Improv & Impulse Control (w/ Dr. Heather Berlin)

Summary

Staying Alive with Jon Gabrus & Adam Pally: Improv & Impulse Control (w/ Dr. Heather Berlin) Release Date: July 17, 2025

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Introduction

In this engaging episode of Staying Alive, hosts Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally welcome Dr. Heather Berlin, a distinguished neuroscientist and clinical psychologist. Dr. Berlin brings her expertise to explore the intricate relationship between improvisation, impulse control, and overall brain health.

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Neuroscience of Improvisation

Dr. Berlin delves into her research on the neural mechanisms underlying improvisation. She explains how activities like jazz improvisation and freestyle rapping activate unique brain patterns compared to rehearsed performances.

Dr. Heather Berlin [06:23]: "When you do an improvised piece versus a memorized piece, you see that during improvisation there's a unique pattern of brain activation."

This distinction highlights the brain's ability to engage in spontaneous creativity, fostering novel connections and enhancing neuroplasticity.

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Flow States and Impulse Control

The conversation shifts to the concept of flow states—mental zones of complete immersion and focus. Dr. Berlin describes how during improvisation, there's a notable decrease in activity within the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the area responsible for self-awareness and adherence to social norms. This reduction allows for greater creativity and spontaneous idea generation.

Adam Pally [10:04]: "You know, I was, we were just talking about this. I would say for everybody's different... when I'm not as worried, when I'm not as scared about it."

Jon and Adam share their personal struggles with maintaining flow states, emphasizing the delicate balance between creativity and self-awareness.

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Benefits of Improv for Brain Health

Dr. Berlin underscores the cognitive benefits of improvisation, linking it to increased dopamine release and enhanced neuroplasticity. These factors are crucial for mental health, aiding in the prevention of neurological decline and fostering resilience.

Dr. Heather Berlin [09:30]: "It's associated with very positive emotions. And then novelty is related to dopamine release in the brain... helps with neuroplasticity."

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Managing Impulse Control Issues

The discussion progresses to impulse control, where Dr. Berlin differentiates between impulsivity and compulsivity. She explains that while impulsivity involves seeking immediate rewards, compulsivity relates to repetitive behaviors aimed at avoiding negative outcomes. Balancing these aspects is essential for healthy executive function.

Dr. Heather Berlin [19:11]: "Executive function is like that when it's turned on... you have to have some control."

Jon and Adam reflect on their own experiences with impulse control, relating them to their professional and personal lives.

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The Effects of Fame on Mental Health

Dr. Berlin shares insights from her upcoming book, The Fine Art of Losing Control, examining how fame impacts the brain's reward systems. She discusses interactions with celebrities like Robert De Niro, illustrating how fame can lead to both heightened dopamine responses and subsequent withdrawal symptoms when the limelight fades.

Dr. Heather Berlin [26:49]: "So, you have a part of the brain called nucleus accumbens... And when you lose it, it's like withdrawal."

The hosts recount humorous and insightful anecdotes from Dr. Berlin's experiences at high-profile events, shedding light on the psychological toll of fame.

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Balancing Personal Life and Career

Jon and Adam discuss the challenges of maintaining personal well-being amidst demanding careers in entertainment. Dr. Berlin emphasizes the importance of finding joy outside one's primary occupation to prevent over-reliance on external validation.

Dr. Heather Berlin [43:09]: "There's also something about finding the happiness outside of that. And that's a very difficult thing."

They explore strategies for achieving this balance, highlighting the necessity of diverse sources of fulfillment to sustain long-term mental health.

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Practical Tips for Staying Healthy

Concluding the episode, Dr. Berlin offers actionable advice for maintaining both physical and mental health:

• Balanced Diet: Emphasizes consuming whole foods like fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats.

  Dr. Heather Berlin [53:03]: "So, you know, fruits and vegetables, things that aren't processed... and then like, being walking in nature is so important."

• Adequate Sleep: Advocates for quality sleep tailored to individual needs rather than adhering strictly to the "eight-hour rule."

• Regular Exercise: Recommends incorporating physical activity, such as yoga, to enhance both physical and mental well-being.

• Hydration: Stresses the importance of staying well-hydrated.

• Mindfulness and Meditation: Encourages practices that foster present-moment awareness and reduce stress.

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Stories and Anecdotes

Throughout the episode, personal stories enrich the discussion:

• Dr. Berlin's experience at Vanity Fair parties and interactions with celebrities.

• Jon's encounter at the MTV Movie Awards and Adam's humorous tales from movie premieres.

These narratives provide relatable context to the scientific concepts discussed, making the information both engaging and memorable.

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Conclusion and Takeaways

The episode wraps up with a reaffirmation of the importance of balancing creativity with self-care. Dr. Berlin highlights the brain's capacity for continuous growth and adaptation, regardless of past habits or current challenges.

Dr. Heather Berlin [73:05]: "It's never just one or the other... you have to have happiness in other areas or else it's a recipe for sadness."

Jon and Adam express their gratitude to Dr. Berlin, acknowledging the valuable insights that will aid their personal health journeys and enhance their podcast's mission to promote wellness.

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Key Quotes:

• Dr. Heather Berlin [06:23]: "When you do an improvised piece versus a memorized piece, you see that during improvisation there's a unique pattern of brain activation."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [09:30]: "It's associated with very positive emotions. And then novelty is related to dopamine release in the brain... helps with neuroplasticity."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [19:11]: "Executive function is like that when it's turned on... you have to have some control."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [26:49]: "So, you have a part of the brain called nucleus accumbens... And when you lose it, it's like withdrawal."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [43:09]: "There's also something about finding the happiness outside of that. And that's a very difficult thing."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [53:03]: "So, you know, fruits and vegetables, things that aren't processed... and then like, being walking in nature is so important."

• Dr. Heather Berlin [73:05]: "It's never just one or the other... you have to have happiness in other areas or else it's a recipe for sadness."

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This episode masterfully intertwines scientific exploration with personal anecdotes, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of how improvisation and impulse control influence brain health and overall well-being. Whether you're a fan of improv, interested in neuroscience, or seeking ways to enhance your mental wellness, this conversation provides valuable insights and practical advice.

Transcript

[Adam Pally]

Smart.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Bless me.

[John Gabrus]

Here. Bring that. Bring that closer to yourself too. Like so.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Nice studio. I always get confused because that's.

[John Gabrus]

These guys, these. All these guys, they designed it, built it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

Put the oranges on the shelf over there. Jared insists.

[Adam Pally]

Thanks for craft services. We have scurvy, so the only craft services we can have are three oranges. We just got off a boat.

[John Gabrus]

Well, back in New York. Back in the New York groove.

[Adam Pally]

How are you feeling?

[John Gabrus]

I feel great. I love it. I. Coming here is. Is because I lived here in my 20s. I'm. I'm. I'm kind of like regressing, but in a positive regression where I'm like, rejuvenated. Yeah. I'm like, oh. I'm like, I'm 26 again. I'm going to walk and get this. I'm going to go. I'm going to.

[Adam Pally]

That's why people live here because you, you end up putting that into your daily life and then it, it kind of like reinvigorates you every day.

[John Gabrus]

I've already got. Today's April 2nd, and I've already got more steps in, in April than I ever have in March.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, no, it's true. It's true. It really is. You know, and. And also, and this is something I want to talk to our guests about today. I wonder if, like, the just being living in a city like this with this much stimulation is good or bad for your brain.

[John Gabrus]

I bet you it's. It's like too much can be bad, but I guarantee getting on the subway, seeing people all weird smells, all that stuff is got to be good new. Sounds new.

[Adam Pally]

Well, yeah, it's like traveling that someone told us traveling was good for their. Your brain the other day. It's like, you know, I just want. I. I feel like that's what this city is kind of like. So I'm not surprised to hear that you're feeling that way.

[John Gabrus]

Right?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

And then also, like, it's out of my normal path of, of commuting. I'm on. I'm on trains rather than in a Subaru. And I'm doing all these, like, different things.

[Adam Pally]

I told you, you should have brought.

[John Gabrus]

The car he day driving across the.

[Adam Pally]

Country so I would do it with you.

[John Gabrus]

Hey, and if you want to. If you want 15 off your Subaru, use promo code. Staying alive.

[Adam Pally]

John and I are going to be driving. That's such a shitty deal.

[John Gabrus]

15 off of cars.

[Adam Pally]

I think it's at 15.

[John Gabrus]

That's still a lot of money.

[Adam Pally]

John and I are going to be Driving a Subaru cross country and podcasting at your local breweries. It's a hell gig.

[John Gabrus]

It's a hell gig. And that's exactly.

[Adam Pally]

I'll do it. I'll find it right now.

[John Gabrus]

Well, enough of our. Let's get into a professional doctor's.

[Adam Pally]

Yes.

[John Gabrus]

Dr. Heather Berlin.

[Adam Pally]

Thank you. They might have to move that back to where we took a pause, but it'll work. Dr. Heather Berlin.

[John Gabrus]

Dr. Heather Berlin.

[Adam Pally]

Dr. Heather Berlin. Don't edit this. Just make this the thing.

[John Gabrus]

Dr. Heather Berlin.

[Adam Pally]

Hey, Siri, play the episode of staying alive with Dr. Heather Berlin. Dr. Heather Berlin. You are so. We have so much in that we want to talk to you about and so much in common. You're. You're a neuroscientist, and we have neurological.

[John Gabrus]

Systems, believe it or not. We have brains, more or less.

[Adam Pally]

Kind of. We have a one brain between the two. But you. You. You're also an improviser, and you're one of your main focuses is impulse control.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yes.

[Adam Pally]

So.

[John Gabrus]

So these are three. Three that we're dealing with on a regular.

[Adam Pally]

And we could talk about anyone first. We want to get to all of them. Okay, but what do you want to talk about the most? Your. Your neuroscientist background? Improv comedy or, like, drugs and sex?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I like all of the above.

[John Gabrus]

I mean, I wouldn't.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I wouldn't call myself an improv. I mean, I've. I've studied the neural basis of improvisation and, like, sort of spontaneous creativity.

[Adam Pally]

Oh, okay. That's a. What an interesting.

[John Gabrus]

Well, we have a combined 45 years of improv experience, which is almost, like, worth nothing anywhere. Worth nothing, potentially.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

This, in my lab, it could be worth a lot.

[John Gabrus]

Yes. Bring us in the lab, dude.

[Adam Pally]

Put me in a cage. How much would we get? How much would we get to be in a cage and on newspaper and drink from a little bottle?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You'd have to pay me for the privilege to explore your brain.

[John Gabrus]

No, no, I tell you, if you gave us $8 each, it'd be more money than I ever made doing improv.

[Adam Pally]

More than I'm making right now.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's very funny. We used to have, like, I did a. An off Broadway. I did Edinburgh Fringe Festival show.

[Adam Pally]

Yes, of course. I've never been, but, like, I. Oh, my God. It's one of those shows coming up in comedy. It's when you hear someone has an Edinburgh Fringe Festival show, you're like, oh, well, they're very smart.

[John Gabrus]

Gotcha. They're figured out.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

No, it was amazing. I mean, so we Did a show on, it was called off the Top. And it was about the neuroscience of creativity, improv and improvisation. And each day, and we'd perform each day, but we'd have a different comedian come and do like a 10 minute set and then talk about, you know, what we know, what's happening in his brain based on, you know, imaging studies that were done previously.

[John Gabrus]

Whoa. So talk to us, talk to us a little bit about this because I'm very curious.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Wow.

[John Gabrus]

Because one, one thing I, I feel like I'm getting some mental health and mental wellness, brain protection, neurological protection from doing improv, from constantly creating new synapses or constantly having conversations that I don't know where they're going and like currently, and I feel like it's low key, kind of good for the brain to not to keep doing that. But talk us a little bit through what your studies have shown.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, I mean, first of all, I mean, life is improv, right? Every conversation we have, we have like.

[John Gabrus]

A life's a Harold, life's a Harold. We're only in the second beat.

[Adam Pally]

May rest in peace.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I don't even know who that is.

[John Gabrus]

He's an improviser who is alive.

[Adam Pally]

Very much alive.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Very much alive. Yeah. So, I mean, we're all improvising all the time. But you know this when you're on stage and you're doing it in front of an audience or you're doing it to your, you know, we call it spontaneous creativity. These studies were done, they looked at.

[John Gabrus]

I have nocturnal creativity, spontaneous nocturnal creativity. I wake up with bad ideas.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Do you keep them or throw them away? No, but so, so there's neuroimaging studies done with, with, first of all, it was like people who did jazz improv and. Oof.

[Adam Pally]

That sounds horrible.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It was pretty interesting. They had to be in a scan. So using fmri, which is functional magnetic resonance im, which basically just looks at blood flow to different parts of the brain in real time, which is a proxy to neurons firing. Right. The more the neurons fire, the more they need blood to support them. So we're looking at brain activation in real time. And when you do an improvised piece versus a memorized piece, you see that during improvisation there's a unique pattern of brain activation. And you see that in jazz improvisers. In freestyle rappers as well are also those.

[Adam Pally]

But come on, how freestyle are they really?

[John Gabrus]

I mean, is little Dicky truly off the dome?

[Adam Pally]

Come on, Little Dicky's been in the mirror working on all those things.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You know, you would think, but what you do is you spontaneously throw them, like images or words or stuff that they have to incorporate into the rap. And so you have to know some.

[Adam Pally]

Of it because sometimes we would do that improv, like exercise, warm up, like the, you know, in the, in the backstage area. Yeah, yeah.

[John Gabrus]

And that is kind of like there is, there is something to that. Obviously the art of the freestyle rap is kind of convoluted as to who has actually got some bars pre written or anything like that. Yeah, but this, you're saying in this exercise, in this formula, you're throwing stuff out, people are freestyling. You can see that the brain is flowing, the neurons are firing in a different area than if they're just reciting Eminem's rap. God.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right, so you swear.

[John Gabrus]

I also know black rappers.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

There's a different pattern.

[Adam Pally]

Okay.

[John Gabrus]

I just don't listen. Cracker is my home calling bullshit on that. What's his name? Large Wayne?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, dude, I've seen your, your Spotify top five. It's all jelly roll.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Jelly roll is. Yeah. Okay, so you see a unique pattern of brain activation. Basically when people are in this sort of improvising state, which is you get decreased activation in a part of the brain called the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is the part of your brain that has to do with your sense of self and with like conforming to social norms. So when you're in this state, you're. People often say like they lose their sense of self. They feel like, you know, they're in these flow states. Like they're like it's coming through them from someplace else. And it allows for the novel association between ideas because kind of the filter has come off, but it's not like it's random. Like when the jazz improviser is playing, he's not playing random notes or the rapper's not saying random words. There's a structure there. I mean there's still. So you need to have the training in order to kind of let go and then improvise or freestyle. So there's, you know, previous bars that you've learned or the harmonies or whatever, all that is in there. But it just allows it to come together in a novel way. And that's what creativity is, is sort of making these divergent, like novel connections between ideas that other people haven't done before. But the thing that it does also. So it's good for your brain in the sen. The sense of. It's associated with very positive emotions. And then novelty is related to dopamine release in the brain. So is learning new ideas as well. So just like you would, you know, be good to do a new crossword puzzle or do some other neural activity that you don't normally do every day to learn something new. Travel to new places. That's also a novelty that increases dopamine and helps with neuroplasticity.

[John Gabrus]

This is. We're doing a lot of good for ourselves.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, yeah. We like to travel.

[John Gabrus]

We like to travel. We like to do improv. We do a lot of other bad stuff for our brain. But like we're trying, we're trying to split the diff and just. I had neutral like his haircut.

[Adam Pally]

I have not done improv for a long time. And I'm, I'm starting. I'm trying really hard to push myself to do it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And it feels different. Right. Like when you're doing improvisation must feel different when you're performing. I don't know, like a memorized.

[Adam Pally]

Oh, completely. It's two completely different skill sets.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And would you say like you feel like more like you lose your sense of self more when you're in these improvising states?

[Adam Pally]

You know, I was, we were just talking about this. I would say for everybody's different from. For me. That's how I know I'm. I'm in a good place improv wise. When I'm not as worried, when I'm not as scared about it.

[John Gabrus]

The phrase we, the phrase improvisers use is in your head.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, yeah.

[John Gabrus]

If you're in your head, you're not in this flow state.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You can't be in the flow state exactly in your head at the same time.

[Adam Pally]

And I, and I don't think it's. And maybe it's this, this is my own insecurity about being an improviser and stuff. And after a long time. But I think that sometimes it takes me a really long time to get into the groove of it where it'll take me months and months of doing shows and, and never feeling like I'm in that groove. And shows will be good and they'll be okay. And they'll be. Some will be great, but I don't feel that good. And then it'll click and you'll get like a two week run, you know, where you're like unstoppable.

[John Gabrus]

Like it could even happen on the micro. Like from scene to scene. You're like, oh shit, I was just in the pocket there.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

And I wasn't even thinking. And I was.

[Adam Pally]

Then it flows out. You're like Thinking about the show and how am I going to do all this?

[John Gabrus]

You're like, am I standing weird?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So that's the rumination. So that part of your brain gets turned up on higher when you're ruminating, when you're anxious, when you're self aware, you know, what are they thinking? How did I do? Whatever. Right. And so, and the flow state is, you know, you want that turned down. So it's like the minute you start thinking, how am I doing? You know that you automatically switch out of that flow state.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, like.

[John Gabrus]

Or that didn't work the way I wanted it to. And then all of a sudden you're like so, like spiraling. And so that's sort of what the athletes talk about, right? Like you want to get out of you, like you want to be in that flow state. You can't be overthinking the grappling.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And that's your letting go and letting your unconscious.

[Adam Pally]

So I have a question. I'm gonna put my glasses on because.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay, is this a serious question?

[Adam Pally]

I have a question. How is there an argument to be made that the flow state and the creativity and the stuff that comes from that, while it feels good because there's dopamine that comes from like nailing it on the spot, it's still not as good as stuff that's pre thought and taken a long time because of those other thoughts that come into your head. And it's like, is there is. Do you know what I'm saying? Obviously spur of the moment, improvising creativity, it's worth a ton. You know, I'm not questioning it's worth, but I'm just saying like, is there an argument to be made on the other side?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, I would say that it's. You need both. And there are different types of creativity and it's a balance. And so even in the moment, on this sort of micro level, when, let's say you're performing in front of an audience, you do something improvised and you're in this sort we call default mode network. And then you check in with what the, how the response was with the audience. Right? That's we would call like now your focus is outward. That's the executive control network, we call that. So you can switch between these two networks because you want the feedback. Oh, oh, they're liking it. Okay, I'm going to go and do that. Or they're not liking it. I'm going to revise what I'm doing. Right. So it's this iterative process between creation, like. Oh, spontaneous. You need to let go to be able to just have the initial. The initial ideas.

[John Gabrus]

That's our third color.

[Adam Pally]

No, it's all right. I'm sorry. Donnie, did you have something to say? We should really be micing. Donnie. We're gonna have him in the room.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Artificial intelligence.

[Adam Pally]

No, he is. He chat. GBT is motorizing him right now so we can. You can ask him anything.

[John Gabrus]

He won't answer because we haven't finished the.

[Adam Pally]

We don't know how to hook it up yet, but you can ask.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay. Oh, yes.

[John Gabrus]

So, like, you're better at getting back on track than we are.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I mean, I'm like, you know, it's when you. Because I also do therapy. Right. So I'm a neuroscientist and a clinical psychologist. And sometimes, you know, we really.

[Adam Pally]

Another thing.

[John Gabrus]

Hey, Anne, can we add an hour to Dr. Berlin's time, please? We get a lot of shit. We gotta unpack.

[Adam Pally]

Push back the GQ writer.

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[Adam Pally]

You know, improv comedy, long form is. Which is what John and I came up doing is a very specific skill set in that you are taught to pay attention to the laughs, you know, and like you. So while you're in that flow state and while you're, you know, feeling it and acting and responding, you're also checking in, checking in on the laugh partner. To checking in with your partner and listening and also holding back on patterns and beats because of rhythm of the scene.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah. So much like a jazz pianist might be like, I can't just keep jamming here.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right, right.

[Adam Pally]

Exactly. Right. So. So you're. So it's. It's. It's like an interesting art form in that way because you're doing all that at the same time. Is that. Is that different than other people's flow state where they don't have to check in like a painter or a. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I think live performance is different than other people can get in the flow state playing a sport, you know, rock Climbing, doing whatever. But you're not like, completely out there oblivious, right? You have to be paying attention, like, where is the next place I have to put my foot? Or whatever, you know, so there is this. This back and forth between the creation and then the checking with the environment to see how that interplays with what's happening, you know, externally, and then it's this. You know, Darwin had this idea of performance, feedback, revision. Right? You perform, you get the feedback, you revise, you.

[Adam Pally]

Charles Darwin. You know we're talking about the same dar.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yes, Chuck.

[John Gabrus]

Well, when we're talking.

[Adam Pally]

You know, when he's talking about evolution, he's Charles. But when he's talking about, like, creativity, I like to think of him as Chuck.

[John Gabrus]

That's my guy, Chuck.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But I mean, he had it right. Although where he did have it wrong was he. I. From what I hear is like, when he made a decision about whether to marry his wife, he just sort of made a list of like, you know, pluses and minuses. But that's. You see, that sounds ridiculous, but at the time it was like the idea that. Leaving things to your unconscious.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. I hope she didn't find that list.

[John Gabrus]

You don't. The last thing you want to do is find a list of your own cons from someone who loves you. Be brutal. I don't even want to know what people like about you.

[Adam Pally]

Did not evolve. That's how he died. Is that with the end of Darwinism?

[John Gabrus]

That's what they call the death of the fittest. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

He's no longer there.

[Adam Pally]

No matter how fast you can run.

[John Gabrus]

Well, you know, should say RIP Charles Darwin. He is no longer with us.

[Adam Pally]

When did that happen?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

What?

[Adam Pally]

I didn't see him on the Immemorium.

[John Gabrus]

He's dead. And so is Darwin. The dolphin from seaquest. No. Well, actually, he might not that. They might not be dead. I'm not going to gender Darwin. I don't know the actor. I could have said it, I guess, to a dolphin, but still, I'll go there.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But this is the thing I would say about most comedians. So I met. I get to meet.

[Adam Pally]

What about Darkwing?

[John Gabrus]

Darkwing Duck? Let's get dangerous.

[Adam Pally]

Is Darkwing Duck still with us?

[John Gabrus]

I fucking hope so. The city needs them now. An animated show from, like 25 years ago. See, we're in a flow state here. It's not always good.

[Adam Pally]

Sorry, we're in a flow state. We need to check in more. We're just in a flow state.

[John Gabrus]

I need feedback, performance, acceptance. You were saying?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, yeah. I Think you know, the idea. Actually, you're illustrating. My point is that if you're in that state all the time, that would not be adaptive. Right?

[John Gabrus]

Yes. We've been told by our partners all the time that we need to drop it and stop being on and multiple.

[Adam Pally]

People who love us. Yeah, give it a rest.

[John Gabrus]

I mean, you can ask half the people who work on the show.

[Adam Pally]

I was going to say the crew is getting tired and they're all robots.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah. Only Donnie really likes our bits anymore.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's great.

[Adam Pally]

But he's stuck with the feedback now. You just have.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

There was no revision.

[Adam Pally]

You just have to be confident that Donnie likes it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And who's Donnie?

[John Gabrus]

The plan.

[Adam Pally]

He doesn't like to be called. Sorry, he got here on his own.

[John Gabrus]

Would you guys want to be called the human?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Why are we gendering the plan?

[John Gabrus]

But it could be D A, N I.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's right.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. We don't know. Also, it could be Dahani Jones.

[John Gabrus]

Okay, sorry.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, so I mean, it relates to impulse control, which was like, what are we talking about?

[John Gabrus]

We have issues with that as well.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So executive function is like that when it's turned on. Like the prefrontal cortex is on and you're very. You know.

[John Gabrus]

Executive function is where everyone has quarter zips and are drinking. Is drinking red wine.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yes, exactly.

[Adam Pally]

It's very Catalina. It's in Catalina.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

I'm going to the executive function.

[Adam Pally]

That is literally what your brain.

[John Gabrus]

Like I was demonstrating the lack of impulse control. I have. You say executive function. I'm having a conversation with a doctor, and I can't not make a dumb joke moment. That's.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's the perfect example of like, the lack of impulse control. Yes, but, you know, so the executive function is like, you know, what is. What is socially appropriate? You know, it's planning, organizing time, you know, management, all of those things. And that's when the prefrontal cortex is turned on. If it's turned too high, the volume, let's say, then you get into the anxiety and the rumination too tightly wound. Right. So it's not good to be too over controlled. And when you have decreased activation, the prefrontal cortex, you get that sort of lack of control, which again, can be healthy, like letting go in a healthy way. But those people who. Who are always in that state, then you get impulse control problems. Right. Which can be detrimental. And then, you know, maybe drugs and alcohol abuse and, you know, check, check. Right. So, you know, purchase money.

[Adam Pally]

Money.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Excessive. So we call it mood swing. Behavioral. Yeah. That's watching another episode we say emotional dysregulation, behavioral addictions. So that would be the spending, the eating. Throw that all on the fire, you know, it could be sexual promotion, muscuity. Throw that in there, you know. So.

[John Gabrus]

So all I got, 10 out of 10 on this desk. Oh, it's bad.

[Adam Pally]

Masturbation. Masturbation.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Excessive masturbation. There's nothing wrong with.

[John Gabrus]

We don't have to. Let's not define what excessive mat is here.

[Adam Pally]

I'm just saying what, I'm putting it all. I'm putting the logs on the fire. So far it's a bond.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And then there's like, you know, not, not like for younger, you know, not handing in their work on time. Like procrastination. Okay.

[John Gabrus]

So we're in careers where we're own boss. We're our own bosses and we are very lax bosses and lax employees.

[Adam Pally]

And the other thing I'm learning too about a lot of people in our career is that there is quite a bit of delusion like in that is necessary, you need that you need it to face every day. And in that delusion takes a lot of energy. And so a lot of, of creative people or people especially where they're like image or presence is. Their business is out, is out front. They are extremely negligent in other place. In other places that need to be covered, you know.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[John Gabrus]

This is exactly what our wives tell us.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, no, I've been working on it. I'm working on it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

No, this is good. This would be a therapy session. So this is what I would say.

[Adam Pally]

That'S what I'm working on.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. You know, you have to have, you have to have also a lot of people in the, in the entertainment or in the arts fields which are, you know, high risk but can be high reward is you usually people are not attracted to that field if they are risk averse.

[Adam Pally]

Right, right.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

A risk averse person is going to be like I'm going to, you know, accounting. It's safe, it's whatever.

[Adam Pally]

Well, let's throw gambling on the pile.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, that's another one of our problems.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, that's a behavioral addiction. So all these behavioral addictions, I've studied these as well. They, they're because they're impulse control for sure. And the same neural pathways that are involved in drug addiction are in these behavioral addictions we call them or having the lack of impulse control. But there are positive things to those personality types. So there's more open mindedness, there's less risk aver, you Know, risk aversion, so you're more willing to do things. And, you know, the reason that there. There's, like, evolutionary theory behind that, why people with impulse control issues have stayed in the population. It's that you need a couple of people in the population to be those risk takers. Right. To go out. Who's going to go first and see, you know, what's out there, and then all of us.

[Adam Pally]

I've been saying this for years. I consider. I consider myself and other comics first responders. Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

Since about September 12, 2001.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

We need you.

[Adam Pally]

I mean, I was out there. I was out there on stage doing 911 material.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You're one of the first.

[Adam Pally]

One of the first.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

To be popping off at the mouth. And I feel like at the time it was needed. At the time it was because cathartic. And now I'm realizing just how necessary it was.

[John Gabrus]

We want to just take a moment to stop down the show.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Thank you for your service.

[Adam Pally]

Honestly, no problem.

[John Gabrus]

I'm going to do it again.

[Adam Pally]

Is there some way that I can have, like, a badge of this so I can get on the airplane earlier?

[John Gabrus]

Park wherever you want?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. Is there some kind of, like, thing that I can.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I can see what I can do. Thank you. Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Thank you for your service.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, thank you.

[Adam Pally]

This is what I fought for.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So something also I'm really interested in, and I've been writing it, so I'm working. My book will hopefully be out next year, but a lot of it is on impulse control. Thank you. It's called the Fine Art of Losing Control.

[John Gabrus]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And one of the chapters is on the effects of fame on the brain and how fame affects people and why they want it and what happens when they lose it.

[Adam Pally]

And, you know, so interested in that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

The nucleus accumbens, which is for a friend. Yeah, right. Obviously. But, you know, I don't have to.

[John Gabrus]

Worry about that just yet.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, right. Guy's so famous, he downplays it so much. I would say the ratio when we're out to dinner is 10 to 1. He gets recognized over.

[John Gabrus]

I will say downstairs, when I checked in, they were like, going to see Adam. And I was like, yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, my God. They said that to me, too.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, they said, what is that about? I'll tell you why. They're all fans. They go, yo, tell. Tell them that I want. Ask him to tell me what's going on in Sonic 4. They were. But I was like. And I go, no, I'm going with Adam. Him to talk to a neuroscientist. And then they go, he's a neuroscientist. I was like, okay, guys, hold on. Let me just. Him and I host a pocket. Now I'm explaining my life to three security guards. But it was funny. They're like, yo, he's going to see Adam. Like, yo, Sonic. And they all were talking about it.

[Adam Pally]

Three different security guards. That's so nice and. And, and amazing and. And so great. But then you have the flip side of that of like anybody. Last night I was at. At premiere of a movie that I'm in with our friend Rosebud Baker.

[John Gabrus]

Oh, heck yeah.

[Adam Pally]

And we were standing there and one of the peop. Like the people who runs PR came up to me and was like, hey, I. I worked with you on a PR for a show like a couple years ago. And I was like, oh, yeah, man. How's it going? You guys good? What are you up to?

[John Gabrus]

And you were standing on the red carpet. Standing film.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, yeah, standing on red.

[John Gabrus]

Like, what are you up to?

[Adam Pally]

I was like, oh. And like Rosebud started hysterically laughing, like audibly laughing.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's funny.

[Adam Pally]

And I was like. I didn't know how to answer, so I just took this like, comedically long pause of like, like, cuz, like, what do you say? What do you say? You know? So it's like. And that stood in the all night.

[John Gabrus]

Getting real into chicken tender.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. It's like, what am I up to? What am I up to?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Like this. Have you seen the marquee? This is what I'm up. What do you mean?

[John Gabrus]

Like, right during the movie, when your scene comes on, you tap him on the shoulder and go, that's what I'm up to.

[Adam Pally]

Like, honestly, it was just like so. It was just so like, oh, it's so humbling. Yeah. And like so at the same time, that's the thing.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It's like the being so. So. So there's a part of brain called nucleus accumbens, which we sort of call the pleasure center of the brain. And that's the part that gets where the dopamine hits and then gets, you know, activated with drugs of addiction and all of that.

[Adam Pally]

Mine is blown out. It's like the Grand Canyon.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And the thing with. With fame is a lot of people, you get that. Get the adulation, you get that high. And then, you know, when you lose it, it's like withdrawal or when you. You know, and it's. I sort of had a. Not like a taste of it, but like I did. I was on a Juror for the Tribeca Film Festival for films that, like, incorporate science and I don't know anything about this whole world. And I get invited to this opening, like, party, gala, whatever, and it says, like, from VF I don't know what that means, because I do.

[Adam Pally]

Vanity Fair.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. See, I don't know. This is key code on your cover.

[Adam Pally]

That's a big deal, right?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I get invited to the Vanity Fair party. I have no idea. It's so low.

[Adam Pally]

Like, get a fit. You got to get a. You got to get it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I didn't know any of this. Okay. I think it's just some opening reception. Like, wine and, like, cocktails, whatever.

[Adam Pally]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So I come straight from work. Yeah. But, I mean, I'm just wearing, like, whatever, skinny jeans, a little shoe boot, and, like, a cool T shirt.

[Adam Pally]

All right, okay. Under Planet VF Might like that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, excuse me.

[Adam Pally]

No, you're glad to hear that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I pull up, and it's this red carpet, like, hundreds of Hannah Wintour. Yes, it was. It was like, Governor Cuomo was there, and there's Harvey Keitel and, you know, Robert Gennar, and I like one, and you can't get in without walking down red carpet. And so the person ahead of me. I don't know who they are, some model, beautiful and all taking pictures. And then I come strolling along, and all the photographs, guys go, just.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, been there. Yeah, that's.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, okay.

[John Gabrus]

That exact thing happened to me at the MTV Movie Awards.

[Adam Pally]

That happens. That happens all the time.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It was crazy. And I was like, okay, I guess that's what that feels like. But, you know, what happened at the end of the day is I played it off. It's all about perception, right? I mean, I know this from, you know, psychology. So. So it was like, actually, I was so cool. I must have been. Some people there thought I was so something special that I didn't have to dress up. Like, I was like, maybe worked in the catering department.

[Adam Pally]

That's what Gabriel thought is so cool.

[John Gabrus]

They keep handing you, like, their empty skewers. You're like, hey, I'm a fucking doctor.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Like, do you know who I am?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But I did. I ended up. I ended up talking to Governor Cuomo and Harvey Keitel and Robert De Niro got into deep conversation with Robert De Niro about impulse control. Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Because I spent two weeks with that man, and we barely got. Oh, my gosh.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You know what he was really interested in about eating and impulse control and eating. He was hugging, you know, so I'm.

[John Gabrus]

That. I'M very interested.

[Adam Pally]

I'm more interested in what Robert had to say.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I mean, I could tell you a funny Robert Darrow story.

[John Gabrus]

It's, it's the place. This is the place we've been name dropping.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay. This is. I just hope he never sees.

[Adam Pally]

I love him. He played my uncle in a movie.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh really?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, it was like the greatest.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

What movie was this?

[Adam Pally]

A little film called Dirty Grandpa. Winner of a couple razzies.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I gotta check it out.

[John Gabrus]

Great. People can make medium movies.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So he might see this and if he does, I'd be, I mean, whatever. I'd be very embarrassed.

[Adam Pally]

He wants.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So I was a juror, you know, and we have this juror lunch that you go to and Robert D's there and all these people, Whoopi Goldberg and whatever. And this is when I got into this conversation with him about impulse control and psychology. And he was just really interested in. He goes, you know, did you ever see this documentary about Bernays? Bernays was the cousin of Freud, the sauce guy who.

[Adam Pally]

No, sorry, I think I saw a different documentary.

[John Gabrus]

You said Bernays and I was like a documentary about the sauce. That sounds awesome.

[Adam Pally]

I think I saw a different documentary. I'm sorry about that. I'll tell you. But I'll tell you the one that.

[John Gabrus]

I saw, I've only seen Hollandaise.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So he says this is Freud's cousin. And he basically used all these psychological techniques and started pr, like the PR movement. Like he had the suffragettes out there when they were marching, smoking cigarettes to try to get more women to smoke cigarettes. Like he all these psychology techniques and started the field of like pr. And he's like, it's this BBC documentary, it's really interesting, blah, blah, blah. I'm like, no, I haven't seen it. Great. Like a week later I'm in my office, I get a. In the mail from Robert De Niro's people. The DVD of this BBC documentary series. It's like a four hour long documentary series. I mean suddenly in the mail it's like Robert De Niro signing up.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, that does sound like Robert.

[John Gabrus]

That's fucking cool.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So do I watch it? I don't go ahead and watch it right away.

[John Gabrus]

Or four hour BBC dog putting that on the queue is a little different than the new White Lotus.

[Adam Pally]

I mean also that's like white noise to go to sleep at that point.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I mean it's a lot of black and white.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So I don't watch it now we're cutting to a year later. We're at this Vanity Fair party that I'm underdressed for. And it's a year later, Robert De Niro's there. He sees me, he remembers me, and he sat down. So did you watch the documentary? What did you think? Oh, no, imagine this, first of all, that he remembers this.

[John Gabrus]

Well, the first thing Bobby D. Says to you is, did you do your homework? It's in front of you, Dr. Heather. Supposed to watch the doc.

[Adam Pally]

Did you watch it?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Can you imagine this?

[Adam Pally]

You see it?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And now it's in front of. Wait, we're in a little circle, and it's in front of Governor Cuomo and.

[Adam Pally]

Harvey Keitel, these good fellas over there.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And I got go.

[Adam Pally]

I go, you gotta lie.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I lied, I lied. I go. I go, yeah, yeah, it was great. Thank you so much. And he goes, which part did you like best?

[John Gabrus]

Oh, man. Which part?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, which part?

[John Gabrus]

I got nipples. Can you milk me? Which part, Focker, you like best?

[Adam Pally]

Which part did you kn.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

He knew. Yeah. He got disordered. And I said, oh, my God, you know what? It was so long ago. Like, I can't. I don't remember. Whatever. I tried to get out of it, right? The next day was that year's lunch. That night I went home. I stayed up till 4am I watched the whole fucking documentary. I go to the lunch the next day, and I go, oh, yeah, you know, I remember. You know what my favorite part was, man? And I recover.

[Adam Pally]

And he was like, you're back in.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. Can you imagine me? That's my. That's my robustness.

[John Gabrus]

I'll tell you what. We have way more in common than I thought.

[Adam Pally]

Similar to Nero's story.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And I hope he never hears it. Yeah, Tell me.

[Adam Pally]

So we were. We were on a movie, and we. We. He took a couple of us out to dinner, which was, like, really nice of him. His fancy dinner. Oh, nice. And the wine was, like, really good. And I. Not only did I drink a lot of it, but I exclaimed a couple times to him in the way, here.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Comes the lack of impulse, the way.

[Adam Pally]

That I do, you know, like, Mr. Dairo, this. This is amazing wine. And was, like, another bottle. Yeah, it was, like, really good. So then we wrapped, and when I got home, I had a bottle of the wine with a card that was, like. He sent, you know, your favorite Uncle Bobby Dick. Oh, my God, it was amazing. I saved the card and everything.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

What an amazing guy.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. And then I saw him, like, a year later at the Oscar, like, the after party.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Was it the Vanity Fair party?

[Adam Pally]

No, it was like. No, it was, like, sad. It was like the Netflix Emmy party or whatever. It wasn't a big thing. But I saw him, and he was like, you like the wine?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

See that?

[Adam Pally]

And I was like, I drank it. He was like, that's my boy.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Was he like, what part of it did you like?

[Adam Pally]

No, he didn't go into it. He was just happy.

[John Gabrus]

That was the mouth feel.

[Adam Pally]

What was the plan? He didn't go into that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

No.

[Adam Pally]

But it was like, why don't you.

[John Gabrus]

Tell me what the pan.

[Adam Pally]

He did follow up.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

He did, like, how amazing that, like. I mean, like, who am. I'm like, I'm not even in Hollywood. I'm some neuroscientist. Like, Like. Or, you know, he sends the. He thinks about it to send it. He remembers it to ask about it. You know what?

[Adam Pally]

I. I always. I think about this a lot because I want to be that guy, and I think that it is amazing. I think it's amazing that he does. And, like, there's people like Tom Cruise who sends, like, coconut to everybody, you know?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And, like.

[Adam Pally]

And I think it's amazing to be that guy. I. I think I would be better at being that guy if I had unlimited resources and unlimited people and, like.

[John Gabrus]

11 employees that trailed me for every.

[Adam Pally]

Thought that I rattled.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Because, you know, he's saying to his person, send that guy a bottle.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, he said it probably day of when it happened. Like, he probably. In the restaurant, like, was like, you know, to his guard or whatever is like, get him a bottle on the wrap, you know, and it's like.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And they go. They find out. I'm trying to find my address.

[Adam Pally]

Well, yeah, in production, it's, like, so easy. Your name is on every list. If he was. If he was on a. A banquet with you, then his people know where you were picked up, you know?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right, Right.

[Adam Pally]

So it's like, I feel like Bobby.

[John Gabrus]

D. Will find you.

[Adam Pally]

He'll find you. Yeah. Unless you're a talk show host. And then he'll avoid you. You don't want to talk to anybody. But, like, yeah, he. I think that I would be better at it, you know? Like, I'm not. I'm not saying he's. He's not good at it, because he is. He does that stuff. But, like, I think a lot of us would be. Be. I'm gonna say a lot of us would be better at that.

[John Gabrus]

Bernie. Reminder. Let's send Dr. Heather Berlin a DVD of 101 places to party before you die. We don't have that kind of power.

[Adam Pally]

He's like, my name is Phil.

[John Gabrus]

I'm Donnie the plant.

[Adam Pally]

Sorry, sorry, Donnie.

[E]

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[John Gabrus]

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[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay, so. So what are you waiting for?

[John Gabrus]

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[Adam Pally]

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[D]

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[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, I have to say also a lot of the communes that I met, every one of them was like, either had anxiety or depression. There was like. And I really do think that there is a higher rate, rate of mental health issues.

[Adam Pally]

Well, for people in the industry, I think you bring up an interesting point about the, the dopamine and the flow state and the adulation and the fame and all that. Because there is, you know, like, you know, when you go out for a big night and then you have anxiety the next day where you're like hungover and you're like, oh my God, did I say something wrong or did I, you know, and it's really just the alcohol is.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, it's a depression. A little under sleeping a little.

[Adam Pally]

Exactly. All those things happened. Yeah. So like you go on stage and you achieve that flow state, you know, and you are like getting that adulation. It's a very similar, very similar feeling to.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, you feel like hungover after.

[John Gabrus]

Well, when you're not getting.

[Adam Pally]

Well, you go right away to not getting it. You go right away.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yes.

[Adam Pally]

And yeah, you take withdrawal. It's yeah. And so I think that. That the quickness of it really does, like, tattoo your brain a little bit in a way that leads a lot of comedians to feel depressed when they're not in other. And then seek it out. And alcohol and. And then I was going to say the flip side of depression is like, so your job is comedy is a comedian. You love it, you want to do it. And then right before. Or what happens right before we go on stage, we're super anxious.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

We're nervous and we're like, we shouldn't have done this. We. You know what I mean? It's like, what the Am I supposed to do again?

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

And so it's like that. That pattern, I think, is. Is truly unique.

[John Gabrus]

It's hard on. It's hard on a body and a.

[Adam Pally]

Brain and a mind. Yeah. I don't know if it's been studied, the effects of it, but I do think it's singular for two, like performance.

[John Gabrus]

I know. I also think we attach a lot of performers attach value and validation to their success. But I also think on a smaller going purely for comedy, when you're making other people laugh, you feel amazing, or when you're being funny, you feel amazing, but you're not. That's not something you can do all day, or you're not supposed to do it all day. So for the six hours when you're not, you have to kind of just live your life. You're like, this is not nearly as fun as having 30 strangers think I'm funny.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But they did do a study with comedians who were creating. So it was the sort of thing where they would give, like, they put them in a scanner looking at brain activation. They would give them like a. Like a New Yorker, like, cartoon, and they would just say, come up with a, you know, a good punchline for this. And so it wasn't really with an audience getting feedback, but even in just the act of creating something funny, they would get some nucleus accumbens activation. And it's like an enjoyment to even. Maybe you're imagining, you know, what other people might enjoy. Maybe you're just enjoying it yourself. But it. It becomes an addiction. You can habituate to it. Like some people need more and more and more. I remember having it like I did, like I hosted many years ago, like a Discovery Channel show. It was like a. Just like a stint outside of my world of academia, and I. I'd never done anything with television before at all. So it was all like, threw me into the. The whole thing. I had no idea what it was. And we're on the road. We flew around the world and met these like superhuman people and. But I remember like, the second I would wake up, there was like a person calling me. Okay, like the car is coming. Like, there was all these handlers. I'd get to set. Do you need stockings? Can I get coffee? Whatever, right? Like. And that went on for weeks. You had all these kind of like handlers and people who like, just cared about your every move and the hair and the makeup and. And then the shoot ended and it was just like it went from everything.

[John Gabrus]

Own coffee again, it fucking.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

To nothing, right? The next day it's like, get your own way to the whatever and nobody gives it. And I was like. And I remember feeling. I felt that little bit of like, wait, where, where is everybody? And then I was like, thank God I have my actual, like, real job to go back to. And I have like a purpose and a meeting and I'm doing, you know, I'm doing research and all this stuff. But I was for a. I could imagine if I didn't have that to go back to what that would feel like. And then you're just sitting there in like this no man's land. When is. Where is my next gig? What am I going to get? That. That lifestyle, never.

[Adam Pally]

You're looking at, that's hardcore.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And so you get the highest highs, but then you also get these lows because there's no. So like, I would. I wouldn't quit my day job, you know, I really like that.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, no, it's a lot. As I was saying, it takes a lot of delusion to. To. To be like. Like this one day. It won't be like this.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You have to be.

[John Gabrus]

There's also something about finding the happiness outside of that. And that's a very difficult thing. Cuz when you. When you identify so singularly as like a comedic performer and you need. You want to make people laugh and if that's the only way. But then you go, like, go on vacation with your family and don't do bits or sets for like two weeks. And you're like, am I getting depressed? Vacation is supposed to be the most. And I'm like, I missed this. And I'm like, okay, I need to find happiness. I need to achieve it, quote unquote, outside of my framework of comedy. Or else I will be unhappy. Like, I will never achieve. Like, it's too much to ask of me to be like, you can only. I'm only happy when it rains, you know, I can't. I can't be that. It's.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

There has to be happiness in other areas or else it's a recipe for sadness, basically.

[John Gabrus]

Because I found ways in my life to, like, chase this, the novelty and that, and it's like learning new things, experiencing new things, trying new stuff. Like all these things that bring me joy. I'm like, I purposely seek them out to try to find joy outside of this specific framework. Because then. Because then you also get in your head about, like, what if I. What if people stop wanting to see me do comedy? Then who the am I? And.

[Adam Pally]

Well, yeah, I think that's. And that's something that I'm in a struggle in all the time because so much of my success is based on ratings. How much people watch other people, what other people think. And so you have to.

[John Gabrus]

Dozens of gatekeepers.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. And so you have to work really hard to be on the other side and be. And really find. What I try working on is like, what do I. Like, I'm already not doing it for the money because there was. There's other things that could make me more money if I had invested time and skill. Right. So I'm already not doing it for the money money. So I have to, like, stay really true to that, like, kernel of artistic. I wouldn't call it integrity, but, like, artistic.

[John Gabrus]

You have to find the joy in the process. If it's only. If it's only the paycheck that gives you the joy. You're like, that's.

[Adam Pally]

There's nothing.

[John Gabrus]

That's nothing.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Or the feedback too.

[Adam Pally]

Exactly. And, and, and so, and, And I think you're.

[John Gabrus]

Are you doing a special? Like, you doing your tour and your special is like, in that wheelhouse of like, you're like. Like, this isn't necessarily super commercial, but even the process of doing this is bringing me joy.

[Adam Pally]

Exactly. And you have to. Because if you don't do that, then you release you. You don't have to. But I found I have to because that becomes like, at least I have a day job. Because then I know, well, this is what I do is something like this.

[John Gabrus]

Well, it feels good when you get a no. And you're like, well, that's great. I'm working on a new bit that.

[Adam Pally]

Is killing and you get a million no's.

[John Gabrus]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

But it's like, so.

[John Gabrus]

But having that other thing to focus on whether it's. It is. I'm writing a book. I'm trying to learn how to do a handstand, like any. I'm writing A special I'm performing, like, all those things give you that joy of creation without the joy of, like, acceptance and.

[Adam Pally]

Right. And that's why I'm finding it away from where I. I found it. I needed to find it a little bit away from the stage. Right. Because I found the stage to be too, like, forgiving in a way because of the feedback. And, like, I could. As long as I was getting that feedback, I wasn't really doing much. You know what I mean? Like, I was just really.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, that's almost like the a. Like if somebody, like, with rats, you know, we can.

[Adam Pally]

I love. People call me a rat all the time.

[John Gabrus]

Pizza rat, to be fair. Compliment bagel rat. Your pizza pizza rat and bagel rat. That's our two New York animated characters.

[Adam Pally]

I will say when that. When that rat crawled across the. The platform with the pizza, I was. I like, I was like, I wish the camera gave it a couple more seconds because you knew there was one with a bagel behind it that was like, couldn't quite carry it as well.

[John Gabrus]

Hey, Rick, come on, brother.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I'm trying. It's stuck on a tracks and apothecies.

[John Gabrus]

It's got everything on it.

[Adam Pally]

Scrape it off so we can move quicker.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Come on.

[John Gabrus]

We're going to be rich.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay, so you take a rat, right? And you play.

[John Gabrus]

You are a pro.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

What were we talking about? Thank God we have you here.

[Adam Pally]

Are you gonna get your own serious show? We leave. Have you ever done ketamine on your show?

[John Gabrus]

Because we get.

[Adam Pally]

Because I will tell you right now, they do not fly. That will not fly.

[John Gabrus]

One thing you can't do on this show, and we found it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But anyway, so the rats, we. If you implants electrodes in a rat that can directly stimulate its nucleus accumbens, this sort of reward circuit, right? And they can press a lever just to get direct stimulation of that reward center. They will choose, and you give them choices. Right now. They will choose to press that lever over. Over food, if they've been food deprived, over water, if they've been water deprived, over sex, over everything to the point of exhaustion, to the point of. Of death. Okay? Like, that's how powerful that rewards.

[John Gabrus]

Don't push the dopamine button until they do.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

They'll just go, yeah, because they're not going to eat, they're not going to drink. They're just going to keep going for the pleasure. Pleasure, pleasure. So when you talk about the audience giving you that adulation, that's like pressing the button, right? And so what you're saying. I think this is what you're saying is that sometimes I can get so just sort of in a way distracted by getting that immediate, like, the audience attention gives me all I need that I'm not going to be motivated to go do maybe these other things that are, you know, either more lucrative or more rewarding in other ways.

[Adam Pally]

I found it to be, especially as I had children, a time issue, you know, where it was like the time was just too. You don't have as much time.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

So it was like, well, I'm getting enjoyment out of. Out of being with my kids and my life that I was putting away because I was like, chasing this. That high, high of a laugh and, like, and calling it work.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

You know, and calling it necessary. And you have to really take stock and go, like, is it necessary? How much of it is necessary? And like, I law.

[John Gabrus]

There's a law of diminishing returns. At some point.

[Adam Pally]

At some point it is. And so, like, I think I went too far in the other way where it was like, I didn't do anything. Anything on stage, but. And. And now that my kids don't want anything to do with me, I'm like, you know, well, someone.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

How old are they?

[Adam Pally]

They're 13 and 12.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Now, and the. The youngest one's seven. He's about to have nothing to do with me. Like, you know what I mean?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, yeah.

[Adam Pally]

I'm like, well, someone's got to love me here, you know?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[John Gabrus]

So might as well be 100 strangers.

[Adam Pally]

But, you know, that, that, that, sir, sort of like, choice. Choice. Sometimes you. It's about balance we talk about all the time. And I think that I was out of balance and then just went back and now I'm out of balance again. And you know what I mean?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right. It's never just one or the other. And it's also to do with, like, ego. Like, and I think there are different, like, you know, how much it feeds your ego, your sense of self, your identity, all of that. And there are certain celebrities that reach a certain level of fame where they let all that go.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. It's like now, like, Daniel Day Lewis.

[John Gabrus]

Is probably the best example.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

That's another guy who doesn't want to be famous. He wants to be an actor.

[Adam Pally]

Right. And he doesn't even want to do that.

[John Gabrus]

He barely wants me. An actor wants to cobble shoes.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

His next movie that he's in is his first movie since, like, Phantom Thread, and it's directed by his son. He's doing his Kids, Daniel Day Lewis is a fucking hero. The guy Scorsese can't get him anymore. And his son is like, dad, will you be in my movies? Like, I'll write it with you.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. And there are still some. Some people that's like, it sucks to be a pedo.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

What?

[Adam Pally]

You know, or not a pedo. What's the word?

[John Gabrus]

Nepo baby. Yeah. Very different. Anything.

[Adam Pally]

It does suck to be a pet.

[John Gabrus]

It objectively sucks to be a.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But, you know, one comedian, a friend of mine, like, what?

[Adam Pally]

I was like, I didn't realize what I said.

[John Gabrus]

I was like, what information do you have?

[Adam Pally]

I don't know.

[John Gabrus]

I saw this is a QAnon podcast.

[Adam Pally]

No, look, last night I was getting pizza in D.C. with a rat. With a rat at Hill Clinton spot.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right, right, right.

[John Gabrus]

Podesta was buying cheese pizza.

[Adam Pally]

It got to you.

[John Gabrus]

I said, podesta, that's a person.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

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[John Gabrus]

Dr. Berlin, we've gotten way off track gu this. What do you do to stay alive?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, wow. What do I do to stay?

[John Gabrus]

That could be physical fitness, mental fitness, something that brings you peace, relaxation, or.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I guess there's a couple of things. Usually there's not just one thing. I, I. Well, okay, there's the physical health and then there's mental health. You know, for my physical health, I try to do all the things we kind of know which are kind of cliche at this point, but like, you know, eat healthy, you know, brain healthy foods.

[Adam Pally]

What does that mean to you?

[John Gabrus]

What is that? Yeah, what does that mean?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So, you know, fruits and vegetables, things that aren't processed, like, you know, with a lot of unnatural sugars.

[Adam Pally]

Can I ask you a question about that? Because that said so much and I feel like sometimes it's hard for, for me to understand what processed means because like, everything seems processed. Like where.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, if you think about the, how many steps it goes through from the, it being growing from the ground to on your plate, the less, the lower the amount of steps is probably the better. So when you want your, your milk pasteurized, you want to get rid of some, you know, you wash your food. Like there's certain things you want to sort of, if you want to call that a problem process. But when things are, you know, artificial sweeteners and ingredients and it's ground down and it's mostly, you know, corn syrup and it's, it's so many steps away from the fresh fruit or vegetable or piece of meat. You know, that was, you know, the.

[John Gabrus]

Way I've heard people describe it is if the name of it is what it is, right? Like if you eat blueberries, that's less processed than a blueberry muffin or blueberry, like the more things.

[Adam Pally]

But what about an organic blueberry, Blueberry muffin?

[John Gabrus]

Well, it's still processed to make it into a muffin, but that then I'm.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Now, I mean like organic is so Michael Pollan, I met with him, interviewed him for, he's written a couple of books on this and he's also written.

[John Gabrus]

A couple of books on hallucinating.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

He has indeed. How to change your mind. That's right. But his main, like, thing was about food and processed foods, and it was.

[Adam Pally]

Weird when his wife was the vice presidential candidate.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

What? Wait, his wife was the vice president?

[Adam Pally]

Sarah. I'm thinking of Sarah Palin.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, my God. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

[Adam Pally]

I'm thinking of Sarah Palin.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Although. Although, this is an interesting fact that I just found out. His sister is Tracy Pollan, who is married to Michael J. Fox.

[Adam Pally]

Really?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

That's amazing.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I just found that out.

[Adam Pally]

That's so cool.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Cause I did a. Wow.

[Adam Pally]

What a family of heroes.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, I had a. We did a podcast series. It was called the Science of perception box, and he was one of the people that plug it. Thank you. Which was actually the number one science podcast on Apple.

[John Gabrus]

Get the fuck out the way, Dr. Berlin, because here comes staying alive.

[Adam Pally]

Sorry, Dr. Glenn. I don't think we're considered really a wellness podcast.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, it's a science podcast.

[Adam Pally]

It's far different category.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

This is in the science. It was the number one in the science category. We're not. We're not competitors.

[Adam Pally]

Look out.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But he. We interviewed him for that, and we talked a lot about, you know, foods. One of the things he said, the reason I bring him up is he said, like, healthy foods don't need labels and things like screaming at you, like, low fat, low sugar. This is, you know, this is healthy, like all the. So the more labels and things they have to advertise, it's usually like, the less, you know, so. But okay. Things like fresh fruits and vegetables, things with antioxidants and blueberries. You know, the good fats, like in salmon and nuts, you know, are really good for your brain because the brain, the. The neurons are covered with this, like we call myelin sheath. It's like a. It's like a. The white matter is really like this. This white fatty substance that makes the signals go faster. And. And so you need fats for your brain. Avocado. Like these. Healthy. So eating healthy is one thing. Sleep for sure. Getting a good amount of sleep. Not everybody needs eight hours. I think that's sort of a myth. Some people, like, take sleep drugs just so they can get their eight hours, which is actually defeats the purpose. Some people only need six hours. But whatever it is that. You know what your ideal kind of sleep is, where you can function, like, try to get good sleep, you know, drugs and alcohol. I try to have none or to a minimum. Right. Hydration is another one. Exercise. Exercise. So these are all you know physical things.

[John Gabrus]

What's your. Like, Go to exercise for yourself.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I love.

[John Gabrus]

And again, just so you know. And listeners, nothing is prescriptive. We're just talking about what we do personally.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So this is what. And I do all this stuff. I. And I take. I take vitamins.

[Adam Pally]

When you say hydration, we could all say it in, like, a Louisianan water. Boy.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

How do we say that?

[Adam Pally]

Hydrate home.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Hydration.

[John Gabrus]

Water is better. He is bad.

[Adam Pally]

Hydration.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I don't know if I. Hydration.

[Adam Pally]

There we go.

[John Gabrus]

I'm looking at your FMRI and your pleasure center. All these novel connections you're making about your Cajun ex.

[Adam Pally]

Your creativity is insane.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It's off the chart.

[Adam Pally]

Basically. Miles Davis.

[John Gabrus]

If pee in your pants is cool, just keep doing sandler bits this whole day.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, my God. Okay, so what I do personally is I. I do all those things and I do yoga. I think that's really good. I don't have a specific. I do Ashtanga yoga.

[Adam Pally]

No. Like, where do you do it? At a studio?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

No, I do. Well, I have, like. I'm a member of, like, a fitness club, and they have different yoga classes.

[John Gabrus]

Different classes there.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. Yeah. So I don't go to, like, a particular. I'm not like, this is my type of yoga. I used to do the Bikram, but I. Screw that. Like, I don't do that anymore. I used to do that.

[Adam Pally]

I did Bikram for a long time.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I got headaches. And then I watched the documentary about the guys.

[Adam Pally]

That's when I started.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh.

[John Gabrus]

Adam's being interviewed in the documentary. Like, wait, what?

[Adam Pally]

I. I was an investor.

[John Gabrus]

He's a nepo baby. No, he's a pedo. Stop getting those words confused.

[Adam Pally]

I'm a pedo baby. I. My dad became, like, super, super into it. He's like a health nut. And then after my mom passed away, he got, like, insanely into all these exercises and became obsessed with berm yoga and was amazing. And it was even, like, teaching classes.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Wow.

[Adam Pally]

And I loved it. And I never got the headaches or anything, but I never got into shape. No, it's not really about that, I don't think. I think it's about, like, true, like, torture. Torture pain.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. And pushing yourself. I mean, it's like, the thing about yoga is I think it's like this, both psychological and physical. And so I would feel physically good after, but also my mind would be calmer.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. All that is totally worth it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. But. But the Bikram was just. It got. I mean, it was you know, I was doing it my, like, 20s or whatever, and then it was like, yeah. And then I think my body was like, no, this is like not working for us anymore.

[Adam Pally]

If I went back to a beak room class now, I think I would die probably, I think.

[John Gabrus]

But you're. Now you're a sauna guy too, so you might have a little heat adaption that most people wouldn't possibly.

[Adam Pally]

But it's so strength. It's so.

[John Gabrus]

I've done sweat yoga, which is a place in la, a few times, and that kicks my ass.

[Adam Pally]

Sweat yoga is really hard. Bikram is like. It's so intense. Like, you're going so fast and so like, you know what I mean? The sequences are so quick and there's no end to it. Once you start, you're like, wow, this is an hour and a half. I'm gonna be in here for an hour and a half. It's like.

[John Gabrus]

It's making me nauseous.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, for me, it was the headaches. Once I was getting the headaches after, I just couldn't keep hydrated enough hydration. Thank you.

[Adam Pally]

Here we go.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But I moved away from. I know. I moved away from that to the goat yoga. No, I'm just kidding. But. But you know the Ashtanga. And I do like. And more of like for the spiritual practice of it. I find also for me, walking in nature is so important and then like, being.

[John Gabrus]

That's a double banger too.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, it's everything.

[John Gabrus]

Steps are good and nature is good. Like two separate things that are good for you at the same time.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's cool.

[Adam Pally]

Hard for you in New York City?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Well, I moved out of New City and now I live in the suburbs. On Long Island? Yes.

[John Gabrus]

Point out where. Oh, my God, you have a tattoo.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

On Long Island.

[John Gabrus]

Where on where? Yeah, I'm from Freeport originally. And now my mom and family all live in Belmore.

[Adam Pally]

Parents are from Merrick.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I'm in Merrick.

[Adam Pally]

Get out of here.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Shut up.

[Adam Pally]

Well, I got a spot all the way.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, he's out here.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, you're out there. Well, that's the fancy people. Yeah, the. I grew up in Dix Hills.

[Adam Pally]

Okay.

[John Gabrus]

And then.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And then I lived everywhere, all over. And never thought I'd come back to Long island ever in a million years. But now, yeah, I ended up buying my grandmother's house. So sentimental value. And then I. I refinished it and everything. And so, like, I mean, I didn't like. So that's kind of why I ended up in America. So that's where my grandma.

[Adam Pally]

My mom grew up on Shelter Rock Road.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I don't know that road exactly, but.

[Adam Pally]

An exit off the la.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh. Oh, okay. Okay. Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

Do you have kids?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I do.

[John Gabrus]

Are they going to go to Calhoun or Kennedy?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

No. So.

[John Gabrus]

Because I went to Mepham.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You went. My dad went to Mephom. This guys. We're all just like Long island kids. They. They are. Well, my kids are in private school, so, you know, that's what's going on there. But yeah, we'll see what happens with high school. I don't know. But my. My dad went to Mepham. I can never say that.

[John Gabrus]

Mepum, class of 2000. Me and Lenny Bruce.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, my God. I know some people who went. I can name some names. We would know the same people.

[Adam Pally]

I have a crazy. My high school has crazy people.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Where did you grow up? You grew up in.

[Adam Pally]

I grew up all. No, I grew up all over, but I went to high school in Livingston, New York, Jersey.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay.

[Adam Pally]

And people from there are like Chelsea Handler.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, my God. Yeah. Chris.

[John Gabrus]

Yes. Your high school alumni are more famous.

[Adam Pally]

It's just weird. It's like a weird.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

She did a Netflix show with Chelsea called Chelsea Does Drugs, and she did drugs with me. And I did experiments on her to see. You got to watch this show. It's hysterical. She. She. I come on right after. She smokes weed with Willie Nelson and I go to her house and she was like, in Bel Air?

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And. And we spent the day together. And in the morning, she did. Did, like, Adderall and, like, energy shots and whatever and did, like, total, like, uppers, basically did all these tests on her. And then at night, she did, like, Ambien and. And vodka. I mean, I didn't recommend any of this.

[John Gabrus]

Again, not prescriptive.

[Adam Pally]

She does have a health book about that, right? Like, that's the Chelsea Diet.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I don't know. I haven't. It was. It was pretty interesting. She was really funny. She was so funny.

[Adam Pally]

I think she's the funniest.

[John Gabrus]

And reach out, get her on the pod.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. She's so funny.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

She's.

[Adam Pally]

Her new special is we both share something in that there's a Livingston High School ring of honor and neither of us are in it. She's not in it because she said she didn't want to be in it. I'm not in it because they won't recognize me.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Nice.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Livingston.

[Adam Pally]

Wait till the pedo Stop. Nepo.

[John Gabrus]

Jesus.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

But one more thing I did want to say in terms of living the Other thing is that meditation, any kind of meditation, just being and mindfulness. And what I try to do is every day a prayer. Appreciate. Little thing. The littlest thing. Like I'd be like, you know that movie soul did a good job. If you've ever seen this Pixar movie soul. Yeah. Notice the trees. Notice, you know, the sunrise. The.

[Adam Pally]

It sounds a little like, you know, hippie dippy, but it's true.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It's so. It's. That's the purpose of life and then also connecting with people and any like the person you get your coffee with or whatever. Like we're all just humans walking, you know, we take that big picture.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Walking around this earth. It's so ridiculous. Like floating in space. Like none of it makes any. Like just those little moments. And I'm like, I really appreciate being alive. Like I have. I also have a fear of death. Like I don't want to die, but I love.

[John Gabrus]

We host a podcast called staying alive.

[Adam Pally]

Singing girls.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I want to say alive. I was like, if I get in a coma, just keep me alive, whatever. If there's a chance of me to live, I want to be alive.

[Adam Pally]

Use my brain.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. All of it.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Can I ask you guys one question though? I have a out of curiosity, the why this theme of staying alive?

[Adam Pally]

Well, that is a great question.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

We.

[Adam Pally]

So we are best friends for a long time. And in, in that best friend, in that 25 almost year period, both of our parents passed away young.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah. My dad died young. His mom died. Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

And so. And we lived a similar lifestyle. Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

Our foot is on the gas in our life. We'll say we're the gas. No brakes.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. 100%.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

And so. And as we kind of grew up a little and hit a certain age, we were like, I, you know, what we're interested in is staying alive longer for more experience.

[John Gabrus]

And when we did, we did a travel show called 101 Places to Party before you die. It was about, it was about pushing ourselves and going out for these crazy long weekends. But because the show was hosted by two 40 year old men, we also learned we had to recover. And that's something we do on vacation is like we got to hit the sauna. We gotta. Let's make sure we get some cardio in and then we can start drinking. You know, like, let's go for a long walk, then come back, smoke weed and do blank. Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[John Gabrus]

So we started and then we. Then when we were talking about it more and more, we were like, fuck. We actually, if we really want to balance. We need to up the amount of staying alive.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

And maybe a. Lower the little bit before you die.

[Adam Pally]

Lower the risk.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right, right, right, right. So as you age, that balance changes completely.

[Adam Pally]

And so we're just, you know, and.

[John Gabrus]

We found ourselves listening to and watching so many fitness influencers and wellness podcasters.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

And all of them are on, like, TRT or selling some kind of kettlebell link.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. And also all 20s and 30s, and it's, like, easy to stay fit and healthy. Look at me. I'm.

[Adam Pally]

We found too is like, the other thing that's kind of fun about it is because we're comedians and what we're. I mean, you're. You're a certified neuroscientist, but we've had on some people, and we're meeting people who sometimes the. The. The wellness industry is a bit of like a. I don't want to say snake oil, but like, sometimes young people will sit in that chair and be like, sleep eight hours and you'll be ripped. You know?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. You're 25.

[John Gabrus]

But I'm a father of.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. It's like, so how am I supposed to sleep eight hours? It's just not realistic. So I think that being able to say that to people and have that conversation is also why we like it.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

And here's the one thing I would say, though, just with the impulse control, why I got so interested in it, because I think that's really the key. The marshmallow test. You know?

[John Gabrus]

Yes.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You can have one marshmallow now, or you can wait and have two later. You know about this. So this is really famous marshmallow test. Sorry. I don't know if we're still taping or.

[Adam Pally]

We're not. No, we are. These people come in and out to throw you off.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, okay. I don't know.

[Adam Pally]

These are important information.

[John Gabrus]

Cameras only go six minutes at a time.

[Adam Pally]

Social experiment. So right now, you're one of our rats.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay, I see.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah. This is the Stanford prison.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It's like. Well, she's still talking. No, this is a really important, I think, study for. For people. So. So Walter Michel, he's a professor at Columbia. He did this study years ago. It was like, he took kids between the ages of, like, three and six, I think it was. He said he put them in a room with cameras. Right. And they said, you can have this. I'm gonna leave this one marshmallow here. If you wait a few minutes, when I come back, just don't eat it. You'll get Two, and he leaves the room and then he leaves the camera on and watches what these kids do, right? Some of them. It's hysterical to watch, actually. You know, some of them are like freaking out and they're shocking. Some like, just like, fuck it. And they just like, eat it, like, whatever. And some can just sit there patiently and wait. And then he. He followed these people up throughout life and he gave them a bunch of. Looked at all their, like their. Their bmi, you know, their body mass index, their marital status, job att, all these measures of like, success in life. And then he had all these measures. He didn't just give him that marshmallow test. He gave him a bunch of other tests. But the thing that predicted future life success was whether they passed this marshmallow test or not. And there's been some controversy around it. Like, let's say people who have scarcity in their life, like, actually it's a better strategy to just eat the one marshmallow because you don't know that the feature is the next marshmallow. So there's some like, socioeconomic issues with it. But in general, it's a measure of prefrontal cortex function. Right. That's the brake system. I was about talking about that. It's not fully developed until you're around 25. So kids don't even have it fully developed. That's why it's harder for them to have impulse control. But also they're more creative because there's less of that filter. But what it shows is that those who have more self control, that scales up to all these other things, like you're in college, okay. Instead of going out and partying, I'm gonna stay home and study. And that's gonna lead to, like, better grades and then a better job and then. Right. So impulse control in that way really does correlate with life success. But people who are too overcome control, that's also negative. Right? So I talk about there being a dial in your brain that you want to turn it up or down. That's what you want to be able to control. How much do I rein it in? And it's healthy to let go in a controlled way. Too much letting go, not good. Too much control, not good. But just the right amount is where I think you live a healthy, balanced life.

[John Gabrus]

Classic split the diff scenario.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yes. Well, yeah, but if you tend toward everything in moderation, if you tend toward more being more impulsive, then you have to kind of push more toward the other direction.

[John Gabrus]

Like a sea captain trying to Turn this giant wheel towards impulse. Like, controlling myself a little bit.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Just a little bit more. Right. But you don't want to go all the way. And then it's, you know, you get the neuroticism and the, you know, anxiety, and it's like, people, they can't, like, it's. It's really bad. The other direction, too. OCD and that level, I mean, I.

[Adam Pally]

Struggle with some of that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You can have both, so you can have compulsivity and impulsivity. So compulsivity, it's like compulsivity is doing something to avoid something. Something negative. So, like, let's just take ocd. Like, you think, okay, if I touch this thing, I'm gonna get, like, a disease.

[Adam Pally]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

So I'm not gonna touch it. You're avoiding it to avoid something negative. Or you're like, if I flip the switch three times, that'll avoid something bad happening. Okay. Impulsive is more like chasing a high, chasing something positive at the cost of whatever the negative consequences are. So, like, I'm gonna have this marshmallow now because it tastes good. That's. Regardless, I'm going to lose the others later. So you.

[John Gabrus]

I'm going to stay up and watch one more episode, even though I know I need to get up early tomorrow and I'm cutting into my sleep that I want.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

That's impulsive.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Compulsive is like, you know, I don't know what you do that's compulsive, but I can.

[Adam Pally]

Well, I have the M and the come.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

The what?

[Adam Pally]

I'm impulsive and compulsive.

[John Gabrus]

The way you said it sounded a little.

[Adam Pally]

It sounded a little Nepal.

[John Gabrus]

The M and the come. Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Sounded a little Nepal.

[John Gabrus]

I've got the come now, but, like.

[Adam Pally]

I, I, I got them both. I, like, really, truly, like, am compulsive and impulsive.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. And you can be both. And they, they intermix, so it's not like one or the other.

[Adam Pally]

But I've borderline personality disorder, so, like.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Oh, do you. I did my PhD on that.

[Adam Pally]

Really?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

I don't, I don't even think it's that.

[John Gabrus]

BPD PhD.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I did a BPD PhD. ABC on the OFC, which is the orb cortex. Thank you.

[Adam Pally]

Diagnosed with depression and a adhd.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay. Diagnosis. Yeah. Borderline is probably. You're probably not. I, like, I think borderline gets overused with. Just because if you have emotional dysregulation doesn't mean that you're borderline.

[Adam Pally]

I feel like I have depression and adhd. With emotional irregular.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah, yeah, but which is still different.

[John Gabrus]

Than bpd and I have erectile dysfunction. My therapist keeps telling me which you.

[Adam Pally]

Can stay for this. We want to bring up our spot sponsor hymns.

[John Gabrus]

Shout out use promo code. Staying alive for gas station honey packs.

[Adam Pally]

Ginseng popums and no, we're not gonna.

[John Gabrus]

Do honey packs on the show, but we can talk about them.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I knew one day my PhD would come in handy to get me here.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, well, we're happy to have find that 25 years of each of improv experience came into play in a conversation that wasn't.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

You guys are great.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, no, this has been, this has been so informative and nice and reassuring in a lot of ways because I feel like so a lot of my own like self doubt about improv and stuff comes with the idea that it's like not worth anything, you know, and now to hear that, just the exercise of it and just the idea of like getting on stage and getting, getting the feedback from the audience, I'm telling.

[John Gabrus]

You, that's helping us with neuroplasticity.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It's good for your brain, definitely. And by the way, your brain is always changing, growing, developing, even though it kind of slows down with age. Right. Like you think of like a piece of clay, it's really malleable early on and then it sort of hardens, but it's never fully. It's always to the day you die. Your brain is evolving and changing, whatever, and you can heal it, it can grow. So, you know, even if you live, let's say a hard lifestyle or whatever, had some concussions, like, you can still do all these very brain healthy things like the exercise and socializing and new activities and new, new ideas that can help increase your neuroplasticity, that can help, you know, you stave off the negative effects of the aging brain. So like there is hope, you know, and that comedy and doing improv is great. It's great for your brain.

[John Gabrus]

Improv and avocados. I'm going to save my brain the old fashioned way.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

We call that the burrito supreme.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Some walnuts.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Store instead of the Taco Bell.

[John Gabrus]

That'll be. I knew, I knew Taco Bell wasn't going to save me.

[Adam Pally]

But doctor, thank you so much for being here.

[John Gabrus]

Thank you so much for coming on and when your book comes out, you should come back on the podcast and plug it again.

[Adam Pally]

And, and we love to follow up with you if, in, in any way, if you want to throw us into your lab and let us run on the treadmill for a little. We would do that.

[John Gabrus]

Put the fmm. FMRI on our heads and see what happens when we do dumb. Looks like neither of them are currently thinking.

[Adam Pally]

Actually be really cool. Could if we did a two man improv show, could you hook something up to our brains that you could read it the whole time?

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

It would be different than FMRI because FMRI you have to be solid in a tube.

[Adam Pally]

Right.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

In a machine.

[John Gabrus]

But we can improvise.

[Adam Pally]

But we could improvise from two machines. Like as if we were on a radio show or something.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Hyper scanning. If you do with two people at the same time, that'd be interesting. You'd have to have two scanners, we call it hyper scanning. And see the like relationship between the two.

[Adam Pally]

We would love to do that.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[John Gabrus]

If you ever want.

[Adam Pally]

At your expense.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah. Right. I will keep you posted on this. There are some studies that are looking and not specifically at improvisation improv, but at that. That interaction between two people.

[John Gabrus]

Also, if it's only one machine, Adam's in the machine. We do improv together. And then.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

I appreciate it.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, yeah. But we would love to. I would love to see how it's affecting me in real time.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah, that sounds cool as hell.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Okay.

[Adam Pally]

And we can do it at the UCB Theater on 14 seconds. Pretty sanitary.

[John Gabrus]

They have two MRIs.

[Adam Pally]

They also during the day are an open MRI.

[John Gabrus]

That's why your keys fly out of your pocket when you walk.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

All your money.

[John Gabrus]

Couple thousand dollars that way.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

All right.

[Adam Pally]

Thank you, doctor.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Thank you so much.

[Adam Pally]

That was. It felt like I was talking to a cousin of mine.

[John Gabrus]

Yes. There was some wonderful person. Not only like highly informed, but very. And she was able to. Dr. Berlin was able to keep us on track.

[Adam Pally]

No, she was the third host. Really or the first host. She was really more of the first host. But she was just delightful and, and.

[John Gabrus]

Getting to talk about improv on a like health level is very appealing to me too. Retroactively justifies six nights a week for 20 years.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. No, you're one of the healthiest people I know.

[John Gabrus]

I know my brain is fucking plastic.

[Adam Pally]

As fuck according to Berlin. But like her name did freak me out at first. Doctor. Dr. Berlin. But I, I found her also like her general outlook to be positive. You know, sometimes people sit in this chair and they're, They're. They'll tell you what you're doing wrong and all the ways that it'll kill. Kill you.

[John Gabrus]

It was really reassuring. I think the big takeaway. I. I'm going to take from this is that you can do stuff to still help your brain.

[Adam Pally]

Yes.

[John Gabrus]

No matter what you did.

[Adam Pally]

The way that you can do it to help your body.

[John Gabrus]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

You can do it. Do it to help your. Your brain. It doesn't have to be improv, but they're basically, what she was saying was, like, staying involved in the world. They will keep you alive longer.

[John Gabrus]

Yes. Yeah. I mean, that's what. That's what you see, right? That's like the research. Like, when you see, like, those anecdotal things, like, old men die alone, and then, like, people who have, like, family around them, like, live longer, and people have.

[Adam Pally]

I thought those were just being sent to my algorithm. You know what I mean? Like, when you see, like, the next person. Like, I always get, like, the next person that you think of, you're in love with. It'll start with this letter, and then it's like a D. Because the algorithm knows that I'm married to someone with.

[John Gabrus]

A D. I get a lot of, like. Because I just am always DMing with my brother. And I get a lot of, like, the guy. The next guy who's named Jason owes you a drink. We're just constantly sending each other to the same.

[Adam Pally]

Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[John Gabrus]

That's upsetting. Like, kind of like those Amazon ads where it's like, we're the Pali family and you better get the fuck out of our way. And that just, like, pops up and you're like, they have my fucking name on it. It's a Gabriel's thing. And you just don't understand. I get served that on Amazon. It's like, yeah, they design a shirt to like, make me buy.

[Adam Pally]

It truly is, like, the bottom of the bottom. The snake has eaten its own tail, and now we're part of it. You know what I wanted to do just really quick, because I wonder if this works for people that are listening to this, like, in their kitchen while they're doing something else. Like, hey, hey, Siri, play Incubus. Do you think that work?

[John Gabrus]

It might. Try it again. But, like, be loud. Be loud. Do it again.

[Adam Pally]

What's, like, the most annoying incubus song? Or give me, like, an annoying, like.

[John Gabrus]

Well, tell them to play Staying Alive by Bee Gees.

[Dr. Heather Berlin]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Hey, hey, Siri, play Staying Alive by the Bee Gees. How do we know if it's working?

[John Gabrus]

We don't. We'll get messages, but we don't check them.

[Adam Pally]

Hey, Amazon, play Staying Alive by the Bee Gees.

[John Gabrus]

Hey, Amazon, order 101 places to party before you die on Blu Ray Hey Amazon.

[Adam Pally]

Hey Amazon. Hey Siri. Open ChatGPT and Venmo Adam Pally $500.

[John Gabrus]

Hey Siri. Stay alive. You have been listening to Staying Alive with John Gabris and Adam Pali, a Smartless Media production in association with SiriusXM.

[Adam Pally]

Produced by Devin Tory Bryant and Anne Harris. Engineered and edited by Devin Tory Bryant, who also wrote the music, Associate producer.

[John Gabrus]

And video producer is Matt Patty McCann, social media producer Tommy Galgano, assistant engineer Kyle McGraw.

[Adam Pally]

Special thanks to Jared O' Connell at SiriusXM.

[John Gabrus]

Executive producers are John Gabris. Ooh me. Adam Pally. Ooh you Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Richard Corson and Bernie Kaminsky. Do us a favor. Just rate and review the podcast. It actually helps.

[Adam Pally]

Just so everyone knows we do not have a discord.

[John Gabrus]

Don't reach out to us.

[Adam Pally]

See us on the street. Walk the other way or you'll catch hands.

[John Gabrus]

No, trust me. I started in pot. Like I've been in podcasting for 10 years and the fact that when I switched to video I was like, I'm going to have to start putting on fucking pants. I'm going to start wearing a shirt. Used to just be pitch black. You could dress however you want. Now you have to remember to change your shirt in between episodes.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, for me and me, I was like, I will not do a podcast unless I can change my outfit every.

[John Gabrus]

Every time he was trying to get it so that I did the talking and he just kind of sat there and looked cool.

[Adam Pally]

I thought we decided that that's what it was. Gon I'm bummed to find out that I have to give my opinion on stuff.

[E]

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[John Gabrus]

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[E]

That's copsleepgoods. Com Sleep 101.