How Emotions & Social Factors Impact Learning | Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

1. 0:00 – 2:11

   Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. Today, my guest is Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang. Dr. Immordino-Yang is a professor of education, psychology, and neuroscience at the University of Southern California. Her laboratory focuses on emotions and the role of emotions in learning, as well as how social interactions impact how we learn. Today's discussion is one that I found absolutely fascinating, because it will reveal to you, in fact all of us, how our temperament, that is our emotionality, combined with our home environment and the school environments that we were raised in shape what we know about the world and our concepts of self. In thinking about that, we also discuss the education system and how different aspects of rules and how we are told to behave and what actually constitutes good behavior or bad behavior shape how we learn information and develop a sense of meaning in life. If any of that sounds abstract, I promise you that today's discussion is incredibly practical. You will learn, for instance, how different styles of learning are going to favor different people, from children into adulthood, and how we ought to think about learning in terms of our emotional systems being our guide for what we learn and the information that we retain and how we apply that information throughout life. For those of you that are parents or who are thinking of becoming parents or who were once children, so I believe that encompasses everybody out there, today's discussion will arm you with an intellectual understanding of psychology and neuroscience as it relates to learning, but also practical tools that you can apply in order to be able to learn more effectively. What I like so much about Dr. Immordino-Yang's research and the discussion today is that she frames up beautifully how those who best learn from traditional forms of classroom learning as well as those who learn from non-traditional forms of learning, either in or out of the classroom, can best use that understanding of self in order to learn in the way that is best

2. 2:11 – 5:54

   Sponsors: Eight Sleep, HVMN, ROKA

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:11

      for them. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. I've talked many times before on this podcast about the fact that sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance of all kinds. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is the temperature of your sleeping environment, and that's because your core body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees in order for you to get into and stay deeply asleep. And conversely, your core body temperature increases by about one to three degrees in order for you to wake up and feel refreshed. With Eight Sleep, you can control the temperature of your sleeping environment very easily because of the way that the mattress cover communicates with an app where you can dial in the temperature of your sleeping environment at the beginning, middle, and end of your night as you arrive toward morning. Sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover has greatly enhanced the quality of my sleep. I know that because it also includes a sleep tracker which will tell you how much slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep you're getting and it gives you a sleep score. If you'd like to try Eight Sleep, go to eightsleep.com/huberman and get up to $150 off. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by HVMN Ketone IQ. Ketone IQ is a ketone supplement that increases blood ketones. I know most people are familiar with or at least have heard of the so-called ketogenic diet. It's used for weight loss, it's used to control epilepsy, it's used for mental health reasons. However, most people, including myself, do not follow a ketogenic diet. Nonetheless, increasing your blood ketones can improve the function of your brain and the function of your body, and that's because ketones are a preferred use of fuel for the brain and body. So even though I follow an omnivore diet, that is I'm not in a ketogenic state, I use Ketone IQ to increase my blood ketones prior to doing preparation for podcasts or writing grants or doing research, as well as prior to workouts. Especially if I want to work out fasted, I'll take some Ketone IQ to increase my blood ketones, which gives me a lot of energy during workouts or during bouts of cognitive work even if I haven't eaten in the preceding hours. It really increases my focus and my energy levels. If you'd like to try Ketone IQ, you can go to hvmn.com/huberman to save 20% off. Again, that's hvmn.com/huberman to save 20%. Today's episode is also brought to us by ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. The company was founded by two all-American swimmers from Stanford, and everything about ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses were designed with performance in mind. I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of different challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly. ROKA understands those challenges and has designed their eyeglasses and sunglasses accordingly so that you always see with perfect clarity. Their eyeglasses and sunglasses were initially designed for sports performance, and as a consequence, they are very lightweight, which is great. They also won't slip off your face if you get sweaty. However, even though they were designed for sports performance, they now also include a lot of styles that are designed to be worn to work, out to dinner, essentially recreationally, so that you could wear anywhere. If you'd like to try ROKA eyeglasses or sunglasses, go to ROKA, that's roka.com and enter the code "Huberman" to save 20% off your order. Again, that's ROKA, roka.com and enter the code "Huberman" at checkout. And now for my discussion with Dr. Mary Helen Immordino-Yang.

3. 5:54 – 9:59

   Inspiration, Awe & Story

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:54

      Dr. Immordino-Yang.

   2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang5:56

      Good to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman5:57

      Great to have you. I'd like to start off talking about something that...... to me seems a little bit high level, but I think is the perfect jumping off point. I've heard you talk before about inspiration and awe.

   4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:11

      Uh-huh.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman6:12

      And as somebody who's interested in the brain, and as somebody who's interested in the role of emotions and learning-

   6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:19

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman6:20

      ... and life experience, inspiration and awe seem to me, um, kind of rather high level emotional experiences-

   8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:28

      Mm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman6:28

      ... compared to, say, fear or happiness.

   10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:30

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman6:32

       And yet inspiration and awe just seem so fundamental to how we learn and navigate life. And before we started recording, we were talking about David Goggins of all people.

   12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:43

       (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman6:43

       Um, and we'll get back to that. But if you could just share with us, what is the role of inspiration and awe and story-

   14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang6:54

       Uh-huh.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman6:54

       ... in how we learn and experience life, starting at a young age, and then maybe we can transition to older ages.

   16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang7:01

       Yeah, I mean, I think what you've noticed is actually fundamental to the conundrum of being a human, is that our most high level complex brain states, mind states are also fundamentally hooking themselves into the most basic biological machinery that literally we share with alligators that keeps us alive. And that is both the power and the potential of, of being a human, and the danger of it. So our beliefs, our experiences, our interpretations of the meaning of things, which that's where the story comes in. The stories that we conjure about, you know, collectively with other people, culturally in spaces, inside our own selves also, those stories become kind of the through line that organizes the way in which we construct our own experience, consciousness even, I would say. So when we hook into those very basic survival systems by recruiting them into these narratives about the nature of reality, the power of the meaning we make, what happens is we get this amazingly f- both fundamental and high level state simultaneously, where we feel expansive, we feel, uh, like it's all so incredibly beautiful, and we are, I would argue, actually ramping into or catching into the very basic survival mechanisms that make us conscious, that make us alive. And, and that's, that's in essence the power of being a human. That's the power of our intelligence at this late stage in our evolution.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman8:44

       So when I was a kid, I loved stories of all kinds.

   18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang8:47

       Uh-huh.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman8:48

       Like, I think like most kids.

   20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang8:49

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman8:49

       I loved my Curious George books. Uh, I'm told I liked the Babar books, but then quickly didn't like the Babar books. Um, I liked the book Where the Red Fern Grows.

   22. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:00

       Uh-huh.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman9:00

       I liked, um, books and stories about, it generally was boys for me, for whatever reason, uh, that had some idea in mind or some ongoing challenge, and that played out over time, and the character evolves across the story.

   24. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:16

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman9:16

       And of course, many, many, many excellent stories have all those features.

   26. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:20

       Yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman9:22

       I can recall specific passages in those books to this day that made me feel something in my body.

   28. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:30

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman9:30

       You know, a, um... I actually am very familiar with the sensation of having chills go up my spine as opposed to down my spine.

   30. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:37

       Mm-hmm.
4. 9:59 – 15:58

   Brain-Body, Narratives

   1. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang9:59

   2. AHAndrew Huberman9:59

      I've heard you say before, and, and I love this quote, and I wanna make sure that you get attribution for this, not me, that we basically have a brain to control our body.

   3. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:08

      Mm-hmm.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman10:10

      What is the, the role of the brain in controlling the body, and do you think that there are an infinite number of ways in which our brain does that? Or are we really talking about a language between brain and body of, you know, tingles on the back of our neck that go up, tingles on the back of our neck that go down?

   5. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:27

      Mm-hmm.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman10:27

      Stomach feeling kind of tight and making us cringe away, or kind of warm and wanting to approach?

   7. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:33

      Mm.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman10:33

      In other words, do you think that the conversation between the brain and body is primitive, sophisticated? How nuanced is it? Because language is very nuanced.

   9. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:43

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman10:43

       We could probably come up with 50 words just in English for the state of being happy.

   11. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:48

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman10:49

       But the feeling of being happy, I experience along a continuum of a little bit happy to elated. But it's, it's kind of one thing-

   13. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang10:57

       Mm-hmm.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman10:57

       ... really. So if, if you would, could you comment on this notion of the brain being the organ that's responsible for controlling the body, and what that dialogue is like, what the syllables and consonance of it are like. Perhaps not at the level of biology, but, um, at the level of psychology and how we subjectively experience that.

   15. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang11:17

       Sure. So the first thing I'll say is that I learned that idea from, from working with Antonio Damasio. So, uh, he was my postdoctoral mentor, and he taught me first that, uh, this notion that the, that it's the feeling of the body. It's, it's an organism's ability to represent or map the state of the interior and exterior of the body that becomes the substrate for consciousness and for the mind. Um, so I just wanna give him credit, because I didn't, I didn't think of that first. But the work that I've been doing is an elaboration of that. It's, it's basically addressing exactly the question that you're asking, which is how is it that we construct a narrative, construct a conscious feeling, which that word I take from Antonio and Hanna, right? Damasio. How is it that we construct a feeling and sort of narratize that feeling, elaborate that feeling into something that feels like a narrative, that feels like a belief state, or an emotion state, or an experience? I mean that in a very verb-like way.... and, um, and what is the role of embodiment in that? What is the role of the brain in that? Um, and, and what also is the role of the culture and the cultural context and other people in that? Because what we're really learning across the sciences right now is just how incredibly social and interdependent our species is. I mean, our biology is inherently a social one. We are directly dependent on other people for the formulation of our own sense of self, and we interact with one another and construct and co-construct a, a sense of self and a sense of meaning via those cultural spaces and those sort of, um, nuanced ways of accommodating each other mentally and physically that, that lead to the feeling of us. So, you know, back to your original question, there's a lot we don't know there, um, but I think what's very clear is that the kind of background sense of the body, the mapping and the regulation of the body, is a, a basic substrate, a kind of, of trampoline for the mind. And so, we are managing our survival. You know, we now have lots of evidence from across many kinds of science about the interdependence of our stress and social relationships and our immunity and our, right, and, and our ability to digest food. And, and it's even now very clear that it's not even just us. There's m- a, a whole microbiome and all kinds of other organisms that are assisting us in that and that are collaborating with us in that. Um, and then the brain is, is a s- is a specialized organ of the body, in fact. It's not a, it's not a separate thing. It's, it's an outgrowth or an elaboration of that process. It's, it's a specialization of that process, a localization of it, um, in a way that provides enough processing power to be able to really construct, uh, all kinds of feelings and mental states and beliefs and imaginings, you know, um, out of, out of basically just the f- the feeling of being here. And then the amazing part is that our brain is also imposing those back down onto our bodies, so the way in which our body reacts, um, and is modulated in response to mental states is also very real. So we have a kind of, like, a dynamic, uh, conversation happening that's happening in very raw and, and direct ways, k- neurochemically in others, and also in broader, longer term, slower fluctuating patterns around, you know, other kinds of hormonal changes and things like that. So along multiple time scales simultaneously, we have a kind of whole, right, a humanistic whole of brain and body and mind that are kind of co-conjuring one another in real time, and that leads to all kinds of dynamic possibility spaces for how we are and how we feel as we grow through time. And I think as humans, the legacy of our intelligence is to tap into those possibility spaces and start to construct them into meaningful, meaningful sort of chains of ideas, chains of experiences over time that we call story, and that, I think, is what you were tapping into as a little boy. You were hungry for fodder for, for a kind of structure for those feelings that you could start to help them evolve from one into the other and chain them together in ways that produce meaning.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman15:57

       Mm-hmm.

5. 15:58 – 21:47

   Emotions, Durability & Lifespan

   1. AHAndrew Huberman15:58

      Yeah, I'm fascinated by the idea that early in life, we experience some interaction with the world. It could be with other people, could be with an object in the world, and it makes us feel something powerful.

   2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:12

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman16:12

      And that lays a, a, a template f- of, of recognition-

   4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:16

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman16:16

      ... meaning that later in life, and perhaps throughout life, w- we're always consciously or subconsciously going back to try and, to experience that same kind of awe-

   6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:26

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman16:26

      ... or inspiration.

   8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:27

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman16:27

      Um, because, again, the, the what, the circumstances almost certainly vary from being a five-year-old to being an adolescent-

   10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:37

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman16:37

       ... and into adulthood, and into the, I guess, the geriatric years. Do they still call it that?

   12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:42

       (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman16:43

       Um, probably did. I, I probably used a politically incorrect term, but forgive me.

   14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:46

       It's okay.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman16:47

       Um, pe- 75 to, to 125. Um, and yet, the, the feeling is the same, right?

   16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang16:55

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman16:55

       You're feeling, and so it's as if a word can mean the same thing but be used 50 different ways, maybe 5,000-

   18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:04

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman17:04

       ... different ways.

   20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:04

       To represent the same novelty.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman17:05

       The, and in this analogy, I'm saying that the, the, the word is the feeling, and, you know, and it's used so many different ways because, um, occasionally I'll read a, um, scientific manuscript, and I'll be like, "That is so cool."

   22. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:17

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman17:17

       And it's the same way that I feel-

   24. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:19

       Yes.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman17:19

       ... when I was nine years old-

   26. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:20

       No, when you, you, you... yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman17:20

       ... and I spent all my time in the pet store looking at tropical fish and tropical birds and thinking-

   28. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:25

       Yeah.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman17:25

       ... "Oh my God, that freshwater discus fish is the coolest thing I've ever seen."

   30. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang17:29

       Yeah.
6. 21:47 – 32:16

   Conjuring Stories, Historical Context & Emotion

   1. AHAndrew Huberman21:47

      uh, and so much so that I'd like to continue to build on that-

   2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang21:50

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman21:50

      ... example. Um, because I think it's very relatable for people and it's the first time that I've ever heard the embodiment of emotions described in a developmental framework-

   4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:03

      Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman22:03

      ... that truly makes sense.

   6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:05

      Oh, good.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman22:05

      Um, so thank you. Uh, so, i- the contact with your arm, or your arm, or both, uh, was the, the, was the life example that she was using at a, as a two-year-old that maps to an internal feeling.

   8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:22

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman22:22

      And, and we're gonna assume, she's not here, we don't have her in a brain scanner, we can't ask her, but we're gonna assume that her experience e- of, uh, being put to bed at night and, and feeling so, so much love from and for you mapped to her then, uh, growing understanding of the, the world around her.

   10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:42

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman22:42

       The fact that there's day and night and sunshine.

   12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:44

       That's right. That's right.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman22:44

       So as her knowledge base grows-

   14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang22:46

       Yep.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman22:46

       ... she can add examples to the feeling. And I'm assuming that, um, doesn't matter how old she is now, but I'm assuming that as a 14-year-old, the knowledge base is going to be different and is going to map to that feeling again and again. So, the question is, is what we are doing across the lifespan is recognizing, um, sort of, I don't want to call them primitives, but, um, basic emotional states-

   16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:10

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman23:11

       ... which are not infinite-

   18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:14

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman23:14

       ... but can be along a c- each one along a continuum.

   20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:17

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman23:17

       So a little bit of love, completely in love-

   22. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:21

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman23:22

       ... you know, along a continuum and everything in between.

   24. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:24

       Mm-hmm.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman23:24

       Um, a little angry and annoyed to completely furious.

   26. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:28

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman23:29

       Are we talking about maybe, um, 10 to 30 core emotions that then we are j- just simply binning our experiences into and onto, and mapping onto, and then that's our life story? Uh, and I'm not trying to oversimplify things, but, um, that seems to me like a, a pretty great way for a nervous system to navigate a, a world that is infinitely complex-

   28. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang23:54

       Yeah.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman23:54

       ... and has a lot of surprise, both positive and negative, and in which, like every organism, our main goal is to survive as long as possible-

   30. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang24:02

       Mm-hmm.
7. 32:16 – 33:30

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang32:16

   2. AHAndrew Huberman32:16

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Athletic Greens. Athletic Greens, now called AG1, is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that covers all of your foundational nutritional needs. I've been taking Athletic Greens since 2012, so I'm delighted that they're sponsoring the podcast. The reason I started taking Athletic Greens and the reason I still take Athletic Greens once or usually twice a day is that it gets me the probiotics that I need for gut health. Our gut is very important. It's populated by, uh, gut microbiota that communicate with the brain, the immune system, and basically all the biological systems of our body to strongly impact our immediate and long-term health. And those probiotics in Athletic Greens are optimal and vital for microbiotic health. In addition, Athletic Greens contains a number of adaptogens, vitamins and minerals that make sure that all of my foundational nutritional needs are met, and it tastes great. If you'd like to try Athletic Greens, you can go to athleticgreens.com/huberman, and they'll give you five free travel packs that make it really easy to mix up Athletic Greens while you're on the road, in the car, on the plane, et cetera, and they'll give you a year supply of vitamin D3 K2. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/huberman to get the five free travel packs and the year supply of vitamin D3 K2.

8. 33:30 – 46:24

   Hierarchal Emotion Organization, Default Mode Network, Story & Emotion

   1. AHAndrew Huberman33:30

      I started off studying the visual system.

   2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang33:32

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman33:33

      And I don't want this to turn into a discussion about the visual system, but in the visual system, uh, we know that there's a what's called a hierarchical organization where the eye encodes and can respond to edges and light versus dark and red, green, blue and from that very basic set of building blocks, there's an elaboration or a buildup of what's really called the iceberg model that was developed by my scientific great-grandparents, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel, who won the Nobel Prize for that work, where you can look at somebody's face and recognize it or see a profile moving at a particular direction and still recognize that person or, um, see a word written and, and conceptualize in your mind's eye what that word, like bird actually looks like, like parakeet, blue parakeet. In other words, there's a hierarchical buildup. And what you're describing sounds somewhat similar, that there's a hierarchical organization whereby through development we, we first learn, I guess earlier I called them primitives, but basic building blocks of, you know, when someone steps on my foot, it hurts.

   4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang34:39

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman34:40

      It can hurt a lot or a little bit-

   6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang34:41

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:41

      ... depending on who stepped on my foot. Um, whether or not I have a shoe on, so you start learning context, but that, that there's a buildup on top of the basic somatic experience of different examples that map to pain, including emotional pain and physical pain-

   8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang34:55

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman34:55

      ... because we know those are interdigitated-

   10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang34:57

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman34:57

       ... somewhat. Um, and that over time, this builds up so that we have, you know, countless examples. But you added, you said something else that's, that goes beyond the, the hierarchical organization that we see in the visual system, which is that when there's a narrative or a story that we have to add, it changes something about the representation of emotion. I'm, I'm so struck by this, by this, um, comparison between seeing somebody step off a curb and break their ankle. Like, even as I'm describing just like a folding-

   12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:29

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman35:29

       ... ankle-

   14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:30

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman35:30

       ... like ouch-

   16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:31

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman35:31

       ... God, that really hurts.

   18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:31

       And just look at what you're doing with your face

   19. NANarrator35:33

       (laughs)

   20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:33

       Laughter to that in your body right?

   21. AHAndrew Huberman35:34

       No, that just about hurt. Yeah, I mean, I've-

   22. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:35

       Uh-huh.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman35:35

       ... I broke my, I've broken my left foot five times growing up-

   24. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:39

       Oh, god.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman35:39

       ... doing the same sport.

   26. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:40

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman35:41

       And it just I can still hear and feel the thing going (imitates cracking noise)

   28. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:44

       Uh-huh.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman35:44

       And that means six months in a cast or whatever it is, versus a story, you know, seeing somebody sitting alone in a cafe writing in their journal and then y- you learning that they just lost their spouse of 75 years.

   30. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang35:59

       Right.
9. 46:24 – 57:13

   Emotional Development & Lifetime

   1. AHAndrew Huberman46:24

      Uh, if I'm understanding correctly, there's a feeling state in our body when we experience, um, or observe somebody i- in, in their own feeling state or experience. Um, it may be the same as theirs, might be different, and frankly, as a neuroscientist, I'm going to say we'll never know e- exactly.

   2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang46:45

      Yeah. Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman46:45

      It... We won't know.

   4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang46:46

      That's the age-old philosophical debate. (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman46:48

      Okay. We, we won't know.

   6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang46:48

      If I see blue and you see blue, is it the same-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman46:50

      Exactly.

   8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang46:50

      ... experience, right?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman46:51

      It's probably not, uh, based on so... uh, from my knowledge of color vision and the distribution of cones, uh, to explain why I'm saying that, the distribution of cone photopigments in your eye and my eye are extremely different...

   10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:04

       Uh-huh.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman47:04

       ... uh, to the point where we're not working with the same palette.

   12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:07

       Cool.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman47:08

       And I think that makes life interesting.

   14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:09

       That makes life interesting, exactly.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman47:11

       But, but assuming that neither of us is color-blind, red is similar enough to both of us that we would both look at it and say, "That's red."

   16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:17

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman47:18

       But one in 80 males who's red/green color-blind would look at it and would, um, see what you and I call red and call it orange. In any event, when we, let's say, listen to or watch and listen to Martin Luther King's-

   18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:34

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman47:34

       ... you know, classic I Have a Dream speech.

   20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:35

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman47:36

       Um, or when I hear certain music that I first heard when I was 14. It was a particularly interesting, for me, time in my life, in part 'cause I was 14, and we'll get back to that and what I mean by that.

   22. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:50

       14's a thing. 14's a thing. (laughs)

   23. AHAndrew Huberman47:51

       We're talking about adolescence, right?

   24. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang47:53

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman47:53

       I, I, I'll just say, I, I'll go on record by saying that the m- I think that the music that we listen to in our adolescence and teen years is one of the main ways in which we come to recognize the extremes of these feeling state templates-

   26. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang48:08

       Yep. Yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman48:08

       ... that you're describing.

   28. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang48:09

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman48:09

       Uh, I can... uh, one of the ways I prepare for podcasts is, um, is to walk and t- and, uh, for my solo podcast is to walk and go through some of the narrative.

   30. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang48:18

       Yep.
10. 57:13 – 1:05:22

    Narrative & Genocide; Checking Assumptions & Mental Flexibility

    1. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang57:13

       them. So this matters a lot for the ways that humans experience the world more broadly, because think about, for example, um, a terrible topic like genocide or the Holocaust, right? How does something like that happen, right? How is it that people who have empathy, who, who love their family, who love their neighbors can suddenly turn on each other, right? What's happened is they've shifted the way in which they narratize the context of those events. The way in which they impose interpretation on somebody else's pain has been fundamentally shifted from, "That's another human suffering," to, "That's not a human. That's a, a rat, a pig, a bug," whatever it is, right? And that dehumanization process allows us to shift our story set so that we bring another set of values and beliefs into the space. Um-

    2. AHAndrew Huberman58:10

       Can I just-

    3. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang58:11

       Yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman58:11

       ... as... I'm, I'm glad that you brought up that dark example-

    5. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang58:14

       Yeah.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman58:14

       ... because my understanding from my psychology courses in university were that, um, as much as we would all like to think that we are incapable-

    7. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang58:23

       Mm-mm.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman58:23

       ... of being the committers of genocide-

    9. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang58:25

       We're very much capable of it.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman58:25

        ... that there's studies been- that were done in the '50s but then have been repeated over many decades showing that, um, in certain contexts, um, essentially everybody and anybody wou- would respond to a- an authoritarian figure and torture somebody else. And, and I'm sure as people are listening to this, this, they're thinking, "No, I would absolutely not do that." But all the data point to the fact that if the conditions were set in a particular way, um, you and I and everybody else most certainly would. A very eerie idea that, uh, goes back to, I think, Jung's idea that we have all things inside of us, and we certainly have all the neural circuitry components inside of us for, um, rage and contempt and, um, and horrible mistreatment of others, as well as all the good stuff. Um, uh, but I, I'm just glad that you brought up this example, because, um, I think that for a lot of people, it's, it's inconceivable, but I've never heard it framed the way that you're describing it, which is that if the story becomes not about the other person's suffering, but primarily about one's own story of suffering, and that can suppress or literally inhibit the neural circuits that invoke empathy-

    11. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang59:34

        Mm-hmm.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman59:35

        ... uh, then it makes perfectly good neurobiological sense as to why that would at least be possible.

    13. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang59:42

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman59:42

        And, of course, I don't think it's a good thing. It's just, um, like many aspects of our biology and psychology, it just happens to be the way things are.

    15. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang59:50

        It is, and I, I think it really... I think... I mean, I'm the... ever the optimist. I'm also ever the educator, right? I, I... You know, I'm a teacher. I'm very... also very interested in the ways that we design educational experiences for young people. I think the only hope we have to protect ourselves against these possibilities is to systematically develop dispositions in ourselves, proclivities within ourselves to question our own motives and to deconstruct our own assumptions about situations and to engage with other people's perspectives systematically. And when we develop those dispositions.... the hope is that we are developing within ourselves a kind of, um, uh, a veto system, right? A system for checking our own motivations against other people's experiences of those motivations. And, you know, so much of what's leading, I think... Now, now we're going in another direction and kind of a political direction, but so much what's leading us into these very divisive political times, for example, not just... And you know, the rise of authoritarianism, not just in the US, uh, or the threat of it, not just in the US but around many places in the world, all of which, by the way, are Western-educated. Um, uh, is that we are taught that to know something means you own something in yourself, and then you take that with you and you impose it on the world forevermore. "I know how to do Algebra 2 and I can do it whenever you ask me," kind of thing. And that's what a good student is, where when people en- learn to engage with their own knowledge states in, in more curious, open-minded, flexible ways, then we dispositionally teach ourselves to, to check our assumptions, to rethink what we think we know. And, and this is key, developmentally to notice when we need to do that and when we should just plow ahead and it's totally fine. And, and so what we're doing, I think, right now to ourselves, both in the education system and in things like social media, is we're reinforcing our own biases by diving down rabbit holes where you re-hear the same thing over and over again that reinforces your own belief systems, and then you come to believe those things, and those puts you on a train toward a particular kind of action or belief system that never becomes deconstructed, and it's very comfortable and it's easy to do. But the responsibility I think we have as individuals and as groups, as humans, given the amazing intelligence we have, is to rise above that and actually look back on our own selves reflectively and deconstruct our preferences, deconstruct our values and our beliefs, and systematically query them, specifically around how they impact or influence or, or, or change the situations of those around us or don't, right? The situations and sustainability of the world that supports us or don't. And so it, it all comes back to the emotions that drive our thinking. So we have these very basic primitive physiological states which vary across individuals, the degree to which they are, you know, incredibly powerful, easily evoked versus not. You know, there's a lot of range in that. Now, all of that variation makes things interesting, right? Um, but it's our ability to learn to experience those and to know, develop wisdom around when we need to query our own emotions and deconstruct the narratives that are, that we're using to validate or substantiate those kinds of emotions in order to assess whether we actually are right, whether we should continue or whether we should step back and, and, and, and, and reframe, right? And so that kind of mental flexibility really comes out of an emotional disposition. It, it is our ability, so it takes it back to what you're asking at the very beginning, it is our ability to not just drive from what feels like the bottom up, which of course is always starting in the top down because you've got some interpretation of the world that makes you feel fear, that makes your body do this, that makes you... right? Um, but also to be able to rise above, to transcend and think about what are the broader systemic, historical, uh, uh, ethical, civic implications of this narrative I'm telling myself which feels default like the truth, and how might I deconstruct those systematically and how might I invite others to give me their version of those events and engage with those systematically in order to be able to really appreciate the implications of my beliefs? And so the bottom line is that the emotions that we're talking about today are actually the fundamental drivers of all of our thinking, decision-making, relationship-building, right? Our community lives and our personal well-being all in one mix, but that doesn't kind of excuse us for acting on their bequest, it actually imbues us with a responsibility to then develop dispositions to systematically query those and reframe them when they are not serving us or the world well.

11. 1:05:22 – 1:09:52

    Social Media, Cognitive Dissonance

    1. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:22

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:22

       Exactly what you said.

    3. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:24

       (laughs) Yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:24

       Uh, uh, so much so that, you know, I- I'm a big believer in following lots of different types of social media accounts.

    5. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:33

       Yeah.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:33

       I've taken some heat here and there-

    7. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:35

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:35

       ... because people automatically assume that if you follow an account that you subscribe to that ideology, but I follow many accounts through my... disagree with what they say-

    9. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:44

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:44

        ... specifically so that I can learn different perspectives.

    11. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:47

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:48

        Um, as far as I know, we're the same species, uh, me and these other people.

    13. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:52

        Yes.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:53

        Um-

    15. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:53

        As far as we are, yes.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:54

        And sometimes I wonder, but, um, they probably wonder the same about me.

    17. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:05:57

        They wonder too. Yes.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:58

        They wonder too. Um, and there's enormous range in, in, in those, uh, those accounts that I follow. Um, and I follow different accounts for different reasons, some for entertainment, some for information, some for challenging myself, some for, um, my desire to be baffled every now and again, but to always return to this idea that we're all, we are all basically working with the same building blocks of neurons and neurochemistry. Some people's dopamine, which whether or not you're into Bitcoin or-

    19. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:06:27

        (laughs)

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:27

        ... um, traditional currency, uh, the one true currency that's universal is dopamine.

    21. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:06:32

        Yeah.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:32

        Everyone's working for dopamine-

    23. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:06:34

        Yeah. Yeah.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:34

        ... and exchanging their own dopamine with world experiences.... but this is one of the reasons why I think it's important to, uh, not be siloed in one's thinking or exposure to different things on social media. A somewhat controversial statement, actually, because I think a lot of people assume that if you follow somebody from a particular political party, then that means that you vote that political party, e- et cetera. Um, but that to me always seemed crazy.

    25. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:07:00

        Yeah.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:00

        I, I'm fortunate to have this, uh, good friend who was on this podcast, Rick Rubin, and who's a, an extremely accomplished music producer, and he's done... produced music from essentially every genre of music.

    27. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:07:09

        Yeah.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:09

        From punk rock, which is where I sort of I got my start, and still love punk rock music so much, but classical and hip-hop and everything in between, and Rick is somebody who forages so broadly.

    29. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:07:18

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:18

        And I've really learned to try and forage broadly in terms of ideas and ideologies.
12. 1:09:52 – 1:17:22

    Education, Deconstructing Beliefs & Curiosity

    1. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:09:52

       But one thing I really do think a lot about in this is, um, the way in which we educate our young people, and what do we do with our 10-year-olds, right? And, like, the, the s- first thing I'll say about your 10-year-old, I don't know if you actually have a 10-year-old, but is, um, is, is query them about their beliefs. When they follow something, when they think something's impressive or bad or, you know, ask them, "Why?" Teach them to unpack their own beliefs. That doesn't mean that you, that you don't still hold them necessarily. It doesn't mean that you adopt the opposite belief, right? If I talk to someone who has a very different value system than I do and I disagree with them, that's legitimate. But to, it als- but, but in deciding that I disagree, I have sort of revisited my own belief and queried it. I've, I've externalized it a little bit, made that thinking visible. It's w- why we talk about it in education. That's David Perkins at Harvard talks about it that way. You know, making your thinking visible, and then examining that thinking. And, and so I think one really important step that as society, we'll have to take or we won't make it, and I, I know that sounds a little, um, dramatic, but I actually think it's true sadly, uh, and I'm starting to think it's more and more true, is that we need to really get brave about how we think about the process of educating our young people and what it actually means to expose young people to developmentally appropriate, age-appropriate opportunities to grow themselves as thinkers, as individuals, and as civic agents and community members. I, I think that our Western-designed education system has in it some very basic beliefs about what counts as knowing and what is worth thinking about and knowing about, and how do I know that, how do I test you on that, that I think is deeply, they are deeply problematic and lead us, I mean, I know this is a strong statement, but they lead us to a place where we are, we are actively punished, not just not encouraged, but I would say actively discouraged from really playing with ideas, engaging systematically with our own beliefs, deconstructing those beliefs, and engaging with complex perspectives on topics and ideas. That is just not what school is about.... and it needs to be. We need to shift. So right now, the way in which we think about school is about, is basically judged by, quote-unquote, "learning outcomes," right? What have you learned? And how do we know that? We make you demonstrate it by yourself, under time pressure, in a particular setting, right? Or you're gonna come back and I'm gonna give you a question and you're gonna give me the answer I had in mind. And if you do that in time, then I'll say you learned it and now we're done. Check, right? As compared to a system, and there are educational systems like this. This is not, um, there are people, for example, the Performance, uh, Assessment Consortium in New York City is a, is a consortium of public schools, some of which do this extraordinarily well. They have a, a, a dispensation from the New York State government, uh, not to give the regents exam as their graduation requirements, um, and their, um, and, and their, their mar- benchmarks of learning, but instead to have alternative ways of assessing kids where kids work for months to years, depending on the project, on these in-depth intellectual multidisciplinary projects where they explore a topic and they engage with their own process of learning about that topic and they bring in teachers and community experts and other people and they present their work and then they query the work and they talk about their own learning process and what could happen next and what decisions they made and all these kinds of things.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:59

       It's like a graduate thesis.

    3. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:14:00

       Exactly. You have to invent not just the work, but the question. You need to look at the world and notice what it is we're not understanding that we would benefit from understanding and find a way to, to isolate and systematically query that. Why don't we build education systems from preschool all the way up that eng- that engage people systematically in that kind of intellectual curiosity? We don't do that. So we, we know that little kids' education, preschool education, if you don't have the water table and the sand table and the cool stuff and the choices and the ways to engage with each other and, you know what I mean, all the stuff being really age-appropriate for three-year-olds to touch and smoosh and, you know, try to taste and whatever else, they're gonna be a mess on the floor. They're just not gonna come. They're gonna refuse to come to school, right? And they're gonna be laying in the, in the doorway throwing ti- temper tantrums, right? But as ... So we know how to do little kid education well. It doesn't mean we always do it, but we know that they need to be intrigued, they need to be invited to think, and they bring their natural curiosity and then you expand the range of ways they can leverage that curiosity to discover new things they hadn't known to think about before, right? Then we get to the standard, quote-unquote, "educational system" and we somehow think that that natural human proclivity to engage curiously and meaningfully with deep thinking about ideas and the world is, is like inefficient and inappropriate and frightening, and we teach kids, no, no, no, no, no, turn that off. It's, it's, it's dangerous. If you do it, it's considered insubordinate, right? And what we want you instead to do is just let me give you what I've already figured out for you. I'm going to give it to you and you are going to give it back to me.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:58

       So it seems to me that in the way that things actually happen in school, what is created is a kind of desire for the kid to be a computer-

    5. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:08

       Yes.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:08

       ... not a human. And they do have a dopamine system, however.

    7. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:12

       Yes, yes.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:12

       And so what becomes the, the buzz, the emotional buzz, is performance.

    9. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:17

       Yes.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:17

        If it becomes a buzz at all. So for the kids that don't get that buzz from performance-

    11. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:22

        Power to them. Yeah. (laughs)

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:23

        ... or that don't, or that don't intrinsically love the math or the English or the books that they're being presented with or, or whatever the subject happens to be, um, or maybe they only like one or two things, then they emotionally dissociate from the rest of the material. I'm, I'm actually describing a bit of myself in high school. I, I was not a, I barely finished high school.

    13. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:43

        Yeah.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:43

        Um-

    15. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:43

        I dropped out of sixth grade for a few months. Yeah. Didn't work for me. (laughs)

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:47

        Yeah, well, you know-

    17. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:48

        Yeah.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:48

        ... I eventually got back to it and, and as I'm- I imagine you did too-

    19. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:16:51

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:51

        ... 'cause we ended up as academics. But, um, I think what you're describing is so key, um, and I never thought about it from the perspective of, oh, yeah, as young kids, like, we're given all the things that are gonna drive our sensory world, um, in the appropriate ways, touch and sound and, um, and v-

    21. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:17:07

        And our minds-

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:07

        ... vision.

    23. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:17:08

        Right?

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:08

        And-

    25. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:17:08

        We're trying to build meaning-

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:09

        Right.

    27. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:17:09

        ... in our mind.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:11

        And that we get to, um, as students, young, very young learners impose some of our own, um, intrinsic motivation to do certain things and not others and that that isn't supported as we're adults.

13. 1:17:22 – 1:18:32

    Sponsor: InsideTracker

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:22

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14. 1:18:32 – 1:28:59

    Emotion & Learning; Constructing Meaning

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:32

       you're describing is so vital. Uh, what age do you think this, um, cliffs off? So, you... Okay, so in preschool, kids are allowed to do this, in kindergarten they're allowed to do it, first grade they're allowed to do it in tr- in most schools, but at what point do k- uh, is the expectation imposed on kids to become little rote, um, um, learning computer machines and to get their dopamine from, um, performance rather th- from intrinsic pleasure in what they're learning?

    2. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:00

       Yeah, in, in thinking about, yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:01

       And also, how do we address this issue that there are certain basic skills that not everyone-

    4. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:05

       Oh, yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:05

       ... is going to perform well at, and so for the kid that says, "I don't like math."

    6. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:09

       Well, you still have to learn it.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:10

       You know, like, what, like-

    8. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:10

       You need to appreciate it though. Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:12

       How do you-

    10. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:12

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:12

        So how do you conjure up an- a, a joy or an appreciation in that kid? I mean, it seems like an- a- a hard thing. I mean, I eventually set myself a- along a academic trajectory, um, to... that worked out. Um, but that was initially just out of pure fear because my life was-

    12. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:19:30

        (laughs)

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:30

        ... was really bad. I- I made... Circumstances and myself made it bad. Um, and I was rescuing myself from basically becoming more of a loser, so I was just like, "Okay, school is the thing," and I did school. And, and that was, that was the turn hard right into, into academics for me. But what do you do for the person who is like really doesn't like math because they're- they're struggling with it, or doesn't like biology or psychology? I mean, how do we, how do we evoke a- a- at least an appreciation for that? Um, it sounds like the emotion system is the key system to leverage in order to learn. And, and so could you talk about the relationship between emotion and learning?

    14. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:20:11

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:11

        'Cause I realize this is really the, the, the center-

    16. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:20:13

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:13

        ... of wha- of what you do.

    18. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:20:15

        So, I mean, you could say it this way, right? So whatever you're having emotion about is what you're thinking about, right? And whatever you're thinking about, you could hope to learn about, remember something from, right, understand differently. So the key question for educators is what... Everybody's always having some kind of emotions all the time if- unless you're dead, right, or unconscious. What are people's emotions about in this space? If the emotions... Because whatever those emotions are about, that is what you're learning about. So if the emotions are about the outcomes, did I get it right, am I going to flunk, did I get an A+, I'm so smart, I'm so stupid, what, any one of those, right? If those are the main drivers, then that is what you're learning about. If the emotions are about the actual ideas in play, the math, the physics, the why does the ball roll down the ramp, wait a minute, that's the same as why the moon goes around. Uh, you know what I mean? Like, there are... Right? When the emotions are about ideas, then what you're engaging with is learning about ideas. And so what I would argue is that in setting up the kind of accountability system we have, we have taught people that their emotion should be about these high stakes accountability measures, which means that's what we're learning how to think about.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:35

        Perform.

    20. MIMary Helen Immordino-Yang1:21:36

        Perform. Not how to think about the ideas, not the intrinsic power of using math to understand the world in a different way. So how do you engage kids, right? You engage kids by setting out rich problem spaces that... and problems that invite them to try to engage with something that piques your curiosity, that's meaningful to them, or have them bring in, where the kid who really hates it, like, "What is it that you do find interesting, kid?" Right? Start there. Start there and start using your, your academic skills in a way that will give you power to do what it is you're interested in doing. That's the way in. Use your writing, use your math, use your persuasive argument skills, use your filmmaking skills, whatever it is, to tell the story of something that you find deeply meaningfully powerful to understand, and all of a sudden you need the math. Kids actually say things like... Like there's this lovely, um, there's this lovely, uh, uh, long quote from a, from a Sudanese immigrant kid in one of these New York schools, uh, with the performance assessments, um, uh, in a, in an article I wrote with a colleague named Doug Knecht. Um, the, the article is called Building Meaning Builds Teens' Brains. You can find it. It's ed- in Educational Leadership. There's a big long quote from this kid at the end, and he's basically explaining what math class meant to him, which he had never passed a math class before. And he says he got this problem called walking to the door, which is basically Zeno's paradox, right? You get halfway to the door, halfway to the door, halfway to the door. Do you ever get to the door? Why or why not, right? And they spent months learning the math that would help them get at that problem, and he talks about how, "I had a problem," he says, "and I had to learn fractions. I had to in order to be able to solve the problem I had. And as I engaged with fractions and that problem, I got fascinated," he says, "by finite and infinite, and these ideas were driving my need to learn to do fractions." Right? So we've got the cart before the horse. I'm not saying you don't have to learn math or you don't have to learn to read or write or, or, or do all these other kinds of skills, but we make those which is in the horse's cart, you know, what's in the cart, we call that the, the metric of the education system and the aim of it, when in fact it's the quality of the horse. Can that horse pull the thing, right? That's the development of the person, and what they put in their cart then serves that development. It's the toolkit of ways of knowing and understanding that come with you as you move into the world. But this takes real, real developmental skill on the part of educators, right, who are not supported...... or, or, or resourced, or trained to think about development in these ways. I mean, so you asked when does this fall off? It really depends on what school system you are, and in what demographic you are when it falls off. But for almost everybody, except for the privileged few, uh, who are in very progressive alternative schools, it falls off by adolescence, which is when school gets serious, and is also ironically when developmentally kids are developing the neural capacity, and the psychosocial capacity, and the drive to infer complex narrative meaning from the things they are doing. You know, these aren't just my shoes. These are a statement about, you know, what I believe about sustainability, and about sports, and about adults, and counterculture, right? And as we grow into a space where we're driven to try to, you know, challenge, and think about big meanings, and engage with perspectives, and emotions, and social issues, and broad important existential questions, be they in physics, or be they in art, or be they in the social civic domain, right, what do we do? We double down on controlling the input and the output transactional mechanisms that count as, quote unquote, "academic rigor and achievement," right? We start to ask kids, you know, "What's the name of the, the, the servant who shows up in the scene in, in, in Great Expectations," right? "Is it Molly or is it Maria?" Right? And it's, you know, like, who the heck knows? And that is not the point of reading Great Expectations, right? We take away because we're afraid. As educators, as society, we've got this narrative around young peoples in s- uh, particular, but everyone's propensity to build and construct meaning in these spaces and self in these spaces. That agency frightens us because we're worried they're going to take risks, they're going to do something stupid, they're gonna, they're going to fall off the track, they're gonna not make it in the traditional system. And in trying to protect them and shield them from their own curiosities, their own dispositions for meaning making, we, I would argue, actually stunt their ability to grow themselves to the point where we have mental health crises, literally crises in, in mental health right now in adolescents across demographic groups to the point-

Episode duration: 2:41:21