1 00:00:00,180 --> 00:00:02,380 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedanta. 2 00:00:03,480 --> 00:00:05,527 You can take a horse to water. 3 00:00:05,610 --> 00:00:07,170 but you can't make him drink. 4 00:00:07,350 --> 00:00:11,610 It's an old saying, but it captures a fundamental truth about human nature. 5 00:00:12,330 --> 00:00:16,437 How often have you come by people who fail to seize the opportunities in front 6 00:00:16,521 --> 00:00:20,550 of them, who decline to make the most of the privileges they've been given? 7 00:00:20,730 --> 00:00:25,889 If you're a parent or a teacher, you may have sometimes felt like saying to a kid, 8 00:00:25,972 --> 00:00:27,570 I can't make you want it. 9 00:00:28,970 --> 00:00:33,210 If you're a manager, perhaps you've told an employee, there's a ladder over here. 10 00:00:33,540 --> 00:00:35,640 But you have to be the one to climb it. 11 00:00:36,690 --> 00:00:41,088 Sometimes the thing that needs to be seized is not an opportunity, 12 00:00:41,171 --> 00:00:46,657 but a lifeline. Do you know people stuck in bad situations? Unhappy marriages? 13 00:00:46,740 --> 00:00:49,893 dead-end jobs, soul-crushing living conditions, 14 00:00:49,976 --> 00:00:54,520 who seem unwilling to escape even when the chance presents itself? 15 00:00:54,870 --> 00:00:56,610 Thank you. Does that describe 16 00:00:57,210 --> 00:00:58,043 You? 17 00:01:00,850 --> 00:01:03,942 Today on the show, and in a follow-up episode next week, 18 00:01:04,025 --> 00:01:07,118 why do some people act on the possibilities before them, 19 00:01:07,201 --> 00:01:10,830 while others believe that nothing they do can make a difference? 20 00:01:12,360 --> 00:01:18,757 . How to discover or rediscover your ability to change things for the better . 21 00:01:18,840 --> 00:01:21,060 This week on Hidden Brain. 22 00:01:28,440 --> 00:01:32,019 Every day, life presents us with small moments of possibility. 23 00:01:32,102 --> 00:01:35,327 A conversation that could change the course of a career. 24 00:01:35,410 --> 00:01:40,052 A relationship that could be repaired. A job posting that could become the start 25 00:01:40,136 --> 00:01:41,140 of something new. 26 00:01:42,090 --> 00:01:46,100 Some people step toward those moments almost instinctively. 27 00:01:46,183 --> 00:01:48,750 Others turn away without even trying. 28 00:01:49,020 --> 00:01:54,057 Today, we explore the hidden psychological forces that determine which path we take 29 00:01:54,140 --> 00:01:58,520 and why the stories we tell about ourselves can become self-fulfilling. 30 00:01:59,190 --> 00:02:03,370 At the University of Pennsylvania, psychologist Martin Seligman has spent 31 00:02:03,453 --> 00:02:07,950 many years studying these questions. Marty Seligman, welcome to Hidden Brain. 32 00:02:08,400 --> 00:02:11,240 Thank you, Shankar. I'm happy to be here. 33 00:02:12,810 --> 00:02:17,490 Marty, I want to take you back to what might be your earliest memory. 34 00:02:17,573 --> 00:02:22,140 Tell me the story about a time when you saw your mother crying. 35 00:02:23,250 --> 00:02:24,007 I'm... 36 00:02:24,090 --> 00:02:30,570 Two and a half years old. And I think this really is my first memory. And, uh, 37 00:02:31,050 --> 00:02:36,833 I hear these heartbroken sobs and gasps coming from the next room. 38 00:02:36,917 --> 00:02:43,678 And I run in to see my mother. And there she is sitting on the second step of 39 00:02:43,761 --> 00:02:50,250 the stairs to the upstairs with her head in her hands. And she's sobbing. 40 00:02:53,280 --> 00:02:58,860 Many years later, I tried to figure out what was really going on. 41 00:02:59,490 --> 00:03:05,940 . It would have been Mid-early 1945 42 00:03:06,540 --> 00:03:13,540 I think the concentration camps had opened and all of my mother's Hungarian 43 00:03:14,689 --> 00:03:21,689 relatives, her family that she abandoned in Hungary were murdered. 44 00:03:22,440 --> 00:03:23,257 you 45 00:03:23,340 --> 00:03:29,080 But something happened to me then, Chakra, that actually fits with the hidden brain. 46 00:03:29,340 --> 00:03:32,917 And that is when I look at the photos of me... 47 00:03:33,000 --> 00:03:34,440 I'm a... 48 00:03:34,650 --> 00:03:40,910 smiley hair down to my shoulders. 49 00:03:41,430 --> 00:03:45,730 ebullient kid up until about age three. 50 00:03:46,320 --> 00:03:53,320 And then when I look at my photos up to my teenage and beyond, I'm tight lipped. 51 00:03:54,211 --> 00:04:01,211 I'm unsmiling. I'm looking thoughtful. And when I look at my really early photographs 52 00:04:02,596 --> 00:04:08,120 of the smiley, a bullying kid, I don't recognize myself. 53 00:04:08,790 --> 00:04:09,623 you 54 00:04:10,560 --> 00:04:11,393 Amen. 55 00:04:12,330 --> 00:04:13,163 you 56 00:04:16,170 --> 00:04:20,479 Marty, I want to skip forward to another experience a few years later when you were 57 00:04:20,563 --> 00:04:24,608 13. Your dad was driving you in the car, and he shared something with you that 58 00:04:24,691 --> 00:04:27,390 was very disturbing. Describe for me what happened. 59 00:04:28,860 --> 00:04:35,700 It's now 1955. I'm 13 years old and I 60 00:04:36,000 --> 00:04:37,940 I go to... 61 00:04:38,160 --> 00:04:43,669 My second day of playing golf with my friend Bob Kaiser, 62 00:04:43,752 --> 00:04:49,660 and when my father drops us off at the golf course, he says, 63 00:04:49,744 --> 00:04:52,240 I can't feel my left arm. 64 00:04:53,790 --> 00:04:57,999 And that scared me and it scared Bob also. 65 00:04:58,083 --> 00:05:05,083 I slept overnight at my best friend Jeff Albert's house and I had this dreadful 66 00:05:06,157 --> 00:05:13,157 feeling that something was wrong. And I walked home probably nine in the morning 67 00:05:14,333 --> 00:05:18,830 the next day and there was my father being a 68 00:05:19,140 --> 00:05:22,020 dragged out on a stretcher. 69 00:05:22,950 --> 00:05:27,097 into an ambulance. and 70 00:05:27,180 --> 00:05:34,020 He had had a small stroke. Thank you. 71 00:05:35,010 --> 00:05:39,090 And then within a couple of days, Shankar, my mother said, 72 00:05:39,180 --> 00:05:41,940 My father had had massive strokes. 73 00:05:42,780 --> 00:05:48,637 And in the next couple of months, I visited my father reluctantly. 74 00:05:48,720 --> 00:05:52,040 I was really afraid of this helplessness. 75 00:05:52,200 --> 00:05:53,340 that I saw 76 00:05:54,360 --> 00:05:59,180 and My father was paralyzed. He could speak. 77 00:05:59,400 --> 00:06:01,820 And he basically said... 78 00:06:02,490 --> 00:06:05,030 I'm helpless. I don't want to die. 79 00:06:06,510 --> 00:06:11,985 I love you and your sister and your mother, and I don't want to die. 80 00:06:12,069 --> 00:06:16,810 And I think this was the major experience of my childhood. 81 00:06:18,450 --> 00:06:21,877 I'm wondering, Marie, if you can spend a minute talking about the helplessness 82 00:06:21,960 --> 00:06:24,262 that you had seen in your mother when she was crying, 83 00:06:24,345 --> 00:06:27,862 the helplessness that you saw in your father when he told you that he was afraid 84 00:06:27,945 --> 00:06:28,778 of dying, 85 00:06:29,130 --> 00:06:30,480 How did that make you feel? 86 00:06:31,020 --> 00:06:38,020 It's hard for me to remember Shankar. I know my response was avoidance, 87 00:06:39,540 --> 00:06:46,540 not to visit my father, not to see more of it. But very interestingly, 88 00:06:47,940 --> 00:06:51,090 when I got to college, Thank you. 89 00:06:51,330 --> 00:06:53,950 I found myself wearing black. 90 00:06:54,210 --> 00:07:00,854 all the time and thinking all the time about death. I think those were the, 91 00:07:00,937 --> 00:07:07,850 if you will, the hidden brain consequences of whatever happened when I visited 92 00:07:07,933 --> 00:07:08,830 my father. 93 00:07:14,000 --> 00:07:17,220 Our experiences teach us lessons about the world. 94 00:07:17,340 --> 00:07:19,616 They also teach us lessons about ourselves, 95 00:07:19,700 --> 00:07:23,183 whether it's worth taking a risk, whether setbacks are temporary, 96 00:07:23,266 --> 00:07:26,120 and whether our actions can shape what happens next. 97 00:07:26,550 --> 00:07:29,130 Those lessons can be remarkably powerful. 98 00:07:31,070 --> 00:07:36,167 When we come back, Mardi steps into a psych lab and starts to understand 99 00:07:36,250 --> 00:07:40,916 the true horror of helplessness. You're listening to Hidden Brain. 100 00:07:40,999 --> 00:07:42,510 I'm Shankar Vedantam. 101 00:07:43,320 --> 00:07:44,320 . 102 00:07:55,680 --> 00:07:58,693 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. 103 00:07:58,776 --> 00:08:03,600 All of us carry around a private explanation for why things happen. 104 00:08:03,990 --> 00:08:07,790 When something goes wrong, we ask ourselves, was this just bad luck? 105 00:08:08,100 --> 00:08:12,420 Is it going to last? Does it say something about who I am? 106 00:08:12,570 --> 00:08:16,016 We usually don't notice ourselves asking these questions, 107 00:08:16,099 --> 00:08:19,690 but the answers can quietly shape the course of our lives. 108 00:08:21,000 --> 00:08:25,699 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania who studies 109 00:08:25,782 --> 00:08:27,780 the science of human flourishing. 110 00:08:28,410 --> 00:08:34,386 *music* Marty, you told me about some personal encounters with hopelessness 111 00:08:34,470 --> 00:08:37,940 and helplessness that you had as a teenager. A few years later, 112 00:08:38,024 --> 00:08:41,099 as a 21-year-old entering graduate school in psychology, 113 00:08:41,183 --> 00:08:45,330 you had the opportunity to explore these same themes in a research context. 114 00:08:45,414 --> 00:08:49,731 Paint a picture for me of what you saw when you first entered the psychologist 115 00:08:49,814 --> 00:08:53,650 Richard Solomon's lab. What was he working on, and what did you see? 116 00:08:55,020 --> 00:09:00,851 Well, they were doing experiments that I actually felt were horrifying. 117 00:09:00,934 --> 00:09:07,515 I'm a dog lover, and psychologists were working with dogs at the time and giving 118 00:09:07,598 --> 00:09:10,680 them mild to moderate electric shock. 119 00:09:10,830 --> 00:09:15,882 So these were very difficult experiments for me to participate in. 120 00:09:15,966 --> 00:09:20,790 But there was something very puzzling going on, and that is... 121 00:09:21,060 --> 00:09:25,080 The primary puzzle that, 122 00:09:25,230 --> 00:09:31,999 animal learning psychologists were working on was Pavlovian conditioning. 123 00:09:32,083 --> 00:09:37,867 A dog or a rat or a person gets a tone followed by a shark. 124 00:09:37,950 --> 00:09:42,710 And then the tone comes to elicit fear. 125 00:09:43,380 --> 00:09:50,380 And they were working on that. And indeed, in phase one of their experiments, 126 00:09:51,111 --> 00:09:58,111 dogs were put into a hammock and given Pavlovian conditioning with shock. 127 00:09:58,470 --> 00:09:59,927 And but, 128 00:10:00,010 --> 00:10:06,034 They were running into this enormous problem is they wanted to see the next day 129 00:10:06,118 --> 00:10:09,436 when dogs were put in a different situation, 130 00:10:09,520 --> 00:10:15,497 a shuttle box in which the dogs just needed to run from one side to the other. 131 00:10:15,580 --> 00:10:17,120 to turn off shock. 132 00:10:18,010 --> 00:10:20,630 that the dogs didn't run. 133 00:10:20,920 --> 00:10:26,147 So in some ways, what you observed was that on day one, 134 00:10:26,230 --> 00:10:33,230 the dogs were essentially learning to associate the painful electric shock 135 00:10:33,375 --> 00:10:40,340 with the stone, but they could do nothing about it. They couldn't escape. 136 00:10:40,423 --> 00:10:47,423 On day two, the dogs were placed in a position where they were hearing these 137 00:10:47,761 --> 00:10:48,594 stones 138 00:10:50,920 --> 00:10:54,301 This was a puzzle for the people in your lab. 139 00:10:54,384 --> 00:10:59,844 You interpreted this in some ways as the dogs experiencing helplessness? 140 00:10:59,927 --> 00:11:06,080 I said, you know, there's something much more important in Pavlovian conditioning 141 00:11:06,163 --> 00:11:11,860 than learning the association of a tone with shock. The dogs are helpless. 142 00:11:12,670 --> 00:11:18,544 In Pavlovian conditioning, by definition, there's nothing you can do about it. 143 00:11:18,628 --> 00:11:23,586 The shock comes regardless of what you do. And their interest was, 144 00:11:23,669 --> 00:11:29,544 did you learn to be afraid of the tone? But could it be that more important to 145 00:11:29,627 --> 00:11:35,050 an animal or person is the fact that you're helpless in this situation? 146 00:11:35,200 --> 00:11:40,440 and that you might be learning that nothing you do matters. 147 00:11:43,600 --> 00:11:48,035 And if that were so, it would make sense that the next day, 148 00:11:48,119 --> 00:11:53,480 when you got shocked again, you just lay there and didn't do anything. 149 00:11:54,070 --> 00:12:01,070 So this began a major uphill battle between me and the behaviorists. 150 00:12:01,257 --> 00:12:05,590 And what was behind it was the notion of, 151 00:12:05,710 --> 00:12:10,978 that people and animals were cognitive, that they could think, 152 00:12:11,061 --> 00:12:15,207 that they could integrate experience across time. 153 00:12:15,290 --> 00:12:21,850 And we theorize that the animals has learned that nothing they did mattered. 154 00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:27,864 I understand that a psychologist named Donald Hiroto extended some of this work 155 00:12:27,947 --> 00:12:31,878 with a very interesting experiment involving human beings. 156 00:12:31,961 --> 00:12:34,660 Describe for me what Hiroto did, Marty. 157 00:12:35,170 --> 00:12:41,057 Yeah. So Don Herodo said, let's try exactly the same thing with humans. 158 00:12:41,140 --> 00:12:45,854 So what Don did, and it became an entire field, 159 00:12:45,938 --> 00:12:52,938 he put for day one headphones on people and turned on a loud, annoying noise. 160 00:12:53,797 --> 00:13:00,797 This is the equivalent of shock, nothing traumatic, but very annoying. 161 00:13:00,943 --> 00:13:02,777 And for one group. 162 00:13:02,860 --> 00:13:07,406 Nothing you did mattered. For a second group, you got the tone, 163 00:13:07,489 --> 00:13:13,542 but you could press a button. to turn off the noise. And then the next day, 164 00:13:13,625 --> 00:13:17,990 Don built a human shuttle box about four feet long. 165 00:13:18,073 --> 00:13:22,176 You put your hand on one side and noise went on. 166 00:13:22,260 --> 00:13:28,980 And all you had to do was move your hand to the other side of the shuttle box. 167 00:13:29,063 --> 00:13:33,860 And lo and behold, he found that the people who had had 168 00:13:34,270 --> 00:13:41,160 the helplessness experience inescapable noise just sat there with their hand 169 00:13:41,243 --> 00:13:47,390 in the shuttle box and didn't move and that was the beginning of uh 170 00:13:47,890 --> 00:13:53,625 a vibrant field of learned helplessness, which went way beyond the animal 171 00:13:53,709 --> 00:13:58,810 laboratory to the question of human trauma and human depression. 172 00:14:01,210 --> 00:14:06,655 So you use this term learned helplessness a moment ago, 173 00:14:06,738 --> 00:14:12,585 and it's an important term to stop and ponder for a second. 174 00:14:12,668 --> 00:14:19,668 How would you describe the phenomenon of learned helplessness, Marty? What is it? 175 00:14:21,850 --> 00:14:27,135 Here are the basics of learned helplessness. First, 176 00:14:27,218 --> 00:14:29,807 the event is inescapable. 177 00:14:29,890 --> 00:14:36,478 the first event nothing you can do matters and what we believed was that people 178 00:14:36,561 --> 00:14:38,957 learned that nothing they did 179 00:14:39,040 --> 00:14:45,704 mattered. And this had two consequences. The first consequence is you became 180 00:14:45,787 --> 00:14:51,380 passive later on, particularly when you faced a similar kind of 181 00:14:51,490 --> 00:14:57,709 annoying or traumatic event. And the second problem was that you had a lot 182 00:14:57,792 --> 00:14:59,410 of trouble learning 183 00:14:59,590 --> 00:15:05,852 that you could do something about it. So once you had learned that nothing you did 184 00:15:05,935 --> 00:15:12,120 mattered, it was very hard to unlearn it. But the most surprising thing we found, 185 00:15:12,203 --> 00:15:16,453 Shankar, was there was an emotional consequence as well, 186 00:15:16,536 --> 00:15:19,090 that people felt sad and anxious. 187 00:15:19,300 --> 00:15:24,540 So there was passivity, cognitive difficulty, 188 00:15:24,623 --> 00:15:30,099 and emotional sadness and anxiety. Importantly, 189 00:15:30,183 --> 00:15:37,183 this was not the result of trauma itself. We controlled for that. 190 00:15:37,872 --> 00:15:42,840 It was a result of not having any control. 191 00:15:42,970 --> 00:15:49,970 over trauma. And so that was the operative variable that in many ways has been the, 192 00:15:57,624 --> 00:16:03,450 the arc of my entire life's work. 193 00:16:06,220 --> 00:16:11,067 And of course, you can think about so many groups of people who experience something 194 00:16:11,150 --> 00:16:14,999 like this in the real world. If you're a small child, for instance, 195 00:16:15,083 --> 00:16:18,286 your life is governed by people who are bigger than you, 196 00:16:18,370 --> 00:16:21,338 more powerful than you. And if they treat you badly, 197 00:16:21,422 --> 00:16:24,625 you might not have options to escape your circumstances. 198 00:16:24,709 --> 00:16:27,090 If you're trapped in poverty, for example, 199 00:16:27,174 --> 00:16:30,612 you might not have the ability to escape your circumstances. 200 00:16:30,695 --> 00:16:32,280 And you can quickly see how 201 00:16:36,220 --> 00:16:38,140 bigger consequences in the real world. 202 00:16:38,860 --> 00:16:43,945 Exactly. And so I thought a great deal about poverty, about war, 203 00:16:44,029 --> 00:16:49,114 and in particular, adult circumstances in which you're helpless. 204 00:16:49,197 --> 00:16:55,900 And there was a literature that I got very interested in about sudden death itself. 205 00:17:08,860 --> 00:17:13,316 friend Robert. They were down to about 95 pounds by then, 206 00:17:13,399 --> 00:17:19,527 but they kept Robert going by telling them that he was first on the list to be 207 00:17:19,610 --> 00:17:24,145 released and that in December he was going to be released, 208 00:17:24,229 --> 00:17:30,360 particularly if he cooperated and told them about what he did during the war. 209 00:17:38,860 --> 00:17:45,860 and within a few days was dead. So I was not only interested in early experiences 210 00:17:47,932 --> 00:17:53,577 of abuse, helplessness, systematic experiences like poverty, 211 00:17:53,660 --> 00:18:00,660 but adult experiences in which even though you've had a lifetime of doing well. 212 00:18:01,390 --> 00:18:03,850 And you're deprived... 213 00:18:04,090 --> 00:18:08,770 of control, what the consequences were. 214 00:18:09,730 --> 00:18:10,427 you 215 00:18:10,510 --> 00:18:17,510 *music* 216 00:18:20,950 --> 00:18:25,992 I understand that at one point, Marty, you spotted a connection between what you were 217 00:18:26,075 --> 00:18:30,574 seeing with learned helplessness and the pervasive phenomenon of depression. 218 00:18:30,658 --> 00:18:33,130 Talk about that connection that you made. 219 00:18:34,210 --> 00:18:41,210 When I was a graduate student, one of my young professors was someone named Jim 220 00:18:41,890 --> 00:18:42,723 Gear. 221 00:18:42,820 --> 00:18:48,167 And Jim came up to look at the helpless dogs and he looked at him and said, 222 00:18:48,250 --> 00:18:50,060 Marty, that's depression. 223 00:18:51,460 --> 00:18:58,460 I said, well, what's depression, Jim? And now, if we go back to 1970, 224 00:18:58,876 --> 00:19:02,100 depression was not a category. 225 00:19:02,590 --> 00:19:06,698 So if you looked at the diagnostic categories, 226 00:19:06,781 --> 00:19:10,790 there was something called manic depression. 227 00:19:11,140 --> 00:19:17,441 But by 1975, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American 228 00:19:17,524 --> 00:19:24,524 Psychiatric Association for the first time isolated a new disorder called unipolar 229 00:19:25,456 --> 00:19:26,507 depression. 230 00:19:26,590 --> 00:19:33,590 Unipolar depression had nine different symptoms, and if five of them 231 00:19:34,300 --> 00:19:40,288 were present for two weeks or more, you got the diagnosis. 232 00:19:40,372 --> 00:19:45,920 So the symptoms were passivity, cognitive difficulty, 233 00:19:46,030 --> 00:19:53,030 sadness, anxiety, trouble sleeping, food not tasting good, numbness, 234 00:19:53,542 --> 00:19:57,630 lack of mirth, and thoughts of death. 235 00:19:59,020 --> 00:20:05,457 So... I looked at those nine symptoms and then I looked at the... 236 00:20:05,540 --> 00:20:09,560 very large literature I learned helplessness, 237 00:20:09,643 --> 00:20:15,867 which had accumulated by 1975. Eight of the nine symptoms We're prisoned. 238 00:20:15,950 --> 00:20:21,612 The only one that wasn't present in the laboratory was thought to death. 239 00:20:21,695 --> 00:20:26,639 And that's probably because we're using things like loud noise. 240 00:20:26,722 --> 00:20:31,430 And so I proposed that learned helplessness was a model of, 241 00:20:31,820 --> 00:20:38,228 of depression. And indeed, that went on to become the leading model of depression. 242 00:20:38,311 --> 00:20:44,719 And it led to a vibrant neuroscience in which people tried out drugs that broke up 243 00:20:44,802 --> 00:20:48,835 helplessness in the laboratory in rats, for example, 244 00:20:48,919 --> 00:20:54,460 and then tried them in people. And it turned out the drugs that worked 245 00:21:02,990 --> 00:21:07,806 Now, the research that you were conducting at this time was focused on the people who 246 00:21:07,889 --> 00:21:12,071 experienced adverse conditions. They became helpless and then perhaps even 247 00:21:12,154 --> 00:21:16,682 depressed. But there was also another group of subjects that at first you didn't 248 00:21:16,765 --> 00:21:20,716 pay so much attention to. Tell me about this group of subjects, Marty. 249 00:21:20,800 --> 00:21:22,990 Who were they and what did you notice? 250 00:21:24,530 --> 00:21:29,782 In the entire helplessness literature, both in animals and people, 251 00:21:29,865 --> 00:21:36,088 the helplessness effect was statistical. So when I described a person becoming 252 00:21:36,171 --> 00:21:41,504 passive and just sitting in the shuttle box and not doing anything, 253 00:21:41,587 --> 00:21:44,400 that was five out of eight. people. 254 00:21:44,900 --> 00:21:50,720 on average, or a helpless rat, that five out of eight of them, 255 00:21:51,020 --> 00:21:54,777 were helpless, but about a third were not. 256 00:21:54,860 --> 00:21:59,755 And so starting in the 1970s, I began to ask, well, 257 00:21:59,839 --> 00:22:03,060 what is it about some people that 258 00:22:03,200 --> 00:22:10,200 some animals that made them resilient or resistant to helplessness. 259 00:22:11,847 --> 00:22:15,417 What is it about some people 260 00:22:15,500 --> 00:22:21,747 that make you in spite of the fact that your girlfriend has rejected you, 261 00:22:21,830 --> 00:22:28,160 your stocks have gone down. What is it that gives some people the courage 262 00:22:28,370 --> 00:22:34,010 to transcend helplessness. And this was the turning point in my career. 263 00:22:35,930 --> 00:22:42,930 *music* 264 00:22:50,840 --> 00:22:55,608 So you started thinking about what might distinguish the people who become helpless 265 00:22:55,691 --> 00:22:59,847 and passive in the face of adversity from those who remain motivated and 266 00:22:59,930 --> 00:23:04,027 and energetic. Were there differences between the groups in the stories they 267 00:23:04,110 --> 00:23:06,090 told about their experiences, Marty? 268 00:23:07,970 --> 00:23:12,130 Yes, and it led to nailing down 269 00:23:12,470 --> 00:23:17,780 what it was about the one third of people who didn't become helpless. 270 00:23:17,870 --> 00:23:20,550 Optimism versus pessimism. 271 00:23:21,350 --> 00:23:28,350 These were vague terms to me at the time. But what we wondered was when you have a, 272 00:23:29,330 --> 00:23:34,470 bad experience, a traumatic experience, you could believe 273 00:23:35,000 --> 00:23:36,540 There's nothing I can do. 274 00:23:37,160 --> 00:23:44,160 and I'm helpless. But we postulated from the stories we heard that, uh, 275 00:23:45,740 --> 00:23:52,493 What protected people from helplessness, what made them resilient, 276 00:23:52,577 --> 00:23:56,720 was different dimensions of interpreting 277 00:23:56,810 --> 00:24:00,230 What happens to you when bad events occur? 278 00:24:00,650 --> 00:24:06,830 So first, you might believe that the bad event is, 279 00:24:07,010 --> 00:24:09,430 was going to last forever. 280 00:24:09,560 --> 00:24:14,863 or you might believe it was temporary. And so, for example, 281 00:24:14,946 --> 00:24:20,420 if you fail an examination, you might say, I had a hangover. 282 00:24:21,530 --> 00:24:26,219 That's temporary. That means the next time you confront an examination, 283 00:24:26,302 --> 00:24:31,210 you'll be fine. On the other hand, you might say to yourself, I'm stupid. 284 00:24:32,240 --> 00:24:36,660 That's permanent. So the first thing we thought about was, 285 00:24:36,920 --> 00:24:40,680 When bad events occur to you, Shankar, do you... 286 00:24:40,820 --> 00:24:47,820 reflexively believe they're gonna last forever or do you believe no just this one 287 00:24:48,377 --> 00:24:55,377 time the second dimension we worried about was pervasive versus local and that 288 00:24:55,655 --> 00:25:01,940 is you're rejected by your girlfriend and You could believe... 289 00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:03,800 I'm unlovable. 290 00:25:04,490 --> 00:25:10,654 Well, unlovable is pervasive, and it means no matter who you come across, 291 00:25:10,737 --> 00:25:17,157 you're not going to find love. On the other hand, you might say, that's her. 292 00:25:17,240 --> 00:25:24,240 And we postulated that people who believed that helplessness was pervasive would go 293 00:25:24,343 --> 00:25:30,447 on to generalize across situations. People who believed it was pervasive. 294 00:25:30,530 --> 00:25:37,172 temporary would recover quickly. So we began to look at the way people 295 00:25:37,255 --> 00:25:41,207 interpreted the bad events in their lives. 296 00:25:41,290 --> 00:25:47,163 And this opened up an enormous literature on learned optimism. 297 00:25:47,246 --> 00:25:54,246 And it basically showed that the people who became helpless in the laboratory 298 00:25:54,644 --> 00:25:58,460 believed the helplessness was permanent 299 00:25:58,550 --> 00:26:05,227 pervasive and typically their fault. The third of people who didn't become helpless 300 00:26:05,310 --> 00:26:11,009 believed it was temporary. It was just this one situation and it wasn't 301 00:26:11,093 --> 00:26:12,070 their fault. 302 00:26:12,710 --> 00:26:17,690 you you 303 00:26:17,810 --> 00:26:21,788 So having established the importance of explanatory styles, Mardi, 304 00:26:21,872 --> 00:26:26,465 you began to generate evidence that an optimistic or pessimistic explanatory 305 00:26:26,548 --> 00:26:30,527 style can significantly affect how people go about pursuing goals. 306 00:26:30,610 --> 00:26:34,650 One place you explored this was at the West Point Military Academy. 307 00:26:34,733 --> 00:26:37,010 Paint a picture for me of that study. 308 00:26:38,300 --> 00:26:42,113 So we not only asked the question about depression, 309 00:26:42,197 --> 00:26:46,850 so what we did was to take large groups of people at time one, 310 00:26:46,934 --> 00:26:52,963 measure their explanatory style, and then go on to predict who's going to become 311 00:26:53,046 --> 00:26:58,700 depressed. And it turned out the pessimists, the people who believed that. 312 00:26:59,000 --> 00:27:04,221 it's me, it's going to last forever, are between two and eight times as likely 313 00:27:04,304 --> 00:27:07,825 to become depressed. And so we then ask the question, 314 00:27:07,908 --> 00:27:10,220 let's test this in the real world. 315 00:27:10,430 --> 00:27:16,468 And so one thing we did is we went to West Point and West Point at the time and still 316 00:27:16,551 --> 00:27:20,933 does to some extent had something called Beast Barracks. Well, 317 00:27:21,016 --> 00:27:25,902 West Point is one of the most selective schools in the United States. 318 00:27:25,985 --> 00:27:29,730 These are very highly qualified young men and women. 319 00:27:40,430 --> 00:27:46,347 of helplessness experience in which the attempt is explicitly to break them. 320 00:27:46,430 --> 00:27:52,001 They're woken up at four in the morning, sent on a 10-mile run. 321 00:27:52,084 --> 00:27:58,193 They're systematically abused. And my memory is that about a third of 322 00:27:58,276 --> 00:28:00,430 the candidates drop out. 323 00:28:00,710 --> 00:28:06,598 So we asked the question, could you predict from day one in Beast Barracks who 324 00:28:06,682 --> 00:28:12,730 was going to drop out? And it turned out it was the pessimists who dropped out. 325 00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:19,413 We then looked at something very similar about the grades you get in college. 326 00:28:19,496 --> 00:28:23,054 We looked at the optimists and the pessimists, 327 00:28:23,138 --> 00:28:27,725 and we asked who does much better than their talent augers. 328 00:28:27,809 --> 00:28:33,822 And it was the optimists. And who does much worse? And it was the pessimists. 329 00:28:33,905 --> 00:28:38,180 And then in selling insurance, exactly the same thing. 330 00:28:43,400 --> 00:28:47,561 helplessness and optimism in Olympic swimming. 331 00:28:47,644 --> 00:28:54,019 And just come back from a day of looking at our Olympic swimming data. 332 00:28:54,102 --> 00:29:01,102 And the phone was ringing. I picked up the phone and it was an insurance salesman. 333 00:29:01,667 --> 00:29:06,012 And I hung up on him. And I said to myself, gee, 334 00:29:06,095 --> 00:29:09,140 this must be an awfully difficult 335 00:29:13,400 --> 00:29:19,859 And it so happened that the month before, I had become friendly from a professional 336 00:29:19,942 --> 00:29:23,170 meeting with the CEO of Metropolitan Life. 337 00:29:23,253 --> 00:29:28,687 And I had told him about optimism and pessimism. He said, well, Marty, 338 00:29:28,771 --> 00:29:33,890 if you ever have an application to life insurance, give me a call. 339 00:29:33,973 --> 00:29:40,200 So I called him up and I said, well, how do you hire a life insurance salesman? 340 00:29:43,400 --> 00:29:50,400 Do you want to make a lot of money? And we hire 5,000 new salesmen a year because 341 00:29:52,101 --> 00:29:58,410 of this. But... After one year, 50% of them drop out. 342 00:29:58,760 --> 00:29:59,917 And after four years, 343 00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:04,777 For years, 90% of them have quit. They just can't take money. 344 00:30:04,860 --> 00:30:06,100 The rejection. 345 00:30:07,140 --> 00:30:13,145 said, well, I think I've got a test that might predict who can stick with 346 00:30:13,228 --> 00:30:19,650 a difficult job like life insurance. We just found out it predicts grade point 347 00:30:19,734 --> 00:30:23,737 average and it predicts Olympic swimming success. 348 00:30:23,820 --> 00:30:27,240 Maybe it'll predict professional success. 349 00:30:28,940 --> 00:30:34,100 So indeed, Metropolitan Life started to give the test. 350 00:30:37,140 --> 00:30:43,044 life insurance salesman is more optimistic than you or me. 351 00:30:43,127 --> 00:30:49,031 You have to be frankincidentally optimistic to even start. 352 00:30:49,115 --> 00:30:56,115 And then they hired a special force of 140 salespeople who knocked the top off 353 00:30:57,167 --> 00:31:03,980 of optimism scale. This special force outsold everyone at MetLife. 354 00:31:07,140 --> 00:31:11,620 as opposed to 10% were still working. 355 00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:19,240 So we basically found across success in beast barracks, grade point average, 356 00:31:19,805 --> 00:31:26,589 and difficult jobs that the optimists did better than the pessimists. 357 00:31:26,673 --> 00:31:33,640 And they were the people who didn't become helpless in the laboratory. 358 00:31:34,530 --> 00:31:40,330 *music* 359 00:31:41,070 --> 00:31:43,130 you 360 00:31:47,220 --> 00:31:49,943 Most of us think our lives are shaped by events, 361 00:31:50,027 --> 00:31:53,627 but just as important is the meaning we assign to those events. 362 00:31:53,711 --> 00:31:58,305 The way we interpret a setback today can quietly influence the decisions we make 363 00:31:58,389 --> 00:32:01,020 tomorrow and the future we ultimately create. 364 00:32:01,200 --> 00:32:06,296 When we come back, we'll explore one of the most powerful forces in human 365 00:32:06,380 --> 00:32:10,990 psychology. The belief that our choices can shape what happens next. 366 00:32:11,073 --> 00:32:14,560 You're listening to Hidden Brain, I'm Shankar Vedanta. 367 00:32:14,970 --> 00:32:20,130 *music* 368 00:32:21,390 --> 00:32:24,660 you you you 369 00:32:30,360 --> 00:32:32,720 This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam. 370 00:33:00,360 --> 00:33:05,274 www.fema.org. Use the subject line, How to Make a Difference. Again, 371 00:33:05,358 --> 00:33:07,780 that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org. 372 00:33:10,440 --> 00:33:14,398 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. 373 00:33:14,482 --> 00:33:18,262 He is the author of many books, including, most recently, Agency, 374 00:33:18,345 --> 00:33:20,960 the Psychological History of Human Progress. 375 00:33:22,650 --> 00:33:27,162 Marty, so much of this conversation has really been about whether people feel like 376 00:33:27,246 --> 00:33:31,477 they can make a difference in their own lives. It's about the idea of agency. 377 00:33:31,561 --> 00:33:33,130 How do you define that term? 378 00:33:34,980 --> 00:33:40,260 Agency is the opposite of learned helplessness. 379 00:33:40,620 --> 00:33:44,820 If you break it down, it's got three beliefs. 380 00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:50,703 The first is efficacy, and that's the belief that in the here and now, 381 00:33:50,787 --> 00:33:53,620 you can accomplish a specific goal. 382 00:33:54,060 --> 00:33:54,877 Thank you. 383 00:33:54,960 --> 00:34:01,960 The second was optimism. And that's the belief that you can accomplish this goal 384 00:34:02,730 --> 00:34:07,710 Not just now, but into the future and into the far future. 385 00:34:08,340 --> 00:34:14,380 And the third is imagination, which was the... 386 00:34:14,640 --> 00:34:19,112 range of possible goals that you might achieve. 387 00:34:19,195 --> 00:34:24,151 And the broader the range of goals, the more agency. 388 00:34:24,235 --> 00:34:31,235 So full-blown agency is efficacy. I can do it in the here and now. Optimism, 389 00:34:31,601 --> 00:34:35,685 I can do it in the future. And imagination, 390 00:34:35,768 --> 00:34:40,420 I can innovate across many different situations. 391 00:34:44,640 --> 00:34:45,530 you you 392 00:34:50,580 --> 00:34:54,009 So this idea of agency is something that fascinates you, 393 00:34:54,092 --> 00:34:58,420 and you think that it tells us the story of humankind. How so, Marty? 394 00:34:58,770 --> 00:35:04,350 My hypothesis was that because 395 00:35:04,530 --> 00:35:11,530 Agency is such a potent force that maybe this was the psychological state that 396 00:35:13,227 --> 00:35:17,130 was key to progress and innovation. 397 00:35:18,780 --> 00:35:24,563 Let me take you through some of the main highlights which convinced me of this. 398 00:35:24,647 --> 00:35:27,840 One of the great mysteries of human history 399 00:35:27,960 --> 00:35:31,320 It's called The Mystery of the Axial Age. 400 00:35:32,130 --> 00:35:35,620 So, Come back with me to 1000 BCE. 401 00:35:36,540 --> 00:35:41,939 What you've got is primitive societies, small villages. 402 00:35:42,022 --> 00:35:48,817 This is true of Greece, it's true of the Hebrews, it's true of China, 403 00:35:48,900 --> 00:35:55,080 it's true of India, it's true of Persia, a thousand years BCE. 404 00:36:06,240 --> 00:36:11,757 The Buddha has lived, Confucius has lived, Socrates has lived, 405 00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:17,538 and progress breaks out. Technology, medicine, arts, literature, 406 00:36:17,621 --> 00:36:22,860 the first spatterings of political freedom. What happened? 407 00:36:23,280 --> 00:36:27,930 between a thousand people and 500 BCE. 408 00:36:28,890 --> 00:36:31,340 I think I've discovered... The answer. 409 00:36:32,130 --> 00:36:37,350 And that is... Humans discover... 410 00:36:37,500 --> 00:36:39,720 The concept of agency. 411 00:36:42,270 --> 00:36:47,928 So the hypothesis I had was that maybe in 1000 BCE, 412 00:36:48,011 --> 00:36:54,990 they didn't have the words for agency, words like I can do it. 413 00:36:55,260 --> 00:36:59,940 human agency and the like. And there's an entire lexicon 414 00:37:00,150 --> 00:37:02,550 of agency which I had created. 415 00:37:02,730 --> 00:37:09,730 So in Homer, for example, in the Iliad, Achilles doesn't decide to act. 416 00:37:10,068 --> 00:37:17,068 Athena tells Achilles to act. But a hundred years later in the Odyssey, 417 00:37:17,405 --> 00:37:23,626 you've got Odysseus, who's this clever, cunning, wily person. 418 00:37:23,710 --> 00:37:29,167 The gods have started to leave the stage. And so 419 00:37:29,250 --> 00:37:34,390 Convincingly, across these cultures, by 500 BCE, 420 00:37:34,473 --> 00:37:39,613 you've got a massive vocabulary of human agency, 421 00:37:39,696 --> 00:37:44,810 and you can track it almost century by century. 422 00:37:44,970 --> 00:37:49,230 So I took the entire Old Testament. 423 00:37:49,680 --> 00:37:52,420 and looked for a gentic 424 00:37:52,740 --> 00:37:59,740 verbs and words. And grossly, you can see that the Torah is God-commanding. 425 00:38:01,080 --> 00:38:06,853 and humans obeying, with a few exceptions, like choose life. 426 00:38:06,936 --> 00:38:11,636 But as you go into the prophets and the writings, 427 00:38:11,719 --> 00:38:17,882 human agentic words occur more, divine agentic words occur less. 428 00:38:17,966 --> 00:38:24,422 And now it turns out you can have AI read the entire Old Testament, 429 00:38:24,505 --> 00:38:28,800 book by book, and rate how agentic each was. 430 00:38:29,070 --> 00:38:34,041 book is, and you plot it across time and it's linear. 431 00:38:34,124 --> 00:38:39,476 So as time goes on from the Torah to essentially 300 BCE, 432 00:38:39,559 --> 00:38:44,244 the Babylonian exile, more and more agency occurs. 433 00:38:44,327 --> 00:38:49,584 And if you plot it against human innovation, population, 434 00:38:49,667 --> 00:38:55,747 standard of living, political freedom, technology, it's linearly 435 00:38:55,830 --> 00:38:59,010 related to the development of the words. 436 00:39:04,890 --> 00:39:08,103 I mean, in some ways, the point that you're making, Marty, 437 00:39:08,187 --> 00:39:12,366 is that there was a time when people essentially turned their fates over to 438 00:39:12,450 --> 00:39:16,459 the gods, where they assumed that the gods were telling them what to do, 439 00:39:16,542 --> 00:39:19,983 that their fates were written on their foreheads, if you will. 440 00:39:20,066 --> 00:39:24,359 And over time, people started to feel, no, in fact, it's not the gods, but I, 441 00:39:24,443 --> 00:39:26,830 the individual who actually can do things. 442 00:39:34,890 --> 00:39:39,130 has shown signs of flourishing, signs of innovation and progress. 443 00:39:39,810 --> 00:39:46,810 Exactly so. Two comments on it. Progress and agency have not been linearly... 444 00:39:48,330 --> 00:39:53,489 going up in human history. And when does progress stagnate? 445 00:39:53,572 --> 00:39:59,970 When does the human condition deteriorate? And the Christian Middle Ages 446 00:40:00,370 --> 00:40:07,370 are a very interesting example of that. And this is not what you were taught 447 00:40:08,313 --> 00:40:15,313 in school. But basically, early Christianity is highly agentic and highly 448 00:40:15,942 --> 00:40:22,607 optimistic. And then something radical happens. In actually 383, 449 00:40:22,690 --> 00:40:25,750 AD and it's St. Augustine. 450 00:40:25,930 --> 00:40:32,070 St. Augustine says grace is arbitrarily evil. 451 00:40:32,530 --> 00:40:34,630 bestowed by God. 452 00:40:34,990 --> 00:40:40,110 Predestination occurs and there is no human will. 453 00:40:40,330 --> 00:40:41,350 That is... 454 00:40:41,980 --> 00:40:48,980 independent of arbitrary grace. This becomes the theology of the Middle Ages. 455 00:40:49,776 --> 00:40:51,700 And if you plot the 456 00:40:51,880 --> 00:40:58,840 progress across time. Basically, the Middle Ages believe that Okay. 457 00:40:59,080 --> 00:41:05,927 God does it and humans don't do it. And it's not until the Renaissance 458 00:41:06,010 --> 00:41:10,670 that Augustine's views are overthrown and progress breaks out. 459 00:41:12,400 --> 00:41:15,677 So that's one point. 460 00:41:15,760 --> 00:41:20,920 When does stagnation occur? But the other has to do with China. 461 00:41:21,520 --> 00:41:26,800 versus the West and the importance of agency in China. 462 00:41:27,580 --> 00:41:32,660 Western agency Shankar is about I can do it. 463 00:41:33,190 --> 00:41:39,250 the individual and indeed progress in the West is intimately related to 464 00:41:39,460 --> 00:41:45,430 to I can do it. But we've asked exactly the same question about the history 465 00:41:45,514 --> 00:41:52,300 of China. But in the history of China, we quantify we agency as, 466 00:41:52,390 --> 00:41:54,830 as well as eye agency. 467 00:41:55,720 --> 00:41:59,820 And to make a long story short, the book, 468 00:41:59,980 --> 00:42:06,980 balance in China between we agency and I agency is what predicts population, 469 00:42:09,174 --> 00:42:14,980 innovation, GDP and the like. And when we agency 470 00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:20,487 in the form of the state is very high and crushes individual agency, 471 00:42:20,570 --> 00:42:24,147 that's when you get stagnation and regression. 472 00:42:24,230 --> 00:42:30,035 But when there's a balance between collective agency and individual agency 473 00:42:30,118 --> 00:42:33,460 in China, that's when progress breaks out. 474 00:42:33,760 --> 00:42:34,593 . 475 00:42:35,500 --> 00:42:41,060 A reminder, has this conversation evoked your own experiences of feeling helpless? 476 00:42:41,170 --> 00:42:45,434 Or has it reminded you of a time when you stepped up and took charge of your own 477 00:42:45,517 --> 00:42:49,727 destiny? If you have a personal story you'd be willing to share with the Hidden 478 00:42:49,810 --> 00:42:53,531 Brain audience, or a question or comment about the science of optimism 479 00:42:53,614 --> 00:42:57,389 and pessimism, please find a very quiet room and record a voice memo on 480 00:42:57,472 --> 00:43:00,070 your phone. Two or three minutes is plenty. 481 00:43:00,160 --> 00:43:05,730 Then email the file to us at feedback at hiddenbrain.org using the subject line, 482 00:43:05,813 --> 00:43:11,750 How to Make a Difference. Again, that's feedback at hiddenbrain.org. 483 00:43:13,170 --> 00:43:18,069 In our episode next week, we take a deep dive into the ingredients and drivers 484 00:43:18,153 --> 00:43:22,988 of agency. We examine how people can become more agentic and how you can help 485 00:43:23,071 --> 00:43:26,374 the people around you discover their autonomy, drive, 486 00:43:26,457 --> 00:43:31,548 and self-confidence. Marty told me how he himself has taken his research to heart 487 00:43:31,631 --> 00:43:34,517 and learned to be more optimistic and agentic. 488 00:43:34,600 --> 00:43:37,660 And as he puts it, less of a grouch. 489 00:43:40,870 --> 00:43:43,870 I think it's important to tell you about it, Shankar. 490 00:43:44,020 --> 00:43:46,560 I'm sitting... 491 00:43:46,660 --> 00:43:52,380 In the garden. I'm a gardener with my five-year-old daughter, Nicky. 492 00:43:53,230 --> 00:43:58,205 We're weeding together. I am grimly pulling weeds out. 493 00:43:58,288 --> 00:44:03,732 Nikki's having a wonderful time. She's dancing and singing, 494 00:44:03,815 --> 00:44:09,810 throwing weeds in the air, running around, and I shouted at her. 495 00:44:10,060 --> 00:44:12,080 You can eat Get to work. 496 00:44:13,150 --> 00:44:15,810 And Nikki walks away from me. 497 00:44:16,570 --> 00:44:20,410 come back and says, Daddy, can I talk to you? 498 00:44:21,160 --> 00:44:28,160 Yeah, what is it, Nicky? Daddy, do you remember that before my fifth birthday, 499 00:44:30,580 --> 00:44:34,940 I was a whiner that I whined all the time. 500 00:44:35,260 --> 00:44:41,445 Thank you. I said, yeah, Nikki, you were pretty horrible. And Nikki said, well, 501 00:44:41,529 --> 00:44:48,136 that was two weeks ago, my birthday. And have you noticed that I haven't whined 502 00:44:48,219 --> 00:44:52,007 once in the last two weeks? I said, oh, yeah. 503 00:44:52,090 --> 00:44:56,890 Yeah, you've been a real pleasure. Well, Daddy... 504 00:44:57,010 --> 00:45:01,637 On my fifth birthday, I decided to 505 00:45:01,720 --> 00:45:08,116 I wasn't going to whine anymore. And that was the hardest thing I've ever done. 506 00:45:08,199 --> 00:45:13,120 And if I can stop whining, you can stop being such a grouch. 507 00:45:15,850 --> 00:45:22,670 Well, this was for me, an epiphany, and it changed my career. 508 00:45:22,810 --> 00:45:27,617 In that moment, Shankara realized that I was a grouch. 509 00:45:27,700 --> 00:45:33,347 And indeed, I was proud of being a grouch. What a grouch does, 510 00:45:33,430 --> 00:45:40,430 he sees everything wrong with what's going on, criticizes it, and corrects it. 511 00:45:40,640 --> 00:45:47,640 And it occurred to me for the first time in my life that maybe any success I had 512 00:45:48,034 --> 00:45:53,350 had in life was was not because I was a grouch, but in spite of it. 513 00:45:55,190 --> 00:45:59,087 And so I resolved to personally change. And by the way, 514 00:45:59,170 --> 00:46:04,876 I do measure these things, Shankar, and I'm a completely different person than I 515 00:46:04,960 --> 00:46:06,190 was 30 years ago. 516 00:46:06,400 --> 00:46:13,400 I'm not a grouch anymore. 517 00:46:17,770 --> 00:46:18,603 you 518 00:46:20,540 --> 00:46:24,816 Martin Seligman is a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania. 519 00:46:24,899 --> 00:46:29,368 He's the author of Agency, the Psychological History of Human Progress. 520 00:46:29,451 --> 00:46:33,342 Marty, thank you so much for joining me today on Hidden Brain. 521 00:46:33,426 --> 00:46:37,958 I've been enjoying our time together. This is great fun for me, Shankar. 522 00:46:38,041 --> 00:46:39,580 I hope it's fun for you. 523 00:46:40,510 --> 00:46:42,570 you 524 00:46:46,720 --> 00:46:50,076 Hidden Brain is produced by Hidden Brain Media. 525 00:46:50,159 --> 00:46:54,978 Our audio production team includes Annie Murphy-Paul, Kristen Wong, 526 00:46:55,062 --> 00:46:59,442 Laura Querell, Ryan Katz, Andrew Chadwick, and Nick Woodbury. 527 00:46:59,525 --> 00:47:04,940 Tara Boyle is our executive producer. I'm Hidden Brain's executive editor. 528 00:47:06,670 --> 00:47:10,840 Before we go, I'd like to give a special shout out to a friend of mine who has 529 00:47:10,923 --> 00:47:15,093 a new podcast. I first met Vivek Murthy years ago when he joined me as a guest 530 00:47:15,177 --> 00:47:19,510 on Hidden Brain. At the time, Vivek was the Surgeon General of the United States, 531 00:47:19,593 --> 00:47:23,218 and he was particularly interested in calling attention to the issue 532 00:47:23,301 --> 00:47:25,210 of loneliness and social isolation. 533 00:47:26,510 --> 00:47:30,974 His episode with us was hugely popular, in large part because Vivek has a powerful 534 00:47:31,057 --> 00:47:32,610 way of showing vulnerability 535 00:47:35,830 --> 00:47:36,663 Thank you. 536 00:47:37,110 --> 00:47:41,236 Vivek has continued to expand on his work on social connection in the years since 537 00:47:41,319 --> 00:47:44,302 our interview, and I'm delighted to recommend his new show. 538 00:47:44,386 --> 00:47:47,212 It's called Staying Human. And if you love Hidden Brain, 539 00:47:47,296 --> 00:47:50,027 I'm confident that you'll love Staying Human as well. 540 00:47:50,110 --> 00:47:52,810 You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. 541 00:47:55,930 --> 00:47:58,310 I'm Shankar Vedanta. See you soon.