0:00:11 is sugar poison? Sugar is like alcohol. So is alcohol poison? Depends on the dose.
0:00:19 Right? The dose determines the poison. Paracelsus 1537. We have an innate capacity
0:00:26 to metabolize alcohol. And if we stay below that, it doesn’t do too much damage.
0:00:33 If we go above it, different story. Same thing with sugar. Same thing with this molecule,
0:00:37 the sweet molecule, fructose. And the reason is because fructose and alcohol are metabolized
0:00:41 virtually identically. What’s the difference between sugar and fructose?
0:00:48 So sugar, dietary sugar, the sweet stuff, the crystals, the stuff you put in your coffee.
0:00:55 The stuff I’ve got over here. Yeah, like that stuff. Yeah, that stuff. The five pound bag right
0:01:02 there. That’s called sucrose. Okay, this is sucrose. This is sucrose. Now sucrose is two
0:01:09 molecules bound together. One molecule called glucose, one molecule called fructose. They
0:01:13 are not the same. Now the food industry will tell you they are the same. They are not the
0:01:18 same. The reason they tell you they are the same is because that’s the way they assuage
0:01:24 their own culpability for what they’ve done to the food. But they are not the same. They
0:01:30 will say a sugar is a sugar. A calorie is a calorie. A glucose and fructose both have four
0:01:37 calories per gram. Why should you care? Oh, you care a lot. You care a whole lot. Now glucose
0:01:42 is the energy of life. Every cell on the planet burns glucose for energy. Glucose is so important
0:01:50 that if you don’t consume it, your body makes it. Okay. The Inuit had no carbohydrate. They
0:01:55 had ice. They had whale blubber. They still had a serum glucose level. Inuits are the people
0:02:01 that live in the North Poles. That’s right. Yeah. Formerly known as Eskimos. Right. But they
0:02:08 didn’t have any carbohydrate. They ran off fat. But they still had a serum glucose level because
0:02:15 your brain runs on glucose. It can also run on ketones too. But you know, your brain runs on
0:02:23 glucose. My brain runs on glucose. And you need glucose because certain hormones and certain
0:02:33 proteins in the body require glycosylation in order to be effective. An example, LH and FSH. When you
0:02:39 don’t have glycosylation of LH and FSH, the hormones that tell your testicle and your ovary to work,
0:02:47 you are infertile. It’s that simple. So survival of the species says you need some glucose. But if you’re
0:02:52 not consuming it, you’ll still get it because your body will make it. Right. You will make it out of
0:02:59 amino acids. It will make it out of fat. Gluconeogenesis, it’s called. So glucose is
0:03:05 essential. It’s just not essential to eat. Fructose, on the other hand, the sweet molecule
0:03:11 in that bag. Which is sort of one of the two parts of the grain of sugar that I see. One part of it is
0:03:16 fructose. That’s right. It’s the other half. Right. It’s the evil twin, if you will. What are the two
0:03:22 halves again? Glucose? Yeah. Fructose. Cool. Found together. I need glucose to live. My body will figure
0:03:31 that out. Fructose. Do I need this? Not only do you not need it, but in high dose, it’s toxic.
0:03:42 Now, your liver has the innate ability to metabolize a small amount on the order of about six to nine
0:03:50 teaspoons per day of dietary sugar. So half of that being fructose. So about 12 grams. Your liver can
0:03:57 manage about 12 grams of fructose a day. In the same way, it can manage about 12 grams of alcohol per day
0:04:04 without showing any signs of any metabolic derangement. But if you go above that,
0:04:15 now you get problems. Are we above that? Oh, we are so above that. We are at 50 grams of fructose
0:04:22 per day. 100 grams of sugar per day. We’re supposed to be at 25. We are at 100. We are quadruple
0:04:29 our limit. And also, just because grams are quite hard to wrap the head around, right? Okay. So if I
0:04:34 was to get a tablespoon… Well, do teaspoons. A teaspoon. Two spoons. How many teaspoons of sugar
0:04:38 would I have to consume to get to that level of fructose? Because I say this in part because most of us
0:04:44 don’t realize that we’re consuming sugar. That’s right. Because it’s hidden in all of the food.
0:04:50 That’s exactly right. We don’t even know. We say, oh, I never even add sugar to my coffee. Therefore,
0:04:59 my sugar consumption is zero. Wrong. That is not true. Okay. Because it is hidden in plain sight
0:05:07 in virtually every processed food in the entire grocery store. 73% of all of the items in the American
0:05:14 grocery store and in the British grocery store are spiked with added sugar by the food industry for its
0:05:19 purposes, not for yours. Because they know when they add it, you buy more. And how much does that
0:05:25 look like in teaspoons then? The upper limit is about six teaspoons of added sugar per day.
0:05:30 The allowance, the recommended allowance. The allowance, the upper limit. Okay. The recommended
0:05:36 allowance is lower than that. Yeah. Okay. But the upper limit is about 16 spoons of added sugar per day.
0:05:44 So we have an innate capacity to metabolize about 12 grams of fructose per day. By the way, that’s for
0:05:56 adults. For children, it’s one third of that. Four grams of fructose per day. Okay. Four to six. So we’re
0:06:02 talking very little. Talking very little. But when you think about, for instance, kid in America,
0:06:14 29% of kids in America consume the National School Breakfast Program breakfast in school. Okay. 29%. So what is
0:06:21 the National School Breakfast Program breakfast? It’s a bowl of Froot Loops and a glass of orange juice.
0:06:32 That is 41 grams of sugar. The upper limit for children in terms of their metabolism is 12 grams per day.
0:06:37 They got 41 grams and it’s just breakfast.
0:06:46 What do you think that’s going to do? Now, if a calorie were a calorie, and if glucose and fructose
0:06:53 were the same, then you say, well, you got to get your calories somewhere. But because fructose is not
0:07:00 glucose, because fructose is more like alcohol, because fructose’s toxicity has nothing to do with its
0:07:09 calories, that is a huge overdose. And it has metabolic complications, systemic health complications.
0:07:11 It has mental health complications.
0:07:17 Sounds like a bit of a scandal. When I hear that these kids are getting 30, almost 30% of kids are
0:07:26 getting, you know, almost, you know, through three to four times their recommended daily allowance of
0:07:32 sugar from school, and that it’s having these sort of really adverse consequences on us. And the studies
0:07:37 are there to prove that the consequences are very real. It sounds like a scandal in the sense that
0:07:38 nobody’s doing something about it.
0:07:46 Ah, well, yes, that way it is. The point is that the food industry is very powerful. And they have,
0:07:53 you know, swept virtually every aspect of this under the rug for 40 to 50 years.
0:08:02 They knew back in the 1960s, that sugar was a problem. But they paid off scientists to say it wasn’t.
0:08:10 And we actually have the documents from the food industry. They live at the UCSF Food Industry
0:08:17 documents to the library. And we are doing research on corporate interference in health.
0:08:18 What do those documents show?
0:08:27 They show that in 1965, the sugar industry came to two Harvard School of Public Health scientists,
0:08:33 the head of the Department of Nutrition, Fred Stare, and his associate, Mark Hegstead, who became
0:08:43 the head of the USDA five years later, and paid them $50,000 in today’s money to produce two articles
0:08:49 for the New England Journal saying saturated fat was the bad guy and that sugar was exonerated.
0:08:54 And they did it.
0:08:54 And they did it.
0:08:58 That’s just one thing they did.
0:09:07 They also infiltrated the National Institute of Dental Research, NIDR, their study sections
0:09:17 and their executive committee to take money away from nutrition research for dental health
0:09:20 and put it toward a caries vaccine.
0:09:22 A what?
0:09:24 A dental caries, a cavities vaccine.
0:09:26 Okay.
0:09:28 How’s that cavities vaccine working for you?
0:09:29 Okay.
0:09:37 We have all of the data in their own words to demonstrate that they knew exactly what they
0:09:38 were doing.
0:09:40 This is not a hallucination.
0:09:51 This is hardcore fact, and we’ve published this, and we now have a center at UCSF devoted
0:09:55 to understanding the corporate determinants of health.
0:10:01 And when we look across society at the consequences of this sort of corporate interference, some of
0:10:06 the crazy stats in your book, Fat Chance, that I really sort of highlighted were that by 2050,
0:10:09 obesity will become the norm, not the exception.
0:10:09 Correct.
0:10:13 Well, the World Health Organization said that the percentage of obese people globally has
0:10:16 doubled in the last 28 years.
0:10:22 And in the UK, 28% of adults are obese and 36% of them are overweight.
0:10:26 That’s not from your book, but that’s from some research we did on the UK numbers as well.
0:10:28 Well, you know, the UK is the fat man of Europe.
0:10:29 Yes, that’s true.
0:10:34 Having metabolic syndrome is equal to losing 15 to 20 years of life.
0:10:34 That was in your book.
0:10:35 That’s correct.
0:10:37 Which is startling.
0:10:42 And worldwide sugar consumption has tripled in just the last 50 years.
0:10:43 Correct.
0:10:44 All true.
0:10:47 Now, you could say that’s correlation, not causation.
0:10:49 But we actually have the causation.
0:10:51 We have the data.
0:10:54 We have it in mechanistic terms.
0:10:59 We have it in clinical interventional efforts.
0:11:01 We have it in societal efforts.
0:11:07 There is a method for determining proof that doesn’t need randomized control trials.
0:11:09 It’s called econometric analysis.
0:11:13 This is what we have for, for instance, climate change.
0:11:16 There’s no control group for climate change, but we still know it’s true.
0:11:19 This is what we have for tobacco and lung cancer.
0:11:23 You know, you don’t have naive people start smoking.
0:11:25 That would be illegal, immoral, get you thrown in jail.
0:11:28 But we still know that tobacco causes lung cancer.
0:11:32 We know that football trauma causes chronic traumatic encephalopathy.
0:11:33 Okay.
0:11:38 None of these have control groups, but we know it’s true through econometric analysis.
0:11:46 This is a method of using natural history data over time to be able to determine proximate cause.
0:11:52 And we have that for sugar and diabetes, and we have it for sugar and heart disease,
0:11:58 and we have it for sugar and fatty liver disease, and of course, we have it for sugar and tooth decay.
0:12:02 We’re working on sugar and cancer and sugar and dementia.
0:12:03 We’re not there yet.
0:12:11 In your book, Fat Chance, on page 120, there was something particularly curious,
0:12:15 because I think this is a, yeah, here we go.
0:12:18 It says, the bottom line is, sugar consumption is a problem.
0:12:22 33% of sugar consumption comes from beverages.
0:12:23 Yes.
0:12:26 And the biggest abusers are the poor and underserved.
0:12:27 Indeed.
0:12:30 So, let’s talk about beverages to start with then.
0:12:33 Diet beverages.
0:12:40 Are they fine, and how bad are the sort of fizzy pot beverages that most of us consume every day?
0:12:47 So, let’s do the sugared soft drinks first.
0:12:48 Okay.
0:12:48 Okay.
0:12:50 They are really bad.
0:12:58 If you consume one sugared beverage per day, your risk for diabetes goes up by 29%.
0:13:00 Wow.
0:13:01 Okay.
0:13:04 And that’s if you have one.
0:13:07 If you have two, 58%.
0:13:11 And diabetes is now the main cause of death in 40% of death certificates.
0:13:12 Exactly right.
0:13:15 So, this is a big problem.
0:13:20 So, you know, that’s demonstrating its toxicity at, you know, shall we say, medium dose.
0:13:23 You know, at low dose, you can handle it.
0:13:26 But, you know, as soon as you go above that dose, it’s a problem.
0:13:28 And we have the data for it.
0:13:28 Okay.
0:13:30 And all of these are factored in.
0:13:32 These are all econometric analyses.
0:13:35 We’ve shown that sugar is a proximate cause of diabetes.
0:13:42 Whenever sugar availability changes in any country, diabetes prevalence changes three years later.
0:13:56 And we’ve also done what’s known as advanced Markov modeling where we go into the future and show that when sugar consumption goes down in any country, diabetes levels change and, you know, reduce three years later.
0:14:03 So, it’s a three-year window between the change in the diet and the change in the metabolic health consequences.
0:14:04 We have those data.
0:14:11 And the fact that they work both on the way up and on the way down is like, you know, take it to the bank.
0:14:15 Now, that’s for the sugared beverages.
0:14:18 You asked me about diet beverages.
0:14:18 I’ve got one here.
0:14:21 Let’s look at it.
0:14:25 All right.
0:14:27 I’ve covered up the logos because I don’t want to call you.
0:14:28 Oh, I’ve never seen this before.
0:14:29 I wonder what that is.
0:14:47 The data now show, I mean, it took a while for these data to come in, but the data now show that the toxicity of one sugared soda equals the toxicity of two diet sodas.
0:14:49 Half as bad.
0:14:50 Okay.
0:14:51 Half as bad does not mean good.
0:14:53 Half as bad means half as bad.
0:14:56 Well, it says zero sugar here, so how can it be bad?
0:14:59 Well, because it’s bad for a different reason.
0:15:04 So, yes, zero fructose, zero calories.
0:15:05 I agree.
0:15:07 But that doesn’t make it good.
0:15:12 It makes it better than the sugared alternative, but it doesn’t make it good.
0:15:14 Why?
0:15:17 Number one, you put something sweet on the tongue.
0:15:20 Message goes tongue to brain, sugar’s coming.
0:15:22 Message goes brain to pancreas.
0:15:23 Sugar’s coming.
0:15:25 Release the insulin.
0:15:27 So, I still get an insulin release.
0:15:29 You still get an insulin response.
0:15:32 And the more other food you ate, the bigger the insulin response.
0:15:33 Okay.
0:15:39 So, you will have an accentuated insulin response because you were exposed to the diet sweetener.
0:15:44 This is work from Janina Papino, 2013 at WashU St. Louis.
0:15:47 And it’s been corroborated multiple times since.
0:15:50 And why does that harm me, having an insulin response?
0:15:51 Because insulin’s a bad guy.
0:15:56 So, we always talk about glucose being a bad guy in terms of diabetes.
0:15:57 And it is, of course.
0:15:59 But insulin’s a bad guy, too.
0:16:04 Glucose causes small vessels to be dysfunctional.
0:16:07 It causes endothelial cell dysfunction.
0:16:13 It causes high blood pressure because it causes those small vessels to constrict.
0:16:19 It interferes with nitric oxide, which is one of the things that relaxes the blood vessel.
0:16:25 And it will, you know, basically reduce blood flow to specific organs.
0:16:28 So, high glucose is not good for you.
0:16:30 And it’s bad for small vessel disease.
0:16:40 And that’s why diabetics get retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy, kidney disease, nerve damage, and eye disease.
0:16:44 But insulin is also a problem.
0:16:47 Because what insulin does is it causes cell growth.
0:16:49 Insulin is a growth factor.
0:16:53 And it causes vascular smooth muscle growth like in your coronary arteries.
0:16:55 And it causes glandular growth.
0:17:00 So, it is one of the primary drivers of heart disease and cancer.
0:17:11 So, you can be a diabetic, a type 2 diabetic, and have your hemoglobin A1c, a measure of your glucose control,
0:17:23 down near normal range because you’re on insulin or oral hypoglycemics or even GLP-1 analogs for that matter.
0:17:23 Okay?
0:17:31 And you will die just the same because you will die of a heart attack or of a cancer.
0:17:35 Because diabetics have a much higher incidence of cancer.
0:17:38 They also have a higher incidence of dementia as well.
0:17:40 And the reason is because of insulin.
0:17:42 Because insulin is a bad guy in this story.
0:17:46 Glucose causes microvascular disease.
0:17:50 The insulin causes macrovascular disease.
0:17:52 They’re both bad.
0:17:54 You need to control both of them.
0:17:57 And this controls the glucose.
0:17:59 It doesn’t control the insulin.
0:18:02 Do you drink that stuff?
0:18:03 Of course not.
0:18:05 Just checking.
0:18:11 Is there any other physiological consequences to diet sodas outside of the insulin response?
0:18:12 Indeed.
0:18:19 So the other thing that we’ve learned about non-nutritive sweeteners across the board is that they alter the microbiome.
0:18:23 Now, the microbiome is the bacteria that live in your gut.
0:18:26 Now, you have to feed your microbiome.
0:18:28 You have to feed your bacteria.
0:18:31 Because if you don’t feed your bacteria, your bacteria will feed on you.
0:18:39 It will strip the mucin layer, a protective physical barrier, right off the surface of your intestinal epithelial cells.
0:18:50 And when it does that, it denudes them and allows for other bacteria, toxic bacteria, to take up residence and cause irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease.
0:18:56 And the junctions between the cells become dysfunctional as well.
0:18:59 And so the cells become permeable.
0:19:08 And so stuff in your intestine, the junk in your intestine, the SH, you know what, can actually make it through into the bloodstream.
0:19:19 You can measure the endotoxins and the whole bacteria, the lipopolysaccharides, in the bloodstream when the intestine is damaged, even from diet soda.
0:19:24 And what that does is that ultimately leads to systemic inflammation.
0:19:33 And that systemic inflammation also leads to metabolic disease, mental health problems, cognitive decline, early death.
0:19:42 So what advice do we give that is simple and actionable for Jennifer or Judith or Dave who’s listening to this now?
0:19:44 They are, you know, 40 years old potentially.
0:19:46 They have a nine to five job.
0:19:47 They’re very busy.
0:19:49 Maybe they have some kids to feed at the same time.
0:19:57 They don’t have time to be like, you know, looking at doing a fine sort of tooth comb over every single thing that they’re putting into their body.
0:19:58 They’re not a scientist.
0:19:59 Agreed.
0:20:05 It’s a problem because the food industry has made the grocery store a minefield.
0:20:09 And it’s really easy to set off an explosion.
0:20:13 If you walk in, you’ve basically lost.
0:20:15 That’s how bad it is.
0:20:16 Understood.
0:20:21 So the simple rule is eat real food.
0:20:23 So what’s real food?
0:20:28 Well, food that came out of the ground or animals that ate food that came out of the ground.
0:20:35 The problem is we all lead busy lives and we’re looking for labor-saving devices because people don’t even have time to cook.
0:20:40 Most people, 33% of Americans don’t even know how to cook anymore.
0:20:42 So, like, what are they going to do?
0:20:44 So we understand this.
0:20:45 I mean, it’s a problem.
0:20:45 Agreed.
0:20:54 We need food that is metabolically healthy for us, not metabolically detrimental.
0:21:02 And the problem is that as soon as you put added sugar in the food, you have made it metabolically detrimental.
0:21:07 Now, the food industry will say, well, there are all these other good things in there, like vitamins and minerals.
0:21:08 We fortify it, et cetera.
0:21:13 So I’m here to tell you, toxin A plus antidote B still equals death.
0:21:15 Okay?
0:21:26 Just because they put some vitamins in there or you take a dietary supplement, if it’s not solving your mitochondrial dysfunction, what’s the point?
0:21:31 So you can’t believe what the food industry is telling you.
0:21:32 Okay?
0:21:36 If they say something is healthy, it’s usually the opposite.
0:21:39 Whatever it says on the package, believe the opposite.
0:21:44 Because they have an incentive to put wrong stuff on the package.
0:21:55 And I’ll be honest with you, I’m part of, you know, numerous lawsuits suing the food industry for deceptive advertising, misbranding, mislabeling.
0:22:00 Seventy percent of all of the items in the American grocery store are misbranded or mislabeled.
0:22:01 In what way?
0:22:04 They say things that are not true.
0:22:05 Give me some examples.
0:22:20 Well, first of all, any time they use the word healthy, okay, they say no added sugar, okay, but in fact they put in apple puree or raspberry puree or evaporated cane juice.
0:22:27 You know, there are 262 names for sugar and the food industry uses all of them.
0:22:33 And so they will say that something’s no added sugar, but that in fact is actually not the case.
0:22:34 Okay?
0:22:37 There’s a whole, you know, a whole host of this.
0:22:40 Kellogg’s has been sued for raisin bran.
0:22:41 Okay?
0:22:42 Everyone thinks raisin bran.
0:22:44 Well, it’s just raisins and bran.
0:22:47 What color are the raisins in raisin bran?
0:22:51 I’ve never seen it.
0:22:54 Well, I mean, raisins are purple.
0:22:54 Yeah.
0:22:56 You know, purple brown.
0:22:56 Yeah, yeah.
0:22:57 Yeah?
0:22:58 Yeah, normally.
0:23:00 Well, the raisins in raisin bran are white.
0:23:03 Why?
0:23:17 If you take the raisins in raisin bran, that’s supposed to be 11 grams of sugar, but on the side of the package, it says that one serving is 18 grams of sugar.
0:23:19 Where’d the other seven come from?
0:23:27 It’s the white, because they’ve all been dipped in a sugar solution to make them sweeter.
0:23:30 As an example.
0:23:30 As an example.
0:23:32 Okay?
0:23:34 So, post has been sued.
0:23:38 General Mills, theirs was dismissed.
0:23:46 Mondelez, a whole host of companies are actually under the gun now to change their practices.
0:23:46 Why do you care?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:47 Why do you care so much?
0:23:51 I am a pediatrician.
0:23:54 My job is to take care of children.
0:23:57 Children are vulnerable.
0:24:00 In the same way minorities are vulnerable.
0:24:02 In the same way prisoners are vulnerable.
0:24:03 Okay?
0:24:04 They need a voice.
0:24:07 My job is to give every kid a shot.
0:24:11 Well, we now have neonatal obesity.
0:24:16 We have babies being born.
0:24:21 Israel, South Africa, Russia, United States.
0:24:32 Four separate studies showing that over the past 25 years, birth weight has gone up 200 grams, half a pound in all four countries.
0:24:39 And when you do DEXA scanning to look at body composition on those newborns, those 200 grams are all fat.
0:24:41 We have a neonatal obesity.
0:24:48 These kids did not get obese by dieting and exercising, by gluttony and sloth.
0:24:53 They came out of the womb behind the eight ball.
0:24:58 It’s my job as a pediatrician to fix the problem.
0:24:59 That’s what I care.

0:00:11 In a world where knowledge is power, this podcast is your toolkit for mastering the
0:00:13 best of what other people have already figured out.
0:00:15 Welcome to The Knowledge Project.
0:00:17 I’m Shane Parrish.
0:00:24 How do the world’s top performers, CEOs, investors, best-selling authors make decisions that lead
0:00:25 to extraordinary outcomes?
0:00:31 Each week, I sit down with people at the top of their game to uncover the mental models
0:00:33 and insights that separate the best from the rest.
0:00:39 If you want to think clearly, make better decisions, and unlock your full potential, you’re in the
0:00:39 right place.
0:00:44 Rich is when you have enough money to make your mortgage payment, make your car payment.
0:00:48 Wealthy, I think, is when you have a degree of independence and autonomy.
0:00:49 It’s okay if it doesn’t resonate with your grandmother.
0:00:55 If I’m selling a specialized thing to specialized buyers, it just needs to resonate with them.
0:01:02 We are the first endeavor in history to focus on trying to rejuvenate every organ of the body.
0:01:06 It all started with Farnam Street, an anonymous website I created while working at a three-letter
0:01:08 intelligence agency.
0:01:14 I wanted to uncover timeless wisdom and distill principles of clear thinking from across disciplines.
0:01:19 As it grew, it attracted more attention from top athletes and world-class decision makers,
0:01:22 becoming a go-to resource for those who think differently.
0:01:28 That success led me to opportunities I never expected: private conversations with some of the most
0:01:29 exceptional people in the world.
0:01:36 You have to extend yourself not just through space, but through time, into the future, announcing
0:01:38 something that might or might not work.
0:01:39 You don’t know yet.
0:01:40 That’s what makes it creative.
0:01:46 Thinking about what you need and starting there, as opposed to like, just like, okay, what should I avoid?
0:01:52 Millions of downloads later, in over 174 countries, the goal remains the same: to bring you the
0:01:56 highest density of wisdom per episode of any podcast in the world.
0:01:59 What’s really important is: what are the risks?
0:02:00 What can go wrong?
0:02:02 How bad could it get?
0:02:04 And how do we deal with it if that happens?
0:02:09 And so we spend virtually all of our time on downside protection.
0:02:15 No amount of computers and artificial intelligence and space technology and nanotechnology and
0:02:22 biotechnology and all of that is going to stop continuing warfare or economic injustice because
0:02:24 those are born in the human heart.
0:02:27 You have a rigid business plan that doesn’t usually work.
0:02:32 That ability to go with the flow, you need to have that business shame.
0:02:37 The difference between those who consistently succeed and those who struggle starts with how
0:02:38 they think.
0:02:42 Subscribe now to The Knowledge Project because the conversations that change your thinking will
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0:00:04 Hello, boys and girls, ladies and germs. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of
0:00:10 The Tim Ferriss Show. My guest today teaches people how to save themselves and their relationships
0:00:15 when they are on the brink. He is known as a turnaround expert. And what he teaches,
0:00:20 tactics and strategies are incredibly practical. I’ve used them in my own life. His fans include
0:00:26 Dr. Peter Atiyah, Kevin Rose, and many others. And he breaks all the rules of therapy, which is
0:00:31 part of what makes him very, very interesting to me because the results are undeniable. Terry Reel
0:00:36 is a nationally recognized family therapist, author, and teacher. He’s known for his groundbreaking work
0:00:42 on men and male psychology, as well as his work on gender and couples. His book, I Don’t Want to
0:00:47 Talk About It, Overcoming the Secret Legacy of Male Depression, the first mainstream book ever written
0:00:52 on the topic of male depression, is a national bestseller. That really put him on the map in a
0:00:57 big way. His new book, Us, Getting Past You and Me to Build a More Loving Relationship,
0:01:02 is a New York Times bestseller. And I’ve also featured snippets of one of his audiobooks,
0:01:07 Fierce Intimacy, on this podcast before as a guest episode because what he teaches can be applied
0:01:13 immediately in all of your relationships, I would go so far to say. Terry’s Relational Life Institute
0:01:19 offers training for therapists and workshops for couples and individuals. And I will tell you in advance,
0:01:25 chances are you are going to disagree with some of what he says in this episode. So don’t throw the
0:01:30 baby out with the bathwater. If something gets your hackles up, just breathe and continue listening
0:01:37 and you will find something of value that you can apply in your life today or this week, sometime soon,
0:01:44 I promise you. You can find all things Terry at TerryReal.com. That’s T-E-R-R-Y-R-E-A-L.com.
0:01:50 We’re going to get right to a very wide-ranging and tactical conversation right after a few words
0:01:52 from the people who make this podcast possible.
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0:02:16 stuff and everyone else’s agenda for my time. For me, let’s just say I’m a writer and entrepreneur,
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0:02:39 So here we go. I need to find people who are great at managing. And that is where Cresset
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0:02:57 founders, and entrepreneurs. They handle the complex financial planning, uncertain tax strategies,
0:03:04 timely exit planning, bill pay, wires, all the dozens of other parts of wealth management,
0:03:09 just financial management that would otherwise pull me away from doing what I love most, making
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0:03:43 your financial plans and grow your wealth. That’s CressetCapital.com slash Tim. And disclosure,
0:03:47 I am a client of Cresset. There are no material conflicts other than this paid testimonial. And
0:03:52 of course, all investing involves risk, including loss of principle. So do your due diligence.
0:03:58 My first book, The 4-Hour Workweek, which made everything else possible, is built around the
0:04:05 acronym and framework DEAL, D-E-A-L, Define, Eliminate, Automate, and Liberate. Now, of course,
0:04:10 after you define all the things you want, your metrics, 80-20, blah, blah, blah, then you want
0:04:15 to get rid of as much as possible, eliminate. But sometimes there are things that are a huge
0:04:19 hassle, like expense management for a lot of companies, which you can’t get rid of. They are
0:04:25 essential to your business. But today, thank God, you can automate it. And there is no better
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0:05:33 Optimal, minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start to shake.
0:05:35 Can I ask you a personal question?
0:05:37 Now would have seen an appropriate time.
0:05:38 What if I did the opposite?
0:05:42 I’m a cybernetic organism, living tissue over a metal endoskeleton.
0:05:54 Terry, so nice to see you. Thanks for making the time for the show.
0:05:57 Oh, it’s wonderful to be here, Tim. I’m a big fan.
0:06:04 And I am a big fan. And it all started with two people. I would say Peter Atiyah first on the topic
0:06:13 of male depression and then Kevin Rose on couples therapy specifically. So we’ve had, I suppose,
0:06:21 indirectly and directly a few years, or I’ve had a few years of Terry Reel. And I thought that I would
0:06:29 share more of Terry live and in person with my audience for a number of reasons. And as we
0:06:34 discussed before recording, I thought we would start with some stories. Story time with Terry. And I will
0:06:37 cue it with bread.
0:06:40 Pumpernickel.
0:06:46 Pumpernickel. Exactly. As all good stories begin. Pumpernickel. So could you fill in the blanks with
0:06:47 that particular story, please?
0:06:55 So as you know, Tim, my specialty, a couple on the brink that no one else has been able to help.
0:06:59 That’s what I’ve been doing for 20 years. And that’s what I teach. So here’s a couple on the
0:07:07 brink. The issue was that he was a chronic liar. I teach my therapist, you pay attention to what people
0:07:11 report, you pay attention to what they do in front of you, and you pay attention to how you feel.
0:07:17 And he’s one of these guys, I walk in and I go, the sky’s blue. And he goes, well, not really blue.
0:07:25 It’s really, the guy is a champion evader. So I get that. He’s an evader. Then I ask a relational
0:07:31 question. A standard therapist would think, oh, where’d you get that? No. There’s somebody else on
0:07:38 the other side of that habit. He learned it. So I say to him, who controlled you growing up?
0:07:46 He’s an evader. Who is he evading? Sure enough, dad, military man, how he sat, how he ate,
0:07:52 his friends. I said, well, what did that little boy do with that controlling father? And Timmy smiles.
0:07:59 And that’s the smile of resistance. I like that smile. Very mischievous smile. And he says to me,
0:08:05 ready? I lied. Dad said, don’t play with Henry. I played with Henry and told him I was playing with Tom.
0:08:15 Boy, I always teach my students, be respectful of the exquisite intelligence of that adaptive little
0:08:22 boy or girl that you were. You did just what you needed to do to get by. But guess what? You’re not
0:08:30 that little boy. Your wife is not your father. Maybe you’re on death’s door here, but maybe it’s time to
0:08:36 change this up. That’s it. One session. Of course, I don’t tell you the one sessions that don’t work.
0:08:40 I have to tell you the ones that work. Anyway, one session. They come back two weeks. That’s
0:08:46 absolutely true. Hand in hand. We’re done. And they were. They were done. Okay, there’s a story here.
0:08:52 Tell me this story. Guy says to me, over the weekend, his wife sent him to the grocery store to get,
0:08:59 say, 12 thanks. And true to form, he comes back with 11. The wife says, where’s the pumpernickel?
0:09:08 I want folks to feel this. He says, every muscle and nerve in his body was screaming to say they were
0:09:15 out of it. This is a moment my wife, wonderful family therapist, Belinda Berman, calls relational
0:09:23 heroism. Every muscle was screaming to do the same old, same old. And I took a breath. I thought of you.
0:09:30 He was borrowing my prefrontal cortex. I thought of you, Terry. I looked at my wife and I said,
0:09:38 I forgot the goddamn pumpernickel. And she looked at me, true story, and she burst into tears. And she
0:09:46 said, I’ve been waiting for this moment for 25 years. That’s the story. So in relational life therapy,
0:09:54 the work I’ve created, we talk about three parts of the human psyche. The wise adult, the part I’m
0:10:00 talking to right now, prefrontal cortex, the most evolved part of the brain, that’s the part that
0:10:05 evolved last in the human species. That’s the part that evolves last. Hey, you parents out there with
0:10:14 ADHD kids, 26 years old, chill. You got 26 years before they start to calm down. Anyway, prefrontal cortex,
0:10:22 stop and think and choose. But what makes life interesting and dicey is there are two, we call
0:10:29 them subcortical parts of the brain, automatic, you know, knee jerk response. The mature, wise adult,
0:10:38 all the way amygdala in the back is the completely flooded, wounded child part, first moments of life
0:10:44 to four or five, just flooded, just wants to crawl in someone’s lap and cry. Between these two is what
0:10:49 we call the adaptive child part. And Tim, that’s the part most of the people I see have lived most of their
0:10:57 lives in thinking that that’s an adult. And it’s not. It’s a kid’s version of an adult. And the
0:11:03 hallmark of the adaptive child part of us is that it’s automatic. Fight, flight, fawn. I got to get
0:11:08 out of here or the world’s gone. I got to stand up for myself. What is fawn? Could you explain that
0:11:12 co-dependence? Oh my God, Tim’s feeling bad. I got to make him feel good because if he doesn’t feel
0:11:19 good, I don’t feel good. Big for a lot of women, but not only women. And it’s not an adult, let me see
0:11:24 what I can do to make this relationship work. It’s an anxious, compulsive, oh my God, I got to fix this
0:11:34 guy. Okay. What we teach is shifting out of that, we call it relational mindfulness. This is the core
0:11:41 skill from which all other skills depend. The adaptive child part of us, you know, you played
0:11:47 the losing strategies from fierce intimacy in a podcast. It doesn’t want to use skills. It doesn’t
0:11:54 want to be intimate. Intimacy is scary. It wants self-protection. So, I’m going to control you. I’m
0:12:01 going to scream at you. I’m going to withdraw from you. I will never get what I want in the relationship
0:12:07 when my adaptive child is taken over. And almost all of the people I see, that’s what happens.
0:12:12 You know, skills are great, but when you’re flooded, they go right out the window. So, the first skill,
0:12:17 I call it remembering love. Remember the person you’re speaking to as someone you care about.
0:12:23 And you live with them, dummy. It’s in your interest. So, get centered in that, you know,
0:12:28 somebody wrote, wait, why am I talking? And be honest with you. Are you talking to nail your
0:12:33 partner into the ground or prove you’re right? Then take a break. I’m a big fan of break. Wait until
0:12:39 you remember you’re talking to someone you care about, and the reason why you’re opening up your
0:12:47 mouth is to make things better. Now, what makes life even more dicey is that that adaptation,
0:12:56 like the guy in the story lying, was born in a relationship. And what happens is when people
0:13:02 shift out of, I call, I speak about miserable, comfortable, happy, uncomfortable. And when you
0:13:11 move out of that into new territory, vulnerability, risk-taking, courage, standing up for yourself for
0:13:19 some, coming down and yielding for others, when you move into intimacy, you lose that old relationship.
0:13:30 And there’s a lot of, not always, but there’s a lot of unconscious guilt and loyalty. So, part of the
0:13:35 reason why we don’t change is we’re loyal to the relationships that we learn how to be screwed up in.
0:13:44 And it feels odd. I say we’re immigrants. We leave the old country and the old people behind. So,
0:13:50 a story. Here’s a story. True story. The guy comes to me. He says, you’re my ninth therapist.
0:13:55 There’s a challenge. Gauntlets down, right? Another notch in the belt.
0:14:00 I mean, my ninth therapist. Eight therapists have tried to help me. And he was screwed up. The guy
0:14:07 was an award-winning artist, a celebrated artist. You know, he’s got a bad back. He doesn’t go to the
0:14:14 doctor. He’s got rotten teeth. He smokes too much. He’s just a mess. Going to die early at this rate.
0:14:23 What’s his story? Here’s his story. It was raised by a single mom. She died of alcoholism. Didn’t know
0:14:30 his dad. Her story was, when she was a little girl, her father beat everybody up in the whole house. Mother
0:14:37 and all four sisters in her. And the little nine-year-old girl, this feisty chick, walks over
0:14:42 to her father and says, you lay a hand on my mother or my sisters and I’m going to call the police and
0:14:48 have you sent to jail. True story. Father looks at this little nine-year-old and says, okay,
0:14:55 you win. I’m not going to lay a hand on your mother or sisters ever again. I’m just going to beat you.
0:15:00 And he beat her every day of her life until she finally escaped at 60.
0:15:00 Jesus.
0:15:02 Then she became an alcoholic.
0:15:03 Wow.
0:15:04 Catholic family.
0:15:12 So here’s what I say. I say, well, I know why a therapist have failed. And he cued me. He said,
0:15:16 I said, what happens with your therapist? He said, well, sooner or later, they all care more about me
0:15:23 than I do. And then I ditch them. Okay, got it. I said, okay, I know why that happened.
0:15:34 I say, your mother, who he adored, your mother was a sainted martyr. What she did to save her family
0:15:41 as a nine-year-old girl was crawl up on that cross and get crucified. And guess what? You’re up on that
0:15:49 cross with her. And if you take care of yourself and live a life and get happy and successful and
0:15:54 intimate, you will leave her on the cross. She’s dead, by the way, but it doesn’t matter.
0:16:01 You’ll leave her. And you ain’t going to do that. So you know what? I’m not going to try and make you
0:16:06 better. I’m going to celebrate your sacrifice. And this is a true story, Tim. He looked at me and he
0:16:13 goes, my back is killing me. Do you know a good doctor in New York? And there we were.
0:16:14 So what do you do with that?
0:16:18 I got him a good doctor in New York. I mean, once there’s progress,
0:16:20 move it.
0:16:23 I got it. So at that point, he was ready to actually make change.
0:16:33 Yeah. I say, look, this is what you’re doing. I admire it. I always side with the adaptation.
0:16:40 I admire it. By the way, you’re going to die. Your mother’s already dead. She doesn’t care anymore.
0:16:47 But what a loyal guy you are. Congratulations. You really want to live like this? And he says, no.
0:16:51 Everybody else argued with him. You got to live. You got to live. No, I don’t. No, I don’t.
0:16:57 Why don’t you crawl up on that cross and die with your mother? You go, I don’t think so.
0:17:07 One of the differentiating characteristics that I appreciate about you, and I can only speak to my
0:17:12 experience with you, but I’m sure it applies to therapists you’ve trained, is taking a position.
0:17:21 You’re not playing the neutral mirror with all of your clients, which gets old very quickly, for me at
0:17:25 least, when I’ve worked with other therapists. When I ask them what they think, and they’re like, well,
0:17:33 what do you think? And it just becomes this game of echo. Why do you think it is so uncommon to take
0:17:36 positions, and how can it be effective?
0:17:43 Oh, my God. We’re taught not to, as therapists. We’re actively taught not to. God forbid you should,
0:17:49 you know, thou shalt not take sides. If you take a side, particularly if you side with a woman against
0:17:55 a man, then you have to go to your supervisor and talk about your mother for a while, and then you can
0:18:02 go back into the therapy. No, no, no, no, no. The idea is that all problems are 50-50, and common sense
0:18:11 knows that’s just bullshit. Literally, I treated a couple, the guy was an untreated, bipolar, manic
0:18:18 depressive, alcoholic wager. What was the woman’s quote-unquote contribution? She was there. That
0:18:23 was her contribution. And this was the feminist critique of family therapy. You don’t say to an
0:18:30 abused spouse, what’s your 50% of this? I mean, that’s grotesque. So, in RLT, we call it like we see it.
0:18:38 Tim, you’re a nut. And Mrs. Tim, you’re an even bigger nut, and here’s why. And here’s what I think
0:18:45 you need to do about it. So, some problems are 40-60. Some problems are 99-1. We call it like we see it.
0:18:53 So, I want to bring up some other, perhaps, concepts or ways of looking at common problems that I think
0:18:59 could help people. Could you discuss objectivity battles? Maybe paint a picture of what that looks
0:19:04 like? And this is something I found personally very helpful, by the way, not just in intimate
0:19:08 relationships, but in all relationships. So, could you speak to this, please?
0:19:14 Yeah. I’m glad you said that, because relationships are relationships. We’re doing a corporate piece.
0:19:21 We’re doing a big thing for the general public. And the same skills in work, with your kids, with your dog.
0:19:26 Although, most people treat their dogs better than they treat their spouses. But anyway.
0:19:36 okay. What were we talking about? We’re talking about objectivity battles. So, what does it look like
0:19:44 to do that the wrong way? Actually, let me go big picture for 30 seconds. The essence of my work,
0:19:51 the new book, Us, is about correcting what Gregory Bates and the father of family therapy, husband of
0:19:59 Margaret Mead, called humankind’s epistemological error, philosophical error. And here it is. We stand apart
0:20:06 from nature, and we control it. We stand apart from nature, that’s individualism. We control it, that’s
0:20:13 patriarchy. And by the way, control can be one up, that’s male, do what I say, or regulating up,
0:20:20 one down, that’s traditionally the female, enabling, don’t get daddy off. Both forms of control, all
0:20:27 bullshit. Nobody controls anything. Instead, we offer a map, and then tools to live it. But here’s the new map.
0:20:36 You’re not outside of nature, idiot. You’re inside nature, and you depend upon it. Our relationships
0:20:43 are our biospheres. We breathe them. You’re an ecosystem. You can pollute your biosphere with a
0:20:49 temper tantrum over here, but your partner will retaliate with cold distance over here. There’s no
0:20:55 escape. You’re linked. And the idea that you’re not linked is diluted. So, once you wake up
0:21:04 to the fact that I’m in it, I’m not above it, then all the rules change. Who’s right, who’s wrong,
0:21:12 who cares? So, objectivity battle. Here’s the bitter pill. Objectivity has no place in personal
0:21:20 relations. I’m sorry. The relational answer, or ecological answer, there are two ways of saying the
0:21:24 same thing. The relational answer to who’s right and who’s wrong is who gives a shit.
0:21:29 What matters is, how are you and I going to work this thing in a way that’s going to work for us?
0:21:35 And proving who’s right and who’s wrong is not the way to do that. Look, I’ve been married 40 years.
0:21:43 When my wife and I have a disagreement over accuracy, who remembered it correctly, whose feelings are more
0:21:49 valid, you know, she’s a very difficult person, Belinda. And she has this nasty way of thinking
0:21:55 she’s right and I’m wrong. I don’t know why she does that. It doesn’t work. So, let me give you an
0:22:03 example of the new world. This is a true story. Okay? Totally heteronormative. Her to him, you’re a
0:22:08 reckless driver. Him to her, you’re overly nervous. How many of us have been through this one?
0:22:15 And then everybody starts marshalling their evidence and arguing their case. No, you’re nervous. You’re
0:22:19 nervous about this. You’re nervous. No, no, you’re reckless. You tailgate. Okay, that’s an objectivity.
0:22:28 Who’s right? Who’s wrong? After one session with me, true story. Her to him, honey, start with that.
0:22:36 Change the energy. Honey, I know you love me. Right or wrong? Maybe I’m overly nervous or whatever. See,
0:22:43 she just takes the whole battle off the table by talking subjectively. Maybe I’m overly nervous.
0:22:49 Nevertheless, when you tailgate and you go switch lanes and you speed up, I get crazy. I get scared.
0:22:55 Now, when you’re driving on your own, I worry, but it’s your life. When I’m next to you,
0:23:02 you don’t really want me sitting here being terrified the whole time we’re driving. As a favor to me,
0:23:11 could you please slow down and drive more conservatively? And him to her, be, be, be. Okay. And he does.
0:23:19 What might have been a fight that lasted 40 years is done in 15 minutes because it moves out of
0:23:25 objective. Who’s the authority? Who’s right? Who’s wrong? What’s fair? What’s unfair? And it becomes
0:23:36 relational. We’re a team. You love me as a favor to me. Could you? Sure. New world. New world and new tools.
0:23:42 And just to underscore that, I remember hearing you give an example and suppose the overarching point
0:23:48 that I was going to underscore is there isn’t a threshold past which your objective data wins
0:23:55 typically, right? So, so if you think, if you think your wife is yelling at a server at a restaurant,
0:24:00 it doesn’t matter if you have an audiologist sitting right next to you with various types of
0:24:02 measurement equipment, it’s still not going to work.
0:24:05 It’s not going to work. It’s not going to work. Yeah.
0:24:10 I call this applying a scientific method to your relationship, but good luck.
0:24:17 Yeah. So I’m probably going to do a poor job of prompting this, but I found it so fascinating when
0:24:23 when I heard you present it once. And that was in effect, the same way that people sometimes
0:24:28 escalate problems where they say, dah, dah, dah, dah, then you always do this. And it’s reflective
0:24:32 of this character flaw, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And you could lay it out much more eloquently
0:24:38 than I could is the same way that you can deescalate something. If you apologize for it,
0:24:42 if you’re out yourself. Yeah. Could you speak to that? Because I just thought that was such a
0:24:46 brilliant turnaround technique when I heard it, that it’s stuck with me ever since.
0:24:54 Yeah. This is a step in the critical process of repair. And either in this one or you invite me
0:25:00 back, I would love to lay out some skills. You know, we did the losing strategy. I want to do some
0:25:09 of the winning. And here’s a skill that’s part of repair. First of all, look, all of us, when someone
0:25:16 we care about confronts us with something difficult, we move into two orientations.
0:25:21 The first is objective reality. Well, that’s true. That’s not true. That’s accurate. That’s not. Well,
0:25:26 you got to understand that. And then we argue. In our heads, it’s not out of our mouths. We don’t
0:25:33 listen. We rebut. And then the second orientation we all go to is ourselves. I can’t believe I have to
0:25:39 put up with this crap. Belinda, I was just on the road telling thousands of people how to love each
0:25:47 other. And I come home and you, this is, okay. Let go of objective reality. Let go of you and take a
0:25:56 breath. And I want everybody to write this one down. Enter into compassionate curiosity about your
0:26:02 partner’s subjective experience. Let me say it again. Compassionate curiosity about your partner’s
0:26:09 subjective experience. They’re nuts. Okay. But find out what kind of nut they are. That feels bad,
0:26:16 honey. Help me understand. Who sounds like that? But that makes peace. And then when they tell you,
0:26:23 you did this, you did this, you did this, acknowledge it. Don’t deny it. Don’t minimize it. Don’t
0:26:29 rational. Yeah, but that’s not an apology. Yeah, but I did it. Land on it. And if you really want to
0:26:34 get slick, here’s the deal. Ready? This is the advanced course. You went right to the PhD, Tim.
0:26:44 Here’s what I want you to notice. Generally speaking, functional moves in a relationship are moves that
0:26:52 empower your partner to come through for you. Nobody gets this. Functional moves in a car make the car go.
0:26:58 Dysfunctional moves stop it. Functional moves in a relationship empower the other guy to give you
0:27:04 what you want. Dysfunctional moves render them helpless. So what we do, because we’re trying to
0:27:10 get heard, is we go, you did this, and last week you did that, and 10 years ago you did that, and you
0:27:18 always, and you never. The normal escalation is from this moment to trend to character. And I teach
0:27:24 people to stay particular and not do that. Because every move up that ladder renders the person you’re
0:27:29 speaking to are more helpless. And they’re either just going to get mad or leave. You did it, you
0:27:36 always, you never, you are a, you’re a slob. Okay. All right. So stay particular if you’re the disgruntled
0:27:45 one. But if you’ve been confronted, B is, yes, I did it. Here’s an A. You walk up the same ladder I’m
0:27:50 telling you not to do as the disgruntled one. I did it. It’s not the first time I’ve done it.
0:27:56 Tay, the kids and I were waiting for you. You knew dinner was at 7. You come waltzing in at 7.45. You
0:28:05 don’t call. You don’t text. It was really rude. You’re right. I did that. And I can be late. It’s
0:28:10 an issue. We know that. And when I do that, I’m being thoughtless. I get caught up in the moment,
0:28:18 and I stop thinking about the impact I’m having. And that’s really kind of selfish of me. I do have
0:28:26 some selfish tendencies. I’m working on it. Holy shit. Now that’s an apology. So if your partner
0:28:34 outs you, you did it before, you often do it, you never, you always, it’s terrible. But if you out you,
0:28:40 oh my God, your partner’s going, wow, there’s hope. This is great. It’s a funny thing.
0:28:46 Yeah. It makes me think of, I think it was Hurt Locker and the bomb defusing. It’s just like,
0:28:52 you know, it’s like, wow, nice job. Nice job with the defusing. And then of course,
0:28:56 ultimately you should be working on this issue that you say you’re going to work on or pay attention
0:29:04 to. Tell me if this is geotechnical bullshit. I’m sorry, but I have another story. One of my clients
0:29:10 told me this is true story. He said, on his wedding day, and I say this, no offense, but particularly
0:29:16 for men, on his wedding day, his father-in-law said, let’s go for a walk. Okay. He said, son,
0:29:22 I got two things for you to master. You master just these two things. Your marriage is going to be
0:29:28 great. He said, okay, pops, I’ll buy it. What you got? He goes, you’re really sorry, and you’re going to
0:29:42 work on it. Yeah. I imagine that that’ll give you a lot of payoff over a lot of miles. What is another
0:29:49 term that I’d never heard before being exposed to your work? Normal marital hatred. I got this from
0:29:55 Ed Tronick, infant observational researcher. Ed, along with Barry Braslington, was the first generation,
0:30:03 you know, since Freud, what we said about child development all came from listening to adults.
0:30:08 We didn’t watch any kids, and he was one of the first people to actually plunk a video camera in
0:30:12 front of mothers and infants, and then fathers and infants, and actually look at what happens.
0:30:19 And what he came up with, I borrowed, and it’s central to RLT, which is, the essential rhythm of all
0:30:27 relationships is harmony, disharmony, and repair. Closeness, disruption, and a return to closeness.
0:30:33 That’s where the skills come in, how to move from disruption to repair. Our culture doesn’t teach
0:30:39 it. Our culture doesn’t even acknowledge a good relationship is all harmony, just like a good
0:30:46 body is yours. A good body is like a 20-year-old’s body. A good sex life is like, you know, what you
0:30:53 had when you were two weeks into the relationship. No, all harmony is bullshit. Bullshit. One of the
0:30:58 things I like about you, Tim, is you tell the truth. You know what? You go to a cocktail party,
0:31:05 and you go, oh, there’s Harry and Shirley. They’re in their 80s. They still have sex. They love each
0:31:10 other. One of these days, I like to go to a cocktail party in here. There’s Harry and Shirley.
0:31:17 They actually split up for a year. He fell in love with another woman. He couldn’t take it because she
0:31:22 was such a drunk, but then she got into AA and got sober, and the two of them are really doing reasonably
0:31:30 well. Aren’t they cute? Just once I’d like to hear that. So we don’t deal with reality. You know,
0:31:39 the father of couples therapy back in the 50s said the day you turned to the person who was next to you,
0:31:47 it was assumed it was your marriage, and you’d say, this is a mistake. I’ve been had. This is not the
0:31:53 person I fell in love with. That said, Framo, is the first day of your real marriage. So here’s what
0:32:02 I want to say about disharmony. You ready? It hurts. It’s dark. You can really, really feel like,
0:32:09 what the hell did I get myself into? This is such a disappointment. And guess what? Your partner’s
0:32:16 probably feeling that about you, too. So I talk about normal marital hatred when you’re in that dark
0:32:24 face. You hate your partner. That’s okay. Don’t kill yourself or her. That’s okay. I’ll teach you
0:32:30 how to get through it, but it’s part of the deal for many of us. And here’s what I like to say.
0:32:35 I’ve been going around the world talking about normal marital hatred for, oh my God, what, 30 years.
0:32:40 This is true. Not one person has ever come backstage and said, Terry, what do you mean by that?
0:32:49 It’s okay, kids. Don’t sweat it. You can get through it. It’s normal. Relax.
0:32:56 Just a quick thanks to one of our sponsors, and we’ll be right back to the show.
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0:34:24 What are some of the first steps or tools that you would recommend to someone listening
0:34:32 who agrees with what you’re saying, but has had no models for repair, has never learned how to
0:34:38 use any type of approach for repair? And this is something that your direct help and then also your
0:34:42 books have really helped me with because I did not grow up in a household with repair, right? It was
0:34:47 basically one person screams, then the other person goes to fix, which they don’t really want to do,
0:34:55 but it’s their attempt to basically quell the disaster and fury. And that’s it. Then everybody’s
0:35:00 kind of upset and it never gets addressed. That was the model growing up. What do you suggest to people
0:35:02 who want to start with repair?
0:35:08 You know, of course, I’m tempted to say, so are you a screamer or a fixer? But I won’t. I’ll leave
0:35:08 that alone.
0:35:11 I’m a fixer. I’m not a screamer.
0:35:18 Oh, okay. Lucky for your partner. But the problem is the resentment that builds up.
0:35:19 Yeah, exactly.
0:35:19 Yeah.
0:35:26 Yeah. Okay. So repair. First of all, here’s, I like to say I have a number of bitter pills to swallow,
0:35:32 but if you swallow them, things will be a lot better in your life. And here’s one of them.
0:35:41 Repair is a one-way street. Everybody gets that wrong. It’s not a dialogue. It’s not, well, these are your
0:35:48 issues with me. Well, these are my issues with you. No. You have your turn, but not then. Take turns.
0:35:55 So if you have a disgruntled partner, you are at their service. That’s the first thing to master.
0:36:01 You know, I like to say, Tim, you’re at the customer service window. Somebody comes to customer service
0:36:05 window and says, my microwave doesn’t work. They don’t want to hear you say, well, my toaster doesn’t
0:36:11 work. They don’t want your excuses. Fix the goddamn microwave. Tend to your partner and bring them back
0:36:17 into repair with you. Tend to them. Put yourself aside and tend to them. What does that look like?
0:36:28 Two things. First, do I get it? Listen. Don’t argue. Don’t rebut. Empty the well. I’m sorry you
0:36:33 feel bad. That’s beautiful. Compassion. I’m sorry you feel bad. I love you. I don’t want you to feel
0:36:39 bad. Help me understand. What feels bad? What’s it like for you? Okay. And then you reflect. This is what
0:36:48 I hear you say. Did I get it? Yeah. Good enough. Good. Two, is there something I could say or do
0:36:56 right now that would be helpful? What would you like? Who says that? And then if it’s anything
0:37:02 short of jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, give it to them. Be generous. Those are the basics. I could be
0:37:10 more specific. Let me ask you a follow-up which is related to this. When someone is attempting to do
0:37:18 this but they’re having trouble biting their tongue because you ask what’s upsetting someone or you ask
0:37:24 them to describe their feelings and they say, well, when you did this, this, and this, and you disagree
0:37:29 with their assessment of reality. We already talked about where objective reality doesn’t exist. But
0:37:36 nonetheless, it could trigger visceral response. What is your advice to people who struggle with
0:37:40 that? Where it’s like, that isn’t a reflection of reality. Come on. And they want to rebut, but
0:37:45 they’re not supposed to. How would you suggest they table it? What should they say to themselves? Or do
0:37:51 you have any other pieces of advice? Well, we both know you’re a nut. Let’s investigate exactly what
0:37:57 kind of nut you are. Let’s get curious. And actually, let’s get compassion. One of the things I say is
0:38:04 no one’s a nut to themselves. You know, the paranoid who’s crouched under the desk because the Russians
0:38:12 have put germs in the ventilating system knows that we’re all going to die. And if you knew that there
0:38:18 were germs, you’d be under there with them. No one doesn’t make sense to themselves. They don’t make sense
0:38:26 sense to you. So let go of you and see if you can enter into the world of the person. When you show up
0:38:32 to our interview with a t-shirt, these are the rules of speaking. I make up. We teach people to say what I
0:38:39 make up is. No objective reality. What I make up is, you have a very casual feeling about this interview.
0:38:44 Don’t you know that you’re talking to the great Terry Reel? I’ve had a little formality. And I feel
0:38:50 really insulted. All right, you’re sitting there going, fuck you. Give me a break. If we were partners,
0:38:57 you would take a breath and you would go, okay, help me understand. What is it about the t-shirt that
0:39:03 was so upsetting to you? And then, okay, so you think it was disrespectful. Did I get that right?
0:39:08 It’s like, I don’t, you’re a nut. I know that Russians didn’t put germs in the ventilating
0:39:13 system, but I want to understand you. Look, I’m sorry that hurt your feelings. I didn’t mean to be
0:39:21 overly informal. And then if you really want an A plus, this is really parking your ego at the door.
0:39:28 I can understand how you might feel like that. And really what it is, is I can understand
0:39:34 praying, thinking the nutty things you think, if you think that way, that you would feel like that.
0:39:39 So give it to them. Be generous. I can understand how you might feel like that. Is there something
0:39:41 I could say or do that would help you feel better?
0:39:48 Got it. All right. Very helpful. I wanted to shift gears just a little bit. And we can go
0:39:53 in a lot of different directions. We can also come back to repair because, as you said already,
0:40:01 I mean, this is practically universally neglected in terms of any type of education that people tend
0:40:08 to receive, but we’ll park that for a second. I wanted to know what types of deal breakers exist
0:40:16 when you work with clients. And that could include addictions, psychiatric conditions, et cetera. But I
0:40:21 wanted you to maybe run us through what that list looks like, because I might want to double click on a
0:40:27 few of them. So if you go to my website, and I’m supposed to put in a plug for social media,
0:40:30 you can follow me. May I say how?
0:40:30 Of course.
0:40:42 Let me get it right. You can follow me at all socials at capital R real, capital T Terry, capital R real.
0:40:51 So at real Terry real, or you can go to my website, Terry real.com. Anyway, so I have an article about
0:40:59 this. Should I stay or should I go? And the tool I use is what I call a relational reckoning. And it’s
0:41:06 a question you ask yourself. Here’s the question. Am I getting enough in this relationship to make
0:41:15 grieving what I’m not getting worth my while? Let me say that again. Am I getting enough in this
0:41:24 relationship to make the pain of what’s missing? Okay with me? And if the answer is yes, it is okay,
0:41:31 then stop whining and embrace what’s good. You know, work the change to get more, but embrace what’s good
0:41:37 and stop walking around like a big angry victim. If the answer is no, it’s not enough, then do something
0:41:44 about it. Lean in and fight. And if it doesn’t work, drag your partner to hopefully an RLT therapist,
0:41:50 they’re the ones I believe in, and get an ally and get some help. And if that doesn’t work, you’re done.
0:41:57 So, okay. So in answering the question, what’s a deal breaker? Let me be clear. Deal breakers come
0:42:04 only after you’ve dragged your partner to a couple’s therapist and one that actually helps. And you know,
0:42:10 you’ve heard me say, I don’t think most do, but get one that will side with you and be an ally and take
0:42:18 that person on. Okay. Deal breakers. Basically, do they want to work or not? If you want to work and they
0:42:27 don’t, you could be done. And that could be an addiction, could be sexual acting out, could be anger, could be
0:42:34 lying, could be withholding and passive aggression. But if you’re not getting what you want, and the truth of the
0:42:41 matter is, your partner isn’t going to do the work of giving you more of what you want, you’re done.
0:42:48 And there are a lot of variations on that. Obviously, if somebody’s got an active addiction and they don’t
0:42:55 want to work on it, I would not. And people do. People go to Al-Anon and manage, but I’d prefer you
0:43:03 break up. If somebody’s a rager or mistreating you, if they violate contracts, particularly monogamy,
0:43:11 if they’re chronic liars, and if they have an untreated psychiatric condition, anxiety, depression.
0:43:17 And then, this is interesting, and I would really not trust yourself. I would only trust a professional.
0:43:28 If there’s a massive difference in the maturity level of the two people, the evolution of the two people,
0:43:38 the immaturity of the unevolved one will start to feel too painful to the more mature one, and they
0:43:40 should leave and find a different partner.
0:43:46 So, when you… I guess a few questions related to everything you just said. The first is,
0:43:54 I have to imagine that in many instances, it’s one partner who not necessarily drags the other person,
0:43:59 but convinces them to do therapy. They’re not equally enthusiastic about perhaps being in front
0:44:07 of the therapist. So, I would imagine there’s a grace period of sorts to enlist the other person.
0:44:18 So, how do you do that if one person is more resistant or stoic, and the other person is
0:44:22 the one who’s more enthused, who sort of initiated that first session?
0:44:29 It’s sort of carrot and stick. I talk about leverage, negative and positive leverage.
0:44:35 Tim, your partner is saying to you this, this, and this. She’s pretty fed up. Are you fed up,
0:44:43 partner of Tim? Yeah, I’m fed up. How fed up are you exactly? Do you believe her? Why should he
0:44:49 believe you? And what I’m doing is I’m amplifying the negative consequences. They’re there, but you’re
0:44:55 not looking at them. So, my first move is to empower your partner to be firm and speak up to you,
0:45:01 and I use that as leverage to get your interest. So, this is the negative thing that I can help you
0:45:08 avoid. And here’s the positive thing I can deliver. Would you like a happier, warmer, sexier partner?
0:45:15 Okay. And if you have kids, this is a big one. Hey, Tim, what kind of father did you have?
0:45:24 What kind of father do you want to be? I got bad and good news. If you don’t do this work,
0:45:32 you’re going to do some version of what got done to you to them. You want to do that? Would you like
0:45:38 to be a better father than the one you grew up with? Okay, well, you got to let me help you. And a lot
0:45:44 of particularly men who won’t do, it’s hard work, this work. They won’t do it for themselves. They won’t
0:45:52 do it for their witty wives. They will do it to spare their children. So, I get buy-in. And it’s a
0:45:57 combination of, this is what’s going to happen to you if you don’t change. And this is what could
0:46:02 happen for you if you do. Here’s the consequence. Here’s the reward.
0:46:08 And when you’re talking about deal breakers, could you just clarify in what sense they are deal
0:46:13 breakers? Does it mean that you will not work with them as clients until they address one of those
0:46:19 deal breakers? For instance, they have addiction to alcohol or gambling or whatever it might be.
0:46:23 I found it interesting that you mentioned the anxiety and depression because one of the topics
0:46:31 I wanted to talk to you about is male depression. And I guess I’m curious if you work with some of
0:46:37 those in tandem or if people are kind of left to their own devices to figure it out.
0:46:44 never, never do that. I never confront somebody and then let them swing in the wind. I’m always right
0:46:50 next to you telling you, okay, this is what you’re doing that ain’t working. Let me take your hand and
0:46:55 teach you what does work. And that’s different than a lot of other therapies. We get, roll up our sleeves
0:47:03 and get granular. Tim, this isn’t you. I’m just, Tim, do you notice that your face is kind of frozen when
0:47:08 you talk and you’re speaking a monotone and your wife is out of her mind right now because nobody’s
0:47:13 ever said this to you, but she, she’s bored as hell next to you. Look, this is what I want you to do as
0:47:18 we learn to, we learn for you to start speaking about your feelings. I want you to go like this with your
0:47:26 face. Animate it. I want, yeah. Let me see a little oomph here. I mean, that’s what I call micro-coaching.
0:47:32 And we roll up our sleeves and get right next to you and teach you how to do it better. We call them
0:47:42 preconditions. Addiction, acting out, psychiatric conditions. Acting out either violence or sexual acting out.
0:47:49 We will not take couples if there’s domestic violence. You go off to a safety program. You go
0:47:54 off to a perpetrator program. I don’t ask people to tell the truth to power if it’s dangerous.
0:48:02 You know, safety for, about the others, sexual acting out, addictions, psychiatric disorders.
0:48:09 RLT therapists will meet with the couple, but only to talk about the issues. What are you going to do
0:48:15 about your depression? What are you going to do about your womanizing? How are we going to settle
0:48:23 this? The idea is it would be bullshit for me to pretend that I can help you and your partner get
0:48:30 closer while you’re still engaged in this stuff. So sobriety first. I will meet with the couple,
0:48:36 but to deal with what you’re not dealing with. Then we can work on your relationship.
0:48:43 So let’s double click on your first book. I don’t want to talk about it because I know
0:48:50 Peter Atiyah, who’s an old friend of mine, of course, very well-known doc these days is a huge
0:48:57 fan of this book. I have not yet read it. I apologize for that, but I would love for you to perhaps
0:49:04 describe what people get wrong about male depression, or we could dive directly into covert depression,
0:49:10 because I’m wondering how many of these preconditions might be explained by depression as
0:49:13 opposed to being separate problems.
0:49:18 First of all, for those who haven’t, please read Peter’s book, Outlive. It’s great. In the last
0:49:25 chapter, it was about his work with me and Esther Perel, about his own psychological work. And also,
0:49:29 if I may, Peter had a podcast that we did together, and he talked about his work with me. It was very
0:49:37 moving. So look those two things up. Male depression. When I wrote that book, it’s 30 years old. It’s
0:49:43 selling as well as my new books, by the way. It’s really been a keeper. Depression was seen as a
0:49:51 woman’s disease, and I argued against that. And what I said is that a lot of men have the same kind of
0:49:58 depression that we normally think of. I call it overt depression. But a lot of men, unlike women,
0:50:06 have what I call covert depression. You don’t see the depression. You see what the man is doing to
0:50:13 defend against the depression. And many of the problems we think of as typically male may be fueled
0:50:23 by depression. So self-medication, rage, philandering, radical withdrawal, all of these may be symptom of
0:50:29 an underlying depression. A lucky guy gets what we call a dual diagnosis. You’re, you know,
0:50:34 forgive me, I can’t be, you know the joke. You’re terminal, I want a second opinion. Okay,
0:50:43 you’re ugly. It’s like, it’s like, okay, the bad news is you’re addicted. And the worst news is
0:50:48 underneath the addiction, you’ve got a depression. Lucky guy gets a dual diagnosis. Unlucky guy gets
0:50:54 one or the other. If you stumble into an addictions person, they’ll clean up your addiction, but they
0:50:57 won’t deal with them. If you go to a psychiatrist, they’ll give you a mass period of depression,
0:51:01 but you’re drinking like a fish. First, you have to deal with the defenses.
0:51:09 When they settle down and move into some level of sobriety, then the underlying depression comes
0:51:15 to, you don’t even have to go after it. It comes up. I say the cure for a covert depression is an
0:51:22 overt depression. And once the pain comes up, you deal with it. But I think part of the reason why
0:51:29 that book has lasted for 30 years is there’s a third piece, which is not only do men express depression
0:51:37 differently, but the ideology is different. Girls and women get depressed because they famously lose their voices
0:51:48 and blame themselves and turn inward. Boys and men get depressed because of what I call normal boyhood trauma
0:51:59 under patriarchy. We are taught at 3, 4, or 5 years old to deny our vulnerability, to disconnect from our feelings,
0:52:08 to disconnect from others, all in the name of autonomy. We cut off half of our humanity.
0:52:15 The feelings, the vulnerability connection, really in some ways the most rich, nourishing parts of what
0:52:22 it means to be a human. And that cut off, which is imposed on boys, I have story after story,
0:52:35 that cut off is traumatic. And it also renders you isolated and lonely. So there’s a lot of trauma.
0:52:42 That trauma becomes depression. That depression becomes acting out of self-medication. And if you
0:52:50 really want to heal someone, you hit all three layers. First, the defenses, then the depression,
0:52:59 then the childhood trauma. How do you think about teasing out when, for instance, addiction is
0:53:07 paired with underlying depression, maybe downstream of it versus independent? Because I suppose there’s
0:53:13 a risk of asking a barber if you need a haircut in the sense you go to the surgeon, they tell you you
0:53:18 need surgery. You go to the fill in the blank, right? They tell you that you need whatever their
0:53:23 specialty happens to be. Just like you mentioned with getting the single diagnosis versus the dual
0:53:30 diagnosis. So how do you determine if something is actually paired with underlying depression, since
0:53:34 that’s the sort of example we’re talking about in men, versus independent?
0:53:39 It’s really simple. When the person starts to get sober, do they get depressed?
0:53:44 And the depression that they get looks just like psychiatric depression.
0:53:48 I see what you’re saying. So if they’re a workaholic and they pair that down, does the
0:53:52 depression then have room to breathe and express itself, basically, when the coping mechanism is
0:53:55 removed in some capacity?
0:54:00 Yeah. As opposed to you remove the coping mechanism and, oh my God, I’m so much better.
0:54:16 But 99 out of 100, you go from sobriety to trauma. You have to deal with the underlying trauma. My great
0:54:24 mentor, Pia Melody, a great legend in the 12-step community, ran the meadows for 70 years. First,
0:54:31 the addiction, then the personality issues, and then underlying childhood trauma. If you don’t deal
0:54:35 with the underlying trauma, it’s going to be hard for that person to stay sober.
0:54:45 What type of approaches or modalities do you favor for working with trauma when you get to that layer?
0:54:51 We like to do trauma work with your partner sitting next to you, and we’re unique in that.
0:54:56 And I’ve got to tell you, I’ve argued against what I call toxic individualism in this culture,
0:55:04 and psychotherapy is up to its eyeballs in supporting individualism and supporting patriarchy.
0:55:09 I want to ask you about this word, patriarchy, because you have so many messages that I think
0:55:17 I want to convey to not just a male audience, but I have a very large male audience, and I feel like
0:55:24 patriarchy can be a very loaded term, and that there are matriarchal or matrilineal,
0:55:29 there are patrilineal societies, both of which function pretty well. And I’m just wondering how
0:55:36 you think about using versus not using that term, because I feel like there’s a risk that you might
0:55:41 turn off men who actually need to hear a lot of what you have to say. How do you think about that?
0:55:48 It is what it is. So let me talk about what I mean, and then we can talk about the marketing of it.
0:55:53 I make a decision between what I call political patriarchy and psychological patriarchy.
0:56:00 And political patriarchy is the oppression of women by men. It’s all over the globe, and
0:56:09 you know, it’s deadly in some cultures. It’s a very real thing. Psychological patriarchy is basically
0:56:17 traditional masculinity writ large. Oh, double back. But psychological patriarchy, traditional
0:56:29 masculinity, guys, listen up, is a system that does damage to everybody. Everybody. And does deep,
0:56:36 deep, deep damage to our relationships. What do I mean by that? Let me just take traditional
0:56:43 masculinity. The essence of traditional masculinity under patriarchy, the overarching system, is
0:56:50 invulnerability. The more invulnerable you are, the more manly you are, the more vulnerable you are,
0:56:56 the more girly you are, and that is not a good thing. And of course, we both know there’s been a huge
0:57:03 resurgence. You know, a backlash. Don’t tell us we’re bad people. I’m not talking about not being
0:57:10 powerful. I’m talking about not being dominant. There’s a difference. Rhianne Eisler talks about
0:57:17 power over versus power with. I want men to be powerful. I also want women to be powerful. I want
0:57:24 all of us to be whole. And what patriarchy does is what Carol Gilligan calls the binary. These human
0:57:33 qualities are feminine. A good man has none of them. These human qualities are masculine. A good woman has
0:57:38 none of them. And it’s what Olga Silverstein called the halving process. You take a whole human being,
0:57:47 you draw a line down the middle, half of humanity say goodbye to. That is not healthy. That’s not good
0:57:54 for anybody. So vulnerability, for example, what we do, the way we quote-unquote turn boys into men
0:58:00 under patriarchy is through disconnection. We teach them to disconnect from their feelings.
0:58:05 There’s hard research. Three, four, five. Little boys have more feelings than little girls,
0:58:10 actually. They’re more sensitive. But by three, four, five, they know better than to open their
0:58:18 mouths and say anything. They’ve read the code. So no vulnerability, no emotion, not too connected to
0:58:24 others. You’re independent. Great. Here’s what I say. I would say it to you if you showed up in my office.
0:58:31 Tim, the things you learned as a boy about what makes a good man are the very qualities that will
0:58:34 ensure that by today’s standards, you’ll be seen as a lousy husband.
0:58:44 Across the board, I’ll just deal with heterosexuals for a moment. Women want men’s hearts. They want
0:58:51 connection. Tell me what the fuck you’re feeling. Open your mouth and share with me. When I come to
0:58:59 you with a feeling, be compassionate and not dismissive. Well, guess what? All of that goes against what was
0:59:06 imposed on you as a boy about how to handle yourself as a man. But one of the things I say is moving men,
0:59:14 women, non-binary folk into true intimacy is synonymous with moving them beyond traditional gender roles,
0:59:21 beyond patriarchy. Men have to move into vulnerability and open their hearts. Women have to move into
0:59:30 assertion with love, not with harshness, but with love. And doing that on both sides moves beyond
0:59:34 anything that this culture teaches us. It’s pioneer work.
0:59:39 All right. Thank you for unpacking that. We might come back to it. I’m happy to talk about that more.
0:59:42 I have follow-up questions, but I don’t want to take us off track with the trauma question,
0:59:49 because you were talking about one of the defining and unusual characteristics by conventional therapy
0:59:57 standards is that RLT does trauma work with the partner present. That’s where I then took us on a
1:00:02 side quest with the question about patriarchy. You know, as a relational therapist who argues against
1:00:09 exaggerated individualism, look, here’s the thing. We’ve never wanted more from our relationships than we do
1:00:14 right now. It’s historically new. We don’t think historically, so we don’t get this. But
1:00:22 our parents, grandparents, a companionable marriage was plenty good enough. But we want more. We want
1:00:27 real intimacy and sustaining. We want to hold hands, walk on the beach, have heart-to-hearts, have great
1:00:35 sex in our 60s and 70s. I mean, we want to be lifelong lovers. This is new. Marriage was never built for that.
1:00:41 Go into Western literature and find me a passion at marriage. All passion is adulterous.
1:00:42 It’s new.
1:00:49 Yeah, it’s new. But we live in an anti-relational culture. That’s patriarchy. We live in a culture
1:00:59 that’s about up, down, wind, lose, right, wrong, no. We have to wake up to ecological wisdom. We’re a team.
1:01:06 We’re in this together. What do you need, honey? It’s in my interest to keep you happy. That’s the
1:01:12 new world order. And, you know, not to disarm man, but I do get these big burly guys, and they say,
1:01:18 why should I have to work so hard to please my wife? And I go, knock, knock. You live with her.
1:01:27 It’s in your interest. That’s what I teach people. It’s in your interest to learn how to do this stuff.
1:01:33 And also, I would just say, for clarification, that you mean to keep someone happy, but in a
1:01:38 interdependent, not codependent way, right? Because it’s easy to go into that fixing mode,
1:01:41 and people think they’re making someone happy.
1:01:45 You’re right. And I didn’t say, it’s in your interest to make them happy.
1:01:48 What I really say is, it’s in your interest to take care of your biosphere.
1:01:55 If you ride in the one-up, at some point we should talk about this. If you’re more in the one-up,
1:02:03 and you’re more entitled, demanding, dominant, you don’t listen, you got to come down off your high
1:02:09 horse. If you ride in the one-down, like a fixer, oh my God, oh my God, my partner’s upset,
1:02:15 codependent. You need to take a breath. What your biosphere needs is for you to be assertive
1:02:24 and be more conflictual and fight a little more. Stand up for yourself. So you have to correct what’s
1:02:31 off. It’s not one-size-fits-all. It’s what’s off for you. If you’re one-up, come down. If you’re one-down,
1:02:38 like a fixer, then assert yourself and take some risks. But both are vulnerability. When we think of
1:02:43 vulnerability, we think of sensitivity. But for a fixer like you, standing up for yourself, and oh my
1:02:51 God, they may get mad at me, that’s vulnerability for you. So what does my biosphere need? You know,
1:02:58 Carol Gilligan says, there can be no voice without relationship. So come down off your high horse if
1:03:05 you’re dominant. There can be no relationship without voice. So I would work with someone like you, and I
1:03:12 would have you, okay, I want you to identify what you’re feeling. I want you to identify what you want
1:03:18 and need right now. Don’t worry about pleasing them. What does Tim want? And I want to teach you how to
1:03:25 articulate that in a way that might get listened to. May I hypothesize about you?
1:03:26 Sure. Go for it.
1:03:31 This could be wrong, but here we go. What I make up, as we say. So you have this dominant,
1:03:33 I’m assuming, father.
1:03:33 Yeah, his father.
1:03:40 And this codependent, unhappy mother. This is what I call the unholy triad of patriarchy.
1:03:46 You wonder why so many men are love avoidant or avoiders. Well, here’s why. You have an
1:03:52 irresponsible or shut down father. You have an unhappy mother. You have, and I guarantee this
1:04:01 was you, a sweet, sensitive, big-hearted young boy. The mother doesn’t have to do a thing to
1:04:07 enmesh him, to use him. That boy looks at his unhappy mother and says, what can I do to make
1:04:13 her happy? And he lets go of what he wants and needs and becomes her caretaker emotionally.
1:04:20 Grows up, and his template for relationship is, I’m a caretaker. I’m a fixer. I got to take care
1:04:27 of them. My needs, nobody gives a shit. So what that breeds, maybe you, maybe not, is what we call
1:04:33 love avoidant. You live behind walls. Because relationships mean I surrender my, you know,
1:04:39 my needs and caretake them. I’m a human, so I need relationships. I pull them in. But once they’re in,
1:04:45 I got to keep them at arm’s length or they’ll eat me alive. So you live behind walls to protect
1:04:48 yourself. That’s that adaptive child. How am I doing?
1:04:56 I mean, you’re 100% spot on. I think at the very end, I had a question in my mind as to
1:05:01 whether I have those types of walls, because I don’t know what they might look like.
1:05:05 So perhaps, could you give me an example of what those might look like? And then I could tell you.
1:05:11 How good are you at identifying what you want in a relationship and assertively going after it?
1:05:17 I’d say pretty good at identifying. Could be a lot better at proactively going after it
1:05:21 and requesting it. Tend to be very indirect. That would be accurate to say for sure.
1:05:27 Yeah. And the cost of that indirectness is you don’t get your needs met, and then resentment grows,
1:05:31 and then whatever. So I have eight million sayings in my mind.
1:05:34 Make him progress. Make him progress. I’ve improved a lot.
1:05:44 I can feel that, by the way. I can feel that. I would teach you, the cure for love avoidance is
1:05:51 negotiation. I would teach you to identify what you want and lean in and have the daring break the rules
1:05:57 and say, hey, you know what? I don’t want to eat Indian tonight. I want to eat Japanese.
1:06:03 And the last two nights, we ate what you wanted, and tonight we’re doing Japanese.
1:06:06 Well, I don’t like that, Tim. Well, okay.
1:06:11 And, you know, for you fixers, I say, let the bad thing happen.
1:06:18 You know, that adaptive child part of you is petrified of conflict. You don’t want to make dad
1:06:23 angry, and you don’t want to make mom unhappy. You’re a fixer. You’re a good boy, and you want
1:06:30 to bring peace. Well, this is where trauma enters into our relationship. That adaptive child part of
1:06:37 you has no model for healthy conflict. It’s either yelling and screaming or giving in.
1:06:43 And, you know, we children, we look at mom and dad, we go, I’ll be that one. You looked at mom,
1:06:49 I’ll be that one. I don’t want to be dad. I don’t want to be that aggressive. So you don’t have a
1:06:55 healthy template for healthy aggression. Didn’t have that model. Yeah. Yeah, me too. I had a violent
1:07:02 father. I would teach you how to have healthy conflict and feel good about that, but it would be
1:07:11 very scary initially. So you nailed a couple of things that I want to revisit. So the first,
1:07:16 and this will come back into the patriarchy thing too, because what you do, Terry, is so powerful and
1:07:21 so important. I want as many men to listen to it as possible, which is why I’m talking about the
1:07:26 patriarchy piece. It’s not because I disagree with a lot of what you’re saying, although I do have some
1:07:32 clarifying questions. So one thing you said is, you hypothesized, right? The story you make up is
1:07:38 that I was very, very sensitive, or I was a very sensitive young kid, which is true. I was very
1:07:44 sensitive, much more so than my schoolmates. And then for a host of reasons, really also including
1:07:51 some pretty terrible childhood abuse, not from my family, ended up trying to, yeah, I’ve written about
1:07:58 it extensively, but yeah, maybe another time. But the upshot of it is that I turned that off, right?
1:08:04 Emotions, insensitivity, or reliability. So I completely compartmentalized that, locked it, put it
1:08:11 away. And that continued to be the case. And I paid a lot for that. There was some upside. There’s some
1:08:15 upside. I had a very high pain tolerance. I could handle certain things. I could be very aggressive and
1:08:22 take a lot of shots in the course of doing various things, competitive sports, business, whatever. So
1:08:27 I had some quote-unquote success from that, but there was a lot of collateral damage. And then around
1:08:35 2013, for a number of reasons, including a relationship I thought was going to end in marriage and kids
1:08:45 coming to a halt, decided to reopen the doors and sort of reactivate that sensitivity.
1:08:49 So that’s been a project for the last 12 years or so.
1:08:52 Brilliant and courageous, both. Congratulations.
1:08:59 Thank you. Thank you. And so that’s been an incredibly rewarding and challenging path thus far,
1:09:05 and it continues. I don’t regret having done that. My question, I suppose, and this might seem a little
1:09:11 out of left field, is that when you’re talking about men being available to their partners and
1:09:19 emotionally attuned, and I know I’m using different vocabulary. I agree with all of that. But I suppose
1:09:27 some people listening might feel like men and women might be positioned as equivalents in a lot of ways,
1:09:33 sort of emotional doppelgangers. And I’m just wondering if you feel like there are any patterns in terms of
1:09:38 male and female differences that you spot again and again that don’t need to be fixed, that they’re
1:09:43 actually just, whether intrinsic or otherwise, sort of differences to embrace. And I’m just curious
1:09:49 what your thoughts are there. I tend to think there are, but I’m curious what your position is on that.
1:10:00 I don’t know. Who are we beyond our socialization? I don’t know. What I do know is that the bifurcation
1:10:06 of men and women under patriarchal culture, which is virtually ubiquitous in the world,
1:10:17 is so strong. You gave up your sensitivity because your sensitivity was punished. And the playground is the
1:10:24 greatest enforcer of traditional roles. You learn. Three, four, five-year-old boys learn to keep their
1:10:31 mouths shut or they’re going to get punished. And for the guys out there, I got to say, for a girl to
1:10:39 cross into boy land is like, no, she’ll get some shit. For a boy to cross into girl land evokes violence,
1:10:47 emotional, and I’m sorry, at times, even physical violence. It’s dangerous to break the rules.
1:10:55 It’s dangerous to stand up for being whole in this culture. And I talked to parents about having their
1:10:59 boys be literate, gender literate. Can I tell you a story?
1:11:01 Of course. I love your stories.
1:11:10 So when my kids were little, I’ve got two kids. One’s a massive jock, Justin, and one is a gay doctor,
1:11:16 ballet dancer, danced professionally, and he’s got five. Anyway, they were both amazing and very,
1:11:23 very different kids. And we went off to vacation, like the Dominican Republic, and they had cornrows
1:11:31 put in their hair. The kids did that. My little one, Alexander, who turned out to grow up to be gay,
1:11:37 did his whole head in cornrows. And they were like green, no, pink and gold, his favorite color.
1:11:43 His older brother, Justin, the jock, had a couple of like Keith Richards, cool rock and roll, you know.
1:11:47 All right, it’s time to go to school. We’re back from vacation.
1:11:53 Belinda and I sit him down and go, here’s the deal. If you go to school with that in your hair,
1:11:58 you may get crap from the other kids. If you don’t go to school with that in your hair,
1:12:03 you may feel like you’ve missed out on expressing yourself. And it could be the kids are going to love
1:12:09 that stuff in your hair. I don’t know. What do you guys want to do? It’s not my decision, it’s yours.
1:12:14 And we talked to boys about, do you want to express yourself and deal with the crap you’re
1:12:21 going to get? Or do you want to comply and deal with the inauthenticity of that? It’s your choice,
1:12:27 not ours. I don’t make those choices for my boys, but it’s an on-the-table conversation.
1:12:34 So they’ve all said, sure. And as the older one, Dustin, the Keith Richards, puts his foot in the car,
1:12:41 goes, I can’t do it. And we wind up cutting his hair. His brother, Mr. Pink and Gold,
1:12:48 looks like the toast of the town, but it could have gone another way. So I would teach young Tim
1:12:57 how to negotiate his sensitivities so that when they were welcome, they were overt. And when they were
1:13:04 unwelcome, you put up a shield of toughness to protect yourself and having some sense of which
1:13:05 moment is which.
1:13:11 How did you navigate that with your boys? Like, how did you raise your boys? I’d be so curious to hear
1:13:20 more about it because there is a time to, it’s not limited to men, of course, or boys, but I think
1:13:25 there’s a lot of value placed. And I don’t think this is necessarily a bad thing on competition and
1:13:30 winning and so on and so forth. And I’m just so curious, since you mentioned the jock in particular,
1:13:34 how did you think about raising those two boys? And did you raise them any differently?
1:13:41 I did. No, they were both raised similarly to one another, but they’re very different from the
1:13:47 culture at large. It’s funny, we just had our first relational life therapy annual conference,
1:13:53 and my sons got on stage with me. And the older one, Justin, the jock, was very funny. He looked at the
1:14:00 crowd and he said, you know, being the son of two therapists, the way I grew up, you want to talk to
1:14:07 me about how your nanny had sex with you when you were five or your deepest anxiety, I’m there,
1:14:13 no problem. It took me into my 20s to learn how to sit on a bar stool, have a beer and talk to guys
1:14:24 about a game. Nobody’s perfect. You know, the thing is, I want whole people. And going back to people
1:14:31 may be turned off by what I’m saying, it absolutely kills me when people describe my work as Terry’s
1:14:41 I’m trying to feminize men. No, I want whole human beings. I want smart, sexy, competent women. I want
1:14:51 powerful, big-hearted, compassionate men. We don’t need to have ourselves in compliance to the world order.
1:15:01 We can be whole. And the issue is, whole and adaptable. What is this moment calling for? And
1:15:03 I got to tell this story. This is one of my favorite stories.
1:15:04 Please.
1:15:11 So I had the privilege of going to Maasai land in Tanzania with another family who knew this
1:15:19 particular compound, these guys, very well. It took 10 hours of driving to get to them. They were
1:15:25 remote. And this is the real deal. I mean, you know, we’re talking, you know, earlobes down here and
1:15:29 everybody had, and they have spears and they kill lions. And these are real warriors.
1:15:37 So I had a men’s group with the elders for four nights running, and we talked about everything.
1:15:43 So I go like this to them. In the United States, there’s a debate about what makes a good man,
1:15:49 Marani, warrior, all one word. What makes a good Marani? Some people say a good Marani is sensitive
1:15:56 and thoughtful and kind. Some people say a good Marani is fierce and tough and no bullshit.
1:15:59 What do you guys think? Which is it? True story, Tim.
1:16:05 So this little guy has got to be 4’3 and 1,000 years old, crooks his finger, and he sounds like
1:16:12 he’s totally pissed at me. And it goes from Maasai to Swahili to English to Swahili. And this is what
1:16:19 he says. I have no interest in talking to you about what makes a good Marani. I could care less. But I
1:16:25 will talk to you about what makes a great Marani. He said, when the moment calls for fierceness,
1:16:31 a good Marani will kill you. Don’t mess with him. I mean, he’ll kill you. When the moment
1:16:36 calls for a good man calls for tenderness, a good Marani will lay down his sword and shield and be
1:16:43 sweet like a baby. A great Marani is a man who knows which moment is when.
1:16:45 That’s good. Yeah, that’s very good.
1:16:52 I want whole people who can adapt to what’s in front of them. That’s health.
1:17:04 How did you and your wife think about changing how you would raise your kids from how you were raised?
1:17:10 How do you think about that? And just be curious to hear you approach that from whatever angle makes
1:17:10 sense.
1:17:17 Well, as you probably know, both my wife and I came from terrible trauma, terribly violent families.
1:17:25 I wouldn’t wish it on anybody. Four books, 40 years. Here’s probably my single most famous quote.
1:17:29 You know, they say it’s the height of pretension to quote yourself, but I’ll do it.
1:17:39 Family pathology rolls from generation to generation like a fire in the woods, taking down everything in
1:17:46 its path until one person in one generation has the courage to turn and face the flames.
1:17:53 That person brings peace to their ancestors and spares the children that follow.
1:18:02 Belinda and I made a rock solid commitment that we were not going to leak the kind of reactivity
1:18:10 and violence that we grew up with on our kids. And we didn’t. We did it on each other. We had a real
1:18:19 rock’em sock’em marriage for years. We were both fighters, but we spared the children. And they know that.
1:18:27 And they’re really robust, radiantly healthy boys. I am the son of an angry, depressed father.
1:18:35 He was the son of an angry, depressed father. I have two boys. Neither of them say that,
1:18:41 and neither were their children. And that is the greatest achievement of my life.
1:18:48 I mean, it’s an amazing achievement. And I’d love to get a little more, not microscopic,
1:18:54 but granular in the sense that a lot of people say they want to change. A lot of people have
1:18:58 New Year’s resolutions and they say, you know what? I’m not going to be the diabetic my parent
1:19:03 was because I can fix it. I can change it. And they don’t change. So I’m wondering how,
1:19:09 especially since you had the rock’em sock’em experience in your marriage, what were the actions
1:19:18 you took or the strategies you had to check yourselves and ensure that you weren’t letting
1:19:22 those older inherited behaviors bleed into your parenting?
1:19:28 Well, first of all, get help. Men don’t get help. In the book one, I said,
1:19:32 a man is about as likely to get help for depression as he is to ask for directions.
1:19:39 You know, if you come from a tough background, I say this to the people I work with all the time.
1:19:48 You can’t come from what you came from and have the happy, healthy family you want without doing
1:19:53 a shitload of therapy, a shitload of work. Men’s groups, women’s groups, 12-step groups,
1:19:59 therapy, but therapy that works. But the first thing I want to say is, thank God you don’t have
1:20:04 to do this on your own because you won’t know what to do. Get help. And get help that helps.
1:20:12 Years and years of spiritual work. I’ve been meditating over 50 years and all stripe of
1:20:17 therapy work. There’s a saying, therapists are people who need to be in therapy 40 hours a week.
1:20:24 I became a professional therapist to heal myself. And then I became a family therapist to learn how to
1:20:31 have a relationship. I mean, I was so far behind the starting gate. In 12-step, one of these folks say
1:20:41 is the last phase is gratitude. I was so on the ropes. Unlike a lot of people, if I did my defaults,
1:20:46 I’d be dead now. That’s true. A lot of my friends that I grew up with are dead. If I did what I learned,
1:20:57 I’d be dead. I had no choice but to go under or reconfigure myself. And that’s a gift. The same
1:21:02 with Belinda. And we are. We’re reconstructed human beings. Belinda calls us retreads, you know,
1:21:09 like a tire. And I love reconstructed human beings. We have a lot of depth. And if I can do it, you can
1:21:14 do it. There’s a way to do it, no matter where you come from. But you’ve got to be willing to do the
1:21:16 work. And it’s hard goddamn work.
1:21:23 What do your group therapy experiences look like? I remember, I don’t think you would mind
1:21:28 me saying this. I’ll double check with them after we finish recording. But Kevin went through a group,
1:21:33 I want to say, for lack of a better way to describe it, sort of therapy experience with seven or eight
1:21:38 people. He didn’t tell me anything. Men. Men. And he didn’t tell me anything about the content,
1:21:43 of course. But it had a really big impact on him. And I’m curious what the format was,
1:21:47 what the rules looked like for a men’s group like that.
1:21:52 We start off with check-ins. How’s everybody doing? What’s on your mind?
1:22:02 And then either we move into a theme that emerges. So my practice is 10 full-pay people and four pro
1:22:09 bono at any given time. And the 10 who pay, they tend to be high rollers. So here’s a group of some of
1:22:17 the bigger mover and shaker guys in the world right now. We had a hilarious time talking for two hours
1:22:24 about how we were all petrified of our wives. So sometimes a theme will emerge. Fathers, anger,
1:22:33 self-medication, being afraid of our wife. And or as the check-in evolves, one person will like pop.
1:22:44 And I’ll go, Dave, do trauma work with you. We’re not going to do it. Just go around anyway. But if
1:22:50 you were in the group, at some point, I would say, I want to go back to that little boy who learned how
1:22:58 to be a fixer. How old were you when you first adopted that? Four or five is whatever it was. Close your
1:23:06 eyes, go into your body. Find that four-year-old boy. Ask him to come out and sit in a chair facing
1:23:12 you. What’s he look like? How do you feel toward him? What do you want to say to him? What does he need to
1:23:17 hear from you? What’s it like for him? How does he respond to what you just said? And I get into a dialogue
1:23:26 between you and this little boy. Of course, it’s very emotional. And it ends always with you saying to that
1:23:36 little part of you, I’m here now. I can take care of you. Your angry partner may not be available,
1:23:45 and that’s frightening to you. But I’m available. We don’t need her. You turn to me. And that’s
1:23:52 transformative. So I do deep trauma work in the men’s group, or we do a theme, or we just all hang out and
1:23:56 talk about what’s going on in our lives. Any or all of the boat.
1:24:02 Are there any guidelines for how people can respond to what someone else says or discloses?
1:24:07 Or I’m just thinking there are sometimes rules in organizations like the Entrepreneur’s Organization
1:24:14 and in forums and things like this, in these smaller sized groups. If somebody was thinking about
1:24:18 creating something like this for themselves, and I know it’d be good to have a professional involved,
1:24:23 of course. But are there any other rules or guidelines that you think are helpful in these
1:24:23 types of groups?
1:24:28 As you know, I have 8 million sayings, and here’s one of them. Generally speaking, unsolicited advice
1:24:29 doesn’t go very well.
1:24:31 Yeah.
1:24:38 So we all learn to have good boundaries in these groups, which we can double back and
1:24:45 talk about. A core principle of RLT is what we call full respect living. I may disagree with
1:24:52 how you think, but I hold you in respect. It’s a part of the culture of the group that we speak
1:24:59 to one another with humility. This is what I’m making up, Tim. And with respect. No one in these
1:25:04 groups that, well, a fucking asshole. How can you do this? We just don’t talk to each other that way.
1:25:07 And I never had to make that explicit. It just happens.
1:25:13 When you were talking about identifying the age of the little boy and having him sit in the chair,
1:25:20 for some people listening, they might hear echoes of, say, internal family systems, IFS. Does your
1:25:25 approach, is it similar to that? Does it differ from it? How do you think about that?
1:25:30 Let’s do this briefly, because this could be a whole. There are some similarities. For example,
1:25:38 there’s a three-part part of the psyche. What I call the wise adult has some correlation to what
1:25:43 Dick calls self. What he calls protectors and managers has some correlation to what I call the
1:25:48 adaptive child. And his exile is my wounded child. So there’s some similarities, but there are also some
1:25:55 very distinct differences. I don’t believe that the adaptations that you learned as a kid are all
1:26:04 defensive, are all about protecting the wound. And I believe there are bad parts. Dick is almost a
1:26:10 religious fervor that there’s no such thing as a bad part. No, there are grandiose, retaliatory parts
1:26:17 of you that you really need to corral. And there’s also entitlement and privilege. And it’s not all
1:26:24 grouped around protecting a vulnerability. We think that in psychiatry, too. We think all grandiose
1:26:30 behavior is a defense against shame. No, some grandiose behavior is just entitlement and hatred.
1:26:36 That’s part of our humanity. You know, I don’t think Hitler killed millions of Jews because he was
1:26:43 protecting a vulnerable part of himself. There’s more to it than that. So we take on some of the
1:26:52 issues of grandiosity and entitlement and some of the less savory parts of our humanity in a way that
1:27:00 I don’t think IFS quite does. Broadly speaking, do you think there are any new or particular challenges
1:27:07 with modern relationships, whether it be dating or marriage? Anything that is relatively kind of new
1:27:14 on the scene, in your opinion? Well, polyamory is interesting. Yeah, let’s talk about it. Fire away.
1:27:21 Belinda and I spent three months in Costa Rica and amongst the young expats who can’t find a monogamous
1:27:30 couple anywhere. And polyamory is a real challenge. Monogamy is the challenge, too. I used to say,
1:27:38 monogamy is unnatural and open marriage is like, wow, hold on. So people trying to, you know,
1:27:46 there are people experimenting with different models of intimacy. And okay, open the doors and
1:27:53 there are challenges. Yeah. I remember I was chatting with someone who had experimented with
1:28:04 every variant of polyamory and she referred to it as polyagony. That was her label for it. But I would
1:28:09 love to know, are there challenges for monogamy now that didn’t seem to exist 20 or 30 years ago
1:28:16 or that are just much more exaggerated now? Yeah, a number of things. First of all,
1:28:23 we men are trying to figure out what the hell we are. And, you know, someone wants to describe my work
1:28:29 as women have had a revolution and now men have to deal with it and no one knows what to do. Women have
1:28:38 had a revolution and they are speaking up and they are insisting on intimacy from us guys in ways that are
1:28:46 exactly in conflict with our traditional role as men. You know, Eric Erickson said,
1:28:54 it’s a sign of a healthy culture that socialization practices in childhood equip you to succeed in your
1:29:01 adult roles. And it’s the sign of a culture in transition when there’s a disjuncture between the
1:29:08 two. And for men, this is this juncture. What traditional masculinity teaches you as a boy,
1:29:16 whether you want it or not, often through punishment, by today’s standards, will give you problems in your
1:29:21 relationship. You got to be vulnerable. You got to open your heart. Literally, you have to reconfigure
1:29:28 masculinity in order to be a good partner these days. And people need help with that. The cultural
1:29:36 response to feminism and women’s empowerment has been a big backlash. You know, the manosphere and
1:29:46 that sobering movie, Adolescence, there’s a big resurgence of, I’m a man and I’m tired of being told
1:29:52 I’m bad and go screw yourself. It ain’t going to work. The toothpaste ain’t going back in the tube.
1:29:59 So what I say is, I don’t want women to stand down. I want men to stand up and meet these new demands.
1:30:03 Look, I’ve been saying this for 40 years and research has finally caught up with me.
1:30:11 personality, intimacy, open-hearted connection. The ace that we RLT therapists have in our back
1:30:17 packet is that’s what we human beings are designed for. We’re designed to be intimate. Not being
1:30:25 intimate, I know you do a lot of great work with health on your podcast. Not being intimate is as bad
1:30:30 for your body as smoking a pack and a half of cigarettes a day. This is a hard black and white
1:30:38 research. We are born to be intimate. Moving beyond traditional gender roles is the only way to get
1:30:48 there. So stop whining, stand up, and learn a few relational skills. It’s good for you. It’s good for
1:30:54 your body. You’ll live longer. It’s good for your marriage, and it’s good for your children. And let me
1:30:59 help you learn how to do this better. That’s revolutionary. You’ve got a lot of people out
1:31:05 there. I’m so happy to be on this podcast with you, truly. You’ve got a lot of people out there.
1:31:14 I’m mad as hell, and I’m not putting up with it. We men need to reclaim our power. No. We need to open
1:31:19 our hearts and listen. And listen, here’s a simple way. You don’t like patriarchy. Here’s what I said.
1:31:27 I teach the men I work with to learn to become family men. Here’s how you’re a family man. You
1:31:33 decentralize yourself. I wrote this, and I don’t want to talk about it. A boy’s question of the world
1:31:40 is what he got for me. A man’s question of the world is what’s needed here. And I teach men to show up as
1:31:46 men and not boys. What’s needed here? You know, research on happiness is, I like black and white
1:31:54 research. If you get a gift, you’re happy. You get happier for a bit. If you give a gift, you’re even
1:32:05 happier and longer than if you get it. What men need to understand is it’s good for us to be empowered,
1:32:14 be assertive, and also to be connected and show up and ask ourselves, what’s needed here? How do I need
1:32:16 to show up here? That’s a man.
1:32:23 I like that framing, the questions and how they differ for boys and men. It does, I think, perhaps to some
1:32:29 listeners sound like men have a lot of heavy lifting to do, and women have had this revolution, and all is
1:32:37 well in woman land. Is there such a thing as toxic femininity? Is there collateral damage to all these societal
1:32:44 shifts? Yes. I’m glad you brought this up. Because in family therapy, we talk about first and second
1:32:51 order change. First order change is just a rearrangement. You know, Tommy’s truant. You get
1:32:56 Tommy and I be truant, and then Sally starts pooping her pants. It’s like, okay, well, rearranging the
1:33:03 furniture. Second order change is a revolution. No kid has to be symptomatic. In our culture,
1:33:11 there’s a lot of what I call individual empowerment. I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw
1:33:19 yourself. I am woman. I have found my voice. Hear me roar. No. And you get a lot of, I’m going to get
1:33:24 into trouble, but too bad. You get a lot of people in that traditional feminine side of the equation.
1:33:31 It doesn’t matter what body you’re in. You’re, as a fixer, on that feminine side. You get a lot of,
1:33:37 the people on the feminine side move from disempowerment to individual empowerment. I call
1:33:45 it, I was weak. Now I’m strong. Go screw yourself. And everybody will cheer. Mom, dad, therapists,
1:33:54 12-step sponsors, your men’s group. No. Relational empowerment is the next step. I was weak. Now I’m
1:34:00 strong. I’m going to go toe to toe with you. I’m going to tell you just what I want and need. Now
1:34:06 listen to this. What could I give you to help you to do that for me? Who sounds like that? We’re a team.
1:34:13 I love you. What do you need? Let’s work together. That’s the next step. And a lot of women,
1:34:20 early stage feminism, move from disempowerment to individual empowerment. You know, as a couple
1:34:26 therapists, often the bane of my existence is an individual therapist who’s individually empowered
1:34:34 their client right out of a workable relationship. No, I was weak. Now I’m strong. I love you. We’re a
1:34:39 team. Let’s roll up our sleeves and work on this together. That’s the new world order.
1:34:44 So we’ve covered a lot of ground. I’m looking at all my notes. There’s a lot that we, I’m sure,
1:34:49 could cover, but are there any other tools that you would like to cover?
1:34:55 Yes. I want to go back and talk about relational empowerment versus individual empowerment.
1:34:56 Right.
1:35:03 Because here’s how I say it. Under patriarchy, you can either be connected,
1:35:10 that’s you, the fixer, accommodating, self-sacrificing, peacemaking,
1:35:15 or you can be assertive. That’s more traditionally, quote-unquote, masculine,
1:35:21 independent, competent, aggressive. But you can’t be both at the same time
1:35:27 because power is power over. When you move into power, you break connection. That’s individual
1:35:34 empowerment. I was weak. Now I’m strong. I don’t care how I sound. Just listen. No, you do care how
1:35:40 you sound or you’re not going to get listened to. I teach people, and particularly women in this one,
1:35:45 or whoever’s coming up from the one down, what I call loving power.
1:35:50 And could you just, for the sake of revisiting, just describe one up, one down, one more time?
1:35:52 Because people may not have gotten that.
1:35:59 It’s what Pia called my great mentor coming out from under the great lie that a human being could
1:36:07 be inherently superior or inferior to another human being. Healthy self-esteem, which I have to teach
1:36:14 people in this culture, comes from the inside out. You’re here. You’re worthy. You’re lovable.
1:36:21 You’re a good human being because you’re breathing, period. And your essential worth can’t be added to,
1:36:28 can’t be subtracted from. This is democracy. This is one person, one vote. We’re all equal under the law
1:36:35 until recently. Anyway. This is democracy. But we don’t live like this. We live in the world of patriarchy,
1:36:44 which is one up, one down, superior, inferior, better than, less than, all day long. And the one down,
1:36:53 shame, inferiority, helplessness, defectiveness, unlovability. For 50 years, my field has focused on
1:37:00 helping people come up from that one down. Good. But we’ve almost totally ignored helping people come
1:37:08 down from the one up. Entitlement, anger, judgment, contempt, self-righteous indignation,
1:37:14 all forms of grandiosity. There’s a lot of ink now being spilled on the so-called narcissistic
1:37:20 partner, which is almost always a man. And the idea is they can’t be treated, leave them. Bullshit.
1:37:26 That’s more individual empowerment. We treat grandiose man, breakfast, lunch, and dinner in
1:37:34 RLT. Come down from that entitlement. Come down from that contempt. It’s poison for you. Let me teach
1:37:41 you how to do it. You’ll be happier. And we do. We effectively help people come down from the one up.
1:37:47 How do you do that? Just because people probably view this as very unfamiliar territory, as you mentioned,
1:37:54 50 years of bringing people up from one down. But how do you bring someone down a step back to
1:38:01 baseline from grandiosity? You have to wake them up. There are three phases to RLT. The first we call
1:38:09 waking up the client, which is loving confrontation, which most therapy doesn’t do. Once we get what you’re
1:38:15 doing, that will never work. And if you’re riding the one up, your grandiosity, then we move into trauma
1:38:23 work. What set you up to do that? And then we teach you skills. It’s all three. IFS doesn’t teach skills,
1:38:29 by the way. A lot of trauma people think you remove the trauma. You don’t need to teach skills and wishful
1:38:35 thinking. Anyway, so first we confront what you’re doing. Then we go back to your childhood roots and where
1:38:42 it came from and help you with that. Then we teach you new skills to replace it with. Why should you come
1:38:52 down from your rage and dominance and control? Why? Well, how’s it working for you? I talk about poison
1:38:59 privilege. And let me say this, and this is particularly true for men. You know, God in her wisdom has given me
1:39:08 access to the dream. The real American dream is that if you have money and fame,
1:39:15 it will transmute you. You’ll become a demigod and you’ll be happy. I treat those people. They’re not
1:39:21 happy. They’ve done well in the world, but they’re not happy between their ears and they’re miserable to
1:39:29 live with. Some so-called expert got on television and talked about aspirational masculinity and Elon Musk,
1:39:35 go to the moon. Great. Be the richest man in the world. Great. You want to be married to that guy?
1:39:43 You want to be that guy’s kid? Good luck. All of the people I treat are incredible successes in the
1:39:51 world and a mess inside. Why? The first thing I teach is the difference between gratification and what I
1:39:58 call relational joy. Gratification is pleasure, short-term pleasure. You make a million bucks,
1:40:05 great. Pretty girl flirts with you, great. I like pleasure in its place. Relational joy, which many
1:40:12 of the people I, the grandiose people in particular, I have no idea what I’m talking about. Relational joy
1:40:19 is the deeper down pleasure of just being there and being connected. And many of the grandiose people I work
1:40:24 with simply don’t know what relational joy is. They’ve lived their whole life for gratification
1:40:30 and it’s empty and they feel the emptiness and the people they live with are fed up with them and
1:40:38 they certainly feel that. So what I have to offer is relational joy. That’s the ace in my pocket because
1:40:44 that’s what we’re born for. That’s the only thing that will make you happy. Let me teach you to come down
1:40:51 off your perch and enter into being a human being like the rest of us. And let me teach you to really
1:40:58 look at what you’ve been doing. Can I tell you a story? Yes, always. A guy came in and he was quote
1:41:03 unquote depressed. Another one of these guys with five therapists under his belt. Nobody’s been able to
1:41:10 help him. And he’s on the break of divorce. And I listened to him and I go, I can’t help you with
1:41:17 your depression, but I can save your marriage. Okay. But you know, you have a very, this is a guy,
1:41:23 he literally go to work, come home, flop on the couch. His wife would be running around. They’d all have
1:41:28 dinner. She’d do the homework with the kids. She’d put them to bed and then he’d slump off the bed and go to
1:41:35 sleep, get up the next day and go to work. She’d be ready to divorce him. So you have a very mysterious
1:41:45 depression. It goes into remission at 845 and it comes roaring back at 515. When you’re at work, you manage
1:41:52 the function. When you’re at home, you’re on the couch. A million people have tried to help you with your
1:41:57 depression. I can’t, I’m not going to try. You’re depressed. Sorry. Been there. Here’s what I want
1:42:05 to tell you. True. Here’s what I want to tell you. Says what? Get off the couch. Go do homework with
1:42:11 your kids. Go help your wife with your dishes. You manage to pull yourself out of yourself from nine to
1:42:19 five. You give yourself a pass when you get home. You’re going to wind up divorced and you’re going to do
1:42:29 great damage to your children. And he looks at his wife and he says, I realize I’ve really abandoned you
1:42:36 in this family. And I made excuses for myself all these years. And he starts to cry. That’s remorse.
1:42:44 That’s open heartedness. I say he’s come out of the coldness of outer space into the warmth of connection
1:42:54 through remorse. Oh my God, I see what I’ve been doing to you. I’m so sorry. And I looked at him
1:43:00 and I said, as I say to so many people in that moment, I say to him, welcome to the planet earth.
1:43:05 Welcome to the human race. It’s been really lonely up there, hasn’t it?
1:43:11 Well, Terry, you have a lot of resources and a lot of books. Who should start where? In other words,
1:43:16 do you suggest people start with any particular book or resource? If they have a particular
1:43:23 challenge or issue, where would you point them? How can we provide a roadmap for people who want to
1:43:33 explore more of Terry real? Do the social media thing at real Terry real that covers all the social
1:43:41 media at real Terry real. Go to my website, Terry real.com. I’m pleased to say we have a lot of
1:43:47 offerings now online for the general public, of course, on self-esteem, of course, on healthy boundaries,
1:43:53 courses on relationship skills. We have little mini courses, how to come back from infidelity.
1:44:00 We have particular topic courses now that are followed up by online groups that you can join.
1:44:06 So if you’re coming back from infidelity, here’s a three-hour workshop and here’s an ongoing group you
1:44:15 can be part of. We’re doing more and more of that. In terms of books, I like Us, the new book. I like,
1:44:20 I don’t want to talk about it, the old book. And I like Fierce Intimacy. I like all three of those.
1:44:25 Yeah. Fierce Intimacy. It is quite funny because I loved Fierce Intimacy and I wanted to find a
1:44:32 Kindle edition to highlight. And could you explain why there isn’t one, at least as it stands right
1:44:39 now? It’s audio. Sounds to ask me to, you know, it’s one of those things, God was with me. I sat in
1:44:46 a booth, no notes, and I just talked for three days. And that’s Fierce Intimacy. It’s insane for
1:44:50 people who want to listen to it. You know, there’s certain people, maybe at that point,
1:44:56 the spirit was at your back. And similarly, I remember at one point I was using a meditation
1:45:00 app designed by Sam Harris, and he had this interlude, which was this commentary, and it was
1:45:04 five or 10 minutes long. And I said, could you please send me the text? Could you send me the
1:45:09 Google doc? And he said, what text? I said, what do you mean, what text? He goes, I just got in the
1:45:13 booth and riffed for 10 minutes. And I was like, okay, there are levels and then there are levels.
1:45:18 So nicely done on Fierce Intimacy. Thank you. Yeah, just a few more questions. And everybody
1:45:23 should go to TerryReal.com. I’m sure that the socials are also available from TerryReal.com.
1:45:27 And we’ll link to everything we’ve discussed in the show notes. Outside of your own books,
1:45:33 are there any books that you have gifted frequently to other people or re-read
1:45:37 more than once yourself that come to mind?
1:45:42 I’m a big fan of Jim Gilligan’s book, Violence. It’s not an easy read.
1:45:44 What was the name of the book again?
1:45:45 Violence.
1:45:46 Oh, violence.
1:45:52 Yeah. Jim was the medical director of the Bridgewater Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
1:45:56 And he worked with serial killers. He worked with Hannibal the Cannibal.
1:46:04 And he starts off as a young man taking this over. And he says to himself, if I can figure
1:46:09 out the dynamics of these guys, I can figure out what violence is. And he does in the book.
1:46:12 So that’s been a great inspiration to me.
1:46:15 Why has that been an inspiration to you?
1:46:24 I deal with male violence. I deal with violence. And both Jim and I agree that violence is the shunting
1:46:32 from the one down to the one up. From shame to grandiosity. From helplessness to attack.
1:46:37 And so it’s really, it took him 25 years to write that book and it shows.
1:46:46 You know, not to drift, but when 9-11 happened, I wrote an op-ed piece that nobody published.
1:46:53 In the piece I said, this is the first time we’ve been hit on American soil. This is a national trauma.
1:47:00 And like anything we’ve faced before. And as a trauma expert, I know that you have two choices.
1:47:07 You can tolerate the discomfort of sitting with the vulnerability and pain of that trauma.
1:47:15 And maybe asking some tough questions about why and what needs to happen. Or you can escape that
1:47:22 discomfort by a flight into one up, grandiosity, judgment, contempt, and attack.
1:47:30 And my hope for this country is we join together in the vulnerability rather than escape into attack.
1:47:33 Nobody published that. Two weeks later, we were in Iraq.
1:47:49 So I like the book. I like the book. I want people to resist the temptation of flying from discomfort into one up, superiority, contempt, judgment, and attack.
1:47:58 On all sides, the left and the right. The left is not shy about moving into self-righteous indignation and contempt either.
1:48:10 I’ll put my body on the line and be on the streets protesting your agenda and still hold you in regard as a human being.
1:48:22 I don’t have to dehumanize you in order to fight you. Gandhi knew that. Martin Luther King knows that. That wisdom is being lost all over the globe right now. It needs to be rekindled.
1:48:26 Any other books that come to mind besides violence?
1:48:28 I like Raymond Chandler.
1:48:31 Yeah, Raymond Chandler is amazing.
1:48:35 Where would you have to go start? Or do you have a favorite?
1:48:45 You know, I love lines. Belinda made my day by giving me a book called The Great One-Liners from Noir. I like noir. It’s a big sleep, I guess.
1:48:52 There’s a great line. When Humphrey Brogard meets Lauren Bacall playing Sam Spade, she says,
1:48:55 Oh, I see you met my little sister. He says,
1:48:59 Yeah. She tried to sit on my lap. I was sitting up at the time.
1:49:06 Now that’s writing.
1:49:25 All right. So speaking of one-liners, just a few more questions and then we’ll wind to a close. If you had a billboard, metaphorically speaking, just to get a message, a line, a quote, a question, anything like that to many, many millions of people, what might you put on that billboard?
1:49:32 Have the courage to move beyond the defaults you were handed and do it with help.
1:49:42 Terry, thank you for taking the time today. It’s so nice to see you again. I really appreciate you carving out the time, being flexible on Start Time and covering so much ground as well.
1:49:56 You’re a wonderful interviewer, Tim. And I’m sure you’re going to edit this out, but if I dare say it, even the little I know you, I’ve grown fond of you. I’m rooting for you. So what a service you’re offering. And thank you for having me on.
1:50:19 Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Terry. And to everybody listening, we will have links to everything in the show notes as per usual at Tim.blog slash podcast. Just search Terry or Terry real and it’ll pop right up. And until next time, as always, be a bit kinder than is necessary to others, but also to yourself. Don’t forget the last piece. And thanks for tuning in.
1:50:31 Hey, guys, this is Tim again. Just one more thing before you take off, and that is Five Bullet Friday. Would you enjoy getting a short email from me every Friday that provides a little fun before the weekend?
1:50:40 Between one and a half and two million people subscribe to my free newsletter, my super short newsletter called Five Bullet Friday. Easy to sign up, easy to cancel.
1:51:03 It is basically a half page that I send out every Friday to share the coolest things I’ve found or discovered or have started exploring over that week. It’s kind of like my diary of cool things. It often includes articles I’m reading, books I’m reading, albums, perhaps, gadgets, gizmos, all sorts of tech tricks and so on that get sent to me by my friends, including a lot of podcast guests.
1:51:18 And these strange esoteric things end up in my field. And then I test them and then I share them with you. So if that sounds fun, again, it’s very short, a little tiny bite of goodness before you head off for the weekend, something to think about.
1:51:28 If you’d like to try it out, just go to Tim dot blog slash Friday, type that into your browser, Tim dot blog slash Friday, drop in your email and you’ll get the very next one. Thanks for listening.
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0:01:28 Episode 347.
0:01:30 347 is the area code serving parts of New York City.
0:01:35 In 1947, fruit flies became the first animals to travel to space.
0:01:35 True story.
0:01:39 I was training to be an astronaut, and during training, I vomited.
0:01:41 And I asked the instructor, is this normal?
0:01:43 And he said, not during the written exam.
0:01:47 Go, go, go!
0:01:58 Welcome to the 347th episode of the Prop G Pod.
0:01:58 What’s happening?
0:02:01 The dog is in Hamburg, Germany.
0:02:05 The most interesting thing that’s happening, I’m speaking of something called online marketing
0:02:07 rock stars, which gets about 12,000 or 13,000 people.
0:02:09 I’ve been here six years in a row.
0:02:10 It’s one of my favorite events.
0:02:11 Love the city.
0:02:16 It’s like Karl Lagerfeld exploded into a city, the juxtaposition of cement and industrial
0:02:22 stuff, and then all these rich people constructing steel and glass condos.
0:02:23 Remember Wallpaper Magazine?
0:02:26 It’s like Wallpaper Magazine exploded into a city.
0:02:28 I really, really enjoyed here.
0:02:30 And one of the really nice things about living in London is everything is close.
0:02:32 It took me an hour and 12 minutes to get here last night.
0:02:33 Can you get over?
0:02:34 Hour and 12 minutes.
0:02:34 Boom.
0:02:37 Like when I lived in LA, it took me an hour and 12 minutes to get to work.
0:02:41 I’d either go to work, Figueroa, downtown in LA, or now I can go to Hamburg.
0:02:42 Incredible.
0:02:44 The world is getting smaller.
0:02:45 Quick thought.
0:02:48 I was on stage today and they asked me, what are the most seminal things happening in the
0:02:49 world?
0:02:55 I said, one, the reversal of the rivers of capital flowing, human and financial flowing into
0:02:58 the U.S. that have reversed flow and are now flowing back to other parts of the world.
0:03:05 And two, if we’re going to get serious about our deficit in the United States, we could
0:03:07 tax rich people to death, which I think we should do.
0:03:09 Let me be clear, but that wouldn’t do it.
0:03:11 We could cut Social Security or extend the age.
0:03:12 That wouldn’t do it.
0:03:13 Also, I think we should do that.
0:03:18 Counting on the interest rates plummeting to reduce the third largest expenditure, which
0:03:20 is our interest on our national debt.
0:03:21 That’s out of our control.
0:03:22 The military.
0:03:23 I believe we need a strong military.
0:03:24 Are there inefficiencies?
0:03:24 Sure.
0:03:28 But I think there’s, unlike a lot of people on the far left, I think there’s a lot of
0:03:31 very resourceful, mean people who would like to kill us.
0:03:34 And I think that it’s important that we have the biggest military in the world.
0:03:36 So where do we go from here?
0:03:38 I think all roads lead to the same place.
0:03:43 And that is, until we figure out a way to bring the cost of our health care system down from
0:03:49 $13,000 a person to $6,500, which is what it is in the other six of the G7 nations, despite
0:03:53 the fact we have worse outcomes, we live less long, we’re more obese, depressed, and anxious,
0:03:55 none of this is going to get fixed.
0:04:01 I think our only opportunity to balance the budget and also suppress or obviate a lot of
0:04:05 unnecessary or manufacturing anxiety is to reduce health care costs.
0:04:10 We pay eight times the price for Ozempic or for Humira.
0:04:13 Our hospital systems are more expensive.
0:04:16 We spend more on pharmaceuticals, despite the fact that many of these innovations are actually
0:04:17 invented in the U.S.
0:04:24 Why is it that the Gulf states get cheaper oil or cheaper gas?
0:04:24 Why?
0:04:25 Because they produce a lot of it, right?
0:04:30 If you’re in a nation that has incredible agricultural output, usually the bananas are less expensive,
0:04:30 but not in the U.S.
0:04:31 Why?
0:04:37 Because into the middle has slipped lobbyists who have weaponized a government with absolutely
0:04:42 flooding the zone with a lot of money, such that pharmaceutical firms can convince a legislator
0:04:46 that it makes sense for Americans to pay eight times more for pharmaceuticals, despite the fact
0:04:49 they’re invented, manufactured, and distributed here in the U.S.
0:04:49 Why?
0:04:53 Because there’s money involved, and every senator needs to raise $60 to $100 million to be reelected.
0:04:54 So I know.
0:04:58 Let me take money from the pharmaceutical lobby to make sure that seniors and everybody else
0:05:01 pays a shit ton way more than they should for health care.
0:05:07 All roads, and I’ve been thinking a lot about the deficit, lead to one thing, and that is
0:05:10 we need to do all of it, raise taxes, cut spending, and entitlements.
0:05:14 But the only way we’re going to get there is if we figure out a way to dramatically lower our
0:05:15 health care costs.
0:05:17 It’s also the ripest place for disruption.
0:05:22 That’s probably going to have to involve some sort of, I don’t know, executive action or laws
0:05:27 that get rid of or at least reduce the amount of money in Congress or shaming these companies
0:05:29 or these individuals, although that doesn’t appear to be working.
0:05:33 But anyways, I’ve been thinking a lot about what are the kind of, what’s the best idea
0:05:35 and what’s the biggest change in our economy.
0:05:39 One, the river of the Amazon has changed flow twice in its history.
0:05:40 It’s happening right now.
0:05:45 Human capital is reversing flow out of the United States, which is not a good forward-looking
0:05:47 indicator for the United States.
0:05:52 And any serious conversation around our deficit and getting our fiscal house in order leads
0:05:56 to a very boring place, and that is how do we figure out a way to rank down to lower the
0:05:59 costs of health care, which probably means figuring out a way to get money out of
0:06:00 politics.
0:06:01 Easy squeezy.
0:06:01 Done.
0:06:02 We’re done.
0:06:08 Anyways, in today’s episode, we speak with Anne Applebaum, a Pulitzer Prize-winning historian
0:06:09 and staff writer at The Atlantic.
0:06:13 We discussed with Anne the rise of kleptocracy in America, the global playbook of autocrats
0:06:16 and solutions to our democratic slide.
0:06:17 I really enjoyed this conversation.
0:06:18 She’s definitely having a moment.
0:06:24 I love it when people who are just in a very narrow area, her kind of, especially as
0:06:26 autocracy, she’s a historian and writing about it.
0:06:30 And when I say narrow, I don’t mean it’s not important, but she is probably the leading
0:06:32 authority in the world in autocracy.
0:06:36 And she is having a moment, which is unfortunate to be like, if all of a sudden, if someone were
0:06:41 to tell you that someone who wrote about famine or urban violence was having a huge moment,
0:06:43 that probably was not a good thing.
0:06:47 And unfortunately, Anne is having a real moment, not because she isn’t incredibly talented,
0:06:48 which she is.
0:06:53 She’s both forcefully yet dignified, but because autocracy, kleptocracy, whatever you want to
0:07:00 call it, whatever I think of it as a cacistocracy, has unfortunately taken root in the United States.
0:07:04 Anyways, with that, here’s our conversation with Anne Applebaum.
0:07:16 Anne, where does this podcast find you?
0:07:19 I am in Washington, D.C., our nation’s capital.
0:07:21 How’s the mood there right now?
0:07:24 A little paranoid, a little stressed.
0:07:26 I mean, it depends a little bit on who you are.
0:07:30 But, you know, I have a next-door neighbor who works for the Department of Education.
0:07:34 I know lots of people who worked for HHS.
0:07:37 I know plenty of people who worked for USAID.
0:07:43 And all of them are watching things they’ve worked on all of their lives be destroyed.
0:07:44 So it’s a tough moment.
0:07:48 You recently wrote a piece for The Atlantic arguing that under Trump, the U.S. is sliding
0:07:53 towards kleptocracy, a system where leaders use political powers for financial gain.
0:07:57 Before we get into the specifics, can you help ground us?
0:08:03 What exactly is a kleptocracy, and how is it different from other forms of autocracy or corruption?
0:08:09 So a kleptocracy, maybe it’s a fancy word for a profoundly corrupt dictatorship.
0:08:18 But it’s a political system in which the leaders of the country not only exercise political power,
0:08:23 but they also exercise economic power and probably own a lot of the economy.
0:08:25 So Russia is a kleptocracy.
0:08:32 You have people who have both political and economic power, you know, at the top of the system.
0:08:39 And they use, I think maybe this is the key point, they use their political influence to make money for themselves.
0:08:44 In other words, the policy of the Russian state, its foreign policy, its domestic policy,
0:08:49 is not being made for the benefit of Russians, of ordinary Russians.
0:08:56 The policy is being made for the benefit of a group of very wealthy people who earn their money out of state decisions.
0:09:00 And the U.S. is very rapidly moving in that direction.
0:09:04 There are questions now to be asked about some of our foreign policy.
0:09:14 Is it being conducted in the interest of Americans, or is it being conducted in the interest of Trump, maybe his family, maybe the business community around him?
0:09:17 That’s where you would have a real change.
0:09:27 You know, we’ve had presidents before who were incompetent or who made mistakes or whose foreign policies failed in various different ways.
0:09:37 But I don’t think we’ve ever had a president whose foreign policy and whose perhaps domestic policy are not designed for the purposes of making American life better.
0:09:39 And I think that’s where we’re heading.
0:09:51 So just to double click on that, by some estimates, the Trump family has increased their personal net worth approximately $3 billion since the launch, the Friday before inauguration of the Trump coin.
0:10:06 Can you think of any other instance in history anywhere where one president, prime minister, dictator, you know, general consul, whatever, has managed to sequester $3 billion from the economy in 100 days?
0:10:07 Obviously not.
0:10:11 You can point to many other instances of corruption around the world.
0:10:16 In U.S. history, there have been corrupt presidents in the past or people who were thought to be corrupt.
0:10:23 But that usually was, if you look at the details, there were people who perhaps tolerated some corruption around them.
0:10:29 I don’t know, Ulysses S. Grant supposedly let his wife’s family make money off government contracts, that kind of thing.
0:10:37 But there is no incidence of a president while in office, while in office, enriching himself like this.
0:10:41 I don’t think there’s any precedent for it, and I don’t think we’ve seen anything like it before.
0:10:48 How do you respond to the notion or the argument that we’ve been a kleptocracy for a while?
0:11:04 When you have Speaker Emrita Pelosi meeting with HHS and getting a sense for they’re considering using AI for payment systems, and then she goes and buys call options on Tempest AI, and when it’s disclosed, she’s purchased those call options.
0:11:12 They surge that, I mean, effectively, isn’t Trump doing what everyone’s been doing, but he’s not doing it for small ball?
0:11:15 The Democrats do it for hundreds of thousands, and he’s doing it for billions.
0:11:18 But hasn’t this been going on for a while?
0:11:25 You can certainly talk about the slide into corruption, which goes back, as you say, a while.
0:11:39 I mean, I don’t want to put a date on it, but both the—I think certainly since the Citizens United Supreme Court decision that made U.S. elections a kind of Las Vegas free-for-all, where almost any amount of money can be spent.
0:11:50 And certainly the change in ethics, I think, that meant that more and more members of Congress were using insider information to play the stock market, both Democrats and Republicans.
0:11:59 And those are, you know, those are pieces of the story and the buildup to where we are, and maybe they explain part of why so many people tolerated Trump.
0:12:16 Again, I don’t think there’s an example of any politician using office while in office to become a multibillionaire, and I don’t think it’s just a matter of numbers.
0:12:19 I think it’s a completely different attitude.
0:12:26 I don’t think Nancy Pelosi’s entire policy while she was Speaker was designed to make herself personally rich.
0:12:28 I don’t think that was her goal.
0:12:43 I don’t think that’s—and actually, I don’t say that—I don’t think there were Republicans, speakers of the House, whose political philosophy was deliberately designed to make themselves rich or who were doing things solely for that purpose.
0:12:46 And I think you can ask whether Trump is doing that.
0:12:58 You know, one of the—you mentioned his cryptocurrency business, which did a deal in the last, you know, in the last day, a day or two, with the Emirates.
0:13:01 It was a sort of major Emirati investment into that company.
0:13:16 And this actually—Trump also has a financial relationship with the Saudi government, whose state-owned Saudi companies sponsor his—a golf tournament that took place at his golf course a few weeks ago.
0:13:22 And they—the head of the Saudi sovereign wealth fund was at that tournament and as one of its sponsors.
0:13:32 In other words, these are countries with which the U.S. has political relationships and whose, you know, and whose leaders are interested in influencing U.S. politics.
0:13:39 And the president, meanwhile, has an ongoing financial relationship with those governments and with those leaders.
0:13:42 That’s not anything that Nancy Pelosi did in the past.
0:13:45 I actually see the more damaging part of this.
0:13:59 It’s not as romantic or interesting as that companies now, there’s—I would describe this sort of domino of cowardice in the private sector, where nobody wants to speak out because you do his bidding, he’ll make you rich.
0:14:07 I believe about 30 people within a few hours made $700 million in the launch of the Trump coin.
0:14:13 And then over the course of the next few weeks, when it crashed, about 80,000 retail investors lost several billion dollars.
0:14:14 So there’s upside.
0:14:16 But there’s also a downside.
0:14:21 And that is, if you speak out, he might decide that you don’t get an exemption for the tariffs.
0:14:27 Or he might, you know, implement some sort of crazy policy that just distracts or hurts your company.
0:14:29 Is that the difference?
0:14:32 Is that a slide from kleptocracy to autocracy?
0:14:49 It certainly makes the state, and in particular Trump himself, an arbiter of the economy in a way that we used to think as Americans, and I think this is even both Democrats and Republicans, was, you know, was damaging and immoral.
0:14:58 It puts the White House in a position of being able to decide who wins and who loses, you know, at least for large companies and at least in some businesses.
0:15:07 And that is a—that does make us, you know, certainly on the path to becoming a Russian-style political system, yes.
0:15:15 Speaking of going from depressing to really depressing, this isn’t like we’ve uncovered something.
0:15:19 It’s been not transparent, it’s been not transparent, but it’s been transparent, but it’s out in the open.
0:15:34 And it appears that despite what is obviously a slow creep or a fast, you know, train barreling down the tracks towards a kleptocracy, that if America doesn’t want it, it’s tolerating it.
0:15:39 I just saw a poll saying that if the election were held again today, Trump would still beat Harris.
0:15:43 And the Democratic Party is less popular than Trump.
0:16:02 Hasn’t the failure been, or do you think, the failure kind of rests with us, educators, the media, the lack of civics courses, our inability to communicate to the populace that the kleptocracies don’t typically serve the citizenship well?
0:16:08 Because as far as I can tell, America has decided they’d rather have a kleptocrat than a weak party.
0:16:10 Your thoughts?
0:16:14 I don’t know that most people understand yet what’s happened.
0:16:17 I mean, you know, these stories come very fast.
0:16:20 I actually started collecting the kleptocracy stories.
0:16:28 Some of them are in that article I wrote for The Atlantic a couple weeks ago, but I’m also collecting them, you know, for future use.
0:16:29 And there is something almost every day.
0:16:46 Either it’s a violation of the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, which says that Trump shouldn’t, or the president, sorry, shouldn’t take money or any favors from foreign governments or foreign countries, or it’s a immersion of a new conflict of interest.
0:16:53 Somebody in the administration has clearly conflicted both a business and a political interest in something there.
0:17:02 I mean, the classic example of that is Elon Musk, who has influence now over government agencies who regulate his own companies and who subsidize his own companies.
0:17:07 I mean, that’s an outrageous conflict of interest of a kind that, you know, we would have thought was illegal.
0:17:09 Or it’s a legal change.
0:17:28 You know, the administration announcing, for example, it won’t, it will no longer enforce the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits American companies from bribing, using bribery abroad, or the Corporate Transparency Act, which was supposed to make the world of shell companies and anonymous businesses more transparent.
0:17:38 You know, or it’s just plain corruption of the kind that we’ve been discussing, you know, the Trump family just taking money in exchange for political favors.
0:17:41 And there’s many, many of those stories every day.
0:17:47 And I am not sure how much people are yet able to pay attention to them or to understand them.
0:17:49 I mean, there’s another problem.
0:17:57 There’s been a problem for a long time with the world of kleptocracy and the world of money laundering and shell companies and so on, which is that it’s very, very complicated.
0:17:59 It can be hard to explain.
0:18:01 I mean, I’ve read a lot of books about money laundering.
0:18:04 There have been some good ones in recent years.
0:18:06 There’s a good book called American Kleptocracy.
0:18:07 There’s a good book called Kleptopia.
0:18:12 And almost all of them would be hard for laymen to grasp.
0:18:15 I mean, it’s a story about moving money around the world very quickly.
0:18:17 It’s about shell companies.
0:18:18 It’s about manipulation.
0:18:21 And I’m not sure that people get it yet.
0:18:28 You know, what will have to happen is for people to begin to connect these stories to their own personal lives.
0:18:35 personal experience when they understand that they are poor because the Trump family is rich.
0:18:40 And this is something when you look at anti-corruption campaigns around the world, this is what the moment when they succeed.
0:18:44 So, I mean, the most famous example of this is Alexei Navalny’s campaign in Russia.
0:18:51 So, this was the great Russian dissident who died in a Russian prison some months ago.
0:18:57 And he was the most successful campaigner against Vladimir Putin.
0:19:09 And he did so by talking about theft and by talking about corruption and also by talking about how bad the roads are in Russia and how bad the hospitals are and how underpaid the doctors are.
0:19:15 And he made the case that there was a connection between these things and people understood him.
0:19:19 He made these spectacular – they were documentaries, really.
0:19:21 I was going to say videos, but they were long.
0:19:22 They were an hour or two hours.
0:19:29 And he would sketch out these elaborate schemes that the president was carrying out or the president’s entourage.
0:19:32 And he would show that sometimes they were funny.
0:19:34 They used video.
0:19:35 They used drone footage.
0:19:40 But they also showed the connection between that world and the world of ordinary Russians.
0:19:50 And that is the link that the Democratic Party will have to make and that I hope journalists who cover this stuff will also begin to make.
0:19:53 You know, it’s not enough to talk about crypto or schemes or fraud.
0:19:56 That’s something that I don’t think people get.
0:20:21 But when you explain, as I said, that they are doing this in order to benefit themselves and not you and that the policy of the United States, whether it’s the foreign policy or the domestic policy or the economic policy, is being twisted and manipulated to benefit them and not ordinary Americans, then I think you’ll begin to get some political leverage from this.
0:20:25 So there’s so many-ocracies to think about.
0:20:33 And the thing that feels even more differentiated with this administration is, OK, there’s other kleptocracies, but kakistocracy.
0:20:38 And that is, I would argue that Putin and Xi have competent people around them.
0:20:41 And I don’t think that’s the case here.
0:20:47 Any thoughts on what I think could be fairly described as a kakistocracy now in the United States?
0:20:49 Do you do much thinking or writing about this topic?
0:20:53 I don’t think I’ve ever used the word kakistocracy in my writing.
0:21:01 But maybe I’ve addressed the idea, which is that it’s the rule of the worst people or, you know, of the least competent.
0:21:11 I mean, there is something about who Trump attracts to his orbit and what kind of people want to work with him and be around him.
0:21:31 Almost anybody who has real character, who has any ideals, who has any commitment to truth-telling, to evidence, to even just to reality itself, to the world of real facts, is almost immediately made uncomfortable in the presence of Donald Trump.
0:21:47 Because Donald Trump is somebody who’s constantly seeking to shape reality to his own benefit, to change the facts, to tell a story or make up a myth, and who’s perfectly capable of being totally inconsistent from one day to the next or even from one hour to the next.
0:21:49 I mean, the tariff story.
0:21:54 One minute, he was justifying the tariffs because it’s going to bring back manufacturing to America.
0:22:01 Another minute, he was justifying them a few minutes later on the grounds that he was going to do great deals with countries.
0:22:05 But if you’re going to do deals and lift tariffs, then that’s not going to bring back manufacturing to America.
0:22:28 And so anybody who does, anyone who cares about telling the truth or about presenting accurate vision of the world, or who cares about making policy based on reality and not on this fiction that Trump promotes, is uncomfortable.
0:22:42 And that means that all the people around him are either, they’re simply manipulable and they’re willing to just do whatever he says, or they’re people who have made a big, a kind of moral sacrifice, you know, who are doing something they know to be wrong.
0:22:45 You know, and you can, sometimes you can see it on their faces.
0:22:48 I mean, I think this was the core problem that Mike Waltz had, actually.
0:22:55 You know, the reason why he didn’t fit into Trump’s inner circle wasn’t just because he put my editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, on a Signal chat.
0:23:05 It was also because he, at least in the past, had had an attachment to a certain ideas about foreign policy, a certain belief of America, what role it should play in the world.
0:23:15 And he was just unable to lie convincingly on behalf of Trump when that violated his own, you know, his own morality or his own sense of the world.
0:23:18 And he just couldn’t be around Trump any longer.
0:23:21 And, of course, that happened repeatedly in Trump’s first term.
0:23:24 And in his second term, these are people who are self-selected.
0:23:28 They’re people who know what kind of person Trump is, who want to be there anyway.
0:23:36 And so, as we used to say about Polish communists, for listeners who don’t know, I lived part of the time in Poland, either they’re liars or they’re stupid.
0:23:42 I mean, either they go along with it because they don’t know better or they go along with it but know, you know, but know it to be wrong.
0:23:45 So let’s move to potential solutions.
0:23:48 And granted, this is a naive take.
0:23:56 But my sense is the only way to step back from a kleptocracy is fairly swift punishment that sends a very strong signal that this won’t be tolerated.
0:23:59 And I don’t know if America is capable of that.
0:24:07 So, one, do you agree that it’s hard to pull back from it without pretty swift punitive action, imprisoning people or worse?
0:24:18 Or more generally, how have you seen large economies that claim to be democratic walk back from this type of kleptocracy or autocracy?
0:24:23 The country that I know best that is trying to move back is actually Poland.
0:24:28 Poland had an autocratic populist government in power from 2015 to 2023.
0:24:35 And one of the features of that government, like all autocratic populist government, is that it became very corrupt.
0:24:37 The scale was different.
0:24:39 This is Poland, not the United States.
0:24:44 You know, they weren’t, they were, they were bound by the rules of the European Union.
0:24:50 And so, as I said, it wasn’t the stunning theft that we’re seeing take place inside the United States.
0:24:55 Nevertheless, there was a lot of money stolen, in effect, from the state and put into people’s pockets.
0:25:08 And we now have, there was then an election which was unfair, but yet the opposition was able to win, partly by putting together a broad coalition, sort of center-right, center-left, liberal coalition.
0:25:15 And now they are seeking to prosecute the previous government and hold them to account.
0:25:16 And it is indeed very difficult.
0:25:25 It’s very difficult, partly because the judiciary was changed and manipulated by the previous government.
0:25:28 So that makes, that’s part of the story.
0:25:34 It’s partly difficult because the president, although this may change in a few weeks, is still from the previous government.
0:25:40 And so, and he’s been blocking a lot, he’s able to, to pardon people, actually, and block a lot of the changes.
0:25:51 But even, even mobilizing the, the prosecutors, mobilizing the state to go after in a fair and systematic and legal way is pretty difficult.
0:26:08 I mean, I think actually Poland is a lesson of how, once you destroy things and once you destroy, particularly the ethos of government, you know, once you’ve kicked out of government all the people who are there for idealistic reasons, you know, who don’t mind working for less money because they think they’re doing something on behalf of Americans.
0:26:14 And once you’ve replaced a lot of those civil servants with loyalists, it’s very hard to find new ones.
0:26:18 And that’s another, that’s a, that’s a related piece of the story I’m worried about in the U.S.
0:26:40 That once you have kicked out everyone who works for the American government because they love America and instead have people who work for the American government because they think they might make money doing it corruptly or because they’re loyal, not to America, but to Donald Trump, you’re going to, you’re, you’ll, you’ll find in later years that the government lacks capacity to do things.
0:26:46 That the people who should be there to fix problems or to manage risks aren’t there anymore.
0:26:49 It’s a long walk, walk backwards.
0:26:54 I mean, in our case, there are really three ways in which, in which this could be stopped.
0:27:09 I mean, the, the, the, actually the simplest way would be for, I don’t know what it is, three or four Republican senators and a handful, six or seven members of the House to decide they want to stop it, to join with the Democrats.
0:27:24 You know, to elect, you know, an independent or a, a bipartisan speaker and a bipartisan leader of the Senate and begin to, certainly they could end this, this fake emergency decree that Trump is using to, to impose these tariffs.
0:27:29 They could certainly begin to conduct investigations into what’s going on.
0:27:37 I mean, it’s Congress that has the investigative power to do this, but right now we don’t have, you know, we don’t have a majority in Congress that’s able to do that.
0:27:40 So that would be, that’s actually the fastest thing that could happen.
0:27:49 The second way it could happen is that voters decide at the next election, which is, you know, still many months from now.
0:27:58 But they could decide to, to hand Congress to the opposition political party to enable them to conduct this and enable them to do it.
0:28:06 But that would require a really decisive vote from a lot of people, including in red states, because the moving the Senate is, is not so easy.
0:28:13 And then, you know, finally, we would need the courts to begin to respond.
0:28:18 This would have to probably happen via lawsuits to begin to demand some kind of change.
0:28:28 I mean, the, the, the, of course, the tragedy is that the real, the bodies in our system who are supposed to investigate federal corruption are the Department of Justice and the FBI.
0:28:31 And those are controlled by Trump.
0:28:35 So they’re not available to us right now as, as, as tools to do that.
0:28:42 But maybe it would, it would, we would now have to wait for a future president, unless, of course, this president was impeached.
0:28:45 We’ll be right back after the break.
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0:30:05 Should university presidents take public stances on political issues or remain neutral?
0:30:12 And I think people like me who have access to platforms like yours should speak out to stop authoritarianism.
0:30:14 I’m Preet Bharara.
0:30:20 And this week, Wesleyan University President Michael Roth joins me on my podcast, Stay Tuned with Preet,
0:30:26 to discuss the role of college leaders in turbulent times and why he has chosen to speak out
0:30:29 as the Trump administration takes aim at higher education.
0:30:32 The episode is out now.
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0:32:01 My understanding is that in leading up to World War II, that the private sector in Germany basically did sort of a deal or several deals with Hitler that said,
0:32:07 you bust our trade unions, you financially favor us, and we’ll support you.
0:32:10 And then it kind of spun out of control, so to speak.
0:32:13 And it got to a point where they were powerless to do anything about it.
0:32:20 Do you see any parallels in terms of the private sector in Germany enabling Hitler with what’s happening here?
0:32:27 Specifically, I’ve just been shocked that all of these independent thinkers who think of themselves as leaders have been so quiet.
0:32:36 And it’s just sort of gone along, whether it’s paying $30 or $40 million for some documentary on the First Lady or deciding that,
0:32:47 no, just kidding, I’m not going to put tariffs on the pricing page or just not saying anything when you know that they’re very much against some of these policies.
0:32:56 What’s your observation around the private sector in America right now as it relates to this and any historical references?
0:33:04 So I’m always reluctant to compare America to Nazi Germany because then all anybody can think about is how Nazi Germany ended.
0:33:13 And I didn’t feel like there’s going to be a Holocaust here very soon, so it always creates the wrong image.
0:33:17 It also creates an image of dictatorship that’s wrong.
0:33:24 You know, when people think of Nazis, they think of stormtroopers and people goose-stepping through the streets and that that’s what authoritarianism looks like.
0:33:27 And, of course, in the modern world, that’s often not what it looks like.
0:33:39 You know, the democracies end nowadays usually because they are a democratic elected leader slowly takes over the institutions of the state or quickly.
0:33:44 And it can take some time and it can be very smooth and it doesn’t necessarily involve violence.
0:33:47 And so that’s the way democracies fail.
0:33:59 If you look at Hungary, if you look at Turkey, if you look at Venezuela, if you look at what almost happened in Poland but wasn’t completed, you know, that’s not a – there isn’t mass violence or street violence of the kind.
0:34:01 So that’s why I didn’t like the comparison.
0:34:21 However, having said that, you are right that there are multiple instances of company heads, business people, you know, in Nazi Germany, in other autocracies, thinking that they can do a deal or they can benefit from the system and that they won’t eventually suffer.
0:34:23 And there are also multiple instances of them ultimately suffering.
0:34:31 I mean, of course, the German economy, you know, the stock market went up and up and up, I think, until Stalingrad or, you know, some turning point of the war.
0:34:34 And then it collapsed never to recover.
0:34:39 And, you know, many businesses were destroyed and people’s lives were ruined.
0:34:40 I mean, that’s an extreme example.
0:34:54 But even in – even if you look at Hungary, you know, lots of business people who thought at first, you know, Orban was talking, you know, talking the talk of free markets and he was somebody who was going to be friendly to them.
0:35:10 I mean, they too slowly lost control of their companies as the Hungarian state played a bigger and bigger role, somewhat like Trump wants to do, in deciding essentially who got rich and who didn’t, in making the rules of the system so that they would benefit a particular group of companies who are close to him.
0:35:18 In his case, it’s his son-in-law who became very rich rather than his sons and a couple of his childhood friends.
0:35:22 And eventually, I mean, I know a Hungarian businessman who wound up leaving the country.
0:35:25 I mean, he eventually sold his businesses in the country.
0:35:26 He moved away.
0:35:32 He was very – he had some – still had relatives there, so he’s been rather quiet.
0:35:39 But he understood finally that he couldn’t operate anymore in his system unless he was going to have a kind of corrupt relationship with the ruling party.
0:35:52 And I’m afraid that American businessmen, I mean, especially the big businesses, are making a huge mistake by imagining that it’s going to be good for them in the long run to go along with this.
0:36:10 Because if they cede that kind of power to the White House, you know, if they let the White House make arbitrary decisions, whimsical decisions about who can do this deal and who can – who’s allowed to escape the tariffs and who can’t, then first of all, it’s bad for the economy in the long term.
0:36:26 But also, at some point, they could very well end up on the wrong side of that deal as the whim moves in the other direction and as others become favored.
0:36:35 And, you know, there’s – you know, in almost every case that I’ve mentioned, sooner or later, the economic decline catches up.
0:36:37 I mean, Hungary is a great example.
0:36:43 It’s a country that was the – you know, the early 1990s, which is when I first started going there.
0:36:46 It was the kind of gem of Central Europe.
0:36:49 They started privatization early in the 1980s.
0:36:52 By the time communism fell, they were ready for it.
0:36:54 There were a lot of good investment opportunities.
0:36:56 A lot of foreign companies moved into Budapest.
0:36:57 It’s an attractive city.
0:36:59 Food was good.
0:37:03 And, you know, and it felt like it was moving upwards.
0:37:09 But since Orban has taken over, you saw the boom continue for a while.
0:37:22 And in recent years, you’re now beginning to see this very distinct decline, so much so that Hungary, depending on which measurement you use, is either the poorest country in the European Union or the second or third poorest.
0:37:30 But it’s – you know, it’s – and it’s behind in all kinds of measures of productivity, of governance, has a very poor healthcare system, poor education.
0:37:41 It’s sliding downwards, and the slide downwards is directly connected to the authoritarian system that Orban built and, of course, which many people around Trump admire.
0:37:43 You know, it enabled corruption.
0:37:45 It gave too much power to the state.
0:37:53 It gave too much power to the people around Orban to – again, to decide, to make rules and laws that benefited them and their friends.
0:37:56 And ultimately, it was bad for everybody else.
0:38:00 It also encouraged a lot of educated Hungarians to leave the country.
0:38:02 I mean, they have an emigration problem.
0:38:08 And despite all this kind of pro-family rhetoric that Orban uses, people don’t seem to want to have children there.
0:38:11 And they often leave if they can.
0:38:15 And so that’s a – it’s a good indicator.
0:38:19 I mean, almost every one of these countries – I mean, and there are more extreme examples like Venezuela.
0:38:31 You know, countries that are – that lose out where too much power goes to one person, where institutions decline, where the independent judiciary declines, where the rule of law declines.
0:38:34 Sooner or later, there’s an economic impact, and it’s negative.
0:38:36 And, you know, Jeff Bezos should know that.
0:38:42 And, you know, everybody who runs a large company or a bank in this country should be aware of that.
0:38:44 I mean, they’re – and they have some other options.
0:38:48 I mean, I understand that nobody wants their company to be picked out or attacked on true social.
0:38:58 But there are ways in which they could work together, you know, which universities could work together, law firms could work together, and companies could work together too and begin to speak collectively.
0:39:00 And I think that might make a difference.
0:39:11 Just for the purposes of some discussion here, just some pushback, I find that I get a lot of pushback whenever I compare the U.S. right now to 1930s Germany.
0:39:13 You know, he’s not a genocidal maniac.
0:39:14 Say what you will about him.
0:39:15 Okay, granted.
0:39:27 But I see a nation that was arguably over the last 200 years the most progressive enlightened nation in the world, and it wasn’t the U.S., it was Germany, that descended into this darkness for 11 years.
0:39:29 And what did they have?
0:39:32 They started demonizing immigrants at an economic shock.
0:39:35 They started – I mean, what do we have in the U.S.?
0:39:45 We’re essentially in some form – it’s a new form – but we are rounding up people, in a sense, and sending them to the equivalent – I won’t call them concentration sites, but black sites.
0:39:50 We have someone with extreme nationalist rhetoric who sees the world as a zero-sum game.
0:39:54 All of our problems are because of the gains of other nations.
0:40:06 And also, what I think is the most dangerous component that’s similar to 30s Germany, we have a huge group of a population that tends to be more risk-aggressive and more prone to violence, specifically young men who are really struggling.
0:40:19 And what I would offer a question and ask you to respond is, is the U.S. that much less likely to get to that very dark place in four years than Germany was in 1935?
0:40:28 So, again, the only reason I hesitate with the Germany comparison, as I say, is because of how it ended and because we know the end of the story.
0:40:38 But you are right that if you look at Germany in 1933, which was the beginning of the story, you can find some parallels.
0:40:49 And you’re also right that the – you know, one of the important comparisons to make is the speed with which a country can transform itself.
0:40:56 You know, that we have – we all have this image in our head of the United States as being on some kind of even keel.
0:41:00 You know, everything has been the same for so long and it will go on being the same.
0:41:03 But countries do experience rapid declines.
0:41:05 You know, they do experience rapid change.
0:41:08 And we had it once before in our history during the Civil War.
0:41:15 I mean, you know, we – our country plunged into violence and thousands of people killed thousands of other people.
0:41:21 I mean, I don’t foresee that happening now, but you can have moments of profound change.
0:41:36 And you are right that people who are too complacent and who believe it could never happen here because of our history, because of who we are, because we’re exceptional, whatever story they’re telling themselves, are missing the frequency with which this can happen.
0:41:39 So, you know, I agree.
0:41:47 You know, it’s also useful because you’re also right that what happened in the early 30s is a pattern that you see in other places.
0:41:58 So, again, it’s a leader who is legitimately elected or chosen, as Hitler was initially, you know, then deciding to take over the institutions of the state.
0:42:06 In other words, take over the civil service, politicize that, take over the judges, politicize them, attack the media.
0:42:12 Actually, Hitler had this phrase Lugin Presa, which means lying presa, which is something like fake news.
0:42:21 The same institutions that he was attacking – and these are, of course, also the institutions that Orban attacked or that Chavez in Venezuela attacked.
0:42:25 By the way, this doesn’t have to be a right-wing – it doesn’t have to be a right-wing leader who does it.
0:42:27 You can also have left-wing version as well.
0:42:35 You know, all these moments when you see a rapid period of decline, it’s the same institutions being attacked and undermined.
0:42:36 And that is happening here.
0:42:39 And in that sense, your comparison is correct.
0:42:44 Some of your writing and the writing of others is really – is illuminated.
0:42:46 And let’s be honest, I’m a glass-half-in-the-be kind of guy.
0:42:51 I’m always thinking about the end of America, how it might happen.
0:42:58 And some of the stuff I’ve read, to your point, made me believe that it happens not with a bang, but with just a thud or a whimper.
0:43:12 And an example or a scenario, and I want you to respond, 2028, four major states refuse to certify the election and say, we don’t – we don’t recognize this president.
0:43:19 And California, basically, fifth-largest economy in the world, starts doing trade with the Asia-Pacific room.
0:43:22 It’s a technology-based economy, develops its own leadership, its own currency.
0:43:27 Texas, oil and gas economy starts its own currency.
0:43:34 Different set of values, maybe Florida in the south and maybe the northeast is more about finance with strong relationship with Europe.
0:43:43 But basically, we become four nations the size of, I don’t know, France and the UK, lose all of our scale, lose a lot of our power, infighting,
0:43:46 don’t like each other, start putting up fences and borders.
0:43:54 And America just slowly kind of fades, not to black, but fades to a much less powerful, inspiring form of black and white.
0:43:59 Your thoughts on that scenario and could it happen?
0:44:03 And if it could, what – I mean, well, I’ll start there.
0:44:07 Do you think that is in any way a reasonable scenario?
0:44:13 So I would like Americans to be open to the idea
0:44:19 of thinking and imagining scenarios like that because – precisely because of how you ended your question,
0:44:24 because it will help us think about how and why we might want to prevent it.
0:44:33 You know, I don’t know if it’s reasonable to imagine California breaking off or whether Texas having its own currency is possible.
0:44:50 Well, I can imagine very easily, I can imagine a challenged election in which some states either don’t certify or some – or don’t accept the result.
0:44:55 And you can imagine in many different versions of how that could work out.
0:45:01 And there is a president who’s not recognized by some state governors.
0:45:04 And as I said, we came very close to that in 2020.
0:45:12 And there are still – I don’t know what the percentages are now, but at some – it was at one place between 20 and 30 percent of Americans thought the 2020 election was stolen.
0:45:16 What if that number was 60 percent or 70 percent?
0:45:21 You know, what if most people thought that the president was illegitimate and had good grounds for thinking that?
0:45:31 Then all kinds of – you know, then you have all kinds of federal institutions losing credibility and people asking whether they still need to obey the law.
0:45:38 You know, what happens to the FBI in those circumstances or the Department of Justice or the instruments that the president has to use.
0:45:49 So a kind of radical weakening of the presidency following this period of kind of hyperpower being given to the presidency is something I can easily imagine.
0:46:00 And the fact that Donald Trump introduced into our system this profound doubt about elections means that you can now hear it on both sides, actually.
0:46:06 I mean, you can hear – you know, I don’t know how much time you spend on social media, probably not so much.
0:46:15 But you can see there’s a piece of the left who believed the 2024 election was stolen by Elon Musk, you know, or by Trump.
0:46:27 And that uncertainty about results and that doubt about the system, you know, what if that grows to a level that makes people question the legitimacy of the whole system?
0:46:31 And that’s the version that I think we could be quite close to.
0:46:35 So, yeah, and I think people – it’s useful to imagine it.
0:46:41 It’s useful to think through scenarios because that reminds people, I think, of what’s at stake.
0:46:48 I mean, one of the things I find so frustrating is gearing up for the House races in 2026.
0:46:56 I mean, I think I’m, like a lot of Democrats, frustrated that we haven’t had a more robust response, if you will.
0:47:08 Do you have any thoughts – I’m sure you’re going to ask for your advice – on what, based on what you’ve seen historically, what – if people do, in fact, think this is dangerous and bad for America,
0:47:18 what is sort of a playbook for a more greater viscosity, more tensile strength response than what is happening now?
0:47:30 Well, first of all, in every time you see the rise of an authoritarian in any country, one of the first things that happens is that the opposition splinters.
0:47:37 Because the rules of politics have changed, sometimes in ways that people don’t initially understand.
0:47:43 And the – whatever was the previous opposition doesn’t understand the new rules.
0:47:47 And they fight with each other and they split into different parties.
0:47:55 You know, look, a country like Iran, the political opposition, you know, had dozens of parties who fought with each other and, you know, for years.
0:47:57 Russia, same story.
0:48:00 Venezuela, until recently, also the same story.
0:48:02 You know, Hungary, the same story.
0:48:18 That, you know, you had the rise of Orban and in response, you know, you had the left and the Greens and others, you know, fighting one another, you know, rather than unifying or finding a way to push back against the damage that he was doing.
0:48:21 So this is normal.
0:48:24 And so some of that – some of what we’re seeing is the same.
0:48:27 I mean, I heard this kind of frustration in Poland in 2016 and 17.
0:48:28 It was the same thing.
0:48:30 You know, the opposition is powerless.
0:48:31 They can’t fight back and so on.
0:48:38 One of the things that needs to happen is for people to understand the rules are different, that the things that divided us before can’t divide us now.
0:48:48 You know, there was a scene just – was it yesterday or the day before – of, you know, Palestinian activists attacking AOC at one of her events.
0:48:50 I mean, this is a kind of own goal.
0:48:51 Allies turning on allies.
0:48:55 And that’s kind of – you know, that’s something that has to be avoided.
0:49:18 But also, I think the Democrats need to look for what are the stories, what are the narratives, what are the – what are they going to find that unifies not only them and not only brings together different kinds of Democrats, but also reaches people who voted for Trump or people who stayed home, you know, people in the rest of the country.
0:49:31 And actually, one of the things that might eventually work once people – once it begins to sink in is the idea that I spoke about before, this idea of corruption and its link to your well-being.
0:49:37 You know, and you hear – you’re already hearing some of it, you know, when AOC and Bernie Sanders talk about oligarchy.
0:49:46 When – I think it’s Elizabeth Warren who keeps saying, you know, they’re getting rich and you’re not – you know, and you’re losing your – you’re going to lose your health care.
0:49:56 Beginning to make those links between what people are seeing and hearing, you know, even if vaguely about Trump and the people around him and how it affects people.
0:50:05 I mean, the same is true actually for the decline in the justice system is that, you know, when you talk to people about judicial independence, that can be a little bit too theoretical.
0:50:15 When you begin to say, you know, look, these are – you know, you’ve had these, you know, illegal deportations of people who are in this country legally.
0:50:18 You’ve had, you know, even U.S. citizens being detained at the border.
0:50:25 There – you know, this is a new, you know, a new system and eventually it could be coming for you.
0:50:36 And when you link together people’s personal experiences and the political, you know, mess that they see around them, I mean, I think then you begin to get powerful narratives that move people.
0:50:45 I mean, there’s a – you know, there are probably, you know, names and tactics I could – I could – you know, that might work here that you’ve seen in other countries.
0:51:08 But I think the most important thing is for not just Democrats but for Democrats and for company bosses and for heads of law firms and for, you know, disappointed and distressed Republicans to begin to coalesce on a definition of what’s wrong that can be made clear to people and to begin to offer an alternative.
0:51:11 We’ll be right back after the break.
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0:54:11 We’re back with more from Ann Applebaum.
0:54:16 I just want to move to the business of Ann Applebaum.
0:54:24 My sense is you’re having this extraordinary moment, and I imagine it’s been a lot of, you know, successes.
0:54:29 I love the statement, after working my ass off for 30 years, I’m an overnight success.
0:54:31 I see you everywhere.
0:54:34 And by the way, I think it’s wonderful.
0:54:44 How are you, I don’t want to say taking advantage of it, but how do you think about this moment for you, and how do you try and get your message out there?
0:54:51 Are you trying to write more, get better at social media, trying to hire people to manage your social media?
0:54:53 Tell me about, like, Ann Applebaum, Inc.
0:55:07 How do you manage to scale your message such that it can have as much impact as it can, given this, quite frankly, this moment in time where your work has real resonance?
0:55:17 So, I’m not sure that I think about myself as a business that needs to be managed, but, and for better or for worse.
0:55:22 I mean, I think it is, you can, it’s fair to say that I have changed some of what I do.
0:55:29 So, I did spend, I don’t know, the 90s and 2000s and into the 2010s, a lot of what I was doing was writing history books.
0:55:34 You know, I wrote histories of the Soviet gulag, the Ukrainian famine, and so on.
0:55:48 And it was really, for me, there was a big turning point in 2015, when first in Poland and in Hungary, and then in the UK and the US, I saw, you know, I felt, I suddenly realized that I was watching a very big change.
0:56:01 I was, there was a, there was an intellectual shift going on around me, particularly among, because I was kind of part of a, I was an anti-communist, and I knew a lot of conservatives, and a lot of my friends were in the conservative world.
0:56:05 And I saw this conservative world begin to split, and part of it begin to radicalize.
0:56:11 And then I wrote a book about that, and then I, I, I, I wrote another short book.
0:56:30 And, and, and, and you are right that I do now think more about how to find ways of telling the stories that I studied and telling the, you know, describing the bad ends that I know from history and, and warning Americans not to go down those roads.
0:56:38 And I don’t know, I, I, I, I’m not sure that I do it systematically or well, but I do it through, I, I talk a lot more than I used to.
0:56:40 I mean, I do podcasts.
0:56:46 I, I didn’t used to do any television, partly because I didn’t want to, and now I do it if you ask me, if I, if I have time.
0:56:53 You know, I understand that there are different ways to reach people, that not everybody’s going to read my 500-page history of the Gulag.
0:57:03 And so if I, if I have to talk about what a concentration camp is, which, by the way, they, those concentration camps in Guatemala, I mean, in El Salvador are, that’s what they are.
0:57:09 And, and the definition is a site that’s not subject to the laws of the, the country sending people to that site?
0:57:11 Is that the right definition?
0:57:18 A concentration camp is a camp where people are sent who are neither prisoners of war nor necessarily convicted criminals.
0:57:19 It’s somehow outside the law.
0:57:25 It’s people who are being sentenced not for necessarily what they’ve done, but for who they are.
0:57:28 And that’s, certainly that defines some of the people who have been sent to.
0:57:43 So, so, so yeah, I feel obligated to, to, to, to talk and speak more, but, um, I don’t know, may, if there were, if there were something that I could do to get the message through more effectively and to more people, I would do it.
0:57:50 Um, I, um, you know, I, I, I don’t come from a show business world or a, or a, or really a television world.
0:58:04 Uh, you know, I, I, I’m, I’m somebody who writes books and articles, figuring out how to make what I studied and what I do, how to, how to make it clear and simple and to transmit it in a way that people understand.
0:58:07 I mean, that I do spend time thinking about how to do that.
0:58:08 I guess that’s the best way to put it.
0:58:14 So we entered college the exact same year, uh, you at Yale, me at, uh, UCLA.
0:58:19 You’re now, um, I think a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins.
0:58:19 Is that right?
0:58:20 Yep.
0:58:22 There’s something called the Agora Institute there.
0:58:23 And I’m, I’m fellow there.
0:58:33 I’m curious, well, I’ll put forward a thesis that at universities, our inclinations are Democrats, almost like Democrats, our inclinations are correct.
0:58:35 Our heart’s in the right place.
0:58:38 We take things too far and we invite an overcorrection.
0:58:44 How would you, what role, if any, do you think universities have played in inspiring an overcorrection?
0:58:47 If that, if you believe that’s true.
0:58:53 And two, what role do you think university leadership has to play in an attempt to push back on this autocracy?
0:59:11 So when you’re talking about universities, it’s actually a really fraught subject because the truth about what actually happens at universities and what was written about universities and what people think about universities can sometimes be quite separate.
0:59:22 And this was true both during the cancel culture moment of a few years ago, you know, and it was very true of the Gaza protests, for example, last spring.
0:59:24 I’ll just give you an example of what I mean.
0:59:32 I was a, I did a lecture at Northwestern University last year, and it was right at the height of the protest movement.
0:59:34 And there were a lot of protest movements there.
0:59:43 And I talked to a group of journalists who, student journalists, who were, who were, it was a class I spoke to before the lecture.
0:59:53 And I asked them to tell me about how many people on the campus, which is about 20,000 people or 22,000 people at Northwestern, how many people actually cared about these protests?
0:59:55 What, how, what number did they guess?
0:59:59 And they said, well, there’s probably about a thousand people who care, who know about it, who follow it.
1:00:00 Okay.
1:00:03 How many people have actually been to a protest?
1:00:04 Maybe 500.
1:00:10 You know, how many people go regularly, live in tents, you know, care about it intimately?
1:00:14 That was certainly no more than 50.
1:00:15 And sometimes it was just a couple dozen.
1:00:22 So out of 22,000 people, there were a few dozen who were making the news.
1:00:27 Then we started talking about the slogans that were used at the protest.
1:00:28 And these were kids.
1:00:30 I mean, they were sort of in their early 20s.
1:00:31 They’d never done journalism before.
1:00:32 They were editors and work.
1:00:34 They worked on the student newspaper.
1:00:47 And one of them said to me, you know, the thing that had been most shocking for him was to learn that every time, whatever was the most extreme slogan, whether it was anti-Semitic or anti-Muslim, you know, whatever was the most extreme thing.
1:00:55 If someone took a picture of that on a given day, that slogan was the one that would be in the Chicago Tribune the next morning.
1:01:04 And so, you know, you had, I don’t know, 21,500 students on this campus who were not involved in this.
1:01:09 You know, you had 22, 25 kids who were very angry.
1:01:13 You know, one of them made a poster, and that was the news story.
1:01:23 And so there were stereotypes and exaggerations about what students were up to and what they did that I think became very unfair.
1:01:53 So I think, you know, it’s also become the case that because of the nature of social media and the way that news spreads, you know, one incident, you know, one crazy person at Yale or at UCLA or at wherever, you know, University of Colorado can do something crazy or make a statement or disrupt a lecture or post a blog or do something that suddenly will make him or her the focus of a kind of frenzy, you know, of one kind or another.
1:01:59 And I don’t think that was ever very representative of everybody’s life on a university campus.
1:02:05 And I’ve had kids who’ve been through university since then, and I know, I teach a little bit, so I know kids that age.
1:02:15 And I mostly found them, you know, they were wary of this kind of extreme politics, you know, on both sides.
1:02:17 They were mostly pretty moderate.
1:02:30 You know, most of them were, you know, did their homework and, you know, went to their, you know, lacrosse matches and weren’t engaged in the kind of bitter campus wars that you read about in the newspaper.
1:02:43 And so I think the, I think a lot of, you know, and then of course the campus wars became important to conservatives and to some on the left as a, as a way of fighting about other things.
1:02:48 And so I think, I think the, the campuses were really did, you know, it was a bad service was done to them.
1:03:02 And having said that, there were plenty of university professors and in particular, but also university presidents who weren’t clear enough about the basic, what should have been the basic rules for any university.
1:03:14 You know, we, you know, we, you know, free speech, tolerance of views, you know, due process for people accused of things, whether they were accused of political crimes or, or, or sexual assault.
1:03:20 You know, the, the, the, the, the presidents and the faculty also became caught up in these various frenzies.
1:03:28 And in some cases became afraid of, you know, they, they, they, these institutions also became afraid of becoming the subject of attack.
1:03:45 And so, you know, we had a, we had a, we had a long and ugly moment that actually, I think we were beginning to recover from until, you know, until the Trump administration came, came to office and decided that what it really wanted to do was destroy the universities altogether, which I do believe is their goal.
1:03:53 I mean, I think they, I think their goal is, and it’s not just about correcting some kind of lefty excesses on campus.
1:04:00 I think they want to, they, they see universities much as, again, Orban did, or, or indeed almost any authoritarian did.
1:04:06 The Chinese apparently are very interested in what’s going on in the U.S. because they see echoes in their own history, the cultural revolution.
1:04:13 You know, they see them as places where, you know, people exchange ideas, where they, they seek for truth.
1:04:17 They try to establish facts, whether those are scientific facts or historical facts.
1:04:28 And, and, and those are the kinds of people who’ve been taught critical thinking and who’ve been taught to ask questions that are a problem for a president who wants people to accept his lies.
1:04:31 You know, he, he, this is a president who lies every day, several times a day.
1:04:33 He lies about the price of gas.
1:04:36 He lies about, you know, his tariff policy.
1:04:40 He lies about everything and he doesn’t want people to question him.
1:04:46 And they, they want to be their, their, you know, their movement to be accepted and not questioned.
1:04:51 And they see universities as the source of a kind of, it’s not even a political opposition.
1:04:53 It’s the source of intellectual and moral opposition.
1:04:56 And I think that’s why they want to destroy them.
1:05:05 So, so although there was a case for university presidents to be braver, for university faculty to, to, to become, to be less political.
1:05:10 And by the way, you know, keeping in mind that it was always a small percentage on any given campus.
1:05:16 And certainly when looked at, at the thousands of universities across the country, there was a, certainly that you could make that case.
1:05:21 But it seems to me that what’s happening now isn’t even an overcorrection.
1:05:23 It’s a, it’s a, it’s a different project.
1:05:24 It’s a much more extreme project.
1:05:27 So last question.
1:05:33 I’ve been shocked whenever I meet an actor, one of the, and I’m talking about kids, they almost universally said,
1:05:35 I just would not want my kids to go into this industry.
1:05:44 Would you encourage your kids to be authors or write for a magazine or be a historian?
1:05:48 How, do you think your industry is a good industry for young people to enter?
1:05:52 So I don’t think, I have two kids and neither of them is interested.
1:05:56 So we’re, you know, I don’t have to, I don’t, I don’t have to worry about it.
1:06:02 All those, um, look, I, I, I still know a lot of really great journalists.
1:06:12 I know people who are dedicated to investigating important stories, who write about crises around the world.
1:06:20 I was just corresponding this morning with a photographer who I’m working with, who’s in Sudan and who’s witnessing a horrific moment in that war.
1:06:22 There are refugees escaping into Chad.
1:06:23 She happens to be there.
1:06:23 She’s taking pictures.
1:06:25 I’m going to write something short.
1:06:29 I was, I was there a few weeks ago and I’m going to write something short to go with her photographs.
1:06:40 And, you know, I see that people who are, you know, who, who, who believe in this kind of work and who want to do good work are, are still there and they have interesting careers and great lives.
1:06:45 I mean, you don’t become super wealthy and you don’t necessarily become super famous.
1:06:47 It depends on, you know, maybe you get lucky or maybe you don’t.
1:06:53 But, but I, but it’s a, I see that the people in the industry feel they’re doing something good.
1:06:56 And so, yeah, I would recommend that people do it for the moment.
1:07:02 We still have, there are still places to write for some big places, some small ones.
1:07:17 If you’re, if you’re interested in doing investigative journalism, if you’re interested in reporting, if you like writing, if you want to convey ideas, if you care about ideas, if you want to be engaged in, in political debate, there’s, there is space to do it.
1:07:25 I mean, there is a lot of junk out there and a lot of really bad journalism and a lot of video clips that, you know, we don’t all need to see.
1:07:33 But, but, but there, but there’s a, there’s a, there, there’s a real world and, and I hope younger people join it.
1:07:35 There’s still space to do it.
1:07:39 Ann Applebaum is a Pulitzer Prize winning historian and staff writer at The Atlantic.
1:07:42 She is also a senior fellow at Johns Hopkins.
1:07:50 Her books include Gulag, A History, Red Famine, Stalin’s War on Ukraine, and her latest Autocracy, Inc.
1:07:55 She joins us from her home or office or home office in Washington, D.C.
1:08:09 And I just love seeing people such as yourself who have gone a million miles deep on a, not a fairly narrow topic, but you, you, you, you literally are the Autocracy person.
1:08:13 And it’s just very rewarding to see the kind of recognition and influence you’re having.
1:08:22 And you’re forceful, yet dignified, and you’re one of the few people that, and this is one of my many flaws, I fall in love with my own ideas and look for reasons to validate them.
1:08:29 But whenever you say something that isn’t congruent with my current thinking, I stop and I question my own beliefs.
1:08:30 And I think that’s really important.
1:08:33 So I really appreciate your good work.
1:08:35 That is a really kind thing to say.
1:08:36 Thank you very much.
1:08:42 You know, I’m a listener and a follower and, and I look forward to hearing what you have to say in the future too.
1:08:43 Thanks, Dan.
1:09:03 Oswer of Happiness, this notion of autocracy, kleptocracy, and I brought up the notion of cacostocracy with Anne.
1:09:16 And what I would argue, the difference between, you know, a lot of individuals who are really talented make good livings, but the reason they don’t make exceptional livings, and maybe that’s not their goal, maybe they just want to do their thing and make a good living.
1:09:17 There’s nothing wrong with that.
1:09:22 But I would argue if you want to make a great living, obviously you have to be talented.
1:09:28 And I can’t figure out if raw talent is 51% or 49% of the whole package of making a really exceptional living.
1:09:29 I’ve managed to make an exceptional living.
1:09:30 I think I’m talented.
1:09:31 I’m not humble.
1:09:36 But hands down, the secret sauce of my success is two things.
1:09:45 One, an ability to endure rejection and never get afraid to ask investors to invest in me, ask talented people to come to work for me, ask clients to be my client.
1:09:47 I was never, you know, no never held me back.
1:09:52 I’ve gotten a lot more no’s than yeses, and that’s the key to yes, is a lot of no’s and the willingness to endure it.
1:09:58 But two, I have always understood from a very young age that greatness is in the agency of others.
1:10:12 I’ve always invested a lot in people, and constantly I am thinking about, I think more about, what do I think more about than clients or expenses or the product, whatever it is I’m offering at the companies I’ve been running?
1:10:16 I think about, who is really good, and how do I make sure they stay?
1:10:23 Because the cost of replacing someone really good is just genuinely going to be a lot more than the cost of trying to keep someone.
1:10:28 And the way you keep them is one, first and foremost, you pay them well.
1:10:33 I want to make it really difficult for anyone to leave, especially anyone who’s really good.
1:10:35 And that comes down to compensation strategy.
1:10:44 And you don’t like to say this at all hands, but I generally believe there’s a small group of people that drive the majority of the value at medium and big firms.
1:10:47 At a small firm, you can be kind of a SEAL team.
1:10:49 You can pick mostly or have mostly really outstanding performers.
1:10:54 Your ratio of A performers to B performers can be like 50-50.
1:11:01 It’s never going to be 90-10 because the really best performers, no matter how profitable you are, it is very hard to pay everyone really, really well.
1:11:04 But most big firms, it’s usually 10-90.
1:11:09 And that is 10% of the people drive 120% of the value, and the other 90% are negative 20.
1:11:15 And you have to have B players to scale a business because A players want a lot of compensation and equity or they want to go start their own businesses.
1:11:21 And you have to convince them, better than doing your own thing or going to Salesforce or Google, you’re going to do really well here.
1:11:23 So you have to give them a lot of equity, a lot of compensation.
1:11:26 But I’ve now gotten to the point where I get a lot of joy.
1:11:27 And I’m rounding third.
1:11:41 I’m monetizing a lot of the brand equity and work that I’ve invested over the first four decades of my career, more of the last four decades, hopefully, and trying to overcompensate people, not only financially, but I’ve got a good manager in place.
1:11:42 I think about kids.
1:11:43 I send them on vacations.
1:11:53 I try to, you know, invite them to cool stuff, try to give them a little bit of, I don’t know, some of that riz or fame in terms of speaking gigs or whatever it is.
1:11:56 But loyalty is a function of appreciation.
1:12:00 And loyalty is absolutely a function of shareholder value, or shareholder value is a function of loyalty.
1:12:01 So then how do you get to loyalty?
1:12:03 It’s appreciation.
1:12:04 You pay them well.
1:12:05 I try to overcompensate them.
1:12:08 And you try to make their job rewarding or somewhat cool.
1:12:09 Also, what do you do?
1:12:11 You hold people accountable.
1:12:13 And that is, on a regular basis, you let people go.
1:12:14 And that’s not what you hear at all hands meetings.
1:12:21 But it’s important because everybody at a firm needs to be able to look left and right and say, maybe I don’t love this person, but I get why they’re here.
1:12:29 And if they are looking at someone who’s not very good or not working very hard or not as committed, it reduces their commitment.
1:12:33 Or they start thinking, maybe I should go somewhere else where I’m compensated for my additional commitment.
1:12:38 In sum, if you have a lot of talent, you’ll make a good living.
1:12:42 But if you want to make a great living, you have to understand how to build an organization.
1:12:47 And recognizing that greatness is in the agency of others is paramount.
1:12:49 It’s the difference between a practice and an enterprise.
1:12:52 It’s the difference between making a good living and making a great living.
1:12:56 It’s the difference between having a voice and having an enormous impact.
1:13:00 This episode was produced by Jennifer Sanchez.
1:13:02 Our intern is Dan Shallon.
1:13:04 Drew Burrows is our technical director.
1:13:07 Thank you for listening to the Prop G Pod from the Box Media Podcast Network.
1:13:12 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, as read by George Hahn.
1:13:18 And please follow our Prop G Markets pod wherever you get your pods for new episodes every Monday and Thursday.
1:13:22 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice.
1:13:22 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy.
1:13:24 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy, No Malice, and we will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy.
1:13:24 We will catch you on Saturday for No Mercy.

0:00:02 – Welcome to Huberman Lab Essentials,
0:00:04 where we revisit past episodes
0:00:07 for the most potent and actionable science-based tools
0:00:10 for mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:00:12 I’m Andrew Huberman,
0:00:15 and I’m a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology
0:00:17 at Stanford School of Medicine.
0:00:21 Today, we’re going to talk all about hearing and balance
0:00:24 and how you can use your ability to hear specific things
0:00:29 and your balance system in order to learn anything faster.
0:00:31 The auditory system, meaning the hearing system,
0:00:33 and your balance system,
0:00:35 which is called the vestibular system,
0:00:39 interact with all the other systems of the brain and body,
0:00:41 and used properly can allow you
0:00:43 to learn information more quickly,
0:00:47 remember that information longer and with more ease,
0:00:50 and you can also improve the way you can hear.
0:00:51 You can improve your balance.
0:00:54 We’re going to talk about tools for all of that.
0:00:56 As many of you know,
0:00:58 I’ve been taking AG1 daily for more than 13 years.
0:01:03 However, I’ve now found an even better vitamin mineral probiotic drink.
0:01:09 that new and better drink is the new and improved AG1, which just launched this month.
0:01:14 This next-gen formula from AG1 is a more advanced, clinically-backed version of the product
0:01:16 that I’ve been taking daily for years.
0:01:20 It includes new bioavailable nutrients and enhanced probiotics.
0:01:26 The next-gen formula is based on exciting new research on the effects of probiotics on the gut microbiome,
0:01:33 and it now includes several specific clinically-studied probiotic strains that have been shown to support both digestive health and immune system health,
0:01:37 as well as to improve bowel regularity and to reduce bloating.
0:01:41 As someone who’s been involved in research science for more than three decades, and in health and fitness for equally as long,
0:01:46 I’m constantly looking for the best tools to improve my mental health, physical health, and performance.
0:01:55 I discovered and started taking AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I’ve been taking it every day since.
0:01:58 I find that it greatly improves all aspects of my health.
0:02:04 I just feel so much better when I take it, and I attribute my ability to consistently work long hours over all these years,
0:02:11 while also maintaining a full life, having tons of energy, sleeping well, not getting sick, etc., in large part to AG1.
0:02:14 And of course, I do a lot of things. I exercise, I eat, right, etc.
0:02:19 But with each passing year, and by the way, I’m turning 50 this September, I continue to feel better and better,
0:02:22 and I attribute a lot of that to AG1.
0:02:29 AG1 uses the highest quality ingredients in the right combinations, and they’re constantly improving their formulas without increasing the cost.
0:02:31 So I’m honored to have them as a sponsor of this podcast.
0:02:38 If you’d like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim a special offer.
0:02:45 Right now, AG1 is giving away an AG1 welcome kit with five free travel packs and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
0:02:51 Again, go to drinkag1.com slash Huberman to claim the special welcome kit with five free travel packs
0:02:53 and a free bottle of vitamin D3 K2.
0:02:55 Can you hear me?
0:02:57 Can you hear me?
0:03:00 Okay, well, if you can hear me, that’s amazing.
0:03:07 Because what it means is that my voice is causing little tiny changes in the airwaves, wherever you happen to be,
0:03:16 and that your ears and whatever’s contained in those ears and in your brain can take those sound waves and make sense of them.
0:03:21 And that is an absolutely fantastic and staggering feat of biology.
0:03:25 And yet we understand a lot about how that process works.
0:03:28 So what we call ears have a technical name.
0:03:34 That technical name is oracles, but more often they’re called pinna.
0:03:37 The pinna is P-I-N-N-A, pinna.
0:03:43 And the pinna of your ears, this outer part that is made of cartilage and stuff,
0:03:50 is arranged such that it can capture sound in the best way for your head size.
0:03:58 So the shape of these ears that we have is such that it amplifies high-frequency sounds.
0:04:01 High-frequency sounds, as the name suggests, are the squeakier stuff.
0:04:05 So we have low-frequency sounds and high-frequency sounds and everything in between.
0:04:11 And those sound waves, for those of you that don’t maybe fully conceptualize sound waves,
0:04:21 are literally just fluctuations or shifts in the way that air is moving toward your ear and through space.
0:04:24 In the same way that water can have waves, air can have waves.
0:04:27 Okay, so it’s reverberation of air.
0:04:34 Those come in through your ears and you have what’s called your eardrum.
0:04:39 And on the inside of your eardrum, there’s a little bony thing that’s shaped like a little hammer.
0:04:45 So attached to that eardrum, which can move back and forth like a drum, it’s like a little membrane.
0:04:47 You’ve got this hammer attached to it.
0:04:49 And that hammer has three parts.
0:04:54 For those of you that want to know, those three parts are called malleus, incus, and stapes.
0:04:57 It’s like, but basically you can just think about it as a hammer.
0:04:59 So you’ve got this eardrum and then a hammer.
0:05:02 And then that hammer has to hammer on something.
0:05:09 And what it does is it hammers on a little coiled piece of tissue that we call the cochlea.
0:05:18 So this snail-shaped structure in your inner ear is where sound gets converted into electrical signals that the brain can understand.
0:05:24 Now, the cochlea at one end is more rigid than the other.
0:05:28 So one part can move really easily and the other part doesn’t move very easily.
0:05:40 And that turns out to be very important for decoding or separating sounds that are low frequency and sounds that are of high frequency, like a shriek or a shrill.
0:05:51 And that’s because within that little coiled thing we call the cochlea, you have all these tiny little what are called hair cells.
0:05:57 Now, they look like hairs, but they’re not at all related to the hairs on your head or elsewhere on your body.
0:05:59 They’re just shaped like hairs.
0:06:09 So we call them hair cells, those hair cells, if they move, send signals into the brain that a particular sound is in our environment.
0:06:12 Now, this should stagger your mind.
0:06:14 If it doesn’t already, it should.
0:06:24 Because what this means is that everything that’s happening around us, whether or not it’s music or voices, all of that is being broken down into its component parts.
0:06:27 And then your brain is making sense of what it means.
0:06:31 Your cochlea essentially acts as a prism.
0:06:37 It takes all the sound in your environment and it splits up those sounds into different frequencies.
0:06:41 And then the brain takes that information and puts it back together and makes sense of it.
0:06:47 So those hair cells in each of your two cochlea, because you have two ears, you also have two cochlea,
0:06:56 send little wires, what we call axons, that convey their patterns of activity into the brain.
0:07:05 And there are a number of different stations within the brain that information arrives at before it gets up to the parts of your brain where you are consciously aware.
0:07:15 And there is a good reason for that, which is that more important than knowing what you’re hearing, you need to know where it’s coming from.
0:07:26 And our visual system can help with that, but our auditory and our visual system collaborate to help us find and locate the position of things in space.
0:07:28 That should come as no surprise.
0:07:33 If you hear somebody talking off to your right, you tend to turn to your right, not to your left.
0:07:40 If you see somebody’s mouth moving in front of you, you tend to assume that the sound is going to come from right in front of you.
0:07:49 Disruptions in this auditory hearing and visual matching are actually the basis of what’s called the ventriloquism effect.
0:08:01 The ventriloquism effect can basically be described in simple terms as when you essentially think that a sound is coming from a location that it’s not actually coming from.
0:08:12 The way you know where things are coming from, what direction a car or a bus or a person is coming from is because the sound lands in one ear before the other.
0:08:22 And you have stations in your brain and meaning you have neurons in your brain that calculate the difference in time of arrival for those sound waves in your right versus your left ear.
0:08:28 And if they arrive at the same time, you assume that thing is making noise right in front of you.
0:08:31 If it’s off to your right, you assume it’s over on your right.
0:08:38 And if the sound arrives first to your left ear, you assume quite correctly that the thing is coming toward your left ear.
0:08:39 But what about up and down?
0:08:45 If you think about it, a sound coming from above is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time.
0:08:49 A sound from below is going to land on your right ear and your left ear at the same time.
0:09:01 So the way that we know where things are in terms of what’s called elevation, where they are in the up and down plane, is by the frequencies.
0:09:10 The shape of your ears actually modifies the sound depending on whether or not it’s coming straight at you from the floor or from high above.
0:09:16 Now, this all happens very, very fast in a subconscious, but now you know why.
0:09:22 If people really want to hear something, they make a cup around their ear.
0:09:26 They essentially make their ear into more of a fennec fox type ear.
0:09:30 If you’ve ever seen those cute little fennec fox things, they have these big spiky ears.
0:09:34 They kind of look like a French bulldog, although they’re kind of the fox version of the French bulldog.
0:09:38 These big, big, tall ears, and they have excellent sound localization.
0:09:47 And so when people lean in with their hand like this, if you’re listening to this, I’m just cupping my hand at my ear, I’m giving myself a bigger pinna.
0:09:50 Okay, and if I do it on the left side, I do this side.
0:09:53 And if I really want to hear something, I do it on both sides.
0:09:55 Okay, so this isn’t just gesturing.
0:09:57 This actually serves a mechanical role.
0:10:09 And actually, if you want to hear where things are coming from with a much greater degree of accuracy, this can actually help because you’re capturing sound waves and funneling them better.
0:10:12 I’d like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Eight Sleep.
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0:11:56 So now I want to shift to talking about ways to leverage your hearing system, your auditory system, so that you can learn anything, not just auditory information, but anything faster.
0:12:00 I get a lot of questions about so-called binaural beats.
0:12:10 Binaural beats, as their name suggests, involve playing one frequency of sound to one ear and a different frequency of sound to the other ear.
0:12:32 And the idea is that the brain will take those two frequencies of sound and because the pathways that bring information from the ears into the brain eventually cross over, they actually share that information with both sides of the brain, that the brain will average that information and come up with a sort of intermediate frequency.
0:12:39 And the rationale is that those intermediate frequencies place the brain into a state that is better for learning.
0:12:43 And when I say better for learning, I want to be precise about what I mean.
0:12:50 That could mean more focus for encoding or bringing the information in.
0:12:54 As you may have heard me say before, we have to be alert and focused in order to learn.
0:12:58 So can binaural beats make us more focused?
0:13:03 Can binaural beats allow us to relax more if we’re anxious?
0:13:05 So what are the scientific data say about binaural beats?
0:13:10 The science on binaural beats is actually quite extensive and very precise.
0:13:15 So sound waves are measured typically in Hertz or kilohertz.
0:13:23 I know many of you aren’t familiar with thinking about things in Hertz or kilohertz, but again, just remember those waves on a pond, those ripples on a pond.
0:13:28 If they’re close together, then they are of high frequency.
0:13:31 And if they’re far apart, then they are low frequency.
0:13:35 So if it’s many more kilohertz, then it’s much higher frequency than if it’s fewer Hertz or killer Hertz.
0:13:42 And so you may have heard of these things as delta waves or theta waves or alpha waves or beta waves, et cetera.
0:13:46 Delta waves would be big, slow waves, so low frequency.
0:14:01 And indeed, there is quality evidence from peer-reviewed studies that tell us that delta waves, like one to four Hertz, so very low frequency sounds, can help in the transition to sleep and for staying asleep.
0:14:12 And that theta rhythms, which are more like four to eight Hertz, can bring the brain into a state of subtle sleep or meditation.
0:14:15 So deeply relaxed, but not fully asleep.
0:14:21 And you’ll find evidence that alpha waves, eight to 13 Hertz can increase alertness to a moderate level.
0:14:27 That’s a great state for the brain to be in for recall of existing information, okay?
0:14:39 And that beta waves, 15 to 20 Hertz are great for bringing the brain into focus states for sustained thought or for incorporating new information.
0:14:44 And especially gamma waves, the highest frequency, the most frequent ripples of sound, so to speak.
0:14:48 32 to 100 Hertz for learning and problem solving.
0:14:56 Here, we’re talking about the use of binaural beats in order to increase our level of alertness or our level of calmness.
0:15:03 Now, that’s important to underscore because it’s not that there’s something fundamentally important about the binaural beats.
0:15:10 They are yet another way of bringing the brain into states of deep relaxation through low frequency sound
0:15:16 or highly alert states for focused learning with more high frequency sound.
0:15:22 They’re effective, but it’s not that they’re uniquely special for learning.
0:15:27 It’s just that they can help some people bring their brain into the state that allows them to learn better.
0:15:34 There’s very good evidence for anxiety reduction from the use of binaural beats.
0:15:46 And what’s interesting is the anxiety reduction seems to be most effective when the binaural beats are bringing the brain into delta.
0:15:50 So those slow, big waves like sleep, theta and alpha states.
0:15:55 There’s good evidence that binaural beats can be used to treat pain, chronic pain.
0:16:01 But the real boost from binaural beats appears to be for anxiety reduction and pain reduction.
0:16:08 Many people like binaural beats and say that they benefit from them, especially while studying or learning.
0:16:16 I think part of the reason for that relates to the ability to channel our focus when we have some background noise.
0:16:19 And this is something I also get asked about a lot.
0:16:25 Is it better to listen to music and have background noise when studying or is it better to have complete silence?
0:16:31 Well, there’s actually a quite good literature on this as well, but not so much as it relates to binaural beats,
0:16:38 but rather whether or not people are listening to music, so-called white noise, brown noise.
0:16:40 Believe it or not, there’s white noise and there’s brown noise.
0:16:41 There’s even pink noise.
0:16:51 I want to be very clear that white noise has been shown to really enhance brain states for learning in certain individuals, in particular in adults.
0:17:02 But white noise actually can have a detrimental effect on auditory learning and maybe even the development of the auditory system in very young children, in particular in infants.
0:17:07 So first, I’d like to talk about the beneficial effects of white noise on learning.
0:17:10 There are some really excellent studies on this.
0:17:21 The first one that I’d like to just highlight is one that’s entitled low intensity white noise improves performance in auditory working memory task, an fMRI study.
0:17:31 This is a study that explored whether or not learning could be enhanced by playing white noise in the background.
0:17:40 But the strength of the study is that they looked at some of the underlying neural circuitry and the activation of the neural circuitry in these people as they did the learning task.
0:17:53 And what it essentially illustrates is that white noise, provided that white noise is of low enough intensity, meaning not super loud, it actually could enhance learning to a significant degree.
0:18:01 And this has been shown now for a huge number of different types of learning.
0:18:06 I was very relieved to find, or I should say excited to find this study published in the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
0:18:08 This is a 2014 paper.
0:18:17 White noise improves learning by modulating activity in dopaminergic midbrain regions and the right superior temporal sulcus.
0:18:17 Okay.
0:18:26 I don’t expect you to know what the dopamine midbrain region is, but if you’re like me, you probably took highlighted notice of the word dopaminergic.
0:18:41 Dopamine is a neuromodulator, meaning it’s a chemical that’s released in our brain and body, but mostly in our brain, that modulates, meaning controls the likelihood that certain brain areas will be active and other brain areas won’t be active.
0:18:59 And dopamine is associated with motivation, dopamine is associated with craving, but what’s so interesting to me is that it appears that white noise itself can raise what we call the basal, the baseline levels of dopamine that are being released from this area, the substantia nigra.
0:19:08 So now we’re starting to get a more full picture of how particular sounds in our environment can increase learning.
0:19:14 And that’s in part, I believe, through the release of dopamine from substantia nigra.
0:19:29 So I’m not trying to shift you away from binaural beats, if that’s your thing, but it does appear that turning on white noise at a low level, but not too loud, can allow you to learn better because of the ways that it’s modulating your brain chemistry.
0:19:32 So what about white noise and hearing loss in development?
0:19:39 I know a lot of people with children have these kind of noise machines, like sound waves and things like that, that help the kids sleep.
0:19:48 And look, I think kids getting good sleep and parents getting good sleep is vital to physical and mental health and family health.
0:19:52 So I certainly sympathize with those needs.
0:20:01 However, there are data that indicate that white noise during development can be detrimental to the auditory system.
0:20:03 I don’t want to frighten any parents.
0:20:12 If you played white noise to your kids, this doesn’t mean that their auditory system or their speech patterns are going to be disrupted or that their interpretation of speech is going to be disrupted forever.
0:20:27 But there are data published in the journal science some years ago showing that when they exposed very young animals to this white noise, it actually disrupted the maps of the auditory world within the brain.
0:20:41 So auditory information goes up into our cortex, into essentially the outside portion of our brain that’s responsible for all of our higher level cognition, our planning, our decision-making, et cetera, creativity.
0:20:46 And up there, we have what are called tonotopic maps.
0:20:47 What’s a tonotopic map?
0:20:55 Well, remember the cochlea, how it’s coiled, and at one end, it responds to high frequencies, and the other end, it responds to low frequencies, sort of like a piano.
0:21:06 In the auditory system, we have what are called tonotopic maps, where frequency, high frequency to low frequency, and everything in between is organized in a very systematic way.
0:21:13 Now, our experience of life from the time we’re a baby until the time that we die is not systematic.
0:21:19 We don’t hear low frequencies at one part of the room or at one part of the day, and high frequencies at another part of the room, another part of the day.
0:21:20 They’re all intermixed.
0:21:30 But if you remember, the cochlea separates them out just like a prism of light separates out the different wavelengths of light, the cochlea separates out the different frequencies.
0:21:42 And the developing brain takes those separated out frequencies and learns this relationship between itself, meaning the child, and the outside world.
0:21:49 White noise essentially contains no tonotopic information.
0:21:51 The frequencies are all intermixed.
0:21:53 It’s just noise.
0:22:06 So, one of the reasons why hearing a lot of white noise during development for long periods of time can be detrimental to the development of the auditory system is that these tonotopic maps don’t form normally.
0:22:09 At least they don’t in experimental animals.
0:22:16 Now, the reason I’m raising this is that many people I know, in particular friends who have small children, they say,
0:22:25 I want to use a white noise machine while I sleep, but is it okay for my baby to use a white noise machine?
0:22:36 And I consulted with various people, scientists about this, and they said, well, you know, the baby is also hearing the parents’ voices and is hearing music and is hearing the dog bark.
0:22:45 And so, it’s not the only thing they’re hearing, however, every single person that I consulted with said, but you know, there’s neuroplasticity during sleep.
0:22:47 That’s when the kid is sleeping.
0:22:56 And I don’t know that you’d want to expose a child to white noise the entire night because it might degrade that tonotopic map.
0:23:06 It might not destroy it, might not eliminate it, but it could make it a little less clear, like sort of taking the keys on the piano and taping a few of them together.
0:23:15 Once your auditory system has formed, once it’s established these tonotopic maps, then the presence of background white noise should not be a problem at all.
0:23:20 In fact, it shouldn’t be a problem at all because you’re also not attending to it.
0:23:28 The idea is that it’s playing at a low enough volume that you kind of forget it in the background and that it’s supporting learning by bringing your brain into a heightened state of alertness,
0:23:36 and especially this heightened state of dopamine, dopaminergic activation of the brain, which will make it easier to learn faster and easier to learn the information.
0:23:41 I’d like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Function.
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0:25:05 As a consequence, I decided to join their scientific advisory board,
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0:25:12 If you’d like to try Function, you can go to functionhealth.com slash Huberman.
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0:25:31 So now I want to talk about auditory learning and actually how you can get better at learning information that you hear,
0:25:35 not just information that you see on a page or motor skill learning.
0:25:39 So there’s a phenomenon called the cocktail party effect.
0:25:46 Now, even if you’ve never been to a cocktail party, you’ve experienced and participated in what’s called the cocktail party effect.
0:25:50 The cocktail party effect is where you are in an environment that’s rich with sound,
0:25:54 many sound waves coming from many different sources, many different things.
0:26:00 So in a city, in a classroom, in a car that contains people having various conversations,
0:26:06 you somehow need to be able to attend to specific components of those sound waves.
0:26:09 Many, you need to hear certain people and not others.
0:26:17 You and your brain are exquisitely good at creating a cone of auditory attention,
0:26:26 a narrow band of attention with which you can extract the information you care about and wipe away or erase all the rest.
0:26:29 Now, this takes work.
0:26:30 It takes attention.
0:26:36 One of the reasons why you might come home from a loud gathering, maybe a stadium, a sports event,
0:26:42 or a cocktail party for that matter, and feel just exhausted is because if you were listening to conversations there
0:26:46 or trying to listen to those conversations while watching the game, it takes attentional effort.
0:26:56 And the brain uses up a lot of energy just at rest, but it uses up even more energy when you are paying strong attention to something.
0:26:59 Literally caloric energy, burning up things like glucose, et cetera.
0:27:01 Even if you’re ketogenic, it’s burning up energy.
0:27:07 So the cocktail party effect has been studied extensively in the field of neuroscience.
0:27:18 And we now know at a mechanistic level how one accomplishes this feat of attending to certain sounds, despite the fact that we are being bombarded with all sorts of other sounds.
0:27:21 So there are a couple of ways that we do this.
0:27:31 First of all, much as with our visual system, we can expand or contract our visual field of view.
0:27:32 Okay.
0:27:32 We can do that.
0:27:34 We can expand and contract our visual field of view.
0:27:42 Well, we can expand and contract our auditory field of view, so to speak, or our auditory window.
0:27:57 We can really hear one person or a small number of people amidst a huge background of chatter because we pay attention to the onset of words, but also to the offset of words.
0:28:08 So one of the more common phenomenon that I think we all experience is you go to a party and, or you meet somebody new and you say, hi, I would say, hi, I’m Andrew.
0:28:10 And they’d say, hi, I’m Jeff, for instance.
0:28:11 And a great, great to meet you.
0:28:13 And then a minute later, I can’t remember the guy’s name.
0:28:16 Now, is it because I don’t care what his name is?
0:28:21 No, somehow the presence of other auditory information interfered.
0:28:23 It’s not that my mind was necessarily someplace else.
0:28:27 It’s that the signal to noise, as we say, wasn’t high enough.
0:28:35 Somehow the way he said it or the way it landed on my ears, which is really all that matters, right?
0:28:41 When, when it comes down to learning is such that it just didn’t achieve high enough signal to noise.
0:28:47 So the next time you ask somebody’s name, remember, listen to the onset of what they say and the offset.
0:28:54 So it would be paying attention to the J in Jeff, and it would be paying attention to that F in F in Jeff, excuse me.
0:28:58 All right, and chances are you’ll be able to remember that name.
0:29:08 Now, I do acknowledge that trying to learn every word in a sentence by paying attention to its onset and offset could actually be kind of disruptive to the learning process.
0:29:22 So this would be more for specific attention, using the attentional system, we can actually learn much faster, and we can actually activate neuroplasticity in the adult brain, something that’s very challenging to do.
0:29:44 And that the auditory system is one of the main ways in which we can access neuroplasticity more broadly, I’d like to now talk about balance and our sense of balance, which is controlled by believe it or not, our ears and things in our ears, as well as by our brain and elements of our spinal cord.
0:29:55 The reason why we’re talking about balance and how to get better at balancing in the episode about hearing is that all the goodies that are going to allow you to do that are in your ears.
0:29:59 They’re also in your brain, but they’re mostly in your ears.
0:30:07 So as you recall from the beginning of this episode, you have two cochlea, cochleas, that are one on each side of your head.
0:30:15 And that’s a little spiral snail-shaped thing that converts sound waves into electrical signals that the rest of your brain can understand.
0:30:19 Right next to those, you have what are called semicircular canals.
0:30:27 The semicircular canals can be best visualized as thinking about three hula hoops with marbles in them.
0:30:33 So imagine that you have a hula hoop and it’s not filled with marbles all the way around.
0:30:36 It’s just got some marbles down there at the base.
0:30:47 Okay, so if you were to move that hula hoop around, one of those hula hoops is positioned vertically with respect to gravity, but basically it’s upright.
0:30:56 Another one of those hula hoops is basically at a 90 degree angle, basically parallel to the floor.
0:30:58 If you’re standing up right now, if you’re seated.
0:31:00 Okay.
0:31:06 And the other one is kind of tilted about 45 degrees in between those.
0:31:09 Now, why is the system there?
0:31:18 Well, those marbles within each one of those hula hoops can move around, but they’ll only move around if your head moves in a particular way.
0:31:22 And there are three planes or three ways that your head can move.
0:31:26 Your head can move up and down like I’m nodding right now.
0:31:28 So that’s called pitch.
0:31:30 Or I can shake my head no side to side.
0:31:32 That’s called yaw.
0:31:36 And then there’s roll, tilting the head from side to side.
0:31:40 The way that a cute puppy might look at you from side to side.
0:31:47 Pitch, yaw, and roll are the movements of the head in each of the three major planes of motion, as we say.
0:31:55 And each one of those causes those marbles to move in one or two of the various hula hoops.
0:31:55 Okay.
0:31:57 They aren’t actually marbles, by the way.
0:32:02 These are little, kind of like little stones, basically.
0:32:05 Little calcium-like deposits.
0:32:15 And when they roll back and forth, they deflect little hairs, little hair cells that aren’t like the hair cells that we use for measuring sound waves.
0:32:21 But they’re basically rolling past these little hair cells and causing them to deflect.
0:32:28 And when they deflect downward, the neurons, because hair cells are neurons, send information up to the brain.
0:32:36 So if I move my head like this, there’s a physical movement of these little stones in this hula hoop, as I’m referring to it.
0:32:43 But they deflect these hairs, send those hairs, which are neurons, those hair cells, send information off to the brain.
0:32:49 Any animal that has a jaw has this so-called balance system, which we call the vestibular system.
0:32:57 One of the more important things to know about the vestibular, the balance system, is that it works together with the visual system.
0:33:03 Let’s say I hear something off to my left, and I swing my head over to the left to see what it is.
0:33:10 There are two sources of information about where my head is relative to my body, and I need to know that.
0:33:26 First of all, when I quickly move my head to the side, those little stones, as I’m referring to them, they quickly activate those hair cells in that one semicircular canal and send a signal off to my brain that my head just moved to the side.
0:33:31 But also visual information slid past my field of view.
0:33:33 I didn’t have to think about it, but just slid past my field of view.
0:33:40 And when those two signals combine, my eyes then lock to a particular location.
0:33:46 Now, if this is at all complicated, you can actually uncouple these things.
0:33:47 It’s very easy to do.
0:33:50 If you get the opportunity, you can do this safely wherever you are.
0:33:54 You’re going to stand up, and you’re going to look forward about 10, 12 feet.
0:33:59 You can pick a point on a wall, stand on one leg, and lift up the other leg.
0:34:04 You can bend your knee if you like, and just look off into the distance about 10, 12 feet.
0:34:08 If you can do that, if you can stand on one leg, now close your eyes.
0:34:14 Chances are you’re going to suddenly feel what scientists call postural sway.
0:34:18 It is very hard to balance with your eyes closed.
0:34:21 You might think, well, and if you think about that, it’s like, why is that?
0:34:22 That’s crazy.
0:34:24 Why would it be that it’s hard to balance with your eyes closed?
0:34:30 Well, information about the visual world also feeds back onto this vestibular system.
0:34:34 So the vestibular system informs your vision and tells you where to move your eyes,
0:34:40 and your eyes and their positioning tell your balance system, your vestibular system, how it should function.
0:34:45 So up until now, I’ve been talking about balance only in the static sense, like standing on one leg, for instance.
0:34:48 But that’s a very artificial situation.
0:34:55 Even though you can train balance that way, most people who want to enhance their sense of balance for sport or dance or some other endeavor
0:35:01 want to engage balance in a dynamic way, meaning moving through lots of different planes of movement.
0:35:07 For that, we need to consider that the vestibular system also cares about acceleration.
0:35:10 So it cares about head position.
0:35:13 It cares about eye position and where the eyes are and where you’re looking.
0:35:17 But it also cares about what direction you’re moving and how fast.
0:35:23 And one of the best things that you can do to enhance your sense of balance
0:35:33 is to start to bring together your visual system, the semicircular canals of the inner ear, and what we call linear acceleration.
0:35:42 So if I move forward in space rigidly upright, it’s a vastly different situation than if I’m leaning to the side.
0:35:53 One of the best ways to cultivate a better sense of balance, literally, within the sense organs and the neurons and the biology of the brain
0:36:04 is to get into modes where we are accelerating forward, typically it’s forward, while also tilted with respect to gravity.
0:36:09 Now, this would be the carve on a skateboard or on a surfboard or a snowboard.
0:36:21 This would be the taking a corner on a bike while being able to lean safely, of course, lean into the turn so that your head is actually tilted with respect to the earth.
0:36:26 The head being tilted and the body being tilted while in acceleration, typically forward acceleration,
0:36:33 but sometimes side to side, has a profound and positive effect on our sense of mood and well-being.
0:36:44 And as I talked about in a previous episode, it can also enhance our ability to learn information in the period after generating those tilts and the acceleration.
0:36:51 And that’s because the cerebellum has these outputs to these areas of the brain that release these neuromodulators like serotonin and dopamine,
0:36:54 and they make us feel really good.
0:37:07 Those modes of exercise seem to have an outsized effect, both on our well-being and our ability to translate the vestibular balance that we achieve in those endeavors
0:37:10 to our ability to balance while doing other things.
0:37:18 So I encourage people to get into modes of acceleration while tilted every once in a while, provided you can do it safely.
0:37:23 It’s an immensely powerful way to build up your skills in the realm of balance.
0:37:27 And it’s also, for most people, very, very pleasing.
0:37:33 It feels really good because of the chemical relationship between forward acceleration and head tilt and body tilt.
0:37:37 Once again, we’ve covered a tremendous amount of information.
0:37:46 Now you know how you hear, how you make sense of the sounds in your environment, how those come into your ears, and how your brain processes them.
0:37:59 In addition, we talked about things like low-level white noise, and even binaural beats, which can be used to enhance certain brain states, certain rhythms within the brain, and even dopamine release in ways that allow you to learn better.
0:38:12 And we talked about the balance system and this incredible relationship between your vestibular apparatus, meaning the portions of your inner ear that are responsible for balance, and your visual system and gravity.
0:38:18 And you can use those to enhance your sense of balance, as well, as well as just to enhance your sense of balance.
0:38:25 Last but not least, I’d like to thank you for your time and attention, and desire and willingness to learn about vision and balance.
0:38:28 And of course, thank you for your interest in science.