← Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Mayim Bialik's Breakdown
Part Two: Your Brain Might Be Lying. The Scientific Explanation for Cellular Memory, Why Universal Intelligence Can Be Found In Nature and How Past Memory Is Actually Changeable | Dr. Nikolay Kukushkin
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- [00:00]
Jonathan Cohen
Mind Breakdown is supported by Helix Sleep
- [00:04]
Mayim Bialik
Spring is in the air and so are all of the allergens that come with it. Spring allergens means you need more sleep, but there are a ton of factors that can prevent us from getting a good night's rest. Night sweats, back pain, feeling the person next to you when they roll over a million times. We were so excited to hear that Helix wanted to partner with us. I've had my Helix mattress for about five years now and I have been sleeping so much better. Jonathan and also our kids love their Helix mattresses and all night sweats, back pain, motion transfer. Those things are significantly better with a Helix mattress. Helix delivers your mattress right to your door which is so much fun. With free shipping in the US they have a 120 night sleep trial and limited lifetime warranty. Plus they're happy with Helix Guarantee Rest easy with seamless returns and exchanges. The Happy with Helix Guarantee offers a risk free customer first experience designed to ensure that you're completely satisfied with your new mattress. Go to helix sleep.com breakdown for 27% off sitewide that's helixsleep do for 27% off site wide helixsleep.com breakdown a vacation
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Mayim Bialik
the listing says heated pool but there's actually no pool to heat.
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Definitely a verbo care thing.
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Jonathan Cohen
If my teenager starts calling me Leslie
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Vrbo Advertiser
instead of mom, that's a family thing. Leslie.
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Mayim Bialik
That makes sense.
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Mayim Bialik
Hi, I'm Mayim Bialik.
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Jonathan Cohen
And I'm Jonathan Cohen.
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Mayim Bialik
And welcome to part two of our conversation with Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin. He's a Russian born neuroscientist. His degrees are from St. Petersburg State University, Oxford University and he did his postdoctoral training at Harvard. We talk about his book one hand clapping and part one of our conversation with Dr. Kukushkin explored so many different aspects of evolution intelligence that we can find in every aspect of our life. We talk about his research into sea slugs. What can we learn from sea slugs about memory? Part one is great. Part two is going to explore AI as part of our evolutionary path. What technology can't provide that real experiences can? And what what are the implications of the friendships that so many people are forming with non human synthetic robots. What does it mean for love?
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Jonathan Cohen
Stick around to the end where Mayim and I get into a heated and somewhat hilarious outro. We really hope you enjoy part two of this episode.
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Mayim Bialik
And without further ado, here's part two of our conversation with Nikola Kaushkin. Break it down. I want to talk a little bit more about dopamine because you give it kind of its own glorious moment in one hand clapping and, and you know, what you kind of talk about. And this kind of goes back to the carbon oxygen conversation. And I really love. And this is the, you know, this winds its way through everything that you talk about in the book, which is every organic relationship that exists is giving us information about a much larger purpose. Right. So when you talk about the cortex versus, you know, the dopaminergic reward system, what you, what you set up is that there's a, a cognitive and, and, and emotional component of us, but it's always going to be competing against a system that is wired for like, sex, drugs and rock and roll. The dopamine system is always going to say, like, more, yes, good. We don't care about her, him or the time. That's the dopamine system and it's being balanced by this cortical system. So again, in the same way that you talk about, you know, the DNA, RNA protein relationship, the carbon oxygen relationship, there's these larger patterns that are built in to, to even this system. I want you to talk about dopamine, though, because the example that you give is, for example, if you give all of your dopamine to social media, there's simply not going to be a lot left over and you will then have to keep chasing it. If you go to a party and have a great time and you're up till 4, chances are you can't do that again the next day because the system's going to need to recalibrate. As we get older, this becomes more evident. Talk a little bit about the, the strength of the dopamine pull and what it tells us really about also our human experience.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Well, so what I'm always interested in is what does dopamine mean from the perspective of nature? What did nature put into this molecule? What is it there for? What does it actually do? And it's not an easy question. Even though dopamine, I think it's the one case where this chemical has really entered the popular vernacular. People refer to it when they talk about their mental states. I think really this probably is the future of neuroscience and the future of not just neuroscience, but our culture. I think that in the future we will have words that come from the bottom up that define our mental states, emotions, memories, from what is actually happening in the brain. And dopamine might be the first instance when that is sort of beginning to happen. But the way that people understand dopamine is wrong. People think of dopamine as a pleasure molecule, a pleasure chemical. It's an easy narrative. You do something, you get a pleasure chemical because you did it, you want more pleasure, you. You repeat the thing. That's very neat and easy to understand. The problem is that dopamine doesn't actually cause pleasure. So Adderall would be one way to get more. More dopamine. People who take Adderall for adhd, for example, they get more focused, they get in the zone more, they work harder for their goal. Same would be true for a rat. But they don't experience euphoria. It's not that. Suddenly everything is incredible in their life, and it's just pure joy. That's not what happens. So this molecule doesn't cause pleasure. And it becomes not clear, okay, if it doesn't cause pleasure, why are we chasing this dopamine? What is it that draws us to it? And what I arrive at in the book is that dopamine is not actually what our brain wants. Ironically, it's what the brain wants to get rid of. But it gets it every time there is something unexpectedly good. And this dopamine basically tells the brain, why is this good thing unexpected? Why is that a surprise? Go and figure out why this is a surprise so that it's not surprising anymore. So I can get access to it anytime I want. So whatever that good thing you found, I have access to it all the time. That's what dopamine does. It's a figure it out signal rather than a pleasure signal. It makes you work harder to get that reward and anytime, that's what motivates us. So one great way to understand this is classic experiments by B.F. skinner on pigeons. So these pigeons, they also have the dopamine system just like us. Even though their brains are a little different, since then, it's been replicated in other animals too. So it's not specific to pigeons. It's just that was the classic organism in which these experiments have been done. So what you can do with these pigeons is you can put a button in their cage and make them pick that button to open a reward. Yeah, pick, pick, pick, pick, pick. And you can set the number of pecks that they need to make to get the reward. So say you set it to 50, that's a lot of work. And they peck and they peck and they peck. They open the reward, they get tired, they walk around, they eat the reward. Eventually they come back to the button, start pecking it again. If you make this number of pecks, if you set it to 100, that's even more work. When they're done with that, they get even more tired. They spend more time relaxing, resting, before they reluctantly get back to that button. So the longer, the more effort you put into that button, the more time they will be tired. But if you make that number unpredictable, if you randomize how many times the pigeon needs to peck the button to get the reward, then it doesn't stop. Just keeps pecking and pecking and pecking and pecking and pecking nonstop without any arrest, Faster than any pigeon with 150 pecks per button. So it's not the reward, per se, that motivates pigeons. You would think that, well, the 50 peck pigeon knows how to get the reward. It can always get it. Why isn't it motivated to get it? It's just not the reward that motivates the pigeon. It's the unpredictability. It's trying to figure out the pattern. It's trying to figure out what do I need to do to get Sounds
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Mayim Bialik
more like dating than social media. It sounds like love. It sounds like if I'm in a relationship and I don't know if I'm actually gonna get the goodies, I'm gonna stay, I'm gonna keep going back no matter what, because one time I might get something more than crumbs and gambling.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
And in any really, any motivation, we are drawn to unpredictability. When everything is predictable, our brains rest. They don't do anything. It's only this unpredictability that draws us to do anything.
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Mayim Bialik
Chaos is addictive.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Yeah, chaos is. That's a very good way to put it. Chaos is addictive. And order is just absence of motion. If everything is perfectly predictable and orderly, Then there's nothing to do. You can remove dopamine from a brain. That can be done in a mouse. And if you watch those mice, it's creepy. It's not that they're paralyzed. They can move. They can, you know, if you hold them on the finger, they hold onto your finger. If you put food in their mouth, they chew it. So they have reflexes, no problem. But you put that mouse in an arena without dopamine, that's genetically removed. And it just sits there, just sits motionless, doesn't even flick its tail. It's really creepy. And then you put a food next to it and it's hungry. You know that it's hungry. You haven't fed it for a while. But it won't move towards the food. It's right there, but it won't do anything. You put it in its mouth and it will start chewing once the reflexes kick in, and then it will start doing something. But basically, anything we do on top of basic reflexes is motivated by dopamine. If we don't have dopamine, we just stall.
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Mayim Bialik
It's kind of a thing to talk about a dopamine fast. Or, you know, people start talking about like, oh, social media. It's this dopamine hit. And it's like the word that parents are told to say to their children, you're going to run out of all your dopamine. What is actually happening? What are we talking about when we talk about this colloquially?
- [10:57]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Well, I think that that's a. That's a very useful way to think about this, because dopamine is. It's a finite resource. There's a certain amount of it that your cells produce per. Per unit of time. And you can run low on that dopamine and you need to wait until it balances back in. Your sensitivity to that dopamine can go down, the quantity of dopamine can go down. Those are all flexible things that can be adjusted in the brain. And I think it's very useful just on a practical level to think about it like a finite resource, like a salary. Think of it as a salary. You only get this much dopamine per day, per week, per month, and you can decide how to distribute it. What you have to keep in mind is that you need that dopamine to motivate yourself, but you also spend it anytime something unexpectedly good happens. That's just how it's wired. You can go around that you will spend that dopamine whenever you have a big good surprise. So you have to balance those two things. You have to save enough dopamine to be motivated. If you spend it all, then everything will seem boring and you will just be kind of low on energy. But you also need to have some exciting things in your life. And so if you balance those things, maybe sometimes avoid exciting things, maybe you have a quiet week and then you can have a big party and you'll enjoy it even more. Sometimes it's Good to throw your dopamine on one big wedding or something and just prepare to be a little bit low on dopamine for the next couple of days. I think if you're aware of that, it gives you a lot more control over it.
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Mayim Bialik
I'm thinking of the pig jumping on the trampoline with a chicken on its back that I saw on social media and it brought me so much joy. And I'm also like, I'm a human on a planet hurtling through space and. And I'm looking at a screen with an AI generated pig with a chicken on its back jumping on a trampoline. Like, is this what God placed me here for right now is to share this with my boyfriend?
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
And I bet that that emotion, I bet that that moment has made you open up social media a couple times
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Mayim Bialik
more because maybe I'll see a different pig on a trampoline. Maybe I'll see a cow on a trampoline.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Social media fundamentally unpredictable. They are built in such a way to maximize unpredictability. You don't know what's going to be. You don't know what funny thing you'll see. You don't know who will react to your post, how many likes you will get. You don't know when the likes will come. I mean, that's deliberate. The likes arrive at random times. If you picture a situation in which your likes all arrived at the same time once a week, you get your like time. That would be very disappointing and very frustrating. Everybody would hate it.
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Jonathan Cohen
This is the first time in human history that we have been exposed to this number of ways to be surprised constantly. I would imagine that our systems are not geared up to be able to defend against us.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
I absolutely agree with that. I think about what used to be funny when I was in high school and college and before broadband Internet, we would just gather around and tell jokes to each other and really, really laugh at that. It was really funny. And I cannot possibly imagine that something like that would be funny anymore. Like the standards of what joltsu out of a state of boredom have grown exponentially. Now you need an AI generated video of a pig to get you out of that state of boredom. Now the stakes are continuing to grow. I think, yes, we are getting saturated with surprising information. We're also getting saturated with information in general. I think that our memory was not meant to internalize this much information per day, just completely saturated with these bright flashing lights that stick into our memory. I think that our memory doesn't work like a computer memory. We don't run out of memory when we hit 100%, and you can't create new memory. But I do think that we constantly hover on 99% of memory capacity and having to rewrite some of the things that we've memorized with new information. That's why everything seems so flat. All the information that we absorb, all the memories that we form kind of feel like this soup where all the important things are blended with unimportant things and politics are blended with funny videos. And it's hard to distinguish what is really important and what is just soup of information.
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Jonathan Cohen
So we're getting too much information.
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Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
One time when human brain does become saturated with memory is sleep deprivation. That's one example where you're not balancing this acquisition of information during the day with forgetting at night. That's what needs to happen for you to maintain memory capacity. So if people don't sleep for a very long time, for weeks, for 10 days, they start seeing hallucinations. Basically, all the pathways within the brain, all the connections between neurons become so saturated that everything blends together. Information just kind of goes in all directions. Distinguish what's imagination, what's memory, what's reality. So I think that's maybe not in quite such an extreme form, but I think that's where we are as a culture. We are so saturated with information that our synaptic connections are at their maximum power. And we don't remove, we don't prune that enough to distinguish what really matters from what doesn't matter.
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Jonathan Cohen
This episode is sponsored by Wondering Jews, an Open Door media brand.
- [16:41]
Mayim Bialik
If you've ever found yourself feeling like you have more questions than answers, you're in good company. The Jewish people have been like that for thousands of years. Wandering Jews with Michal and Noam is a podcast where two of today's most dynamic Jewish voices, Michal Bitton and Noam Weissman, dig into the biggest questions about life through a Jewish lens. It's the kind of conversation where you'll laugh, learn something new, and probably shout in disagreement at least once. Michal and Noam tackle the tough topics like antisemitism in America, what happens after we die, and the future of religion with guests like Bret Stephens, Michael Rapper and Sarah Hurwitz. And this past month, in honor of Jewish American Heritage Month, they've been celebrating some of the Jewish lives and institutions that have shaped American life, from food to music and comedy. Thoughtful, joyful, and always honest. That's Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam, a production of unpacked Find it on your favorite podcast app or on YouTube and make sure to hit subscribe. Check out Wondering Jews with Michal and Noam podcast and subscribe at Unpacked Bio NMX
- [17:42]
Jonathan Cohen
Mind Bialix Breakdown is supported by Bioptimizers.
- [17:46]
Mayim Bialik
You know, I struggled to get good quality sleep and I just assumed it was stress. But as I learned during perimenopause and menopause, your hormones shift in a way that affects your magnesium levels. And low magnesium, it makes everything harder. Not just sleep, focus, mood, your tolerance for stress. That's why I have added Magnesium Breakthrough bye bye Optimizers to my nightly routine. It's a blend of seven different forms of magnesium designed to support relaxation and overall sleep quality. Try it. See if you wake up more rested and refreshed, you've got nothing to lose and a lot to gain. Bio Optimizers offers a 365 day no questions asked money back guarantee. Magnesium Breakthrough is a huge breakthrough to improve hormonal balance, to help with focus, decrease brain fog, improve sleep hygiene. Overall, Bioptimizers makes it very easy. Jonathan, what do they get when they go to bioptimizers.com breaker and use the code breaker?
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Jonathan Cohen
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Mayim Bialik
best selling digestive enzyme that'll be added to your order automatically when you use our exclusive code.
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Jonathan Cohen
That's a $20 product, free on top of your discount already.
- [18:53]
Mayim Bialik
This is a limited time offer and while supplies last, you can't get it on Amazon, you can't get it in stores. This offer exists in one place. Our link, our code. That's it. So maybe you were already thinking about it. This is the sign. Go to buyoptimizers.com breaker use the code breaker. Grab it before it's gone. Make 2026 the finally start sleeping again. One of the things this, this makes me think about is, you know, when you think about evolution, like literally from start to where we're at now, I mean assuming time is linear, I'm making a big leap here. When you think about evolution, you think about how late in the game, right? Humans have even arrived on the evolutionary table, right? It's very, very late. It's like literally almost January 1st of the next year. If you think of it like a calendar or like at the end of, you know, December 31st. In evolution, brains can't change that much. Meaning, you know, when I hear people say like, oh well, our brains have adapted to be holding a phone in our hand for 20 hours a day. And when you think about evolution, like, that's actually not how it works. It's not that in the last 10 years the human brain has evolved. Like, that's just like, it's just not how evolution works at all. So, you know, when I think about, I think about the music my grandparents listened to and how far it was from the music that my parents listened to, right? Like when my parents listened to the Beatles, my grandparents were like, what is this? That's crazy, right? So when you think about those kinds of changes, you know, I, I wonder, did people say what we're saying about social media, about the television? Yes, they did, right? Did people say what they're saying about social media, about the Internet? I mean, I was one of those people. Right? And I'm still one of those people. My question for you is, given the fact that the human brain is not evolving in the last 10 years, in the last 100 years, what can you tell us about the adaptations that we are making because of the massive amount of time that we are dedicating, right. To social media? And brain capacity is being devoted to, to also remembering things that, objectively speaking, do not matter as much as things used to.
- [21:09]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Yeah, I'll go even further. You said television, maybe radio. Before that, writing. Writing was seen by ancient Greek philosophers as a cop out, as a technology that you shouldn't be using. A real Greek philosopher should memorize everything. You shouldn't be writing anything down. And I think they were probably right. I think that in all those instances, people were right. I think that if you never write anything down, if you force yourself to memorize, I think your memory will be better. I think if you read books instead of listening to radio, I think your memory will be better. I think if you listen to radio instead of watching tv, I think your memory would be better. And I think if you watch TV instead of being on social media, I think your memory would be better. I think all of those cases are a part of the gradual progression to outsource our cognitive capacity to technology. And I think the logical conclusion of that is artificial intelligence. So I think we can't separate that from our evolutionary process. Our evolution is not just about our body. Evolution is cleverer than you. That's Orgel's second rule. It's a famous principle in biology. So anytime you think that our evolution needs to go this way or it can't go that way, you are probably missing something. And so, for example, I give this example in the book that there was a Time in the history of our cells, before there were multicellular organisms, there were just individual cells. And there was a time when those cells would have appeared complete, evolutionarily done, and really haven't changed very much since that point. Maybe a few flourishes, but really the basic setup was done. And that was before there was anything like a plant or an animal or a fungus. So if you talked to those cells at that time, they would have said, well, what else is there to evolve? We're probably done. If anything, we're just gonna degrade and regress. But that's not what happened. Those cells invented a totally new way to evolve. Evolve not the cell itself, but complicated things you can do with many cells. And that's how multicellularity appears. And that's the launchpad for all the other evolutionary inventions that followed. So maybe we are at the precipice of something like that as well. We are thinking of AI technology as something that's distinct from our evolutionary path, but maybe that is our evolutionary path. Maybe our evolutionary path is to expand our brain beyond the constraints of the skull and incorporate technology into it.
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Mayim Bialik
I mean, I think there's obviously many places where AI is extremely helpful. Useful. But, you know, as, as the parent, we each have a 17 year old separately. I also have a 20 year old. And you know, one of the things that I try and communicate to them and, and fortunately, they seem to be understanding. There is nothing that replaces the capacity of the human brain. There is nothing that replaces the capacity of the human heart. When I was a kid, I remember this creative experiment, you know, that they assigned us in like fourth grade. We had to do a drawing. It was an exercise where you imagine how an elephant could be incorporated into a car wash. Right? So this was the, this was the thing meaning, like, you know, you do a drawing and I was like, oh, the ho. You know, the, the trunk would be the water sprayer and the ears could be, you know, that experiment of thinking, what are the ways that an elephant could be useful in a car wash? You can type that into a computer and it will produce many wonderful outputs. But the process that your brain goes through when it starts grinding those gears, I'm gonna hold on to that. That's what we evolved for. We evolved to think, to interact and to feel. When I see babies holding iPads in restaurants, I really don't. I mean, I'm. I'm gonna say a really crazy thing. I don't really care if you don't get to go to a restaurant because your kid is Noisy. That's the age your kid is for to say to me the solution, I need to go to a restaurant. And the only way to do that is to place a computer in front of an infant. You know that just like it just. And, and I know people are like, oh, but I do. It's like, I'm not, I'm not trying to be judgmental. I'm trying to say that baby's brain is not wired to stare at that. It's wired to talk, engage, babble, cry express. So where are we inserting? Also, you know, so many aspects of convenience that's actually taking the place of what the actual human brain evolved to do.
- [25:52]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Well, I absolutely agree with everything you say. And while I don't have kids, I have students who are close to that age. And I also experience the same tension of, well, if you're outsourcing your capacity for language production to a machine, then what are you even doing with your life? But there's a difference between what I want to happen and what I think should happen and what I think will happen. And yes, from a perspective of myself as a conscious individual from a pre Internet era who grew up producing my own language, I think of that as a fundamental property of a human. And I will hold on to it like you. But do I believe that the world will hold on to it? I don't know. I'm not sure. I'm not sure that that's the trajectory in which this natural system is headed.
- [26:47]
Mayim Bialik
So what does that say about the evolution of our species? If things like generating language, emotion, thoughts and creativity is going to be outsourced, what's that going to look like?
- [27:00]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
That's a great question. Well, maybe we will look like cells of a multicellular organism. A kidney cell is a lot less capable than a single celled organism. Maybe that is the direction in which we're headed. Maybe this hive mind which we'll connect ourselves to will be able to produce something collectively, but individually, we'll no longer be able to do that. I know that sounds pessimistic, but I'm not sure that there's much reason for optimism right now.
- [27:25]
Mayim Bialik
It just sounds like a Dostoevsky short story.
- [27:29]
Jonathan Cohen
The main problem about not producing our own language is not that the machines will be able to produce language and we won't. It's that we will default to how bad the machines produce language. Like, my issue with my son using ChatGPT to write things is that he doesn't know how to make it better. He doesn't know what shitty writing is.
- [27:55]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
That's true. That's absolutely true. And we have to explain to, you know, we conscious linguistic individuals have to explain to the next generation that if you don't produce language yourself, you won't be able to do it and you won't be able to tell what's good and what's not good.
- [28:10]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm actually okay with him using it to like, he was writing a story recently for school. I'm actually okay if he's like, I gotta figure out a plot, I need to be able to write this thing. But like, I really don't know what the plot is. I think it's a fantastic exercise to invent a plot and come to it. But also if a machine is able to give you a couple signposts, you still have to figure out how to get there.
- [28:31]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Here's how I draw the line in my class. So in my class I say I absolutely encourage the use of AI for brainstorming for research, as long as you confirm the references that you cite for bouncing ideas. Where I draw the line is you can't submit language that is generated by a machine. And what I mean by that is more than one word copied and pasted one. Because I've run into these situations. I've run into non English speaking, non native speaking students saying, well, I just used it for grammar correction. I didn't do anything meaningful. Well, I can't tell. So where I drew the line is if you copy one word from an online translator, that's okay. If you copy two words, you've created artificially generated text. I think that once I drew this very sharp line, I think the vibe in my classes shifted and I think that now I have a little bit of a more normal, productive relationship with AI compared to how it was in the first year or two after ChatGPT came out.
- [29:34]
Jonathan Cohen
I want to touch back on the dopamine process for a second because I think there's a very terrifying evolution in our relationship with AI that's about to come, which is our relationship with chatbots and non human synthetic friends. This same type of randomness is going to be programmed into those relationships. There's going to be conflict programmed into those relationships so that we can overcome the conflict and feel good about the reconciliation. That's terrifying.
- [30:07]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Wow, that's getting more dystopian by the minute, isn't it? Yeah. And yeah, the first humanoid robots are appearing already. It's inevitable. I think we'll see them around in the next couple of years. And yeah, there's absolutely no reason to assume that they won't be controlled and programmed in the same way as all the other addictive things on the Internet that are there to extract data from us and to maximize profit for advertisement. Yeah, it will probably work the same way. I think there's a glimmer of hope in the fact that we are so saturated with information and screens and the social media feed that I think it really can't go much further than that. There's just not going to be more hours in a day to watch all that content. So that gives me some hope that maybe something will swing a little bit back. Maybe we will, as a culture recognize the need for some screen free time, for some technology free time for thinking on our own. I think it's already happening to some extent in schools. When I banned technology in my classroom, that was a very new thing and nobody followed that because of accessibility, which I understand, but I think the benefits of removing technology far outweigh accessibility. But now it's a more accepted thing, and lots of schools are banning phones in class, and people are already seeing great benefits to that. So I think there is an upswing in our recognition that we need to do things with our brains.
- [31:48]
Mayim Bialik
One of the things that really kind of captured my attention with this book, you know, I said to Jonathan, if there was one book that I feel would explain from start to finish all of the scientific concepts that I'm constantly referencing and using when we podcast, it's so helpful. It's really. It's such a helpful description. And that's sort of why I am recommending it to our. To our audience in particular. So many people are operating in a world where science knows so much, and we're learning, like, little tidbits about science from social media and things like that. But this is the best explanation of real scientific concepts in ways that. That even laypeople can appreciate and understand. And, you know, I kind of think that the divide that Jonathan and I experience when. When we podcast, right, we're looking at sort of the intersection of science and spirituality. And there's this dichotomy, right, where you either understand things scientifically or you're a God believer who doesn't believe in evolution, right? And most of us are falling somewhere in between, right? So this notion that there is enough that you can understand about science that can also be incorporated into your larger understanding of the universe. To me, that's what's interesting about sort of understanding the human experience.
- [33:15]
Jonathan Cohen
My Ambiox breakdown is supported by bioptimizers
- [33:19]
Mayim Bialik
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- [34:43]
Jonathan Cohen
Make 2026 the year you finally start sleeping again.
- [34:48]
Mayim Bialik
And one of the things you describe is a football example, right? You can describe what it's like for Messi to score a goal, right? In very materialist terms. You can speak about physiologically what's happening. You could even discuss electrophysio, physiologically, what's happening. But the notion of what does it feel like to watch a game, to see your favorite player in their uniform and the sounds and the smells and the, the experience. Can you talk a little bit also about what technology and what a technological experience of our lives is missing that we get when we find more of those real life experiences?
- [35:33]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Well, I think that humans always are trying to be part of something immortal. I mean, our mortality is the biggest tension of our lives. That's what we have to grapple with at some point. And I think the exit that we find from this conundrum of being mortal is belonging to something immortal. Whether that's your Family, your religion, your career. It could be many different things, but I think what's in common between them is belonging to something that's bigger than you. I think that's what humans need, not just superfluously, but on a very, very deep level. Just like we need air and water and food. I think that we are in a crisis of this connection and meaning of our life. We've lost the traditional institutions that have organized people and gave their lives meaning. And we fragmented. We are all on our own, fending for ourselves without really understanding why we're doing that. I think that's why there is an uptick, for example, in church going among young people right now, because they're looking for meaning. They're looking for something that would give their life, something immortal. But I think we can find that meaning in what we know about the world. I don't want to say the word scientifically because I think that immediately takes you to a different domain. It takes you to a science textbook. And that's not what I mean. I mean what we really know. Science is not some separate domain of reality that's independent of everything else that we experience. Science, it's just disciplined search for truth. And we know enough truth to link our individual lives and minds to this eternal all encompassing flow of cause and effect that starts with the origin of life, even the origin of the world, and continues in this unbroken line into our individual lives, those patterns of the world unfolding through our consciousness. I think that gives your life meaning in the same way as a religion would give your life meaning. I don't mean that what I'm saying in this book is supernatural or beyond physical understanding. What I'm saying is that we know enough to make an origin story that would give our life meaning.
- [38:20]
Mayim Bialik
That's exactly what I got from it. And I think the reason that it resonates so much with us is, is that for so many people, they have felt like if they believe that there is meaning and if they believe that there is purpose, the only place that they can exist is in a religious realm. And when people ask me how I can be a person of faith and a scientist, it's not confusing for me because everything scientific to me is divine and everything divine is scientific. So I love this notion that there is something in between. We don't just have to have these two choices where you know, we've had many materialists on who really stick it in our face and say, hahaha, how could you believe in any psi phenomenon? How could you believe in anything that I haven't already proved to, which Jonathan says, like, well, they didn't used to know that like bacteria, you know, could cause infection. Right. So this notion that there is a middle place where you can have, and the book really does help people have that even if they don't have training as a scientist, you can have a full integrated understanding of the scientific world without rejecting the parts of you that love mysticism, alternative methods of understanding, health, wellness. It's really, it's just such a beautiful, a beautiful fusion. It really just sat so well with us. So thank you.
- [39:38]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
I think it's all just understanding. There's just understanding. You can use different methods for that understanding. The reason why science has a privileged position among these different methods is because science has this built in way to resolve internal inconsistencies. Whenever there's an inconsistency, science has a method of figuring out which way it is. And that is what makes science special because it allows you to build up this understanding to infinity. Usually most schools of thought, they also try to understand the world, but they are capped at some point. And when there's an inconsistency, it's removed, it's suppressed. How religion usually works. The only reason why science is different is because it has this way to resolve inconsistency. But I think understanding is understanding. That's all we're trying to do.
- [40:26]
Mayim Bialik
It was such a pleasure to speak to you and honestly, we just really enjoyed this conversation and we wish you only good things. So thank you so much.
- [40:33]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
Thank you for inviting me. This has been great. I loved it
- [40:38]
Jonathan Cohen
when he lists that at one point in human history writing was considered, that blew my mind. Outsourcing cognitive capacity. And then our brains would likely have more memory if we had remembered everything versus writing. And then if we read books versus listening to radio. And then if we listen to radio instead of watching television. And if we watch television, which I sometimes say to my son, just like, watch a movie, don't play a video game. Although video games also have some strategy and increase in response time, but then drive your reward system faster. And then scrolling, of course is the worst. And now we're going to outsource even more cognitive capacity to artificial intelligence. There's a pattern here, right?
- [41:20]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah, but you're also making the opposite argument because like, you know when, when people said like, oh, TV's gonna rot your brain, I don't know that that was accurate. And a lot of people would be like, it doesn't rot your brain. And you decide how much to watch and Then like, oh, the phone's gonna rot your brain. And my kids will just be like, that's what people said. Like, when. When I wanted to get a landline, you know, with. What was it? Call waiting. My parents were outraged. What do you mean you can't. What do you mean, call Wait? What is this? This is crazy. You're rotting your brain with all these nonsense conversations every night. Like, they were. I mean, were they wrong? Like, should we all be living in a. In a technology free universe? Of course not.
- [42:07]
Jonathan Cohen
What people were wrong about was that and more information increased our perspectives. They enriched us in many ways. What they were right about is that our memories got worse and worse.
- [42:18]
Mayim Bialik
Oh, we also are dumber. I mean, the Free Press had a piece recently about this. Like, we're just kind of circling the intellectual drain right now. A lot of us, not everybody, some
- [42:29]
Jonathan Cohen
of us are using all that additional information to push the realms of what we understand and know. But what he said that we're at like 99% capacity and that we're constantly having to rewrite over other memories because we don't prune properly. So we're these complex machines that we're getting a lot of interesting information, but we're also getting an enormous amount of junk. Like, so if you imagine that we're constantly, constantly consuming, and out of the amount that we consume, maybe 60%, 80% is junk.
- [43:05]
Mayim Bialik
This is the question of this episode. What's the trade off? What are you giving up when you are outsourcing your dopamine processing to the thing that you think is bringing you joy? What's the trade off? Is it. Is it your relationships that are going to suffer? Maybe? Is it your work that's going to suffer? Are you going to stop being excited by things like a ladybug? Are you going to stop interacting with your children in ways that feel meaningful and elevating? What are you. What is the tr. And I see what the trade off is when I see a group of kids all sitting looking on their phones. The sadder trade off is when I see an entire family out to dinner and they're all on their phones. What's the trade off?
- [43:55]
Jonathan Cohen
The ladybug example really hits me because I know, like, the hippies, I know almost more ladies than men that are like, just in awe and wonder at so much. You know, like they live in this state where they're just like really, really slowed down. And there's a trade off of like, being a productive hustling. Got to run. Shit. Got to get to My job, make
- [44:21]
Mayim Bialik
that money, get the nicer car.
- [44:24]
Jonathan Cohen
Even if, even if it's not even getting a nicer car. It's just like, just to survive, just to like, live in a materialist society where like, shit's expensive and healthcare is expensive and the rent is due and like, my kid needs stuff. And like, people are just, especially in bigger cities, you know, and you're disconnected. A little more expensive cities or more expensive cities. And then there are these people who, you know, I almost equate it to like a lack of productivity, are just able to just like, be in their garden and just be like, oh, my God, I can't believe how much this plant has grown since I watered it last. And like, there's a ladybug that's. And isn't that amazing and magical? And I know that tapping into that state is so powerful for us, right? Like, we've lost that awe, that sense of wonder that is connected to our sense of meaning. When he talks about feeling meaningful and feeling connected to something greater than ourselves. Being able to have that awe connects us to that. And it I. It's the antidote to so many of the things that plague us. And yet the trade off is all this vast information that distracts us from it.
- [45:33]
Mayim Bialik
Well, and I think, yeah, we can look at all of those things that we're talking about is like capitalism, right? It's, it's, it is, it's an information system, right? How do I achieve more, succeed, get. I mean, the other notion that he kept kind of bringing up was like, what is it like to live bottom up or top down? You know, what's it like? You know, we had Deepak Chopra on, right? Who can take one experience and make it the experience of the entire universe, right? Like, is that the way to look at it? Is that expansive? Is that elevating? Right? As opposed to saying, everything's just the way it is and like, here are the fundamental things and yeah, we're just a bunch of chemicals and good luck to you.
- [46:13]
Jonathan Cohen
Well, I think that when he talked about how everything having a pattern and that it's the oceans that create the sea lion with the coloring that it needs to, you know, I think the person who believes in God is going to say, well, that is the intelligence of the entire universe being infused with the godlike characteristics that drive us and create these patterns.
- [46:39]
Mayim Bialik
It's proof of whatever you want it to be is I think what's interesting. And for scientists, they would say, oh, it's proof that evolution. Right, Is smarter than you and for people who don't want it to be that it would be like, oh, it's proof that there's a purpose of something greater. And that's really. This came up when we talked about the telepathy tapes. What do you want to believe? What do you want to believe? What do you want to support that. Which, no joke, is why I love this book. Because this book says you don't have to choose one of those things.
- [47:05]
Jonathan Cohen
Things.
- [47:05]
Mayim Bialik
Because it's all the same thing. It's all the same.
- [47:08]
Jonathan Cohen
What does it mean to you? For someone who is a scientist and deeply believes in God, what does it prove to you?
- [47:16]
Mayim Bialik
It is indescribable. I cannot articulate it. The. The best way to describe it is the feeling of awe. That's it. That's the special feeling when you see, oh, my gosh, what is a ganglion cell? What. What's happening with the retina? What? The ovaries produce an egg every month. What? Like, that's nuts. My emotional experience will tell my body not to release an egg because it's not ready. Like what? That. That feeling of. Like what? That reverence, that fear. If this exists, what else is possible for me to comprehend? That's the closest thing I can describe it to. I do. I call that divine. That's that divine based reverence for the experience. That's what it is. It feels really good. Meaning, like, I don't feel conflict. How do you believe? I. Because I do. I do. That's my.
- [48:18]
Jonathan Cohen
Is that the best drug?
- [48:20]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah, the best drug is awe. Yeah, the best drug is awareness.
- [48:25]
Jonathan Cohen
Awe doesn't deplete your dopamine system, though.
- [48:28]
Mayim Bialik
No. Awe exists separately from dopamine. It's a different system because when he
- [48:33]
Jonathan Cohen
was talking about, oh, surprise, and something unexpected happens and actually you need to sort of control those systems. I think we're in a massive dopamine depletion. I think we don't even know what normal is anymore because we are so inundated with opportunities for novelty. But even just like, if you're in a city, in a major city center, you're like that person, that restaurant, the sign. There's so many things that you're processing all the time that you just never had to process before. You kind of mapped your surroundings in your previous iteration. In the 1800s, you had your town that you rode in on your horse. I've seen 1883, like, when a new person came to town, you were like. The whole town was like, who the hell are they? We're gonna get our pistols out. That was the one time there was novelty.
- [49:25]
Mayim Bialik
The thing that I most thought about was dating. I. I most thought about the novelty. I thought about dating apps. I thought about, there's always someone better. I thought about how quickly people give up on people because there's 86 more people waiting, you know, for you to message them. I also thought about, you know, why do we pick, quote, bad boys, right? Why do we choose someone who. Who feels like, oh, I mean, yes, you could give a lot of reasons, like, oh, I grew up in a house where predictability was normal. But I think about that in terms of what are we chasing in our relationships? What are we trying to get back? I mean, also, his explanation of novelty explains why many people get bored of their partners. You're having sex with the same person over and over.
- [50:15]
Jonathan Cohen
What did he say? The most addictive thing for human beings is novelty.
- [50:19]
Mayim Bialik
How do I figure out how? The pigeons, the freaking pigeons.
- [50:25]
Jonathan Cohen
We are just pigeons just pecking, looking for a reward.
- [50:29]
Mayim Bialik
And all of a sudden, they're not even tired. They're like, I'll do this all day because it might come anytime.
- [50:33]
Jonathan Cohen
Well, they're getting into an addictive state, right? Like, I'm imagine if you monitored their brain chemistry. There's like a frenzy going on. They're just searching and searching, waiting to dig up that next piece.
- [50:46]
Mayim Bialik
Sounds like people on the prowl at a bar.
- [50:48]
Jonathan Cohen
It sounds like looking at your phone. I'm going to go to this app. Well, actually, that algorithm isn't. Isn't doing it enough. I'm going to go to the YouTube app.
- [50:56]
Mayim Bialik
Maybe I'll check the news and just see if something horrible has happened. No, I mean, like, it's true. Like, just it's all the information. We have some breaking news from Valerie. There is an article from Perspectives on Psychological Sciences. I think is the journal from 2022, Awe as a Pathway to mental and physical health. And there are components of dopamine that are discussed. So I want to be clear, just want to revise this, that dopamine itself is not module. That's not like, oh, awe is about dopamine. I'm not like, seeking awe because of dopamine. But yes, there may be obviously components of dopamine incorporated into these pathways. Something to discuss, maybe in a further episode where we talk about awe in more detail. How awe promotes mental and physical health. So thank you, Valerie, for correcting me about dopamine. But also I do want to make a distinction between moments of awe and that kind of pleasure as it were as opposed to the reward seeking behaviors that typically we think of as addictive.
- [52:03]
Jonathan Cohen
One of the things that we have found is that sharing awe with a friend is even better than having awe by yourself. It's a compounding effect.
- [52:11]
Mayim Bialik
Psychedelics increase awe by quieting the default mode network. Oh, this is interesting. Thank you, Valerie for this article.
- [52:19]
Jonathan Cohen
So now that we're like saying, okay, here are all the problems, I think it's important to say, well, what are the alternatives to that? Thinking of ways to slow down. When he talked about our speed, that humans are so fast and then he talked about the progression of technology, really what's happened is that we've just sped up.
- [52:42]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah, we, we found ways to compensate for the need to slow down and other, other things will move faster than we can even look. He talked about rest. He talked about a Sabbath. He talked about a day of rest, times of rest. I think a lot of people are trying to incorporate these things. Delaying social media for your children, delaying the acquisition of a device in your kid's hand. Delay, delay, delay. That's what I'm hearing. I'm hearing Jonathan Haidt Vibes.
- [53:11]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm also thinking about the memory and the programming of memory. It feels better to like, if I'm thinking about my own social media use, to be like, all right, I'm not going to say I can never go on it, but I'm not going to go on six times in the day starting from early morning because that's going to program me, myself to want it and to be expecting it and to get it. Like build a structure that's more predictable and say like, there's a dedicated time. Which of course is not that easy to do.
- [53:43]
Mayim Bialik
I have to do something. But it's fine.
- [53:48]
Jonathan Cohen
We better keep that in the episode, people. In between the interview and the outro, there's a moment where the guest leaves and we collect ourselves and we're in the remote studio today. As you can tell if you're watching the episode, but you won't be able to tell if you're just listening and we're talking to our producer. And my headset did not work during this episode. So I had an earpiece in and there was a bad echo. I could hear myself on loop. It was like a four second delay. Every time I said something there it would be again. There would be again. So very hard to form the second sentence. You like a second sentence, like a multi syllabic idea. Multiple clauses. I've been accused of not putting up.
- [54:32]
Mayim Bialik
He's Mr. Claus. Go ahead, Mr. Claus.
- [54:35]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm speaking to Mime, but I cannot hear the producer because I've taken my earpiece out to get away from the echo I'm speaking. And Mayim is repeating everything I'm saying to the producer, because when I hear
- [54:49]
Mayim Bialik
that he can't hear her, what I think is, well, she can't hear him,
- [54:54]
Jonathan Cohen
which is not the same.
- [54:56]
Mayim Bialik
No.
- [54:57]
Jonathan Cohen
Maybe even. Let's play a clip. Let's play a clip right now for people. Valerie, insert a clip. We're gonna find another piece of audio.
- [55:04]
Mayim Bialik
We're gonna find another piece of audio.
- [55:06]
Jonathan Cohen
Can hear me. I'm literally talking into the microphone.
- [55:11]
Mayim Bialik
He says that he. You can hear him because he's speaking into the microphone now. He's laughing. He laughing. He blinking.
- [55:20]
Jonathan Cohen
You're literally repeating, like, I'm speaking another language, but you're speaking the exact same thing.
- [55:25]
Mayim Bialik
What do I do? Right now?
- [55:26]
Jonathan Cohen
It will just be a separate piece of audio that will go in the audio that. Why are you still.
- [55:31]
Mayim Bialik
Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry.
- [55:32]
Jonathan Cohen
I'm saying.
- [55:36]
Mayim Bialik
No, I forgot again. I forgot.
- [55:40]
Jonathan Cohen
I just had so much feedback, and now you're the feedback that you're me.
- [55:46]
Mayim Bialik
All right, so what am I doing? Are we doing an outro? I didn't know. Also, you told me once, like, she can hear me. And I was like, oh, sorry, sorry, sorry. But then, like, not 30 seconds later, I was like, okay, now he's saying this word.
- [56:05]
Jonathan Cohen
Are we moving so fast because of our access to technology? Because our access to novelty? Like, you might not think, hey, ChatGPT is moving fast, but actually what it does is it provides me so much information at the. Instantly at the tips of my fingers.
- [56:22]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah.
- [56:23]
Jonathan Cohen
That I can't even process it all.
- [56:24]
Mayim Bialik
Yeah. I think that the. This. This notion of speed is very interesting to me. It's not just about the outsourcing. It's about the labor, you know, and we didn't get to talk about that, but the sort of. The cost. Right. Of memory. What's the cost of all these activities? Yeah. It's changing expectations. I remember. I think Louis CK did a bit about getting frustrated that you can't get Internet on an airplane. And he was like, think about what you're frustrated about right now. You're flying through the air.
- [56:54]
Jonathan Cohen
Yeah.
- [56:54]
Mayim Bialik
In a metal tube.
- [56:55]
Jonathan Cohen
Yeah.
- [56:56]
Mayim Bialik
Right. And you are upset that some satellite that you don't even understand can't get a signal that you also don't understand so that it can beam back into the metal tube so that you can, like, you know, send a text or watch porn or whatever you want to do.
- [57:12]
Jonathan Cohen
I really hope no one's watching porn on airplanes.
- [57:14]
Mayim Bialik
Same.
- [57:16]
Jonathan Cohen
I've had this experience where you get on a plane, you've downloaded, I don't know, six hours of content because you're like really hunkering in to be offline and just to like, have a little moment. And then you realize none of the content is downloaded and you have not brought any backup plan. You don't have anything to read. And one of the things that we have been doing over on Substack is that we've been sharing our little moments of awe. I posted one recently. Mime has been posting she awe for her is baseball.
- [57:45]
Mayim Bialik
I also think it's very strange that the word awful is so different than awe. Full.
- [57:51]
Jonathan Cohen
Full of awe.
- [57:52]
Mayim Bialik
Full of awe. You'd think that would be the word awful, but it's not. It's a totally different word.
- [57:57]
Jonathan Cohen
You know, there's a lot of people out there that think just like you.
- [58:01]
Mayim Bialik
Oh, that's good.
- [58:03]
Jonathan Cohen
That's why we do this, because there are all different types of people.
- [58:06]
Mayim Bialik
I also completely forgot my normal makeup that I wear and so I just want to give a shout out. I literally put on my blush with my fingertips. I did not have a brush. I didn't have any cover up today. I had worked yesterday, so there's a lot of product in my hair and I'm wearing your shirt. It's a different look today.
- [58:25]
Jonathan Cohen
Hope you guys enjoyed this one. It's a different one than normal. I don't even know what normal is anymore for us. We're curious if you want to hear a type of episode on a topic. If you have an amazing guest for us, reach out, tag us in the comments on YouTube or find us on Substack is the best way to send us a message.
- [58:43]
Mayim Bialik
And from our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.
- [58:46]
Dr. Nikolai Kukushkin
It's Maya Bialik's breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's gonna break down to break down. She's gonna break it down.