Transcripts For CSPAN2 Chantel 20240705

Tonight. Tonight is one of the kind of acts that we enjoy more than any other. As we do what were doing here, which is to come back into in person gatherings like this, which we did for a better part of 35 years, 36 years, and it had to take to your break. We all did in various ways. And now weve been resuming and the pleasure, though, during a night like tonight is a very welcoming, brand new book in the world shuttle press. You were a science of you with me. Still, this way. Im still in zoo mode. Is time. Once we just came out yesterday just got published. And the other part of that, of course, is that its a very first book. So its even more occasion for celebration and were glad youre here tonight. She, of course, is up here and from here at the university of washington, where shes a professor of psychology. Shes a professor of neuroscience, professor of linguistics at all distinct ways. And yeah, has worked also doing research and teaching over the years and she tonight well talk with kevin white who is also the university of washington about what shes done with this book, which is drawn from great research, which kind of counters a lot of the prevailing scientific themes that everythings the same with everyone in every way. And some of the distinctive individual patterns really are there in the human brain and in our role of making are there. And she really has done a lot of work. She and colleagues and this is written i mean, this book in a way, is quite grounded in the science, but also is readable and which is not a masterpiece. Whats the website . Is it composed of a book. You know, they know each other of both know that very well. So tonight on your own, professor . I think shes on top to most here. But we also illustrate a little bit more in the second reading from the book. And then she and kevin will converse about the book and talk about this. And then we hope youll pass the question a little bit of difference tonight. If youve been here before, you if you have on the lights are slightly brighter tonight and those are because this program with the tape is being recorded for cspan. So were going. Live. And first of all, were also theres an audience. Well see this in a different way, in a different time. And again, helping introduce what shes done with this book to an audience thats here that will go girl by word of mouth, by other program she does. And by the way, folks really do surveys. We get picked up, talk about read so they will take to do their part. But we do hope youll ask questions like joe. They repeat them so that it works better over for the tv part of it. And then at the end of all that, she will sign copies of her book. We also have german and his book came out in the middle of the pandemic. So he was a lead and do this kind of thing. But he coauthored this excellent book calling , which draws from, you know, the area era. And every author, the era of online misinformation and how things get sorted out and what ways of that also is also what book of copies that back there as well. A few other things if you hadnt been here were done for the inroom audience and so watching rescued are upstairs and we do call at 9 00 so were a little still a little not quite up to the late late nights that we used to be here. But were so glad youre here. And now were so glad that youve been to all for the first part. Later, to be joined by jeffrey with with professor shackelford with the neuroscience of you. Thank you. Stephen west. Yes, i was going to correct that using most people miss my first name. Im not the last one. So i like to know where it is. Can you guys hear me . Okay if i have the microphone . Not right in my face. Yes, i like that. Audience participation and very welcome. This is surreal, for lack of a better word. I think this is the first moment that i really cant deny that im an author, that that label goes with those other labels that you heard. And lets say a little bit about that, because i feel a little awkward every time someone introduces me as a professor of psychology, neuroscience and linguistics. But the truth is, and everybody in this room who knows me 100 vouch for this. I dont fit anywhere very well. So i kind of get into a lot of different spaces, and i think thats what uniquely prepared me to write this book, because i love the ways that people differ. I appreciate i celebrate them and im really tired of the one size fits all. You know, approach to neuroscience because we lets face it, things that are one size fits all dont fit anybody at all very well. So i want to thank my students, my friends, my supporters, and especially those of you who are here and dont know me and did not get bribed to come here because i was a really afraid that no one would show up. But thank you all for being here and and especially my husband, who supports me in ways that vary from talking about what im going to write in this book to illustrating this book, too, telling me whether the back of my hair is curled or not. You name it, he does it, and together we decided that i should read the beginning of the book because, you know, whats a better place to start than at the beginning and if i were a little more prepared, either id have it open to that. Okay. So also this is the preface. Not everyone reads the preface. Thats what i learned. The difference between a preface and an introduction is so now im going to force you all to listen to it. Its its called from my brain to yours. They say that everyone has a book in them, but no one ever tells you how hard it is to get that book out of you. Well, they didnt tell me anyway. To be fair, i probably wouldnt have listened. As it turns out, my brain is more of a touch the stove to see how hard kind of learner. To be honest, im thankful for it because even if i get burned now and then along the way, if i had it because they said so type of brain, i wouldnt have done most of the hard things that prepared me to write this book in the first place. And if you learn half as much about your brain when you read it as i did when i wrote it, it will definitely have all been worth it. Suffice to say that my first book writing experience has been anything but normal. If there is such a thing. A big part of it involved the experiment we all participated in that began in 2020, and im. Im not the one. Wait. And im pretty sure none of us signed a consent form. You know, the one centered on a virus. Id like to think of it as a radical exploration of what psychologists have called the nature versus nurture question how much of what makes you you is inherent in your biological makeup and how much is a response to your environment . When the covid 19 pandemic hit, many of us traded the routine parts of our daily lives for pervasive anxiety about our health and the safety of our loved ones. Fortunately, my day job as a scientist and professor at the university of washington in seattle gave me some tools for understanding what might happen to me under these circumstances. But for reasons youll read about in the second half of this book, my knowing better didnt immediately translate into my doing better. Instead, i watched my life transform with equal parts, fascination and horror. I was captivated by the differences between how i felt and how the people around me seemed to be coping with the changes in their routines. Some of them got into the best shape of their lives while i remained stagnant. Others exchange recipes and became obsessed with baking the perfect loaf of sourdough bread. Not only did i cook less than ever, i didnt do any of the things i always said i would do if i had more time. Instead, i tried my best to finish netflix. I cajoled my husband into playing dozens of hours of pandemic, a board game in which you try to save the world from a Virus Outbreak you never know could come in handy. I ate like. I drank more than normal and thats a fair amount. And in the moments of stillness, while gazing at my increasingly protruding navel, i found myself asking the very question that got me into this field in the first place. Why am i like this . The answer is pragmatic, simple, but biologically and philosophically complicated enough to fill a whole shelf full of books. My brain makes me this way. I remember the exact moment i first had this realization and how swiftly it changed my life forever. I was 19 years old and after watching one too many episodes of doogie howser, m. D. , i was on my way to applying to med school to meet my last requirement. I signed up for a psychology course at the local Junior College that didnt interfere with my day job selling shoes at kinneys in the mall, dating myself and during our first class, the instructor described the story of phineas gage. Gage was a Railway Worker who made a mistake in 1848 that caused an iron spike to get blasted through his left cheek and out the top of his head grows right when it did, it took a decent sized chunk of his brain with it. Surviving such an injury would be remarkable, even with todays medical practices. So the fact that gage got up and literally walked away from the accident is incredible in and of itself. Eventually, many of his physical and mental abilities returned to normal. But the damage gage sustained to his frontal lobe left his personality funda mentally and permanently changed. While gage was once a well respected and dependable man capable of forming and executing rational plans, his physician described him as fearful, irreverent, manifesting but little deference for his fellows. Impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires. At times pertinax ously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible, to put it simply, gage was not the same person after his brain injury. This fascinated me. I left class trying to wrap my mind around the fact that the human brain is an organ just like the heart or the lungs, but the functioning of this organ makes you, you. The lungs oxygenate the blood, the heart circulates the oxygenated blood through the body. And then your brain uses that oxygenated blood to create the energy that gives rise to every thought, feeling, emotion and action that you identify as your own change the brain and you change the person. What i realized about three months into the pandemic is on a smaller and hopefully less permanent scale. My brain was changing, soaked in cortisol, a neurochemical related to prolonged stress. My brain was struggling to find balance between the should dos and want to or want to do urges. And i dont know who needs to hear this, but being stressed also majorly kills creativity. Thankfully, while writing the mixology chapter, i had the aha moment that gave me some much needed perspective among other things, it reminded me why people were responding to the pandemic in different ways. At the end of the day, people respond to stress differently for the same time that some people feel paranoid when they smoke weed for the first time, while others just feel hungry. It all goes back to the nature versus nurture question, and the answer is almost always a combination of both baseline differences in our biology, combined with our lived experiences, to shape the way we think, feel and respond to and to our environmental changes. And i know that my brain did the best it could under the circumstances. It always does. I sincerely hope your brain will enjoy learning about itself through the fruits of our labor. Please. Okay, im joining. I dont know if i need to turn this on or probably not. Lets go. Oh, im good. Okay, perfect. Well, congratulations. Thank you. I was looking at you thinking like i know you identify with some of this as im just theres the stress of of getting comments back from your editor. Theres the stress of thinking. Yeah, well, a book publisher ever take and then theres the stress of that night where youre releasing an and just having your friends and family come celebrate. So i wanted congratulations. Its so great. And its whats so strange for me is that youve been on campus for many, many years. So have i. I and i know ive known of your work. I know of the lab. I know andreas work and others, but now i kind of really know you and the stories that you tell. I mean, just like the story of maya, is that how you pronounce her name . Wow. The the ovum donor story was just fascinating. I mean, just one after another. In fact, i wish that i would have have this book when i was an undergraduate, although maybe i would be off in a different path right now, because i think this was a lot more fun than the textbooks i read. So i guess im going to start with some questions that are really probably selfishly for me, and then ill get into maybe a little bit some of the, you know, how pop culture kind of weaves in to some of the neuroscience and the ways that you really i like sort of in the quotes here danced made me neurons sort of dance from the page but how long did this take you because im theres so much that you weave and it really takes three professors three professor titles to be able to tell this story. So what when was the germ of the idea of a book . And today, two to today. So what . Yeah. What, when was it . I think the germ. Andrea was my date guy. So interrupt me if im wrong, but i think the germ of the book probably came late 2018. And i know i sold you know, i found an agent, shopped the book and sold the book in, i think, may 20, 19. I had an 18 month turnaround time, 18 months. Yeah, that was actually met it. Nope, but i didnt say that. But i had an 18 month contract and they asked me one of the questions. They asked me, Publishing House asked me when i was there is how are you going to make that time . Some of my students are here and i was like, we have writing hours like every day this is going to be easy. No problem, you know . And then the proverbial ash hit the fan and the world crumbled. But i think even before covid happened, i had a huge bout of imposter syndrome that got in the way. I mean, i had a a real genuine desire to write this book when what i am calling the great unfriending happened in the 2017 2018 Political Climate and i just, you know, i come from a Small Agricultural town in northern california. I live here in seattle of the most liberal place on the planet. I love it. But, you know, people i know and love stopped being able to talk across their differences. And, you know, being married to a neuroscientist. I thought the stuff that we know gives us a perspective on what it means to have an opinion. And it shouldnt stay here at our dinner table. So i had that real strong motivation and then, you know, imposter syndrome happened, the pandemic happened. And when we started getting close to the deadline, i started talking to my agent. You know, i probably had half the book done at the 18 at the 18 month mark. I probably had half of the book done. And she was like, listen, its not a big deal to ask for an extension. Its a big deal. Thats for two. So im like, you know, how much can so so long story short, five month extension. And in true. Shontell fashion, i wrote the last sentence on the morning that i turned it in. Wow. And if anyone looks on twitter and sees that picture of me crying my eyes out like, is this messy or is this what it feels like . It was like because i did it and there were a lot of moments where i thought, this is just going to be a glorious example of one of my big epic fail or one of my stair stair tracking incidents. This is going to be the most epic of my failures and and it was actually my daughter, jasmine, because probably 2 to 3 months into that extension, i was like, i might just not do this. I might not be able to do it. We need to wrap our mind around this. And she said, you are going to do it just like youre going to do it. Dont relax your criteria. Like it doesnt have to be a perfect book. Finish the book like like what . You dont accept my resignation . Absolutely not. Thats like, okay, fine. Jasmine said i had to and i did it. And then and then. So i think we finished the book. I but andre, i was doing my my notes. Apparently some people ask students to do end notes, but i did not do that. I asked my husband, we we were doing it like a round, round the clock affair. But i. Rewrote 60 of the book in the three months after i turned it in, like after i turned it in and that pressured to do it left. I just decided to write what i think and i think it got a lot better. I sure hope it did. I havent seen version once. Well, do change structurally because i. I really like the way you broke the two main parts of the book. No, no, not, not big structure, just within the chapters, making sure there was more coherence in everything. And but what did change structurally was the difference between my pitch and this book. So my pitch was a lot nerdier. It was called wired weird and all of that. And there were nine sections and it was like, you know, hard wired rewired. It was all kind of like neural circuitry. I could see how that would be. It kind of fits with your theme that wired, where it sort of identifies and highlights those differences rather than the typical red to argue against. Right, right, right. And so but this is a lot more, i guess, and i, i kind of thought to myself like, are other people going to be i like weird. Like, i like being weird and i like other people was like, maybe not everybody wants to pick up a book about being weird. So i think that thats where the editors and the people who know better than i do what other people like to think about themselves kind of shaped it a little bit. But so in that rewriting, did it become that conversational sort of way of telling stories . Because i love the conversational side. I know some editors push back on that. They dont want you to become too conversational with the reader, but i personally love it and i actually like writing that way. Did that come in the rewrite or was that i liked version . It was interesting because when i was stressed and under time, pressure, my default was to do what we learned as academics, which is like grantees. It was like writing a lit review. And i should say that a lot of this book is not my specific expertise. So i was like reading, summarize in writing, and whenever i was under a time crunch, this thing that would come out felt like a review paper. And i was like, you know, me the next day, like, i hate this. And so again, it was kind of it was a huge process that ends right here of me sitting on this stage with you where i was like, you know what . I know what im too. I my opinion is as good as anyone elses. And im going to say what i think and and also, you know, for me that those dinner table conversations are for everybody, like this book is not for you. Its not written for the ivory tower. Its not written for academics. I think it has a lot more science, like actual hardcore science in it than you would think for the rainbow you cover, you know . I mean, its like youre reading and listening to a story or some fascinate, you know, a story of someone, you know, having something go through their head and then boom, you learn a whole bunch of this. Right . And i think maybe my my knowledge about curiosity and how that helps learning maybe plays. And i think i really tapped into what i call my psych 101 kind of teaching. Its like, get them interested in this and then feed them a bunch of vegetables. And then its like, get them interested again. And then first of all, you know, like once i think probably one of the most sincere compliments i ever got was in my writing group where someone says, i feel like youre one of those sneaky parents who puts vegetables as in dessert. And i was like, yes, i think that really came out well in the mixture, too. You were just all this all the things that i learned about dopamine and all these other mixtures that we sort of depend on for how we behave and how we feel and how we think. Its just by the end of it, im like, well, i think i learned more from this than all these like textbooks. I always thats one way of for me to compare the book. So i thought that was really nice. So i think if that was your goal, i think you did a good job on that. Well, its its actually hard. Dopamine is one of the things that i feel through my husband, whos a model of the basal ganglia model, of the basal ganglia and so forth, when you know a lot about something, its way harder to write about it than something you know a little bit about. Youre like, oh, i can see that. I can see the forest, i can see the forest and so dopamine is a thing. Dopamine reward. And the way that drives us through life is the thing that i gave in bits, because i really wanted to tell the truth and tell the whole truth, and in fact, when i wrote the book, i had this idea, it sounds good until you try it. The idea was, im going to write a more accurate book about neuroscience than exist on the shelf, but im going to write it in a way thats accessible so everyone can can learn it. And then i sat down to do that and i thought, oh, this is really hard, you know . And so and so i tried to, you know, instead of having introduction, here are all the machines we use to study brains. I tried to like introduce it at the time that you need it. You know, in the in the place, in the story and so that somebody is motivated like, okay, were in a tube and were staring at a screen because were studying this, you know, and its i hope, i hope it works, you know. But that was my goal. And and when i sat down to do it, i thought, wow, thats really hard. It is. Its interesting that you say its harder to write the things you really know because you do have so many things you want to dump out of your brain onto the paper and then try to make that accessible. I think i struggled with that too, and i feel like im a misfit as well because i got my training and evolution of biology than work was physicist or my postdoc and now im doing mostly Computer Science stuff, which there are links. By the way, if we have time, id like to get to that element for, you know, i think all the computer scientists should be reading this book as well. But i want to i want to go back to sort of the rewrite. I think one of the questions ive always liked asking authors and i have my own sort of story in writing as well, what got the cut, what didnt get in that you wish you could have kept in play and performance and whoa, oh, thats a that could be a load. Theres that a chapter all by itself. It was. Yeah, i think like choking under, like the sort of relationship between oh. Performing when you have a goal and doing something with no, no care about the output. So that kind of yin and yang between just like exploring and playing and you know, in the why, why that might be necessary in the brain and like selfmonitoring and how it gets in the way. So if you were to start singing right now again, you would have to sort of see that. And i mean that to me. I dont care if i but i like this idea of singing. The book was a good idea. I like i like that for sure. Yeah, that comes out right. The whole beyonce halo thing that is that is a secret personal anecdote thats real. And, you know i would people in this room witness okay so thats one so performance in play okay im hoping to see an addendum to the because youre going to have probably have a multiple editions of this i imagine. So you already should be thinking about that. What else, what else got cut from that. Well, there was a lot of stuff. Ironically, there was a whole lot of stuff about George Washington into which i think needed to be cut. But when i was talking about learning and navigation and like, you know, the difference between semantic and episodic memory, i mean, one day, you know, we called it the George Washington chapter because i just kept writing pages and pages and pages about things like didnt have wooden teeth, you know, possible rumors about where his dentures came from and like on and on and on and on. Like so much about George Washington. And then it was really funny because my editor there was like a list that came out from gut and then there was like a whole book about George Washington, not like, oh, they already did that. Okay, i can like let go of the George Washington chapter because really, i think farther and farther away from the brain, George Washington got cut. I think theres still a few George Washington sentences in there, but no longer like ten pages about George Washington. The book is longer than it was supposed to be. So yeah. What is it . What was the original contract then . I think 100,000 words and it might. Be 125,000. Thats not that. And its weird. I mean, like, for me to see it and hold it, im like, but whats like, nothing. Well, and youve got lots of footnote i love your phone that so youre right youre a youre a footnote queen. I like that. I ask you how many footnotes you used to have, like, oh, yes. Oh, yeah, we have. Were going to have the unabridged version for the footnote fan. Even when i did the audiobook, then i went through another footnote hacking and someone i knew who was listening to the audio because whats with all the footnotes . I was like, listen, sister, youre getting 25 of the footnotes that i wrote. The footnotes for me, that was my way of staying organized because im like, im having this, like, distracting thought or i think this is real funny. And i just, like, put it in some of the finest. It came out in the footnotes and i got distracted too. Thats not a, you know, think thats a bad thing. But i got distracted. I kept going back to the footnotes every time. But there are some clever notes i know thats going to be absolutely relevant or like part, you know, more of the story. Its kind of a smoke youre smoking something about marijuana and then thered be this footnote about whether. So i thought that was totally fine. What does that say about your brain, this footnote sort of habit, probably that i am more of a organic, nonlinear type. Theres a bit in the book where i talk about the symptoms of adhd and how strongly andrea and i fall on the spectrum of maybe, maybe high functioning. Fake it till you get busted, organically driven brains. And, and that was fine. I mean, talk about play, right . Like i think theres some part of writing where you just have to write once without editing. I think thats i mean that personally. I think thats the best way to do it. And get the editing is far away. Yeah. At the beginning especially. Yeah. And so its like heres a distracting thought that looks like a great footnote. Heres oh, theres oh, well, that footnote is a half decades long. Hey, you know, what are we going to do . And it was my editor. She is amazing. She i think im one of her few. She does a lot of nonfiction, but she does a lot of biography, autobiography and biographies. And she was highly tolerant of my footnotes and my personal anecdotes and so for what its worth, there was somebody like feeding the feeling the flame there with that narrative kind of style and i mean, you know, its interesting. One could argue theres too much of me in the neuroscience of you, but, you know, you if especially when, you know, i hear people saying like jim trans is one of the people i asked proofread. Thank you so much. Youre such a valuable resource and such a valuable team member. Wed like kind of giggle about something you read in the book and i was like, i wrote that in the book. You yeah, well the preface was awesome. That pulled me right in the story. I mean, does the honesty about netflix and all the sort of bad habits reformed and all the good things that came, of course still from the pandemic as well. And i wonder if the pandemic didnt happen, would the book have happened the way it did or actually because it sort of you had 2018 and you said youre 18. I have to figure out all the time. Yeah, but why now . Why now . Could you have written this five years ago . Ten years ago . Why . Why now . I think i wrote the book because i do. I mean, were all talking about this, but i do feel its getting increased increasingly divided. And i worry about things like politics and how compromises, you know, seen as weakness and how, you know, i think that two brains that are in the same room can already come up with really different versions of reality. And now, i mean, i think the pandemic was also the fact that we were socially isolated and like 95 of what our brains were adapting to were the things that we see on our smartphones or our televisions, right . So like its less and less that were i mean, in the pandemic, we werent in the same room. Right . And so its like were not in the same room, but were not even having like more and more and more. I think our Smart Devices have the best model of our brains. And so theyre feeding the, you know, they if they know what you like and they know what you want to see, and so theyre feeding you this and your brain is adapting to this little ecosystem and this little echo chamber that your smart device has created for you. And so its like if two people in the same room cant agree about whether the dress is blue and black or white and gold, what happens when youre like, yes, here are other blue and black things you can find to accessorize that blue and black dress and here seem blue and black and like, you know, theyre in totally different rooms are totally different it puts so i mean i would have my motivation to write the book happened before the pandemic i think the book and the personal tone, i mean, theres definitely some element of what i call nicer to me. You know, in the book and in therapy, for me to be like, what the hell is happening to me right now . Like, you know, but we all do that, right . Like, why am i like this . What . What i really hope people will take away because theres so much about neuro hacking. And, you know, ive been on the radio for the last week or so and everyones like, how do i improve my brain . How do i do this . And im like, wouldnt it be awesome if you could just like, man, theres a lot of space for different to not be better or worse. You dont know what that thing that you think is improving is going to affect in the long run. There might be a cost to that. You dont know. So as i was struggling with stress and the unknown and, you know, trying to support my team through this big change, you know, i was also like reading like, wow, stress in the brain. You know, its like sort of reading about the different ways that we adapt. And and i think that the book i dont think it would be the same book if i hadnt been if we hadnt all been surviving the pandemic while i wrote it. But i think it would have been needed. No, i love this element of of trying to figure out, you know, how to almost bring people together out of neuroscience. And thats just one of many things that you could talk about any topic and weave in neuroscience. I think thats one of your talents and i think that that really stood out for me. I mean, actually, its one thing that kind of motivated me as well that, you know, im sort of more on the technology side. I mean, we use deep Neural Networks inspired by the work being done by neuroscience interests. But this element of technology and all the millions and bazillion of online app experiments that are going on to tap in to what, you know, the the the device knows that were going to sort of keep clicking through how thats affecting the way that we behave and think and this creation of this reality that the brain and you talk about often in there and theres a lot of, you know, you you sometimes technical terms and sometimes you dont theres elements of the plasticity of the brain that i think were fascinate being. In fact, the thing that really stood out for me by, the end too, was that how much we know about neuroscience. I was like, on one hand, i was amazed at how much we know at this point. But also how much we still dont know. Of course, as we are, we know the brain is complex and the nervous system is complex. But a question i was, you know, sort of left with at the end is, you know, whats next for you . You weave in your research and you also weave in other peoples research. What are some of the things that excite you most about the field that we should be sort of paying to . If we want to go from this book, whats next . What do we do . Where do we go next . Well, our team is working. So, you know, weve been kind of doing things related to assessment and complex skill learning and moving away from paper and pencil tests, which i mean, thats another really like topical thing as half of the colleges in the us have finally decided that the sat and the act or are biased towards peoples experiences and you know, ive been literally trying to write a Scientific American article for six years talking about what does it mean to have potential, what does it really mean, and how do you put something on the page that measures what you can do in the future and not what youve been exposed to in the past. And so, you know, weve been working on what we call neuropsychiatric risks are ways of understanding the basic Information Processing character mistakes of brains and how that predicts success in a particular environment usually were doing some kind of software that trains somebody to learn a second language or now programing languages, which were really excited about. But i dont want to just say, oh, youre going to be doing well and youre not going to be doing well. I think what were all really motivated to do is understand that match between brain and environment really, that would allow you to tweak a software to or to, you know, like, is this person a sandbox learner . Do they just need to try a lot of stuff and extract the principles . Does this person want to know how every single thing works before they try something . Does this person just need data to be presented at a slower or a faster rate . So its like, you know, i really think its about i say this a lot, but its about finding the your brains lane more than winning a race with it, right . So really, really understanding the characteristics of information of an individual brain and how to set that brain up for success and the things that they want to do. I saw that throughout the book and i love how you built on it. So in some ways it had some textbook elements where youre building off of knowledge from previous chapters. I love your example of like the taxicab drivers and how they would perform if you were to do a test very well on visual spatial kinds of task, but maybe not so well in some of the ways. And the bus drivers, i just think i love that it really sort of clicked in for me. And so now that you talk about it, actually when i was driving in just now, there was a story on the radio about the use or nonuse of the standard ice test for College Entrance and how, you know, and now ive got a good explanation and a response to kind of conversation based on what i learned. So, you know what, you know, for those kinds of. So youre youre in the lab, youre learning these things about the brain and it takes forever. You tried forever to get a Scientific American out there so that the public knows about it, policymakers know about it. Lets imagine you had that power to go in and sort of change whether its a College Entrance exam or actually you can just choose what are some of the biggest things based on all the knowledge that you have all these years of training as a researcher sitting on the bus, being sort of thinking about all those, you know, random thoughts as you talk about in your book where what would you do with that power . Mm hmm. Well, i think i would completely uproot the education system, for one thing, i think that our definition i think our definition of success is way too narrow. And its like were like were just missing so much talent by training people. Think about this. Its like, take a step back and think about the fact that youre like physicians and educators and engineers and thought leaders are the people who can sit in a desk all day and stare at a book like, i think we need, like more, more creative, playful, energetic types. Im not saying boo because i mean, ive spent my whole life in college just one of the environment guys accident. But were just missing out because our definition of success, even like, you know, the way colleges are set up, its based on a preinternet age. It doesnt even make sense to have these people who are really good at research and suck at teaching stand in front of a class and go blah, blah, blah. But like, it makes no sense whatsoever. So again, thats what i do for a living. So youre probably going to sort of be all over it. I think we really need to think about motivation and engagement like we dont know. I mean when i was a graduate student, i did this big National Science Foundation Study where we ran people through 20 hours of individual differences, testing in the lab, and they were like, do you phonological discrimination . And read a story and do memory. I mean, 20 hours of figuring out how they work and im sitting there you know, im a grad student. Im trying to figure out peoples minds. And, you know, theres there are a couple of people in the lab and you hear this beep and that person is asleep on the keyboard. Right. And then there are these other people are like, how do i do . How do i do . Like, you know, can i have a meeting with the teacher and like figure out if im the best at everything and im like, wow, that is something were not measuring right . That like, what are how hard are they trying . Like, how, how much are they invested in this outcome . And i think that theres so much about putting people in this really narrow and violent. And then we we give them feedback that theyre good or bad at it. And then we, you we expect them to want to try again in the same environment if they just got feedback that theyre afraid of it. So i think, you know, and i think there are all kinds of concerns with Something Like tracking, but like wouldnt it be great if there were these dramatically different environments for learning and that they were matched to someones interests and theyre sort of Information Processing capabilities of their brain and i would start it at the age of two or three, you know, not when theyre starting to get a theory of mind. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, exactly. Not like, i dont know, like college or whatever. I mean, i think i would start putting information in front of people way that their brain wants it. I dont know what would happen, but thats what i would do. I like that. I like that change. So you im going to use a term and ill use it naively because you know more about this term, but its sort of it sort of aligns with the theme. Its something im hearing more and more in many different circles, but it means Something Different to different groups. And the terms neurodiversity. It means if you walked at least if you were just even on campus and you talked about neurodiversity in a Sociology Department versus a neuroscience department, and then, of course, off campus, it means something very different. Tell us about this term as its like what it means, at least from your perspective, and what maybe it doesnt as well, maybe more what it means. But im the term more and more, but ive heard it in so many different contexts. Im not sure what i that i know what the term means. Im not sure i know what the term means either, which is why i dont use it. But i suspect that usually what people mean is accepting and making room for people who who deviate from the norm. And i think what im trying to do is say the norm is not an idea or a point, that normal is a multidomain national space, that you cant even define whats normal or whats abnormal without understanding the ways that people differ. And that in that multidomain general space, there are lots of ways of being that arent better or worse or just different. So i think that most people would talk about neurodivergent. Theyre talking about a diagnosis of some kind and and, you know, a, the match between that persons brain and the environment. I think thats what most people are talking about. But i think that the idea of diverse event is, again, based on this investment we have in normal. And and the truth is that, you know, the truth is that what we define as normal is really a statistical average rate. So like if i took the normal height in this room, would that be like the ideal height . Really depends on if youre going to play basketball or go on an airplane. Right. Hey. And that idea, that mean height might not actually be the height of any person in the room. And so we get really invested. Is this like normal . Is this and even when you get to to divergent or that idea of eating a goal, you know, one of the things i try and say right upfront is that can these two really Different Things one is about topicality like how often does this way of being occur . And and the other is about function ality, right . So there are a lot of behaviors that dont work in the environments that we put brains in and like feeling clinically depressed that happen in like 50 of adults at some point in their life. Right . Thats not atypical at all whatsoever. And the another big problem in both defining atypical or dysfunctional is that were not looking at representative participants right. Like, you know, that these are like our college undergrads. I love you guys. Youre brilliant. But youre also really weird. Like, your guys are adapted a very particular environment, right . And like we walk around in the world and think like most of the people who want to know how they work and youre like, oh, youre a typical compared to who . And i think thats dangerous. I really do. So divergent. I mean, i think that the spirit is to appreciate people that are different. But is it is it different . Like how different is it . And even like when we decide that something is atypical or dysfunctional, were always looking at ranges of things and somebody at some point says, like, when you get to this level, your atypical, but like there might be people on either side of that level that are more similar to each other than all the other people with that label. So i just think we need to really its complicated. Thats always the answer, but we need to have a better understanding of what if what do people mean when they say normal . What does it to be abnormal . Am i just like like one point away from normal . You know, like if i had more coffee, it would be great or or, you know, is this not working for me . And it would work for someone else or work in a different environment . Well, since this is the central theme of your book, let me ask one more question, and then we are going to turn to audience. We were we we promised that would happen and were going to do that here. But since this was the central theme of your book, this sort of overfocus on topicality and the importance of of really sort of looking at this sort of, you know, the weird elements of, of all of us. What kind of pushback have you had sort of in the research circles around this . Because im sure this wasnt an idea that just popped out on this book. This is something youve been working on for a long time, whether its with the work youve been doing around language processing or other things, like have you you had a lot of pushback. Do you think youll get pushback from this . I dont know. My favorite. Okay. So my favorite and i mean this. Absolutely, like at least favorite comment i ever got on a grant review was, well, what if what you do proves all of these other things, all like i had i didnt even know i was like i actually went to the program officer. Im like, whats happened . Thats a huge gulp. I was like, how do i think thats what its exactly what im trying to do is that so . I think that people get very invested in like, you know, theres not a textbook on that that wont tell you brocas areas and the left inferior frontal gyrus and wernickes areas and the left temporal parietal junction and thats where speech that i think happens. And thats like copyright comprehension happens. And any person who looks at individual brain as certain, a single brain doing a Language Task goes like, what the hell . Like, you know, these are just the only these are like areas higher to explain. I love the partyer metaphor. It was a yeah yeah so you know we and then it was i think probably the one of the coolest things that ever happened to me is that i was on that. What i mean. No not ive had so many cool things happen and rewind in the last couple of days. One of the most exciting things is that i was on a show of a neurologist and he was like, i read a lot of books about the brain and you know, i operate on people, you know, i treat people for a living. And i read your book and made me realize that what i learned in med school is wrong. Like, yes. And you get that quote on the back of the book twice as fast as possible. Yes. Thank you. Im so glad you learned that because youre you know, youre telling people what to expect. You have room in mind like theres no. So, yeah, i mean, we we have to learn, you know, the simplified version. But its like, do you want someone diagnosing or even like parenting . You or educating you on the on how this like Group Average works . Like, not me. I know. I know. And i think this is a really important point. And its the thing that really stuck with me. And next time i talk, you know, whether its over the dinner table with family, whos also from a farming town as well, that ill be able to to talk a lot about that and how you can learn from it. Okay. All right. I think i dont know if were on time or were past, but we are now going to turn to the audience for questions and what im supposed to do as the emcee or the moderator. And i think i just my microphone off, im going to repeat your question. So if you could say it clearly enough for me to hear, because this is going to be on cspan, i want to make sure that question gets heard by the rest of the audience. And then chantal will take over from there. All right. Question all right. We already got a hand. I love the first hand. Thats the best. Oc. I have a oc tutorial. Kelsey id like the first one is i what made you want to write a book, become an author along with Everything Else that youre doing . I and then the second part is, are you planning on writing another oh, okay. Im going to repeat the question because. Shontell a lot of things and plenty of things that keep you busy. Why . What made you want to be an author . And then the second part is, do you plan on writing another book after this experience of going through book writing . I think that i get it right. All right. Hopefully they heard on the on tv. Go ahead. Thank for that question. And the subtle like, what the hell were you thinking of that, too . Because we. Yeah, because theres a lot of my poor students. I love you guys. I do a lot. Im like the two full time jobs just being a mentor and a scientist and a professor. I think our world is hurting and i felt really frustrated. I wont go into detail about all the other plans i had for like trying to help my family, but they were a lot more dangerous and less legal. And so i went with science because i just felt like it was my responsibility. And there are a lot of books that really changed my life. A lot of brene brown books, for instance. And im sitting here and im listening to her and im like, i think, you know, i could do that. I could connect with people in a real way. And i think that what i know and what i mean specifically is just that i rarely walk around the world thinking that im right and the more i learn about life, the more i learn i dont know anything. And i think that makes space for me to connect with and understand, even if i kind of know the wrong. And because sometimes we know. But but im like, you know, i dont know if im right. Like, what part of this might be valuable or interesting to me and why do they believe this . And why do i think i know that theyre wrong and you know, so i felt very called i guess i just felt like i had to i wanted to try to share part one. Part two. This is part two of answer one i dramatic, i underestimated how hard it would be. Thats also kind of my style. But once i got committed and kicked in the pants by my jasmin, you know, i was like, well, im going to do this. So it was like, oh, i should write a book. I know m. A. Was with me at a f, we were at a society for neurobiology of language conference, and i had been percolating, writing a book for a while and there was like the mit press table and walking over, chatting with the guy. And i was like, i think im going to write a book. Either its either going to be about brains or about horses. And the guy was this would have been hard. And the guy was like, ill give you a horse for free. If you write a book about the brain. I was like, there is no such thing as free horse. I dont think i can trust you any further with this interaction. But then he like gave me his card and he gave me a Christopher Cox book about consciousness and and so i was like, you know, that was like a little these little things. Im like, its like i feel like it should be harder than you know, you dont just, like, say youre going to write a book and then you do it. And i was like, sister, i havent written the book yet. I just promise to like that. The whole writing part is going to be really hard. So that was a little bit of, you know, me feeling like i needed to do something really scared about society, which i still feel that way and a little bit underestimating how hard it would be. And will i write another book . I think so. I think so. But this time im going to do it like im on sabbatical and ideally not trying to survive of anything. Who knows . Maybe itll be about horses, maybe. Well, speaking of horses, didnt you either buy or get a horse donated you from the racetrack or something . Thats important. Yeah, i, i had a horse, an off the track racehorse that was a part of my, the chaos that was writing this book of losing some animal friends. But we in the process of the pandemic and in the last six months. Andre and i fell in love. We got adopted by a new four year old horse who changed our whole life. Now i live on a ranch with my horse and her new little brother. So now i have two horses that live with me and i think that part of the stress and chaos of writing a book is really balanced by shoveling horse every day. And i think, you know, maybe i just got off the laptop with pbs or whatever and then i got i got to go shovel poop really quick before my next before i go, i took a shower. Guys, that keeps you grounded. Where in the world you have a ranch in seattle, but probably not seattle. Yeah, we moved. Were in between issaquah and maple valley. Its only 20 miles, but its a long 20 miles. And seattle traffic. You can ask my husband about it. He has a lot of words. Well, thats great. Great. First question. Okay, more questions is, what are the main takeaway ways that you want your readers to look and and then the second one is, since since were doing a bonus question, were there any like aha moments or like things that surprised you as youre researching or writing your book . Okay. So those are two good questions with another bonus. Thats, thats good, which i like because thats like a footnote, right . Yeah. So the first question are what are some of the takeaways . And we didnt get a number. So it could be one, two, three, four, you can choose how many you want and then the, the bonus question really is just something that you can sort of take, take from take from that. Yeah, i can i think i can even do a one, two that are related to one another. So i think the most important thing for me, which was also the biggest aha is that we are instinctive of understanding other people lead us to grow close with people who work like we do social neurosciences got these really new buzzy experiments that show that you can map a whole graduate program or a whole island in south korea and figure out how close of someone will be based on how similarly their brains work and what i learned my aha moment was when i was looking at behavioral genetics and these different ways of understanding people and the i call it like mirror mirroring or my mirror neurons is one of the ways we talk about this in the neuroscience field. Like if an infant or even social primates like watch someone else doing an action, your brain simulates the Motor Program that would make you do that action so it understands ends by sort of mimicking what what you would be doing if you were behaving that way. And and when that goes well, we get the feeling like if you see someone get hurt and you actually feel pain, thats what happens when your brains are aligned and your brain has kind of made the right guess about whats causing that person to behave that way. But theres another way of understanding brains, understanding minds, and its more like the way we understand outer space or quantum physics, things that we cant see and touch like another persons mind. And thats people call it theory of mind. I think its a term that a lot of people use to mean Different Things involved in sort of reverse engineering. A person. And that can be a kind of a cold or a process can be an intellectual process by which, you know, maybe i taught you something in the book that helps you. Oh, that person is not just making a bet, is not making a bad decision. Their brain is driven by avoiding negative outcomes or Something Like that. Right. So you can use a new piece of information, kind of understand somebody what was amazing like my biggest aha moment is that there was a huge twin study. I think there were like a thousand pairs of twins, five year olds that were studied and just thinking about these researchers going into the homes of 1005 year olds and giving them all these mind modeling tasks, ive never in my life you always see like these behavioral genetics and it seems like the answer is always like 80 or 60 inherited, like how much of this variation and this ability is related to genes versus environment . There are some problems in the inferences they make, but this mind modeling thing is 0 heritable, so . So like identical twins or fraternal twins, twins that are almost genetically the same are twins that are like siblings genetically have the exact same correlation in mind modeling abilities, which means its entirely environmental. And, and there were some interesting things related to parenting and the language that parents use with their children and the extent to which they go, oh, you, it seems like youre feeling wink, wink, wink. And so i just thought, like you know, its amazing that this thing is 100 learned. And i think that the challenge then just becomes, how do you motivate someone to understand someone who works differently, right . Like you might be thinking, oh, yeah, diversity, its great. And teamwork its great. But now think about someone you hate. And think about why you hate them and think about whether you would be willing to go down that and have compassion for them and understand why that persons brain and that persons experiences might make them behave the way they do. Right. So then theres this part about can do and will do and and, you know, our brain, our brains have a chemical oxytocin then that motivates us to work really hard to understand someone else. And one of the times that that happens is when we have babies because theres nobody on the planet who has a different a more different brain than you than this little wiggly thing that just wants to scream and, like, eat and poop. But we have to, like, care about it and try and figure out what it wants. So our brain gives us oxytocin and it gives them oxytocin because theyre like theyre giants everywhere. Like, which one is going to take care of me . And change my poop and which one is just, you know, could could eat me or carry me away . Right. So, you know, there are there chemicals in our brain that help to motivate us. But these chemicals seem to work more with people that we consider ingroup. And so, you know, theres all these research that are going to give people oxytocin thats going to increase bonds and stuff, but it actually really increases your feelings of ingroup outgroup at the same time, you know, of the really deep lines of research, oxytocin shows that people in their dogs have reciprocal oxytocin bonds. Your dog gets oxytocin when it looks at your face. And so i like to think about that and think who if could learn to expand our idea of what our pack is . Could we learn to be motivated, understand people who work really differently than us . To have compassion for people that we hate doesnt mean you have to condone what they do or even invite into your life. But could you stretch yourself to be motivated to understand someone who works completely different than you . I mean, thats thats my sort of call to action and and sorry for mangling the bonus question at the bonus question was the aha moment. Lets a good take on whats the aha. And they kind of mingled and i was trying to say well they mingled and i didnt realize i had to actually repeat that, i didnt even notice. You bet. Okay. Well, i told my brain, fill in the blank because. Yeah, you did. You felt you filled in. Well, interestingly, just one note on that, though, you had mentioned this amazing study, identical twins, and how there was basically no real relationship, whether you were doing identical or fraternal, comparing them, but yet you have these this story, two of the ovum donor like the maya. I think again where you had all these similarities to and you hadnt connected over that that length of time. And some, you know, you even admitted that some by chance. Yes. Some people also like animals and movies. But to have some of those things, the taco bell thing really sort of stuck up. So how so . How is so how do you reconcile all that with some of these studies that do sort of, you know, almost sort of this element of the the the nature part of it. They sort of just take this thing and and and go with it. You know, disregarding even the genetic. Yeah. So i think most of the other behaviors ive ever seen studies on have a genetic component. You know, even like partizanship, not necessarily affiliation, but like how strongly political youre going to be. I mean, there are a lot of genetic factors that drive behavior, and thats why i think it was a particular aha moment that this mind modeling isnt. Yeah. And so what javin is talking about is that halfway through book writing, i got an email from a 20 year old human that was so funny. And this the subject line says 49. 5 match. You better sit down, but its not like its so funny because its not like i had an affair somewhere and didnt notice. You know, like, women dont have that right . Its not like, oh, theres that. Oh, what do you mean . Oops. You know, its like, thats true. Which is kind of obvious. I have that problem. Its kind of the tone of the email, right . Like, you better sit down. Like, i have a surprise for you. Like, of course i. You exist, silly, but yeah. So when i was in graduate of the summer between under my what i call my pre Doctoral Research when i worked in a lab for two years before going to grad school and i went to grad school, i decided to do egg donation. So like one of the benefit s you know, many benefits of my accidental teenage pregnancy. One was that i got a job in neuroscience because i was good with babies. They were looking for someone to put a cap on a baby. And i was, look, i have my own baby that like, im so good at this. Like, you must hire me. I can put every hat on this thing, whatever you want. And so that was great. And then and the other was that i knew that i was fertile and i knew someone else who had done this. And i just thought, like, i, i thought like, this is a great way to make a tiny bit of money that at the time. Let me take the summer off and hang out with my kid. I thought grad school was going to be like med school. Like, im never going see you for five years. Lets go to disneyland and help like a really great family. And i had a we were on a we had a conversation. We were on a first name basis. They both had phds and they had like a totally different life. Her parents are my parents age closer and you know, they were funny and so we had this conversation. I was like, this feels really good. And i knew she existed her. Dad wrote this note to me after she was born, and in the note he said, you know, the grocery the Grocery Store clerk next to me says that we have the same face, but she has these chunky thighs. And im like, hmm, which comes up over and over. But, you know, i knew she existed. I knew her name was maya. And they knew my first name and that i was going to grad schools. Like theres not that many on towels and psychology, you know. And i kind of thought, in fact, the day that she emailed us, my daughter jasmine, andrea and i had been going out, we went to taco bell, which was i had been a really long time. But i think that was like a taco bell day. I think it might have been around thanksgiving. We might have been like shopping or something. I dont remember. But anyway, we said i was on 23 and me and i said like sunday the egg baby. They called me the egg lady and i called her the egg baby. So it was like symmetry there to is going to find is going to, you know, find me here or something and that night we got home that day and i had this email from her and she said, you know, is very respectful. And she was like, you know, my final we want a bet with my or, you know, argument of my parents. So they let me reach out to you, even though they wanted to see if it was okay with the, you know, concession that they could give you. This slideshow of my whole life. And, you know, she she talked about herself and she said like i would be an equine vet if i could handle the part about putting animals down. So instead, im going to be a music teacher. I love kids and i love to sing my whole life. And then she said, you know, i wrote all the things in the book to like actually compare. But, you know, there was like, you know, i like hiking and nature and animals and singing and my taco bell order is a current rap supreme with spicy potatoes. And it was like, what . I mean, my my family used to joke that i always lived, like, within a block of a taco bell. Like, i took andre. I just had my 30th class reunion, and i drove him by our taco bell. It still exists there. We ate there everyday day. It used to be like 59, 79, 99. And you could eat, you could save all your lunch money for weekend activities. So i was like, this is my taco bell. And shes like telling me her taco bell. Thats wild, right . And also just that she is an equestrian. Shes like, oh, she said she was the class clown. That was one of her things. And it was, you know, i think another thing about maya thats really similar to me is that shes incredibly unreserved. And so thats made getting to know each really easier, like, you know, just everything, everything is, is fair game. But it was really eerie and and you, you know, i think like for andre and jasmine, for the people who are really close to me, i mean, the similarities are the things that stand out a lot. And but the weird thing is that she feels more like a twin or like a little sister or something, you know, i dont feel maternal all like i dont. She came to me like into my life and she was a grown up and, you know, all of my daughters, like friends from like, kindergarten through, like, high school. Call me mom. And theyre all like, this kind of like nest or brood. But maya is like her whole. Its kind of like it feels like a science experiment. Like i took half of my genes and i put them in this really great protective environment and like, you know, look how silly i am. And, like, you know, but like, i think my fear, i think i read about this in the book like she has, i had iguana, i wanted a dog. And in college and like you cant have a dog in college. And so i had iguanas. She has a bearded dragon. And then she would like, send me this. This picture and shes got a she bought like an aquarium backpack and she carries her dragon around like fiscal. Shes like so he can have, so pepper can have adventures with me. I was just like, wow, thats a lot like me. Something i would do. Yeah. So its been really interesting, but the, you know, to be i think i said Something Like you dont know what you will find familiar youre and like what that word familiar really means. But its like the language, you know, like her voice doesnt sound like mine. My mom, my daughter, jasmine. I all have the same voice. Like, we still, like, mess each other by trying to pretend like im jasmine when our friends are on the phone, see if i can get some juice and stuff. And my mom used to do that to me, like, oh, what . You know . Yeah. Hey, whats up, mom . I give you the phone back before cell phones was the worst. So she doesnt sound like me in her voice. Probably really thankful for her, since she is a singer, but she sounds like me in her word choice. And like i think one of the things that we noticed is like a lot of exclamation points all the time. One of drea in my early dating stories was before we were dating. He up like a crazy person in my office. One day because i wasnt using enough like emojis or something. Yeah. Yeah. And hes like, whats going on . And i was like, well, you just showed up at my face, like, yeah, like, theres no whats going on. He had no exclamation points in your email, but they were. Those are great, great, great personal stories. And they relate to the neuroscience part. Another question. Yes. Yeah. You talked about how we might be missing people with standardized tests, but do you also think that as we introduce standardized tests earlier and earlier and students try to be really good at standardized tests that people actually might be becoming less individual through testing like teaching to the test. Yeah, because as especially high performing students who are perhaps really interested in science where academia try to get good at standardized tests, do you think we could be losing individuality and what do you think the effect of that might be . So the question is, and another great question, are we losing individuality by really forcing our our next generation of and researchers and great thinkers into these pigeonhole tests these standardized tests, which is, again part of the conversation weve talked about in the book and very much in in the common conversation, right. National conversation at our universities. So its a relevant question. I think there are two levels of this. Like one is the way that schools get funding by how theyre like elementary schools, how their students perform on these standardized tests. I think were just educating kids in a really in a much narrower way than they need to like actually function in the real world, which is a huge bummer. And i think its i dont know, a better system, but i think and which i was try and be careful about when im like, these are all the things that are wrong and when it comes to like people studying for the test, i think not as much of a problem because. I dont think that the i dont think that i think that people study for the test and then take the test and its dead at least thats what i think. I mean, i still know a few of the big words i studied for the year here, but i dont certainly use them on a daily unless im reading phineas cages doctors notes. I think that in that sort of cultural or, you know, idea working toward the ideal, there is this bigger problem about what we defined as successful or smart and and we say like we value this way of being or this type of knowing and. We tell kids like, youre smart, youre good at math. Are you struggle here and like how that affects like and and their and what they do in the future and so i think that also just who who is deciding what is smart like i always say my cousins i andre and i are also the only were both Gen College Students and so im really thankful for that because i spend a lot of time with im going to say normal now is like not academics, you know like my cousins are like ambidextrous. My cousin, who is a welder he makes wine tanks. He made more money than me until i was like well into my professor and he was happy and he had like a 9 to 5 job, like he says, you know, he was also dyslexic like a lot of people in my family are did not graduate from high school, but like, you know, i always had that as a model like, am i doing this wrong . Should i be welding windings and off at 5 p. M. . And so i think we just need to be more about what it means to be successful and, you know, School Smarts even like what that means, right . Because even what were talking about with academia in school is so old its like its created in a time where information wasnt in the air. It was only in the heads of the the teacher. And so its like, okay, i think need to break out of that a little bit. Just as yeah. And just as a quick side, thats one thing that i am so proud of. The university of is that i dont know the exact number of i think its about a third of the students that come to university. Washington are first generation students and mostly see that in public universities. And so thats something ive it turns out people like yourself and oh okay well i dont know how many more questions we time for, but i do see some more hands. One more question. Okay. And all those other hands that are still there come day, im here like 1 00 in the morning, i thats a question. So they drag me. Okay, since your hand was up first, lets go with yours. A lot. Now you know how. Like did you. Yeah could you just say that just a little louder . I hear it that we all people people like this person this way. Its that way. So dont you think itd be Better Society to like people to diction and people who have property, people who are going for trauma. Waste . How does that process and would you be a better outcome in the. Yeah so its an important question given some of the struggles were seeing in society right now. Certainly we see it in. So the question is you know, when we look at individuals those that that are struggling through things going trauma whether its homelessness, addiction or whatever it is, would it help to look at them from an individual lens rather than here is there in this little bucket that we sort of characterize either or even just policy wise . Would that be a fair okay, its all yours . Yeah. Yes, thats a great question. I talk about this in the introductions of my book. You know, again, its difficult because. You its convenient to have a label for something. It helps doctors, therapists and stuff know what to start to try to do. But think that the labels, you know, i talk about this one size fits all approach to neuroscience and i talk a lot about like a bucket, like, heres a normal bucket, heres an abnormal bucket. And i think that we know and weve seen this in the language, like things have many, many of the disorders that are common have moved to being called spectrum. Right, because Autism Spectrum Disorder instance to, people who have the label of Autism Spectrum Disorder might have very little in common symptom symptoms. Logically, the kind of points that you need to get diagnosed with this thing to have common are many fewer than the kinds of ways that you can very so you know this i think that science is moving in this way. We call it precision medicine. Sometimes times and computational psychiatry, like trying to model what drives a person to get to a diagnosis. Its really important because Something Like depression, for instance, can be caused by a whole lot of different situation, all neurochemical and precursors. And so people who are there, that same label are not going to respond the same way to different to medicine as to therapy. So forth and so on. And also like there are many in the book, i talk about axes of being. There are many different variables that kind of mushed together to get you in a in a particular place. Its kind of a multi dimensional problem space, right . So, you know, i might be high in one thing and low in another and brings me to a place. And devin might be just medium on that too, but it brings him to the same place, right . Because of how those the checks and balances in the brain work. Yes, i, i we should be moving towards treating an individual and understanding what this persons are, but its really hard, you know, in this Current System where you see your doctor for 15 minutes, it would be really, really hard to get the kind of understanding of the individual on that multidimensional space that would be needed to treat just them. But i think if we dont do the science and understand what are the variables that matter treatment, then then were going to do trial and error. Thats what happens now, right . Like for the most part, its like, try this thing. It for most people, if it doesnt work for you, we try the another the next thing i should refer to the clinical psychologist in training here in the front row. But yes, i to answer your question, i think the labels are necessary for sort of communication among different kinds of health care providers, or at least theyre convenient for that. But i think that understanding an individual all as not just putting them in a bucket would make things more accurate for it would be harder, but it would absolutely more accurate. Okay, Great Questions know there were more questions. So is the time that you get to talk to the author of this book. So i think at this we want to thank im going to say the first time doctor pratt for this instead of gentle but if you have were going to have a book signing and you can write. I am just repeating i think this is good. Okay, good. Yeah, this is so were doing were in person. This is this is great. So i think that lets give this new author a of applause. How do you