The Neuroscience Of The 7 Deadly Sins | Dr Jack Lewis | Modern Wisdom Podcast 182

Dr Jack Lewis 0:00 Be careful who you envy because quite often the people that people typically envy project success and that everything's great, but actually behind the scenes, are they really great? Is life really as gravy when they're back home? Quite often it's not the case, but we don't look into the backstory behind these people. There's loads and loads of people in the public eye who, when they roll out on stage, when they roll out in the studio in front of the lights and the TV cameras, they put, they put on a face that just exudes success. But actually behind the scenes, they've got a crushing, horrible existence, um, that they carefully hide from everyone. (airplane flying)

Chris Williamson 0:37 We're talking about sin today, all the, all the sins. How are you? Are you sinful today? Are you feeling sinful?

Dr Jack Lewis 0:44 No, I've been, I've been pretty virtuous, to be honest. I mean, lockdown sort of, uh, stops people going out and doing things that might get them in trouble, so I've been boringly virtuous.

Chris Williamson 0:58 How sinful can you be during a pandemic, you know?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03 (laughs) Yeah, I mean that, uh, if you, if you take the drop-in A&E, um, visits, uh, it's just, you, you let, you can't even hurt yourself if you stay indoors.

Chris Williamson 1:13 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 1:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14 You put those little foam cups on all the sharp edges in your house.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:18 Exactly.

Chris Williamson 1:19 And you make sure that you take the steps carefully. That's it.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:22 And particularly during the period where the DIY shops were closed, it's like, I mean, how's anyone gonna chop their finger off on a bank holiday if they can't go and buy a scalpel?

Chris Williamson 1:31 Limes.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:32 Not a scalpel, a standing- a standing lime.

Chris Williamson 1:33 Cutting limes for mojitos, that's how.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:36 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:37 That's how you do it. Um, so talking about sin-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:40 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:40 ...The Science of Sin, your new book.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:42 Science of Sin: Why We Do the Things We Know We Shouldn't.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:47 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:47 So why, why do we do the things that we know that we shouldn't?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:51 Because we're human.

Chris Williamson 1:54 Okay. I-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:54 Too short an answer? (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:55 No, I mean, it's just, it's just a, it's a longer book than that.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:58 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:59 It's, it's, there's loads of words, loads of pages in this.

Dr Jack Lewis 2:01 No, it's, um, it's, you know what? I'm usually very wordy, so I've, I've, my New Year's resolution is to be more concise. That was perhaps too concise. No, so h- the thing is humans are driven by instincts, um, amongst other things, and those instincts, if you take the ones that are covered by the seven deadly sins, the important thing to remember is if you were to abolish any of those seven things, it, it would be curtains for humanity. We need a modicum of all

Dr Jack Lewis 2:31 of the seven deadly sins, um, in, in order to function properly as individuals, as communities. It's just when th- any of those seven categories of behavior go to excess that they are, uh, at its core, antisocial. Now, I'm, I'm not a religious person. Um, I spent a lot of time sort of singing hymns at school because both my primary and secondary school were Church of England, but I, I didn't really believe a word of it. I just thought, you know, I, I was always more inclined to sort of the scientific approach. Let's look at the evidence. If there's evidence to support it, you know, more evidence to support it than to refute a hypothesis, then you, you, you know, you believe accordingly. But with, I don't know, there was so much stuff in the Bible that was sort of clearly outdated that I thought, "How can people still buy into this?" Like, I realize it gives people a lot of, um, hope and it gives them a sense of community, but, but the, the concept of believing like a literal interpretation of the Bible in a post-enlightenment time, it just seemed bonkers.

Chris Williamson 3:34 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 3:34 But I, I've, I've, the more I looked into it, having sort of got my PhD in neuroscience, and scanned a lot of brains, and sort of got much clearer on what we do and don't know in terms of human knowledge, m- modern wisdom, um, I realized that actually there's an awful lot of stuff in those ancient books of religion, Bible and, and others, um, which you shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater just because you don't j- for me personally, just because I don't believe in the supernatural doesn't mean that there's not something to be learned if you read between the lines.

Chris Williamson 4:07 Mm.

Dr Jack Lewis 4:08 And that, and that's what I was sort of correcting the error of my ways.

Chris Williamson 4:12 It's so interesting. I got this quote from Donald Kingsbury which hits the nail on the head there I think. "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared. Often it is still there as strong as it ever was."

Dr Jack Lewis 4:31 Mm. And, and that reminds me of a friend of mine who's, uh, she's an amazing woman. She's like an engineer and a designer and she sort of designs healing spaces, not in a hippy way. I'm talking about psychiatric institutions. Build the buildings and the parkland, the open air, so that it fosters healing rather than a lot of, you know, let's say Bedlam hundreds of years ago, it was the opposite of a place that promoted healing. And after, so, so she's doing a PhD in Sweden. Four and a half years into a five-year PhD, she realized that all of the answers had been, uh, reached by the ancient Greeks. So if only she'd been a classicist and read the right ancient Greek books, all of her, what she thought was modern discoveries using the latest cutting edge research techniques, it was already there. It's just, who's interested in history? We're all interested in the future and what technology can do.

Chris Williamson 5:24 Bro.

Dr Jack Lewis 5:24 It's bonkers.

Chris Williamson 5:25 That is, that is crazy. It is that, the Lindy effect, the fact that we always presume that newer is better and, um, especially given the fact that so much of our time is spent on like Instagram stories or Facebook stories or whatever.

Dr Jack Lewis 5:40 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 5:40 That is content which has been produced within the last 24 hours.

Dr Jack Lewis 5:44 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 5:44 It's the least Lindy platform like by design. Um, but yeah, so-

Dr Jack Lewis 5:50 But also, but also the fact that when you're consuming information so rapidly that you're not rea- y- y- you're so eager to get onto the next thing because it's more about quantity than quality w- when you consume social media, um-You're not even focusing on what you're saying. Like, you get to the end of the paragraph and you go, "What? Another 10 paragraphs? No, screw it. I've got enough. I'm going to move on to the next thing."

Chris Williamson 6:13 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 6:13 But it means, it means everyone's knowledge is superficial and rapid, and people don't bother to go deeper and deeper to get a thorough... a more thorough understanding. Um, but anyway, we can't fix the whole world.

Chris Williamson 6:24 No, we... But we can explain to people about seven deadly sins today. So-

Dr Jack Lewis 6:29 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:29 ... do, what... Do we want to do them? Is there some part of us that wants to do these, these capital vices, which is the other term that you have. You've got the seven deadly sins or capital vices, as you call them.

Dr Jack Lewis 6:39 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 6:40 Like, why aren't we the masters of our own behavior?

Dr Jack Lewis 6:44 Hmm. Why aren't we the masters of our own behavior? Pa- it's partly because finding the right path in life is a, is a balance. Like, there's always pros and cons, there's always pluses and minuses, there's always benefits and risks. And each individual's capacity to pick a path which finds that Goldilocks zone, that sweet spot where you're doing everything in moderation and you're not letting anything go to the extreme, it, it is different. Like, everyone's capacity to do that is... Well, decision-making, in general, is driven by... You don't remember the last 100 times you made a similar decision, but on a sort of subconscious basis, there's a trace of whether it worked out well or badly when you went for the risky option that, that promised a high return compared to the low-risk option that promised a low return. And so quite often, finding that balance between s- sort of giving that urge for immediate gratification, um, a little bit of airtime, but not too much, and, and on average, always trying to go for what's best in the long run. Y- you can't do both.

Chris Williamson 8:04 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 8:04 Like quite often... So let's say... The, the best example, I think, is gluttony, right? Because gluttony a-... Gluttony is overeating, over-drinking. Greed is just wanting more of anything, no matter how much you've got already. And that gluttony thing was an absolute design feature back in, you know, hundre- hundreds of thousands of years of, of human history. If, when food was available, you stuffed your face and built up fatty deposits, it meant that when the inevitable lean times came, where food was unavailable for weeks and weeks and months and months, you know, this scrabble for existence was tough. We're, we're very pampered in this day and age. Under conditions of prevailing food scarcity, you want to get fat in the... at, at harvest time so that you can survive through the winter, right? And so, it, it is actually a logical thing to do, to, to, to shove everything in your face. And instinctively, we love, like, fast-release carbs, sugary, bready, cakey stuff. We love fatty stuff. Of course, we do. But we're not designed to eat it every day. Our, our metabolism can't cope with eating that stuff every day. And then you... So you've got the forces of advertising saying, "Hey, don't buy all that expensive, kind of nutritious food. It's much more affordable," let's appeal to the cost-effectiveness, "to get a family meal. You know, get, get a bucket of fried chicken. Get, you know... Get in the habit, get trained in the habit of eating takeaways or, or, or sort of microwave meals every single day without fail." Now, a little bit of that stuff is fine, but doing it every day screws you up. So the instinct to overeat used to save lives, in that people could live for long enough to reach sexual maturity, to have sex with someone, pass their genes on to the next generation. Like, by hook or by crook, every single one of your listeners, you and me, we have an unbroken chain of ancestors who managed to live for long enough-

Chris Williamson 10:03 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 10:03 ... to reach sexual maturity and shag and have a baby. It's, it's, it's astonishing. Without that propensity to overeat, that wouldn't have happened.

Chris Williamson 10:10 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 10:11 So, so those humans who didn't have that propensity to overeat, they didn't li-... You know, their ancestral line petered out.

Chris Williamson 10:17 They were out-competed, yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 10:18 So the point is, when you fast-forward to 2020, the, the environment is now defined by food overabundance in the vast majority of places in the wor-... In the developed world, at least. You know, the shops, um, have even... Even in strange times of social isolation, the, the shops do run out, but there is plenty of food available, you know. So no one's... There's very few people starving to death in the UK right now, right?

Chris Williamson 10:43 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 10:43 And, and so that means that that whole gluttony urge is now, um, a design flaw. We're, we're battling against it in order to sort of stay in relatively good shape.

Chris Williamson 10:55 Got you. Okay, so how do you define the deadly sins?

Dr Jack Lewis 11:01 They are... Well, how do I define the deadly sins? They are perfectly natural human urges which, in extreme, cause absolute havoc in one's social relations. It makes you vastly unpopular with other people if you take more than your fair share, greed, if you, uh, don't, you know, pull your weight in a, in a collective endeavor, you know, teamwork kind of thing. We can get so much more done as a team than we can individually, but if one person is shirking their duties, then they become very unpopular. Uh, you know, lust causes all sorts of havoc, in that people end up having relationships outside of the person that they might have, um, dedicated, you know, their, their life to. Um, and then once people feel betrayed, it's very hard for them to trust again. Um, you go through every single one. In moderation, we need a bit of lust, otherwise you don't pass on your, on your genes. We need a bit of greed, so that when... Um, if you, if you've accumulated a bit of an excess, then when you hit tough times, you can endure them more easily. Every single one of those things, it's like in moderation, it helps us, um, but in, in, in excess, it makes people push us away. It makes people think, "You know, I don't want to hang out with that person anymore, because they're so aggressive. You know, at the drop of a hat, they're kicking off, and I just don't want to be around it anymore."

Chris Williamson 12:21 Mmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 12:21 And what... The point I just want to quickly get to is, social isolation is... They're literally deadly, these seven deadly sins. Because if you're socially isolated, you die earlier, and whilst you're alive, you have a higher im- im- im- imp-

Chris Williamson 12:34 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 12:34 ... a higher incidence of things like depression, anxiety disorder, personality prob- uh, personality disorders. So, so, y- you die of cancers and cardiovascular disease t- to a, uh, much earlier if you're lonely. You, you have-

Chris Williamson 12:48 It's an all, all-caused mortality risk, isn't it? Loneliness?

Dr Jack Lewis 12:51 Yes. And, and that's, this has been known since 1988, right? Uh, something was, you know, we, we mentioned this earlier, that, that a lot, w- we're sort of, if we'd only looked more keenly at what was already written down, we wouldn't have to, I wouldn't have to look at all of the fMRI brain imaging data to figure out what makes people do these things, you know? It, it, I could just... (laughs) . Like, I'm, I'm glad that I went through that process, because for me personally, I'm benefiting hugely from having a clearer understanding of the role that the seven deadly sins play in my own, own life as an atheist. And I pay much more attention to them now, having written that book, and by making sure those seven behaviors don't go to extreme. I'm not falling out with my friends and family and coworkers, you know, to the same degree as if I was oblivious to it all and just carried on being selfishly narcissistic and kept taking treble extra servings and leaving other people with not enough to eat, you know?

Chris Williamson 13:46 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 13:46 Like, I am quite a greedy, gluttonous person, and it's made me think differently about it.

Chris Williamson 13:51 It's so interesting when you see this, the ancient wisdom then get re-shown in modern science, man. Like, it, it, it's so funny. It just reminds us how highly we hold, um, ourselves in regard and modern science and modern wisdom. You know?

Dr Jack Lewis 14:09 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 14:09 We hold that. Obviously, the podcast fantastic, but the, you know, the actual term itself.

Dr Jack Lewis 14:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:14 Uh, a- and then you realize, you're totally correct. Like, just read a bit of Seneca. Like Seneca and Epictetus had that sorted out, mate, or whatever it might be. So, uh, what I find really interesting about the seven deadly sins and the way that you put it together was that you said it's common categories of human behavior that cause people to fall out. And what that suggests is that if you were like an island, if it was just Chris or Jack, and you went through your, some of these sins, that it wouldn't cause as much of a problem. But when there's other people around that increase friction, the work between you and those around you that it, it kind of magnifies the problem. Is that-

Dr Jack Lewis 14:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 14:54 ... the correct way to look at it?

Dr Jack Lewis 14:55 I'm totally with you. I think that's a very reasonable thing to say. The one thing, the one caveat is no man is an island, and I think what we don't realize is the degree to which friends aren't just nice to have, they are absolutely essential to our well-being. And that's not about having 500, you know, friends on social media. Y- you can have one or two really reliable mates that you can talk things over with. Like, the human brain generates lots of hypotheses, lots of potential explanations for why things are happening. Some of those notions absolutely start raving bonkers, and you need your mates and your family members or the people around you to reflect back on whether w- the parts of what you're saying then add up and make sense in their objective view, and the parts of what you're saying that are just pie-in-the-sky, you know, bonkers. And that's what people who are socially isolated don't have that, and they end up doing their head in with getting hung up on some of those notions that go round and round in their head. Confirmation bias, they've got no one to sort of push back and, and, and say, "No, no, no. I d- I disagree with that." Like, that's the most useful thing someone can do. It, wh- when, when they honestly say to you, "I disagree completely for the following reasons."

Chris Williamson 16:10 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 16:11 Because it makes you aware of a different perspective that we simply... It's very hard to have multiple perspectives when you're looking out of the same pair of eyes and listening through the same pair of ears each day. So, those other people in your life help you to go through all of your notions and beliefs, and sort of, well, hopefully, so long as you're not in an echo chamber of people who all think the same thing-

Chris Williamson 16:32 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 16:33 ... um, give you a bit more balance. And, and it's the same thing with this modern wisdom, ancient wisdom. There's a lot of nonsense written in the ancient wisdom. The nice thing about looking at it from the context of modern science is it helps you to separate the wheat from the chaff, you know? It helps you focus in on those pearls of wisdom that were bang on the money. Whereas, like, Plato thought that the brain was just sort of, you know, the, the... They thought that all, the spirit was in the heart and the brain was just a radiator for losing heat, you know?

Chris Williamson 17:00 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 17:00 So they might, they might have been good at philosophy, but they got their anatomy completely upside down.

Chris Williamson 17:05 Anatomy, yeah. They needed to do a little bit of work on that, didn't they?

Dr Jack Lewis 17:09 So, what I'm saying is like we can't just rely on ancient wisdom, but, but looking at it through the lens of modern science, I think you can start, you know, working out what bits to focus on and, and, and really put your weight behind, uh, and what bits just to, just to let, just to let go, ignore it. Like, I, I worry about people who worry about the fate of their life, sorry, fate of their soul in the afterlife. Because there's a lot of people who, you know, like the Catholic guilt thing, um, people beat themselves up. People are hard on themselves because the expectations of certain people in soci- in the society that, that they're raised in hold them to such, like, high standards, impossibly high standards. Like, the concept of being able to steer clear of the seven deadly sins your whole life is, is, is poppycock, because they, they are driven by fundamental basic human instincts. Like, you know, they're related to the very fundamental instincts that are involved in the drive s- for survival. So, some people are gonna do well at being disciplined, some people are gonna be bad at being disciplined. But I would argue those people who are overly disciplined are missing out on life. They're, they're, they're postponing everything for the afterlife, which may or may not exist. So, why not just make a heaven of life on Earth?

Chris Williamson 18:27 It's a very good argument, man. I don't know. I mean, increasingly, as I get exposed to books like yours, uh, and more evolutionary psychology, and as I start to wrap my head around how...... we operate and why we are the way we are. Um, the concept of who, but what is natural to us seems to become more and more both clear and muddy at the same time.

Dr Jack Lewis 18:49 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 18:50 Does that make sense? Like you-

Dr Jack Lewis 18:51 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 18:51 ... you don't, when you start to strip away ego and predisposition and your, um, the way that you've dealt with your trauma and your, uh, genetic heritage and all this sort of stuff, when you start to strip that away, you're like, "Well, hang on, how much of this do I do before I'm no longer me? But how much of that do I need to get rid of to be more of me?" And again-

Dr Jack Lewis 19:10 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 19:10 ... Seneca's got this concept which is called the virtuous mean and it's, uh, not a vice of excess nor a vice of, uh, uh...

Dr Jack Lewis 19:20 Too little?

Chris Williamson 19:20 Yeah, whatever under, like, not enough. And-

Dr Jack Lewis 19:23 Denial or something. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:24 That middle section.

Dr Jack Lewis 19:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:25 That middle bit, right? That's what we're, we're kind of touching on today. So let's, let's get into them. Pride first thing. Pride.

Dr Jack Lewis 19:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 19:33 Isn't pride a good thing? I want to have pri-... I've done something well, shouldn't have-

Dr Jack Lewis 19:36 You should be proud of yourself.

Chris Williamson 19:37 Yes, you should be proud of yourself.

Dr Jack Lewis 19:39 What a great podcast.

Chris Williamson 19:39 So w- why is it, why is it, why is pride a sin?

Dr Jack Lewis 19:42 It's confusing, isn't it? Um, "You should take more pride in your work." How many times were we told that at school? Um, so, so, so the positive side of pride is it's, it's a natural human emotion, kicks in during childhood, and it rewards, uh, an infant feels proud of themselves when they do what mommy or daddy tell them to do. And then when they get positive feedback and they get smiles and claps and, you know, like body language and vocalizations that make the kid realize that they've done good, they beam with pride because it's reinforcing. When, when, when the world tells you that what you've done is good, um, in moderation, it's good because it makes you more likely to repeat that positive behavior. But the trouble with pride is when you take it to excess, you end up with essentially narcissism. The, the, the sin of pride, what, what the ancient religious thinkers thought was negative, bad about people who are overly prideful, is almost indistinguishable from what science and medicine these days thinks of as narcissism. So it's things like feeling like you don't need other people, you're completely self-efficacious. It's all about me, me, me, me, me, me, I don't need anyone else. Uh, being very vain, um, thinking that you're better than other people at pretty much everything, even in the sort of face of stark evidence to the contrary. You just, you just can't... you can't believe that you're not just brilliant at everything. Um, so the average narcissistic person is the kind of person that's really going to rub other people up the wrong way. Like they're always drawing attention to themselves, um, and a lot of narcissism seems to be to do with, uh, poor self-esteem and, and that can either come from neglectful parenting or, or overly attentive helicopter parenting, both of which can lead to what, what psychologists describe as an undifferentiated sense of self. Like so their sense of self doesn't develop properly early on in life, which means they don't really know where... If you take the helicopter parenting example, the kid doesn't know where they end and their parents begin. There's no dividing line. They just, they... because they have their parents' views forced on them the whole time, they don't know what they think. They just mimic parrot fashion what the parent would say in all situations and carry on doing that through life. So those kind of narcissists need to work on that to sort of basically stand on their own two feet, ego wise, if, if you like. Um, and, and although they seem, narcissists seem like they're so full of themselves, they're constantly looking for, uh, reassurance, positive feedback from the rest of the world, which is why they're such a nightmare to be around. Like anyone who does something good, "Oh, I'll take, I'll take responsibility for that. I'll get all the praise even though it wasn't my idea, but I convinced myself it was my idea so now all the praise should be showered in my direction." And then if you don't give them that praise, they get really aggressive, they get really wound up and they're, they're just a social nightmare. So narcissistic people almost always end up alone. E- even those in relationships, they choose relationships which are basically yes men, yes women, to, to constantly give that positive reinforcement and that's not really a relationship. Relationships involve g- give and take, so they're still an island (laughs) even when they're in relationships. So narcissism is, is, is the queen of all the deadly sins as far as Saint Gregory the Great was concerned and, and he's the guy who basically invented the concept of the seven deadly sins. He took some... there were so many sins before his time in the sixth century, um, that, that it was hard to keep track of all the things you shouldn't do but he sort of narrowed it down to, "Look, these are the seven most important things to keep your eye on." You know, there are lots of other things that are going to prevent you from going to heaven in his view of the world, um, but I think he was bang on the money to, to, to sort of refine the list down to a more easily manageable seven because then we've got a fighting chance of remembering them. Like our, our capacity to hold information in mind is limited to around about seven items. So expecting someone particularly, you know, hundreds of years ago, thousand years ago, to re-, to bear in mind when they're considering, "Should I, shouldn't I do this thing?" 10 different, like, commandments-

Chris Williamson 24:00 They can't even read or write, but they've got 45 different commandments they've got to try and remember.

Dr Jack Lewis 24:04 But, but like you say, with the 10-

Chris Williamson 24:06 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 24:06 ... by the time you get to the eighth commandment, you've forgotten what the first and the second one were.

Chris Williamson 24:11 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 24:11 So, so Christianity would... just had expectations that go beyond the limits of the brain's capability. So I think, I think Saint Gregory smashed it by, by bringing it down to seven.

Chris Williamson 24:21 Why did you say queen? What's that mean?

Dr Jack Lewis 24:24 Probably because he's a massive sexist. Um, so, so-

Chris Williamson 24:27 Right.

Dr Jack Lewis 24:28 ... I, I think the idea was... and, and I'm, I'm just, I'm, I'm, I'm presuming-

Chris Williamson 24:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 24:34 ... that it was along the lines of he could have said the king, but because qu- queens, you know, from the perspective of, of a religious man who had, you know, devout, he's married to God, he doesn't do women. Women are the temptresses who, who make men think about lust, you know. Lust is one of the seven...

Chris Williamson 24:49 Did he say... I thought you said that pride was the queen?

Dr Jack Lewis 24:53 ... pride. So, so the idea is that once pride has seduced you, you will be much more, um, likely to fall foul of the, all of the deadly sins.

Chris Williamson 25:04 Oh, that's the-

Dr Jack Lewis 25:06 Feeding, feeding greed, including gluttony.

Chris Williamson 25:07 It's the pride's the buy-in, it's the on-ramp, it's the-

Dr Jack Lewis 25:10 It's the, it's, it's the gateway.

Chris Williamson 25:12 Yes. Got you.

Dr Jack Lewis 25:12 The gateway vice that leads to all the other. So those, I mean, whether or not he was right in that regard, I don't know.

Chris Williamson 25:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 25:19 But the, the most interesting finding from the neuroscience stuff was actually to do with scanning the brains of people who, who are high in narcissism, uh, in an fMRI, in an MRI scanner, and then compare their brain responses to social rejection to those who are low on the narcissism scale. And a part of the brain that lit up, um, much more strongly was a brain area involved in, in creating our perception of pain. Whether it's physical pain or psychological anguish, this brain area, uh, which is called the DACC, it's a bit of a mouthful, the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex.

Chris Williamson 25:55 Love it.

Dr Jack Lewis 25:55 Um, so it's like, it's, it's where the two halves of the brain meet in the middle, uh, just above and to the front of the band of, um, neurons that connect the left and right side of the brain. This big bundle called the corpus callosum, um, it's j- it's just a patch of brain tissue that's a little bit above and in front of that particular, uh, structure, DACC. And, um, yeah. And, and that, that brain... So basically, what, what does that mean? What that means is when a narcissistic person is socially rejected, they feel the pain of that social rejection more acutely. And so what I took from that is perhaps that explains why they're such dreadful people in a social, in, in a social circumstance. They're, they're incredibly touchy. They're very easily offended, you know? So any amount of offense that someone in, in, in the group, in their neighborhood, in their family might cause them, you know, one unit of, of intended, um, offense causes 10 units of, of, of pain, which presumably they will then ruminate about and plot their revenge, you know, ag- aggression, um, envy and wrath, two of the deadly sins I'm sure we'll chat about later, th- they, they often inspire thoughts of plotting for revenge, you know, getting your retribution for what normally boils down to, to, to hurt pride.

Chris Williamson 27:18 Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, everyone that's listening knows or has a friend, there's someone in the circle, they might not be in it anymore-

Dr Jack Lewis 27:25 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 27:26 ... who makes everything about them. It's Jay from The Inbetweeners, you know?

Dr Jack Lewis 27:29 (laughs) .

Chris Williamson 27:29 It's like he's just the epitome of-

Dr Jack Lewis 27:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:32 ... the guy that's, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I did this. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I did that." Carol Dweck's-

Dr Jack Lewis 27:37 Yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:37 ... fixed mindset human, well, you know, pick the avatar that you want to talk about this.

Dr Jack Lewis 27:42 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 27:42 But, um, yeah, I, I, I, I feel for these people, man, like I... People that have that-

Dr Jack Lewis 27:50 That need to-

Chris Williamson 27:50 ... excess pride and are super narcissists, like it makes me feel bad because I can watch their programming at play. And that's not to say I'm fucking immune, like I watch my own programming at play as well and I feel bad for myself, which is like a, a whole second circle of hell that you can descend into. But you watch these people do it and I'm like, "Fuck, man." Like I... You're, you're a cool girl or guy, you don't need to do all this, you don't have to have the show, I, I'm perfectly happy being out at dinner with you or going to the gym with you or doing whatever without this whole game.

Dr Jack Lewis 28:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 28:23 You know?

Dr Jack Lewis 28:24 You, you just preempted absolutely beautifully the conclusion of the entire book, which is that that's the best way to deal with these people. A bit of compassion, you know, talking about the ancient wisdom, Buddha's been banging on about that forever, you know? Two and a half thousand years, Budda- Bu- Buddha's teaching's that suffering is inevitable and, and that the best way you can deal with people in the world, or, or creatures or anything in the world, is to be compassionate, you know? To think of... To, to be more mindful of other people's suffering. So it doesn't matter which of the seven deadly sins you're talking about. I found evidence for that brain area involved in generating psychological anguish, inner turmoil.

Chris Williamson 29:07 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 29:07 It, it's, it's, it's on a hair trigger in four out of the seven deadly sins, and probably in the other three too, which, which, you know-

Chris Williamson 29:15 You just got to find it. Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 29:16 ... the relevant, the, the relevant neuroscience studies haven't yet been done. Like any neuroscientist who s- wrote, uh, wrote a sort of, uh, um, a request for funding for research, who said, "Yeah, I'm going to study the seven deadly sins," they'd be laughed out of the room, right? I, I got lucky that there was enough neuroscience to work with to try and estimate what these brain areas do. But, but y- it's bang on the money. I thought... I got, I got to the end of writing the book and I thought, "Well, what can people do with this knowledge?" Like, like is there, is... How can it guide them on how to live a better life? And, uh, I've got a nice little anecdote about how I, I actually failed to put it into practice myself-

Chris Williamson 29:52 Goodness.

Dr Jack Lewis 29:52 ... this idea of the best way to deal with people who are falling foul of letting the seven deadly sin type behaviors go to the extreme and causing social chaos everywhere they go, the best way to deal with them is to be more mindful, just to think about how much extra inner turmoil they're dealing with than the average punter. And I, when I finished writing the book, um, I went back to the place where I, I was inspired to write the book, which is Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park, um, you know? For, for us Brits, it's, it's, and, and in fact in the world, it's the home of freedom of speech and, and it's been that way since 1186, um, and- and it was sort of put into law in the 19th century because, uh, back in the day when people were going to be hung from the neck for some kind of crime, they'd get a chance to say a few words. They, they're going to be dead in a few minutes but, you know, doesn't really matter what they say and I, I love that in Britain we have this tradition of letting people who are doomed say their peace. It seems like a very reasonable thing to do. Anyway, so I used to go down there a lot because I'm, I'm a born and bred Londoner, I love roller skating, one of the best places to roller skate in the whole of London is up and down by the Serpentine. And when I got tired, all the way through my teens and 20s, I, I, I'd just go around to Speaker's Corner and have a little listen to all these usually men up on their ladders preaching away about whatever they wanted, it was invariably about religion.I remember thinking, "It's such a shame that a- all these people, like th- like I love that they are vehemently preaching their beliefs," and a lot of them errant beliefs in my view. But they had a place where they could speak their beliefs, and there's something very liberating about having the freedom to express yourself, even if you're completely wrong. Um, and I thought, "It's just a shame that science doesn't get a look in." And it was there where I, where I'd sort of listen to them. I'd go, "Well, 10% of what you said was bang on the money and I can learn from that, but 90% was supernatural poppycock." You know, it was mostly people arguing over whose religion is best. There's quite a lot of people from one faith having arguments with people from other faiths, you know, stress testing and going round and round in circles. But anyway, I went back there and I got up on my own soapbox, and I preached from my own book and I sort of, I, I s- I thought people would be interested, you know, passersby, "Oh, who wants to hear about the scientific perspective on the seven deadly sins?" And, and it's up on YouTube. If you go to sciofsin.com, I, I made these little videos. I got a friend to film it, and there's little six-minute snippets f- of the hour tal- hour-long talk I gave. Now about 20 minutes from the end, it was, this is like 11:30 on a Sunday, this bloke just s- came, sort of wandered over th- with like a bottle of cider in his hand, absolutely hammered, homeless guy, just shouting abuse at me nonstop for 20 minutes. And I didn't know how to deal with him, like I, I blanked him for five minutes. That didn't work. I, I brought him into the conversation a little bit trying to sort of use him to make some points. That didn't work. He was just drunk and belligerent. Anyway, I'm, I'm not proud. I edited it out, so there's no evidence of it, but I, I gave him a piece of my mind. I was rude to him. I got angry. I let him get to me, and in front of a crowd of about 50 people, I said a few quite unkind things, which didn't help matters, but nothing else had worked.

Chris Williamson 33:00 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 33:01 Fast-forward four months. I went back to the same spot, I gave the talk again, because I thought, "You can't just do it once." (laughs) Uh, and I told the story of how I had failed to be compassionate with that man, and that I was slightly embarrassed that I didn't put my own, you know, do... I basically did do as I say, not as I do. And I thought, "I... You know, if I get the chance, I'd lo- I'd love to make amends." You won't believe it. 10 minutes from the end of that talk, I saw him coming over from the background. I saw him wandering towards. I leapt off my soapbox, I ran over to him, and I was like, "It's so great to see you again. I'm really sorry for what I said last time." I threw my arms around him and gave him a hug. Now this guy is... You know, a lot of homeless people are mentally ill. There's a very high proportion. Like, and I did it on instinct because it felt like the right thing to do. Obviously un- unplanned. And at that moment of embracing him, I thought, "Is he, is he going to stab me? Like, you know, I could end up getting hurt here. What an idiot." On the contrary, he melted. He, he was tense and then when he... Like, I held him for about five, 10 seconds, and I felt him relax into my arms, which is weird, right? And he was good as gold. For, for the whole rest of the talk, he did not disturb once, whereas before he'd been going, "You're not an F-ing neurologist. You're a loony." You know, he was good as gold. And then at the end he came up to me and he's like, "I actually listened to you this time and I come down here to disturb these people because I think these religious zealots are nuts and they shouldn't be telling people to follow God. I think everyone should make their own decisions in life, and that's why I've come and been disruptive." He's like, "Now that I've listened to you, I agree with every word you said."

Chris Williamson 34:40 Man, what a cool-

Dr Jack Lewis 34:40 Which was nice.

Chris Williamson 34:41 ... what a cool-

Dr Jack Lewis 34:41 Which was nice.

Chris Williamson 34:42 What a cool story. So having been on the front door of more nightclubs than I can remember, I know the pain of dealing with someone who's drunk. And when, when people have got alcohol in them, man, there's just no ce- You're not talking to them. You're talking to the blood alcohol .10 or whatever it is. That's what you're talking to, right?

Dr Jack Lewis 35:03 Yeah. (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 35:04 Um, but yeah, definitely what I really enjoy doing, and I'm enjoying in doing it increasingly now, is breaking the fourth wall of a conversation in that sort of a manner. So if someone's doing something, if someone is being driven by their programming or they have a response to something, I'll ask them about the response, not about what they said, but like, "Hang on a second, man. Like why, why did you say that?" Or, "Why, why were you so sort of, um, self-effacing there? Like, why did you have to kind of caveat what you were going to say and say that, 'Oh, well, I know that it's just shit, but it's this thing.' It's like, why didn't you just say it?" "Oh, well, uh..." (stutters) And you can see people, the, the cognitive dissonance starts to fire and you're like, the programming just, it doesn't want to accept the fact, "I should have just said the words." But increasingly, I think, you know, doing it with compassion, not doing it to show off, doing it to say, "Look, like you don't need to be over or under. You..." That kind of-

Dr Jack Lewis 36:03 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 36:03 ... the virtuous mean in the middle is exactly where you can be, and I think calling people out on that, it... As you said at the beginning, you want to be friends with people that want the best for you, not people-

Dr Jack Lewis 36:13 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:13 ... that want- that tell you what you want to hear.

Dr Jack Lewis 36:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:15 Not people that decide to be too mean and, and kind of, um, use you as a, uh, a punching bag for their own-

Dr Jack Lewis 36:23 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:23 ... kind of emotional challenges.

Dr Jack Lewis 36:24 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:25 Um, but man, that's a, that's a really, really cool story. I'm super glad as well that you managed to get some closure and, and, and kind of finish that loop off.

Dr Jack Lewis 36:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 36:32 Because I imagine it must have felt very, very satisfying. Also, obviously-

Dr Jack Lewis 36:36 That's very e- empathic of you because I... It, it, it ate away at me. I, I pride myself on not being a hypocrite. I try to not be a hypocrite, you know?

Chris Williamson 36:43 And not being a dick, I'm going to guess as well.

Dr Jack Lewis 36:45 Yeah. (laughs) Well, I try.

Chris Williamson 36:46 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 36:47 Um, but that, that kind of thing, it, it does, it... You know, there, there are other things that... Like, I mention one in the book ab- about wrath, where this, um, this guy... I, I got... I was doing some filming in Brighton and I got to the end of the line, and I was, I was actually writing (laughs) for Science of Sin. Uh, you know, I was researching and writing, and I had my papers there but it took ages to tidy everything up. And the, the train conductor, like, went through the carriage and said, "You've got to get off." And I was like, "Yeah, yeah," and I was hurrying to get my stuff, but I, I, you know, I was basically dithering.And he, and he locked me in the carriage.

Chris Williamson 37:20 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 37:20 And then I went up to the next carriage, that one was locked too. He had me running halfway up the length of the train before I could actually get off and I'm like, "Mate, what are you doing? You saw me there." I went absolutely mental at him. So, you know, the homeless guy, that guy, you know, literally enraged, like my blood alcohol level was super high and I felt like my pride was wounded. But I spent weeks, like I just, it kept popping into my head, examining it, "Why did you react like that? Why did you do that?" And, and I think that's one thing that this sort of new modern wisdom-inspired pursuit of like, let- let's use all this psychology research and this better understanding of why we do the things we do to try and make ourselves better. I think, I think one of the main things that offers us is the opportunity to not be so hard on ourselves. And what I liked about your anecdote is it sounded like you give reflections to people that help them, uh, catch when they're going into set piece behaviors, where they're kind of either beating themself up too much about something that they did, or writing off their potential to potentially be better. Because it's easier. If you don't try, you can't fail, you know? And I think a lot of people who, who are a little bit stuck in their ways from an objective perspective, it's like they're worried about trying to be different because if they try something new and it doesn't work, then that could end up giving their self-esteem a bit of a kicking.

Chris Williamson 38:46 Bro, I love, I love trying to bring people up like that. There's some people that are, as far as I'm concerned, are just lost causes, and that's more from a time efficiency perspective. There's certain people I know that have excess pride and I'm just, "Dude, like you're, you might, you might figure it out, you might not figure it out. Maybe you stumble down the right YouTube rabbit hole or start reading the right books or maybe you don't, but it's, this isn't my fight."

Dr Jack Lewis 39:07 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 39:07 "I'm, I'm leaving you to it." Um-

Dr Jack Lewis 39:09 But also you're not qui- with respect, you're not qualified to, I'm not qualified to do that.

Chris Williamson 39:13 Oh, for sure. Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 39:13 The only people who can really help those people are ones who can go, you know, trained professionals-

Chris Williamson 39:18 Unpack all of the stuff from back in the day.

Dr Jack Lewis 39:21 ... psychologists, therapists-

Chris Williamson 39:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 39:21 ... who just, "Let's go back through and work out where all this came from," because it's like, I guess it, I'd imagine... My, my mom's a, a therapist, so I've got some insight into what the process involves. Not that I've ever gone through it myself, which is one of my long-lasting hypocrisies, because I know I should do it, but I still haven't yet got around to it. Um, yeah, it's, it's, it's working out what life experiences led you to certain set piece behaviors that aren't good for you or other people. Because it's, it's not a sort of zero sum game, well-being and happiness. Like, we can all together lift ourselves. It's not like one person's happiness detracts from your own. Envy-wise, if someone else seems really happy, it can emphasize your own relative lack of happiness, so, so quite often people don't want to be around perpetually cheerful people for that reason. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 40:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 40:13 Um, but ultimately you need professionals to help you understand why you just keep doing things that rub people up the wrong way. Um, neuroscientists can't really help you, uh, well-intentioned podcasters... But, you know, like if you did the course, I'm sure you'd be brilliant because you have, I would argue on the basis of what you've sh- shown so far in the last 40 minutes, you've got it, man. Like, you- you've got enough of an overview of what makes people tick probably from all the time you spent on the door dealing with every different type of person under the sun. But you've got that life wisdom that means that once you had the... I mean, maybe you are a psychotherapist, I don't know.

Chris Williamson 40:52 No.

Dr Jack Lewis 40:52 But if, (laughs) if you, if you don't have that training, if you got that knowledge-

Chris Williamson 40:56 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 40:56 ... the official training on top of your life experience, you'd literally, you know, change, change people. Those lost causes would be found again.

Chris Williamson 41:04 Again.

Dr Jack Lewis 41:04 But, mate, that's a long journey. Who am I to say that you shouldn't (laughs) ?

Chris Williamson 41:06 I know. So I'm, I'm good friends with Charlotte Fox Webber, who's the head of psychotherapy for the School of Life in London. And, um, I had her on the podcast and she was telling me psychotherapists need to have five years of consistent, um, sessions on themself.

Dr Jack Lewis 41:23 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 41:23 Not that they give it, it's like, that, that's like saying-

Dr Jack Lewis 41:26 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:27 ... you as a PT, you're not allowed to be fat, and also you've got to be really fit before you can be a PT. I thought, I thought that was really-

Dr Jack Lewis 41:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:34 ... really cool. Look-

Dr Jack Lewis 41:35 My, my mum blew me away when she said, "Ev- you, it's impossible to be an effective counselor if you don't have counseling yourself."

Chris Williamson 41:43 Oh yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 41:43 Because your own neuroses come out in the way that... You're trying to be objective, but those set pieces that your unconscious plays on you will end up interfering with your ability to help them.

Chris Williamson 41:53 I love that terminology. I've never heard it before, set piece behavior.

Dr Jack Lewis 41:58 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 41:59 I lo-

Dr Jack Lewis 41:59 It's just I'm thinking autopilot, autopilot behavior.

Chris Williamson 42:01 But I, I, I...

Dr Jack Lewis 42:01 I don't know where it comes...

Chris Williamson 42:02 It re- it makes me think because what happens with a set piece in a sport, right, is that first the guy runs this way, then this person goes out, then the ball comes in, then this guy goes back across, then this is going to happen. And it's the fact that it happens, this kind of iterative, um, like staccato game of it's like first this, then that, afterwards this, and then it finishes up here.

Dr Jack Lewis 42:25 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:25 And sometimes it might go well and sometimes it might go bad.

Dr Jack Lewis 42:27 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:27 And that's what a set piece is and that's what happens when you see people who are part of this, the animus possessed, you know, they're just part of that programming as it goes.

Dr Jack Lewis 42:36 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 42:36 Um, let's, look, let's get back. We have six sins remaining. Gluttony. Gluttony is up next and we touched on it earlier on, right? Fitness enhancing. We have... It's the only time in all of our human evolutionary history where we're in this situation-

Dr Jack Lewis 42:50 It's so funny that you say that. I'm sorry. The ice cream van is literally pulling up outside.

Chris Williamson 42:56 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 42:56 << Just one Cornetto >> Perfect timing.

Chris Williamson 43:00 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 43:00 Go on.

Chris Williamson 43:01 Jack-

Dr Jack Lewis 43:02 Sorry to interrupt.

Chris Williamson 43:02 If you go outside and get us a 99 Flake now, I'll pause the... No. It would be...

Dr Jack Lewis 43:06 I hate that guy because literally I think, I know it's... I must sound like such a...

Chris Williamson 43:11 Dick.

Dr Jack Lewis 43:12 Yeah, but I, whenever, whenever they come past, I think, "You're just there to make fat teenagers fatter."

Chris Williamson 43:18 I don't like mine, so mine goes past the end of my... I don't like mine because he always does it when I'm recording content and it's always on the take where I've nailed it, you know?

Dr Jack Lewis 43:29 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 43:29 And I've had the auto cue running for ages-

Dr Jack Lewis 43:32 It does, doesn't it?

Chris Williamson 43:32 And then it's the one and then... (singing) Ugh, f-

Dr Jack Lewis 43:38 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 43:39 Fuck!

Dr Jack Lewis 43:39 Well, at least he's got the just one Cornetto Music, 'cause for a couple of years he had some godawful nursery rhyme. So-

Chris Williamson 43:46 Oh.

Dr Jack Lewis 43:47 ... you know, we've, we've got to be grateful for the little things.

Chris Williamson 43:48 Stuff of nightmares. So yeah, gluttony, fitness enhancing. For a long time we were in a situation where food was scarce, we didn't know when the next meal was coming. Now, the world's changed and we're in this abundant surplus of food-

Dr Jack Lewis 44:04 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 44:04 ... but apparently if we still, if we eat too much of it, it's a vice. Why?

Dr Jack Lewis 44:10 Because it's really, really bad for you. Um, if you're ... So, there, there's been some quite interesting research done with, uh, looking at the white matter integrity. So the white matter in the brain is like the, the neur- neuronal cabling. You know, like there's billions and billions of wire, brain wires sending electrical information from one end to the other, reaches a synapse, spills a bit, bit of neurotransmitter into the gap, travels across to the next neuron in, in, in the chain, and then that one becomes a little bit more or less likely to send its own electrical messages. So it's got this ... The reason it's white matter rather than the gray matter is 'cause there's a go faster wrapper called myelin around the outside to accelerate the speed of that electrical message so that it can get where it needs to go super, super fast. So when you talk about the integrity of the white matter, it's basically how good is that go faster wrapper? Um, is it, is it in good shape or is it in bad shape? And if you look at the brains of people who are obese, as far as their BMI is con- concerned, and you compare them to the brains of people who are lean, as far as BMI is concerned, uh, if ... Your average 50-year-old, uh, if you're obese, the white matter looks like what you'd get for your average lean 60-something-year-old. You know? So it ages the brain by 10 years. There's lot, all sorts of kind of cognitive capacities that are reduced. So this is obviously, it's not vice from the perspective of heaven or hell, we're, we're getting away from that entirely. A vice in terms of making a hell of your life on earth compared to what it could be. Um, you know, I have the greatest sympathy for people who, who struggle not to overeat because I overeat hugely.

Chris Williamson 45:51 I love it.

Dr Jack Lewis 45:51 I have done my whole life.

Chris Williamson 45:52 I love it. It's satisfying.

Dr Jack Lewis 45:53 But I've al- I've always been a sports person and, and since childhood I had tremendous excessive energy. And that, that wasn't my choice. In fact, it caused my parents ... Like, I, I, I never stopped. I was constantly running around, climbing up things. I wanted to do every sport that was available on the planet. I just wouldn't stop. So all I've done is continue doing that. Even though I keep up the same level of sport, I've still found that I, I have to constantly focus on eating less, increasing the gaps between my eating so that I don't end up, you know, eating something just before I go to bed and then eating as soon as I get up in the morning. I'm trying to extend that period where I'm fasting.

Chris Williamson 46:32 Mmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 46:32 And, and it's a, it is a constant battle and it's weirdly only now that instead of, because I can't go to the gym, I can't do anything else, it's only now by doing, um ... We're back to the hypocrisy thing again. I was a little bit overweight BMI wise, and it's only doing 10K twice a week instead of doing 10K once a month and my normal like, playing gym and football once a week, where I've, where I've, I've lost four kilos and I've got down into that healthy BMI for the first time in about 15, 20 years. So I'm, I'm not, I'm not a fat basher because if, if I had a different metabolism, if it ... No, if I had an injury that prevented me from doing sufficient work, I struggle to regulate my eating-

Chris Williamson 47:13 Mmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 47:13 ... and, and, you know, like, as, as much as the next person. But the consequences if you do allow yourself to become obese in terms of your brain health are, are, are pretty serious.

Chris Williamson 47:25 Bro, the quality of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts as far as I'm concerned. As the quality of my thoughts have improved, the quality of my life has improved linearly. Actually no, it probably increased exponentially. It's probably that my life has got better by a factor of how much better my thoughts have got.

Dr Jack Lewis 47:41 Nice.

Chris Williamson 47:42 And, um-

Dr Jack Lewis 47:43 Nice.

Chris Williamson 47:43 Don, Don McGregor from Social Chain said to me on our first ever podcast, he's a big sobriety advocate, as am I, um, elective sobriety, just for people that want more time and money and calories to spend on shit they care about. And he was like, "Bro, everything in your body is made from the stuff that you put in your mouth. Everything." I was like-

Dr Jack Lewis 48:01 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:02 ... "Hang on a fucking se- You're right." I can't, I can't build anything in my body if I don't first put it on a plate or in a wrapper-

Dr Jack Lewis 48:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:09 ... wrapper or whatever, and then put it in me. And I look back (laughs) , I look back to me at uni and I think, "What was, what was I eating at uni?"

Dr Jack Lewis 48:18 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:18 Like, wake up, big bowl of Cheerios, last night's Domino, Domino's Pizza, go to lectures, come back, Budweiser, Budweiser, bit of pasta probably something, go out-

Dr Jack Lewis 48:33 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:33 ... vod- vodka. You know?

Dr Jack Lewis 48:34 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 48:34 And you think like, that's not-

Dr Jack Lewis 48:36 I'm glad, I'm glad you're mentioning the booze here because the word gluttony comes from the Latin gluttire, which means to, to gulp. So, so it's to overco- it's basically, it's not just food, people thought gluttony, they always think food, food, food. No, it's, it's drink too.

Chris Williamson 48:51 An excessive consumption then.

Dr Jack Lewis 48:53 Yeah, it's just ... So long as it goes in through your mouth-

Chris Williamson 48:56 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 48:56 ... it's, it's, it's gluttony.

Chris Williamson 48:58 Okay.

Dr Jack Lewis 48:58 And, and, and it's really important to remember the huge amount of sugar that is in, um, you know, your average can of lager or, or glass of wine, not so much vodka, but the stuff you mix the vodka with usually very, very high in sugar. And that's that, you know, those invisible calories, we don't really count those calories because it's like, it's my god-given ... The God that I don't believe in. My God-given right to de-stress with a glass of this, which turns into a bottle, you know.

Chris Williamson 49:25 Mmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 49:25 'Cause it, it can so easily slide from a glass of wine a day into a bottle if you're, if you've got a big mouth like me. And it takes ... You have to notice that one glass has turned into two on a regular basis before you can rein it in. Ideally, don't let it go that ... Like when you see the slide happen-If, if, if you don't buy it in the shop, then it can't be on your shelf to tempt you.

Chris Williamson 49:46 Can't, can't, can't, can't eat the stuff that's not in a cupboard, man.

Dr Jack Lewis 49:49 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 49:49 You know? It's the easiest way to not break your diet. Okay. Look-

Dr Jack Lewis 49:51 The battleground is in the shop. It is ... If you bring it in through the threshold of your front door, it will get eaten.

Chris Williamson 49:57 Yeah. It's, it's gonna be consumed, yeah, one form or another. You'll snort it or put it up your bum or do something with it if it's a cookie. Uh, right.

Dr Jack Lewis 50:03 My suppository addiction is getting out of hand.

Chris Williamson 50:06 Next one, lust, which was my ... Personally, in the book, that was the, uh, chapter that I found the most interesting. It was also-

Dr Jack Lewis 50:14 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 50:14 ... the one that I can imagine triggered people the most and was the most uncomfortable. Um, but I want, if you would, I want you to ... First off, actually, do people have conscious control over what makes them feel sexually excited?

Dr Jack Lewis 50:27 No, absolutely not. No one should feel guilty for feeling sexual desire towards another person because we have zero control over that. Whether or not we act upon that temptation, whether or not we act upon that attraction is a whole different matter. But the actual l- you, we can't ... A gay man can't control whether his lust is triggered by looking at a man or a woman. A straight man cannot decide to be straight or bi or gay. You, it's, it's just, it's just not, it's not-

Chris Williamson 51:06 We don't-

Dr Jack Lewis 51:06 ... in our control.

Chris Williamson 51:07 We have no conscious control over what makes us feel sexually excited, which is what, I guess, looking back at the ancient way that the church dealt with homosexuality makes that a very pernicious, um, way for people to have to live. Your-

Dr Jack Lewis 51:23 Yeah, I mean, basically s- sodomy is anything that isn't having sex with the intent of making a baby.

Chris Williamson 51:31 Oh, okay. So the wi- the-

Dr Jack Lewis 51:32 Any an- any sexual activity that isn't aimed at making a baby is sodomy in the eyes of Christianity, at least the original, you know, uh, back in the days of Christ.

Chris Williamson 51:42 That would include the withdrawal method, well, well-timed withdrawal method.

Dr Jack Lewis 51:46 Yeah, yeah, yeah. And masturbation and-

Chris Williamson 51:49 Oh, wow.

Dr Jack Lewis 51:49 ... you know, all sorts of things which through-

Chris Williamson 51:50 Everyone that's listening-

Dr Jack Lewis 51:51 ... modern eyes are very innocent.

Chris Williamson 51:53 Everyone that's listening is a sodomite. Uh, there-

Dr Jack Lewis 51:55 Yeah, pretty much.

Chris Williamson 51:56 If you're not a sodomite, if you're listening and you're not a sodomite, I want to, I wanna meet you because you're interesting.

Dr Jack Lewis 52:01 But that's even in the context of a ... That's even, in the context ... If, if you're going to be really strict about it, and then let's not bash religious perspectives because they, you know, there are different, there are different interpretations of ... This is the, this is the original guidance back in the day that inspired the concept of the lust being a sev- one of the seven deadly sins, right? Like, this is, this is the, the bel- the antecedents to this belief we- were all around that. But even that, that would f- be ... Even in the context of, of a, of a married couple, you know, married in a church, um, if they have sex just for fun, that's sodomy. Like if you have sex with a condom on, that's sodomy.

Chris Williamson 52:39 Wow.

Dr Jack Lewis 52:40 It's bonkers. It's bonkers.

Chris Williamson 52:41 Yeah, it is. Um, so can you take us through the Burns and Swerdlow tumor study?

Dr Jack Lewis 52:48 Can you remind me what that is? (laughs) There were a lot of studies. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 52:51 So it's the one, it was the one about the, uh, married man who was having sex, pedophilic sexual urges.

Dr Jack Lewis 52:58 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, sure, sure, sure. Yes. So, um, he's a guy who was, to all intents and purposes, a responsible man. He, he was a teacher. He, he, you know, held down jobs well. He was liked by ... You know, not the most popular bloke in, in, in the school, but he was, um, uh, you know, a stand-up member of society. He started, uh, developing sexual urges towards his stepdaughter. His stepdaughter mentioned this to her mother and-

Chris Williamson 53:25 Who, who was 14.

Dr Jack Lewis 53:26 ... who was 14. Um, quite rightly, um, they had a word, you know, and with, with the law. And he got banged up for pedophilia because he'd made advances on his stepdaughter. Um, he then complained of a banging headache, um, whis- whilst incarcerated, and so they duly took him for a brain scan and found a massive tuna- tumor pressing on a part of his brain. Um, they removed the tumor. He then claimed, said that all of his pedophilic fantasies had disappeared. Um, he no longer wished that he could still have his ... You know, like when, when, when he was in prison, he still was hankering for his, uh, collection of pedophilic, um, material, and-

Chris Williamson 54:14 He was going after the, um, the nurses as well, or like the assistants that were in the recovery facility-

Dr Jack Lewis 54:21 Yeah. I think he made-

Chris Williamson 54:21 ... he was in as well.

Dr Jack Lewis 54:21 ... he made

Narrator 54:22 a ƒ5.

Chris Williamson 54:22 Like, there was anyone that he was going to make an advance at, right?

Dr Jack Lewis 54:24 Yeah, yeah. And then so, so they let him out because they believed that the removal of this tumor had removed his pedophilic tendencies. So the idea was, it was like disinhibition. Like, I think people who have those urges, it, it's not wheth- it's not that the urges went away, it's his ability to, to suppress them, his ability to do right by the law and do right by not harming other people. But then once the tumor grew back when he was out of prison, the pedophilic tendencies came back, presumably because he, he lost his capacity to resist those urges and then he ended up back in prison again. So the reason it's a really fascinating case is because it's so rare to have a case where the, the pedophilic tendencies will switch on and off-able according to the presence or absence of a tumor. That's why it's fascinating.

Chris Williamson 55:11 Dude, it ... That study blew me away. It reminded me, I can't remember the particular gentleman's name, but the guy who was in the bell tower that was shooting people, shot his family, shot himself, and then said, "You need to do an autopsy on my brain." Found out it was a huge tumor pressing on the area of the brain which is to do with aggression, and he just felt this like unrelenting aggression.

Dr Jack Lewis 55:30 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:30 But, I mean, even that man, like ...We don't have conscious control over what makes us feel sexually excited. We do have conscious control over whether or not we act on those urges.

Dr Jack Lewis 55:41 That's right.

Chris Williamson 55:41 That's, that's what we've got. But that-

Dr Jack Lewis 55:43 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 55:44 ... that brings up, there's a, a big section in the book about p- pedophilia, which I think is a fascinating topic, and ever since I was seeing a girl at uni, and one of her housemates went to go and give a talk at- at a lecture theater, saying that we need to treat people with pedophilia with more compassion because-

Dr Jack Lewis 56:00 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 56:00 ... do you think that these people want to be attracted to children?

Dr Jack Lewis 56:05 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:05 Given the choice of all of the different things that they could be attracted to in the world-

Dr Jack Lewis 56:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:09 ... do you think they want to be attracted to children?

Dr Jack Lewis 56:12 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 56:12 And ever since then, I've, I've been f- f- stuff like this absolutely fascinates me, the thought-

Dr Jack Lewis 56:18 No, no, I agree with-

Chris Williamson 56:19 ... how do we think about it philosophically, how do we see it societally, you know?

Dr Jack Lewis 56:24 Well, let's think of it from the perspective of what's best for society, right? We, we, we want to reduce as much as possible the incidents of pedophiles making advances o- on children because obviously that scars children for the rest of their lives and it causes huge, huge problems. So, so what's a, what's a pragmatic way of dealing with that problem? It's certainly not to make them feel vilified, so the minute they accept it, everyone in, in th- in their life turns away from them, when they, if they were to go to a doctor, you know, they, they would, they, they would worry probably quite rightly that they might get reported to the police 'cause I'd imagine, I don't know for sure, but your average EP has a d- has a duty or might feel a duty to report this because that person, even if they say, "I'm controlling it," but these urges are there, well, do you really want to take the risk that they're saying one thing and doing another? Of course not. So, but the thing is, if you or I were a pedophile, where would we go for help? And that's the bit that I think we need to focus on. If there's no one to turn to, where do you go? You hide it. You suppress it. Is that a good way to deal with problems? Invariably, no. You know, if, if you bottle it and pretend it's not there, it's, it's likely to grow, you know? Can get worse and worse. You need help. But w- where can these people go for help? So, I think what's happened over the course of, you know, all, all time until now, because they're so vilified, they're considered evil, wrong, broken, beyond redemption, um, they know full well that the only people who are gonna, they're gonna get a sympathetic ear from are, are the pedophiles, and so then it's gonna go from entertaining thoughts to, "Oh, shit, have you checked out this website?"

Chris Williamson 58:04 It catalyzes the situation, doesn't it? By being able-

Dr Jack Lewis 58:06 Or, or, or, or 20 years ago, like, oh, I can get ahold of some videos, and, you know, VHS videos or, or DVDs or whatever, and then, and then it circulates and then it goes underground and that's the bit that concerns me. Society's quite understandable attitude of disgust towards pedophiles only serves to dr- drive them underground. A- and it's such a hard problem to deal with. I think most people are just like, "Oh, I don't want to think about this anymore."

Chris Williamson 58:31 Yes.

Dr Jack Lewis 58:31 And then they, they probably don't think about it until it comes up in the news again, but I think we need to address it. It's just who's going to do it? Like I, I certainly thought twice about putting ... I thought it was important to include that information, but on a number of occasions, I thought maybe I'm going to take it out 'cause I don't want to sound like an apologist. That's absolutely what I am not. Um, but at the same time, you, you got to discuss it because it happens in the world, and you know, there's a, there's a proportion of people who have those tendencies and pretty much all of them in the UK, as far as I know, don't have anywhere to turn to get help, to get therapy, to get ... Be, be taught the tools of how to deal with it in a way that doesn't ruin their quality of life or that of anyone else's.

Chris Williamson 59:11 I think you said there's a call line, special-

Dr Jack Lewis 59:15 Yeah, but it's-

Chris Williamson 59:15 ... call line that 50% of the calls are unanswered due to-

Dr Jack Lewis 59:20 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:20 ... the call line not being sufficiently well manned.

Dr Jack Lewis 59:22 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 59:23 And I'm like, I don't know, man. Like, I'd be interested, the people that are listening, I'd be really interested to hear what you think. Like, give me a DM or comment below, whatever, 'cause, um, it's a f- it's a really fascinating topic and, you know, anyone that wants to say, "Oh, this is making, this is an apologist thing for pedophiles." Like, fuck off, man. Like, you don't know what you're talking about. This has got nothing to do with that. It's to do with how can we have an effective society which helps to bring everybody along with it? And at what point do you make someone culpable for the thoughts that are in their head?

Dr Jack Lewis 59:53 Hmm.

Chris Williamson 59:53 Like, are you actually going to make someone culpable not only for thought crime, but for thought crime that by definition in neuroscience they do not have conscious control over?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:00:03 Yeah. Well, which, which is, and the evidence says-

Chris Williamson 1:00:04 Holy fucking shit.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:00:05 ... some of your listeners won't have read it, right? Almost by definition, and, and the bit that, that really made me think differently about it is this thing called plethismography, one of the hardest words to pronounce in science.

Chris Williamson 1:00:16 Say it again.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:00:17 Plethis- bastard.

Chris Williamson 1:00:19 (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 1:00:20 Plethism- Ah, you got me. Plethismography. So you basically put a collar around the base of the penis and so you're measuring whether or not the person gets an erection, right? It's a completely objective measure of sexual arousal. There's a similar th- thing in, in, in women called photoplethismography which measures the, uh, lubrication of the vagina. Essentially, when female genitalia become a- aroused, it lubricates. When male, uh, well, it changes shape somewhat, um, and lubricates, and, and the male, it, uh, it, it, you know, the penis becomes turgid. So you can put the rod inside the hole. It's, it's, you know, biological and simple. But especially, um, s- so, what I'm, what I'm talking about is the sexual arousal thing is something that we have no control over, and in some of these studies that came out of a lab in Canada, the interesting thing was in order to make sure they had a population of purely pedophilic people, they, a- and then they compared them against purely non-pedophilic people 'cause obviously some people there'll be overlap.

Chris Williamson 1:01:18 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:01:19 They showed both parties children porn and adult porn and the pedophiles got no response from the adult pornography, whether it was gay or straight or anything else. They exclusively got a sexual response from, uh, the pedophilic content, which is why they're included, and vice versa. Um, they had to make sure that those who were turned on by-... um, uh, you know, adult consenting, uh, we hope, (laughs) pornography-

Chris Williamson 1:01:46 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:01:47 ... um, the, the, you know, they weren't also a little bit turned on by the pedophiles, in order to make sure that you really are comparing apples and oranges, that you are, you know, you're getting the populations purely pedophilic and purely, um, non-pedophilic. And, and so the fact that they bothered to do that is, is quite interesting in and of itself. But the fact that these people are incapable of becoming sexually aroused to anything other than children, it's like, you wou- you wouldn't wish that on your worst enemy, right?

Chris Williamson 1:02:17 No, man. It's, i- a- and that's the thing as well, especially when you roll the clock back and you realize that for a very, very long time as soon as a girl was fertile, she would be pregnant. In fact there's-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:02:28 She'd be married off and-

Chris Williamson 1:02:29 ... there's even a term for the, uh, period between her first, uh, period and when she becomes fertile.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:02:38 Mm-hmm.

Chris Williamson 1:02:39 I can't remember the word for it, but there's a, a medieval term for that period because it was so commonly used by the waiting male for this, what? I don't know, what? 13, 14, probably for most girls when they start puberty, I don't know.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:02:52 Juliet in Romeo and Juliet was around about that age.

Chris Williamson 1:02:55 Yeah. But I mean, Game of Thrones, there you go, um, Daenerys. But y- you get my point. Like-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:00 Speaking of made up drama. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:01 Yeah. (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:02 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:03:03 Um, right, two more things, two more things in lust that I really, I really thought was cool. Um, I didn't realize that the female orgasm has a reproductive function. What, is it the cilia, is it called?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:03:15 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:15 The little hair-like, um, hair-like extensions that, that reach out into the fallopian tube.

Chris Williamson 1:03:21 The, the waft. Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:21 It actually wafts the sperm into the correct ... You know, there's two fallopian tubes, um, and it wafts it into the one that the egg will be found in-

Chris Williamson 1:03:31 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:32 ... over and above the one that didn't produce an egg.

Chris Williamson 1:03:34 So I've ... Is that selective from an evolutionary sense?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:38 Sure. I mean, I, I don't see how else it could have occurred.

Chris Williamson 1:03:41 Yeah. Okay, cool. So woman enjoys sex, someone that she has a emotional and physical connection with equals more likely to orgasm, equals more likely to direct the sperm through this Mexican wave of little cilia, cilia things down ... I mean, that, even just learning that, bro, like the fact that-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:03:58 And conversely, do you, do you wanna know a bit that I didn't put in?

Chris Williamson 1:04:01 Hit me.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:01 Do you know what the male, male foreskin does in te- in practical, physical terms?

Chris Williamson 1:04:06 Uh, acts as a little helmet and-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:11 It's, it's one of its functions that it, it does the job well. Whether it was designed for that purpose or not is, is, you know, very difficult to discern. But it, it extracts the previous deposit of semen, so that your semen makes it to the finish line. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:04:29 I don't ... I thought that was ... Is that not to do with the, like the coronal head shape of the penis itself that creates a suction inside of the vagina? Is that not how that works? I didn't -

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:38 I think it's a bit of-

Chris Williamson 1:04:39 Okay.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:39 ... I think, I think, like, but then in order for it to, in order for it to ... I'm doing a grab.

Chris Williamson 1:04:46 Oh, okay. So it's catch-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:47 Y- you can, you-

Chris Williamson 1:04:47 It's catching it as it goes ... Oh dude, that's so disgusting.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:51 But it's funny, isn't it? Like if it ... If that's true and I don't know for sure whether it's true, I've just read some papers that suggest it-

Chris Williamson 1:04:56 Oh, I've, I've heard, I've heard it as well.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:04:58 Yeah. But, um, you know, the, the concept of us being historically biologically, um, uh, monogamous is slightly dubious if we've evolved-

Chris Williamson 1:05:09 Well, we, well the y-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:09 ... the task-

Chris Williamson 1:05:09 We're the only mammals on the planet. We're the only mammals on the planet, if that's the case. Final thing, final bit in lust.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:15 Fidel Castro had sex with 35,000 women.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:19 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:05:19 Bro. (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:21 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:05:21 What's going on? (laughs)

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:22 Yeah. That's, that's, um, slightly shocking.

Chris Williamson 1:05:26 If that's not lust.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:28 That's lust, that's out of control lust. That's properly out of control.

Chris Williamson 1:05:34 Probably linked in with a lot of pride, probably linked in with a lot of envy, a lot of wrath.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:05:38 Agreed. Agreed. A- absolutely. I don't ... I think ... I tried to go off on a tangent of sin bundles, like, you know, men who aren't happy with having two or three kids, but in some cultures, you know, they'll have, they'll have 20, 30 kids with multiple wives. It's like why? Why? Why do you need to do this? Like it ... That's not just lust. That's, that, that goes way beyond lust. Like you said, it's, it's greed, it's pride, um, so many other things.

Chris Williamson 1:06:10 Yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:06:10 Envy, like the desire to cause envy in others.

Chris Williamson 1:06:14 Mm-hmm. Yeah, which is in itself a kind of a way of pride as well, isn't it? Yeah, dude, it's so interesting how these all, how these all interplay. I think kind of to, to, um, footnote the lust category, it's one of the most binary categories I think here, that because of the way that typical relationships are formatted. Like there's not really a line when you say that someone's being greedy and not being greedy, right? It's like, "Oh, well, if you accrued this much wealth, there's your greed threshold."

Dr Jack Lewis 1:06:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:06:48 And over that bracket, you're a-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:06:49 It's a relative, right?

Chris Williamson 1:06:50 Or, or y- you, you ate this much food, but you're not allowed to eat this much food, you're officially a glutton or whatever.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:06:55 I, I, I think, I think if there were a threshold it's if your excess leaves others without.

Chris Williamson 1:07:02 It's a good way of putting it.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:03 But that's a hard thing to measure.

Chris Williamson 1:07:04 It's a lot less hard than you cheated on your partner-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:08 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:09 ... uh, or you had sex with 35,000 women.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:12 Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:13 That's ... Like Fidel, "Look, it's been, it's been 2,500 women. Let's leave it there, you know."

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:19 (laughs) Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:07:19 "Let's just ... Let's call it a day, mate. Are you not tired?"

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:22 It's funny, isn't it? Um, so many people have blamed their profl- profligacy on, um, sex addiction. But sex addiction isn't even acknowledged by the psychiatric world, like-

Chris Williamson 1:07:34 Do you think it will become?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:36 Um, don't know. I mean, well it's, it's all about whether there's sufficient evidence to support it. If that evidence comes along, then yeah, if not, no. It'll never make it into ... It become ... Well, it's, it's funny, isn't it? That people bandy it around left, right ... "Oh, I'm a sex addict." Then it's, "Oh yeah, he's just a complete ... He or she is a complete sex addict." It's like, but it's not a thing.... it's just, it's just-

Chris Williamson 1:07:56 Not yet.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:07:56 We-

Chris Williamson 1:07:56 But then depression, depression wasn't, um, categorized as a, a, an official mental health disorder, I don't think, until only fairly recently.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:08:06 Mm. Only not in Freud's day.

Chris Williamson 1:08:08 Yeah, true. Okay, so envy next. You say envy is the least fun of all-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:08:14 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:08:15 ... capital vices. What makes envy different to the other ones?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:08:18 Yeah. Well, I mean when you feel envious it's unpleasant, isn't it? But when you snap at someone who's doing your head in, wrath, it's quite fleetingly satisfying, even if you might regret it in the long run. Um, you know, if you win at poker and you end up winning all the money and the other 11 people, or whatever around the table, don't get it, that's fleetingly satisfying until the next time you go back and play poker and lose it all again. So envy is, you know, there's, there's benign envy which is good, which is where-

Chris Williamson 1:08:47 What's that? What's that?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:08:47 ... you, you compare yourself to other people. Um, usually it's people who had a similar start in life, uh, that, that it, that this works with, like grew up in a similar part of the world, similar level of education, similar opportunity, similar start in life. Yet one person, the other person, has gone way beyond you and it can make you feel ... You can respond to that in different ways. Uh, b- but benign envy is where you examine them, you work out, "What did they do that I didn't?" And you learn from them, and you work out gaps in your sort of toolkit of ways to manage your life and deal with the world. And you maybe, you know, think, you, "I'm gonna, I'm gonna learn how to do that," or, "I'm gonna start moving in more influential circles so that I can maybe get some of those trappings too." You know? We ... Envy helps us realize when we're lagging behind other people in our social group, um, and we're not getting as much as they are, so it can alert us to possibilities, to potential. The dark side of envy is malicious envy 'cause there are two ways you can even the gap out. You can either pull yourself up by your bootstraps in order to get to a similar level to, to the person you're envious of, but there's also the other way of, uh, circulating malicious gossip and bringing them tumbling down. Like, so quite often people respond, uh, to their feelings, perfectly natural feelings of envy, by wanting to bring about the downfall of that other person by any means necessary. So the ... E- envy can inspire awful behaviors, incredibly antisocial behavior, um, in, in, in some people in some circumstances.

Chris Williamson 1:10:25 I love the, the way that you put it. You said, "Envy has a sense of injustice at its core."

Dr Jack Lewis 1:10:32 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:10:32 That's a, a really nice-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:10:34 It's unfair, isn't it? Why have they got all this and I've got nothing? Why have they ... da, da, da? Why have they ... da, da, da? You know? It's the, it's the old refrain, isn't it?

Chris Williamson 1:10:43 It make-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:10:44 The other bit is, um ... Go on.

Chris Williamson 1:10:45 It just ... Envy being useful and motivating you to compete makes sense.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:10:50 Mmm.

Chris Williamson 1:10:50 It also makes sense from a, a, a, an evolutionary, a fitness enhancing perspective, right? You think like, "Oh, well, this is, this is my get up and go." And so much of this is in ... It, it's your own ability to take yourself out of yourself and see someone that's doing really, really well.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:11:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:09 Or even not ... See someone who's doing badly, but kind of just slowly creeping up on you-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:11:15 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:11:15 ... and not seeing it as a threat, not seeing it as a zero sum game.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:11:20 Yeah. The, the interesting thing about envy is it, it's one of the, one of the four where that, that brain area, the ACC that's involved in pain, um ... At the moment people feel envy, when they read about someone else from their childhood doing really, really well, much, much better than them, that brain area kicks in hard at that moment you feel envy. You know? It sort of ... inner turmoil is what, is what inspires a lot of unpleasant behaviors. You know? That's the, that's often the first link in the chain that leads to unpleasant antisocial behaviors. Which I, I was shocked that I kept finding this brain area, because I have to admit (laughs) , when I set out, out on this project I hadn't done, I hadn't done the research before I wrote the book proposal. I found out what I found, and then I reflected on it, and then, and then wrote a book about it. So I couldn't believe how lucky I was getting four out of five. And actually gluttony was one of the ones that this brain area didn't, uh, kick, kick up in. But after-

Chris Williamson 1:12:22 How would that, how would that have operated? Would that be when you were going to have the food and you don't have the food and you feel pain?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:12:30 Yeah. It's, it's when you're, you're try ... Well, fun- funnily enough, um, I can't remember the exact study, but a couple of months after the book was published, a study did come out suggesting that-

Chris Williamson 1:12:42 (gasps) Motherfuckers.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:12:42 ... in people that have problems, um, with overeating, that at the moment they make that choice to give into it, it's almost like the, the, the emotional turmoil of the self-loathing about, "God, here I go again. My resolve is crumbling."

Chris Williamson 1:12:54 Ah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:12:54 From memory, this was a year ago.

Chris Williamson 1:12:56 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:12:57 Um, but I remember thinking, "Oh, if only I'd delayed by another six months (laughs) I could have included this."

Chris Williamson 1:13:02 You could've got another one in there, yeah.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:13:03 And it would've been ... Well, it would've been f- Then it would've been six out of seven, but I had to discount lust. The DACC was the m- Like across ... There's so many studies done showing people porn in, in f- MRI brain imaging tubes, and the DACC comes up again and again and again and again and again. But I had to discount it because it's also a brain area that deals in all sorts of conflict. And if there's one thing that you're told over and over again in the MRI tube is, "Don't move. Don't move. Don't move." And I think that produces huge conflict when, under normal circumstances when people are watching porn, they do move a certain part of their body.

Chris Williamson 1:13:38 Mmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:13:39 If you catch my drift.

Chris Williamson 1:13:40 Yes.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:13:41 But to not be able to touch yourself when you're watching porn might be the thing that was causing the ACC, not the porn in and of itself. So I, so I actually-

Chris Williamson 1:13:49 The, the pain of having to withhold your, uh, hands from touching yourself.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:13:56 Uh, uh, yeah, which isn't really what the-

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 (sighs) That's not, yeah-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:13:58 ... the case.

Chris Williamson 1:13:58 ... you can't isolate it, right?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:14:00 I guess, like, uh, actually now I'm reflecting on it again, you could say that that's involved in the urge of doing something you know you shouldn't. It's just in the case of doing it for the first time. (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:14:11 Because there's a lady watching you in an fMRI machine. (laughs) That's definitely something that you know you shouldn't.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:14:17 Right. I, I met, I met this guy, uh, at the Society for Neuroscience Conference about 10 years ago, who, who did some of the early fMRI studies. Um, it- he's in Groningen in, in the Netherlands, and he said it was really, really hard to get radiographers to come and support that research because they thought it all sounded a bit dirty and seedy.

Chris Williamson 1:14:36 Mm-hmm.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:14:36 So in the early days, it was really hard to get... 'Cause in, in that context, he wasn't showing people porn. He was getting couples to come in and do sexy time. You know, one person stays really, really still and their partner would, uh, manipulate them in the scanner, bring them to ejaculation.

Chris Williamson 1:14:51 That has to be a very challenging situation. You know, you got one person... I mean, anyone that's ever been in an MRI machine, like...

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:00 Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep.

Chris Williamson 1:15:01 Yeah, yeah. It's not-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:02 (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:15:02 It's hardly the most sort of seductive... It's not the, the candles and the Barry White aren't, aren't quite playing, are they?

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:09 Yeah.

Chris Williamson 1:15:10 No.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:10 No, it's not, but then, I guess, (sucks teeth) ƒ�cking A.

Chris Williamson 1:15:13 Okay, so-

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:14 Folks, if you- (laughs)

Chris Williamson 1:15:16 ... we, we, we understand that, we understand that envy is this comparison mechanism that's going on. I guess that's got to be exacerbated in a world where social media shows us a, a shop window into the best of everybody's lives.

Dr Jack Lewis 1:15:28 Correct. Be careful who you envy because quite often the people that... the others that people typically envy project success and that everything's great. But actually behind the scenes, are they really great? You know? Is life really as gravy when they're back home as when they're on the sofa on telly, you know? Quite often it's not the case, but we don't look into the backstory behind these people. There's loads and loads of people in the public eye who, when they, when they, when they