Andrew Newberg Returns (on Sex, God, and the Brain) | Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard

welcome welcome welcome to armchair expert experts on Expert I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Monica padman birthday girl Monica padman Oh yay it's we're going hard we're going to go all the way through today we have for the second time Andrew Newberg he is a neuroscientist he is a Pioneer in the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences known as neurotheology that's what we talked a lot about the last time he was here and he got an incredible new book out right now called sex god in the brain how sexual pleasure gave birth to religion and a whole lot more it a juicy fun one I love any evolutionary topic it was very interesting to hear how the brain works similarly with both of these opposing sure topics please enjoy Andrew Newberg he's [Music] an he [Music] hey how are you there good to meet you in person to meet you in person yeah absolutely we were on Zoom last time it's better in person always better in person yeah it's funny cuz I like went and listen to a little bit of it and it's like I forgot we did so much Zoom it was during the pandemic and we don't we did like 2 years of Zoom they feel like lost episodes though in my head because there isn't that person to person it all sort of Blends this is where glasses become a problem I'm in my glasses more and more and more it's a great source of angst for me you never wore them before I never wore them and I have it in my mind that the more I wear them the more I'll need to wear them oh yeah I would say that I don't know I don't think your eyes actually do that because you're getting older well yeah I mean that's what they're telling me but let's see if we agree on some fundamental things I mean you're a certified internist a couple different certifications so obviously the push back's going to be fierce but I'm an integrative medicine doctor so I'm very holistic okay great great great great so you have lenses your muscles and your eyes Bend those lenses as needed to focus near distance or far why wouldn't it hold that those muscles like all other muscles need to be worked out and kept at Peak Fitness so that it can perform the task of bending the lens I don't know if there's any true way of exercising them cuz they're not the muscles that turn your eyes they're like little interior muscles don't you think you could go through a series of focusing I have heard that a solution to people who get fatigued looking at computer screens is to go look at a tree because there's so many different leaves at different focal lengths it may work I'll give you my wife's answer to you okay she's 54 and she got cataracts actually early on she had cataract surgery and she says it's the greatest thing everybody should have it I'm almost wanting to get diagnosed as having catar she wants me to get them but do you have it you don't have catara I don't know unfortunately unfortunately I've been wearing glasses since I've been in third grade yeah you've long accepted it you've gone through the seven stages and I have very tiny eyes so putting contacts in my eyes I will do that when I play hockey I tried wearing glasses and they all fog up you know yes well this became a big issue too in the pandemic when you had to wear the face mask it was just like an exhaust system up to your glasses yeah exactly terrible okay I'm going to try to reframe this as a much broader question which is wouldn't it be weird that the only thing in our body that doesn't benefit from exercise would be the eyeballs it just be weird that we have one system that can't benefit from exercise are everything else the cardiovascular system our Al factory system doesn't yeah there's no muscles there really but there's probably systematic things yeah I think it's a matter of how well you can get at that muscle good thing about your arms is that it's easy you lift and they get bigger obviously you could be a great weight lifter but you could throw your back out no matter how strong you get there's like little tiny muscles in between your ribs it's always a challenge I've heard that the actual lens itself gets less flexible too which is part of the issue I think we've solved it I will also say that Opthalmology it's like a whole different animal in medicine it's a very different kind of training yeah and where do we put huberman in that he's not an optomologist but his specialty is the eye and I think it's interesting interesting when they explain the eye it's like a protrusion of your brain in a way it's all part of your sensory systems the eye is remarkable that it works as well as it does and unique in our species most species don't spend that much energy on eyes right I mean our vision is really critical to us but I mean every animal I always think about the Eagles who can soar three miles up and then they see a little mouse on the ground and yes that's incredible but also they say even with less information our brain is so good that it digests the information we're receiving and build is a much more complicated model than even with lesser eyes right you're combining with your memory I mean like as I look around this room I know what a can of Diet Coke means and I know what the dinosaur is and everything has a meaning to me you might even smell popcorn when you see that T-Rex it might take you back to Jurassic par park right yeah there's a lot going on it is your visual cortex in fact one of the slides that I often show because of Imaging there's a big question kind of a nerdy question but what is the resting state of the brain is it with your eyes open with your eyes closed if with your eyes open is it your eyes open looking at like a blank screen versus a complex scene like this and all of them change the way your brain is operating and if I do a brain scan with your eyes closed and then I just do a brain scan with your eyes open the whole back of your brain which is your visual CeX just like lights up and then you bring in your memory and if you're reading it brings in your language areas is there a resting there probably isn't one one of the things that's happened now is that they've gotten into a lot of conversations about brain networks and so there's something called the default mode Network which was first discussed about 15 20 years ago which is what is your brain doing when it's not doing anything because it's always on right you know like if I do a brain scan of you at any point in your life other than when you're dead There Will Be Blood Flow and metabolism and all different kinds of things going on yeah when you're trying to think of like us as a study subject and you'd want to get to Baseline anything it's kind of an erroneous Pursuit because there is no Baseline experience for us sometimes we're sleeping sometimes we're hunting sometimes for mating it's very Buddhist it is one of the funny stories I tell students also is that whenever you do a brain scan of somebody there's a certain degree to which you have to trust them that they're doing whatever it is that you're asking them to do one of my favorite little examples was one of my colleagues was doing a study on memory he said we're always looking for subjects so i s yeah sure so I'm in the MRI scanner and you're sort of like lying down and they're showing you a screen of different words and then you have to remember the words and say them back I'm doing all this and after about 45 50 minutes my back's starting to hurt kind of have to go to the bathroom Ball cat now I'm like I hope I'm not doing a bad job so all this is going in my mind but meanwhile from his perspective it's just Ball cat I'm just doing a memory test now the hope is that if you take 30 people and have them all do the ball cat that will overwhelm all of the random this guy had to go to the bathroom and this guy's arm hurt and this guy's foot hurt and this guy's thinking about picking up his kids if you lay me down for 45 minutes at any point I will remember something I forgot to do right right excuse me oh boy oh I hate that what's happening there have you fmri anyone sneezing oh no the questions you must get asked the problem is you never know when they're going to happen you have like pepper on the scene and some feathers and whatnot bright light but that would be actually very overlapping I feel like for your focus because the sneeze and the bless you it's merked up in what maybe we thought was happening exactly okay so the last time you he we were talking about religion's effect on the brain is observable like in an fmri or through nuclear nuclear medicine Imaging nuclear medicine but I'd first like to start because at this point now to be honest when I saw the topic of the book I love it I love talking about sex I love talking about God so your book is sex god in the brain so right away I'm very very intrigued but also then I'm looking at the last book then I get more curious about who you are and why you're steering your academic ship in this direction fair question I don't think we covered this much last time but you st in chemistry that's true at a Quaker School that's true too okay these feel relevant so what was the initial goal my very initial goal really goes back even to when I was a kid I just was always wondering about why people held different beliefs if we're all looking at the same world why are there Democrats and Republicans I mean shouldn't we all look at the world the same way why are there Jews and Christians and Muslims and Buddhists and Hindu why do we all sort of look at the world differently my initial thought was I got to start with the brain when I was in first grade I would go to the elementary school library and they had a little book of all the systems of the body and I would just take them out one at a time and then keep going so I had the scientific ideas about well let's look at the brain that's the part of ourselves that takes in our visual information and basically tells us what the world is like you're on the inside of the experience you lay it out really nicely in the book everything's coming your way it's coming through your ears and your eyes and your nose and your tasting inside of this brain you're trying to make sense of what's outside which is kind of unknowable in a way well it is and that was kind of what I discovered and as I got into college and into this quake School of asking all these questions and then chemistry and understanding the science of the world I realized that while I love science there was some elements where it fell short we're sort of Trapped in our brain and so it became more of a philosophical question how do you really know what you know so I started to read philosophy and I started to take philosophy courses and courses in logic and then I said well there are these religious and spiritual ideas there's Buddhism and thinking about Consciousness and we have Consciousness but somehow we can't find it but we kind of know we have it and how do I know you have Consciousness and you're not just some AI zombie I am just cut to the chase I thought so I wasn't sure Hill Billy from a dirt road don't end up in this house that's right you know became that philosophical piece I started to sort of merge the two yeah in your chapter about myth we talk about myth and I think there's a colloquial use of myth and it generally means a not true story when we use it around town but that's not how anthropologists look at it and then you point out even science is a myth it's a story that hopes to explain our reality through empirical data things we can observe or experiments we can run but we'd probably all agree there's a ton of stuff that's not observable at least yet some of it is not observable some of it is not observable yet and then this issue about sort of being trapped in our own Consciousness I don't know if we can ever get beyond that at least in some kind of empirical way because how do you study something that you're inside of I would even quickly think like well maybe that'll be some tool in AI in machines but at the same time the AI is educated on a large language model originated from humans part of what ultimately led me down a little bit of this path towards the mystical it's in these mystical experiences that I first started reading about back in college and Buddhism Hindu thought because in my mind I thought well the only way to answer this question is that somehow you have to get outside of your brain outside of your Consciousness look at what's out there in the world look at what you're thinking on the inside and see if they match and if they do you got it and if they don't well you know you have to correct but there's no way to do that or is there and so in a lot of these mystical Traditions they say things like I got outside of my mind I got outside of my brain I got outside of my Consciousness my egoo self dissolved now I'm not saying that that happens but these are the only kinds of experiences that I know of where people actually say that and so to me I'm like okay well so what's going on when that happens and can we look at that in some way biologically spiritually that might be able to get us to an answer to that question and that's what led to this kind of work I imagine too there's like a lot of different ways to look at it you could be first looking at how does the brain react to this Idol you show it or this word cat right you can hope to discover maybe the mechanisms inside what happens physiologically in your brain that's kind of one question but then above that is what was it before it went through that mechanism and one of the questions that I challenge a lot of my students about is ask the scientific question all right you've got trillions of neurons you've got quadrillions of interconnections you've got all different kinds of neurotransmitters being released you have all the electrical depolarizations and electrical activity and all these different neurons so where in all of that is your thought where in all of that is your Consciousness because we don't seem to find it in a neuron unless again if you're Buddhist and you say well everything has Consciousness then you could go down that road but an individual neuron doesn't seem to have it so does 20 have it does a million have it does 10 million have it and it's not just the neurons cuz if I have a person who died and I'm looking at their brain as far as we know they don't have Consciousness unless Consciousness is something that goes beyond the brain let alone a unique thought at that it's not even just this fires this fires then you get this thought everyone has unique thoughts all the time yeah what causes that we don't know I mean now there was like some very interesting research that was done a little while ago and the joke was was like the Jennifer Aniston neuron there were seizure patients and they actually put these very very fine needles into individual cells and they could find out that like this cell activated when you showed somebody a picture of Jennifer Anison for example but that's not the experience of the picture of Jennifer Anison you know you're famous when every humans got a neurotransmitter dedicated to your face do you think people with seizures over index in liking Jennifer andison cuz that would add up Monica has epilepsy and I love friends oh okay well I do too and my daughter does too but interestingly when we talk about this larger field of studies sometimes referred to as neurotheology this kind of intersection between science and religion there are lots of pieces to it and one of those pieces is actually people who have seizures because there's been this interesting link between people who have seizures and people who have unusual religious experiences so you start to think why is that what's going on and where people have seizures they have seizures and then they have the time in between the seizures so are they having these experiences when they have the seizures are they having it in between there's some very famous cases of people who have these seizures and become hyper religious or have unusual mystical experiences now it's a very very small population of people have those rather not have another seizure but we had another expert talking on the history of medicine yeah so epilepsy was almost always regarded as some kind of spe possession oh absolutely the devil was in the person in whatever form that culture thought of the devil it's interesting how some of these things a couple thousand years ago they thought there was a religious maybe somebody like Moses or somebody who saw a light and Heard a Voice you know in the medieval days it was demon possession and then nowadays it's a medical Disorder so we'll see how it all goes so like a Moses one as enlightened I actually talk about seizures at different times and the carefulness we have to have is that sometimes people look at these kinds of results people have seizures or people have schizophrenia who think that they're the Messiah or whatever but then we sometimes over pathologize that and what is interesting about even the famous people who've had religious experiences is that it's kind of a one and off it's not like Moses kept seeing the burning chonic condition which is what seizures are normally if you have seizures you continue to have the same kind of thing happening over and over again maybe he got on keer after he saw the bush we know there's a lot of theories there's a lot of theories out there okay but your own personal story has to be embroiled in this because I even think of saos he's looking in a way at the same thing and he has a very rigid explanation of that you could in theory pinpoint what is critical mass for those neurons to create that thought right I worship him but I was a little there's something not very optimistic about it it goes right up against self-will and all these other things it doesn't hold any space for something that we don't understand or isn't observable you must have your own relationship with spirituality or minimally maybe meditation do you have some kind of practice that maybe makes you more open to considering all this it was really in college where I was trying to go down the scientific path felt that it wasn't getting me all the way there started to look at these other approaches and I spent a lot of time just thinking about this problem it became a kind of scientific spiritual meditation I started to take this approach which I felt was helpful cuz again I'm still going back to the question of what's real and I thought if there's something that I'm not sure about it doesn't mean it's wrong but I'll just say for the moment I'm going to doubt it I don't know if it's right I don't know if it's wrong and I'm just going to hold it off to the side is this I called it doubt I started to go through this whole process of doubting the ways I was thinking of doubting different philosophies of doubting science and this was a very challenging thing to do in college when you're like studying for finals and in the M I'm doubting everything like you're teetering on a psychotic break it felt very weird I was in a similar place by the way when I was 20 I think a lot of us are yeah yeah we all go in our different directions but after college was over I managed to graduate and I was getting ready to go to medical school and you have this little summer time where you just want to take off and so I said well I'm just going to really try to solve this problem because it was driving me crazy day after day I'm just like how do I solve this I eventually had an experience that for lack of a better name I describe it as infinite doubt that I got to this point where I was like not only do I not know anything I don't even know that I don't know anything you know and it just became this sort of infinite regression of not knowing but it's a very interesting experience because first of all everything's part of it yeah it's unifying in that none of it can be trusted exactly and so there there was this sort of Oneness you know I was doubting myself obviously so there was no Andy Newberg sometimes when I've told people this they're like well this must have been like the worst experience you could have possibly had here you are trying to find an answer and you found that there's no way you can have an answer and I said but you know it was the most Blissful calming experience and from that moment I realized a new way of looking at all of this where I can keep exploring the question but the pressure was all off I completely relate to this I don't know that I had the period of a or Transcendence but I definitely got mentally to a point where I thought it's all unknowable and that is really liberating because it doesn't matter if you're wrong cuz everyone's wrong there's some kind of freedom I think the anxiety and even in a Buddhist way it's like the tension is the craving for the answer and the admission that there isn't an answer is the erosion of that tension or craving you approach it with a sense of humoral oh yeah when we look out on this universe which is let's just for argument sake basically infinite and what do we have access to in the immediate moment we have access to this room you don't even know what's going on with the guys working on your house over there they could have turned right I mean the whole house could have fallen down be a Ming let alone what's going on in China in the Galaxy next door and then somehow we all feel like we know exactly what's going on we know what's right and wrong political or religious it is there is a survival value to it you have to be making decisions and your brain uses its problem solving abilities to give give you the story that we tell ourselves but if we are worried about our story our survival is at risk that is going to blow our anxiety out of the water so we want to feel like we understand the world and that is part of why we've kind of gotten to where we are in the world through social media because we want to hear all the reasons why we're right and that guy is wrong and also anyone that has the appearance of conviction is very settling provided that it's a conviction that you agree with that you agree with and then again the problem is is that if you don't agree with me now I have one of two choices either I'm right and you're wrong or you're right and I'm wrong well which one is my brain going to select yeah well I must be right and you must be wrong but now if you're wrong and you keep speaking with such conviction to try to convince me you must be kind of a bad person yeah evil now we go into our other opposition Paradox we love and then you get into the US versus them and that's part of the Mythic element it's part of the mating sexual piece too because we have the US versus them it's our family it's our group it's whoever we are and whoever they are they're a challenge to our survival I wonder if do you feel like that has made you a little less fervent about the political energy completely I look at both sides and I look at it at the same way I'm looking at the universe it's like everyone's damn certain they're right like let's just start there and I'm no different I can't really be trusted to think that I'm any more right than anyone else like I mean you kind of have to live on a practical level you have to live in a house decision you have to do the best that you can but in the back of my mind there's always like well that's what I'm doing the best that I can and I could be wrong this may not be the best thing for me or this may not be the right answer or I think these are the right people to vote for but or how about minimally like I'm aiming at 60% good decisions would be a big victory exactly that's probably true I don't also have the illusion that I could possibly make all the right decisions I always think about sports and I mean we always think that the great athletes never lose but actually they lose a lot probably they win 60% of the time the best hitters 30% and they're Legends in 20 you suck what a margin what a Delta between glory and right exactly isn't that weird and that is interesting too cuz you get this whole sort of bell curve of all of us and it is remarkable when you have some of these people who are just the LeBron james' Simone biles right now what makes them at this other level that is just different than everybody else but again you can kind of extrapolate that to religion and spirituality too there's only one Pope and there's only one Mother Teresa there's a bell curve of all of this yeah so the last book that we talked about was again about religions or Gods effect on the brain and so now we've Incorporated sex so I think the best place to start is how completely Universal mating ritual is for all animals so tell us a little bit I mean once you start giving examples it's like oh of course yeah I've never seen a National Geographic show on animals where we didn't see the pageantry it's really remarkable this this goes back also in my own personal life to this Mentor who I met in medical school it was a guy named Dr Eugene Dilly and he was a psychiatrist but he had a PhD in anthropology and we used to go to these dinner parties where you know here I am this little lowly nothing and I'm sitting around literally people who have won Nobel prizes and who have revolutionized the fields of psychology and medicine and Jean's greatest thing was he loved rituals in fact his family was from Italy he was actually nobility in Rome and so he used to enjoy calling himself and his wife Baron and baroness of the Holy Roman Empire well it out as he should well it turns out he found out that as a baron of the Holy Roman Empire that means that he was allowed to KN someone oh and so he found the whole ritual and how it all had to work and all the Latin and they kned one of the uncles or something oh this is great so as an anthropologist he was looking at everywhere you see these rituals in animals and he studied them and he wrote a book called the spectrum of ritual and he talked about rituals take advantage of all the different senses that we have so there might be movements that you see of a different animal or the big colorful feathers or the different sounds and the calls that they make or the smells that they emit so all these different things they stimulate the brain towards mating and bringing them together but what he was also kind of getting at then was well what about human rituals I mean theoretically human rituals would have to evolve from animal rituals but in human beings we certainly have our mating rituals and all the sights and the smells and you know we meet people at a dance and the movements and rhythms But ultimately in human beings we have Incorporated rituals into every part of our Lives we just had a ritual expert on yeah he was who was that Michael Norton he's weirdly a Harvard Business School Professor but he's a psychologist so his newest book is about ritual and yeah we went through all these different like your morning ritual and how people boy what's the term they use in Psych yeah they're disgusted when you tell someone like do you brush your teeth before the shower or after the shower or in the shower right or do you brush your teeth before you put your lotion on these are like really important things it doesn't match up with yours you're like something's wrong with you your other exactly we have rituals throughout our lives and all different aspects of our life and across the lifespan we have rituals for marriage and child but of course religions are loaded with rituals from the ceremonies that we do again the life rituals the prayers meditation they're almost all ritual they're all ritual this is now 30 years ago but Jee and I were talking about well if this is the case we have all these incredible human rituals and specifically religious spiritual ones but if they evolve from animal rituals all animal rituals are mating rituals yeah what's the original ritual so the original ritual is mating I mean all animal rituals essentially are mating rituals or social hierarchy rituals but they're all part of the mating process so sexuality ultimately has to be suffused throughout this whole thing and so the basis of human rituals has to be the same as the mating rituals so we kept saying now there's got to be something that connects the sexual and the spiritual and then we started to think about that in terms of the brain and and one of the ways that we got at that was through the rhythmic elements of these rituals say more on that and we should also do 2 seconds on the two forces behind Evolution as a brush up cuz I think it would funnel in nicely absolutely yeah so with Evolution we talk about natural selection which is what most people think of as Evolution which is survival of the fitness your neck was longer by mutation and you reached higher trees and then you're a more successful giraffe and you can pass on your long neck jeans to the Next Generation that's natural selection and then there's sexual selection which is part of the process because it's part of the mating process but for whatever reason a given species starts to like some kind of ornament we'll call it so the classic examples are the big antlers of a moose or an elk I'm living in Colorado right now so you know they're all sporting these large antlers they're a great cost to the animal and they have no benefit other than the M ritual exactly oh so it's always something superflous often is almost always yeah in the ual itself is an opportunity for the female to determine the fitness of this mate so for peacocks those are great expense they draw attention from predators they're sending a lot of signals that this [ __ ] fit he's like got a big sign saying come get me and he's still in front of me and what's interesting about this too is that's part of why these ornaments get real big and it's why male birds are generally prettier exactly I mean always the males who have that because it's the females that's sort of guiding that that selection process they got the selection across the board pretty much well cuz they have the egg yeah yeah yeah yeah it's interesting cuz the male is selecting the female but the female ultimately has that kind of final evolutionary push and part of what has been proposed and goes along very well with what I talk about in Sex God in the brain is the human brain may have evolved not just because of natural selection that we can solve problems and we can know how to plant our food so we can eat better but maybe more so because of sexual selection because what ultimately started to connect us with each other was poetry music stories charm sense of humor playfulness yeah but the brains have to evolve together yeah you point out if a male was really funny and the female couldn't understand any of the jokes it would not result in mate selection exactly well why does that happen all the time then well we've got a lot of variety in 8 billion people it goes back to the bell curve concept which actually is important though because take peacock feathers or the antlers on an elk if all the antlers on elk could only be 2 ft long and had no variability well they can't be a choice for selection so that you need something that actually can be larger smaller more less whatever it is so some guys have a better sense of humor some guys tell a better story some guys have a better voice and that's part of it too which is the beauty of evolution is that there's not a right or a wrong it's of course it's on it's what is more adaptive and so if you have a woman who really likes great music then the guy who tells a good story is going to be less interesting than the guy who's got a great voice but then somebody else likes a great story and so we're saying these things like sense of humor they're the ornaments the mental ornaments of who we are as human beings and then that's what starts leading us for getting the religious explanation of religion for a moment look at religion I mean it's got the rituals it's got the stories it's got the social connection it's got a lot of stuff that can really be very exciting for someone and ultimately kind of creates that cohesive group that ultimately everybody wants to be a part of so it can work very well both on a natural selection because it creates a cohesive Society but on a sexual selection basis that it kind of brings us together in ways you believe what I believe and this is an important story and this tells me how the world is I've now shown you if you have somebody who's got a lot of fervent belief in something but it's consistent with yours then you like that you're attracted to that stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare it's interesting though they can converge or overlap and maybe that's my complaint always about anything binary is there's kind of overlap in those two mechanisms which I think of the lion Right male and female lions have this huge sexual dimorphism the male so much bigger than the female and that's going to continue to increase at infinitum because the way the mating Works in a pride of lions is one lion comes in that's bigger than the previous Alpha gets overthrown and then that one reproduces every generation size is rewarded and the male keeps getting bigger when the female stays the same size that's just the course it's on that seems like an overlap between mate selection and natural selection in a bizarre way you could look at that either way that's actually to me the power of religion if you look at it from an evolutionary perspective which is that it really works on both mechanisms right cuz that's your fundamental question how would our capacity to believe in a religion or a God be adaptive in either one of these from the perspective of sexual selection it tells a story it connects you to ideas about the world it has music it has social you know it has all these great things that bind people together so that's the sexual selection part but it seems to have a natural selection part as well because it does create cohesive societies and in fact one of the things I point out in the book is this idea that we have found ancient temples that were built in like 9,000 10,000 BC thousands of years before we had civilization so religion seemed to occur long before we were actually able to create these kind of social groups that actually became very adaptive for us because it bound us all together as far as I know I don't think there's ever been a civilization that has developed Den NOA without religion I mean you look at ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt well but but that's why I say denovo and in fact actually cuz I took a course in Russ RI history in college the religious elements of Russia huge Russian Orthodox exactly but back to the evolutionary thing youal does a great job at demonstrating this in sapiens which is conventionally we're designed to live in a group of about 100 people that's what humans traditionally lived in and this common belief and a shared deity allowed us to congregate in groups peacefully like a thousand 2,000 3,000 so and then now we're a member of a group that's 3,000 we can easily displace a group of 200 neander tals that might be physically Superior to us but have less numbers so then it becomes part of natural selection exactly and I think it really does blend both there's two forces that have kind of guided human history one is the science technology the wheel fire to iPhones and then the other is the religious and spiritual which for all of the issues that religions have had over the years here we are 2,000 5,000 years after and they have survived Greece the Roman Empire Soviet Union religions kind of keep going well I think you could lose track of that a a little bit in the US or in Europe but Monica and I were in India this year and hyderbad oh yeah where we were saying was predominantly Muslim and they were doing the call to prayer five times a day and you know the entire city stops and does that and it's very loud that's what everyone's doing for me at least I was like oh my God yeah it's so alive and it's so integrated and all day every day still and even in places like Europe and in areas like the United States where there's been a move away from religions there's still a great deal of spiritual elements to it people are still looking for that connection there's still looking for what connects them to the universe connects them to something greater and it could even be just Humanity I mean it could be being a humanist and saying I've got to take care of humanity that's what I want to do I want to be altruistic I want to be charitable I want to help the downtrodden whatever it is but there's that thing that connects us to something greater and that to me is what we ultimately are talking about it can be codified into a religion and obviously those Rel which are still around today have done that very successfully the analogy to me is music millions of people are writing their own songs but there's only one Beatles and why was that well there was something about their brains that allowed them to write songs that had a universal appeal whereas some guy sitting in his garage could be writing a fantastic song but it just doesn't resonate with people so I think that's part of it at least in terms of the codified forms of religion that gets back to this discussion that we were just having there's sort of an evolutionary aspect to religions which is when Christianity was starting out there were lots of individual sects of religion and so which were the ones that really lasted and they were the ones that for a variety of reasons kind of Hit the largest majority and felt right and could bring all these people together and that I think is true of all of the major Traditions that they just seem to be able to connect with a lot of people I always argue that everybody because all of our brains are unique I mean no two people look at the world exactly the same way yeah you said if there's 8 billion people there's billion religions billion religions but there's still still can be a billion Christians or a billion Muslims so I think that's part of the power of it okay so let's get into a little bit the physiology of these things so give us a brief course on the autonomic nervous system and what's happening my favorite part of the brain that was one of the things that my late Mentor Gan quilly and I talked about when we were talking about this connection with sexuality and rituals how does this all kind of connect and we looked at What's called the autonomic nervous system so the autonomic nervous system connects the brain to the body there's two main arms so one of them is called the sympathetic nervous system that's the scientific term I typically refer to that as the arousal system of the body and then there is the parasympathetic which is the calming or quiescent side and they are very much balancing each other out throughout our whole lives we almost sit within this balance of all of them and so if we were sitting here and suddenly we heard an explosion outside the arousal system would kick in oh do we need to pay attention to that do we need to run do we need to stand and fight against a predator whatever it is but it gets our heart rate going it gets us aroused it gets us getting ready for whatever it is that we need to do and then you have this calming side which is what turns on when it's getting late at night and it's time for us to get ready to go to sleep so it calms us down it makes us feel Blissful what's interesting about this system is that Us and other colleagues have proposed that this is a key part of religious or spiritual experiences because when you talk to people about their experiences and we've done surveys of thousands of these experiences you get these two sides you get I was incredibly aroused energy electricity all these different words that people use but incredibly calm you know Oceanic blissfulness kind of thing and sometimes they happen together which is interesting because the two systems they normally kind of inhibit each other a little bit if you heard an explosion that isn't the time to take a nap that's the time to get out and by the same token we've all been in that place where you know we're trying to get a good night's sleep before we have a big test the next day or a big something at work and we can't sleep why because our system keeps impinging on that calming side but what's also interesting is that fundamental to sexuality and the rituals that we have the rituals depending on the rhythms Drive the autonomic nervous system so that's why if you're getting ready to play a football game you want some heavy rock or wrap that's got this big beat that's going and it drives your arousal system it wakes you up and now you're ready to go out there and fight or do whatever it is that you need to do and on the other hand if you want to get this sort of sense of ocean Blissful overwhelming love of God kind of thing then a Gregorian chant or a hymn that's very calming or some kind of prayer where you just come along and it slows you down and it gets you to feeling this very very calm feeling so that's how the ritual start to affect that but ultimately why do we have these systems at all it's because of sex these two systems are what enable sex to occur they enable the rituals to start the process you start to get that balance there isn't a one way to do it some people like a lot of energy and arousing other people like to be calm and relaxed but you find the person who resonates with you but ultimately in terms of the active sex itself both arms of that autonomic nervous system have to turn on in order for you to have that's what makes it so pleasurable right is that both sides are firing at Max Capacity which is very unique right as far as I know the only two times that that happens or people talk about that happening is sexual ecstasy and spiritual ecstasy well because I'm a junkie I will also so parallel with that's why the ultimate drug has always been the speedball it's virtually that exact same thing in chemical form it's an upper and a downer at once and it's creating this cake and eat it to's State when I was talking earlier about this big puzzle of neuro theology the whole aspect of using psychedelics and different drugs to induce spiritual States you know this exactly what's going on those chemicals are changing in the brain and many people talk about those psychedelic experiences as being profoundly spiritual and sometimes sexual yeah MDMA yeah let's see myth we kind of touched on I just wanted to point out cuz I like that you shine the light on it but the brain is just really great at creating opposites we talked about it already in terms of even if you don't know your reality you're best to think you know your reality because you do have to decide and I think this is an outgrowth of that right oh absolutely our brain works best when we can clearly delineate things so we have what we used to refer to as a binary operator we have parts of our brain that see the opposites you think about how you grow up you learn synonyms and antonyms and black and white our brain likes things that way because it also makes things clear for anybody who's had a kid what you did was write or wrong it can't be well you can turn the juice cup over on Tuesdays and Thursdays but not Mondays and Wednesdays or it's okay to do it if you really don't like it but it has to be yes or no that makes our lives easier but we get into these issues of Republican and Democrat or something it's yes or no instead of the world itself is deeply gray that's where our challenge comes in and that's the basis of myth which is that we sort of bring these opposites that we really can't reconcile easily and in religious myth the fundamental opposite is God versus us as human beings how do we as these very finite limited small mortal beings have any kind of interaction with something which is arguably infinite and eternal and omnicient and so forth so it's the Mythic story that brings them together and helps us to resolve those opposites and that's why you often see things like a profound sense of Oneness or connectedness that's a part of of that Mythic story Bridging the Gap between these opposites you've laid out it's ironic that that's a pleasurable State at times well it is because it resolves a problem for you because of that it releases some of those Feelgood molecules the dopamine and so forth that makes you feel good makes you feel like you understand something now talking about the Olympics right now so wherever you grew up you rooted for your high school basketball team and you hated the high school down the roads basketball team it's US versus them but then we're all part of the same city so we're all going to root for the Lakers and we hate the Celtics it keeps transferring right and now we're in the Olympics and so the guys who played on the Celtics and the guys who played on the Lakers this is all the United States if aliens came down then we'd be all playing you know so which is an interesting piece of all of this because it gets into the US versus them concept but where do you define those lines and the US versus them is movable and sometimes in very good ways but sometimes bad ways that's if we could remember that it's movable that would be good okay let's get into the history a little bit of how some of these religions have dealt with sex given they're so related it is interesting and ironic that so many of the ones were familiar with abhor sex apparently unless it's in pursuit of procreation so how on Earth does it go from how it started to this weird Division and maybe we could start with what's sacred prostitution before I get to the sacred prostitution you asked a great question I've been thinking about this one of the things that we almost have to start with what is argu one of the most well-known sacred texts of the Bible the moment that human beings are created by God what does God do God doesn't tell human beings to pray to create religion or even to believe in God God says be fruitful and multiply it's interesting that even in the religion of many of these monotheistic Traditions which now have a lot of trepidation about sex at least for the sake of having sex the original admonition to us was to have sex I mean that was the first thing that we were told to do and of course if you go to the very first line of the Bible it's God created cre the heavens and the Earth God gave birth to the universe the whole Act of Creation and sexuality is kind of fundamental to the monotheistic TR and I think to all traditions where I think the flip started to occur is there began to be this concern about the overlap if sexuality and spirituality are using the same basic biological mechanisms they can be viewed as competing with each other in which case you should only have sex for procreation and not for fun but then there are lots of traditions and you being in India and Hinduism and even some of the ancient Christian Jewish approaches sexuality was a part of the process and you mentioned prostitution the idea was these women who were performing sexual acts were doing so at the behest of God helping people to connect with God in a very fundamental way and back in the ancient times they were regarded very highly in society yeah unlike prostitution now which diminishes status this elevated status and like Mesopotamian Sumerian tradition exactly part of it has been this slow evolution of well where does sexuality fit in all of this I mean the original Traditions were often about fertility goddesses and coming from Mother Earth God the father and in fact it is interesting because even in more modern times I think one of the quotes that I have from Pope John Paul II talks about how sexuality obviously within a marriage for the Catholic tradition but it's talking about it's this devotedness this complete giving over of self to another this incredible Oneness and connection which in many ways parallels what we are supposed to be doing with God it seems like they're caught in a bit of a trap right which is like they don't want you to be able to go out and experience this unique experience you get with God with someone else cuz it cheapens the God one yet no religion could be against procreation or it wouldn't have made it to now yet then there's also a great hack in there which is if you can only have sex to procreate and we know how much you want to have sex well now we're ensuring you're going to have a ton of babies cuz we want to [ __ ] that's what's going to happen exactly so it's all very convoluted to me that was part of what was exciting about writing this book because it was really identifying the underlying biology of why this has become such a challenge because it looks like it really does ride on the same biological mechanisms the autonomic nervous system some of the other brain areas the fact that there's so much common elements to it literally within us it creates this problem and it creates this Paradox that is challenging and that's why some religions have found ways of utilizing sexuality as part of that process and others have been more concerned about it will you tell me about the cult of Venus just because I'm perverted and I want to know how it was before a lot of this was based on the idea of the sexual energy as being the way that you could achieve spiritual enlightenment and we see this in a number you know if you look at some of the ancient Hindu art forms and so forth there's a lot of eroticism and it was really about engaging in sexuality and sexual activity as a way of facilitating the spiritual well even the notion you point out in the book yahweh's Covenant with his people is going to be symbolized by cutting the penis how about a high five or something yeah they're asking you to basically alter the most important thing to you is that for proof so that people will know you're a member this in group right that's right it's amazing that was the approach that was it's so extreme we take it for yeah we just kind of inherited it as something that happens but it's so extreme not like cut your pinky off or give yourself a tattoo yeah or a nose ring or something sensibly you're seeing the penis when you're having sex so it is all connected and it gets back to the stories and that sexual selection discussion and so it's all connected okay so sexual ecstasy and spiritual ecstasy seem to have also aside from the uh sympathetic and parasympathetic we also have these subjective feelings that parallel intensity Clarity unity connectedness and surrender when we did a survey of spiritual experiences and we looked at all the ways in which people describe them we came up with the fact that there seem to be these five basic elements that are part of those experiences but again they are all part of the sexual experience as well so intensity and if you look at history what else has garnered human attention more than sex every poem every song every play they're all about sexuality so part of the other piece of all of this is even if you were to take a religious perspective and say well if God's up in heaven and here we are and there needs to be some connection there why wouldn't God utilize the things that are part of who we are so if you want to facilitate an intense experience you would take the most Primal experience that we have which is having sex if we don't enjoy it we're not going to do it it better be the best experience we can possibly have and that's because of its intensity the unity I mean that's another really fundamental piece of what sexuality is when we talk about the rituals the basis of animal rituals as well as human rituals is to create this rhythmic pattern that breaks down the barrier between ourself and another normally animals are pretty separate in the world they're certainly not going to start jumping on top of each other but they do it for SEC you know so there's something about that part that brings us together in an extremely intimate way that is also reflected then in spiritual that sense of Oneness that incredibly intense and intimate encounter with God if you're Christian or the universe or Universal conscious you know whatever it is you mentioned the sense of surrender as you get into sexuality as you get into spirituality you know at the beginning you're kind of making things happen and you're controlling what's going on I'm going to do this I'm going to do that whether it's meditation or sex but at some point you kind of lose control of the whole process ideally yeah that sense of Letting Go and surrender is the Transcendent part and then with regard to human beings in sex we talk about Clarity and spirituality that's I get it I understand the world in the context of sexuality it's I get it this is the person for me this is who I now will connect with and it has a transformational element I mean when you fall in love it feels forever and it feels like I'm a different person now you complete me you know the old saying or was it from Jerry McGuire but that's a feeling and the same thing happens with spirituality the person feels completed they feel that they understand it they feel transformed by the experience and we can start looking at the different brain areas so one of the ones that I talk about a lot and may have mentioned this the last time is that we have our parietal lobe which is located in the back part of our brain and it takes our sensory information from all the rituals from everything that we see and gives us our sense of self where we are and what we're doing and how we're interacting with the world what we have found in a lot of spiritual practices that when you get that sense of unity that sense of connectedness you lose the sense of self that parietal lobe quiets down pretty dramatically and that makes sense it turns on to give you your sense of self when it goes away you lose it and you lose the boundary between yourself and other between other objects in the world so that's one of the big areas that we talk about and then the sense of surrender is just one other example we think is very related to the frontal lobe and so our frontal lobe which is behind the forehead and enables us to focus our attention on meditation prayer sex whatever it is that we're focusing future yeah that turns on our frontal Lo but when we watch these practices where the person feels that sense of surrender you mentioned going to India and looking at Muslim practices we studied Muslim practices and the whole basis of Islam is surrender their frontales actually shut down you know it turns on to make us feel purposeful and to be in charge of whatever it is that you're doing and when your fontal lob goes down you surrender yourself sometimes people talk about the feeling of flow like you're just in it and it's just happening to you and you're just going with it I think of the stereotypical you hear this all the time that uh very common submissives in these subd relationships are people who actually have great great control and power in their real life it's so exaggerated in their daily life that to keep everything balanced they almost need this submissive role fascinating it is fascinating and part of the basis of rituals and myths and all these things that we're talking about is that as you turn the brain on in these different ways or off the brain is a great analogy to a muscle because the more you use your brain in certain ways the more the neurons connect to enable you to do it again the cute phrase is that neurons that fire together wire together well that's why rituals work so well you mentioned they're called to prayer five times a day every day so as you come back and you do that prayer as you do the life ceremony or what you do at a wedding you do it over and over and over and over again those neural firings and all they connect those neurons in a way that really supports your way of thinking about the world and connect you to that in a very fundamental way and and because of that autonomic nervous system and this is kind of the final part of the rituals is the rituals are connected to the myth to the story it's not that you just understand what it means cognitively to be Jewish or Christian or whatever you feel it in your body that's what sexuality does it's not just oh I love that person but you're connected to that person in every way possible it's a different kind of relationship than you have with your best friends so it establishes a whole different kind of feeling and that's why they're so powerful and the chemicals involved you have a section called the biochemistry of God and sex so what molecules are at play one of the things that I often say is that there's not one part of our brain that makes us religious or spiritual and similarly there isn't just one molecule that's going to make us feel something and I think for anybody who does have a spiritual feeling in their life they realize that there are different elements to it there's things they think there's things they feel there's the emotions that they have and we've done some brain Imaging studies where we've looked at some of these different neurotransmitters and so one of the ones that lot of people probably have heard of a dopamine and that is the feel-good molecule and that gets released during practices like meditation it gets released during sexual arousal so the dopamine becomes a very important part because it gives you that real euphoric kind of high and that's part of why the drug cocaine is so powerful because it causes a release of dopamine the serotonin system is another one that's where the Psychedelic drugs work and serotonin gets released when we are engaged in these different rhythmic processes and these practices and we did a study where we looked at somebody who went through a long-term treat program and it showed that the brain was more sensitive to dopamine and serotonin so each time now you have a new firing of it it's like a little added effect almost like a drug you know it kind of keeps getting stronger and you may want it more and more because it keeps feeling better and better one other one is a neurotransmitter many people may not have heard of this one called Gaba which is an acronym for gamma aminic acid and what it is is it's one of the main inhibitory neurotransmitters in the brain it kind of calms the brain down it's actually one of the sites where most of the big anti-anxiety medications what Gaba does is it helps to calm the brain down so remember when we were talking about the frontal lobe quieting down the parietal well there needs to be neurotransmitters that help those areas do that and that's what I think Gaba does and there's been evidence that there's a release of Gaba in the brain when people are meditating or praying and so we see all of this but these are also all part of the sexual you know if you look at how sex actually happens and the arousal that you get with the dopamine and then you get the serotonin and then some of these other neurotransmitter it seems like it's a very very similar kind of mechan it's kind of utilizing that mechanism to have those same powerful feelings basically you can observe that the spiritual experience and the sexual experiences are both very similar in their chemical composition and physically what areas of the brains are engaged so then it really is just a question of which one was first and it seems pretty obvious that it would have to be sexual right if you take the evolutionary the idea that there were all these animal rituals for millions and millions of years and you go back in the brains and look at ancient animals and we find autonomic nervous systems and these neurotransmitters have been around for prehistoric crocodile an example exactly is this why Cults are so powerful it's like the trifecta they do rituals there's some spiritual element to a lot of them and often a sexual element to a lot of them absolutely sexuality as well as spirituality can be incredibly positive and they can lead to compassion and understanding but they can also be used for a lot of negativity even the idea of a cult is interesting because back in the day 2,000 years ago Christianity was a cult is it not a cult now because there's a billion people who follow it this to me is a really interesting part of neurotheology which is the whole normal and not normal and how do we Define that we did a study of people speaking in tongues we did the brain scans these are P while they were speaking in were speaking in tongues incidentally they feel that sense of surrender so their frontal loes shut down also but what was interesting to me as I was looking it up doing my due diligence of trying to understand what it was for the people we had coming in it was connecting with God but there are psychiatrists who will tell you this is a trained psychosis or hypnosis and then there's other religious people who would say that's not connecting with God that's the devil so you have the same thing that now everybody's looking at differently but getting back to your point though even within that concept of normal and not normal you might say well somebody who likes to go to a church or MOS they kind of have quote unquote normal religiousness but what do you make of a nun or a monk who says I'm not having a family I'm going to take a vow of celibacy I'm not going to take any money I'm just going to be very focused on only that is that normal it's not a successful reproduction strategy unless it's a way of sort of showing a Target we understand that not all of us are going to be able to do that but if we all dve to be good people and we realize that there's this sort of ultimate goal of connecting with God whether it's now or some day in the future or after death it helps to support the overall Community it's real look at her exactly can't be in Hunger Games they're uh tributary yeah like I'll go right your question is great because this is part of what this whole research helps us to understand which is sexuality is wonderful when it's too consenting people and they love each other and it's great it's intimate it feels terrific but it can obviously go very wrong to the point where you have abuses and rape and addiction stay tuned for more armchair expert if you dare let's save Dark Side of sexuality and religion till the end tell us about the OM group and what opportunity they opened up for you having had this curiosity for 30 years for 30 years I've been thinking about this relationship between sexuality and spirituality but my late Mentor Jean Dilly he died very suddenly after I've been working with him for about six seven years and he really had that anthropological background I'm coming at it more from the Neuroscience side so as part of the team I could kind of continue the Neuroscience piece but I had to leave a little bit of that anthropological piece behind because it wasn't my area but I always felt like that was part of how we got here and I kept wanting to find a way to do that and a lot of times I get a call out of the blue from somebody who says Hey we've got this practice that is really interesting and would you be interested in studying it and usually I say yes because that's what I do Monica people have gone in the MRI and masturbated not with me but I found that interesting cuz you point out like look how strong this wiring is that you can be in this machine making a lot of noise knowing you're observed you're probably assuming that it's not going to happen but you show some pornographic images boom and people orgasm inside of an MRI so one day I'm in my office and I get a call from this woman who I don't know anything about and she says we do this interesting practice called orgasmic meditation oh okay sounds interesting I like both those words more tell me more as she was describing it I realized fairly quickly that one this may be an interesting link between this whole discussion of sexuality and spirituality it's a meditative approach that uses sexual stimulation as the focus of the meditation my first thought was like I'm sure many people that seems a little odd but when you actually take a step back and think about how many practices work many practices use our body's physiology as a focus and probably the most common one is our breath you meditate by closing your eyes and focus on your breath and the air feels cool and you feel all these things there's a meditation called the body scan there's walking meditation as well so the idea of using some kind of stimulation that's part of your body okay that makes sense and then there was this added piece which was the sexual stimulation which to me I'm like this could be a little bit of this Missing Link because here I might be able to actually show what the sexual stimulation do in the brain when it's not specifically used for sexual stimulation but as a kind of spiritual meditative Focus I think we need to talk about what's physically happening so in this practice a woman's meditating and a man generally there's a stroker and a stroked and so a man is stroking the woman's clitorus as she meditates exactly there were a couple things were interesting to me too because it is a paired practice and I do get a lot of questions about what's the difference when you're doing like a meditation practice if you're just sitting there yourself versus if you're a large group at an ashram or something like that but this is a meditation practice which is done with two people they were very adamant about the fact that the person who is doing the stimulation is part of the practice so the male and it could be a female theoretically but in our study we did it as a male and female pair the male who's doing the stimulation is very much much meditating on what they're doing and what effect they're having for the female who is having the sexual stimulation she's also involved in this meditation and so she's focusing her mind on the feelings that she's having on the energy that is being generated as part of this process and part of what also was kind of helpful for me as a researcher sometimes when we've done a study like Buddhist Meditation when we scan people we need to have some sense of timing because I can't put somebody in a scanner for hours and hours on end and one of the ways that we do our scans is through what's called nuclear medicine where we inject a little bit of a radioactive tracer it's great for me to do that but it captures that moment in time when I do the injection so I need to know what they're doing at that moment and when we did our Buddhist Meditation study many years ago they said well we meditate for an hour hour and a half you know like how do I know where you are in your practice I mentioned the speaking in tongue study there was no timing on that but you can hear him doing it so the nice thing about this practice was that it's a very clearly timed practice it's 15 minutes the last half of that 15 minutes is the peak experience so I can know when to inject I can know when to do the study all of that became very helpful for us from a research perspective because it made it easy to know what the whole very well-defined intentional process was they were very clear that it's not having sex and orgasms are happening sometimes and sometimes occasionally but that is not the goal they were very clear about that and as part of our study we ask everybody how it was because that's a whole other piece which is we want to make sure that anybody who's coming in for our study is doing the practice in a genuine way we asked them if they had actually climaxed in our group none of them did that's a little interesting to me I don't know how one gets their clitor stimulated for 15 minutes while focusing on that are they actively trying not to have an orgasm I don't think that they're purposely trying not to I just don't think that's their goal that where their energy is focused their energy is not focused on it it's more just connecting with the actual stimulation exactly part of me was interested in seeing how this sexual spiritual piece matched up but then there was also the kind of social connection too going back to our whole conversation about rituals and how do these two people connect with each other and is he being observed as well we actually were able to set it up in such a way where we actually scanned both of them and did they have this great correlation of brain activity the way when people sing together or do anything together that was part of what we found we saw changes in their brains in general we saw their frontal loes decreasing by the time they get into this process it's sort of this natural thing that's just kind of happening to them I should also be really clear that as with a lot of our studies these were all people who are very experienced in this we're not just taking somebody off the street and saying here you try two students on campus hey home yeah right here let's try this and In fairness I mean when we've studied people speaking in tongues these are all people who have been doing it for many many years which in and of itself is a whole other interesting question about who should you study and should you get people who are experts or novices so these are all people who were very experienced with it and that to me was part of it so we saw the frontal loes decreasing in both the males and the females we saw the parietal loes decreasing because there was this very intimate connection there's sharing an identity in a way exactly what we also found was that there were certain changes in their brains that correlated with how the other one was doing it really showed that connection and in some ways that was I think maybe the best evidence of the whole sexual selection model which is that your brains are really resonating with each other as you get into this kind of a practice Yeah cuz my kneejerk on the surface of learning of this practice was like well this is very lopsided this is interesting the guy just stimulates but at the same time no I've had those experiences and they're very wonderful for you too I guess I'm relieved to hear their brain patterns were mirroring each other and there were some distinctions as well the other areas of the brain that also were different in them were something called the precuneous and the insula and these are basically social areas of the brain they are the areas of our brain that we use so that I can read what you're feeling and know how you're thinking and try to be empathic and compassionate to you so these areas were also significantly affective well because you're overly aware of any cu being broadcast to you so that it will inform your actions exactly even that act of trying your hardest to observe what someone's doing is kind of a euphoric it's like shrooms in that it forces you out of your own head enough that it's Pleasant you're really almost feeling what the other person is feeling or at least that's your kind of goal and it could be very powerful for obviously both individuals and this is part of where this kind of practice and medita practices talking about the real positive side of things does this enable your brain to continue to be empathic towards others even in a nonsexual way does it make you try to understand other people more try to reach out to them be intimate with them and I don't mean sexually intimate but understanding who you are and where you're coming from are those reps of intimacy and Reps of empathy in this particular case we didn't specifically measure that although we do see longer term changes in these individuals in these areas but other Studies have certainly looked at that with things like mindfulness and other types of practices this is just for your own Amusement it's an antidote but we interviewed people who had been in Cults and we interviewed a guy who was in a cult that was a spin-off of this okay there was a woman in New York that practiced this and then ended up with kind of a house everyone lived in and it was wild I don't know I don't know if you cross path I did not I think there's a dock about um okay so let's now talk about the Dark Side of sexuality and religion the most well-known atheist the first thing they point out always is more people have been killed in the name of God than anything else and there's a truth to that so this to me is a real area where the field of neurotheology can help us with because clearly there are people who turn to religion some of the most wonderful human beings I've ever met were like in the Pastoral Care department at our Hospital and they're deeply religious they have their own religious tradition but they're open to everyone they love everyone they want everyone to be well and healed so they turn their religion outward and help everyone and then of course there's people who are willing to drop a bomb around their chest and kill people who don't believe the way they do and this gets back to our earlier conversation a little bit about where is our line drawn in terms of the US versus them and how strongly do we feel about that how dogmatic do we get about that even if you're one person if you believe you're connected to all of humanity then you're a loving compassionate person to all of humanity but if you think that it's your group and your idea and you're going to defend that idea and anybody else who says anything differently there's got to be something wrong with them and they're evil it turns that into very negative energy one of the statements that my mentor and I used to talk about is that rituals are a morally neutral technology they can be used for great good bringing the whole country together or bringing a whole group of people together and loving each other or Hitler and he was terrific at using symbols and rituals I mean the Rhythm and the songs unfortunately I also can imagine again I'm always infusing the addiction lens with all this is that for sex addicts it is a great way to regulate your internal state with this great distraction and you can find Freedom and peace from whatever is haunting you you can enter this Zone in that is this freedom without sounding too judgmental I have definitely met people people who practice religion in a way that I would say is identical the normal day-to-day life is so uncomfortable that this constant Retreat into this world and thought process is being used at all times to regulate do you think there's any parallels between those two absolutely part of what has been realized with the good versus the bad of religion and spirituality is that religion does get wrapped up sometimes in that negative aspect sometimes people think God is punishing them sometimes people turn into a religion that seems to be very dogmatic and very hate-filled But ultimately resonates with them because of whatever issues they've been dealing with and does help to kind of quell what they're feeling and so people have tried to turn to different psychotherapeutic approaches that incorporate religious content to help bring people around to a different way of looking at it and instead of looking at God is hateful God is Angry God wants us to harm other people God is loving God is compassionate God wants us to be compassionate and loving to other people but that to me is why it's a really interesting neuro theological question which is what is the difference in a brain of somebody who has an addiction and turns towards religion or spirituality you look at Alcoholics Anonymous and using a higher power I mean that's a fundamental part of the whole process and it's very powerful for a lot of people and obviously has worked for lots of people but it doesn't work for everybody and then there are people who really go in very negative directions and what is the difference in the brain of somebody who takes that negative path and I do suspect that in addition to just the overall biochemical changes you're talking about some very core areas of the brain there's a very Central structure called the hypothalamus which sits like at the very base of the brain it's an amazing part of our being because it's maybe a half a centimeter half an inch or whatever in size but it regulates our autonomic nervous system it regulates our hormones and because it regulates these things it's very involved in our aggression cuz we sometimes have to be able to fight or flight and quickly but it also is where a lot of our pleasure centers are and they're very close to each other to me I'm always thinking well if it's just a millimeter to the left or a millimeter to the right you get different neurons those I people fight and then have sex and I talk about that a lot in the book I mean that has a long thousand- year history of aggression and violence and Then followed by rape again it all gets wrapped up because it's all part of that stimulatory piece which can lead to very good things and it can be fun to have a sort of aggressiveness with your partner but it can also when that's not wanted it can lead to horrific stuff and it is interesting how both sexuality and religion or spirituality can both have that wonderful positive side and both have that really horrible negative side both prone to indulge in power in dominance but that to me also is just Why it keeps coming back to this common theme of they're using the same parts of our brain well physiologically if we're talking about let's say terrorists or something if their frontal lobe has shut down because of ritual and spirituality and all these things that are used at first can they even logic their way out of some of these things that are getting told to them it's a great question and it is extremely hard a lot of the people who get caught up in these things they can undergo a conversion they can go through a process where they come to some realization now that to me is another really great neurotheology question what is the data what is the piece of information what happens what is that moment of this is wrong that was in rabbit hole if you remember Monica these people that started as Occupy Wall streeters that then evolved into QQ and oners but then some of the people that left qinon because it got really religious and then for whatever reason you keep going down in layers of identity and eventually one of these will bump up against an even more core identity marker which would be for this woman it was like I'm an atheist as much as I believe in all this other stuff the qinon on the occupied Wall Street it got to this point where now we're quoting texts from 2,000 years ago I'm out it can keep moving its way through your identity until it hits a roadblock where that one's so core to how you define yourself you're now willing to be critical how much information or what happens within us when we have a paradigm shift this is not just for religion this is for science when I was going through medical school if somebody had an ulcer in their stomach it was because of acid one day and I remember we were like reading these articles about how there was a bacteria that was doing this that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard it's definitely coffee yeah it can't be that that article that says it's a bacteria that was poorly done these people don't know what they're talking about and today we give you an biotic so they always joke you know science precedes one funeral at a time as people change their way of thinking how much data do you need you know the other story I always think about is Albert Einstein and quantum mechanics he couldn't get there yeah smartest guy in the world could not get there exactly and he would come up with ways to prove that it was wrong and then they would do the experiment to show that it was right mhm and he still didn't like it like what do you need to know that I know it's this truth that we always try to pretend is not there I even asked it to spolski I said you have this enormous brain to bear on whatever your intuition is and you can fool yourself but we have this intuition we have some weird Bas belief and then we can deploy our huge brain to confirm it and you can't know you can't know okay the one thing that I felt like is missing from all this conversation and also I want to point out you lay this book out beautifully for both people so whether you're an atheist or whether you're religious this book I don't think threatens either one of those it's very inclusive of both those experiences thank you I try to be it's very meticulously done I'm an atheist so of course I'm looking at this as basically this system has been co-opted by this human invention of religion but the other explanation I've had for why we are so prone to and Prime to accept a deity is that we're the ultimate social species and so hierarchy is the most important force in our life our hierarchy is going to determine our mating access our access to food to shelter to everything it's number one I agree and we are masterful at identifying hierarchy immediately we pick up so many cues to figure out where we fall in the status ladder so because we're so blueprinted to recognize and accept and then be differential to status and to be subordinate to status of course a God is easy for us it's the ultimate Alpha it's just of course there's another thing about of this Alpha and so I'm just curious how do you see our predeliction and obsession with status and hierarchy play out in Sex and religion or is that even an aspect you think of much and then maybe even what's happening in an fmri when we are evaluating status and hierarchy and is that perfectly paralleled to the sexual thing as well first of all I completely agree with you in fact that's part of the argument that I make and the term I was using a little bit in the book was worship if you look at the social hierarchy of all animals as you mentioned there's the alpha male or a queen bee and it is ultimately all about mating so that whole process it is deeply embedded within us to be able to establish those hierarchies and to have that alpha male and to just pick up on one thing in particularly important that you mentioned which is that when you have an alpha of any particular kind I often thought well if somebody decides to fight the alpha and then they lose why don't they just try again but they don't you are very differential to anyone who is above you in that hierarchy and so that clearly has been a part of what has been kind of embedded within us I would see it on playgrounds all the time you must have too is like these two kids hated each other's guts they scheduled a fight in front of the school they fought like crazy they cried they blood they get up they're instantly at peace with each other yeah the immediate resolution of it ReRe of something primitive in hundreds of thousands of years old even if you look at Major Wars we had World War II where our hated enemies were Germany and Japan and now I don't know if we're best friends but we're certainly good friends up there yeah yeah us yeah that is part of that process because it maintains that social hierarchy so I completely agree and talk about that that that whole concept of worship and even the Ten Commandments is no other God I mean it's like I'm Alpha no Idols I don't know the exact biology of it I suspect that it does have something to do with the autonomic nervous system because as you said you get to this fight where your arousal system is as high as it's going to be and then once that fight is done that drops and your calming side comes in but what also interesting is we use our automic nervous system also to evaluate how that hierarchy runs we did an interesting article I thought on the Forgiveness process and this is also an interesting piece of religion and spirituality and revenge versus forgiveness and I sort of started with well how do you know that somebody has injured you in the first place because if you're my boss you're allowed to tell me I did a lousy job if I did a lousy job you're not allowed to abuse me but you're allowed to tell me I did a lousy job if you're my friend maybe you're not allowed to tell me that I did a lousy job ignore that you just stumbled into Monica and I's life what about when it's your and your friend that's that's very tricky I never recommend that well yeah too late so Revenge Behavior this is in the Bible too about an eye for an eye a hamar Robi right so if you injure me I injure you back an eye for an eye and I have rebalanced that hierarchy however that was even if I perceived you to be higher than me I may not necess bring you down below me but I've at least haven't let you get much higher than me but interestingly forgiveness also allows for a rebalancing depending on the cognitive and emotional processes that are part of that so I might say well you know what he hurt me or he insulted me but he's a human being maybe he was having a bad day I'm a human being I've had bad days I'm going to let this go in my mind I reestablished the hierarchy in a different way and interestingly as we have learned in history while Revenge we see this all the time and the Middle East but sometimes forgiveness is a more powerful approach because other people see what's going on and take your side as the one who is now forgiven my concrete example is always in traffic you're merging someone's pissed someone off someone waves and they're basically saying I'm sorry versus you go to war and you argue and then you leave continuing to hate that person or you have misbehaved I guess what I'm getting at is I have gotten a much deeper lesson out of having wronged people and they forgave me and then I had the moment to reflect that my behavior was wrong and felt shame and guilt about that versus if they just fight back and I get locked in the fight I don't ever get into the evaluation automic nervous system yeah it's so powerful it's almost deadly it's like trying to hit nothing I got into playing pickle ball if somebody smacks the ball at you hard it's easy to punch that back somebody gives you a real softy it's hard it's like baseball you know luting there it's like hitting a knuckle ball you can't do it this also just shows how this intimate connection of sexuality and spirituality all fit together the whole social hierarchy of animals for mating that we see in all the other species on the planet that have social hierarchies it became part of us too oh it's so fascinating is there anything prescriptive I don't know if it's prescriptive so much as I hope it gives people an ability to reflect on their own ways of thinking about things on their sense of spirituality their sense of sexuality helps them to identify the way in which it works for them appreciates when it doesn't and I study these things so to me it's never hey do this practice or do that practice but it's really about understanding ourselves and I think that that helps us to know how to manage the different ways in which we are even if it can just give us a little bit of pause and say maybe that person they're a human being too maybe I should be a little bit more open and understanding and compassionate to them I would like the three main ones to lighten their strangle hold up on sexuality I I think that was my original complaint where I was like well [ __ ] this this is what you're laying out for me we're going to deny our sexuality I'm out this is crazy and untenable for me and I think that's part of it too which is does it give us a better understanding of that relationship and maybe helps people to not feel the shame but what I always emphasize is to find the ways that it's productive to find the ways that it's good sexuality is wonderful when you're with the right person and it connects you and all those wonderful feelings and you can use that to be empathic and compassionate to others as well and the same thing for spirituality have your belief but go out and reach out to other people and engage them and try to learn about them and I think it makes us all better people and I guess that's what it's all about oh well such an interesting book sex god in the brain Andrew your second visit I hope there'll be a third you keep writing very interesting stuff despite you acknowledging you'll never know anything you keep trying anyways and I appreciate it if I ever figure it out I promise I will tell you yeah please publish persistence should be your next I might be all right well so fun having you in person and I hope we see you again soon thank you so much all right take care hi there this is Herm and perum if you like that you're going to love the faction miss Monica hello arm cherries um this marks our last episode under the Spotify umbrella and I just wanted to thank we've worked with so many wonderful people over the last three years years and I just want to thank everyone we had such a wonderful experience there we really did we were treated very very well loved working withi we were yeah we were treated abnormally well I would say and um right out of the gate you know um Don Ostro who's the original exec to reach out to us and have interest in us and um and bring us over she was always so wonderful and Then followed by Julie mcamera and then Jordan Newman we love to death Jess borison who I even had the pleasure of partying with in Austin at Danny Ricardo's live music I'm partying quotes yeah yeah in Asia and Jazelle some incredible team over there we got to work with and we are we're very uh lucky and thankful thanks for having us truly it was a wonderful three years yeah we have another fun three years to coming yes we do which is very fun us reminder ding ding ding that starting next week you can find us at you can find us anywhere we're everywhere can't put to find a point on this cuz I see it in the comments orever you're listening right now wherever you're at right now you can stay right there you don't have to do a damn thing worry but if you want to if you want to listen to us ad free o I would you can go to wry plus yeah if you want to see us on video you us YouTube and some other places I'm not totally sure but YouTube for sure you can find us for the fact check and for experts there's just way more fun options coming your way that's right we've um we have recorded in the new video space we have and I like it yeah how let's give some behind the scenes well about our feelings yeah let's do it I will say our very first guest I did feel disoriented for about the first eight minutes I don't know what your experience was but I was like oh man yeah there's lights a lot of lights I mean the attics gener a little Moody it is the lights don't work in here yeah it actually don't work in fact we have been many times uh interviewing someone in the winter that started at like 2:00 or 3: and it's like getting dark and we're like oh [ __ ] I got to wrap this up I can't see the person anymore yeah we're riding by daylight yes and I had like six minutes of worrying like where I put my coffee and is it distracting that I'm reaching over to get my coffee thought about my notes you know I I I ever want anyone seeing me glance at my notes oh wow yeah what other thing yeah but then that went away our first recording we did it is an amazing guest who also knows this space very well this uh video space very well yes that's where they live that was a very nice entree in I don't know that they're all going to feel I think I think there I'm just going to be yeah you tell me your feelings I think there's going to be some Growing Pains yeah sure but by the way think about well I I'm reminded of like when we first got in here and started doing in here I know there was some Growing Pains no but that's cuz I I did my first Video Edit yesterday oh you did yeah and it was great yeah but I was like you got to look at yourself a lot my god well a few things one I was like I feel like we're starting all over and that I told myself to think of that positively mhm but there were minutes of that feeling Soul crushing oh really yeah like you got to a whole new I can't believe we've been doing this for seven years and we're starting from scratch and this is going to take a long time to get to the point where we were at as far as like ease right right right right even workflow stuff it's like there's a lot more to it yeah yeah like the other I would say not the vibe of the show per se but just the workflow of it right yeah like it the original and I was remembering oh yeah when I was first editing it would take so so long and now it's dialed and then I was like oh my God it's taking so long oh no oh no sure a little Panic we're accelerated so it's as hard as it'll be right now cuz we're playing ketchup yes yes because again if you have wry plus you can also get episodes a week ahead right so virtually at the beginning we have to kind of do two weeks in one week yeah six episodes in one week okay great six yes episodes in one week yeah it's a little bit of it's an intense week yes um but it's great I mean it it it is a lot of looking at yourself on this video and I already was like oh no oh no I'm nodding so much why am I nodding so much oh I hate that and then today we recorded and I was like oh my God am I doing it I for I had forgot to think about it and then halfway through I remembered to think about it oh my god well that's I was feeling in the first eight minutes now mind you I have had a lot more time on camera to break my bad habits right I mean I think I told you the most embarrassing thing I ever lived through was like playing the drums on camera in Parenthood having no clue what I look like when I played the drums and be like whoa that's what you look like it's different though than watching myself on a show because that's a character yeah maybe because it's a character and also it's not real it's not real it's not as long I mean it's like a whole episode of just no you're in a movie watching us a movie if you're in every shot that's right and it's a 2hour movie yeah you're doing three movies a week that's not normal and so anyway I was nodding a lot so I know people are probably going to comment on that and I already I already know that I am nodding too much so you don't need to say I will try to dial it back but I also don't want to be in my head because that's the whole point of the show and you know all these things start to well the I that again back to the very first one I felt that for the first eight minutes I found myself being a little self-conscious yeah but then the next episode which we recorded yesterday and I immediately just flopped into like oh I'm just alive I'm Al I'm like talking I'm alive I'm not even thinking about it so yesterday for me was really kind of um encouraging for my own self-conscious State I was like oh yeah I there were many long stretches where I completely forgot that was my hope or maybe slash my fear is like in here there's long periods where I completely forget it's being recorded it's like the it's like the sweet spot of this and so I was like God am I going to ever forget I'm being recorded when there's a camera at me and yesterday yeah totally I I completely forgot so much at the time it's going to be an evolution well we should be clear I I would hate for people to think that the episodes are going to suffer because we're because of that I don't think they're going to suffer but part of this show is being really honest about our feelings on everything thing and I and I that is something I also don't want to go away I don't want the video to be like a movie I don't want it to be presentational in that way we're still us and so you know if we are uncomfortable a little bit or for some re I don't know but I think yeah my optimism is like when we start doing fact checks down there yeah I'm not worried about that cuz we know like I look at you I hope I won't speak for you I look at you and I go oh I can do anything anything yeah me I feel so safe like if you're sitting across from me yeah I'm like oh yeah turn this thing on I feel very anchored by you in the way that I used to feel anchored by Peter krow and acting scenes you know like oh I'm good Peter's here yeah I feel that for the fact I'm very excited to do fact checks on video actually but it is funny though because again like starting over a little bit I'm a little bit back in my head a little about how much I'm talking how much I'm not talking because you can see it it's see you thinking about that or no you can see me oh right so it's a little bit you're more reminded you think yeah so you know it's just I mean it's funny what I did get to is this is life life is pushing yourself and changing and we got really comfortable which was which is incredible but you know you can't just stay stagnant forever and it's good to try new things that how I'm taking it as like well hey yeah the Phil stuts thing right like this is what life is it's Chang and it's work and it's blah blah blah and then also maybe I feel like I've earned this at 49 like like if if you throw this at me it'll just be another opportunity for me to figure something out yeah and ultimately look back and be proud of myself like I'm kind of already down the road with it no it's a it's a good challenge and it's an excuse I'm going to buy so many new outfits oh sure I did Rob I was kind of mad at you when I was editing it cuz I was like my shirt is not right like you do have to tell me that well how would he know if it's right or wrong he he can see them yeah we've got this always recording thing too so I'm juggling like just make sure all these are focused and framed and like hopefully audio's running too I imagine like whatever we're experiencing I'm imagining Rob you're probably having 3x that you have like so much more going on in the actual recording why he's got to be looking at Focus for five different cameras and he's it's not you're changing Point Focus I mean I'm just framing everyone when they sit down and the camera stop recording move it it's not on robotics is it no we don't have a remote head on any of these that would be cool yeah back there [ __ ] pushing in and [ __ ] directing I think I technically could with that setup but to say I'm not saying you have to fix it in the middle of the recording but at the beginning if my shirt is like not looking good on camera I I need last looks if you're okay if you're giving me the okay to tell you that yeah during a recording I will or could he yell avocado or something maybe we have like three or four different code words what if it's really serious moment cuz I need to look good for the serious moment so I can sneak behind that wall maybe and like whisper to you okay that yeah let's try it what if you what if we put a little light system on the coffee table we should have codes right like your shirt is something and your face is [ __ ] up is like another thing that's code for your face is [ __ ] up avocado no your face is [ __ ] up is code for your face your shirt is messed [Laughter] up um anyway New Horizons ex new outfits it's going to be great yeah for you like this is this is your time to shine you got so like today's outfit is fantastic just left the space thank you your outfit's on fire thank you um it was my birthday yeah before we do that I want to do two housekeeping things great one is we heard loud and clear from the misophonia ACS what do you call people misophonia probably not misophonia and they probably w't like that but misos misos so the misos were like in general the water pouring delightful okay they did not like the sound of me drinking yeah that's where it it uh broke sounds it's not it's not ASMR I think we did when you when you open up the door for the misos to sound off they're going to let you know yeah you have to be careful with what you ask I was thinking there there it was very consistent that they hate water that you know the sound of that they started hating it when I was drinking mhm but then they would go on to list the things that really irk them the most and there there wasn't a tremend amount of consistency so it's like if you were dating a a miso and you had previously dated a miso you still got to figure out what their unique misos are same sex that's like alls and just like you got to relearn everybody yeah everyone's different everyone's different and then uh next bit of housekeeping yes many people pointed out that the Jake Gyllenhaal glasses thing oh he commented on and it's he took it from Paul Newman Paul Newman wore his glasses that way in something and commented on our post no no he didn't many of the listeners had either I many of them said he said it here which I don't recall but then others said they saw him on a talk show talking about it but no matter what the origin Source was the story was still the same that it's a nod to oh JG JG you cute playful little girl obviously you might have said that here that sounds familiar now but we hadn't seen the show yet he did like Paul Newman I do sort of remember he was his Godfather oh yeah and he would come over not Godfather he would come over and they he had the dressing recipe or something oh maybe he did are we making a lot up well definitely the Paul Newman was at the house and he was around him a bunch yeah okay GG so that's all settled okay that's great one more housekeeping also because next week new stuff go find syn yes on its own feed subscribe subscribe go there that's where you'll find it to listen forward out on Thursdays just type that baby in synced s YN c d it's very good you said that oh that was another thing in the comments some people said you can spell it both ways well not you can't spell the show both ways no not at all but the words synced apparently oh all right well that was interesting that's fine but let's not confuse people more it's spelled s y n c d and um go check us out on Thursdays if you miss having a Thursday episode yeah we're still around you can just hit the you can just run from Wednesday morning straight through the weekend yeah we we we have the best questions on there yeah people really write an incredible questions everyone you bring to me I'm like that's a [ __ ] great question I know and they're very honest in like what they're going through which is sweet it's very very sweet and very vulnerable yeah we have fun over there so it's like it's almost like a mini version I don't want to say mini or di anything diminutive but it's related to armchair Anonymous but it's also different yeah it has an element of that because we're hearing from real people who listen oh I'm so glad that just came up o I had a very funny experience which is I go to my daughter's new school's barbecue right after your birthday ding ding ding yeah and I'm in line I'm talking to a young well she's a girl she's not a woman she's like probably 15 or 16 or something okay and and she's um Doling out the burgers I step up and I go like okay I'm going to hit you with a really annoying request like you got an assembly line going here I see it is it is it possible to just get the Patty like I don't want to waste a bun basically yeah I had talked long enough that she was staring at me really kind of bizarrely and she goes hold on is are you on Anonymous and I go wait armchair Anonymous she goes yeah is that you you're like I recognize your voice and I'm thinking this is incredible this is a teenager who doesn't know who I am know you as an actor yeah or a human on planet Earth but she is in high school and she listens to armchair anous she doesn't listen to anything else and she's like oh my God yeah I listen every Friday I think it's so funny I love it and I was like oh what's your you know your was one of your favorite stories and it was so funny it was so I loved it I hope she's sharing with all her friends I hope have an upcoming gen Calvin got really into it on our road trip younger people like Anonymous he he couldn't remember the name of it he kept saying can we listen to broadcast Studios oh we should change the name he has such good we watch we listen to almost every single no one on the road Tri [ __ ] your pants no I skipped that one but he he loved like the grizzly bear attack yeah coping ones he loves sure um there we have one coming up that I told a bunch of people about which one blessing and disguise y oh yeah yeah there were a couple on that that were like Ling to disguise was great I admittedly was very wrong about that prompt that was that's a very fun episode coming up um anyway anyway um okay your birthday yeah I had a birthday it came and went um no you I have a lot of days left which is exciting yeah and I haven't got on the Chain yet but I'll be there on the connection chain you've been saying happy birthday for the past few days yeah yeah and I'm going to continue to and uh it was really really nice so nice at Cara yeah we went to Cara well I had a shopping day in the morning where did you go I went to some stores I I won't say which I went to some relatable stores and then uh and I got a haircut I got a birthday haircut that's a really fun thing to do where at at a salon no Jenny came over oh she did yeah good birthday treat to yourself big treat I needed it so bad don't feel like you need to comment on my hair um on some of the beginning episodes of video uh I hadn't had my haircut and Rob forgot to tell me that it looked bad so um no need to com that that one's going to be uh beehive birthday haircut birthday haircut which was a lovely start to the day she knocked in out of the park uh she's so good but yeah so yeah then did shopping then we went to Cara had just kind of people come stop by very casual very casual it was so nice my favorite kind yeah you came a lot of people came oh there was 20 plus people there yeah and then you when you came who came after I love Ry and Amy okay good they made it and yeah they they made they had ev's uh soccer game okay we had some Co people who couldn't come oh who had Co Laura Matt Oh I thought that was baby related of course no um C you we had to leave earlier than I would have wanted to uh for the aforementioned bar yeah yeah the school barbecue yeah but it was really fun I had three martinis oh nice over the course though of 6 hours yeah six hours that's not enough one every two hours isn't enough I don't think birthday I didn't know this phrase but apparently it's a phrase martinis are like not to hurt anyone's feelings okay I don't because I don't everyone's body is perfect okay but martinis are like boobs one is not enough and three is too many oh yeah I recently heard that saying and it's a good one it's it's good because it's one's not enough three is too many yeah three pushes you over the edge a little bit even if you love boobs I love boobs I I mean four is good though right you think oh well I got you three some okay but uh yeah I love boobs but a third one I don't know it would you'd probably still like it yeah I guess I like anything you know I I can get myself to any yeah yeah I can buy in it sounds perverted but it's a good thing about you yeah it's my super power I I can find most things beautiful if I like the person and I can think someone's very unattractive because I don't like them even though they objectively I I think we all do that yeah well actually I don't I can't speak for everyone but I definitely do that I knew a lot of dudes that like hooked up with people they didn't like yeah that's weird it is I mean it's not for me no I can't even talk to someone I don't like ter yeah well you know this term hate [ __ ] that's like a whole thing too that sounds that's bad yeah it is bad naughty really if you hate [ __ ] people you're a baddy yeah you're bad yeah tell me about your trama oh okay so I didn't realiz I did realize but I didn't put two and two together reals you can only do in a minute 30 that thing is 220 oh it is so I chopped the beginning like just so that it's a little bit of that little song and then I just am going to make it the trauma part and then maybe we could do another one later in the week but I want do tomorrow and then collab on what we're releasing well I'll just oh collaborate yeah yeah that makes sense yeah that's easiest nice how do you feel about collabs if we could just talk about that for a second I don't like when I I see something I like and I look up and I want to like follow the person who posted or at least inquire into their other content and there's two or three people up there I'm like I don't know who's responsible for this and now I don't know who to go sniff around oh my God what I want to play something for you but that's okay it's just I now I'm thinking about Instagram oh okay do you have any issue with that at all is that bother you okay it's never been a hangup for me okay because it says all the people who are collabed I know but you don't know who originated it oh you want to know cuz it's like a funny piece of content yeah well why don't you just click on each person and then see exactly oh wow okay [ __ ] click on three people and go through their whole page try to figure out who the genius in this mix is you could probably find out quickly I guess for you and I it doesn't matter but yeah who are you trying to figure out oh tons of times it's all [ __ ] that gets recommended to me and it's there's like three names on it and I don't know who who's who's the genius behind this if you're wondering on my collabs with Liz it's Liz who's the genius behind it okay that's very honest of you yeah okay can I play one thing for you yeah okay I got to find out who I sent it to okay I know I sent it sent it to Kimmel CU he loves yach Rock oh this is great this is was yach Rock what if Metallica yach rock this is AI enter the sand man [Music] the song [ __ ] slaps by [Music] way oh my [Music] God [Music] theand what [Music] [Music] I love this song isn't it [Music] [ __ ] wow that's good is that wild I like that I should give the dude who created it some uh how do you know has he collabed with a lot of people well luckily it was just his name but um Mr Professor 318 um he does these makes AI make weird mashups is what I can gather from his page and so he just tells AI uhhuh do enter the sandman as yach rock in this [ __ ] SP now we have a lot of fear about AI this we got to say this is awesome that's great except I don't think we need to shout out Mr Professor blah Blas well he's the one who he's the one who had the idea to do this yeah but he's not the robot wait the robot is the one that did it oh the AI Rob I thought you were talking about our robot our inhouse robot I am always talking about him but no hey me play Mata enter the sandman as yach rock I can't remember my tune oh my God ja I hate this it's been too long yeah I want to hear some Metalica but I'm in the moon for yach rock this afternoon and then he just starts playing it I guess yeah yeah okay all right but this I can think so highly of Mr Professor but this is actually weirdly what's going to be the future of AI it's just a tool human are humans are going to use in a very creative way and so I certainly didn't think to tell AI to do that I did oh I just forgot let hear your version I forgot to do it my version would be the same it would be have ai make this song sound like this now here's something really curious and I don't know enough about AI to say it but if like this guy tells AI to do it right and then you tell AI to do it an hour later does it come up with the same song or different my hunch is different and how is that that's weird each person AI has a personality that'll be oh man I had spinning but I'll be listening to this great song as they take over the world great um was there anything else about your birthday anyone throw a drink in anyone's face was there any fist fights what happened when it became open to the pub no problem it was no problem yeah yeah so it was private for a little bit then it became open to the pub figured overan literally yeah and then I kind of was practicing doing some side eyes oh okay to to deter let people know you're not welcome here yeah okay but I forgot okay also a sweet arm Cherry sent me a drink by the way they were serving Ted seagar there which blew my mind yes oh my God was that exciting that is so cool it is yeah you got a little video yeah you have to post that I will all right I'm gonna get into some facts now oh it'll be my last nonv Video Edit enjoy it yeah maybe drink four or five Margies oh no not Margies teis teenis I I could feel it I could feel that third Martini even though it was 6 hour I don't think I drank enough water you felt it the next day or you felt it in the moment you feel slashy no you didn't feel slashy I didn't I felt in control felt sober you rode a motorcycle home right your helmet on I didn't I mean I felt Tipsy but I did not I did not feel drunk or anything you say anything crazy probably actually you know there was one conversation oh wow that I was in the middle of talking and I was like I'm not M I think I'm done making like full sense cuz it was sort of a serious conversation it required an explanation and I was making it and I was like I don't think I'm firing in the way that I'm really making this explanation I didn't normally you could but everyone nodded and yeah people are pretty codependent which is helpful they were also everyone else was rinking too they're a little shitfaced too well that's getting stoned I mean that's that's the name of the game yeah you're like Midway through some point you're like I'm so lost in this [ __ ] point and there's no way they don't all know and what do we do now I know but um but no the next day I could feel it a bit birthday Blues um okay cataract surgery my dad got cataract surgery yeah and he was saying you can have your vision fixed while you're in there but you have to pick nearsighted or farsighted Sophie's Choice yeah heed pick farsightedness he picked fixing distance yeah and he wears his little glasses it makes the most sense because you can easily throw the glasses on it's probably safer to be able to see far away but I will say I don't know if that's the right choice because I'm at least my current life is like a ton of reading and doing research yeah and it's and then journaling in the morning I just feel like a big chunk of my life is near sight you're right I'm when I move into my boating phase I want my farsighted more I don't see anything up close and then your glasses might fall into the water blow off when I hit those you know north of a 100 yeah on my triple engine pontoon boat um okay so you said huberman specialty is the eye but he's not an opthalmologist yeah I wish I could remember what his he is he's a neurologist that specializes in the eyes right yeah he's associate professor of neurobiology and of optim ology oh so the hubin lab is focused on brain function development and repair with emphasis on regeneration to prevent and cure blindness but he's not a medical doctor which isn't an opthalmologist a medical doctor he must be I don't think he is he's a resar yeah he's a researcher I think so he must have a PhD and not an MD right yeah um retinol and optic nerve damage and glaucoma and disorders of sensory lyic functions such as depression and PTSD anyway anyway okay that song is so stuck in my head you know what's funny when I was pulling up my facts I just typed in his name in my email cuz I send my facts to myself MH so I just typed in Andrew so make it feel like you get mail you like getting mail I love getting email I love it so much I love it so much that I have [Laughter] okay if I looked at my phone and said that I would scream out loud I think I know it's I don't it's white noise I don't see that um okay but so I typed his name in uh pulled up the fact check started looking up the facts and I was like what like I don't really remember that but you know some we've done a lot it's from last time it was from last year yeah yeah well I've had that problem too cuz I keep a file of all my research yeah and then so I have over time I had to start putting the date exact well then I looked at the email date and I was like oh [ __ ] but when I did that it was cool because I learned something what did you learn what did you relearn I relearned discrom Materia oh that's um color blindness nope also called discon is a condition of cular dysfunction in which an individual cannot accurately estimate the amount of time that is passed e distorted time percept yeah FAL lobe stuff um cerebal send the cerebellum oh sah yeah anyway that's from last year I'm still a I'm still settling into the Revelation that every brain part we've been talking about there's two of like I'm still digesting Hipp a camp ey same I don't even know if I believe that okay I'm turning into you mhm I like it though we talked about sadism I mean no we didn't oh my god um sub and oh uh-huh and there's a psychology today this was in 2020 and it talks about a study published in the Journal of sex research about understanding the personal origin stories of how practitioners became interested in masochism and submission as well as their reasons or motives for continuing to practice masochism and submission and it's interesting cuz it breaks down like intrinsic Origins it says the significant majority of participate 7 participants 78% described having an intrinsic interest in masochism slub submission most of these participants describe S I can't read very well today cuz I woke up so early to go to the cardiologist update update I don't think my heart's going to explode mhm she didn't keep you that's a good sign she didn't admit me to the hospital yeah when anytime they say clear the rest of your day that's when you got to yeah I am probably going to go on a Statin yeah which is fine as I just said that I didn't like it yeah well you look this is the story of getting older the medication just start racking that is how it's like oh my God I'm 37 now I'm on a Staten yeah you're already on the CA and you're on well not I'm I know I'm trying to sympathize with you so many to take at night now you should see the thing I take in the morning you know I have a pill [ __ ] sort right and there's so many that it's so laborious I do two weeks at a time just cuz it's so much faster if I I set up two weeks yeah but it's a I look like I'm a 100 when you go in my bathroom the biggest thing on my countertop is my pill selector yeah I mean most of mine are elective right which is nice I would I like if I travel and forget that I'll be fine yeah that's nice and I wonder if going on the stattin means I can like go crazy well that's I think how people [ __ ] up the stattin as they start cuz I remember being with my uncle one time and he was like eating you know six seven pounds of bacon he's like yeah I'm on you know I'm on whatever it used to be called lipor No lipor is one yeah just like Off to the Races and I'm like I'm not sure that that's supposed to be used she said which was reassuring you know it was weird and this is I think I'm getting more context to why Dr Ison was like there's weird stuff here because there is a gene that basically shows hereditary cholesterol stuff and mine is not I don't have it o but then there's this other piece called familial something I forget the word and she's like you probably have that but you probably only have one as opposed to two she said some people who have two have like 900 wow do you think you could reframe it and get excited and start telling people like I'm going to ston Island um no I'll try it okay sounds fun although I don't really want to go there well no I'm sure we have some listeners in no I mean I want to I do want to go there what if the medication was called upper side oh I would love it I would love it okay um anyway most of these participants describe their interest in BDSM starting at a young age without necessarily having a sexualized component for example some participants describe liking to be tied up or blindfolded during various makeb beleve games such as cops and robbers these participants often said they were quote born liking BDSM or that they were wired that way about 7% indicated that they had an aha moment later in life realizing they had always been interested in BDSM practices then there's extrinsic Origins 22% of participants describe extrinsic oranges oranges 11% reported it being connected to a history of childhood sexual abuse I would to guess Pro wrongly obviously that that was a bigger percentage yeah oh wow 9% due to parental discipline example spanking with an object another 9% introduced it through play as a child cops and robbers except that it was a friend to introduce the idea of restraints as opposed to them and 9% % reported being introduced to BDSM as an adult by a recent sexual partner interesting as of yet I can't relate to either side of the equation as being very appealing to me that's not I don't really want to be dominated and I also don't want to like dominate or be masochistic cuz I can relate to most of these sexual things I'm like yeah I could get I could see getting into that yeah I definitely don't want to be you might want to dominate I don't know cuz I yeah but I have that in life uhhuh so I don't think I need to play that out there CEO you would go the other way but you don't want to go the other way I don't I don't feel safe enough in that environment to be dominated right even though you set the rules we should say that that is the interesting thing about it you set your own rules yeah but I think I don't you don't even know what your rules no I don't trust people enough to follow the rules during sex and people get sure you get a little their hormones are all yeah mess blood's moving from the brain to other areas I don't trust it you're you know as you said about chimps mhm I haven't watched yet and I do I do really want to watched the second episode last night he mentioned the cell that activates when to some people when you show them a picture of Jennifer Aniston oh that's so cool and you know I'd really like her to come on and I just want to say that out loud sure put it in the yeah I want to put that in the universe love it too and um another plea to Selena Gomez my okay we're doing the whole we're doing a roll call I follow yeah um still haven't her back from JayZ if you're listening you know I Eminem but so that's it and happy birthday oh thanks yeah we're going to go till September 24th well 3rd oh oh that's going to be such a sad day the 24th the first day without a happy birthday yeah I mean I'm inclined to go fine I'll keep going but no then it's not you would care less come it means nothing next August it's like when you tell everyone they're your favorite person yeah it's just like that Waters it all time or love you love you [Music]