Loading summary
Transcript217 lines
- [00:07]
A
Journey on the magic lies within the trails we ride. You're listening to the Journey On Podcast with Warwick Schiller.
- [00:16]
B
Warrick is a horseman trainer, international clinician
- [00:20]
A
and author who helps empower horse people from all over the world with the skills, knowledge and mindsets needed to create trusting partnerships with their horses. Warrick offers a free seven day trial to his comprehensive online video library that includes hundreds of full length training videos and several home Study courses@videos.warwickshiller.com
- [00:44]
B
G' day everyone. Welcome back to the Journey On Podcast. I'm your host, Warwick Sheller and my special guest for today is my new friend, Darren Richard. Darren is a clinical professor of psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University dedicated to advancing trauma, informed mental health care and human rights. He leads the Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health program where he works with survivors of genocide, torture and human rights violations locally and globally. With extensive experience in cross cultural trauma psychiatry, Darren consults for international courts, international investigations of war crimes, advising on complex cases of transitional justice and mental health. He currently serves as a consultant for the Trauma Psychiatry of the United Nations Investigative Team to promote accountability for crimes committed by Daesh isil, which is ISIS for the International Criminal Court and for Human Rights Watch. He's developed a new clinical and educational programs for underserved communities in the San Francisco Bay area. And Darren also teaches a course on the psychology of Happiness and leads the Stanford Stoked Laboratory. You'll hear more about that on here. But yeah, I met Darren recently at a gathering I was at and we hit it off and he's been down to the ranch come visit us and hung out for a weekend. And yeah, I'm proud to call him my friend and excited for you guys to listen to this episode of the podcast. Darren Richard, welcome to the Journey on podcast.
- [02:21]
A
Thank you Work. I'm super stoked to be here, man. This is awesome.
- [02:25]
B
Super stoked. We'll get into the Stoked here in a minute. Actually, let's start out. Dan, why don't you. Why don't you tell the listeners exactly what you do these days and then I want to unravel how you ended up there.
- [02:38]
A
Yeah, what I do these days. But both of the how I got here and what I do are two crazy stories. What I'm what I I'm a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University. I'm a clinical professor there and I do a lot of different things under that role. So I'm an academic person, but I'm also a clinical person. The clinical role that I have there is that I, I am the medical director for the center for Survivors of Torture in, in California. And in that clinical space I see survivors, refugees, people that have come from all over the world who have been exposed to torture and are now getting mental health treatment. And, and in that role I'm able to teach psychiatry residents and, and its training site for Stanford and then I do some other public health work for, for, you know, people that live in poverty in, in California, refugees, immigrants and other folks. But also through the Stanford appointment, I'm able to do some other non clinical work. And, and there's two different projects that you know something about. But I'll tell it, I'll say it again for the listeners if in, in a way it feels like they're, they're, they're a, they're a balancing act because the two different things seem so very different from, from each other. One of them is the Human Rights in Trauma Mental Health Program at Stanford. And that is a project that is very much global. It's not just around the work that I do at the center for Survivors. It's a global effort to acknowledge the consequences of trauma from human rights violations around the world. And that sounds very like a very big concept, but specifically what we're really doing is we are assisting transitional justice programs in recognizing and assisting with the trauma that's seen. Example, we've written expert reports for the International Criminal Court, you know, around the consequences of trauma for the population that's in question. In a court case, we assisted the Khmer Rouge Tribunal with the same idea, like pointing out that not only were people murdered and buildings destroyed and that sort of thing, which is very clear, clear in courts, but also what about the mental health suffering of people who survived? Right. And so, so our laboratory started out doing work like that where we, we're really just able to demonstrate and write about and, and, and show for transitional justice programs how bad it is. Right. The consequences of human rights violations on the human psyche. And then also through that project, you know, we've done other things like training investigators on how to work with survivors. Right. And worked for five years with the United nations on their investigation of ISIS in Iraq. And you know, not exactly doing clinical work with witnesses, but, you know, really helping the witness to talk about what happened to them and helping the investigators understand trauma and you know, know how that might influence, you know, the way that someone's going to report a crime and you can, I mean, it was isis, right, is the worst crimes that you can imagine. And then the other thing, right, there's a whole. I said there's a lot of different things. The other thing is that Stoked Laboratory. And that's what I think you and I spent a lot of time talking about work. It was the Stoked Lab. And that, that is a super fun project. I'm sure we're going to talk about it more in this podcast, but that is an actual laboratory at Stanford. And it's. When I say stoked, I mean it in the California sense of the word. It's the Stoked Laboratory. It started out as a seminar class for freshmen when it's really something of a life philosophy class about how to really, really milk the essence of joy out of life as much as possible. And that seminar has been very popular at Stanford. We've been doing it for 10 years. And each year is something new, something awesome. But it's evolved not only as a seminar, but it evolved into something that we're calling the Stoked Laboratory, where we kind of, because of its popularity, kind of taking some of the messages from that and putting them in other places. So far it's been mostly educational, right? So other classes are teaching other populations, so teaching high school students are teaching, you know, adult learners. And I might have mentioned this before, but the National Hockey League Players association actually bought the class also. So we made a, a variation of it for hockey players. And so, you know, so we're spreading the stoke. And, and that project's so exciting because I'm, I'm at a place now where I don't know where we're gonna go with the rest of it. We think we're gonna make a bigger class at Stanford. So it's not gonna be just a seminar, but, you know, probably like a big, you know, state, whatever, 70, 100 student class. But we want it to be awesome and fun. And here's the thing, work that I think is the most important thing, is it. The class has always been experiential. So the homework assignments are not to go read about something and then, you know, come and take a test on it. The homework assignments are go do something, you know, get. Give them a very. Either a very specific task, go do it, or a little bit more of a vague task where they have to be creative and figure out what the task is for themselves and then go do it. But the do it part is the most important part, right? And that's, that's different from your organic chemistry class where you, you know, you have to learn how the molecules are and all this sort of thing. You have to get examined on it, the examination is, is go do it. Go have that experience, come back and tell us about it. But the essence of the class and then also the essence of this laboratory is experiential rather than just academic.
- [10:07]
B
Can you give me an example of one of the things you might have them go do?
- [10:13]
A
Sure. So we, we, at the end of each lecture or seminar, we give them a, a question that's provocative and then a challenge that goes along with the question, right? And so, so I'll give you one that is not vague, right? We use Martin Seligman's gratitude exercise. And so we'll say, ask a question like, you know, how important is gratitude in your life? Are you someone that's able to express gratitude well, or is it something you want to work on? Right, that's the kind of the, the question. Think about that, talk about it in seminar and then we'll say, well now go do the gratitude exercise. Go do it. And for your viewers who know what that is, or your listeners who know what that is, they'll know what the gratitude exercise is. For those that don't, it's pretty straightforward. You basically think about somebody that you feel grateful for that has done something that you, you feel this gratitude for, but that you've never really expressed it to, to that person. And then you literally write a gratitude letter. You say, hey mom or grandma or coach, you know, or best friend or whomever. And then you say, I'm really grateful and here's why. And you write a letter like that and then you, you take it and have the experience of sharing that letter with the other person. It's an exercise we do every year, right? And that's pretty, it's a little bit open ended, right? Because I'm not telling you who to write it for and I'm not telling you what to write. So I mean there's, there's the element of open ended in the gratitude exercise. But that, that's, that's one. Another one that's a little bit more, that's a little bit more open ended is the one I talked about last week. And that is, you know, we're sort of say talk in the seminar, we'll talk about the value or non value of the concept of regret, right? Is that a, is that a useful concept or not? And people will say, well it's only useful if you can kind of use, if you can, you know, have a regret or a regret moment and then use it to inform a new decision going forward. If you're just dwelling on it, it's probably not good. So the question is, do you have a regret brewing in your life right now? Something that's going wrong or something you don't like, or that you can foresee you're going the wrong direction with this thing and it's going to be a regret later. And then the challenge then is, well, go do something about it, go change it, right? And then that's more open ended so the, the learners can think, okay, well, in my life it's this, but somebody else might have a completely different, you know, concept, right? And so then they come back and share what they did. And it's, it's often very cool.
- [13:12]
B
You know, I heard of an exercise recently very similar to that, that it was something like, imagine yourself from 10 years from now looking back on you now in 10 years from now. What are you wishing you had done, right? What are you wishing you had changed about your life or, you know, steps you took or whatever?
- [13:34]
A
Same idea. And, and so in, so in this class, you know, we really try to use like academic stuff, stuff from philosophers, stuff from neuroscientists, but we also try to use some, you know, like pop culture stuff. And so, I don't know, we, we show the clip from the Fight Club, the mov. The movie the Fight Club, where he says he's driving into oncoming traffic and he says, look, you know what, if you were to die right now, how would you view your life? And he drives into oncoming traffic and he says, if you died right now, what would you regret not having done? And the two guys in the backseat, one says he goes paint a self portrait and the other guy goes, build my own house. And I think that scene is so funny because a lot of us walk around with a concept like that, right? And then when you juxtapose, you know, this is something I've always wanted to do, but I'll do it later, I'll do it later. And then you're driving headlong into a truck. You think I should do that? And then the idea with the class is, well, then go do it. Like, go ahead. And then students do, and it's super cool.
- [14:43]
B
And the one before the gratitude one, do you feel like there's a benefit to the gratitude part of it? But do you feel like there's a vulnerability that does something to like letting that out? Almost like in, almost like the, what is it, like the 8th step or the 6th step in the 12 step program where you've got to make amends to all the people you've wronged. And you've got to find them and actually say the words. Do you feel like if someone's not used to expressing gratitude, just the fact they emote that thing in front of a real person, do you find that there's a part of that that's helpful as well?
- [15:26]
A
Totally. All of the exercises that we do, what we're trying to do is, you know, at least expose the students to an experience of something that maybe they ought to do more often. Right. And so gratitude exercise is a perfect example where the question becomes, why is that a hard exercise to do? In fact, why don't you just kind of do that on a regular basis? Right. I mean, maybe not literally writing down everything and then going and doing a formal present it. But, but really, if you do that exercise once and you have a positive experience with it, or you show that vulnerability, right? And then understand that, why was it so vulnerable in the first place? And, you know, in the class, we will examine that a little bit. And some, sometimes it's, you know, because it's maybe culturally awkward because we don't just automatically do that in a lot of cultures. And, and sometimes it's, you know, people will say, well, honestly, like, maybe gratitude puts you in a weak position because some you're vulnerable and somebody else is higher. And we explore all that and then try to evaporate the barriers and just say, well, how was it to do that? You just told your grandmother that you were grateful for all of her wisdom, and she gave you a hug, you know, so just make it a habit. And then a lot of students do, and then they say, wow, man, this was, this was fantastic. Right? And, and, and here's the thing work about that lab, right, Is you can read Martin Seligman's book and say, wow, that's a good idea, and then not do it. Right?
- [17:14]
B
You can read a lot of, believe me, from personal experience, you can read a lot of books about what you should do and not do it.
- [17:21]
A
Right, right. And, and, and, and so the, the lab, the class, the program, the project is really, you know, go do it. That's more important than reading a paper about, you know, how it changes people's minds and all this other stuff. I mean, you can read that also, but go have the experience. That's the, the experience is the thing that's going to change you, not the knowledge.
- [17:43]
B
Right. You know, you just brought up a couple of things so my listeners know that I send you guys 20 questions. You get to choose some from. And usually towards the End. I go into those questions, but you just mentioned two things that kind of related to your questions. So one of them, you were just talking about having to go out and do something that might be a little worried about doing. One of the questions you chose was, what's your relationship like with fear? Let's get that out of the way right now.
- [18:10]
A
Oh, yeah. Okay. I mean, I saw your question and I didn't. I didn't know which. You have some great questions.
- [18:19]
B
They're Tim Ferriss's questions. I stole them from the Tribe of Mentors book, so.
- [18:23]
A
Okay.
- [18:23]
B
Well, they're really Tim's questions.
- [18:25]
A
Stolen questions. They're still good questions. I think that maybe over the top, I go toward the fear thing. I should say two things about that. I do struggle sometimes with anxiety or nervousness, but I find that going sort of headlong into it is the best way to get past that. And I think the question specifically is, do you run toward. Toward it or find that you play things close to your chest? I think I run toward it work. And I think sometimes that's a mistake, but very often it's the opposite of a mistake. It's the right thing to do.
- [19:18]
B
Good answer. The other one I was going to ask you because you mentioned something about this, about. I forget it was something to do with the Stoke Lab. But another one of the questions you asked, and this might help get some of your story out. What is your biggest failure and how has it helped you?
- [19:34]
A
Yeah, and I'm not. I. I took a note on that one, too. I think. I think. General. I think so. I don't know which of the million failures is the biggest one. I mean, I can think. I can think of some that were pretty severe, but I think. I think I take that question and I would say in failure, trying to reframe failure as an opportunity for something better or to get out of whatever the failure has caused or something like that. I think that is. I mean, that's how failures changed me. Is. Is being on the other end of it. And much like the regret question. Right. I mean, when you find yourself in. In amid a failure, how do you pull yourself up by the bootstraps? Or. Or do you. Because if you don't, the failure consumes you. And if you can do that, you can overcome really almost any failure.
- [20:44]
B
Yeah. Don't you feel that if you've had enough failures and they're long enough to go, and you look back and you go, thank goodness that happened, because otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I'M doing. And so that I think reframing failure in the past tense is easy. Like from then, you know, looking forward, when something, something, some failure happens, you kind of go, ooh, I wonder what this is going to lead to. But in you, I think in your early failures, you think this is the end of the world sort of thing. You know what I mean? Until you realize that there's gold in the failures, you just don't know it yet.
- [21:19]
A
Yeah, yeah, I can think of. I can think of some failures that at the time, Right. I did not understand how to reframe them. When I was younger, I did not understand how to reframe them. And, and you, you really would be like, this is. This is it the end. This is it. And cultivating a mindset where you can say, well, okay, this thing is happening. That looks like it's. Looks pretty bad. How do I take this thing and make a completely different thing out of it? And I'm being kind of vague because most of my examples are either very private or are very political. And so, so I'm sort of purposefully being a little vague on that one. But, but yeah, when you, when you, if you find yourself in a failure, going toward the negative and wallowing, it's just going to make the failure worse and it's going to cascade into a total failure, I think. And if you're able to find the opportunity in the failure, then it's not a failure.
- [22:30]
B
You mentioned a little minute ago that when you were younger, you were, you didn't know how to reframe failure. So let's go back to the younger thing. Let's get your story from the beginning. Where'd you grow up? What'd you want to be as a kid?
- [22:43]
A
I grew up in Northern California. I. My parents worked for the state of California, so we lived in a. In a suburb of Sacramento. And I. I think we would call it a suburb. It was a little bit, maybe a little bit more rural than a suburb, but, you know, it was suburb of Sacramento. And the thing that was super cool about was right next to the American river. And we lived a Tom Sawyer life. I mean, we just, my brother and I, we were very creative at home, did all kinds of fun stuff. We, we got a hold of a Super 8 camera and made all kinds of Hollywood movies with monsters and fiction. And every chance we could get, we'd. We'd be down at the river, goofing around, swimming. You know, it was late 70s, early 80s. I mean, it was frivolous and fun. And creative and, and, and my parents were very much, they were very helpful in letting us become who we were. Right. Giving praise to creativity and, and, and then giving us a lot of unlimited freedom to do pretty cool stuff. And I think what was really cool is that they had, they had strict, strict rules about certain things, right? Like, as long as you don't lie to us, you can pretty much do whatever you want, kind of a rule. And, and, and because they were that way, I think my brother and I really thrived. But we also just respected the, the rules that were there. They were reasonable. And, and I think my parents also. Another thing that they did that was really useful for our development was, was really, the rules are up. The rules are. They're not written in stone. And if there's a rule that doesn't make sense, we can debate with them. I don't think, I don't think they would have put it that way at the time. But I mean, really, like if they said, look, you know, this is a limit, and then you say, well, can we. I don't, I understand the limit, but this is the reason why I need to do this thing that's beyond the limit. And then they would say, oh yeah, that makes sense. It's fine, or no, it's a limit for this reason, and you have to understand, you just can't do this. And then we'd say, okay. I mean, so there was this agreement.
- [25:35]
B
Do you realize how unusual that is?
- [25:38]
A
Well, I do now. Growing up, I didn't realize that it was really just like I, you know, it didn't feel like a free for all. It felt like we, it was structured. But when I look back on it, I mean, we did stuff that I think was so far out.
- [25:57]
B
I don't mean the freedom to do things. I mean, I mean, the, the, the rules are up for debate, you know what I mean? My wife, where she grew up, they moved away from there for a time. Then they moved back to the same area, but not to the same town, like moving to the town like the town next door. And my wife was going to go into high school, so she's going to be a freshman in high school. And so from the town she was moving from, she wasn't sure if she's going to go to the school. School that she went to before the town school in the town she went to before, so with the old friends or she's going to move to the school in the new town and make new friends. And she told me she went to her 8th grade something teacher, I forget and said, so what do you think? This is my options. And I, when my wife told me that I'm like, what you actually felt there was an adult trustworthy enough that you could be honest with him? And have you ever, have you ever, you might even know him, you know, Gabel Mate or know of Gabor Mate?
- [26:58]
A
Sorry, no, I don't know that name.
- [27:00]
B
He's a psychiatrist from Vancouver, Canada and he's does a lot of addiction work, like all around the world. He's a leading expert on addiction, but he wrote a book called the Myth of Normal and he also wrote a book called in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, which was about addiction. But this, the Myth of Normal talks about how in our society these days, what's considered normal is not actually normal for humans, it's just normal in our society. And he was talking, you know, his big thing is you can have trauma without addiction, but you can't have addiction without trauma is his big thing. It comes from some sort of trauma. And he said, he was talking to someone one day and the guy said, I don't have any trauma. And Gabor said to him, when you were a child, did you have an adult that you could go to and openly discuss anything that was on your mind? And the guy looked at him and he goes, no, don't be stupid. Gabor goes, there's your trauma. So, you know, like for you saying that your parents rules were not hard and fast and you can't ever break them, like they were up for consideration, it kind of tells me there's a, there's a back and forth that, that I feel is, I mean, I didn't experience that as a kid and I feel like, you know, and it's, it's, it kind of affects me to this very day, like in maybe trying to negotiate things, whatever. I'm not very good at it because I didn't have any practice at it. And you know, you basically kind of got to do what you're told sort of thing. So I just feel like it's fascinating that, that your parents had that, that going on.
- [28:40]
A
It's a gift they really broke from their tradition. I mean my, you know, I'll be brave here and say it wasn't my upbringing. Childhood was not idyllic. There was some violence at home. My dad, my dad was pretty erratic sometimes, but, but there was a discussion all the time. My, my mother's family, my grandfather on my mother's side, super jovial, rational person. My mother, super rational person. They're Dutch, if that means anything culturally for people. I mean, super literal, super rational, super logical. My dad's family, you know, his parents. His father is very violent with him. He made every effort to not put that into the next generation, but, you know, sort of in some ways, didn't overcome that. But to your point, there. There was never a moment where I couldn't go tell them something that I needed to tell them. And that. That made so much difference for my development, I think. Oh, I mean, so much difference. I mean, so many people that I know. Who. Yeah, who. Oh, I like, you know, like, people getting. My friends. Getting grounded. In high school, I got grounded because I used. I did this or that, you know, And, I mean, that just was never a thing with us again. I. I think. I think the reciprocation was We. We kind of get that you guys are supporting us so much. So we will follow the rules that make sense.
- [30:27]
B
Right?
- [30:27]
A
I mean, if you agree on the rules, you don't. You don't want to break them,
- [30:32]
B
right?
- [30:33]
A
I mean, we. We. We didn't do anything. That was terrible. But, I mean, if we. If I had gotten smashed at a party at age 15, I could have called either one of my parents and say, hey, I'm super drunk. You know, I kind of. I kind of messed up here. Can you come pick me up? And they would have come pick me up with no question. And then. And then, of course, they would have said, hey, what happened? You know, we told you not to do that. We kind of agreed that you wouldn't. But in the moment, they would have come and picked me up, taking care of me. And then we would have discussed, figured out what went wrong. I can't say they wouldn't have been mad, but it wouldn't have been like, hey, you got to go to jail or you're going to be punished. It would have been like, hey, what's going on, man? Like, let's figure this out.
- [31:19]
B
Wow, that's. Yeah, that's. Well, okay. That explains a lot about. Well, you are who you are. So when you're a kid, what was your plan? Like, when I grow up, I want to be a.
- [31:32]
A
Well, it's stupid, I think, but I'm not sure. We. We just loved film, and we had this. My brother and I had this idea that we were going to become, you know, filmmakers and, you know, loved all of those science fiction movies. Big fans of Star wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark and all this stuff that was coming out in the early 80s. And so we, like, that was, that was the idea that we would be in the creative arts and in a place where we could explore. And the place that we could think about was not medicine or engineering. We were more like, you know, hey, what's super fun and cool when you're 12 years old or 8 years old or whatever? It's like, you know, Hollywood was pretty like that was the idea.
- [32:19]
B
So what, what led you to psychology? Was there a, a point to where you got attracted to that for some reason? Or how did you end up in that? And, and my, probably my first question is, when you went to college, did you go there to study psychology or did you change majors and get a new idea? What, what was the story there?
- [32:39]
A
So I, when I dec, my major that I declared was philosophy, and I went to the University of California, Santa Cruz and started out as a philosophy major and, and, and did not immediately pursue any science. And you know, this might be something we want to talk about too, but the reason why is because I was like, I can't do that. I can't, that's too hard. I can't do math. I'm not, I'm not good at that. And you know, when I was a, a freshman in college, I'm doing philosophy and super interested in science stuff, but just had this chip on my shoulder, right? I don't know, this, this false concept, I can't do that. It's too hard. And I said, you know, I'm just gonna get the math out of the way so I don't have to do math because I'm not good at math. And I took a statistics class. And I mean, I, I, I aced it so, so easily. I mean, I, I A plus it. And I was just like, huh, let me reframe that idea. Maybe I'm not bad at math. And then walking down that path going, why did I ever think I wasn't good at math? This is actually, I'm kind of, I'm not bad at math. You just have, it's hard and you have to think about it in practice. But, but I'm not inherently bad at it. And so kind of at that, maybe around that moment I started exploring some of the science classes and saying, I mean, if I can do all the science stuff, then my options aren't limited as I had imposed a limit. And I said, I'm really interested in psychiatry and neuroscience, and if these barriers aren't really barriers, maybe I could go there. And so I ended up getting the a degree in philosophy and also neuroscience.
- [34:39]
B
Tell me what was your. Where did the interest in, in psychiatry and neuroscience come from?
- [34:45]
A
I don't know. That's hard. I mean, if I jump, if I fast forward or to when I chose to go into psychiatry, then I can tell you about a moment that made sense to me, but I'm not sure where. What the. I'm not sure what the root is. I mean, I think, I think I love the human experience, and I just think it's so cool. I want to study it. But so from university, then choosing to go into medicine again, having to remove that kind of concept, well, I'm not smart enough, I'm not good enough to do this, all that stuff. And you just, like, that's. You have to at some point just say, that's hogwash. Let's go for it. I'm gonna try it. And then you go to medical school and study anatomy and physiology and all this stuff. Where did you go to medical school in New York? I went to New York Medical College for, for medical school. And, and
- [35:48]
B
why then?
- [35:50]
A
Because that's where I got in. That's where I get accepted.
- [35:53]
B
I was going to say because you went from one coast to the other coast. I was wondering why the big trip.
- [35:58]
A
Yeah, I mean, medical school is medical. It's hard to get into medical school. And so if you get in, you just, you're stoked and you go, you go where you get in. I think some students have bigger choices. They can go, oh, I can go to Harvard or UCLA or whatever I want to do. I got it. I got. That's where I got in, and that's where I went. And, you know, it was an. It's, it's the opportunity, it's the stepping stone to get to everything for me. But there's a point there, you know, where you have to choose which residency you're going to go into. And, you know, of course, I've got my degree in philosophy, I've got my degree in, in the neurosciences, and that's my fascination. So it's, it kind of makes sense that psychiatry would be a direction I'd go. But. But medicine is lifelong learning and lifelong practicing. Right? And so if you're picking a field, and you're picking a field where, you know, I don't, I don't know if you're, you're going into dermatology, you have to realize that, you know, you're going to be studying skin. Like that's what you're going to study, and that's what you're going to think About. And that's what you're going to read journal articles about. And. And then that's what you can, in fact, do. You're going to look at skin and do biopsies and this sort of thing, and you'll actually love this work because. I know, I know. I know you, and you love storytelling. I was in a pediatrics lecture and in my pediatrics rotation, and I really love pediatrics. And, you know, I was thinking, it's really cool. I like being around the kids, and it's. They're fun and I. Learning about their development and this sort of thing. And I. It's. It's truly an honor to heal kids, right? I mean, that's. That's a pretty cool thing. I was thinking maybe pediatrics, I don't know. And the guy did a lecture, and he was a nephrologist, so he studied, you know, disease of the kidney. And he was senior. He's almost. I think he might have been an emeritus professor. And he was talking about his career of academia, and it was. It was all about kidney disease. And he had published, you know, a gazillion articles on kidney disease, and all of it was based on samples that he took. And he was going through this, you know, the different urinalysis and all this stuff, and it. It just popped into my head. I'm like, I mean, this guy's done wonderful work and he's super cool, but he has spent a lifetime studying P. He studies P. That's what he thinks about P. He's got pee all over him. He writes journal articles about pee. He goes to conferences about pee.
- [38:38]
B
And maybe when he was a little boy, maybe he was the little boy that smelled like pee. You know, there's that one. When you're a kid, there's that one kid that always smells like pee, right?
- [38:45]
A
And again, it's not to say something negative about this guy because his contribution's amazing. We need to. We need to fight diseases of the kidney, right? And I mean, his contribution is amazing. And I thought. But I thought to myself, for my lifelong learning, I. I don't think I want it to be a hard science. I think I want it to be a. Like, about the human experience, about human emotion, you know, about the human brain. Like, that's what I care about, and that's what I want to spend my life thinking about, practicing, studying. And that's the kinds. That's the kind of, you know, disease or deficit state that I want to participate in, in. In healing. And it was. I mean, it Wasn't like during that lecture, my light went off. But it was a little bit of an epiphany where I said, no, I think I'm on the right track to go towards psych. And no regrets. No regrets. It's the, the journey has been amazing.
- [39:45]
B
So tell me, at what point during medical school do you actually decide on that?
- [39:52]
A
Yeah, so, so, so during, so medical school is a four year process and at the end of the third year you're basically deciding what you are going to apply for in terms of a residency, which is the four years that comes after medical school. And so you've done your clerkships in the different basic rotations, surgery, abstentions, gynecology, internal medicine, psych, all of these things. And then you, you kind of say, well I'm, I'm putting it out there, I'm going to, I'm going to apply to orthopedic surgery programs. And then during the fourth year you have your interviews and then you have the match day. And the match day is that if you don't know what the match is,
- [40:35]
B
it's a terrible matches.
- [40:36]
A
Oh gosh, the match is a terrible anxiety provoking thing for all medical students. What happens is you apply to 10 residency programs, you get interviews at six of them, you apply to them and then you rank where you want to go. Great. Right? Well, they rank who they want and then it goes into some algorithm and it spits out where you're going, where your match is, where your match is. And they, so you might not match, meaning you don't have a job after medical school or you might match it. Any of the ones that you have ranked. Right. And so some people apply to 15 programs, right. They get 12 interviews and they rank them and they don't know where they're going to go until match day. And they kind of like hand you the magic ticket and it says where you're going. And so, so I, so I ranked Stanford as my first choice and it turns out they ranked me highly because I ended up going to Stanford.
- [41:49]
B
Really? Yeah, that I was, I was thinking there was going to be a story to get to Stanford, but you went from there to Stanford, that's cool.
- [41:57]
A
I was stoked in fact. And I was out in, in the northern part of Australia when I found this out. I, it was back in the days when we used to have the Internet cafes.
- [42:13]
B
Huh.
- [42:13]
A
And so they, I, you know, because my friend and I, he was also a medical student, we, we're doing a rotation in, in Australia and, and we went on walkabout. So we were up in, somewhere up in the north and, and we were so nervous and we had to get our match results from the computer and so we, we couldn't stand to do it next to each other. So we actually went to two separate Internet cafes and learned where we were matched. And, and we, it turned out that we both got our first choice. So we came back out and we're like, you doing you good? And we had both gotten our first choice. So we pure stokage.
- [42:55]
B
I was gonna say that would be a cool moment. Like, it was great, you know, because you've been thinking about that for a long time.
- [43:02]
A
Yeah. And Stanford was a great, Stanford was a great match for me because it, it's a very progressive and innovative program and there's amazing progress being made there in all of these different areas, psychiatry and, and medicine in general. But I mean some, some of the stuff that comes out of Stanford's amazing, amazing stuff. And you know, it's great to be there and observe it and participate in it.
- [43:36]
B
So what year was that that you went there?
- [43:41]
A
2001. Oh, wow.
- [43:44]
B
So you've been there quarter of a century.
- [43:46]
A
That's right. Been there for a while.
- [43:48]
B
Really? So what when you first went there, what were you doing when you first went there?
- [43:53]
A
Well, when you. So a psychiatry residency begins with a mix of inpatient psychiatry, so like people are very mentally ill or have to be committed, and a mix of internal medicine. So you're rounding and doing the hospital, the, you know, the regular hospital. And then we also do some neurology, some, some experience because psychiatrists, you know, it's very brain based. And so the first year is called the internship. And it's. And this is back in the day when they didn't have a limit on the number of hours that residents can spend in the hospital. So it was, you know, very busy, lots of work, but, you know, amazing experience if, you know a learning curve is exponential.
- [44:42]
B
I was going to ask him. So I'm not a Grey's Anatomy watcher, but my wife is a Grey's Anatomy watcher. I think she's all. She's seen all 272 seasons of it or how many there is. But I have, you know, she usually watch. I travel a lot, so she watches that when I'm not here, but sometimes she's watching it when I am here and I peek in there every once in a while. And it seems like when you're a resident, like, it's, like it's a. You're working all the time like there is nothing. You don't have another life?
- [45:11]
A
No, not at all. No.
- [45:12]
B
Is that what it's like?
- [45:14]
A
That is what it's, yeah, no, there, yeah, you are, you're in the hospital continuously. Well, I mean it's changed a little bit now because there's limits to, there's, there's laws that limit the number of hours that, that doctors can spend in the hospital per week and that, what
- [45:33]
B
is that, what is that number now?
- [45:35]
A
Yeah, the number now is 80.
- [45:38]
B
So yeah, two 40 hour weeks is the limit now. Which means you're telling me before it was limited to 80 more than 80 was probably normal. Was it for sure?
- [45:51]
A
I, I think that, so we, I think it, I think my, because we can't, we can't, we kind of time it sometimes just to see how many hours, you know, like we didn't have a punch in, punch out, but kind of like, okay, or go back in time and say when did I get to the hospital? When I leave? I think, I think 110 was my, was my highest number and I don't know how many hours there are in a week, but I spent 110 hours, one week in the hospital. And to be fair, that counts the overnights, right? So some of that might have been actually sleeping in the hospital, but, you know, most of it was working.
- [46:27]
B
Yep. Wowzers. Okay, so what was your, what was your, your rise to, you know, professor of psychiatry at Stanford? What was, what was the next bit after your residency?
- [46:41]
A
Yeah, so, so during residency, I, I, it was a moment for me to excel. I, I, I did very well there. In medical education, there's a, you know, they sort of go through an hourglass of, you know, where the selection is really about how, what your, what is your iq, how smart are you? How, how fast can you learn a lot of information, process it and then be examined on it? Right. And I'm talking about molecular biology and anatomy and just, you know, how fast can you memorize where every nerve and goes and that that's the selection or that's the, the thing that people are excelling in during the beginning. Then you go through that into your clinical experience and then it really IQ transforms into IQ plus eq. Right. So how good are you with patients? How effective are you, you know, in interpersonally with, you know, other professionals and also with, with, with patients? And then of course, Warwick, you get it. I mean, I went into psychiatry and so the EQ part, just like you just, you have to have that and, and I really love working with people. I love talking to people. It's. It. It. It's where I find flow. And so, so throughout. I think throughout the residency, I was not. I. I liked it. I liked working all those hours. I liked the learning, but I just loved all of this flow that I could have. And I was a chief resident in during my fourth year, where it means the kind of the resident that oversees the other residents. And then I got accepted on as. As faculty, as junior faculty. Right out of residency, I became junior faculty at Stanford. And again, the place is so progressive and cool. You know, maybe much like my parents, I don't know, I never, never thought of this, but until right this moment. But, you know, the chairman at the time was kind of like, yeah, you got these cool ideas about working with these underserved populations. I mean, go ahead. And you're, you know, you're free to explore that a little bit and. And go out there and. And see what. What you can do instead of a chairman who might have said, no, you've got to do it. You've got to do this. You know, like, this is what we do here, and you're going to do it. Uh, that was.
- [49:15]
B
Can I ask what you. What drew you to those populations? I mean, there was a lot of ways you could have gone right there. So what drew you to those populations?
- [49:22]
A
I think, you know, I think that's great question work, and thanks for that. I. I think early on, I mean, you know, part of a fascination with. With the human mind is. Is not just interpersonal relationships and conversations that you might have in your hometown. It's kind of like, well, what are the limits with the human mind? And then you start thinking about other cultures and other languages and other realities. And so. So during residency, I actually started working at a refugee clinic and just kind of blowing my mind of going, oh, my God. You know, we're learning in. In. In an American residency where we're seeing mostly Californian people and using the American Psychiatric Association's definitions of what mental disorders are. And then you start seeing Cambodian people, and you're like, holy. Sorry, I don't know if I can cuss on your show.
- [50:20]
B
You can cuss away.
- [50:21]
A
Okay.
- [50:22]
B
Yeah, we let all the Stanford professors of psychiatry cuss on my podcast.
- [50:28]
A
That's awesome. I'm so glad. But you, you, you, you, you go. And so I was working at the national center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder at the VA through the Residency program.
- [50:41]
B
And then for people not in America, the VA is Veterans Affairs, Veterans affairs,
- [50:45]
A
yeah, and so, so all these guys that had been, you know, at, at that time, it was, they were Vietnam veterans and veterans of other wars and they had come there for treatment of their post traumatic stress disorder. And in the meantime, I've got this side gig for money where I'm seeing Cambodian survivors of the Pol Pot genocide. And I'm, I'm looking at these two populations and how fascinating it is that they have so many similarities, but maybe more interesting the differences between, you know, an American English speaking group and a Khmer speaking Cambodian population. And that was it work like. Yeah, that was it. I was like, this is amazing. This is just amazing to, to be fascinated by the human mind, be fascinated by the human experience and human interactions and then see it's not limited to English speaking, you know, folks that are, that are culturally similar to me. There's a whole world out there. And in, in some ways it's, it's not described necessarily like, you know, like outcomes or psychological phenomena. I mean, most of what we understand, most of what we learn in, in our psycho psychology classes are based on a specific western sample. And then you say, well, what about the rest of the world? It's amazing.
- [52:20]
B
Yeah, you kind of study first world problems.
- [52:23]
A
First world problems. Yeah, I mean there's a, it's, it's, it's well known that there's a huge bias. And so you kind of say, well if, can we really say that these things are true generally when all we've looked at is this population? And, and you know what, that's why, that's one of the reasons. So I, my chairman now is Laura Roberts. She's, she's an amazing person. Laura, if you're listening to this, I think you're amazing. Laura Roberts is somebody who, you know, cares about ethics in, in, in healthcare. She and I wrote a textbook about medical ethics together. Amazing person. But she really let me expand the stuff that I started under Alan Chatsburg and she was fascinated. She just said, well, what are you doing out there? You know, working with these survivors of war crimes? I mean, let's do that. And so, so, so sometime later, basically she said, well, our residents are just seeing, you know, people that are coming to Stanford or coming to the va. I mean, I mean that's a very particular population. People that live in Palo Alto and are coming to Stanford Clinic. Right. I mean that's a pretty narrow group. So she loves it, being able to send the residents down for training where they're seeing people from all over the world in these different language groups. And these different cultural backgrounds and I think importantly, too, for the work that I care about in the human rights side from situations that maybe Stanford residents don't even know about. I mean, I don't know how many Stanford residents come to my clinic with full knowledge of the Cambodian genocide. Most of them have never heard of it. And then they're seeing firsthand.
- [54:06]
B
Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask you when you first were at this. So these were. These were refugees from the Pol Pot genocide? Initially.
- [54:19]
A
Yeah.
- [54:20]
B
How much did you know about before you met this group of people? How much did you know about that? Because it really wasn't. I mean. Yeah, it's in the news. It's a little snippet. And the thing over there. This happened somewhere. Yeah, whatever.
- [54:32]
A
Yeah.
- [54:34]
B
So did you not know much about it?
- [54:36]
A
Great. That's a great point. I didn't know anything about it. I mean, I didn't know anything. I knew that there was a film called the Killing Fields that I didn't see. You know, that was about some terrible thing that happened in Asia, but I, I really didn't know anything about it. And I mean, immediately had to deep dive. I'm just like, well, I mean, if this is my patient population, these are the people I serve. I need to understand the history of what happened to these folks. Right. And. But to your point, didn't know anything about it. And, and now, Warwick, right, we have the center for Survivors and we get people from all over the world and many of them are coming from situations that, you know, now with all the, with all the education that I pursued and all the, look, looking around and finding facts on my own, you know, I know a lot about the different situations that they're coming over with. I mean, we have folks from, from Ukraine that are, that have come over here. We have folks, you know, from, from problems in the world that we see on the news on a regular basis. But we also have folks that come over and they, you know, they come over from a conflict that I've never even heard of, right. And it behooves me to learn about that and know about it, right. So that I can serve these folks. But the first one, you're right, the first ones, the Cambodians and I, well, how could I do more of a deep dive than dove all the way in and end up, right, writing an expert report for the court in pen. On pen, Right. I mean, sort of made myself a semi expert on. On the issue and. Well, I mean, technically, I guess I am an expert at. According to the Khmer Rouge tribunal. I was one of the, on the panel of experts. But when I walked in and started seeing these patients, I didn't know anything. I knew what American PTSD was, was called, how it was defined and how it tended to present among veterans. And then you see the same trauma. Well, different trauma, but the same effect of trauma on the human mind.
- [56:57]
B
Do you feel. It's just come to me, I've never thought it before. Do you feel that it's different in the fact that everybody you would have worked with at the VA, they were in active duty and there was an enemy from somewhere else? Do you feel it affected these people differently? Basically being persecuted by their own, their own people? Do you feel like that that adds another layer to it, like a feeling of betrayal as well as every other freaking thing that happened to him?
- [57:36]
A
Yeah, so, so I don't, I'll, I'll be cautious not to launch off on, you know, my whole theory of trauma. Unless you want to hear it.
- [57:47]
B
Hey, we'd love to hear it.
- [57:50]
A
Well, I'll start with. So try, I'll try to get to your question. I mean, I, I, you know, trauma and stress affects brains and, and we're, we're a lot more similar than we are different gender, culture, all that we are mammal brains are, are pretty similar. And the way that trauma affects a mammal's brain seems to be pretty consistent in many ways. Having said that, the answer to your question is yes. I mean it also, there's all kinds of factors. I mean there were civilians are different than Veter warriors, whatever. The, the expectation is different between a, a, you know, a young 20 year old army person compared to a 60 year old rice farmer. Right. So they're, the psychology is often different. Right. In other words, like what they think, how they process it, how they justify it, how they overcome that trauma that happened to them. Whether it seemed like it was just or unjust or these sorts of things have, they have a lot of psychological factors. But, but the hard hit to the brain that trauma can cause seems to result in something that is much like what the, the American definition of PTSD is. And my experience is that some of the, some of the hallmark symptoms stand up from one culture to the other, from one gender to the other. All of this because of the brain. It's. The, the brain has changed because of the trauma and then the outcome is, is similar. And so it's, it's, it's almost seems like it's by accident that it happen, happens that the American Psychiatric Association Described it correctly because they're looking at a pretty narrow sample. But what happened in those brains happened in all these other brains. And if I'm going out on a crazy limb, I mean, just use your own intuition and look at a horse that's been traumatized or a dog that's been beaten too much. Right. I mean, you're a person that spends time with other animals. I mean, mammal brains are pretty similar, and stress and trauma has specific effects on them. Um, so, yeah, I mean, there's, you know, going from the, the national center for PTSD to a refugee clinic, you're like, wow, they all have nightmares. They all have this terrible insomnia. They all have this hyper vigilance where they're kind of ready to, ready for the next thing to happen. And you say, it's so fascinating, but at the same time you're like, it's not that fascinating. It's because they're all people.
- [60:43]
B
Right, so can you tell us about your experience with the, the, you know, being an expert, I think you're an expert witness in the Khmer Rouge trials and how. Something else I want to know is how long after it had actually happened were the trials and who was on trial.
- [61:05]
A
So that, yeah, so it's called the extraordinary chambers. And it, it's extraordinary for a lot of reasons. I mean, it's extraordinary because it happened in Cambodia as a tribunal of, supported by the International Criminal Court, but it happened not in the Hague but in Pen on Pen. The alleged crimes that we can all count, we can call them now crimes because they've been convictions. Those crimes happened in the, in the late 1970s. So we're talking about Pol Pot's invasion in 1975 and then the horrors that happen after that. Right. And so, so the Khmer Rouge tribunal started in like 2000 and 2008. I, I have to fact check that, but it's, it's decades later.
- [61:59]
B
Right, so the Camille Rouge, were they like Pol Pot's.
- [62:05]
A
Yeah.
- [62:06]
B
Secret police, militia force? Sort of.
- [62:08]
A
Khmer Rouge is. Khmer Rouge means, basically means communist Cambodia. It red, red, red Cambodians. And, and that, that was. Pol Pot was the leader of that movement. And they committed terrible, terrible crimes. And then, I mean, after more decades of violence and political instability, they, they, you know, they, There was impunity. I mean, nothing happened to him. And one of the people that actually ended up being the, she ended up being the co director of my program at Stanford, Beth Von Scog joined with the Yale Genocide Project and, and, and, and very much described the exact nature of the crimes and pinned it to certain individuals. And then the documentation center of Cambodia with this guy Yoke Chang, who's who documented all these crimes and became a reservoir of information. You know, they, they actually had a book, and it was curiously titled seven candidates for prosecution. Not, not for nothing work, but here's a book that tells you exactly who did it, what they did, and here's all the evidence. You can do with it what you like. And, and so they just had this mountain of evidence and it became so obnoxious really that there was impunity, that finally there was a political movement and some will toward, let's actually challenge these crimes. And those guys, I gotta say they did, they thought they were gonna live the rest of their life, you know, free and well and rich and just doing fine. And I think they were shocked when they got arrested and they just didn't believe it was going to happen. And it happened.
- [64:15]
B
I just looked up Kimmy Rouge. So it says between 1975 and 1979, they killed an estimated 1 1/2 to 2 million people.
- [64:26]
A
That's right.
- [64:27]
B
In, in a country that small, I
- [64:31]
A
think the total population is about five and a half or six million people.
- [64:37]
B
So a third of the population.
- [64:40]
A
Yeah. Right. And so here's the thing, right, is, is you're looking at that statistic and it tells you how many people were murdered. What it doesn't tell you is how many of the people that lived have a mental health outcome or a unwanted psychiatric or psychological results. Right. And so that's the piece that we filled in that my group described and presented for the, for the tribunal is well, what about the survivors? We, we know you guys have got them. You've got the debt, you've got the bones, you've got the skulls. We know how many people died and that, that's super important. Obviously those are murders. Right? But what we don't have is of those people that witnessed that, that, you know, that, that lost loved ones that went through that, how many of those people are, are also damaged by it? Just because they aren't dead or they don't have a bullet in their skull or whatever, they are damaged. And so we, we published those books, a book series called Cambodia's Hidden Scars that, that captured that element. Captured. So, so what, so what happens? Well, this is what happens. And we described post traumatic stress disorder. Looked at, you know, statistically, you know, how many folks have it and you know, folks that don't have necessarily ptsd. How many of them have some unwanted outcome and what does that look like, I mean, how many people that go through that are psychologically 100% well and at the top of their game? Well, it's going to be, it's going to be pretty difficult to not have been scathed right by, by such an event. And that was the first one work with. I mean, this is, this is, that's how we started, right? And, and so in about 2000, I can tell you the day, the date is 2014, it was after we had had some success describing this in the Khmer Rouge Tribunal and where in the judgment, they actually talked about the work that we did. They said, well, look, yeah, you murdered all these people, but we've also learned about the outcomes of the people that you didn't murder, but you almost murdered or you tortured or whatever you did. And that's grave. And so, so that can push the sentencing and sort of say, well, you know, instead of getting 30 years in prison or whatever, you guys should have life and sentence or what, whatever element the prosecutors are going after. And you and I, we can talk about justice and all that kind of thing if you want to. But I think more importantly, what happened is they said in the reparations, though, we need to attend to the survivors. And so they literally awarded dollars for mental health treatment. And so that was where our project, our Stanford project said, well, great. We described this. Great. Oh, we got a bunch of publications about it. Great. The prosecutor, you know, used it in the case. But all of that is minor compared to the court is awarding money to treat people. So because of this transitional justice project, they're actually going to pay attention to people with post traumatic stress disorder and build mental health programs and other psychological acknowledgments. I mean, honestly, even I think they have, they, they created like a, like, like a day, like a holiday that, where, you know, where, where they mourn. I mean, that, that has a huge psychological impact, even though it's technically not whatever psychiatry. I mean, the, the, the fact that our documentation influenced, you know, that consideration, and then that was handed down in judgment. And that's also sort of the moment where, where we sort of, where I, as a physician who does public health stuff, I sort of said, well, gosh, when I, when we started all this and had conversations with the Minister of Health, and the Minister of Health said, yeah, you know, I know we have lots of, we have lots of trauma stuff here, but we don't have any money. He and I could have talked all day about agreeing about what you could do if you only had resources. But having the court say, here's money was so much more impactful probably than just about anything else I could have done there.
- [69:18]
B
Right. Did you guys influence the work they did afterwards as far as, like, did you give them like a framework of how to help these people or did they have that under control themselves?
- [69:36]
A
That's a great point. Work that our lab has taken into consideration, I think wisely and continued. And that is, you know, we usually meet the, the local providers, the local psychiatrists, the local mental health people. And you know, I'm not a Cambodian person, I don't speak Khmer. I don't know the cultural nuances. In order to practice good psychiatry, I think you need to know all those things. I also don't really know the system necessarily, but, but, you know, we, it's, it's, it's not the case at all that the Stanford people know something more than they do. In fact, we know less than they do. Right. And so our, our work is always toward the promotion of public health and not necessarily the implementation of the mental health. I, I wouldn't, I wouldn't go there and say, well, everyone here has to get whatever, a therapist and, and take Prozac. What I do is, I, I would say what you, what this talented workforce needs is resources, and usually that's money and, and political support.
- [70:50]
B
Yeah.
- [70:51]
A
And if we're able to shift things so that, that happens, like, that's, that's our win.
- [70:57]
B
What's the, what's the religion there? Is there a major religion?
- [71:00]
A
Yeah. Buddhism.
- [71:02]
B
They're Buddhists. Okay.
- [71:03]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [71:05]
B
How do you feel or do you feel at all that that has an effect on, you know, let's say they've all had near death experiences and I feel like the Buddhist view of death and you know, the Catholic view of whatever, they're slightly different. Do you, do you feel the, the underlying, that the religion there has any effect, either good or bad, on the repercussions of the trauma?
- [71:42]
A
I, I'm gonna, I'm gonna cheat and answer a slightly different question and. Okay, if you, if you don't mind, bring me back to that question because that's a great question. Also.
- [71:52]
B
I don't know if there's an answer to it. I just, I just know.
- [71:54]
A
Well, the answer is yes. The answer is absolutely yes. And it's really, really interesting because I, I don't know that there's like, like, like one monk who says this is the way it is, and then everybody else believes it's more like people have interpreted the karma cycle in different ways around what it means for them to have gone through this. But I'll, I'll get back to that. And I'll first say, you know, the. At first glance, the first time I went to Cambodia, I mean, I was saying, like, how is it possible that you really only have about 20 psychiatrists in the whole country and you have all this psychiatric need? What. Where do people go? And they're like, well, I mean, they go to the temple, obviously. Why would they go to a psychiatrist? They go to the monk. And this little journey of exploration where you go, well, I wonder what that's like, you know, um, and by the way, that's an important element. Instead of saying, well, that's stupid or that's not going to work, you say, I wonder what that's like, Or I wonder, you know, like, let me learn more about that. And as you might imagine, like, some of the Buddhist prayers, meditations, some of the Buddhist methods actually are. Are perfect for the treatment of post traumatic stress disorder or other. Some other psychiatric disorders, but especially anxiety. And so, you know, so we did this journey, part of learning about the mental health, public mental health, was learning how the public mental health is intertwined with the system of temples that are all over the country. And yeah, if I can't sleep at night because of something terrible that happened to me in the past, why would I think I need to get a pill from a white doctor? Right? I mean, what I think I need is to go to the monk, because he knows everything. And then you go there and he actually has some pretty decent solutions like mindful meditation and other. Other concepts. And so, so we learned that that was the method there. We learn, you know, like, what that looks like and why that's such an important public health thing, because there's lots and lots and lots of Buddhism. There's not a lot of health care. And I said to my team back at home, I said, I mean, that's pretty cool, but, you know, if only we had a monk in, back here in California, we could do the same thing here. And they said, well, why don't we introduce you to the guys at the temple and you can pitch your idea. And Warwick, that is a whole story that you're going to love. You want to hear it?
- [74:37]
B
Hell, yeah. Is this like the Buddhist center in San Jose or something? Is it?
- [74:40]
A
Yeah, it's the. So it's. There's. There's a Khmer temples then in San Jose and one, you know, one of the. My translator slash mental Health professionals was on the board of directors for that non profit, right? So, so she said, well, let's, let's introduce you to the monk because maybe we could have some kind of a collaboration between our trauma clinic in, you know, and in the community center. And I went there and I said, man, you know, it'd be, it'd be super great if we could do something like what they do in Cambodia where I could, you know, kind of send some of my patients and they could work out with, you know, doing some of the mindful meditation stuff that you do. And he said, well, really? So, well, you know, come back next week, we'll talk about it. So I came back the next week and he said, let's go out here in front of the big golden Buddha and, and he said, you know, just get in the lotus position and you know, like relax. And he took me through this meditation, right? I'm going to spend a half hour hour meditating together. And then at the end of that, I said, okay, well let's talk about the project. I said, next week, come back next week. So I said, I'm not sure, I think, I think, I'm not sure how this is going to go, but let me, I'll take the bait. I went and meditated with that guy for three different times before he actually would sit down with me and sort of say, okay, seems like you're serious, let me hear your proposition, but come back next week. I ended up meditating with this guy for about a year. And I said to him, why did you have me come back and do this? And he said, well, if you're going to prescribe it to your patients, you probably should know what it is. And, and he said, and what's it like? How is it? And, and I said, it's, it, it's makes perfect sense to me. But only because I did it, only because I had the experience. And he said, well, that was kind of the point, right? And so, but, and that was a really cool experience because I, I learned about a resource and I also learned a lot about the, the patient population. And, and then moreover, we did and still do have this collaboration with that temple where we, we, we send patients there for religion, but also for what I would call behavioral therapy. I mean, they're, they're basically getting some mindfulness treatment and it works. And then, and then they know us. So like, sometimes they'll see somebody who's a pr, you know, practitioner, and they'll say, this person probably needs to see Dr. Richter. And, and Talk about, you know, some Western treatment as well.
- [77:32]
B
Had you had much meditation practice before that?
- [77:36]
A
No, that was my intro, that was my introduction.
- [77:39]
B
Was, was really so sitting in Lotus Position for an hour?
- [77:43]
A
Pretty much, yeah. I went from zero to hitting the ground running.
- [77:49]
B
And how was that experience?
- [77:50]
A
But before I, before I go on to answer that question, I do want to say like the, this whole thing that I've described In the last 20 minutes about, you know, the Cambodian experience it in around, about 10 years ago. So 12 years ago. Exactly. We, we took this concept and said this seems like it's applicable in not just this one place but in many places. And so we, we, we went to the prosecution office at the International Criminal Court and they already had heard about what we'd done in Cambodia and they said this makes sense for so many of our cases. And that was really the, that was really the second quantum leap was when they sort of said, well we get what you did in Cambodia, you know, what about Central African Republic? Right. What about these other cases that we're looking at? What about Uganda? Like, does the same thing apply? And the answer, it turns out, is yes, because we've now done that. We've replicated the same concept in multiple different real time international cases where you're able to show the exact, not exact, but you know, the, the same concept and win the support of public health and maybe more importantly the political will of where money is diverted. And that's the big win. That's, that's really the big win is when you can get public health funds put into trauma, mental health so that those folks actually get treatment.
- [79:31]
B
Right.
- [79:31]
A
And I'm sorry, I did interrupt you work. I think you were going on to my personal meditation journey. I'm not sure.
- [79:39]
B
Yeah, I was going to ask you how it was sitting with the monk in Lotus Position for half an hour or an hour when you've never, when you've never meditated before. What was that experience like?
- [79:50]
A
Well, I, I think I was a bit of a natural, you know, I, I think at first was intimidated and you know, sort of thought of it as, oh, this is a bit exotic, right, Because I'm in a temple and you know, and here I am with this guy who's wearing the saffron robe and all this and I, I kind of got over that pretty quickly. And just this, these are the two, two men, you know, contemplating and meditating together, you know, became very natural. I, I didn't have that frantic moment that a lot of people have when they first start meditating where they're like, oh, my thoughts are everywhere.
- [80:36]
B
Right. Your brain's going, your mind's going crazy.
- [80:39]
A
I was, I was, I was pretty capable meditator at first. I, I've got to say I think I became a worse one later and then kind of maybe came back to it.
- [80:50]
B
It's the Dunning Kruger effect.
- [80:52]
A
I, Yeah, I mean, I mean I, maybe it's just the way that my life was or the way that other stressors or other events were, were, but I was able to, I was able to get with it pretty fast with, with my first go round and then I think it took me some time and only just now in my life am I sort of getting back to being a decent meditator and being able to do that.
- [81:18]
B
So you have a current, heavily, currently have a meditation practice?
- [81:22]
A
Yeah, I'm developing, I'm developing one for sure. In fact, you and I, you and I have got to go to that, that retreat that Nadia talked about. We gotta, we gotta go check that out.
- [81:39]
B
Yes. So where Darren and I met, where we met, we met this other lady too, and she had been to a meditation retreat where they. You definitely go into an altered state of consciousness and she was telling us all about it. So we've kind of been talking about that since. But back to Darren here. So you said the Internet, you, you were consulting or something with the international tribunal, was that in the Hague?
- [82:09]
A
Yeah, yeah.
- [82:10]
B
So, so they, so you've worked on ISIS stuff. Did you, did you end up doing any stuff with, in the end of that place in Africa?
- [82:24]
A
So we did, we wrote a, we. I wrote an expert report in two different cases that were regarding the human rights violations in Central African Republic. And I wrote an expert report for the, the case against the Lord's Resistance army in Uganda. And in two of those cases I actually testified. And in, in all three cases, the expert report court was accepted as expert evidence. And it's actually interesting because the court process takes so long sometimes it's frustrating almost. You do your testimony and then you hear about some outcome at the end. And I mean, it was years later that I learned that part of the reparations ended up doing the same thing it did in Cambodia where it influenced public health. Money, money was diverted, money was given. And, and the reason I talk about money each time is because that like people can make a gesture and say, yeah, people suffered and that's terrible. Or they can say they really ought to get treatment. But I mean when there's a, a real money source that actually pays for programming. That's what, that's what counts. And so, so through the Hague, we did three different cases and, and had some good outcomes. But also, you know, there's a, there's a, a pretty close network of the folks that actually do this work, the attorneys that do the, these kinds of cases. And you know, through the work in Cambodia and especially through the work in the Hague, sort of the meeting these different, creating these different opportunities. So, you know, I met, I met Karim Khan in the, in the ha. And then went on to work with him in the investigation of isis, you know, mostly because he was aware of. So he's a, he's, he was a prosecutor and then also a defense attorney in some of these big criminal cases. And then he became the, you know, the director of the ISIS program, whatever the investigation of isis. And then he later became the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court. But the point there is the influence, right? Somebody who can pick up on it and say, well, that's really interesting that you guys do that. I'm about to go and do an investigation, and I'm not really sure that we're going to need testimony because we're at investigation phase. We're not in a prosecution. But there's so much trauma in Iraq. Surely this psychiatrist who knows all about it can, can offer something. And then, you know, in, in consultation with him sort of saying, yeah, I mean, you really got to train your investigators to know what they're about to see, because they're about to see things that I won't say on your show. Right. I mean, they're about to see some stuff that you, you couldn't even invent it if you thought, you know, thought about them when in. And, and they're going to see people that have been through that and somehow they're supposed to extract, you know, testimony or information to learn about these crimes. They better know what post traumatic stress disorder is and they better know how to manage someone who's really dealing with it, because they're about to. That's all they're going to do for five years is be seeing people that have been exposed to trauma. Right. So he used our talent set in a slightly different way. We did collect a lot of data that we put into an expert report, but there's not even a tribunal. You know, there's no, there's no arrests. They, they have all that information. They have plenty of information so that they could have a justice process. But there's, there's never even been an arrest warrant. But our project was able to help the folks that were actually witnesses get into treatment. We were able to help them get better information, better data. We did collect a lot of information information about it. And the other byproduct of the, the investigation of ISIS was that our team actually worked with the local people and was able to bolster their public health approach and actually advocate for some diversion again of money to treat post traumatic stress disorder. And getting Baghdad to realize that they need to put money into mental health is not an easy task. And yet the facts are so overwhelming that that's, that is in fact what happened.
- [87:27]
B
You mentioned the Lord's Resistance army before. Did you have anything to do with that?
- [87:33]
A
Yeah, I testified in that case.
- [87:37]
B
So I got a question about. Not so much about.
- [87:41]
A
And so just to be clear that that's, that's Dominic Angouen. That's not the Kony is, is at large or, or, or gone. But Dominic Ongguan was captured and he was tried, he was tried.
- [87:53]
B
Okay.
- [87:53]
A
He was the, whatever, the Brigadier General. So he is second in command. The guy that, the guy that was
- [87:58]
B
the, the Coney guy or whatever his
- [88:00]
A
name was, he was never found.
- [88:02]
B
Right. So you think about, there's all these survivors of that. What do you know about the child soldiers? Because like they're almost, they're almost like the vixen victims as well. Do you know, do you know anything that happened? What happened there with them?
- [88:18]
A
Like, so it's, it's a curious case because Dominic Anguin actually was in fact a child soldier. He was, he was kidnapped and, and, and made a child soldier and then he be, was such a good child soldier that he became the Brigadier General of the whole thing. So what do I know about it? I mean they are, they are human rights violators, criminals and victims at the same time. Right? Yeah. I mean it's, it's unspeakable horror that you give a nine year old a machine gun and, and, and methamphetamine and tell them to do horrible things like that's, that's the state of that. Yeah, that's a pretty horrible situation. I'm not sure what comment I can make. It's, I just didn't know the worst thing. It's about the worst thing that can happen is it, is, that is what's happening.
- [89:16]
B
Right. So my question for you is being involved in all this stuff, how has it changed your, or has it. But I want to say how has it changed your perception of humanity? Like coming to grips with humans can do these sorts of things to Other humans. Does that rest heavily on your soul or, I mean, you know, how's that, how's that affect you?
- [89:46]
A
Well, I have a, I have a happy answer that I'll say after I say maybe more true answer. I think it's damaged me, man. I think I, I think, I think it caused some real problems in my life. I think, I think you're meeting me at a time where I'm coming up the other end of that. But I think it caused some real damage to my psychology and, and to my personal life because of the damage to the psychology. It's, I mean, I train on how to not get affected by secondary trauma, and yet I, I think, I mean, I don't think. I know, I know I am the product of secondary trauma. A lot of the things that have happened to me. Talk about regrets. I mean, some of the regrets come directly out of consequences of, of secondary trauma. That's that. And then you answered it. You asked me a more specific question, I think, and that is like coming to grips with that, what people can do to each other, this sort of thing. I think before I started this work, I already knew that people could do terrible things to each other and that they have for millennia. Right? I mean, I think I knew that. There are some moments where I hear about something, I'm like, that's so sick. I can't. How did someone even think of that? That's true. But in general, I think we all have an idea like that people, people can do some pretty brutal, pretty terrible things. But I, I, I, I, I will say, or the capacity for people to be creative and beautiful in a terrible situation and, and, and to create light out of darkness. I mean, that has been such an important aspect of my understanding of, of human life. That's, that's the thing that's been amazing. And I hate to use the term resilience because it, it almost suggests that people that aren't, you know, quote, unquote, resilient, somehow they're not successful. But, but yes, that, that the people that are able to kind of overcome some of the things that they have been through. There's a, there's a, there's a book called Last Girl or the Last Girl by Nadia Murad, who won the Nobel Prize. And she describes some of the things that Isis did to her. And it's, it makes for very hard reading. And I got to meet her and I'm just like, I can't believe how awesome this woman is. Like, she's, I'm going to say she's, you know, five foot two and. And, you know, and at the same time, she's the size of LeBron James. I mean, she is. She is a just a beautiful soul. And you read that book and then you meet her and you go, I can't believe the same woman who went through that is standing in front of me ready to. Ready to, you know, fight ISIS right now. So. Yeah, so. So I think that's also affected me maybe not equally, but made me really feel like in the big picture, humanity's beautiful brutality is dark, but there's more light than darkness, I think. And that's coming from someone who's seen a lot of man. I mean, like, a lot of bad stuff. The elements of humanity that you care about work and that you're tapped into, you know, how beautiful it is and outshines the darkness. That's my experience.
- [94:03]
B
You know, while you were talking there, I thought, you know, what I. I asked. Not I asked the wrong question, but I should have asked another question, too, is some of these people you've met who've been through these terrible things, I bet some of them just have this beam of light shining out of them, and you think, how the hell can you be like this after that? Yeah, it's almost totally the total opposite of the question that I asked.
- [94:27]
A
Yeah. I mean, so the. That. That woman, the translator I told you about, who. She's a translator and a mental health specialist who I mentioned. She had introduced me to the folks at the temple. Her stories, it's awful. We dedicated the book to her because her story is so gruesome. She testified in the Khmer Rouge tribunal because her story was so exemplary of how terrible things can get. Well, she was a. She was a dancer. She did the. You know, the Cambodian dance, and they fold their fingers all the way back. She was a dancer. And all the dancers got executed because. Because Pol Pot was trying to do away with all of Khmer culture. So he, you know, murdered people that were artisans, artists. Anyone that had cultural signature was first against the wall. And she managed to not get executed and make her way over here to the United States. And she put together a dance troupe in San Jose, California, and taught little girls the Cambodian dance. She, like, brought. Resurrected it right from. From her knowledge. And. And now they have a troop down there still that, you know, with the. With the beautiful costumes, beautiful uniforms, and there's still. They're still doing it, you know, based on her development of this and teaching young people how to do it and what it is. So that It. It didn't. It did survive Pol Pot. It didn't. It wasn't eradicated. And so, so that was so inspirational to me that I actually wrote a children's book about it, which you can. For your audience, if you're interested. Look up. You can Google my name and children's book or Cambodian Dancer and. And. And that book will pop up for you. What's.
- [96:32]
B
What's the name of the book?
- [96:33]
A
It's called. What is it called? It's called the Cambodian Dancer, but the. The book company put a different name on it for the second round. I'm gonna. I'm gonna look it up while I'm on this with you. And I'm. Yeah. Sophie's Gift of Hope. So that the main title is the Cambodian Dancer. And then they put that slogan, Sophie's Gift of Hope. And it's a true story. And, and, and so inspirational and so, so amazing. And again, that's. I don't know. Knowing what happened to her and her family is such a weight, and then this other thing is such a lift. And. And I. And I have to answer your question honestly. I mean, it's impacted me a lot, man. It's impacted me a lot in it. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it constitutes a regret. I think some of the ways that I managed how it. Hand. How I dealt with that are regrettable. Yeah. I mean, I've been through some rough times because of it. That's. That's for sure true.
- [97:55]
B
I bet. I bet. Maybe. Maybe that's why the. The Stoke lab's so enticing. It's the. It's the complete.
- [98:03]
A
The.
- [98:03]
B
The. The light side of the shadow.
- [98:07]
A
Absolutely. Is that. It is. Yeah. And my mind does go back and forth between some of the concepts there and some of the concepts in the other lab. It's funny. My. My colleague who co. Co directs or co. Runs the stoke stuff, his work in psychiatry is. Is suicide. So he's like. He's like the suicide prevention guy for. For the state of California and an expert in that area. And so it's kind of funny because we were like, hey, with a Stoke Lab man. And then they say, well, what do you do with the. You know? And he's like, well, I do suicide, and he does torture. You know, the. The students are like, oh, my God, how do we get these two clowns? But I. I think maybe it's also a little bit of a counterweight for. For his. His career stuff as well, I imagine.
- [98:57]
B
So I might get to some of these questions that you chose. And. Okay, the first one you chose was what book you recommend the most. Not necessarily your favorite book to read, but one that you recommend to others the most.
- [99:11]
A
Right, right. And that was the key. Right. Because the. My favorite book. This probably is on the. On my list of favorite books, but I don't think it's my favorite book, but.
- [99:21]
B
Well, tell me your favorite book, and then you can tell me the other one.
- [99:23]
A
I don't. So that's the. I don't know what my favorite book is. I'm not sure, But. But the Alchemists. The Alchemist is. Is the book that I think I recommend the most frequently. It's such a positive, positive book. It's delightful, it's well written. It's. It's whimsical and magical, but it has some very poignant elements that I think
- [99:48]
B
are
- [99:51]
A
beautifully spoken truths. And. And we actually draw from that for the class. And Warwick, I think it's the only book that I've ever done this. I read the book. I don't know if you want to tell your story about the book, but, I mean, I read the book.
- [100:10]
B
I think I have on the podcast before, but I'm like,
- [100:14]
A
when I got to the end, I literally turned the book back and started reading it again. I'd never done that before with the book.
- [100:22]
B
Like, it was the same. Like, it was. Like it was a continuation of the book.
- [100:25]
A
Just continued and just read it again. Usually you set the book down and think about it. Maybe you come back to it after some time or maybe never. I literally just started reading it from the beginning again. And I. I love that book. It's so fun.
- [100:39]
B
Turned the last page and turned it over before we got on here. I was telling Darren my Alchemist story a few years ago. Yeah, I had on my Facebook group, I had. Someone asked me had I ever read the Alchemist, and I said no. And that was a Wednesday. I'd never heard of it, actually. And then on Friday, I got two packages in the mail, one from America and one from England addressed to me. And opened up the first one, and it was a copy of the Alchemist. And so then I opened up the second package, and it was another copy of the Alchemist. And so they were mailed days apart from each other before I ever had someone suggest I read the Alchemist on my Facebook group, and they arrived in the mail the same day. So I thought that was one of those synchronicities you just cannot. You cannot ignore. Okay, next question for Darren, is if you could spread a message across the world, one that people would listen to, what would that message be?
- [101:44]
A
So I'm not. The second part of that question also is or a favorite quote. And I think I went with, oh, sorry.
- [101:51]
B
Or if I record quote.
- [101:52]
A
I think I went with that a little bit more because I think if I'm spreading a message around the world, I think it would be. I was thinking of the quote by Mahatma Gandhi about, you know, be the change that, that you want to see in the world. And, and I, that's, that's a pretty good one. But if I was gonna pick a philosophy quote and put it out there, I picked one I think is a little bit more complicated, and I'm not sure if it's necessarily one that appeals to everyone in the world, but it's one that I find a challenge and a wonderful. And it's, it's from Friedrich Nietzsche, and he's talking about this idea of what he calls amor fati. Right. The love of fate. He's really challenging you to love your fate. So no matter what that is, if you've, you know, been thrown into greatness, you're senator, all of your dreams are coming true. Or if you're a prisoner and in, in solitary confinement, challenging you to love your life, love your fate. And he says, and I'm, I'm reading it now, he says, my formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati. That one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity, not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it. All idealism is mendiciousness in the face of what is necessary. But to love, To love your fate, to love all of it, that's his challenge, and that's real. That's a really hard thing to do. If you view your life that way and you can love your fate backward and forward, then you're really liberated. And, and I'm not sure where I am on that. I'm working on it. I, I, I can get there sometimes and say, yep, yep. And other times I say, man, this is. It is hard to love all of this, honestly.
- [104:12]
B
Right. Kind of comes back to the biggest failure. And how has it helped you sort of a thing?
- [104:17]
A
I think.
- [104:17]
B
So in the middle of the failure, you.
- [104:19]
A
Yeah.
- [104:20]
B
You know, you, you got to try to love it because you know it's going somewhere good.
- [104:24]
A
But sometimes it's odd, sometimes it's hard. Right? Yeah. So I love, I love that quote. We teach that in the stoke class. Put it out there and, you know, put it out there for discussion. And it's, It's. It's a pretty good life lesson.
- [104:39]
B
You know, it almost ties into your other work because it sounds. It's almost like a. A Buddhist philosophy, isn't it? Of.
- [104:46]
A
Yes.
- [104:46]
B
Non. Non. Attachment to outcome.
- [104:50]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of overlap, for sure.
- [104:56]
B
A lot of overlap. And the last question that you chose was, what does it mean to you to be a leader and a follower?
- [105:09]
A
So.
- [105:09]
B
Oh, he's going for his notes, are you?
- [105:12]
A
Yeah, sort of. I wrote, you know, I. What I wrote. I think, I think. I think. I think of. I think of. A good follower can never, ever be a leader. But a good leader knows when to be a follower. That's what I, that's my thought, is that there are times. There are times when the leader understands that it's that person's role to take, take the reins. And then there's other times when they know to yield. I think that's. That. That is for sure the difference between those two.
- [105:54]
B
I had a professional ballroom dancer tell me, a woman ballroom dancer told me one time, a good leader knows how to. And she's talking about ballroom dancing, but she said, a good leader knows how to lead, but also knows how to fight. Follow the follow.
- [106:09]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. There you go. I think that's right.
- [106:15]
B
Very cool. So what's next for the stoke lab? You're excited about trying to make this thing a bigger thing. What do you hope? What else. Where else do you hope to take it?
- [106:25]
A
Dude, I'm glad you asked me that, because I actually thought that might be what we'd be talking about for the whole time. And so I'm glad we got back to that. So that's just it. So. So we're definitely going to do more with the education part, right? I mean, what we've got there is a pretty organized class that could be a bigger. We could expose more students to this material because I think we've, you know, over 10 years really developed it. But what I just got a. I just got a grant to. To do is to explore how to use this. I, this concept in ways other than just college education. And, and, and, and what I'm. What I'm thinking about especially so, so for the listeners, Warwick and I are. We just got initiated into this beautiful fellowship of, of thinkers and doers and, and, you know, we've just become exposed. That's how we met each other, is how we've become exposed to some other folks that are doing, Doing really amazing projects in, in, in physics, in medicine, in, in other aspects of, of human improvement. And through that I've sort of started to wonder whether or not the Stanford Stoke Lab can become somehow a conduit for people to have experiences in well being that aren't standard at all. So absolutely not what we offer at the Department of Psychiatry because we already got that, we've got that, we've got therapy, we've got different biological interventions, we've got psychiatrists. What I'm thinking is some well being platform that is outside of the, the usual. And I think my department will support that. And to be quite frank with you, I don't know what the next step is. But you know, for instance we mentioned our colleague and our co fellow Nadia who's exploring this, this meditation that is, you know, very exploratory and interesting but also has a, has an important effect on human health. You know, we, another fellow that we, we know from there is this gentleman named Topaz who does a lot of work with super intense interactions between human beings. You know, and there's, he's looking at some outcomes of that that show that these intense interactions are, are, are a modality for well being. And so, so one of my thoughts then is, is bringing not, not just the folks from the institute, I'm mentioning them, you know, because you and I are co fellows there, but you know, folks that are not necessarily in the mainstream of what mental health does but who provide some amazing thing that is sort of outside of, of the usual and than learning. How can I actually literally use that on with Stanford students or folks beyond Stanford students or people that just want to have amazing experiences that are toward well being. And, and, and I should just say, you know, like the, the retreats that you offer work, I mean you know, those are about working with animals, they're about working with human beings, interaction with animals. But the truth of the matter is it's also a psychological well being event that you host. And, and as you and I were talking down there, you know, sort of saying well how do you measure the outcomes? And you're like I, you know, it's like a survey or whatever. I mean I think that this project is much less about measuring outcomes as it is about, about finding new experiences for people so that people can have access to amazing well being phenomena. And I don't know that there's really a model for this yet a university platform that is a conduit for people to actually have meaningful experiences that are not mainstream. I, I'm gonna I'm gonna. When you send me the transcript of this, I might write that one down because, you know, as I'm. As I'm coming up with this idea and so, and so, so I got a little bit of grant funding to explore that idea. And then, you know, if, when I come up with something to sort of pitch it and sort of see, pitch it to the Stanford University, but also pitch it potentially to funders that might be interested, you know, where can we go with this? And I don't know if I'm rambling at this point, Warwick, or not, but, you know, when I start rambling, it's because I don't have the idea yet. And that's kind of the fun of this.
- [111:31]
B
I think the reason you're rambling is because you're stoked about the stokes.
- [111:34]
A
Super stoked. Well, for instance, an element of that funding came in for a public health project that I'm doing in Guatemala. I know exactly what I'm doing with Emily money. I have line items for that money. This is what we're going to do and these are the outcomes I expect with the Stoke project. It's a kernel of an idea that I think could be a really, really beautiful thing. And I'm stoked to find out what it's going to be.
- [112:03]
B
You stoked about the Stoke Lab?
- [112:05]
A
That's right. So I don't know if you heard this or not, but the people in my lab are not psychiatrists, they are Stokologists. We try to use stoke as a verb. We try to use that word in every way we can. It's stoked. We say it all the time. And it's a fun thing. The reason that people smile when we say we run the Stoked lab is it's on purpose that we use this word that is a little bit tongue in cheek. It's supposed to be fun. We could call it the, you know, a dopamine enhancing laboratory of investigation of such and such, you know.
- [112:48]
B
Right.
- [112:49]
A
We call it the stoke because we want people to get it. If you want to get stoked, you come and do this and you're going to be stoked. And I think that all of the academic stuff, measuring people's brains and all of this is absolutely powerful, essential and wonderful. And we'll use that information for sure. But the experience is the thing that really. The stoke is where it's at, man.
- [113:17]
B
Spoken like a true California professor of psychiatry. The stoke is where it's at, man. That's awesome. Oh, my goodness. Well, we're almost at the end of our two hours here and I've asked you all the questions and I've heard the stories I was hoping to hear. We've heard about the Stoke Lab. How do, how do people find out more about either the Stoke Lab or the center for Human Rights and Trauma or the center for Survivors of Torture?
- [113:51]
A
Yeah, yeah. I mean, websites basically Google me and the thing you're interested in, if you Google my name, Stanford and then whatever thing. And there's a website for the Stoked Lab. It includes the different projects that we're doing now. I think that website's going to get revamped with this, you know, new oversight and gosh, I mean, I don't know. In my head things are percolating, but I, I do want to have like, look, this is what we actually offer at Stanford and this is what we do with students and these are the opportunities. And then, you know, on a separate kind of thing, this is how big it can get. And sort of I'm imagining like these are the different contexts that we're going to bring in. You know, like we have colleagues like, you know, Professor Warrick down in Paso Robles is, you know, going to be a guest lecturer with us. But all joking aside, really have a little bit of a separation between what is purely academic and what's educational and what is, what is absolutely experiential and brand new. So I can imagine that. But there is a website for that. I have to, I have to admit with. And hopefully by the time this gets produced and put out there, this might not be true. But our, our website for the Human Rights Project is pretty terrible. It's not, it's not that informative. But there is a website and of course, if people are interested in this stuff, I, I love to get emails and, and, and, and hear from people, you know, and people can find me at Stanford.
- [115:24]
B
Something you hadn't mentioned, which I think you have told me for in the Stoke Lab. Don't you have a T shirt cannon that shoots students who fall asleep?
- [115:32]
A
So, so these are ideas that the students had. I, the T shirt cannon was actually, was my idea, but in collaboration, the students that fall asleep, we're going to squirt them with, with, with water guns. So there will be armed tas who can walk around class and shoot people that fall asleep. But if there's a general sense of sleepiness, yes, we want to get a T shirt cannon, fire it up into them so people that are awake can get the T shirt. And then there are some other Ideas. I thought this idea was fantastic. The idea was to literally have the Stanford cheerleaders run out and do a cheer at the halftime point of the class, you know, to get everybody riled up. I thought that was a good idea, but we'll see if that's possible.
- [116:20]
B
That'll wake him up, I think. I think anybody falling asleep in the stoke lab is in the wrong place.
- [116:27]
A
That's why I think too, they left
- [116:28]
B
their stoke at home.
- [116:30]
A
That's what I think. And it is interesting because we do it now as a seminar. So there's between, you know, 15 and 25 students every year, and that's a pretty small group. We get. We get like 300 applicants and then we only take that number again. That's one of the reasons why we, if we get 300 applicants, we should open it up to bigger class. But, you know, we cherry pick people that are probably going to be pretty stoked. Right. And so, so there's no one's falling asleep in the seminar, you know, but who knows when we have a bigger class. This is another thing worth is a can of worms that we might not want to open at this hour because I know you have another appointment, but I mean, we really don't want it to be like a lecture. We want it to be like an exciting thing every time. In fact, you know, like if we had a guest speaker, we would almost want it to be a little bit canned, you know, where we run it like I'm Jimmy Fallon and they're on a show or something where it's. It's more entertaining, it's more fun,
- [117:37]
B
you
- [117:37]
A
know, have people planted in the audience that we can play off of to be hilarious. You know, just really bring things that are usually not brought to an academic situation to stimulate the students, get them going all the time. And also so that they never know what to expect when you go to. When you go to organic chemistry, you know, you're going to get a smart lecture that's going to last forever and you're going to sit there and try to follow along with it. When you come to the stoke class, I really don't. I really want you to have no idea what's about to happen and be entertained. Odd and then transformative.
- [118:18]
B
Perfect. Sounds like an amazing. I'll have to sneak in there one day. That's awesome. Okay, I got to finish up here. Darren, thank you so much for joining me. It was so good to chatting with you again.
- [118:31]
A
Thanks, man. This is really fun. This is. This is really great. It was very very kickback. And I just love your show. I love being on your show. I, I, I'm, I'm so grateful that the universe brought you and me together because it's been a real, it's been a real kick, man.
- [118:49]
B
It has been fun, and it's only just begun, so.
- [118:51]
A
That's right.
- [118:52]
B
Yeah. We'll keep the bromance going.
- [118:56]
A
Absolutely.
- [118:57]
B
Okay. Well, you guys, listen, thanks so much for joining us and we'll catch you again on the next episode of the Journey on Podcast.
- [119:05]
A
Right on. Thanks for being a part of the Journey on Podcast with Warwick Schiller. Warwick has over 850 full length training videos on his online video library@videos.warwickshiller.com Be sure to follow Warwick on YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram to see his latest training advice and insights.