever written by humans. And so that provides a whole new way of interacting and learning humankind's knowledge, which is a sphere that is now much too large for any of us to ever hope to even get into. But what we can do is find some doorway that interests us and enter the sphere that way. And by talking to the AI, just, you know, learn all about the world by asking questions that are relevant to us. And I think this is going to really change our educational systems for schooling, because right now, you know, kids sit in classrooms. It's Too fast for half the kids, Too slow for half the kids. But we can finally achieve this dream of real individualized education where everyone, you know, has an AI tutor. Which is, by the way, how it used to go. You know, Alexander the Great was tutored by Aristotle. And, you know, you'd sit there and have conversations and I think we'll. We'll return to that.
- [44:55]
Craig Ferguson
But that's. I mean, that's fantastic for learning. But I mean, what we were. You're talking about as well, even when we were talking about religion, is that your religion or your propensity to certain depressions or different traumas. All of that's to do with socialization. And to have an AI at a certain point, I have to ask myself, I mean, I'm just speaking out a little bit. What's the point if it just mimics everything that we've already got? We've already got that.
- [45:30]
David Eagleman
So, okay, great. Those are two separate questions. So as far as socialization, I think that's what school will become. I think you're exactly right. That's such an important part of growing up. And this was the terrible thing for parents about COVID is seeing your young children having to stay home and not wrestling and rolling around and jumping on trampolines with other kids. So we'll always have that, but school will become more about that. And instead of having the teacher drone on to the kids, it'll be, you know, the kids put on headphones and do that. At least as it stands now, what humans are really great at doing is creativity and also understanding which. Which creative moves matter. So, for example, I can say to the AI, hey, generate 100 pictures of, of, you know, Craig sitting in an avocado chair holding a poodle. And it'll do that, but it doesn't know which of those pictures are better than. Than another. But a human looks and says, oh, Craig, that's a really good one. And that one over these stink over here, whatever. And so humans are actually necessary, at least at the moment, for doing this next step, for figuring out, okay, I can ask, I can query the AI, but what do I do with that? What's the next step? I'll give you a specific example. Science. So AI can tell me incredible things like, hey, I need to understand, you know, these facts that are scattered around all these different journal papers across 50 years. Give me a summary of this. It's trivial for it to do that, and that's super useful. But what it can't do is generate new sorts of science in the way that, let's say Albert Einstein says, okay, what if I were riding on a photon of light? What would that be like if I were moving at the speed of light? And then he thinks through that, and he says, oh, and he comes up with the special theory of relativity. That's progress. He wins the Nobel Prize for this sort of stuff. That's the kind of things that, at least at the moment, AI does not do. So, in answer to your question, the. The ultimate perfect thing is if we have AI co pilots with us who can tell us lots of information, and then we use our creativity and our extrapolation and simulation of possible futures to put that together to make. To make something that's a next step for our civilization.
- [47:57]
Craig Ferguson
All right, so if that can happen, and let's imagine that it can, is there a possibility that at certain point, if we can find the genetic and chemical recipe for any individual's personality, that that can be. I'm asking the singularity question. Can you put the mind and the soul of a cognizant, coherent, sentient being inside something which is digital?
- [48:30]
David Eagleman
Okay, so that's the question of, can you upload your brain so you don't have to die? Here's how it would work. It would work by taking a scan of your brain at the kind of resolution that we can't even dream of now, right now, with our very fancy brain imaging, what we call FMRI functional magnetic resonance imaging, is very crude. Okay? But cut to 100 years from now, our great grandchildren are sitting around having podcasts with each other. And the question is, could you scan a brain at the resolution where you know every single neuron and all the connections and perhaps everything going on inside the neuron and reproduce that algorithm on a computer? The answer is probably. Probably you could do that, and therefore you could download it and run Craig or Craig's great grandchild, such that you really couldn't tell a difference. So. So I say to the computer, hey, Craig's great grandchild, are you in there? And she says, yeah, I'm here. What's up? And, you know, we have a conversation.
- [49:30]
Craig Ferguson
That'S fascinating to me. So the.
- [49:33]
David Eagleman
The.
- [49:33]
Craig Ferguson
The idea that is. I mean, I won't hold you to it, but sort of theoretically, sort of.
- [49:40]
David Eagleman
Kind of maybe, oh, theoretically, yes. And it's because, as best we can tell, this is just a machine in here. It's the most complex, sophisticated thing that we have ever come across in our universe, the human brain. But it's just a machine. It's just built out of 86 billion neurons and about the same number of glial cells. And it's, you know, every neuron in your head is popping off little signals tens to hundreds of times per second. So it's unbelievably complex. You've got something like 200 trillion connections between these neurons. And as I said, it's like a forest that's reconfiguring with every experience that you have. So it's unbelievably complex, but it's a machine. And so there's no reason that we should not be able to reproduce that on silicon or whatever. I mean, in theory, I could reproduce your brain out of beer cans and tennis balls.
- [50:34]
Craig Ferguson
And if it's mine, definitely. Yeah.
- [50:36]
David Eagleman
Yeah.
- [50:37]
Craig Ferguson
I don't even. I don't think you need the tennis balls.
- [50:41]
David Eagleman
And if it's doing the same algorithm, then. Then it's you. And if I say, hey, Craig, how you doing? You say, I'm a little. Yeah, I'm a little hungry, whatever. But it's. It's you. Because all we are is, you know, these vast machines. And by the way, the reason we know that, I'm not just saying this as an assertion, the reason we know that is because of centuries of studying brain damage. If you study even a very tiny bit of your brain that completely changed, that can change your personality, your decision making, your ability to recognize animals or see colors or hear music or, you know, a thousand other things that we see in the clinics every day. And that's how we know that you are the operation of your brain. And when little things change, that changes you. And by the way, drugs and alcohol are just invisibly small molecules that get in your bloodstream and change the functioning of your brain, changes you. You know, when you sleep each night, you go into deep sleep, and then you're not even there anymore. And then, you know, when you wake up, it sort of reboots the whole system and so on. But the point is, it's all happening in these three pounds here. That is you.
- [51:44]
Craig Ferguson
That is fascinating. So I have to ask you personally more, does anything frighten you about this?
- [51:53]
David Eagleman
I don't think so. I mean, just because what you're saying would.
- [51:57]
Craig Ferguson
I think what you're saying would frighten a lot of people who are committed to different theological or psychological or philosophical ideas. And you're. And you're saying some stuff that would challenge that, I think, from a scientific point of view.
- [52:13]
David Eagleman
Yeah, I mean, I guess I can't say people have all kinds of idea. You know, with 8.3 billion people on the earth. There are that many views on the world. So. But this view, I, I would assert is the only one that's defensible. I mean, you could have whatever faith you have, whatever deity you have, but if you walk into a neurology ward and you see patients with different brain damage and they have different things going on, I don't know how, how, how one would explain that otherwise except to say, yeah, you, you are your brain. I, I guess the part that frightens me, but it's sort of a calm, mellow fright, is just how fragile we are as creatures. But everybody knows that anyway. All it takes is a stroke, you know, a little clot that gets in there, or traumatic brain injury or a brain tumor or whatever, and then, and then you're not even you anymore. So I guess that part is frightening. But I, I, I'm so used to thinking about that.
- [53:13]
Craig Ferguson
Yeah, it's a fascinating, endlessly. I think that must be one of the attractions of it, surely, is the fact that it is, it's endless, it's endless. There's no, there's no end point where you go, well, that's the brain done. Let's move on to the kidneys. It's, it's, this is not, it's a long way to go.
- [53:33]
David Eagleman
Yeah, that's exactly right. And you know what's, what's so cool is. So I've been in the field now, I, Wow. Well over a quarter century and the progress that I've seen. But I would say exactly what the, you know, what the obstetrician said about pregnancy, I would say the same thing about the brain, which is we have so much knowledge now, we know less and less as a percentage. You know, we have this book in the field called Principles of Neuroscience, and it's enormous. It's about a thousand pages long at this point. You know, it's the umpteenth edition of this book. But what's very funny about it is it keeps growing longer with each edition. And it's not principles, because if it were principles, it would be like a pamphlet. But instead, as we get more and more data, we just keep dumping stuff in there. We say, oh, well, but there's also this and there's that and these kind of cells and that kind of genes. And what it demonstrates is we don't have the principles yet that allow us to have some sort of compression of this.
- [54:32]
Craig Ferguson
Does it have an effect on you and your personal life? Do you drink alcohol? Do you take drugs? Do you, I Mean, you don't have to in a vague way, do you know?
- [54:42]
David Eagleman
I don't do any of that actually.
- [54:45]
Craig Ferguson
Is that because of brain damage?
- [54:47]
David Eagleman
Yeah, yeah. No, I think. Right. I think it's because I'm sort of a control freak about my brain. I just want to keep this as healthy as I can. Yeah. So I don't do any of that. I'm the last guy in Silicon Valley that hasn't done psychedelics and had interesting trips and so on. And everyone asks me about that around here, but I, Yeah, I just, I haven't taken. It's probably, it's probably so low risk to do that, but I just. Maybe that's a, A fear is the. My consciousness is a very particular thing and I know that if I stick in these invisibly small molecules, it'll change the, you know, the receptors or whatever, it'll change the activity. Just a few percentage. And I'll be talking to silver leprechauns. But I don't, I don't want to change that. I don't want to mess up the system because this is all I've got.
- [55:39]
Craig Ferguson
And what about physical health? Do you. I mean obviously your body feeds your brain. I mean everything. So I mean, do you find yourself avoiding certain foods or, or avoiding certain activities or, or.
- [55:55]
David Eagleman
Yeah, well, basically that I keep in really good shape and I eat healthfully. Yeah, I just, I try to make sure that I'm optimizing everything I can on that front.
- [56:06]
Craig Ferguson
Are you, are you hyper aware of it? Like if you eat, if you eat some sugar, do you, do you feel it? Do you know what it's doing?
- [56:13]
David Eagleman
Yeah, I know what it's doing. I. Let's see. I, I don't think I'm hyper aware of it, but I, I'm not even attracted to sugary things. I don't even. Right like that. But I think I would say anymore. Obviously when I was a child I did. But the more, the more I care about optimizing the whole system, the less I'm even interested in those sorts of things.
- [56:33]
Craig Ferguson
It's interesting. Let's. Very quickly because I've been taking up an enormous. Of your time. But I'm fascinated by this. What does. Because sugar is a thing for me. What does sugar do in your brain?
- [56:47]
David Eagleman
Well, you increase the blood sugar in your body and there are all kinds of bad effects that, that can have just physically in the brain. It's actually not a bad thing because it's, it's an energy source. It's a quick energy source. So, you know, if you're, if you're really tired and you need to do something, it's probably, it's probably not a bad idea. But the rest of the body, it wreaks havoc with time. Yeah, it's.
- [57:12]
Craig Ferguson
Well, it's a, it's a fascinating thing, David, and, and thank you for being so patient with me, because I really do know nothing about this, but I feel like I know a little more now. And now that I know a little more, I really know how little I know about what I was talking about. But it's a fascinating subject and I hope you'll come back and talk to us again because it's, it really is an endlessly interesting piece of the world that you're involved in.
- [57:40]
David Eagleman
Great. Thank you.
- [57:41]
Craig Ferguson
Probably the most important piece, I guess.
- [57:44]
David Eagleman
I kind of think so. I mean, it is the center of who we are. There's really, if you want to understand something about the self, one can take spiritual classes, psychology classes, stuff like that, and those are probably good inroads. But fundamentally, this is the perceptual machinery by which you view the whole world. So this is probably the best inroad there is to understand what the heck we're doing here, what your perception of the world is and why you react the way you do, why you have the feelings and emotions you do, why you think the way you do, and so on. And by the way, as you know, I think I've got this podcast called Inner Cosmos, and what I do is every week I talk about this intersection between the brain and daily life and why, why we experience the world the way we do.
- [58:29]
Craig Ferguson
It is a fascinating idea. And I will watch your inner cosmos and listen to your inner cosmos and investigate your inner cosmos and see if it can help me. But I, I am fascinated by it, and it really is great. David, thank you so much for being around.
- [58:44]
David Eagleman
Great. Thanks, Craig. It's such a pleasure to be here.
- [58:46]
Craig Ferguson
Thanks, buddy.
- [59:00]
David Eagleman
Here at Life Kit, NPR's Self Help podcast, we love the idea of helping you make meaningful lifestyle changes. Our policy is to never be too punishing on yourself or too grand in your goals, which is why we've got shows on how to make little nudges to your behavior and create habits that stick. Listen to the Life Kit podcast on iHeartRadio. Jon Stewart is back in the host chair at the Daily show, which means he's also back in our ears on the Daily Show Ears Edition podcast. Join late night legend Jon Stewart and the best news team for today's biggest headlines, exclusive extended interviews and more. Now this is a second term we can all get behind Listen to the Daily Show Ears edition on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. $1.4 billion in NFL quarterback Contracts the untold stories behind the biggest deals in football history I'm AJ Stephens, Vice President of Client Strategy at Athletes first, introducing the Athletes First Family Podcast, the the Quarterback series. My co host Brian Murphy, Athletes First CEO and I are sitting down with the agents who have negotiated contracts for Justin Herbert, Deshaun Watson, Dak Prescott, Tuathailoa and Jordan Love. Listen to athletes first family podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You are cordially invited to the hottest party in professional sports. I'm Tisha Allen, former golf professional and the host of welcome to the Party, your newest obsession about the wonderful world that is women's golf. Featuring interviews with top players on tour, tips to help improve your swing, and the craziest stories to come out of your friendly neighborhood country club. Welcome to the Party with Tisha Allen is an iHeart Women's fourth production in partnership with Deep Blue Sports and Entertainment. Listen to welcome to the Party that's P A r on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcast.