Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on How He Changed His Mind about Past Lives, the Importance of Creative Intelligence, Different Types of Narcissism & How to Overcome the Victim Mindset

Summary

Mayim Bialik’s Breakdown – Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman on Past Lives, Neurodiversity, Creative Intelligence & The Victim Mindset

Release Date: March 21, 2025
Host: Mayim Bialik
Guest: Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman
Co-host: Jonathan Cohen

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Episode Overview

This episode delves into human potential, misunderstood intelligence, the transmission of abilities across generations (including theories around past lives and collective consciousness), neurodiversity, the pitfalls and powers of creative intelligence, and how cognitive distortions feed into a victim mindset. Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman joins Mayim and Jonathan to discuss his personal journey in redefining intelligence, how society can both nurture and inhibit neurodivergence, nuanced takes on ADHD and medication, and the ongoing, open scientific exploration of spirituality and consciousness.

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Key Themes & Discussion Points

1. Inherited Skills & Past Lives

Dr. Kaufman's Evolving View on Past Lives, Epigenetics, and Collective Consciousness

• Family Memory as “Past Life”:

  • Dr. Kaufman shares his view that prodigious abilities often recur in family lineages and suggests this is a kind of "past life memory":

    "These prodigies, if you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill. That is a form of past life memory." — Scott Barry Kaufman [00:00]

  • Mayim raises the concept of collective consciousness, asking if certain memories can be accessed beyond DNA encoding [00:29].

• Scientific Openness to the Unexplained:

  • Dr. Kaufman encourages scientists to remain open-minded, emphasizing the mysterious nature of abilities that confound current explanations [00:39].

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2. Redefining Potential & Intelligence

Personal Stories, Systemic Barriers, and Expanding the Definition

• Scott's Journey:

  • Diagnosed with auditory processing disorder, placed in special education until 9th grade, Kaufman recounts becoming the first student to “break out” himself when it was clear he’d outgrown the diagnosis but still faced stigma and anxiety:

    "No one's coming to save me. Like, I actually, I'm the one that needs to make this decision." — Scott Barry Kaufman [09:32]

• Jonathan Cohen’s Parallel Story:

  • Shares similar struggles with early diagnoses and stigma, highlighting the lack of belonging for twice-exceptional kids [11:47].

• Critique of the IQ System:

  • Scott argues traditional intelligence measures overlook creative and deep processing abilities:

    "There's this idea that quickness of processing is the measure of intelligence as opposed to depth... or creativity of processing." — Scott Barry Kaufman [14:24]

  • Emphasizes millions of “twice exceptional” children fall through educational cracks [16:02].

• Neurodiversity for All:

  • Scott pushes for seeing everyone as neurodivergent in their own way, challenging labels as limited and sometimes stigmatizing [17:56].

    "Why are only certain things neurodivergency? Other things aren't?" — Scott Barry Kaufman [17:49]

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3. Contextualizing ADHD & Neurodivergence

A Nuanced, Non-Pathologizing Perspective

• Rethinking ADHD:

  • Argues ADHD is not necessarily a disorder — it can be a superpower or a hardship, depending on context:

    "It can be a disorder and it can be a superpower... it depends on the context." — Scott Barry Kaufman [20:34]

• System vs. Individual:

  • Considers how environmental toxins, nutrition, and broader educational structures contribute to ADHD, rejecting the narrative that blames parents, especially mothers [23:02].

    "The more research comes out suggests it's less and less the mother's fault." — Scott Barry Kaufman [23:05]

• Medication Debate:

  • Weighs pros and cons of medication both as a tool to fit existing systems and as a potential suppressor of creativity [32:10–33:19].

• Imagination as Central:

  • Presents the idea that many with ADHD actually have “overactive imagination disorder,” which, if harnessed, can be a huge creative asset [27:38].

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4. Narcissism, Sensitivity & the Demand for Accommodation

Vulnerable vs. Grandiose Narcissism & Navigating Workplace Neurodiversity

• Accommodation vs. Narcissism:

  • Draws distinction between leading with one’s strengths for collective good vs. demanding everyone cater to one's needs ("Everyone should tiptoe around me and treat me like... even if I'm an asshole" [35:20]).
  • Explores correlation between high sensitivity and "vulnerable narcissism":

    "There's a 0.80 correlation between sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism." — Scott Barry Kaufman [29:53]

• Defining Vulnerable Narcissism:

  • Driven by internal instability, insecurity, and often rooted in childhood trauma. Manifests as resentment, entitlement from suffering (as opposed to grandiosity from superiority), and intense sensitivity to criticism [35:49–36:30].

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5. Cognitive Distortions & The Victim Mindset

Everyday Thinking Traps That Limit Growth

• What Are Cognitive Distortions?

  • Scott explains these are exaggerated, inaccurate thought patterns we all fall prey to:

    "You're not seeing reality clearly... you're exaggerating things to a degree that is not helpful, productive, and often not accurate." — Scott Barry Kaufman [39:36]

• Victim Mindset’s #1 Distortion:

  • Attributing malevolent intent to neutral stimuli is most predictive of a pervasive victim mindset:

    "Seeing a malevolent intent in neutral stimuli... is the number one associated with a victim mindset." — Scott Barry Kaufman [40:29]

  • Illustrated through comedic and everyday examples, such as assuming a neutral face in the audience means dislike [40:44].

• Favorite Distortions Discussed:

  • Black-and-white thinking, catastrophizing, jumping to conclusions, personalizing, should-ing, mind reading, and outsourcing happiness ("I'll be happy when…") [42:26–50:07].
  • Albert Ellis phrase:

    "Stop 'should'-ing all over yourself." — Scott Barry Kaufman [47:21]

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6. Creative Intelligence, The Unseen, and Epigenetics

Where Science Meets Spiritual Wonder

• Creative Gifts Beyond the Material:

  • Explores the line between scientifically explainable gifts and those that potentially draw on a collective or universal consciousness [51:17–59:26].
  • Recounts cases of prodigious nonverbal skills surfacing after trauma or disability, suggesting parts of human genome encode for “attunement” to certain patterns, which most aren't aware of [54:32].

• Collective Consciousness & Telepathy:

  • Open to but skeptical of supernatural explanations for telepathy and reincarnation, Dr. Kaufman frames “past life memory” as possibly intergenerational, even genetic, but also considers theories of universal consciousness (Jung, panpsychism, etc.) [57:31–59:26]:

    "There are scientific approaches emerging that give some sort of mechanistic account to perhaps there is... a universal consciousness." — Scott Barry Kaufman [57:31]

• Limits of Current Science:

  • Challenges in measuring and replicating studies on supernatural phenomena, given that scientific methods favor regularity and statistical power, not outlier experiences [61:41–63:13].

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7. Meaning, Purpose, and the Unfolding Universe

The Philosophy of Personal and Universal Fulfillment

• Predestination and Meaning:

  • Dr. Kaufman speculates the universe has a purpose; much may be predetermined, and fulfillment comes from accepting one’s fate and recognizing the patterns that emerge only in retrospect [74:58–78:13].

• Creative Process as Channeling:

  • Creation sometimes feels like channeling a force beyond oneself:

    "When I was writing Transcend, I don't remember who wrote that book... I would sit down and write... by the end... the chapter was written. I don't remember thinking [it] out." — Scott Barry Kaufman [77:02]

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8. Personal Growth & Tools

Practical Takeaways via Self-Actualization Scales & Cognitive Insight

• Self-Actualization Test:

  • Mayim and Jonathan discuss their results from Scott’s “Characteristics of Self Actualization Scale,” revealing how top values don’t necessarily reflect where you already excel, but what you most aspire to [79:48–83:11].

• Subjectivity of Truth:

  • Good-natured debate about the subjective nature of reality and how truth, like intelligence or happiness, must be interpreted in context [83:11–83:58].

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “No one’s coming to save me. Like, I actually, I’m the one that needs to make this decision.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [09:32]
• “If you just look at what [ADHD] is, it’s a label. There is no thing that exists that is ADHD. It is a label that we humans have created for problematic children that are not behaving.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [20:39]
• “You can be a highly sensitive asshole.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [35:39]
• “The number one thing associated with a victim mindset: seeing a malevolent intent in neutral stimuli.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [40:29]
• “If you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill. That is a form of past life memory.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [67:19]
• “When you really look at some of this incredible phenomenon... we should keep our minds open.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [68:38]
• “The universe has a purpose.” — Scott Barry Kaufman [74:58]

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Inherited Memory & Past Lives: [00:00–00:39], [67:19–68:38]
• Defining Human Potential: [01:05–03:21]
• Personal Educational Struggles: [07:22–13:56]
• IQ Tests & Twice-Exceptional Children: [14:24–17:56]
• Neurodiversity for All: [17:28–19:55]
• ADHD & Medication: [20:00–33:19]
• Accommodation vs. Narcissism: [35:20–36:30]
• Victim Mindset & Cognitive Distortions: [39:36–50:07]
• Telepathy, Creativity, Universal Consciousness: [51:37–74:01]
• Life Purpose, Fate & Creativity: [74:58–78:13]
• Self-Actualization Test Results: [79:48–83:11]

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Final Thoughts

This episode champions the celebration of every kind of mind, advocates for a more open but grounded scientific approach to spiritual and metaphysical mysteries, and delivers practical frameworks for overcoming distorted thinking. Dr. Kaufman’s blend of vulnerability, humility, academic rigor, and philosophical curiosity provides a model for how we all might "rise above" internal limitations and societal labels to realize fuller, richer human potential.

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For more resources, articles, and self-assessments, visit scottbarrykaufman.com.

Transcript

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

These prodigies, if you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill. That is a form of past life memory. When a child comes out and they're able to do something with no preparation.

[Maya Bialik]

Like they become a pianist. And you're saying somewhere in the family you think there's a pianist, case by.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Case, and you start to find, oh, the great grandfather in Russia had this amazing talent. Isn't that a form of past life memory? It's an intergenerational transmission.

[Maya Bialik]

You're saying that there is something coded.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

In your DNA that was transmitted to them. It's a memory.

[Maya Bialik]

And the question is, if we believe in a collective consciousness, if it's not encoded in your DNA, can you pull someone else's life memory from the collective consciousness?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

When you really look at some of this incredible phenomenon, the more that I can rule out all of these confounds, the more excited I get that there's something mysterious that is even in further need. We should keep our minds open.

[Maya Bialik]

Hi, I'm, I am Bialik.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm Jonathan Cohen.

[Maya Bialik]

And welcome to our breakdown.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We're going to talk about human potential today. This was a hard episode to summarize in terms of what we're actually going to talk about.

[Maya Bialik]

But because we talk about so many things, many of which do relate to.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Potential, let's explain what we mean by potential. Here's what I mean by it. And now we can also have your explanation. Because what we learn in this episode is that truth is somewhat subjective and we need explanations on how each of us see reality. For me, potential means what are we capable of? What are our core skills, meaning what are our attributes and our abilities? Many people think we have five senses, that our ideas. Consciousness is localized in the brain. I do not believe that science is exploring these ideas fundamental to the nature of our consciousness, how we perceive our reality. Physicists understand it one way, philosophers understand it one way. Scientists are skeptical, would you say?

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, and today we're going to be talking to a cognitive psychologist who is willing to talk about human potential in ways that many scientists will not talk about it. Uh, we're going to talk kind of all across the spectrum of potential. We're going to talk about personal potential. Um, he has a book, Ungifted Intelligence, Redefined, about kind of misunderstood potential of the individual. And we're also going to talk about things that limit us from achieving our full potential, including having access to or even understanding things outside of the realm of the material world.

[Jonathan Cohen]

In terms of intellectual potential, we explore and kind of turn on its head the accepted idea of what makes someone intelligent or not. There are different types of intelligence. He explores the idea of creative intelligence and that there are a lot of children who do not fit into the school system who may be actually the ones who can help push humanity, civilization, society forward because of their creative ability to problem solve and think outside the box. He also talks about cognitive distortions, ways in which that we're thinking that could be limiting our potential.

[Maya Bialik]

There may be ways that you're thinking that you don't even realize are keeping you stuck in all sorts of ruts with personal relationships in work and even in your relationship to something bigger than yourself.

[Jonathan Cohen]

We touch on catastrophizing black and white thinking should isms, the list goes on and we explore them, but they are so prevalent in our thinking that we may not even realize we are doing it. We think that's just the way the world is. And when we learn to start shifting them, identifying and shifting them, we can access so many more opportunities and see creative solutions to our problems that we never realized were there.

[Maya Bialik]

We're also going to talk to Scott about some of the incredible guests that he's had on his podcast, talking about things like is there a genetic basis for identifications of reincarnation? Is there any sort of way that we can explain and understand a collective consciousness? I love that he really is bringing what a truly open skeptical scientific mind is to these problems that many of us are interested in and really want to believe can be discussed in a legitimate way.

[Jonathan Cohen]

At one point he says, I now believe in past lives. And when we talk to him about it further what he he describes our children who have inherited memory with savant ability meaning somewhere in their family lineage was someone that had an extra amazing ability, for example, to play the piano or decipher math problems. And many generations later this trait resurfaced in this child with no training, showing unbelievable gifted ability.

[Maya Bialik]

And Scott's going to talk about his theory as to how sort of creative memory can in many cases be called reincarnation or past life understanding. And I just love how he frames it again in this scientific lens and makes it really accessible to all of us. Scott Barry Kaufman is a cognitive psychologist. He's the host of the Psychology podcast. He's also professor of psychology at Columbia University. His writing appears in Atlantic, Scientific, American, Psychology Today, all sorts of places. He's the author of 11 previous books. Rise above is the one we're going to talk about today, but also highly recommend Ungifted and We're going to get into so many interesting arenas of his research, his work, and also his personal experience in exploring things outside of traditional scientific models of measurement. Let's welcome to the Breakdown in person, Scott Barry Kaufman. Break it down. Scott Barry Kaufman, welcome to the Breakdown.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, it's so good to be here. I'm so glad to hear it.

[Maya Bialik]

You and I have connected through a mutual friend, Sam Harris, and we've had several conversations. But I've been listening to your podcast, the psychology podcast, and in particular have been really taken with, I don't know, the ability that you have to straddle the worlds of kind of science and wonder.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Thank you.

[Maya Bialik]

And I wonder if we can sort of start.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I love that you start that way.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, that's kind of what.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It feels so seen. It feels so seen.

[Maya Bialik]

I wonder if we could start a little bit.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm just a little kid inside.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, I think I'd like for you to sort of take us through a little bit of your story. I really enjoyed. I mean, obviously Rise above is fantastic, but I also really enjoyed Ungifted.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's my baby, right? It will always be my baby.

[Maya Bialik]

Ungifted Intelligence redefined the truth about talent, practice, creativity, and the many paths to greatness.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I put everything I got into that book, and then I realized I was still alive. And I was like, what the hell am I going to do now, the rest of my life? You ever finish a big project where you just, like, you're like, I put it all in. What else do I got?

[Maya Bialik]

Well, tell us your story a little bit. You know, kind of. What's. What's most kind of captivating is, you know, you had a path that in many ways would have led people to disregard you, not value your intelligence, for you not even to acknowledge your own abilities. Tell us a little bit about your story.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Sure. I was diagnosed with a auditory processing disorder when I was very, very young. It appeared as though I was, let's say, ungifted. The word term I kind of made up, but that's how I was treated. The opposite, whatever the opposite of gifted is, you know, it took me an extra couple of millisecon seconds to process things in real time. So people thought I was really slow. And I was put in special ed. And then in fifth grade, I went to a special school for kids with a learning disability, and my parents couldn't afford it for more than a year. So then I was put back into. I was kept in special education all the way till 9th grade. Now I look back at the IEP reports and things. It says things like, for instance, my. When they tested me in fifth grade, they said he no longer has the auditory processing disability. And I could sense that and feel that. I was like, why am I still here? I don't feel I have a problem. But it says in the report, we need to keep him in because now he has a lot, lot of anxiety. And I'm like, you mother of beepers. What do you think? How do you think I have the anxiety? You're telling me I'm stupid every day. So it's this. I realized this. It's a cycle. It's the self perpetuating cycle. So I was kept there until ninth grade. And I remember I was taken out of the history classroom. I was, I was ready for regular. Like, I wanted to so desperately to show that I was intelligent. But they, they forced me to be removed from the history class and take an untimed test in the special education room. And I wasn't having it. I was just like, I was like. I remember saying something like, well, the rest of my life to take this test. What's the rush? You know? And the. There was a teacher there that day who had never seen me before. Sometimes it takes a fresh eye. She, it was a special ed teacher. She said, I'd like to talk to you after class. And she like tilted her head and she's like, what are you still doing here? And I repeated the question in my head and it really went to like, what am I, what am I still doing? Because I really desperately wanted someone in a position of power to question that. You know, for me, it's like I needed it. Like, something surged through me and I immediately ran to the pay phone and I called my mom. I said, I'm not reporting. I'm breaking out of special ed. And my mom's screaming. She's an overprotective Jewish mother. And she's like, what do you mean? What are they doing to you over there? But I said, no. Like. And so I became the first person in my, in my school district history to. For the kid himself to break out of special Ed. There was this moment, like I also had this profound realization, which the threads are in Rise above, which is no one's coming to save me. Like, I actually, I'm the one that needs to make this decision, you know, Like, I have well meaning parents, everyone means well, but no one knew my inner experience, which was that I felt I was capable.

[Maya Bialik]

Jonathan has a. Not the same experience, but.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, what's your story?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Like, I Was diagnosed in the second grade with a generalized learning disability. I struggled to learn to read. I had a fantastic auditory.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I still have that. The generalized thing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah, yeah. I had a fantastic auditory memory. I processed everything through auditory. But when it came to writing, couldn't spell.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, wow.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Couldn't really sound things out. Had enormous anxiety about reading and catching up in and also being removed from regular classes. I was. Was in regular classes, but then, you know, would get extra help or had to miss gym class. And the social anxiety. Where are. Why are you leaving class and not in gym class? Which is like the best thing about school in general.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It's my favorite.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And then leaving early, you know, I would go to a tutor to get special help, and I would leave at 2 o' clock some days, and everyone's like, why are you. And anything that makes me feel different, I'm like, of course, terrified of. And so I fought against the label and I refused help because I didn't want to be seen as different. And yet I wasn't keeping up with reading. I wasn't getting through any of the books. I would make up books instead of having to read them. And, you know, my mom would help.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That should be an indicator of something.

[Maya Bialik]

He's a writer.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. Come on.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I also went to a specialized school in the fifth grade, actually. They found a school. And, like, the school, regular school just was fraught with just all the, what do they want from me? How am I going to do this? Can I do this? Am I smart enough? Should I be in the special ed class? But, like, the special ed class had a really wide range of students, some of them with very intense developmental delays that you're like, I'm not that.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Right, right. You didn't feel a sense of belonging there or in the regular nowhere.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Exactly. So I really felt displaced. And then I went to a school designed for kids with learning disabilities in the fifth grade.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Were we at the same school?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I was in Toronto, Canada, so maybe not. And I got in a very small environment with kids who were all dealing with their own challenges. And I just had an amazing teacher who was like, I'm gonna teach you what you need to know. I'm gonna fill in the gaps. And it was really the first time where there wasn't a stigma of not knowing something. Like, you didn't have to pretend that, oh, you knew everything, and everything was like, you knew how to do the homework. It's like, come in and like, let's work together. And I thankfully, was there between 5th and 8th grade.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Okay.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And then went back into the mainstream public school system, and that did not go well at all. Yeah, it coincided for me with a lot of, like, a big family tragedy event. So, like, I was emotionally pulled out. But I think there is a huge emotional component to being regulated as a student. And if you're not regulated and you are anxious or you're uncertain in any way, that has a huge implication to how well you're going to be able to process information, be able to feel confident and be able to learn and grow and really fit in.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, well said. Did you have any English teachers who recognized your gift?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I did in, like, the eighth grade. And, you know, I was learning Hebrew, English, and French in the first grade.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, my gosh.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So I think there was. It was overwhelming in Hebrew, which was a very phonetic language I got much more easily, but I think there was an overload, and I was, like, fighting back. I remember the first moment of rebellion for me was standing up in French class in the second.

[Maya Bialik]

And did you say no?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, I used some expletives, and I stor out of the class because I'm just. I. And I remember I can think back to the level of frustration that that kid was feeling. And I'm like, that isn't the type of pressure that a second grader should have felt.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And then I agreed, actually ran away that night from my house because I was so terrified that the school was going to call the house and how much trouble I was going to get in. So, like, imagine that kid feeling like the only way to escape that level of pressure was to run away.

[Maya Bialik]

What is it about the way our society is structured to see intelligence and what we desire as a society in humans that can be challenging for people who are different?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, boy. Well, you know, a lot of it has the roots in the IQ test, to be honest. There's this idea that quickness of processing is the measure of intelligence as opposed to depth of processing or even, dare I say, creativity of processing. And these are two things I've tried to add on to the intelligence sort of conceptualization along with unconscious intelligence as well, which we nerded out about. Yeah, so we'll get to that. Yeah. Cool. Cool. There's just. There is this idea. There really is the idea that, you know, the extent to which you're kind of. There's this computer processing numbers and outputting things quickly, you know, is the extent to which you're intelligent. And that really does leave out way too many kids, as far as I'm concerned. I mean one. One is way too many in my opinion. But it's, it does leave out, I mean I actually estimate. I put a number to it in my book Twice Exceptional. I edited a book for educators and the idea is that if you look at twice exceptional kids, kids who have a learning disability but also have a high IQ. So they're both people asked me about 300,000 kids, but I argue, hold on, we need to go beyond just the IQ as the indicator of intelligence. What if you have a learning disability and you have amazing writing ability? So I say if we expand it to that and I crunch the numbers because obviously, nerd, millions of kids are falling between the cracks who are twice exceptional because we have this dichotomous system that you're either gifted, actually it's actually a three part system. You're either learning disabled gifted, or we don't pay any attention to you. You're in mainstream education and it's not good for anyone.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Eric Weinstein talks about, yeah. How we're basically sectioning off the people who will make the biggest leaps forward in human civilization.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I agree with that. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Because the people who are going to think outside of the box and think creatively and don't fit in to the status quo and assembly line of modern education are really the ones who are going to break the paradigm and come up with the net new ideas.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. I think, I mean he nails it when he says that and I would completely agree with that. And the whole idea of some people are neurodivergent and then we have the typical people. I'm actually starting to come around. There's no such thing as a typical person in the abstract. There is statistically. But have you ever met an individual who's typical? And I don't even know what that really means. And I've had some really great discussions with, I want to give props as well to El Todd Rose who we, we had a great two part discussion, my podcast about this because he wrote a whole book about like, why do we design around the typical, you know, like when no one is really, you know, typical. Everyone has, if you go, if you look enough at enough traits and you start adding up the traits, personality traits, talents, abilities, no one's at the midline on everything. Someone's going to have an extreme trait somewhere. And to me that's all neurodivergency is, is like what's your extreme trait? You know, and how are you like everyone, like we should ask everyone that, you know, all kids.

[Maya Bialik]

What's it, what is an extreme.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

What is. What the. Does that mean? Well above two standard deviations. Above the mean. I mean, I have. I have a precise statistical definition. You could, you could find any trait, let's say agreeableness. Okay, maybe someone's two standard deviations. Maybe that's their thing. You know, they're. They jump in all the time. How can I help? How can I help? You know? Okay, that's your neurodivergency. We don't think of that as neurodivergency. But why not? You know, like, you know, why are only certain things neurodivergency? Other things aren't, you know?

[Maya Bialik]

Well, that's a good question.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I mean, introversion, I have argued that should be 100% part of the neurodivergency spectrum. Introversion, it's actually correlated with autism 0.80. People don't know that.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, so I sleep with my hands folded in. I didn't know that's a sign of neurodivergency. The Internet told me. So I have to sleep like this. So I saw on Instagram and I actually asked Fred. Apparently, like, my whole life I've slept like that. Like, I didn't know. And I didn't know until this Instagram post where this girl was like, trying not to sleep and do the hand thing. And I'm like, why wouldn't you do the hand thing? Or why is my hand thing on Instagram? Apparently it's a measure. Like, it's a thing that a lot of special people do. Can you talk a little bit? You know, if. If every trait in theory, two standard deviations out could be neurodivergency.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Are we all neurodivergent? What are we talking about when we're talking about neurodivergence?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm starting to actually come around to the. That we should be identifying everyone's special sauce, whatever it is, why only some people have special sauce, others don't. Let's only isolate the ones that do and give them all the resources. I'm coming around to this idea that there are so many different personalities, there's so many traits, traits, psychological traits, and physical traits. They contribute to sports ability. On offering among in the human genome, there's enough to go around for every. If you go enough, you'll find an extreme trait in anyone. You really will tip. But I will say, traditionally, neurodivergency has been confined to things like autism, dyslexia, adhd, developmental disorders. And I would actually challenge some of these Labels. I wrote an article recently about ADHD that we should actually view it as an extreme trait. And. And that's it, you know, not as a. Just like get rid of that. You know, the D stands for disorder at the end of adhd, but I think it's a misnomer.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So let's talk about that for a minute. If we got rid of it as a disorder.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Would we then either celebrate it, accept it? You know, I, for example, think that I've always been probably on the very adhd.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You're on the spectrum.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Spectrum somewhere. And as a mime thinks I.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Go ahead. What does MIME think?

[Jonathan Cohen]

That face. That face.

[Maya Bialik]

I don't think there should be any question in anyone's mind.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Okay. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Earlier on my life, I had a much harder time, you know, assigning focus when needed.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But also, you know, that came with a hyper focus on things that I was super interested in. And I found that could be a hundred percent my superpower.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Cool.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Like, without that, I don't know that I would have been able to accomplish a lot of what I've accomplished.

[Maya Bialik]

But in a classroom setting, horror.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Bingo. Bingo. Bingo. So that's what I argue. I like, like, how dare I try to add nuance to this discussion. But I. I hear people describe ADHD as a superpower. I hear people describe ADHD as a disorder. Look, it's neither. It can. It can be a disorder and it can be a superpower. Like, why do people have trouble with. Yes. And thinking. You know, it depends on the context. ADHD is, is just. If you just look at what it is, it is a label. There is no thing that exists that is adhd. It is a label that we humans have created for problematic children that are not behaving. And they can't sit still. They can't sit still. And it also tends to correlate with, to be fair to adulthood, problematic behaviors that are tough for the individual experiencing it because it is frustrating having trouble concentrating. Well.

[Maya Bialik]

And also I just want to say that when I was in school a million years ago, but not that many.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Years ago, I think we're like the same age.

[Maya Bialik]

There's. Okay. There was always like one or two kids who I think by my current thinking, I'd be like, oh, that was a kid that was clearly on the extreme spectrum and had a lot of difficulty. But what, what I hear from my kids who are in school is that most kids are on some medication for adhd. It's like a medicated classroom from junior high.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

The rates have skyrocketed yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

So what in that case, while I want to say, like, oh, it's a trait that there's something going on because a teacher can't teach a group of kids where the majority of them are having those problems.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Is it a broken system or a broken person?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

What a great question. Am I allowed to say both? I would never describe it as broken person, but I do. I would say there are some parts of this. Let's start with. So let's go down both avenues. Let's start with the system.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, just full transparency. I think the system is horribly broken.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yes, I agree. I would use the word broken for system. I just wouldn't. For individual.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah, yeah, no, I totally agree.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. So with the system, what's interesting is a lot of people don't realize the extent to which environmental toxins can actually be. Are causally related to ADHD lead in the environment. So people. Obesity can lead to ADHD looking, appearing symptoms.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Also copious amounts of sugar. I was a massive sugar addict.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Absolutely. Sugar. There's something about fat, about lipids in the bloodstream. I mean, people are starting to study this at a really a way that I like the way they're studying this because we're realizing the more research comes out suggests it's less and less the mother's fault. It's not that the mother just didn't hold you enough, you know, which is the narrative that's the predominant narrative in our society right now that I see everywhere on Instagram, every look, it's like adhd, it's because of your trauma from your, your parents. And usually it's the mother that's blamed. And, and I think that's. I can't tell you how many emails I get from the. The kindest mothers in the world who are like, I've done everything right for my child and they still have adhd. What am I doing wrong? And I think that it is part of it. We need to think of it in a system way.

[Maya Bialik]

In a system that also predicts what pregnancy and labor should look like, does not necessarily support breastfeeding. A ton of interventions that in many cases separate the mother from the child or don't allow hormones to be released to the child. So like, in terms of like what a lot of us think. And also we're told to feed our kids food that is also contributing all these things.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

This is so important.

[Maya Bialik]

So like even the best mother that we're trying to be is in many cases, you know, shaped by a system that's not Supportive.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's why. Exactly. That's why we really need to think about this. Like I'm kind of fed up with people who feel like they have the easy answer. It is trauma, this nebulous term that just catch all for everything. Actually some recent research and when I really looked into, I was like, there really is something here. Iron deficiency kids. Get your kids tested for iron deficiency. Like this is. Meta analyses are showing this to be a really big factor in development of ADHD symptoms. So we just need to look beyond, you know, the environment is just parenting.

[Maya Bialik]

You know, and this is why people report dietary changes actually can make a shift which we're learning more and more about gut permeability and its connection to cognition and behavior. So you may be looking at a kid that is having something nutritional going on, something immune going on. And our solution is to medicate, Medicate, Shut them up.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Right. But also the whole shutting them up thing, like you're also shutting down a lot of creativity. And so I do, I do want to acknowledge what you said earlier about like it can be the superpower part because it can be a superpower. So let's talk about the individual. We talked about the system. Talk about the individual. It can be. I've done a lot of research on the link between mental illness and creativity and ADHD is part of it also being prone to schizophrenia. If you have schizophrenia lite L I T E. So let's say your family member might have full blown schizophrenia, but you got the watered down genes that makes you like 10 times more likely to think in a creative way and to have a rich imagination without the downside, you know, they don't. We don't need to put you in the mental institution. You know, like, like God forbid you think of bizarre associations that might end up being world changing.

[Maya Bialik]

Ah, like non linear thinking in, in certain situations is very not helpful. Like if you're trying to have a conversation in a therapist's office, that's true.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But not on a podcast.

[Maya Bialik]

But non linear thinking in a creative mode or if you're in a creative role, you can make connections other people don't.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, absolutely. Can I tell you a little about the neuroscience of adhd? If this is interesting at all? I think it is. So there's one brain network that educators have tended to obsessively focus on and that's the executive attention network. To the extent to which a kid is having trouble with their executive attention network is the extent we need to medicate them, shut them up because they're not Focusing on you. It's like, how dare them not focus on our boring lecture. Medicate them.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's very boring.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah. The Executive Attention Network is for paying attention to boring things. Let's just say that's what it's for. It's because you got to inhibit and suppress and hold things in working memory.

[Maya Bialik]

To make it sound like it's a bad thing. I love my executive functioning.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, well, yeah, that's true too. Like, there are many benefits to being able to have a meditation practice. That's a whole different topic. That helps you. But there's also another brain network that I think we ignore completely. That's the. I call it the Imagination Brain Network. Nerdy scientists call it the Default mode Brain Network, but I've renamed it the Imagination Network because it really has to do with our. Our at default state. Our mind tends to think about the future and tends to prospect, you know, about. About our own personal self as well as positive, constructive daydreaming, as my. My. One of my advisors in grad school called it.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, and in depression, the Default mode Network, it's telling a whole different set.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Of messages, different thing. The Default mode network is connected to the. Is connected to other areas that we don't want it connected to.

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

The anxious area, the preservative. Yeah, yeah. It's all about. It's all about what are these networks connect. How are they connecting? It's not about any one of them is good or bad, but people with ADHD have an overactive default mode. Even I called it by the nerdy name, an overactive Imagination network, which leads me to believe, as I wrote in a Scientific American article, shouldn't we just say that they have. It's overactive imagination disorder. Isn't that really what it is?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, if you can use that as a way to generate ideas and then have either help or be able to transition the creative and imagination into execution, then that's a fantastic capability. Not a disorder.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I think so. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, this goes to my concern about medication.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, sorry. It just also goes to my concern. Sorry, I have a different concern.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What's your concern?

[Maya Bialik]

So one of the concerns that I have, and this is something that, you know, it's kind of like you can talk to you about everything because it all connects.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

So one of the things. One of the things that, you know, that. That we've noted and noticed is a lot more adults identifying as neurodivergent or a lot of people receiving adult and teenagers on TikTok and teenagers on TikTok but it's the adults also watching on TikTok. But in addition, you know, when people have a new awareness of adhd, it. It can often be. And I'm just saying from a work environment standpoint, it can be kind of cumbersome in certain cases if someone sort of declares, I need a tremendous amount of. Of help in moving things forward. Because in. In a work environment, in. In many traditional work environments here in a Western culture, we do. We value independence, we value efficiency. And I wonder where some of this also starts dipping into some of the narcissism that we talk about. Because so much of what people report about, here's my diagnosis and here's this. And I want everyone to, like, be accepting and we want to be accepting. But when I think about it in terms of how we frame. He's so mad right now.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So many things to say about this.

[Maya Bialik]

I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit, because one of my favorite examples of you talking about this is the link between sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Narcissism, sorry, 0.80 correlation.

[Maya Bialik]

Right. The link between sensory processing sensitivity and vulnerable narcissism. So I also wonder if with all of these diagnoses, in particular for savvy, intelligent adults, if it then becomes this sort of rallying point that can spin its own web of everyone needs to accommodate. To me, how do we work with that?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I think we need to button ADHD and then jump to this.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Because you wanted to talk about medication, right?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, I think I'll hold both things.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

In my mind at the same time.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I love that on the ADHD front.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

A lot of the proponents of medication are like, they have to fit into the school system. They have to be able to go to school, right?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

They have to be able to get through the system that exists. We don't have an alternative for most people. So I understand that we still want.

[Maya Bialik]

Them to learn all the things that are going to be helpful to them when they go out into the world. It's not just, like, fit into the system. It's like, I want you to be able to educate people.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And my point is that the system of education that we have doesn't accommodate for different kinds of intelligence and different, like, needs that a student would have, where one student is able to sit down, listen to the lecture, be generally happy, and eight hours of class, someone else may need to not be at their desk, moving around a room, independent, checking in with a teacher, more like in a Montessori style where that's either self guided or sort of group guided in small areas. And they're never going to succeed being at their desk, sort of not chained to the desk, but that version of it. So. And the other proponent of medication is that which I can't really speak to, and you know, I'd love to hear your thoughts, is that we're helping them develop executive funk functioning through the stimulants, and that that's going to help shape their brain, especially as they're growing, so that they have better executive functioning. As an adult. I didn't have that experience because I never tried medication until my early 20s.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Okay.

[Jonathan Cohen]

When I did try medication, I was like, this is the most intense drug that I think exists.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Adderall.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It was Ritalin. I tried Ritalin for a little while and tried Adderall.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Okay.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'm like, I can sit down for eight hours, yeah, and write, but when I go to sleep at night, it's go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep, go to sleep. Like, it just brought my, it brought my system to that level where I'm like, this is not a natural or healthy intervention. And also what I wonder is if I had been given that as a younger person, what would have happened to that creative imagination that I think is some of my best skill set. Now, this ties into what you were saying about how do people manage both sides. Because I agree totally that we can't have everyone saying this is my diagnosis and the world should accommodate me. However, when you're building teams and you have some people who are amazing at systems and system execution, it's right, right. But they maybe struggle at seeing things that don't yet exist. And someone else who is into creative imagination and someone else who's extremely analytical who can take that creative imagination and say, here's four problems that we may foresee that we should solve for and then pass it. Like you can build a team of people who have complementary skill sets and like, that's ultimately the best business if you're starting to hire and build an organization.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, I mean, no disagreements, no lies detected.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I think the question goes back to, to mimes and then also, you know, buttoning up the. What is the trade off? You know, is it that people should look to ADHD medication because there's longer term benefit in the developing structure of the brain and that trade off doesn't sacrifice creativity. I think that's part one. And then part two would be more to the accommodation part or the diagnosis in later adult life. And how do people Sort of accept who they are without asking for a blanket accommodation that the world bend to them.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

There's a lot there. As a multi part question, I want to just talk about the accommodation thing, for instance, because when I talk in the book about you shouldn't expect everywhere you go people to accommodate you. That's different than leading with your strengths and hoping that if you're on a team, it's a different instance than the instance you brought up being on a team in a workplace. I just recently wrote a forward to a wonderful book, the the Brain Friendly Workplace, which is all about people with neurodiversity. We should absolutely be very friendly in the workplace to people with different kinds of minds and what their greatest strengths are. Specifically the narcissism thing that comes in is a different beast. It's something different. You're not leading with your strengths, you're not leading with what can you contribute? The focus is entirely on me. And everyone around should tiptoe around me and treat me like even if I'm an asshole, for instance, people should forgive me immediately because I'm a highly sensitive person. And I went berserk when I saw an interview once with Kanye west where he said I'm so misunderstood. I'm really just a highly sensitive introvert. And I wrote an article for Scientific American, was very cheeky title. It was like 21 signs you're secretly a narcissist masquerading as a highly sensitive introvert. And the article was about vulnerable narcissism and how you know, you can be highly sensitive in different ways. Being highly sensitive to criticism and your ego. Like you can still be an asshole. Like you'd be highly sensitive. You can be a highly sensitive asshole. Do you know what I mean? Totally.

[Maya Bialik]

Could we put that on a T shirt?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm a highly sensitive asshole. Would be a funny T shirt actually. Just to like make fun of myself.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Before you keep going, why don't we describe what is a vulnerable narcissist?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So it's a spectrum. People who score high in vulnerable narcissism. I'm talking like a journal article over here. In our study, we found that people who score high in vulnerable narcissism tend to score higher in self instability. They really are uncertain who they are and it makes them very insecure. A lot of them. There is a correlation with early childhood abuse. So, you know, these things are complicated, right? We're not. I'm not a big fan of shaming and blaming and being and saying this like, oh, you're. Oh let's laugh at the vulnerable narcissist in general. I think that people who develop vulnerable narcissistic traits, it's a compensatory defense mechanism for real pain that they've experienced in their lives.

[Maya Bialik]

What does it look like?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yep. It looks like constantly having hostility and resentment for people who are more successful than you. Feeling as though you're entitled to special privileges because you've suffered, not because you're better than others. That's grandiose narcissism. See, there's two different types of narcissism with two different forms of entitlement associated with them. Grandiose narcissists are entitled to special privileges because they feel like they're born better than everyone else. Vulnerable narcissists have quite a low self esteem on average and tend to have. It's really an uncertain self esteem. There's actually no such thing as a low self esteem. We find in our studies no one reports a zero on self esteem services. It's either the middle or high, suggesting it's really a low that we've. What we've been calling low is really just the participant who doesn't know who, you know, like how they should view themselves. And so that's really what a low self esteem is. And they, and people who score high involvement narcissism. It's a really defining characteristic is they're very, and they're very sensitive to rejection. There's actually quite a high correlation with borderline personality disorder, which is interesting. But this is a general personality trait with vulnerable narcissism. You know, it's interesting, you do get a lot of the splitting like people are either angels or devils. But like, I mean I want to have some compassion. They're, they're really. There's a lot of like let's, let's pull a little Sharon Salzberg for a second like loving kindness meditation on these people because they have a lot of splitting they do with themselves which is causing them so much unnecessary inhibit inhibition of their self actualization. That's why I wrote Rise above to show how we have these characteristics in all of us that is really bringing us down, you know, from our higher nature and who we could be. To constantly be questioning who you are and just be flipping back and forth between oh, I'm at the root of me, I'm. A lot of these people, they feel at the root of them, they're broken. That's how they feel.

[Maya Bialik]

But it takes a lot of therapy to get there. These aren't people who walk around being like, oh, I'm so hurt. This is people who are usually kind of very externalizing and very. You know, the things that get revealed are typically not what you're encountering on the daily.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, that's a very good point. Vulnerable narcissism is correlated with introversion and more internalizing than externalizing, Whereas grandiose narcissism is related to more externalizing and virtually no internalizing. By the way, we cannot seem to find anyone who scores extremely high ingrained narcissism that ever puts the blame on themselves. They're really good at externalizing everything.

[Maya Bialik]

That's like, sorry, I'm thinking of, like, a pathological liar like that guy at the bar. That's the kind of narcissist I think of. I wonder if we can talk a little bit about, you know, in. In Rise above, which. Which the. You know, overcome a victim mindset. Empower yourself and realize your full potential. There's so much in here that is really helpful in terms of. There are many things that I didn't realize are leaning into victimhood that I do. Right.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

And so that was why I wrote this book. Yay.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, that was really helpful. Explain what cognitive distortions are and how they kind of play into a victim mindset and then maybe give an example of a couple.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Sure. You know, when you have cognitive distortions, you're not seeing reality clearly. You really are exaggerating things to a degree that is not helpful, productive, and often not accurate.

[Maya Bialik]

And we all do this.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

We all do this. We all can fall prey when something bad happens to us. We think, oh, I'm a loser. You know, like, just these thoughts that are so extreme and distorted, like. Like, no one's. The totality of their being is a loser. You know, like. And then cognitive behavioral therapy developed and developed a whole bunch such as exact. Well, exaggerating. Seeing things in black and white terms like, people are either all good or all bad. Or if I don't get this job, then I will never get a job the rest of my life. Maybe over generalizing would be.

[Maya Bialik]

And even if you know that's not true thinking, that thought starts a distortion that basically creates a groove in your brain.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It totally creates a groove in your brain. And the one that's that the number one. If we had the gong, you know, boom. What's the number one thing associated with a victim mindset? It is you ready for is seeing a malevolent intent in neutral stimuli.

[Maya Bialik]

Oh, wow, That's a big one.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's the number One that we have found associated.

[Maya Bialik]

What does that look like?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Like, so you're in a comical example. I like to think all comedians are vulnerable narcissists because when they're up there, like if an audience member is just has a neutral expression, they interpret that as they hate me, you know, so that's the most. I jokingly talk about Rodney Dangerfield. Oh, I got no respect, you know, but in the everyday individual and every. In most people it is, you know, you smile at someone on the street, they don't smile back. You take it personally. You're like Michael Jordan everywhere you go. That was personal from the documentary. He's like, everything. So you just. When the reality of the matter, like, you know, is that person is not. I mean, that person doesn't know you. The person not thinking about you. That person is thinking about the million things they have to do their day, you know, and then just more egregious and more controversially, I admit it, seeing malevolent intent through the lens of only one thing. Like, everyone's racist, right? So therefore, if you have a belief, your prism of the world is all white people are racist, then every white person who has a neutral response to you, like, why don't they like me? They must be racist. You know, so. And I understand it's a sensitive topic and I want to be sensitive.

[Maya Bialik]

No, but it's a good. It's a good example. Yeah, it's a very good example. One of my favorite cognitive distortions that I like is jumping to conclusions.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

A big one.

[Maya Bialik]

Can you talk about you like that's your favorite one?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I do.

[Maya Bialik]

It's my favorite.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You have a favorite cognitive distortion.

[Maya Bialik]

I do. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how that looks sort of. And how that can be so damaging, Isn't that.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I think that's quite related to the ones we're just. We're just talking about where you think you have understood and concluded what's really going on here. When it's. When there's a lot more complexity to what's really going on there or what's really going on there is not personal. So a lot of people will jump to the conclusion that everything is personal. You know. You know, you're at the Starbucks, you're in wine, and there's a big wine. It's not moving fast enough. The world's conspiring against you. Yeah, well, you've jumped to that conclusion.

[Maya Bialik]

And even if it's not that specific thought, that burning feeling you feel, that is the opposite of patience. The Opposite of loving kindness. The opposite of all those things. That's true. Like we sometimes. When I learned about cognitive distortions. I don't know how you feel about cognitive distortions. I didn't realize I was doing them.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, I won't know if he has a favorite one.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, I didn't realize I was doing them. I just spend a lot of time. The way that I think of it. I spend a lot of time in my head and I spend a lot of time in your head, like whoever you are. Meaning I'm always reading into what are they thinking? What can I do to change them? Did I upset them? Are they happy? So if I'm spending all of that time, what it actually means is that the entire world is then filtered through this lens. That's not really true. Do you have a favorite one? Do you want to look at the list?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I have a few.

[Maya Bialik]

Read you the list.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I have a few that I like.

[Maya Bialik]

Like when I read to him.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I do like that, actually. The saying, though, like the Starbucks example is like. Reminds me of the saying of you're in traffic and you're like, oh, this traffic is getting my way. Not realizing you are the traffic.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So true and so true.

[Jonathan Cohen]

The black and white thinking was an interesting one for me. I used to see just two things and I'd be like, well, I can either do this or that and. And understanding that they're. Most things have some sort of middle, which is interesting for me because I love you. Also.

[Maya Bialik]

Catastrophizer, though. I can either take this job or I'm living under the bridge on the freeway because I didn't take the job. Like, he's very like, that's how black and white and catastrophizing.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I definitely worked on my catastrophization. That for me totally came from. I can see the roots both. My dad is an amazing risk analyzer. We used to consider his job. He was. He. He was the managing director of an accounting firm analyzing risk. So.

[Maya Bialik]

But that is his lens.

[Jonathan Cohen]

That's his lens is like, what are all the things that could possibly go wrong? Let's mitigate against that and make our decision. We used to call him head of catastrophe prevention.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, my gosh. Can I just say this? You see. Do you see this all the time in academia where if you only have a hammer, you see a nail everywhere? Everyone at these meetings, these facts, everyone is seeing the world through their own sort of scholarly research thing. So if you're like the. If you're the critical gender theory person, you Literally you're the person at the meeting where every single comment you interpret as well, that was sexist. Well that would, you know, you need to, you need to let me educate you on the literature you need to read.

[Maya Bialik]

But that's how we operate in the world.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you mean? Tell me what you mean.

[Maya Bialik]

Like we're all, we all have specializations and we will see the world through the lens of our specialization, whether it's trauma, racism.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I agree. I don't mean to just pick on the gender critical theorist. That's not, that's the example. Those are most prominent in my head at that moment. But, but you can go down the line. So I was also going to make joke like if you're the history person who, who Your specialization is 17th century Buddhist oppression, you know, you will see every, in the, in the meeting, you know, so I don't mean to pick on anyone.

[Maya Bialik]

No, but that makes sense.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But yeah it's. But we do and to be able to be mindful of that is just world changing because it helps you increase your connections to others in such a profound way. Well said said. The other way it really divides us when we only view things through our own lens. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Learning what the cognitive distortion might be and not to remove it because I still believe that understanding and analyzing risk is extremely beneficial to not end up with in a bad situation.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's right. That's right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It can be very helpful but not to only rely on it to be able to pull back. And I think, you know, all the experts that we've spoken to is they say that it's not necessarily not utilizing any of these but being have having the flexibility to move out out of them and apply other ways of thinking as well.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Totally.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So for from a creative standpoint, when people give me two different options, I usually want a merger, I usually want some sort of hybrid. I'm like let's take this and that and like let's build a new version. And so in one area I feel like I'm able to do it a lot and so trying to learn that what were some of the others?

[Maya Bialik]

Let's see. Okay, well we talked about black white thinking. We talked about catastrophizing, minimizing, personalizing false sense of hopelessness. I like that one too. Shoulding. Shoulding, yes. Entitlement jumping to conclusion over general mind reading. I like that one.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let's pause on shoulding for a second because a lot of big one, it's a big one because it perpetuates others.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Albert, you know, Albert Ellis, Rational motive therapy. He said, stop shudder baiting all over yourself.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Yeah.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Expression he used. He thought he was being clever.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But that has such a deep string when you start to pull on it because you're like, I should be at this meeting on time and yet I'm stuck in traffic. But if you accept that I've done everything possible to be on time, maybe things are okay. Even if I absolutely believe I'm going to lose this job because I'm not at this interview on time, that could be catastrophic. But unless you can look back and be like, oh, I really. No, you're shaking your head. No, I think now I'm mind reading.

[Maya Bialik]

No, I think for, for shoulding. I think of it more of like, I should have had more success by this time in my life. I should have accomplished this, or he should have gotten sober, or she should have this. It's a lot more. It's, it's.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't know.

[Maya Bialik]

I think of it as general too.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Both end. Both end. And I also think we live in an interesting time where we get so mad, like we're kind of signaling to others. You should think just like me. And that's. I'm adding a third, the third thing here. And it's really tearing our country apart, you know, because it's like, you know, you should have my political belief, you know, and if you don't go, fuck off, you know, like. And so we're shooting each other, you know, like we're shaming and shooting each other. In addition to shoulding ourselves, which is inhibiting our self actualization, there's so much shoulding going around.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I'll give an example of something that I think works on a micro level, but maybe not as much on a macro level. It was having a positive. Assuming a positive intent for someone.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh yeah, I love that.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I, I think I've told this story before, but I had a boss who, as I was an apartment manager and I had a boss who came in and he just had a positive intent of every single one of the tenants. You're like, this tenant trashed their apartment. Well, maybe it was. And at that time I was under a lot of stress and my immediate assumption was really like, no, this person has bad intent or they're taking advantage. And I saw how stressful that was on me and I saw how his gracious intent often led to more information that I didn't have at the time. And seeing that him apply that, I was like really profoundly changed by it. On a macro Level, I think it's harder because you're like, oh, this person is, you know, Or I'm in a business deal and they're offering something well below what I want. Like, it's hard to have that type of same positive intent instead of setting a boundary.

[Maya Bialik]

Can you talk a little bit about the cognitive distortion of outsourcing happiness? Can you describe what that is?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Are you a philosopher?

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't know. I don't think so.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I feel like I'm getting a little bit of, like, a philosophy vibe from him. Do you know what I mean?

[Maya Bialik]

We think it's generational. I think there's something in his lineage.

[Jonathan Cohen]

But it's the many men with long beards in my family.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I don't know what it is.

[Maya Bialik]

But anyway, can you talk about outsourcing happiness? What does that look like? Practically, I'll be happy when exactly? Or this relationship will make me happy, and therefore I'm miserable without it.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Gosh, we do that so often. I mean, I do that all the time, you know, like, until there's perfect. Until I get moved to New York and there's perfect tranquility and I'm settled in my job and I find my wife, you know, and then I have the. Then I'll be happy. You know, we don't allow ourselves happiness right here, right now, you know, and. And the sad thing that's heartbreaking is that we actually can allow ourselves happiness, happiness right here, right now. We don't need that cognitive distortion. We can throw that in the rubbish bin, you know, but we hold on to it so much in this false sense that, you know, that we're going to outsource our happiness to external factors or external people. Or external people. Yes. Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

One of the really incredible things about sort of your body of work and your research is you're able to sort of of, you know, you're able to sort of tackle all of these things and be open to thinking about what superpowers can look like outside of the realms of kind of the materialist world. We were actually.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, good, we're gonna go there.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, we. We were connected through a mutual friend, Sam Harris, because I wanted to talk to Sam about the telepathy tapes, and he didn't want to talk to me about it, which is his prerogative, but he said, you should talk to Scott Barry Kaufman. And so we were connected, and I. I started listening to. To your podcast, and we started having some conversations. One of our. One of our interests in the telepathy tapes and in various conversations. We've had over the many, many episodes, hundreds of episodes that we've done is we believe that there is something true about things that previously have been dismissed as something for hippies or mystics or, you know, and we, we wonder if you can sort of speak to what about understanding intelligence and understanding those who are twice gifted. What insight does that give you into understanding people who might have special needs that we can't yet explain?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, I don't go to the supernatural level as my default, but I keep an open mind. You know, I'm an open skeptic. Where my mind goes is just to how incredible are the human genome is and how much we don't know about epigenetics and how much we don't know about genetic transmission. Just what is encoded, you know, what are these proteins code for? You know, like and, and I, and I, you know, before I got into. And now I'm obsessed with this mind reading stuff. But before that I was obsessed with, well, how are these people, these kids able, like prodigies, able to kind of sit down at piano and just kind of get the rule structure of piano. But, you know, the rule structure of piano. It has been operated on enough during the course of human evolution that it is reasonable that it would be somewhere in our genes. You know, some of these things we don't ask, like, we don't say, oh, it must be supernatural that I learned all these words that I learned from the ages of 2 to 5, which we did automatically. We do so many things that we, if we really we were like the fish in water, you know, we're like. Because we're swimming in the water, we don't realize that there's water. But there's so many miraculous things that we have evolved learning systems. And I'm really interested in the interaction between generalized learning systems, like implicit learning systems and evolutionary evolved implicit domain learning systems. So basically what I mean by that, it's mouthful, but saying our genes really prepared us through the course of evolution to tune our attention to certain regularities in the environment that were very regular across the course of human history. Now, some of these individuals, the most exceptional, there's always a great disability concomitant with it. Either it's acquired, so they get hit on the head and then all of a sudden they can be Mozart or it is developmental, but there's no case where there's not a concomitant severe disability where.

[Maya Bialik]

Or trauma.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Or trauma. Great point, great point. Where you. And it's usually the trauma or the disability is usually a verbal one. And the ability.

[Maya Bialik]

Say more.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

The ability is usually a non verbal one. So you don't see prodigies in creative writing. Really? Really. You know, you don't see in verbal sort of creative domains. You see it most prominently in art, music. Now we can add telepathy to the list.

[Maya Bialik]

I was going to say, well, spirituality, spiritual.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

We're adding spiritual. The spiritually gifted child. We can really try to figure that out. But that's still, I think, a non verbal thing. Whatever's going on there. Something non verbal. It's a picking up, it's, it's a receiving, it's a receiving of something at the very least. Right. So I, I, you know, my investigation, which started ungifted with, with, with prodigies and savants, savants. D. Treffert's work is incredible. He spent his whole career studying these savants. There's something about the non verbal that gets unleashed when it's not dominated by language as much.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So you said two things that I want to better understand.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Language is a part of this. I just want to. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

One of them was that it potentially is coded in our genesis.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, everything's encoded.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, what is coded is an attention to certain regularities that most of us are not programmed to be attuned to. But some people are, I think, right out of the get go programmed to be attuned to the pattern, the statistical pattern structure of X.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So it's an. Yes, it's an attunement. But the other sort of word that I'm sort of caught on that you were talking about was that they receive something.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So probabilities maybe.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So it's statistical probabilities. But where are they? I think is the question, where are the probabilities?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, right, right, right. So if with music, queer feedback, with art, I mean with those things obvious, there's queer feedback you're getting, you know, when you sit down and you can figure out the probabilities if you're, if your system's attuned to it. But you're talking about telepathy. Do you want to double?

[Jonathan Cohen]

Well, I'm talking about telepathy, but I'm also talking about even creative imagination. You know, people who, like when we were talking about creative imagination, I'm like, well, where is that? It's not localized brain network. It is the imagination brain network. However, is it internal or is it non local? And the imagine and the system of the brain is actually accessing information all around us. Recently in our episode with Deepak Chopra, he's talking about how the universe is creative of these ones and zeros that we are simply making sense of and pulling external information. So by attunement and by the ability to form statistical probability in music, well then you could say maybe that's somewhat internal, but are they accessing something outside? But when you talk about creative imagination and we're talking about intuitive abilities or the ability to have precognitive experience.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, I hear you man. And there's something really profound here. There's something to the Daimonic, the Greeks, this guiding force that we have seen all throughout human history that creative people, really creative people often say it does not feel like it's coming from me. And so we need to take that seriously. And I have taken that very seriously in my whole career, even linking it to mental illness. I think there's an interesting link there. When the brain is altered, in an altered state of consciousness where you don't feel like you're having agency over the ideas, there's something really profound there as well. So I think I'm taking what you're saying very seriously because there is, you know, Anika Harris, you know, studies the form of consciousness. She believes that there, it's the universal. Right. And so there are scientific approaches emerging that give some sort of mechanistic account to perhaps there is, we have been thinking about consciousness wrong, you know, and perhaps there is a universal consciousness that, you know, Carl Jung talked a lot about that.

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Let's give him a little bit of credit. It, you know, that we're just kind of have the antenna, you know, that's tapping into it there, there. It, it could be. I mean it could be that plants are tapping into that. Everything is tapping into it. That is biology that has any sort of life, you know, associated with it. I'm open to that idea. Some people aren't. I, I'm not going to mention names, but I. There are some friends of mine who are very prominent consciousness researchers at NYU who they will just dismiss it. Just don't even, let's not even talk about it. But I think there's enough accumulating evidence to suggest that we should keep our minds open to that as the way this is working now. Does it mean, as it's depicted in the telepathy tapes that these autistic savants are accessing a plane? They're going to some. That to me is a little far fetched, to be honest. That's a little far fetched.

[Maya Bialik]

The only way that that one could frame that there is a Place called the Hill, for example, as the telepathy tapes talks about, that all these kids are going the same place. The only way that we could kind of understand a scientific framework around that is, is if there were a collective consciousness that in some way we cannot yet measure, we cannot yet isolate. And for those of us who want to measure and isolate things, that's a limitation. But the idea would be that there's a certain group of people who have an ability to drop in because it's almost always like a meditative state, a trance state, some sort of theta state or a nonverbal state, and they are able to access a, a metaphysical location in which their consciousness is entangled and they are linked. You do have to set aside a lot of the, the problems of facilitated communication.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I wanted to bring.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, you have to set aside. And, and I don't think we, you and I feel comfortable just setting those aside, being like, it doesn't matter.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Founds that have not been rolled out properly yet.

[Maya Bialik]

Correct.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

And that's the problem. I had this conversation with someone the other day. They said, scott, you're never going to prove that this realm exists because, oh, it was Michael Shermer yesterday. Michael Shermer, Mr. He's head of Skeptic magazine. So he's on Brand. He's on Brand. And we got to a whole discussion about this on his podcast yesterday. He's like, scott, you're never going, if there does exist this realm of that's not open to evidence. Well, you're never going to discover it. And I said, well, you know, well, here's the way I think about it, because I'm such a curious person. Even if that may very well be true, the more that I can rule out all of these confounds correct, the more excited I get that there's something mysterious that is even in further need. See, that's the way I think. Do you know What I mean, is like, I'm not trying to prove anything. I'm trying to see what could be most probable. And if we. So, like, Simon Baron Cohen and I had a conversation about designing studies on this. Like, let's try this. Confound this. It's never been done where they've had the complete separation. So let's do that. Let's, if we can do put six of these things in and the child is still saying 5, 7, 9, I'll be like, okay, that's pretty darn cool. That's pretty cool.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, here's, there's, there's two issues that I think are outstanding in any conversation about this. And one of the things that is outstanding is the general acknowledgment that observation of something changes it.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

And that's, that's a beautiful limitation. And it's, it is, it is going to make analysis difficult. So that, for me, that's the first challenge. Observation is difficult. And if we are dealing with, with not just a subset, we're dealing with a subset of a subset of a subset of individuals. And what, what proof likes, what science likes, is regularity.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yes.

[Maya Bialik]

We like to live right in the middle of that bell curve. And that is what our scientific measurement is calibrated to. So that is not to say that you cannot study this subset of the subset of the subset of. However, the techniques that we have, that we currently have and the conscious awareness of how to even approach things is limited because we are not used to thinking in that realm. And that's why people like Sam Harris or any of these people are like, we won't even talk about it. Because the only methods of analysis are designed for regularity, reproducibility, separating the individuals from the people that they claim to be telepathic with, which is exactly the only way that in many cases they are telepathic because there is an emotional connection. So we're trying to kind of apply like an ice cream scoop to a piece of bacon. It doesn't go together.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I think that I, I'm even more optimistic, though, that, that if supernatural exists, that we can capture it scientifically.

[Maya Bialik]

This is why I love the conversations that you have on your podcast. This is why I listen to my.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Past lives one by any chance?

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, of course I did, because that.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

One was so cool.

[Maya Bialik]

That one was insane.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm a believer now.

[Maya Bialik]

Right. But the reason that, that it's compelling is there are scientists and, you know, I'm not a practicing scientist, but there are people like me and like you who are actual scientists practicing that you're an actual scientist. No, but, but there are people who are willing to say, we may not be able to design an experiment where we have 50 people and we isolate them from the person and see if they can read minds. That's not what this experiment's going to look like. But if you look at it, I'm picturing like a. Picturing like a pom pom. If the truth is in the middle of the pom pom, you've got all this other stuff that you have to get through to try and get to it. So if we can start shaving off Parts of this outside so that we can say, okay, it's not this, or this is a confounding factor, or if we really want to test it, we've got to do this, or I'm going to be actually an open skeptic and say, how do I shave off the parts so that I can even get an indication of getting closer to the middle? That's what a scientific approach to this needs to look like.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Absolutely. And I think that even if there's certain metaphysical things exist, even if our consciousness. If it turns out that our consciousness is not confined to our brains, that's what we're talking about here. If that's true, I think that there's some interesting things we'd pick up on. So I think that if there are two people who both are thinking of the same thing, we know that certain brain areas are more likely to be active when we're thinking of language or. Or not. But they're both thinking of this. Let's say there's two people that the claim is they're both tapping into the same universal consciousness. Well, I would expect both of them at the same time, without communicating, would show a very similar area of activation while they are both imagining the very same thing.

[Maya Bialik]

Limbic resonance.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You know what I'm saying?

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah. Limbic resonance is a thing. Deepak Chopa talked about it in a description of mirror neurons, in a description of limbic system. If I feel for you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's true.

[Maya Bialik]

And you know that I feel for you, then we are inside the resonance.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I'm giving that to. He's. He is correct about that. Yeah. I've just. I've heard. I've just heard some things. He said that. I'm like, let me do some more testing on that. That's all. Yeah.

[Jonathan Cohen]

He does claim to be the first person to prove telepathy. That he says.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I see him in the background of the telepathy tape. Videos.

[Maya Bialik]

No, there's a video he published years ago where he had one of these kids who was mind reading, and he said it was absolutely.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And they put them in separate rooms, and his mother was reading, and the child was saying what the mother was reading.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Separate rooms.

[Maya Bialik]

Separate rooms.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Why can't we scientifically replicate that, though?

[Maya Bialik]

Correct.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I mean, I'm skeptical. Scientifically. Well, I think. Sure, of course. And it could be that this person had a great ability. The question would be not why we can't scientifically replicate this with other people, but going back to that same same mother and son.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, for sure. And I also Just getting into magic and getting into mentalism, which I have. I realized the extent to which people recreate a story in their head of what happened because it's what they want to believe. That is not actually what happens when you play the tape back. Because I've really gotten into mentalism. A big part of it is, you know, I think, well, what experience do I want to leave this person when they tell their friend this is what happened? He pulled. You know, for instance, I am one of these podcasts. I went to their party and I did this thing. And then. Then on the podcast, they were raving about what I did. They're like, you're not going to believe what Skybright Kaufman did. Okay. Literally there was a person there, and he. He just asked someone, he said, what is your. What is your favorite movie? And the guy said, his favorite movie. And he literally just took his wallet out and he pulled out a movie ticket for the movie. Okay. Just right then and there. Like, there's no explanation for that.

[Maya Bialik]

And that's. And that's a recounting.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It's a recounting.

[Maya Bialik]

That's not what happened, though.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, it is. It is. It is exactly what I wanted him to tell that story in his own head, in how he reconstructs it. Okay. That's exactly like, that's. That was. My aim was for that. How. That's how I wanted him to perceive it.

[Maya Bialik]

Will you tell us how you do that?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Of course not. But I. I wanted him to perceive it that way.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I want to get to something that you said, which is you now believe in past lives.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So there's something that. That I've been banging. So I've acted to Mike, to my credit, ever since I started studying prodigies, I've been banging the drum. There's like, there's something here where these prodigies are. I really believe if you go. If you trace someone in their family long enough, someone had that skill, right? So I always thought there was something that's a form of past life memory. That is a form of past life memory. When a child comes out and they're able to do something with no preparation.

[Maya Bialik]

Like, they become a pianist. And you're saying somewhere in the family you think there's a pianist.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So there is. I looked into this, and you start to go case by case, and you start to find, oh, the great grandfather in Russia had this amazing talent, you know, and so then let's just generalize from that principle. Okay, so isn't that a form of past life Memory, like what else is it if that's not a past life memory? Well, what you're saying, you could say it's an intergenerational transmission.

[Maya Bialik]

No, but you're saying that there is something coded in your DNA that was transmitted to them.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

That's a memory. And I know how controversial it is.

[Maya Bialik]

And in this case it's a creative memory.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It's a creative memory and it's like it's a certain set of genes as well. Well, that makes you more likely to be able to soak up knowledge and things. But I do think the memory thing, we can't rule it out, you know, the extent to which maybe certain memories are encoded in our genes. And again, this could get into someone might sound, make things so woo woo.

[Maya Bialik]

Right?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

But I don't think it's. It is that woo woo. When you really look at some of this incredible phenomenon.

[Maya Bialik]

You know, you had Jim Tucker on your podcast and we hope to have him on one day. But, but the conversation that you had was regarding children who have, have very, very elaborate vivid memories. Vivid and not just sort of factual memories, but emotional memories and in many cases kind of somatic memories of being someone else. In many cases they're pulling out facts. The very famous case was the kid who had all these details about a pilot, I think he was a World War II pilot. And he described his own death, which was accurate to the way this pilot died. And it wasn't general information. It was very, very astonishingly specific information that to our knowledge was not available on the Internet.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Well, I, I mean I read the journal articles and I, and I want to say this to all my scientist friends out there. If you're a good scientist and you read those journal articles, you have to agree there is something that is not fishy going. There's something real going on. You have to, if you, if you, if you have scientific integrity, that's my challenge. If you have scientific integrity, you can't come away reading how meticulously documented this stuff and how rigorous he was about it. He's like this, using the scientific method. You can't just fluff it off. And so that does bother me when scientists fluff off things without even reading the journal article. Read the journal article and then can we talk about it?

[Maya Bialik]

Well, and so what Jim Tucker talks about is he believes that there is something. And the conversation you had was regarding is there something encoded in DNA that's being passed on? And the question is if we believe in a collective consciousness, if it's not encoded in Your DNA. Can you pull someone else's life memory from the collective consciousness into your own?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I literally sit up and I try to think of different hypotheses for what we're going on. You know, how can there be certain accident, accidental commingling of things that wasn't supposed to happen? You know, most of us it doesn't happen. Right. These are a minority of cases. But I like to think of. Of all the weird quirks of things that can happen, you know, there are also so many weird special abilities. And by the way, there could be a whole like doc. Netflix series on just all the weird like the person with three eyes. Like they're all. They're. Yeah, it exists.

[Maya Bialik]

Is the third one.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

No, I don't know where it is. But some people's developmental just the way they development all sorts of things can. Can go awry from the plan, you know, and things can get commingled. Things can, the genes can. You know, I mean I've seen things. Women with three breasts, right? I mean these things. I mean I haven't seen it in a while. I did it a woman once. No, but. No, no, no, but I, I've heard of these cases. They exist. They exist.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Scott, before our time runs out with you, you said there's more and more evidence of consciousness being non local. What other evidence have you come across that that makes you more curious than skeptical?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

You know, it's funny, I heard myself say evidence and I would say there are more. Let me frame it a little bit differently. They're more like not crazy people who are coming up with theories of how it's possible. And I think that's the closest I can get to this fair. There are some, and some of them are philosophers, you know, who are writing about this.

[Maya Bialik]

Physicists have no problem with this. Physicists, quantum mechanics people, they're like, yeah, we totally. Of course this is exactly what like, like Planck described. This is what Heisenberg knew. So physicists have no problem. Philosophers are dipping into it.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Philosophers are dipping into it and some cognitive scientists just arguing that there is this panpsychism that doesn't need to be explained by the supernatural level, but actually is linked to physics. Some of them are linking it to physics principles and the improbability of us of consciousness existing in the first place, you know, and, and trying to kind of use logic and philosophical tools versus scientific tools to explain some of this. Philip Goff is a big one, by the way. G O F F Philip Goff, he just wrote the the meaning of Existence he might be a fun person to talk to because he. He has a scientific case for God.

[Maya Bialik]

Oh, yes.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

And he was on my podcast, so you can listen to that if you want.

[Jonathan Cohen]

So one of the most simple examples that Rick Rubin talks about is the idea that ideas have their moment and that most artists are actually just using antennae to capture data from this collective consciousness. And that, you know, the example he gives is like, ideas springing up in different parts of the world. Before there was a. Thomas Kuhn said.

[Maya Bialik]

The same thing about scientific shifts.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Breakthroughs.

[Maya Bialik]

They're going to happen. It's just who's the person that's literally going to seize on it or receive it?

[Jonathan Cohen]

And I don't have the list of the ideas that circulated in different parts of the world simultaneously, but there is that list where it feels like evolution or human consciousness or human progress is evolving at a certain rate, and these breakthroughs are going to happen, and you sort of are not necessarily local to an individual to bring them to the world instead of, you know, capturing them in some way.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, yeah. There's also. If there's something, an idea in the air, someone's going to find it. There'll be multiples. Dean Simonton has found that to be the case through scientific revolutions. Usually there's about five or six people who simultaneously seize upon it because it's in the air.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Doesn't that push us into this notion?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah, if there's a. If there's a really important scientific discovery to be made. Yeah. People from very different perspectives seize upon it.

[Maya Bialik]

Something happened yesterday before we let you go.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Oh, yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

So, you know, sometimes you'll be, like, thinking of someone and then they text you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Like, whatever it happens, that happens. It happened three times to me yesterday. Three. That's a lot in one day. And I had had a very rough night's sleep. I actually wasn't feeling good. And I was kind of wondering, like, so it happened once, and I was like, oh, that's kind of thing. And then a couple hours later, it happened again. And I was like, oh. And I'm like, how many times in one day am I going to type? I was just thinking about you. And then you texted. Right. And. And one of them was my son who wasn't feeling well. And I was kind of thinking, like, if. Like, how far out on this. On this, like, spectrum of thinking do I want to go? Right. I just. It was like three in one day, and I'm thinking, am I supposed to do something else? Like, try and meditate in a different way? Is there other information in the air that I'm supposed to gather today?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So maybe we should just start here, not end here on this statement, but I think the universe has a purpose. I agree with Philip Garbage off on this. The universe has a purpose. And I think that unfortunately, and as much as I hope we discover that in my lifetime, it's probably going to take many more lifetimes before, but there will become a day. This is my prediction. If you're, if you're listening back on this a thousand years from now, someday I think humans will figure out that a lot of things did have a lot more meaning. And we're, you know, I get a lot of fights with Sam Harris about whether or not we have free will or not, but. And please don't tell him I said this, but I'm starting to come around to his perspective. We've had some heated. On my podcast, we did two parts. We heated debate about this, but I'm starting to come around to the idea that there are, you know, there's every. There's so much predetermined that we don't realize. You know, right when we were born, there was so much predetermined there. And we're watching this beautiful thing unfolding, thinking that we are the one creating it. It, you know, and a lot of the things that, and this is relating to what you said, because there are a lot of things that, if you just view it in a Buddhist way and you just, you start to realize that things do come at you that were meant for you, things go away that weren't meant to you, you can try to hold on to them as much as you can, but they just weren't meant. Like, you have friends that come and go and you're. That are seasonal friends, and then you have friends that, like my friend Elliot will always be my friend. You know, there's no know. And I don't think all that is just chance, you know, you know, whatever configuration of things, like things are attracting and are like, connecting as they were meant to be. And we can fight it because we say, oh, well, I'm jealous of this podcast, or why can't I be like, this podcaster? Or you can accept your fate, which I think is a much more healthier way of living your life.

[Maya Bialik]

When you think about your own personal story to kind of wrap that up, and you think about all the challenges you had and, and, you know, being placed in special ed when that clearly wasn't the place for you, and it may be helpful for some other kids when you think about your own personal journey, how do you kind of tie that into we're here, like everything's supposed to happen.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

I have always felt it was my feat to do these books to do. You talk about creativity. Daimonic. When I was writing Transcend, I don't remember who wrote that book. Like, I don't. I mean, I sat. I wrote. I sat down. I wrote that book, but I don't. I don't remember thinking about what I was going to write. I mean, I can't explain it. I mean, when I sat down, I wrote, today I'm going to write chapter Connection. By the end of the couple weeks, the connection chapter was written. I don't remember thinking, oh, let me plan out how I'm going to write that. I would sit down and write the need for connection. So I don't know. I've always felt that my life story, it's all part of this thread that's unfolding. It's still unfolding, but now it's unfolded enough where I can kind of start to see the pattern because enough years have gone by. I'm an old man now, you know. I'm an old man now, you know, Rise above was the inevitable. I almost had no other choice. But for everything, every choice to lead up, to rise above. Because rise above is the natural progression. Once you get out of the way, intelligence, creativity, then you start to have. Then you have the aha moment. Oh, actually, it's really about, you know, realizing no one's coming to save you. Yeah, you need. You need. Yeah. Do you know, am I making sense?

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, no, it makes total sense.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Everything was in the inevitable result that you only see at the end of your life.

[Maya Bialik]

We really, I mean, we appreciate that so much, and I think it's such a great. It's such a great tie in to also say the universe has a purpose for me. And if I get stuck in a place where I don't believe that, like, these are the kinds of tools that I need to come out of it. I mean, that's what I got out of the book. So thank you so much. It's such a pleasure to have a whole scene today. Oh, great.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Thank you so much.

[Maya Bialik]

We're so glad both of you are.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

So smart and it was fun.

[Maya Bialik]

Thank you.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Thank you.

[Maya Bialik]

One thing we didn't get to talk to Scott about is we'll link to his. His website below, which has a ton of interesting information. It links to his podcast. Also, he writes for the Atlantic, Psychology Today, Scientific American. He does a Ton for them. So he has some really interesting articles about personality, about being a late bloomer, about how to maximize your potential. But he also has a series of tests which you and I actually took. We took the self actualization test. There are many different ones on the. On the website. We took the characteristics of self actualization scale test. It looks at appreciation, acceptance, authenticity, equanimity, purpose, truth seeking, humanitarianism, peak experiences, moral intuition, and creative spirit. And what this test produces is it shows you your three kind of strengths, and it shows you the strengths that you have based on the questions that you answer. So I thought it would be fun for us to go over them.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let's do it.

[Maya Bialik]

So I offered to take the test for Jonathan because I think I understand Jonathan better than Jonathan understands Jonathan. But that's not fair.

[Jonathan Cohen]

You love to answer questions for other people.

[Maya Bialik]

But I did. Did help you in that. When you got stuck, I knew that was a. A neutral, like number three.

[Jonathan Cohen]

There was a couple questions where I.

[Maya Bialik]

Was like, no, I get what they're asking and I'm gonna help you. But no, it was definitely. We each took it. So what I thought was interesting, we got totally different strengths. It gives you your top three strengths. It also gives you the other rankings of your others. But my top three results for my characters, my characteristics of self actualization.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let's hear them.

[Maya Bialik]

Authenticity.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Oh, you're so authentic.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, I want to be authentic. It doesn't mean that I am. It means that it's an important value to me. Purpose.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[Maya Bialik]

Like wanting to have a sense of purpose and humanitarianism.

[Jonathan Cohen]

What people don't know about you is that you actually love purpose. Meaning not only just like a larger macro purpose, but when you show up at someone's house, you're like, let me organize your cupboards.

[Maya Bialik]

I like to be of service.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Can I file your papers for you?

[Maya Bialik]

I like to feel that I have. Have purpose. And in some cases it might be insecurity, but it's not that I want praise. It's not wanting to feel a purpose. It's important. You want to feel useful and humanitarianism. That makes sense to me because I do have a very strong sense of wanting to do good. It doesn't mean that you are these things. It means these are the values and the characteristics that are important to you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Let's talk about me.

[Maya Bialik]

Let's talk about Jonathan. Equanimity.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I had to look up what that was and what that actually meant.

[Maya Bialik]

What did you find?

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

Tell us.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't remember, actually. I have to look up.

[Maya Bialik]

Tell us what equanimity is.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Mental calmness, composure, evenness of temper, especially in difficult situations. I don't like an emergency unless it's an emergency, and even then I don't like it.

[Maya Bialik]

So it's funny because these were. Some of these questions were interesting to me because you answered in the way that you'd like to handle things. But I find that sometimes even little things can make you very upset. Like, sometimes disproportionately. And. And I mean, like in. Like sometimes you feel nervous or anxious about something that feels maybe, to use the language of Scott, like maybe you're generalizing or catastrophizing, but it's not a goal of yours, which is why equanimity is one of your highest. It's something you're aspiring to. If I don't believe you're there yet.

[Jonathan Cohen]

And all, I'll say this. I was dealing with our Internet provider, and that was very frustrating to me. But in general, even when things like get thrown off the rail, I don't. I don't think I am a very reactive person. But maybe that's just my experience of myself.

[Maya Bialik]

Well, equanimity is important to you. That is true creative spirit that feels right on. And these were, I think, all equally the same level. So for my authenticity purpose and humanitarianism, equanimity, creative spirit that really tracks. And truth seeking. That came up high for you.

[Jonathan Cohen]

I don't like any bs, and I think it's more about, like, what is a generalized truth meaning?

[Maya Bialik]

Right.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Where are we getting information?

[Maya Bialik]

Specific truths. It can be a little fuzzy.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Specific truth is. Has a lot of context.

[Maya Bialik]

I think one of the questions was like, what? You know, I try and stay close to your reality. You're like, what? What is reality?

[Jonathan Cohen]

That is true. Reality is very subjective. Every guest we talk about explains that we make up a lot of how we see the world. And that's why it needs context, because you have to explain how you're coming to said reality, which is also about truth. If truth is presented in one fashion, some people be like, this is what it is. It's like those Internet memes. It's Yani or Clancy or Lancy, where people hear things totally differently.

[Maya Bialik]

Yanni. I'm like the cellist.

[Jonathan Cohen]

It's the Internet meme where a sound plays and people hear it totally differently.

[Maya Bialik]

Yeah, it's like the blue and black, white and gold dress issue.

[Jonathan Cohen]

Truth is subjective. That's why we have to find it.

[Maya Bialik]

The other tests that you can take, there's a human potential index. A light versus dark side of the force test, which I thought was really cool. Yeah, there's a selfishness and altruism scale. So, anyway, head over to scottberrycoffman.com for sure and we'll. We'll link to that below. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time.

[Scott Barry Kaufman]

It's Maya Bialix. Breakdown. She's gonna break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two and now she's gonna break down. It's a breakdown. She's gonna break it down.