How to Overcome Social Anxiety | Dr. Nick Epley

If you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation the way to get over

that is not to simulate it or to imagine. It's not like you get up and you give a pretend speech.

“That's what psychologists were doing for years. It doesn't work because it's still pretending.”

It has to be real. You send people out in the world and to do the thing for real. You're worried about getting rejected. Go out and start asking people for help. And you'll learn that your fear is misplaced. That you get accepted more often than you might guess. Exposing people to that thing that they're anxious of. When the belief is misplaced and with social anxiety it is usually wildly misplaced. That's what we find over and over again.

There's a mistake in barrier to connecting with other people. That's how you use that social anxiety and get rid of it. Not because you do you dull your anxiety so much. It's because you change your beliefs about what other people are like. Welcome to the human lab podcast where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine.

My guest today is Dr. Nick Epley. Dr. Nick Epley is a behavioral scientist at the University of Chicago and an expert researcher on the science of social connection. What's different about today's conversation in the context of social connection is that it doesn't just center on improving relationships with friends or family or co-workers. We do talk about that, but we also talk about the smaller everyday conversations that we have

with people that we don't know so well and the positive impact that that can have on mental and physical health. Now I want to be clear. We're not talking about engaging in small talk for small talk sake. We're talking about taking opportunities to connect with people once or several times per day and the tremendous benefits that can have for people's mental and physical health including yours. We also talk a lot about the assumptions that we tend to make about other people,

both in real life and online and how those actually match up with reality. We also talk about Nick Epley himself because his life strongly has informed his research. We talk about his biological

and his adopted children, raising a child with additional needs and the incredible joy and growth

those choices that brought him and his family by virtue of the sorts of social connections that they brought. I must say today's conversation went a lot of places that I did not anticipate and it certainly inspired me to look differently at everyday interactions as far from trivial

“and in fact key to the fabric of social connection and our mental and physical health.”

Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion with Dr. Nick Epley. Dr. Nick Epley. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. We make a lot of assumptions about

other people and in my case because I have a new puppy about animals. We're always thinking that we

know what other beings are thinking. But as you pointed out and as a colleague of mine in neuroscience is Dr. Carl Diceroth is pointed out, most of the time we don't even know what we're thinking. Like they're self going on in there, but we're not that good at thinking. Oh, that last thought was a complete sentence that means blank. That's not how the human mind works. So, usually when we hear the word anthropomorphism, we're talking about humans making assumptions about

other animals. But humans are animals. We just happen to be the curators of the planet. So why

“and how do we anthropomorphize about other people and how does it hurt us and how does it help us?”

Yeah. So, I think the way to think about anthropomorphism is that what we are doing is we're trying to understand what's going on within another agent essentially. So, anything that acts independently, right? You got a ball rolling across the table of something else bumps into it and it moves in perfect, you know, the perfect deflection off of it. You don't need anything to explain why that ball moved as it did. But if this ball is coming across the table and another one hits it

and it just keeps going or it goes some other direction. Well, then it seems like there's something going inside that thing that might be driving it, right? And that thing that's inside that ball might be a mind, right? Might be a set of thoughts or beliefs or attitudes, some kind of psychology that's pushing it. At least that's the way we interpret what an independent agent might be doing. We do this when we think about other people, right? You're not in your head now. I think you're

thinking about something, right? You move this way or that? You wanted to do this thing or that thing. We do that same kind of mind reading, right? With nonhuman agents, animals, gods, sometimes the planet, even ourselves, right? We reflect on ourselves. We have experience at least with having certain mental states come to mind and we use that experience as a guy to what's going on in other people too. That kind of anthropomorphism, that kind of mind reading, right, where we infer other thoughts or

beliefs or attitudes. That's helpful to us for at least two reasons. One is it gives me some sense of why you're doing what you're doing now. It allows me to understand what you're doing right now.

But it's also pretty good at allowing me to predict what you're likely to do next.

“So if I think you feel hungry, you're going to go try to eat something. If I think you don't”

like me very well, you're going to behave in a particular way towards me. So this kind of mental state inference is kind of mind reading serves us pretty well for getting around in a social world.

Don't always get it right. But in general, it's better than not doing it at all.

So as we make assumptions about others and their intentions and their past choices in some cases, like if somebody hits somebody else, we make an assumption about the certain things might have led up to them. Are we mainly paying attention to behavior and or are we paying attention to what they seem to be paying attention to? So call theory of mind. So it depends a lot on what kind of environment we're in. We think about the minds of others in lots and lots of different contexts.

My wife right now is back home and Illinois. I can think about what she might want for dinner, right? Or what she's feeling at any given time. We can think about people when they're not present. We can think about strangers. People will know nothing about it. I write a book. I'm trying to think about how will people understand this book, right? These are all cases where there's not somebody in front of us at all, right? And when we're doing that, particularly with strangers,

people we know nothing about things. We know nothing about. Then the one thing we have

“at our disposal is ourselves. We can use our own mind, right? So I walk into a classroom and I think”

it's kind of cold in here. Well, I can assume that other people will think it's cold too. I'm using myself as a guide. Once I know a little more, maybe about you, right? I learned that you are, you know, your PhD from Stanford. I learned that somebody is an athlete or whatever. I learned something about you, you're a doctor or your lawyer. Then I can use that information. I believe about groups of people as a guide. That's stereotyping. And stereotypes contain a fair bit of

accuracy to them. If I know that you're a Democrat or a Republican, I can make some reasonable inferences about other thoughts you might have. Other beliefs you might have. Not perfect, but better than chance guessing. And then once I see you, like what we're doing right now, if I can see you, then I'm watching your behavior and then behavior dominates. Behavior, though, is tricky. I'm watching you, right? You could have two people kissing. They seem, you know, delightfully

in love, right? They seem just so nice together. And you can, you can make one set of inferences when you see that happening based on that. You can infer what's going on behind that, based on what you're seeing. And when we can see the behavior in front of us, that's then what we're paying most attention to. But each of these different mechanisms, egocentrosome, stereotyping, and behaviorism, when we're working backwards from your behavior, they all gain, give us some

accuracy, but they also create some error. egocentrosome creates egocentric biases. I assume that you think more like I do, then you actually do stereotyping tends to create different set of mistakes. I tend to think that groups are more distinct and different from each other than they actually are because stereotypes are about the defining features of groups, which tends to exaggerate the differences between groups. And when it comes to behavior, I tend to assume a simpler,

more simplistic mind behind that behavior than actually exists. Ecologists refer to this as the correspondence bias. I tend to infer an intention or set of beliefs or attitudes that corresponds with your behavior as I see it. So if I see you hit somebody, I might assume you are an aggressive

“person. That's how I interpret right away. Had I known it was in self-defense, then I would”

interpret it very differently, right? But we tend to leap to mental states or intentions from behavior, sometimes I can get us into trouble when the relationship between intentions or thoughts and behavior is a little complicated. So each of those gets us on accuracy, but each of them also creates some error. If you are willing, I'd like to return to the example you gave at the beginning of

a ball rolling on a table in another ball striking, or not, in the second example you gave the

ball simply takes off on a different trajectory and you said that we're going to make some assumption that the ball has something like a mind, something controlling its decisions. What I'm about to say reflects a strong bias, which is that I've long been interested in the visual system of non-human and human primates, because we are so visual. And the eyes are two pieces of the brain, they're the only pieces of the brain in healthy individuals that are outside the cranial vault,

and they give us a lot of information. And I think people know that, but I don't think they appreciate just how much information they give us, not just pupil size and whether or not our gaze is locked with theirs. Oh, that's true, too. But if I could just alter your experiment for a second,

let's say that first ball had eyes. And it's rolling forward, but then the eyes shift to the left,

the brain where I can say what's over there that might have motivated that decision. And I think with

“humans we do this, for sure. Right? Like if somebody's going down the street just swinging their arms”

wildly and hitting people, we think this person's out of control. They're crazy. Whereas if they see somebody, then they orient their gaze toward them. Now we start making all sorts of assumptions about the operations of that mind. And in my world view, no pun intended, the eyes are the best source of information about intent, about goals, etc. So limiting the conversation to conditions where we can see the other person and what they see. Yes. Are there any examples of our judgment about other

people's thoughts and behavior, etc. Improving by virtue of the short. Yeah, I mean, so the eyes do provide. Oh, I have a lot of valid information. Absolutely. The voice also contains an awful lot.

So that's the other thing we spend a lot of time studying. But we are the most socially sophisticated

primate species on the planet. We have a brain uniquely equipped for connecting with the minds of others. And that means that we are hypersensitive to certain things. The eyes are one of them.

“There's a great paper in 2008 on the Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis. It's a science paper”

where they compared, you know, they try to assess what is it that makes human sort of unique on this planet. And they compared little over 102-year-old toddler. So I'd imagine running this experiment if you would. A little over 102-year-old toddler's, this was done to the Max Planck Institute in Germany, one of the Max Planck's, over 100 chimpanzees. And then just for good measure, another 36-a-rang of 10s who apparently had nothing better to do. What a funny experiment. It's crazy. Yeah, it's crazy.

Exhausting. Exactly. Man, I can't, yeah. I would like to know the background of details of this. How was actually done and how long it took. But what they did essentially is ran each of these groups through two different kinds of IQ tests you might think of them as. One was an IQ test involving physical objects, right? So things like, you know, tracking where a word was placed under a shell game, or using a tool to solve some kind of problem. Jane Goodall,

“once, you know, a psychologist once believed. Well, I'll just once believe that tool use was”

up made humans unique until Jane Goodall watched the chimpanzees using twigs to get termites out of a termite amount, right? On the physical IQ test problems, the human toddlers, the adult chimps, and the orangutans performed equally well. There wasn't a difference. It's not reasoning about physical things in space that make us unique. The other group of IQ problems were social problems, where it required reasoning about the mind of another person. And this involved doing things like

tracking where someone's eyes are looking in order to monitor what someone is thinking, because we tend to look at things we're thinking about, and think about things we're looking at. If I want to know what's on your mind, what's governing your attention, I want to be really good at

tracking your eyes. And we are amazing at this. As human beings, I can tell whether you're looking at

me right now or looking at my right here from this far without a trouble. I can tell from 50 feet away whether you're looking at me or looking at, you know, 10 feet above me. We're amazingly good at this. Super sense of this. I couldn't calculate the angle on a roof if you gave me a month in an arm load of pro-tractors to do it, but I can detect the angle on your eyes in an instant. Also, involve things like being able to understand somebody's intentions from their actions.

So, if I reach out for this glass or water, and I miss it, you can infer, I'm thirsty, and I want to drink. You could, oh, you could hand me the glass next, right? If I wanted to drink. And because that's, you could read my mind essentially. You could infer my thoughts. When they tested the two-year-up toddler's, the chimps and the orangutans in the social IQ test, that's where the two-year-old toddlers were shining. That's where we were crushing

the competition on those social IQ problems. You can do this, you know, in front of a chimpanzee all day long, and they will do nothing for you, right? Nothing for you. I do that in front of you, and you can hand me the glass or water super easily. So, yes, the eyes give us a lot, and we are extremely sensitive to all of those social cues that convey might convey what's on the mind of another person, because it allows me to anticipate what you're doing before you do it.

In today's financial landscape of constant market shifts in chaotic news, it's easy to feel uncertain about how to save and invest your money. Well-front is the solution that helps you take control of your money while managing risk. For nearly a decade, I've trusted well-front to navigate this volatility. With the well-front cash account, I can earn 3.3% annual percentage yield, or APY,

on my cash from program banks, and I know my money is growing until I'm ready to spend it, or invest it. One of the features I love about well-front is that I have access to instant no fee withdrawals to eligible accounts 24/7. That means I can move my money where I need it without waiting, and when I'm ready to transition from saving to investing,

For a limited time, well-front is offering the Hubertman Lab audience an exclusive 0.75%

“APY boost over the base rate for 3 months, meaning you can get up to 4.05% variable APY”

on up to $150,000 into deposits. Over 1 million people already trust well-front to save more

earn more, and build long-term wealth with confidence. If you'd like to try well-front, you can go to wealthfront.com/huberman to receive the boost offer and start earning 4.05% variable APY today. That's wealthfront.com/huberman to get started. This is a paid testimonial of wealthfront. Client experiences will vary. Well-front brokerage is not a bank. The base APY is as of January 30th, 2026, and subject to change. For more information, please see the episode description.

Today's episode is also brought to us by 8 sleep. 8 sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. One of the best ways to ensure you get a great night's sleep is to make sure that the temperature of your sleeping environment is correct. And that's because in order to fall asleep and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about 1 to 3 degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature

actually has to increase by about 1 to 3 degrees. 8 sleep automatically regulates the temperature of your bed throughout the night according to your unique needs. I've been sleeping on an 8 sleep mattress cover for nearly 5 years now, and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. The latest 8 sleep model is the pod 5. This is what I'm now sleeping on, and I absolutely

love it. It has so many incredible features. For instance, the pod 5 has a feature called autopilot,

which is an AI engine that learns your sleep patterns, and then adjusts the temperature of your sleeping environment across different sleep stages. It'll even elevate your head if you're snoring, and it makes other shifts to optimize your sleep. If you'd like to try 8 sleep, go to 8 sleep.com/huberman to get up to $350 off the new pod 5. 8 sleep ships to many countries worldwide, including Mexico and the UAE. Again, that's 8 sleep.com/huberman to save up to $350.

And you mentioned voice. I'm going to make an assumption. I'm sure it's wrong. Or at least partially wrong. That voice offers a lot of information about autonomic tone, how stressed, or how relaxed somebody is. And I'd be curious to know, if that's true, what else it conveys, and also how much prior exposure to voice matters. Today's the first time I met you, I don't know what your voice normally sounds like in this context. So I'm just operating off what I've

“got. So what's invoice? What's not invoice? And what are we aware of? What are we not aware?”

Yeah, so there are lots of things contained in the voice because it is very closely connected to your mind. You notice that your eyes are, right? Your eyes are clear, but your voice is also very closely connected to your online conscious experience. You are speaking while you are thinking. And as you're having thoughts, your voice can reflect authentically what's going on in your mind. So when I speed up, you can tell I'm kind of excited about something. When my voice varies in pitch, you can tell

if I'm enthusiastic or not or kind of sad about something. You can pick up a lot about what's actually going on in the mind by listening to a person's voice. And there are a couple of things that we've studied in our research. One is voice just contains a lot of information that allows us to understand of the people better. So if you compare typing to somebody versus talking to them, the voice allows you to determine things like intentionality, to differentiate when you're telling a joke or being

sarcastic, then when you're not. Right, what type to see him? Is this so funny? Right, we think when we're setting off an email to somebody. He seems funny to us because we know this is meant to be a joke. Person on the other end doesn't realize the comment about this person's answer, brother or whatever was meant to be a joke and they're all offended, right? But if you say this in your voice, sarcasm is crystal clear. Interestingly, what we find and this is because of ego centros of impart,

we're not always so sensitive to how our own communication is interpreted by another person.

Because we know what we're thinking when we're conveying something, we tend to think we'll be understood equally well whether we're typing or talking, but of course, on the receiving end, it varies a lot. So voice contains a lot of information that allows us to understand what somebody's

“saying better. Well, what we also find, which I think is, at least from my perspective, also interesting,”

is that the voice also conveys the presence of mind. I don't have access to your thinking, to your reasoning, to what's going on between your ears. I can only watch from the outside, right? I get cues. I can see your visual gaze, but I can also hear you. The voice contains a lot of cues to the presence of mind. When you're really thinking hard about something, your voice slows down and you deliberate. And that variability in the pace of your voice kind of tells

me that your mind is alive. Just like I can tell that you're biologically alive because you're moving,

emotion. It can convey the presence of thinking. So when we have partisans, for instance,

we did this. This was a truly honest rotor who was one of my amazing PhD students from years ago.

She's now on the faculty at Berkeley at Haas. We had people, this was on the eve of the 2016 election between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. We had people who were voting for Trump or Clinton, say why they were voting for the candidate they were voting for. And they gave a verbal pitch. And we could get a few different cues from this. We could get an audio recorded clip so we could see and hear the person. We could just get their voice. And we could also strip out their voice and

just see the content of their text, right, to see the words they were saying. They also wrote a pitch about an explanation for why they were voting for this particular candidate. Okay.

When we then did, as we had people watch and listen, listen, read the transcript or read the

“written explanation and say essentially how mindful is this person? How thoughtful are they?”

How thoughtful, how intelligent, how rational, how capable of experiencing emotions are they. Essentially they're asking, are you a mindful intelligent person or are you kind of just like a mindless idiot? Are you human-like or are you kind of not human-like like a more like a rock? And what we found was that when people could hear what the person had to say, either while also seeing them or just with their voice, they rated the person, particularly when they disagreed with them, when there was

person on the other side, as more thoughtful, more intelligent, more rational, this tendency to

dehumanize the other side to think of them as mindless idiots was dramatically reduced when you

actually heard what the other person has to say. So I think the voice, along with the eyes, along with eyes gay, eye gaze, but the voice allows us gives us a lot of information. It allows us to understand what's on somebody's mind and it also allows us to something deeper. It allows me to tell you that you've got a mind that you have one. It's very interesting. I, the vision piece I'm familiar with for reasons I stayed before, the physical behavior piece

makes a lot sense that the voice piece as a reflection of an active mind is something that I really haven't considered. We'll hear sometimes that the content of people's words is less informative than the timbre of their voice or something like that. I don't know that I completely believe that.

“I think that that's a 90s, it's like in '80s, '90s pop psychology is absolutely, that is a highly”

stylized experimental result. You will sometimes hear in this pop-cycle world that 80% of what's communicated, just communicated through parallel linguistic. That obviously is not true. You're not going to, I'm not going to be able to tell you about my book just by using the tone of my voice, right? So that is that word's matter. The words certainly do matter, but above and beyond that, there are other things that matter in a person's voice that at least we find people aren't so

sensitive to. So when we ask for instance, when we ask our MBA students to give an elevator pitch, as Julianna and I did in one of our experiments, give an elevator pitch for their desire job, the job they want most, right? Why should this company hire you? They can give it with their voice. So we do the audio and visual. We do just the audio. We pull out the transcript, just get the words, or they type their pitch. We then have people watch and listen, listen, or read these pitches and say,

how intelligent does this person seem to be? How high-rebel does this person seem to be? And we've done this both with people who imagine working for companies and also with Fortune 500 recruiters too. The person seems more intelligent or rational or thoughtful, more high-rebel when you hear what they have to say. And yet, the MBA students themselves think they'll be judged equally on those too, they're not. And when we ask a separate group of people, if you wanted to communicate with somebody

in a way that would make you seem most intelligent, overwhelmingly people say, I'd rather write.

“And the thinking behind that, I think, is that people think they can edit and such,”

but what they're missing is that the sound of your voice conveys a lot more conveys the fact that you have a mind. Because I can't see it and I can't read it in your dead text, right? Your dead text has none of the parallel linguistic cues or features, really talented writers, novelists can do this. But mostly, your text is dead. It doesn't have intonation. It doesn't change its pitch. It doesn't show me thinking while it's actually happening. And people don't seem to realize that.

What does this reveal to us about AI? Because people are spending more and more time with AI on AI. And what comes back is text. I mean, there are versions of it. And soon I imagine

about what that could bring in terms of better understanding other humans? Because I could imagine a

world where, you know, I can't reach you, but I could go on AI and say, hey Nick, I would just do it directly. Hey Nick, I'm really curious. I'm going to the Midwest where you're from. And I'm super interested

“in, like, culturally. What's the best way that I could connect with someone around this this in this?”

Given the content on the internet, the LLM should be able to have a video of you delivered to me, what you would say. Or pretty close to it. Is that that can be better than a bullet point list? Yeah, well, yeah. So people will find it more believable, I think. But a lot of the things that people turned to AI for now are for facts, right, for actual information for text. But I do think increasingly, it's going to be useful for social stuff. Yeah. People feel lonely, disconnected, they need a friend.

I'm friends with Liz Dunn, who's a fabulous psychologist as University of British Columbia, and she told me that they're starting to research about allowing people to practice having conversations with AI before they actually have a conversation with another person like a conflict. I can see ways in which AI could be used to do lots of things. I can also see obvious problems with it if I'm connecting

“with the AI and I'm not connecting with other humans. I can see problems with it. But I think in terms”

of the presence versus absence of voice, I do think voice will allow us to the extent that it's good and perfect, right? It sounds like a human voice. Our prediction would be that you can trust it more when you hear what it has to say. As long as it mimics really well, a human voice. Mm-hmm. Because you'd anthropomorphize it, just like you do, another person. I don't want to spend too much time on politics, but I can't help but ask this next question.

Way back when Bush was president, second one. I recall there was a lot of discussion around

people who voted for him saying, "Hey, is the kind of guy you'd want to have a beer with?" Yeah. Right? Yeah. Which I interpret it as, "There's something about his style of speech, which was very every day." Yes. And we don't have to talk about current candidates and politicians. It's not to avoid it. I don't tap dance around anything these days. But I think it nowadays, we have a lot of access to people talking on video. When you and I were growing up, I think we're more

less the same age. You know, there would be presidential address or there'd be a campaign and you hear from people, but it was very limited. You didn't get so much exposure to people. Yeah. So now we have more and more information about voice, about behavior, about decision-making, depending on the resolution where their eyes are going, do you think that we're getting better at assessing public figures or are we getting worse at assessing clouds for your question?

I think that'll take me too far out on a limb. I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I mean, there's so much information that we have now. But the other thing too is that the way we evaluate other people, and this is this is central to a lot of our research, other people are ambiguous. They're not crystal clear. That same thing that I say to you that I mean to be a joke can sound really hostile or violent to another person or I can sound really awful and be taken as

“offensive. So I think that's what makes my work as a psychology so interesting. In the early 1900s,”

psychologists, you know, win social psychology, my field and cognitive psychology started. It came out of, you know, basically biology and vision sciences and basic sensory perception, thinking that we could understand human thinking and measure it, measure our judgments about each other in the same way that we measure how people evaluate hot and cold and stuff like that. But it turns out that

other people are very ambiguous. It's not always so crystal clear. And so two people with a different

set of beliefs or attitudes or perspectives on this situation can look at the very same stimulus and see totally different things, right? A lot of our judgment is not happening out there coming to us. It's happening in here interpreting what we're seeing. And in the world of politics, everyone who's listening to this podcast knows just how ambiguous things are. Somebody says something and they're right. Well, you know, think interpreted this way. They're left for one interpret

it that way. It's known as my side bias, even the very same stimulus, right? So there is the sense that if we get more and more and more information, then we'll understand people better, better, better, better. That's not necessarily true. If we come into these perceptions into these viewing these things with very different starting points, a very different perspective to begin with. You've worked a lot on this notion of under socialization. If I may, I'd like to

invert it for today's conversation and talk a little bit less through the lens of how bad it is if we're under socialized and explore instead, how good it is if we do socialize. Not because

to be useful. And I'm tempted to set this up as an experiment. So as with the example of the balls you gave before, in the most deprived condition, a human is in total isolation. Okay, so another condition is they can let's just say text with somebody else, but they can't see them.

They've never seen them. Then we can ratchet that up, right? They've seen them before. They can

make a phone call. They can do video chat. They're in person. I can see a million excellent arguments for why in-person interaction is good. But what is the evidence that the other forms of social interaction are good also? We hear so much about how they're bad, but we also hear about the isolation crisis. And so we've sort of, I've lumped the more deprived versions of socialization in with isolation. And I'm not sure that I accept that. I'm not trying to counter your work. I don't

know enough about doing it. I'm not qualified to anyway. But it's texting with a friend, healthy, yes, as opposed to spending time alone for sure. Okay, for sure. In-person time, clearly being the best. There's a little better. Although going from no contact to some contact is the big leap.

Tell me more. So being isolated is spending a day alone is pretty, is pretty miserable. So when

psychologists look at this, this comes from a famous paper by Danny Connemen and Angus Deaton, both Nobel Prize winners and economics and either of them, economists that looked at the gallop daily well-being poll, right? And they call people up every day and they ask them how you're feeling today. In a number of different ways. They actually asked you about the day before.

“Yesterday, did you enjoy yesterday? Did you feel enjoyment yesterday? Did you smile yesterday?”

Did you experience sadness yesterday? Did you experience stress yesterday? And they- so they ask about these different measures of well-being. They also ask about all kinds of other things. How much money you're making or you religious or not, they know how much insurance you have, whether you're serving on a weekend or a weekday. They also ask you, did you spend yesterday entirely alone or not? And when they do that, you can compare the effects of things like social isolation. Being alone

versus not against these other things. And turns out the difference between spending yesterday alone versus somebody else that difference in your well-being on these other measures is about seven times bigger than being relatively higher low on their income measure, which is about a $60,000 difference between these two groups. That being alone is bad. That's a bad day, okay? And having connections with other people improves it pretty dramatically. Above and beyond that, it does matter. It can be- it's- it

is better, those interactions. But now you're- you're adding good things to what was already somewhat a good thing. Plus, we also need to- we need to unpack a little bit what these different

media do. They're good for different things. And we don't always use them in the ways that are

right, but I think, you know, in many ways we do. Like if I send you a text or I send my wife a text, right? She's just back in Illinois today. We've been married for nearly 30, we would be 30 years in August this year. We know a ton of about each other. I can send her, you know, a heart when I'm feeling, you know, love and upon a sender, let her know that and she's going to feel- that's going to lift her up a little bit. They're just going to feel good. We already have a relationship. That's establishing

just some- some content. Testing is great for that. It can allow us to stay in contact with somebody. It is not good for building a relationship necessarily over time. Like if we're going to spend a half hour typing to each other, it's not good to wait to spend that half hour. I'd be much better at picking the phone and talking to you to help establish that relationship. But absolutely, the ability to reach out and connect with other people frequently as texting is used out in the

“world can allow us to stay connected. Now, if that's the only thing we're doing for not actually”

spending time developing more meaningful relationships with people, that's not going to be as good as it could be. But you started this by asking about sociality more generally and why is being social good for us? The fact of the matter is, even with our imperfections and thinking about the minds of others, we are highly social. Just the ability to think in the level of sophistication that we do about the minds of other people's shows how important sociality is for us. And you see

the importance of sociality just to almost everywhere. You look the way our brain is organized, right? So our neocortex is massive relative to the rest of our brain compared to our nearest primate relatives, the chimpanzees. A lot of that stuff is good for social stuff, right? For theory of mind, use for keeping track of who knows what and who you should trust and who you should avoid living in large social groups is complicated, right? And the size of our brain reflects a

complication. If you look across primate species, the size of the neocortex relative to the rest of

“the brain is correlated with this is, this is, this is work on the social brain hypothesis, right?”

The size of the neocortex relative to the rest of the brain is correlated with the social complexity of the group the primate species lives in. Our brains are built to be social. Also, for most of

on each other for survival. That also means that we have a neural architecture that is desperately

trying to keep us connected to other people. And so when you spend a day alone, the reason why it feels like crap as my late colleague and friend John Casio, who is at the University of Chicago studied loneliness. Really, is the world was the world's expert on loneliness. Note that your neural architecture is screaming at you when you are feeling, when you are alone,

“to reach out and connect with other people. That's why loneliness feels bad, right? And that's why”

the opposite of loneliness feels so good, like getting, like getting a hug, that feels good. Your brain is trying to tell you, get out there and connect with other people. So when you're lonely, you get spikes in cortisol in your bloodstream that compromises your cardiovascular functioning,

that compromises your immune system. That's why being lonely can make you sick and why can't

shorten your life, right? You also see that the opposite of loneliness connecting with other people, just feels darn good, right? That's your brain telling you, that's your body telling you, yeah, do this a little more often. This is really good, right? So when you have that little conversation with the stranger, like I did coming, you know, coming in, I had this amazing conversation. It was actually a very deep hard conversation with my Uber driver who was Iranian. I'd lost a

son in a protest shot the neck years ago, over there in Iran. Yeah, very painful, but also very meaningful connected us to each other. I felt a very strong bond with each other in the moment. That's your brain telling you, that's the kind of thing that we're built for, right? Because living alone for most of human history was a bad bad thing. So we are hyper-social agents,

interested in connecting with other people. It doesn't always mean we know exactly how to do it

or that we get it right, but going from nothing to something is a hugely for us. And texting can sometimes help us do that. One comment, one question, sometimes I like a day alone. Yeah, I don't have a day. Yeah, that's because I don't spend time around lots of people, but I spend a lot of time around, certain set of people, I adore them, but sometimes it's nice to get that space. But one thing that I've noticed, because when I was a graduate student, I'd run these

experiments off injury in the holidays, because I worked on developmental neuro biology. I didn't have a choice if that my experimental subjects were a certain postnatal age. I was working. Yeah, that day, that was my after all. And there's this kind of interesting idea that I'm not sure I subscribed to, but well, that I do subscribe to, forgive me, that there's something about us as humans that we really like to create action at a distance.

You know, and I don't know if there's a sex difference here, but I think it's like, you know, young boys like create like a rocket, it's a remote control car, you know,

“you have to see something happen over there that you controlled in a meaningful way,”

and it doesn't have to be violent, right? We did rockets and guns, but it could be something else, but this is, I want philosophical more than it's scientific, but could it be that if we spend too much time alone, we got all this stuff in our mind, and it's very hard to create some sort of reveration or action at a distance that we know reflects us. And I wonder if our unconscious mind actually gets to the question, like, do I even exist? Now, of course, we know we exist. We can

touch our limbs, but the social isolation fear, you know, if I've got fridge full food and I've got music and I've got audio books, that's all income, but at some point you do get a little, I know because I've spent days, on days doing experiments back, one by myself. You get a little weird. You thought to get a little distorted, and it's almost like you know there's stuff out there, but if you spend enough time away from it, it kind of messes with your head a little bit. Yeah.

And then, of course, we think of like the Ted Kazinsky types and these extremes of people have gone into isolation. There's that movie about the true story that Guy that goes into the wilderness. Oh, yeah. Right. Yeah, Eddie Vetter wrote the soundtrack to that movie. Right. Right.

“And I, into the wild. That's right. And, um, mechanics, right, mechanics. Yeah. Yeah. And I think he wrote”

it, the end. You know, connection with people is the thing. Yes. You know, he had this romantic you of going about into the wilderness by himself, where we think of, you know, Walden pond. And you know, we romanticized this thing about being alone for a long extended amounts of time. But I think it raises real questions about whether or not we're even there. It's sort of the the most existential version of like if a tree falls in the woods that you know, and no one's

there did it make a sound. It's sort of like if we have thoughts and emotions and experiences and there's no one else around to reflect those for them to have impact on like do we even exist? Yeah. And if this might be some hardwiring here, I'm getting like almost Freudian and it's so forgive me. I'm not as psychologist. Yeah. But I'm, I'm curious what your thoughts are about the relationship between the fear of isolation, our need for for our thoughts and desires and

behaviors to have some sort of reverberation out there. Some responsiveness to us. Yes.

that there is research on this is what happens to people, prisoners who are putting in solitary

confinement. That is not good for their mental health. It's not good for their sense of cells, for who they are, that you lose the sense of the cells. There's not great research on this, because you can't randomly assign people to be isolated for a long periods of time, right?

“You just thank us. Yes. That's why we have IRBs, right? But that experience I think is very”

real. When you were talking about this, it made me think of research in the early 1900s, theories from sociologists that the way we understand ourselves is through other people. The way I know who I am, what I'm like as a person, who Nick is, is from talking with you and Drew. And when we are in conversation, that's what I'm learning about myself. You're telling

me about myself. I'm having thoughts that I'm sharing with you. And that's what gives me a sense

of self, this looking class, self in our sense of self a steam. In fact, it's highly, highly tied. In my valuable person is highly tied to how well we're getting along with other people. It's like all just believe that it is a monitor. In fact, for how well you're getting along with people, you're very sense of self-worth. And so when there is nobody out there, I think you're absolutely right that's that you can, you can lose your sense of who you are. And people who go out to the

woods, I remember when I was a, when I was a kid, I actually wrote this up. I, I want an early career award from APA, which is a great honor for me. But in the, in the bio that they asked you to write, I wrote in that, that about my childhood dream. My childhood before I was nine years old, I believed I was going to be a mountain man. Like I grew up in the woods and I was hunting and fishing, being outdoors, all my extended family were farmers, watching grizzly atoms on TV.

“Like I thought that was a legit job. Like you could, I could actually go do this, right?”

And I was about nine years old when, I don't remember quite how this happened, but I learned that this was not a real job. Like it was, it was not a legit thing that I could do, right? But, yes, I had romanticized it as well that this is going to be a wonderful thing to be able to do. But when people actually go out and do that, they mostly go and say, you know, well, as many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly 15 years now. I discovered it way back in

2012, long before I had a podcast and I've been taking it every day since. AG1 is to my knowledge the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink and taste great. It's designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy. And it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily

nutrition. And of course, we should all eat high quality whole foods, but most of us are probably not getting enough prebiotics, vitamins, and minerals, and AG1 ensures that those gaps are filled. I get asked all the time by people if they were to take just one supplement,

what would my recommendation for that supplement be? And my answer is always AG1 because it's just been

so critical for supporting all aspects of my physical health mental health and performance by covering those nutritional what we call foundational bases. And I know from my own experience and from everyone I've heard that I recommended it to that they simply feel much better in a number of different ways when they take it regularly. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/Huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time,

AG1 is giving away a week supply of AGZ, which is their sleep supplement, and a free bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription. AGZ is something that I help design, it tastes great, and it's the only sleep supplement I take. It has a collection of different things in it that has dramatically improved my sleep, both my slow wave deep sleep and my rapid eye movement sleep, and I absolutely love it. Again, that's drinkag1.com/Huberman to get a week supply of AGZ

and a bottle of D3K2 with your subscription. Social media, which I spend a decent amount of time on because I teach there and I learn there, you know, we know has healthy aspects and unhealthy aspects, a bunch of variables there age, what people are looking at, et cetera, how much time is going on. Yeah, but social media offered people this opportunity to get out of a loneliness through a different form of connection, and so if we just kind of hypothesize that having

our words or our thoughts haven't visible, but a known impact on somebody else's words or thoughts provides some sort of confirmation that we're there. It kind of explains why, you know, taking the most aggressive or outrageous thought and putting a comment and then somebody responds or other people dogpilot or they respond. And then you're like, I'm having an effect out there

“also safely behind a wall, right? I think we're critical of that safely behind a wall piece,”

you know, that the stereotype that you hear online is like, you know, apple 7689 in his mom's basement, like, you know, trolling people, you know, but that we forget. Like, that person's alone in their basement. Why are they doing it? Like, why is it so satisfying to

but I probably they want to see their words and thoughts haven't effect. And the best way to do that

is to poke or to say something outrageous. And so I'm hoping that whoever runs these platforms will

“try to create incentives for more positive interactions because I think what ultimately what most”

people want is the interaction to feel that their thoughts and their feelings matter out there. So if we can go to something even a little more concrete, if we just think about conversation, right, the back and forth. Why is the conversation as often such a pleasant thing? It is because there is back and forth responsiveness in the conversation that allows me to detect that you're paying attention to me right now. You're looking at me, right? You're nodding at me as I'm speaking

and you'll give a more right or a yes. I'm going along and that allows me to recognize my thoughts

or having an effect on you in a way that's having a positive effect in return on me. And so I think

very much that action, action at a distance, as you put it, psychologists talk about that as response of this or being in synchrony with another person is part of what makes conversation feel so good. I have some friends who are recording artists and the only reason they still tour is it's not for the money, leaving the money. In some cases it's good but it's not as good as money that can make doing other things. It's a huge hassle. It takes them away from families,

there's security issues, there's all this stuff, but they get to experience the apex of collective human action at a distance based on their interactions, their things you mentioned at Evader, right? And then their stories, or whatever, like scaled the, at some concert ready,

scaled up and like grabbed the microphone, got stuck up above and then he actually, I actually

watch it, it's pretty dangerous and then he actually repelled down on the microphone, oh my god. Yeah, this was all spontaneous. So he's doing these things, I don't know how much he's conscious of the fact that he's, you know, exciting people and you know, but recording artists love to do this. They don't just love to sing, they love to see the response of people they sing to and people go to

“concerts. I believe because whether they understand it or not, they're having an impact on what's”

happening up on stage. And they understand their reciprocity. So I think we're just driven to do this. I have to believe that this is part of our core wiring. When, when we're kids and we round up in preschool, like when they are everyone round up and everyone tries to sit still and the girls generally can and the boys generally can't for a little bit, you know, until I later age, there's a lot of learning to let others speak to kind of like hold things in. So as a human

psychologist, if you were to play primatologists for a moment and we were human old world primates, what are this core components that social connection are built on? We talked about dialogue, we talked about vision, we talked about sharing, is it, you know, but we don't get a whole lot of training in this if you really think about it. We just kind of go through school, we learn to sit, we learn to listen, you're not supposed to hit people, you're not supposed to yell at people,

you know, you run around at recess and and and so on and you do what other people do. But like what is the socialization and in human primates? What are the core features that make somebody able to function really well socially or not? I think the thing to keep in mind, at least, is the reason why we think social connection matters so much. Why it's so important is that it allows us to coordinate with other people. And if I can coordinate with you, then you and I are

better able to survive and to exist and pass along our genes and if we can't coordinate with each other and that groups that are able to coordinate with each other collectively cooperate with each other in ways that are that are good for the common good. Those groups outperform groups where people are just at each other's throat, nobody's cooperating, right? This is why corporations function effectively. You could a collection of individuals all operating as a single unit, all oriented

towards one common goal and you can get a collection of people of individuals and doing things that are way more advanced and way bigger than any individual would do on their own. This is why the East Indian trading company was able to send ships all around the world because they had resources tied up in corporations so that they could send ships out into the world. And if one went down, you wouldn't lose all of your resources. You wouldn't lose all your riches as an investor.

So all of social connection, at least evolutionarily speaking, this is the idea, is pushing us toward

“cooperation and coordination particularly with non kin. That's what makes us truly social on this”

planet is our ability to cooperate and to care for non kin. You don't need coordination with family members. You don't need any special evolutionary mechanism to be at coordination with family members. They have your eyes. They have your genes. That makes perfect sense. You're leaving genetic offspring.

well out there in the world. We drive on the right side of the road. We befriend people who were

“not related to and that's where I think all of this, that's what social connection is ultimately”

trying to serve as that coordination function. Do you think there are hard-wired mechanisms that set us up for cooperation with our genetic offspring and siblings and so forth more so than with non-genetic. I know you have adopted kids. We have adopted kids in our family as well and it's sort of weird to say this because it's kind of a duh but for people that don't have adopted family members. Like the notion that they're not like really part of your family is

insane. For privacy reasons, I don't want to disclose who these people are but I can tell you

that I have a younger family member who was adopted and I never, ever, ever think for a moment

that she's not part of our family. I've made down a traffic for her the same way I worked for any other member of my family and I wasn't the one that raised her. Do you think there's something

“hard-wired about our genetic offspring and the other stuff fortunately develops adopted children”

of close friends, community members? Yeah. I don't know the answer to that exactly. That's not what I study per se. What I can tell you though as a social psychologist is that what we study is the power of context and roles to drive behavior and the thing that you are speaking to and the thing that we have experienced as parents we have three adopted children. What really matters is the

role you play. That is magical. When we adopted our first two children from Ethiopia,

we made a decision to do this and when you adopt there's a point where you move from this being hypothetical to being this being real. The way this worked for us was that we were shown pictures of children who we could adopt. Of course once you're in on it like you're all in you're not really making a choice. I'm not sure as they said we called up the agency we said we were ready to go and they said how about these and they put a picture up for us. When we first making this decision

it was hypothetical and the pictures look different to us. Kids who come from our kids who come from very, very hard places and life you don't end up in an orphanage, another part of the world unless you've come through hard places. They come through very hard places. They were in

the second and third percentile in the WHO heighten weight charts. They were in tough shape.

As soon as Jan and I said yeah we can do this. I'm so vividly remember this. They just looked better. They just they looked more you just felt more a lot they looked different. The second we decide yes this is it. Here we go. We have committed and then once you bring people into your

“family anybody who's done this knows the huge effect is your dad or your mom and that's what matters.”

We will sometimes I don't know if your family has done this but I will sometimes very gently note to people they will sometimes talk to me as if as another father of my kids and not my kids. As if the biological and adopted children are different and I've very try to gently say they are all our children and you don't feel different. So I think what's interesting not as if there is there any subtle difference that's left is how almost completely

and perceptible or completely and perceptible it actually is. That's what makes us remarkable as human beings. That we can do that. There is no other species we know of that does that kind of thing that loves beyond their kin and the way that we can. In fact it's led to a total reshaping in many ways of the field of economics even. Economists believe that humans are fundamentally self-interest and they only care about themselves the only rubbers when you actually look at the

data. People just a lot nicer to each other than standard models of economics would predict we give money away to charity. We give away kidneys to random strangers. We care like if if I give you $10 an experiment and tell you you can divide it with another person however you want and keep all that give you know give none of it or give it all away. The standard prediction from economic theories you'll be purely self-interest. You won't care anything about this person you

know nothing about you give them nothing. That's not what real people do. They give something. 30% 50% typically depending on the context that you're in and that's the thing that you think is remarkable in this particular case. Not as there any any bit left of this biological hard wiring but how much of it is about the role that you play and how much our love for another

Incredible example that the moment you made the decision you and your wife made the decision that these were the children you were going to adopt that they your visual perception of them changed different. It's almost like two circuits merged in that moment and I can attest from a parallel

experience although I'm not the parent of this family member that you never there's it's it's an

“instant and you never go back. There's never a reconsideration that you know and I think some people”

assume that like well and especially hard times you know it's actually it kind of just leaves the room that like the question is it's animating and reassuring aspect of our brain wiring. Other people might imagine that you think this it just doesn't you just do you just parent let's it wild and very cool it is very cool and and and I think an underappreciated aspect of our sociability is how much we and we often we kind of take it for granted you know people are mean

to each other and so yeah yeah people can be mean to each other but we also love each other way beyond what we should in some way based on just pure you know kinship relationships and biological offspring would predict we would and that's because we're highly social we got to cooperate with each other in order to get along successful in life and so we got these really hard hard wired kind of circuitry to care and love and connect with each with each other when we try.

What I'm about to describe might be different now but the portion of my families in South America

“I'll never forget when I was in my really late teens early twenties I went down there and I went”

out with my cousins to a bar it was like a club right the um and it was so interesting because they spoke to their friends we met up with their friends there people danced people drank did all the things that we were also doing back in California but there was no communication with other people at this club or this bar that they didn't already know. No this may have changed but then in there that the culture was one where you go out with the

people you already know and you have a really good time but people weren't changing numbers hitting on people looking at other people across it it's that there were these little pockets across the room so it wasn't this idea that oh when you go out in public you go to a club or you drink or something you you might meet somebody else yeah that interesting there wasn't a fear of other people that wasn't the reason you go out you go out to see your friends and the interesting

thing also was that many of these friendships had been lifelong friendships oh yeah so in some sense

I wonder is this one version of how humans evolved because we always think about this village of like

a hundred people you know um you know Bob Sapolsky talks about this and you know we evolved in these culture of a hundred or two hundred folks and you knew everyone and everyone's in each

“other's business and that that's how our species evolved at the same time we we have different”

examples of of sociologist and that strangers weren't around as much yeah yeah yeah it's hard to say I don't know certainly today if you look around the world there is and always has been some anxiety about connecting with strangers and it can vary depending on where there's some places where there's more sociability than in others but there's always been some anxiety about the other the one you don't know right because you don't know necessarily if I can trust you or not

at this moment whether that comes from our evolutionary heritage or not or just unfamiliar with anything right so if you know if you give me something to drink here I don't know what's in it I'm going to be little nervous I want to find out before I drink it if I trust you I'll drink

but if I don't you know I'm not so sure I don't want to see what's in there first there's always

some anxiety about the unknown or uncertainty and it could be a lot of stuff about strangers and reluctance to connect with other people desire to keep with the folks we already know comes simply from that right which also would apply to non-human interactions to or non-human objects as well we just like what's familiar because we know it and we trust it and we're comfortable with it as a result everything else by comparison is a little bit riskier

I can't say I'm particularly outgoing or not but I was taught manners that had me ask how people's day was going like if I'm checking out the grocery stores like how's your day going and I'm interested like it's not just an icebreaker or something like how's your day going but you hold the door for people you say please and thank you I think a lot of people assume that manners equates to small talk equates to superficial and then it's all a bunch of

fluff that it's not about deep connection but when I'm moving through the you know the checkout line at Whole Foods I don't have a lot of options yep if I say nothing okay these days no one would notice they could be on their phone no one would call that abnormal if I say how's your day going and they go pretty good I if I say what do you do before you got here that's that's

that ever happened to you they're going look at me like I'm crazy right so what I wonder is

“when we talk about manners and etiquette which I believe there's been a real kind of erosion”

of at the level of kind of what is standard right for whatever reason we just don't have an etiquette everyone follows all it used to be all men were jackets and ties or at least ties to work him and now you show up in whatever I do think that as manners have become less common or common manner manners have become less common that the opportunities for casual low-level exchange have evaporated yeah and so there's less of a stepping stone to deeper exchange yeah

so I would think about manners kind of as habits right that's kind of what they are and and some sensibilities about about other people being kind and decent other people

but understanding how those manners might be affecting day-to-day behaviors a little bit tricky

so one of the things for instance we find like in in a lot of public spaces people are reluctant to engage with other people because they don't want to interrupt they don't want to be impolite there's a version of that that is about manners right and we have sometimes we're getting signals of that tech gives us signals that somebody doesn't want to be bothered perhaps like we put ear buds in or we look at our phone right and so some of

that could be coming from what you might think of as as manners in the UK for instance one of the reasons we we find just well just this true in the US too but even a little more so in the UK there's this norm of politeness that I it's not okay for me to get into your business in Japan it's even stronger right I don't want to and that scene as being polite right in those contexts I'm with you though that this general norm of saying hello or hide at people has gotten diminished a little bit

“in part because people I think are getting out of the habit because you got these you got these”

got these phones on you all the time but I think I think it's a little trickier it's a little harder to say maybe that manners have eroded because they're complicated out in the world stuff that looks like could be a lack of manners in one context could in people's own minds be no I'm being polite to you by not interrupting it's tricky yeah I mean I hear from a lot of podcast listeners that the challenge is with you know finding a romantic partner nowadays

center largely around people not wanting to be seen as creepy but also people not wanting strangers to talk to them right so there's a little bit of an impact right now I also hear from people who wonder why guys aren't asking them out just kind of randomly or asking them for a coffee or for a number or something like that and there's a lot of fear right now it's what I hear and that fear is probably well it certainly is on both sides you know you said you had a in-depth conversation

with your Uber driver always I over here amazing I mean I used to be that I would get into

deep conversations on airplanes just seems like we're stuck in this I didn't have to come and have to they all have to be sometimes if your neck is turned to one side you can get off that plane with a stiff neck but in all seriousness so are you one to just open up conversation with people as a random yeah in part because we got it we could go back a long way to start out started the beginning of our research but I'll keep this simple I've interpreted reaching out

and connected with other people differently we find in our work that people underestimate how interested others are in engaging with them so you're sitting next to somebody on a plane or on a train and people if you're not already talking you assume this person doesn't want to talk to you but that person is more likely to say they're interested in talking to you than you would guess but if you got two people that aren't talking to each other this gets back to our earlier

conversation how I can use as somebody's behavior as a guy to their thoughts in this case making mistake I can infer you're not interested in talking to me if you're not and you could be thinking well next not talking to me he's not interested in either we can both then sit there both be interested in talking to each other but nobody's saying a word because we must understand what silence is like right or we assume that people don't want to have meaningful conversations

so when in fact most people say that's actually what they want so I've adopted a different

“way to think about manners here in a way that I think attends more to both my own well being”

and the person who I'm connecting with I think about social connection is an opportunity or an invitation to connect with somebody and to your point about fear we find over and over again people are overly pessimistic overly afraid about how positively other people will respond to them when you reach out to them in a positive way so like with the Uber driver on the way here today I just he was Iranian I asked him how do you feel about the war can you can you tell me about it

and it was clear that I was not wanting some superficial respond I cared I was taking an interest in him

and feeling comfortable sharing and he shared that his son died and a protest and I ran and that he had been imprisoned in Iran and I mean we were crying but together at the end of that at the end of that right it's 23 minutes to get here the fact that you're able to connect for a short while I'm assuming you didn't exchange numbers you're not going to be in touch yeah so the point is not to create a lasting relationship the point is to connect to make that moment better yeah I mean

“I think actually this is a really important way to rethink how you think about well being”

well being is not just about the intense you know that the really impactful moments in your life happiness and well being is a little more like a leaky tire like you just gotta keep pumping it up

because you adapt to things right you you'd go on this amazing trip you know to out into the

beautiful sonoran desert or something right and that's great you come back the next day and then you got traffic coming to work and that sucks right and you're right back to where you were before it doesn't last I mean nothing really lasts for that we're obviously relationships can last but but moments come and go right and what that means I think for our well being is that we want to start paying attention to creating good moments right positive moments that can lift us up and the

people around us as well and you can take I could have gone 23 minutes here to talk with you today and had a perfectly boring ride or I could have heard one of the most amazing stories about

“somebody's life where he opens his heart up to me in this car ride in 23 minutes and made”

that 23 minutes way better and connect with another human being more deeply than then you might

imagine will be possible in that short time and make that moment better my day is better because that moment was better and if you start thinking about happiness and connection in terms of moments rather than some sort of illusion of some lasting long-term impact well then you start seeing opportunities that connect all over the place right on my plan flight in last night did that right in the grocery store store check out and you got an opportunity

you know I now keep an eye out I just pay attention I take an interest in other people research that I've done here on social connections fundamentally changed the way that I love my life I take an interest in other people so I noticed stuff that I didn't use to notice I'll throw out compliments any kind thought I will share with somebody I just don't have anxiety about that keep moving on if right if from passing now shout out like this morning I got breakfast at the hotel

I was at guys wearing a killer hat right I'm walking by hey man I love your hat that's awesome right I walk my sister I love it too right and I just kept going but that moment was a little brighter right and what's a good day if not to string along a few good moments and what's a good week if not to string along a few days that have some good moments in them and what's a good month a good year a good life it's about those moments and we got lots of those moments and if we start

thinking about them in terms of opportunities to connect to be decent to another person and away that'll really use the skill we have to connect with other people instead of being held back by misplaced fear changes the way you live your life I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor function function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health this snapshot gives you insights into your heart health your hormone

health autoimmune function nutrient levels and much more they've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans function not only provides testing of over 160 biomarkers

“key to your physical and mental health it also analyzes these results and provides recommendations”

for improving your health from top doctors for example in a recent test with function I learned that some of my beloved lipids were slightly out of range as a result I decided to start supplementing with natto kinase which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol and it did in a follow-up test I could confirm that this strategy worked my blood lipids are now back exactly where I want them Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that function offers is just so important for health

I mean how else are you going to know what's going on under the hood and while I've been doing blood work for years it used to be time consuming complicated and expensive in fact I used to spend thousands of dollars per year trying to get this kind of data and the data frankly we're not all that good but now with function it's extremely easy and affordable a function membership is only a dollar a day 365 dollars a year and if you think about the information it provides and the health

challenges it helps you avoid and the proactive things that it can do for you to enhance your health I truly look at it as a savings to learn more visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code huberman for a $50 credit towards your membership again that's functionhealth.com/huberman. Yeah I'm listening to you and I'm thinking some of the best moments of my life and I've had many many are really

at this kind of level of in passing you know you mentioned like in my mind I was saying like never

you exchange no words with you back and now I live in a very crowded area and so I don't go out

“much but when I do occasion you just pass on on the sidewalk you just like put out a fist and like”

and you feel a kinship the other day also I have a very niche but a very deep relationship to certain genre music so just like walking down the the boardwalk and someone goes someone's like shouted out I was wearing a minor threat sure I'm picking him a Kai fan, minor threat fugazi and someone goes minor threat and I go minor threat I don't even know where they were you know and so like and like they that I mean you know it's you know I'm dating myself here by saying that

but I still amazing band right no matter how old you are to check it out but you know you feel a kinship to other members of your species that way I don't know who these people are it's interesting it's it's a whole other level of human connection that I hadn't thought of and as with manners and etiquette and that kind of superficial small talk piece I kind of assumed that this stuff didn't matter that it was kind of like ah well okay that's like small that's not nourishment

right that's not that's not a that's not a nice like elk steak right or beautiful vegetable spread that that's the that's like a that's like a that's like a cracker yeah you know but the comparison

“isn't fair right because ultimately like you said our life is a series of moments and the feeling”

that our species has a kinship that isn't based on anything else it was no exchange of money or opportunity is or any of that is pretty awesome we're connected we're in this together and somewhere there's a there's a hypothesis that many of my PhD students and postdocs over the years have

suggested and we've talked about but we have never figured out a way to actually test it

but some sense that when you interact with with a stranger a member of a group of some kind but strangers a good example it doesn't just make you feel connected to that person it kind of changes your sense of connection to like the entire group like you just feel a little better about humanity when you see that moment like you deliver a compliment to somebody I was walking down the sidewalk just a little bit ago on my way to the train there was a woman standing next to a car

she's had these awesome red glasses on they just look fabulous and I said to her or gone by I love those glasses you are killing it today and she took them off almost it didn't she wasn't going to cry but she's she stopped and she said thank you so much for telling me that I really needed that today right I had met her at a moment where she had a bad day and my sense is she just felt uplifted just like by people in general by the world just had a more favorable view of what

the world was like a different view of what human nature was like in that moment then you otherwise what I had yesterday on my train ride into University of Chicago before I got on a flight to come here to see you sit down next to a young man on the train he's got his ear buds in looking at his phone you know easy stereotype young man disconnected from the world I sit down and I said I said right next to him I said I said hi reached out I'm Nick I had to shake a hand he came back

with a fist bump rather than a hand shake but then he took out his right ear bud and I started talking I said you know what it what he up to today where what he what he going to the town for and he said well I'm going to this culinary program downtown and what was so crystal clear right away it was how proud he was that he was doing this he'd come from LA actually and he was just started getting into this training program this trade school to get him into this culinary union

where he's going to work as a chef or maybe for hotel or a big restaurant he pulled out his book his little three ring binder that had his lessons for it actually took a picture of it I have a

son who's entering a trade program right now I've never seen him happier in his life than when

he's doing this and he was flipping through showing me what they were doing today he was just so proud of what he was doing so ready to talk with me about this his name was Gustavo delightfully young man and I remember leaving that conversation just like feeling better about about my kids it's about kids in general like here's a kid who's really trying to make it and that felt good not just about this young man Gustavo who I felt fortunate to spend 30 minutes that made that 30 minutes

much better but kind of uplifting about the entire category that he was from and what's interesting is how easy it is to your point about manners say to avoid that how to fear he doesn't want to talk to me not that interested in having a meaningful conversation mate doesn't want to go there right

but in fact that's the thing we're all done for it's super interesting I never thought about

this aspect of social dynamics yes manners both my parents are very polite they taught to be polite my girlfriend comes from the south so she's like very polite like manners yeah big thing and she's

“a genuinely kind person that's what I think people hear like manners and kindness and they think oh”

like it's it's fake but it's not it's a it's a real it's it's part of the the social fabric

aspires to be a public facing person the thing you give up when you're a public facing person is this

“oh really yeah it's interesting and and for somebody like me it you know it's compensated”

for by the other things you gain right but but that disappears right not with everyone right but it disappears and so as you're saying this I actually realize I like have a little bit of nostalgia about like just being able to like go out and interact with people and sometimes it happens but a lot of times that the things refer back to to the podcast or things like which I really love I love when people roll up and have questions and everyone knows me that like I'll give a podcast

right there if someone has a question I'm a given answer sit down for two hours well how many I

always I mean I'm genuinely interested in them I'll be like where are you from what's your name

I'm genuinely interested I'm not asking it like to deflect I'm really interested but the the anonymous brief exchange that reinforces our and their understanding it's not like a belief it's like an understanding it's a feeling that like we're part of the same species and like you know that is

“an incredibly powerful and reinforcing thing I think I mean especially for me I'm very affiliate”

of I can imagine and I'll just table this possibility that there are some people who are not as affiliate if you know I know one or two people whose names I won't mention who don't really it's not that they dislike people but unless it's their family they're not really interested in other people they're just not and I can't say that they're unhappy they like their family they like their books they like their movies and we could say that they would be better off if they you know

were different but they don't seem to really like other people they don't dislike them but they've got their people and then there's everyone else and the idea that like they would interact with these other people except in you know professional circumstances I think to them is kind of foreign but I'm making a lot of assumptions here too so you can find situations where everybody seems to act that way right like on my train coming into Chicago every morning where nobody's talking with

it says it looks like nobody cares about other people they don't have any interest in talking to other people in those kinds of situations when you ask people to connect with somebody else everybody kind of gets lifted up if you look across say introversion and extroversion a common hypothesis is that extroverts get their energy and their enjoyment from connecting with other people whereas folks who are more introverted get their energy and enjoyment from keeping

“to themselves and I think that's what they want the data just don't support that so this we've”

known for a long time so extroversion is correlated with well-being with happiness.

Going back to 1980 one of the very first papers that ever one of the very first studies that

ever tested is personality related to well-being and easy hypothesis is no it's not it can't be because right people get what they want out of their lives right and everybody's equally happy because you know extroverts connect with other people they reach out they care about other people introverts don't care as much about other people or they they have other preferences to keep themselves or have deeper meaningful conversations right but everybody's getting what they want

so theoretically there should be no correlation at all between personality and well-being and that just isn't true correlation between happiness positive affect day to day and extroversion is 0.5 that's huge that is big that's like the correlation between the heights of fathers and sons that is a big correlation right it's a little weaker with things like satisfaction with life it's a little more like 0.3 but that correlation is big and it shows up

around the world right a 1996 ed dinner one of the founding figures in in the science of happiness or well-being stated you know the foundational result in personality science is that extroversion is correlated with well-being or happiness the more outgoing and extroverted or the more you connect with others the happier you are lots of reasons why that could be

there's a third variable maybe extroverts are just happier than introverts to begin with say

let it raise a question maybe it's something about how the choices they're making the habits they're developing how they're actually behaving and so that makes an easy prediction that well what happens if we just ask people to reach out and connect more with other people to act a little more extroverted does it affect their well-being it could this be like a well-being intervention and it turns out it is will fleece in a psychologist at Wake Forest University was one of the

very first people to do this half-hour lab study asked people to act more extroverted or more introverted when people acted more extroverted they reported feeling more positive in that experiment when you ask people act more introverted they felt less positive regardless of where they fell on this personality scale to begin with over the course of a person's day extroverts and introverts report feeling better alike when they're spending time with other people

than when they're with them when they're alone you ask both to spend more time

Sonia Lubermiersky psychology professor at UC Riverside has done some of the best research on this

over the course of two weeks you shift the well the positive affect meter up across the entire extroversion scale when people are connecting with others compared to when they're acting introverted

“I think what differs here between the folks you're describing you don't seem to get along”

well with others or like other people or don't seem to care as much about other people and folks who who do are the habits that they have developed a little like exercise I think is the way to think about some of us choose to exercise a lot you choose to exercise a lot clearly I don't like you're so merrily you play football and you wrestle I'm competitive basketball that's my best basketball football yeah no I've avoided wrestling because I want to my ears to look good yeah

yeah but you know I struggle to find the time for so I don't choose to exercise as much as I should but we all would feel better if we exercise a little more regardless of what our habits are so what the data on this suggests is that yeah people open themselves up a little bit more to other people try to reach out and connect in positive ways with other people the pork you pines and our lives are not making themselves happier by keeping their quills out and keeping

them themselves they're not living quite as good a life as they as they could live if they chose to live a little differently now whether they choose to or not right whether you exercise or not is not like a necessarily a moral view virtue somebody doesn't actually can't say

“you have to exercise but if you wanted to lift your life up a little bit”

reach out and engage a little more often as what the data suggests regardless of where you are on that spectrum every lies it's not your specific area of work but what about for people with social

anxiety I mean my first impulses to say as long as you have the resources and the time get a dog

I'm not a big fan of dog parks for all sorts of health reasons and but when I lived in San Diego like I would take my bulldog massive puppy dog park I mean lots of friends he made my friends or his dog is better than bombing a cigarette which nobody does anymore right at tons of people that way so what's interesting about that is that that that that creates I can excuse to have a conversation right like the well no I'm not suggesting anyone do this but in the old days like you

you would you would ask for a cigarette you and you would then smoke side by side with somebody and you talk and sometimes there's a romantic interest sometimes it was just a friendly interest but you shared a brief experience I have got some nicotine in your system which broke out and they gave something to you right so they they share resources with you and so there's trust that's being that was a very common mode of exchange yeah and till about people really stop doing that kind of in the

nine years when smoking really dropped off so what's interesting about that I think those tokens the dog or the cigarette are serving to work our way around our anxiety a little bit that we have about connecting with other people I don't think their necessary right they're not necessary but they do help to get around that anxiety but to people who have social anxiety it's a it's a it's a painful thing of course and it's hard we all have it to some extent our nervous about reaching out and engaging

with other people and varying degrees some of that just being a function of how often we do it

when I was in graduate school for instance I I was terrified of public speaking before my first

before my first job interview which is my fourth year graduate school at Princeton I got super lucky to get this job interview I was terrified hmm terrified my job had seemed so fast with with it now now I am yeah now I right this is 25 years of practice and experience and exposure and if you have social anxiety disorder and you want to take care of this is something psychologists clinicians can really take care of their lots of things that a psychologist we can't

really deal with behaviorally social anxiety something we really can help people with for for this book a little more social that I then I just wrote I had a conversation with the guy who is responsible for really developing exposure therapy to treat anxiety disorder stuff on Hoffman is his name and essentially the the the strategy is very simple if you are afraid of talking with a stranger or having a deep conversation the way to get over that is not to simulate it or to imagine it's not

“like you get up and you you give a pretend speech that's what psychologists were doing for years”

it doesn't work because it's still pretending it's you're not a real audience it has to be real and that was stuff on Hoffman's real innovation is you send people out in the world and to do the thing for real you're worried about getting rejected go out and start asking people for help and you'll learn that your fear is misplaced that you get accepted more often than you might guess exposing people to that thing that they're anxious of when the belief is misplaced

and with social anxiety it is usually wildly misplaced that's what we find over and over again is a mistaken barrier to connecting with other people that then that's how you use that social anxiety and get rid of it now exposure therapy doesn't work for everything if you're afraid of

is not gonna make you less afraid of that that's gonna be one trial learning and that's gonna be the end of it but when your fears are misplaced like it is with social stuff exposure is what is what takes care of it not because you do you dull your anxiety so much it's because you change your beliefs about what other people are like you learn oh wait other people are nicer than I think when I say hi to somebody they tend to say hi back when I take an interest in somebody they

tend to say take an interest in me when I ask somebody for a cigarette they and they have one they tend to give me one when I ask for it and it makes this nice conversation changes your belief

“that's why exposure therapy works that's really interesting and a bit surprising I completely”

believe it as you say it but that exposure therapy doesn't reduce your anxiety per se it changes your beliefs about how other people are going to react yeah which indirectly feeds back and changes how you feel let me give you a story about somebody who I got connected to a little bit while I was writing this book G.R. G.A. Ang is his name and G.A. lives up in the bay area well at least he did at the time I think that's still where he is he was a he was an aspiring

entrepreneur you can find him at rejectiontherapy.com which is his website where he put this together he's

got all these videos they're amazing he decided he was an aspiring entrepreneur and he but he was

afraid of rejection and he decided he was going to cure himself of this fear of rejection by subjecting himself to exposure therapy and he heard of this that you do this for a month right the stuff on stuff on Hoffman work you're going to he's going to try to to make some outlandish

“request every day for a month and get rejected every day but because his anxiety was so bad he”

needed more than a month he needed a hundred days so he was a hundred days in a row he was going to ask somebody some ludicrous request so that he would get rejected and then he was going to develop thick skin right where he was going to become immune to rejection there's going to toughen himself up he was going to desensitize himself okay first day he goes up to a security guard and he video tapes all these so you can find these online they're beautiful he goes up to somebody at a bank

like a security guard outside of a bank and he asks him can I borrow a hundred dollars from you this security guard says that's that's that's not how this works buddy and so Gia walks away ah success got rejected but then he says but it actually wasn't that bad right he thought the rejection was going to be harsh right middle fingers blazing swear words coming somebody punch him in the face whatever he thought it was going to be harsh it wasn't that bad by the third day

he starts to fail he goes into a crispy cream doughnut store in Atlanta goes up to the desk woman and Jackie Braun is kind of managing the shift there that day she comes up and he he comes to the counter he says can I get crispy cream donuts in the shape of the Olympic rings shape and call the Olympic rings right and he's thinking oh they're going to say we don't do that here um and instead Jackie sits down gets in her thinker pose and starts drawing on a piece of

paper what the Olympic rings are what colors are they we don't know they're trying to figure this out so just wait a minute it goes Gia goes and sits down 15 minutes later she comes out with a box of doughnuts a little sheepish because she thought she could it unbetter and there are these

Olympic rings that are amazing the voice over on his video is something to the effective and this

is why humanity is worth saving over the course of his hundred days he doubles up a few days he ends up with like a hundred and six requests we don't lines who is my lab manager at the time went through and evaluate all of those requests that he posted and we just asked how often was he actually rejected walks up to a house in Texas and asked the guy at the house would you take a picture of me plan soccer in your backyard yeah yes is the answer there he's playing soccer he walks

up to a southwest airlines gate he's getting on the plane he says can I do the security briefing at the beginning as well you can't do that but you can't address the entire plane if you want so there you stand in front of the entire plane addressing this plane right he he goes

to another airport a private airport never flown a plane his life he asked can I copilot a plane

can I do that yeah he does he gets it done right walks up to a woman's house he's got a potted rose pink rose can I plant this in your front yard oh I love roses you bet what are right there he actually is rejected less often than he is accepted and we coded the videos for how negative they are mostly not negative at all only about seven out of those hundred times is there any negativity whatsoever and if anything it's just slight sometimes people can't do it

“right so so he's he's he's accepted 51 times if I remember right and rejected 48 times and then”

there are fewer their arm ambiguous where he can't do the thing he asked for but they do something else but out of all those only a few times is there any negativity when I was talking to him about this he said I went into this thinking I was going to develop thicker skin I lost my fear of rejection but it was because I changed how I think about other people other people are way kinder

because he realizes that if you ask people for help they are much more interested in trying to help

“you than you to imagine that's why exposure to mistaken beliefs like our social anxiety works because”

you learn that your beliefs are wrong but if you never test him you never find out you be wrong

how persistent was he for instance if he asked a question and the person said listen you can't come back yard and play soccer but maybe the front yard would he say backyard please or if they said no outright you know he would he push he wasn't that persistent in these things and this gia's experience is very consistent with what we find in the research literature as well there's a phenomenon frank Flynn and Vanessa bones frank says it is a Stanford Vanessa's a Cornell both

fabulous researchers documented this phenomenon known as the underestimation of compliance effect which is you ask people to predict what percentage of people are how many people will agree to some request and the very robust tendency is that they they overestimate how many people they'll have to ask in order to get some number to agree to a grasp people are just much more likely to agree than you think we find an our research that not only are they more willing to agree to

the request they also feel much better when they agree to help you than you would guess you ask somebody to take a picture of you down along the boardwalk on in LA right you think you're you're you're you're pestering somebody right you're being a burden to them they're usually happier to have helped you because we are happier when we are being kind to other people so so gia's result is consistent with all of this work in his videos he was not that persistent but he would

often accept other alternatives so he goes into Costco one time goes up to the manager he says I love Costco it's just my favorite star can I go on the inner calm and tell the entire store how much I love Costco and how fabulous I think you all are and the manager says well I can't let you do that but we can go get lunch over here at the you know at the pizza shop that's in Costco and we can spend some time talking and so he comps him a lunch and then he gets a free lunch out

“of this sort of that's what he does so there were a few and like on the Southwest Airlines”

and he couldn't he couldn't do the security briefing but he could just address the whole plane flight which is what he did right so he would accept those those and those were the few cases where it wasn't outright accepted but if he got a no he said thank you and that was it I don't want to give anyone social anxiety because you just provided a wonderful or I don't want to discourage anyone from from doing what you just described because it's a it's a really both entertaining and

beautiful example of the goodness of humanity really being a fundamental feature of most surprisingly

fun yeah so it's not the case that everybody's always sure of course not but it tends to go

he thought he'd be rejected a hundred days in a row yep he wasn't you have data I just have an anecdote so the fact that I'm going to tell you that a piece of that anecdote comes from a neurologist does not mean it has any more validity than and it may be even less and that was a joke against my neurology I great jokes about neurologists by the way I could do an entire podcast about the jokes against the different divisions of medicine maybe I'll do that sometime we should do that route

the so I had a post-doc advisor unfortunately he passed but that's not the point here he was a neurologist and he was an extremely friendly person since it was Ben Barris he's to walk on the hall he'd say how did the janitors he'd say he was always very good about bringing things to the the admins up front even I both know they are underpaid at at all

universities they are true people always say they're all the the administrators like

well you got high level administrators I'm not going to comment on what they make I don't know but but all the administrators at the level of like the front office etc they're underpaid they're overworked because it's just an extremely kind person is very outgoing and but he was a neurologist in addition to being a scientist and he pointed something out which was that there would be some people who would that he would interact with on campus and we were adjacent to the hospital

so this plays in who you'd be friendly to like hey how's it going and they say hey what do you do here and you say oh well we work on neuronal glial interactions activity depend development of myelination and they go cool like what's that and you have a little exchange of them move on great healthy they're learning they realize academics aren't just trying to you know hide their information no matter how busy there are somebody just taking time out of their busy

pace to stop and have an interaction with you this is something that I grew up observing in my mom and it's something that I just naturally do and enjoy so it's a lot of

“what you described before but I'll never forget Ben once telling me he said”

he's got coming down the hall he's sticky and I said what's sticky he said that's neurologist speak for the person that takes that kind of casual exchange and makes the assumption that you're a lot closer than you actually are and as somebody with a sister you grow up hearing stories of like

number excited about that but some other guy like he was pretty persistent and he wouldn't go away and not time to have full stalker situation about it this too yep so I think a lot of social anxiety comes from some people just don't know where the line is between normal healthy casual social exchange and being too sticky yeah and this takes us back to the eyes

“I'll never forget freshman year of college for giving me for weaving in a second anecdote”

I had a roommate we were triple room but I had a roommate and feedback from people around us they're like what's wrong with your roommate I'm like what do you mean it's like a perfectly nice guy like he's super nice and they're like no he stares at people and I thought oh he was very very tall you know and I'm reasonably tall but he's like really really tall and so I started noticing when we would stand in groups he would just like beam people and so I pulled him aside

and I said hey listen Dave you can't stare at people he goes I'm just looking at them and I'm like I know but you can't stare at him you're creeping people out he goes okay where should I look now he might have been a little bit on the spectrum I don't know we didn't have that language to understand you know spectrum back then but I explained to him I was like just keep your gaze moving and stop and we all loved him like and he can be part of our social circle but then

those first weeks you know he was a little bit he was giving people an uneasy feeling yeah so I think for a lot of people who have social anxiety they're concerned is that they're going to be perceived as kind of creepy or sticky and no one wants to be that person yeah and so it is an art yep it is a learning to understand that like a fist bump is one thing but just because you see that person again the next day you remember their name you're not best friends yes

and you're not even really friends you're being friendly right and I I don't not trying to contaminate the the the positive waters yeah yeah but I think a lot of people don't know how to develop this skill as a as a hone skill and they're really afraid and I think it's not about like getting you know someone calling the police because someone is being too sticky but yeah like if somebody doesn't call you back like they probably don't want you to ping them a third time right

or text you again and I think a lot of it always seems to sort of immediately deflect to like

men doing this to women I can tell you a lot of women do this too so it's independent of sex right if somebody doesn't respond to third time and it was a first time meeting and regardless of what the exchange was translation they don't want to continue the exchange for whatever reason and so how how do you reconcile that in when giving advice for people to be more outgoing how do you keep people from being sticky I guess there's another way to think about too is that is that

some a lot of sensitivity or concern about social anxiety is about running into sticky people and there I think there probably is a gender difference a sex difference that women are likely to be more nervous about men misinterpreting something in a way that might become problematic or threatened so because of physical things exactly so I'm super sensitive to that and no

“I'm at our data don't suggest that you should be ignoring risks or your senses about what's risky”

but our data suggests that your sense about risk is awful little bit and there are times where you might want to test some of those beliefs and you might find some places where you're mistaken I think the important thing from my perspective on this is that if you're really pessimistic about

other people it never gets corrected you never get to find the great people to have a conversation with

right but it does also mean that you will sometimes run into the people who aren't so great to have a conversation with and you need to learn how to move on from those people right we're not friends with everybody certainly that is true but the other thing you mentioned was the importance of this being a skill it is something that you learn to do as you practice I have become a better conversationalist I become a better public speaker I become better at doing this because I do it for a living

right and I choose to try to do it and try to become better and I try to be when I'm interacting

“with other people to be sensitive to them as well our data don't suggest that you should be”

reaching out to other people in order to make yourself feel good our data suggests what feels good is when you take an interest in other people and you open them up to you in a way that you would have avoided or missed before and you'll just have a lot more positive experiences that way but it does mean being sensitive to how they respond and you do learn to do this over time with practice just like anything you get better with practice right and so for folks who are concerned about starting

or trying my suggestion is just like just like when you're starting anything that you're nervous

about or hard you you never exercise the prescription is always to start small pick a little

thing that's easy and safe you know that person in the office who you've seen for years but you don't know their name this goes and say hi to them let's see how that goes and then try that with somebody else those are easy those are safe right that's not that that's not that difficult and you get better at this over time including figure out how to do things like in conversations

that sticky and then you can manage that a little bit differently those are skills you develop by approaching you don't develop them by avoiding and you miss a lot of people who are wonderful my Uber driver right the young man Gustavo on my train ride yesterday morning Brian on my flight here to speak with you today on my on my plane last night you miss a lot of great people too

“and that's that's what we find in our research that I think is perhaps the bigger cost”

and just like Giaf found he missed opportunities to get help from other people and even to allow people to feel better for helping him because he was too afraid to ask I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors element elements is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't that means the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium all in the correct ratios but no sugar proper hydration is

critical for brain and body function even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive

and physical performance it's also important that you get adequate electrolytes the electrolytes sodium magnesium and potassium are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body especially your neurons or your nerve cells drinking element makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes my days tend to start really fast meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise so to make sure that I'm hydrated

and I have sufficient electrolytes when I first wake up in the morning I drink 16 to 32 ounces of water with an element packet dissolved in it I also drink element dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes element has a bunch of great tasting flavors in fact I love them all I love the watermelon the raspberry the citrus and I really love the lemonade flavor so if you'd like to try

element you can go to drink element dot com slash huberman to claim a free element sample pack with any purchase again that's drink element dot com slash huberman to claim a free sample pack a lot of people are on their phones texting with people they already know they have an established relationship presumably they're continuing to maintain if not build those relationships by doing that and I think that going back to this eye gaze thing from earlier eyes down into a

little box is it's a thicker shell to break through this right like I don't think any of us really feel comfortable interrupting somebody texting or on a call right I mean I wouldn't do that you would think of it as bad manners in polite yeah they're clearly in a conversation with somebody else that way I wouldn't just walk up and interrupt yes actually yes here was a social gathering there was like three people talking and these guys all knew each other I was the stranger in the

“group and like you sort of learn like how like what is this you have to quickly assess like what is”

this conversation so sorry I don't know if I'm interrupting something critical but if so I'm gonna

stand right here no I just said if I'm interrupting like you know and they're like no no like you like you have to be able to know how to break into a conversation it's very hard when people are on their phones it can be the way I think of it is you're giving people an invitation I got off the train one morning was this guy came up behind me I remember this very distinctly he's a little taller than I was so I'm I'm about six foot he was probably six foot three looks like an orthodox

monk gravity's got this big long beard gray and beard long hair looks like you know the last thing he would want to do is talk another person I very stern kind of dead off to work face and and I saw him come up side all up next to me he'd already put his left ear but in and he was putting his right ear but in at the same time right it's it would have been easy for me to infer that he didn't want to talk to me right but of course nobody was talking to him either

nobody's talking and so that signal was a little ambiguous what does it mean does he want to talk to me it's it's not clear he could be put in his ear but in because nobody's talking to him he doesn't think other people want to talk to him so he's just gonna get off to work right get away from all these

jerks I turn over and said hi I'm Nick most powerful words you have in your life high one whoever you are

I'm Nick he took out his earbud he turned to me and he's just like came alive like I was flipping a switch on his back huge smile hi I'm T bow he's turns out his French very strong French accent we became friends over these right we walked down to four blocks to my office there and so sometimes these cues can be ambiguous and you don't know what the cue means until you test it so

“the way I think about reaching out to connect with other people to test our fears right our anxiety”

our interpretations of the big knowing that we can make mistakes with each other this to think of it is an invitation right when I turn a Gustavo yesterday Brian last night my cab drive my Uber driver this morning I wasn't demanding anything I was offering up an opportunity an invitation to connect if they wanted to right didn't have to pull their earbud out didn't that Brian last night had a little video game player in front of him right I thought maybe you wanted to play video

against no he was happy to talk right kind of went in and out at a manuscript review I had to do

somebody and don't take your beliefs about another person for granted but treat them as bets that

might be wrong well then you start to see places where maybe you've made a mistake and you give people an opportunity to show you know Tibo would have been happy to talk to me and became friends over years just because I was willing to test that initial belief I had which was mistaken that he didn't want to talk to me and the problem that at least we find over and over again or social lives is all too often we infer immediately a pest we have overly pessimistic expectations

about how other people respond to us when we try and we just miss opportunities to connect with other people that we could have across the moments of our days, weeks, months, years of our lives

that we just didn't reach our lives in lots of ways if we were willing to test those barriers

that were keeping us from connecting with other people to see if are they made out of steel or is it a postanutal sometimes are postanutals the data I've seen suggest that more and more people are going to church they're attending other religious gatherings you know it seems that in just recent years there are really on the upswing and my guess is there are a number of reasons for that people want to meet people the certain sort of values maybe they are drinking

less who knows you know I I think a component of those types of gatherings are that people generally are profoundly it's pretty inviting absolutely I mean people still go to festivals too like I didn't go but Coachella was recently and he's well tend to be in a good mood festivals I was a Ted last week okay so it was a very good example yeah so I'm just you know we could

“pepper with different examples and I think it is important to do so I didn't want to imply it was”

just just churches but these kinds of common gatherings where people are there for their own reasons but also to interact with others including strangers and I think this in my mind can be pretty well explained by the fact that people were indoors during the pandemic a lot of people were anyway and and everyone's on their phones more and devices so attending venues where there's clearly an impulse towards interacting with strangers actually sauna gatherings a really big

image or city you know people not just sitting in a sauna facing out like bleachers on the bleachers but in a round and doing breath work and so and on and on so it's interesting I think people really crave this earlier you talked a little bit about your family and adoption and I've heard you say in a previous podcast that you have a child or children who are particularly outgoing and yeah so if you're willing I don't um would you share a little bit about that it was it's a very

“interesting and and I think important example into um well differences among humans and and sometimes”

we think of differences as good bad in this case it was a clearly an example of how some people by virtue of being more outgoing having less fear actually afford themselves and others a uniquely wonderful experience of life yeah so our youngest daughter Lindsey has down syndrome and Lindsey's adopted from we adopted Lindsey from China the research that I've been doing over the last 15 or so years with my collaborators where we're finding over and over again

how overly pessimistic we are about how how other people were respond to us when we reach out to connect with them it's just really changed the way I live my life it is sometimes hard to take behavioral science research and apply to individual lives but in my own life I've seen ways to do this over and over again by testing some of these barriers and just being more open to reaching on connect realizing it's going to be more positive than I might imagine so um my 10 years ago

my wife this is how this all got us to Lindsey in the end and it came right through our researcher

“I remember this so vividly my wife we were three months into uh pregnancy we had already”

we had named our daughter Sophie at that point we had it four kids by that time we were open to tomorrow life and and Jen was open and three months into pregnancy we learned our daughter had down syndrome and my response to that was to be very pessimistic it was uncertain I didn't know

how I'd never this was not where my mind was I didn't think it wasn't thinking that we'd be raising a

child when we were we're in our 40s with down syndrome um this was this was going to be hard I know though how easy it is to misunderstand how you'd respond in a situation you're not in and so my wife and I and I'm not speaking for my wife starts my wife Jen is an angel she's an amazing human being as my college football coach said when he learned that I was going to ask her to marry me when I was a junior in college she said Nick he said Nick you're marrying

up and he was absolutely right about that marrying up um but for me I was nervous about this we

to get their perspective to learn what it would be like to be in the situation when we weren't in

“to a person those families refer to their children with down syndrome as a blessing it was almost”

like they were reading off of a script it was amazing to hear their stories about how their children

who did not have much social anxiety were just were very open and loving and create were like magnets in their family that everybody flocked around they just brought joy and love and a broader view of what humanity could do with each other than they'd ever imagined before just enriched their lives brought in their worldview in ways they could have anticipated was a blessing six months into our pregnancy uh so if he died so children with down syndrome face a much higher risk

of of miscarriage or stillbirth six months was a stillbirth July 11th 2016th our daughter died those were worst was horrible was the worst experience in our marriage we had ever had we mourn that loss for a good long stretch it's about a year one morning I went into the syndrome my wife was

“sitting there we had two chairs they were she was sitting in this chair where she always sits and I”

said you know honey we were we were ready to have another baby we could do this again there's there there are children out there who need parents we've adopted to before we know how this goes we can do this again we were ready we were in the starting blocks we were ready to go and she turned to me and she said would you be open to adopting a child without syndrome not even occurred to me that that was something we could do and thought about it my head was not there all over again I

was back where I was three months before thinking I don't know that we can do this right this is going to be super hard and then you know if you're a researcher you do think about your data all the time I started thinking again about you know where we were three months ago calling all these families who's talked about their kids as blessings all this data thousands and thousands of the data points by this point as I'm talking you now we've run over 30,000 people in over 120

experiments people reaching out to others documenting ways in which they're underestimating how positively others were respond they're making the choice to hold back too often rather than reaching out and engaging connecting with other people too much and and here we had this choice right in front of us my wife was offering it do we reach out and bring this child into our lives the stranger or not and I was full about here all the same kind of doubt how would she respond to us

our data though gave me some courage here like data driven courage like Nick you are in the same position that all of your participants are in over and over again and it gave me courage to go where my wife was and to say yeah we can do this honey you and I can do this together now Jen and I are in a position that's different from lots of other families we have resources she's fabulous human being we have a strong marriage we could do raising a child with intellectual

disabilities challenging but we we could do this and my data really made me feel comfortable that it wouldn't just be good it would be surprising or good about a year after that Jen and I ordered a flight or there for other kids we're like a traveling circus show on our way to China folks had not seen a family like ours to adopt Lindsay it's two years old she was a band in

in China by woman who we will never meet who's thoughts we can't you know about how hard this

might have been or the how little support she had to raise a child like Lindsay we don't know Lindsay a beautiful brown eyes relentless smile despite a really really hard start in life and that was how that started and she has been amazing she has been flat out amazing not not without difficulty raising a child in intellectual disabilities really really really hard at the same time she has been what every other family has said that raising a child with

Down syndrome would be like a blessing to us in so many ways and to watch her go around the world machine gets frustrated and she's stubborn and she gets angry at people but she also lives without the same kind of social anxiety that many of us has she has no filter on her hello taken her grocery shopping is is super fun goes up and down the aisles she says to hello to everybody everybody and it's like just like with my with my friend Tibo who I flipped a switch on

his back and he gives his big hello to me she flips the switch on so many people's backs they'll faces light up when she says hello to them and she walks around the world this way open hello to

“everybody it's amazing it's amazing and I think about how close we could have been I could have been”

saying I don't think I can do this because we failed to appreciate just how well things would go

when we reach out to love someone bring them into our lives when we could and she's amazing

and the other children and your family because it you know you described a beautiful set of

animals with people outside your family and obviously in your wife have an incredible connection

to her but what is her relationship to the other she is the magnet in the family she is the baby everybody is you know if you if you you're in a family with a young you know a youngest sibling you all go around that youngest one she is like that too for the sibling student now it's also hard they need some time alone but they when you come home and Lindsay is there I get a high dad that's of a volume that every dad should hear when they come home it is wonderful the

sisters and the brothers all get that too it's great it's great she is very connected to everybody

“in a way that I think even the other siblings aren't attention they get older they go their own”

ways but everybody loves Lindsay is it the case that children with down are given up for adoption more I mean you described it very what I assume is that somewhat unique situation in China somebody you said a band insert she was given to an orphanage I don't know anything about this right I try to call you it was like study gabotransmission in the brain you know and down and like you know but like I have zero minus it you can adapt to child with down syndrome today in the United

States and there's a waiting list for these kids in most places the other thing that happens though is what what could have happened to us at three months and I think this is more common now is genetic testing allows you to tell whether your child has any number of different kind of genetic you know differences diversity on that dimension and look there's some there's some conditions there's just very very hard to manage or that aren't conducive to life down syndrome is just not

one of those but many families at that three month period because their skeptical or pessimistic about how well they can handle this they don't know the supports that are available they don't realize the strength that they don't that they that they have or the amount of love that they will feel for this child once it becomes yours hardship's not what's standing it is harder no doubt about it will end those pregnancies when like us might have found it to be a massive blessing in their

lives I don't I don't know what to tell people to do with that other than telling our own story

“I think people have strength that they might not realize and it they're lots of very challenging”

conditions down syndrome is one that is not as challenging as you might imagine these kids are amazing amazing and you know our kids are our kids and you know even even like you know across as we were talking earlier whether your kids have come into how however kids have come into your into your life once they're your kids I mean the fact that she has down syndrome is something

that is always kind of on our minds because it governs lots of things we do but it also fades very

quickly Lindsay's just Lindsay right she's got she's got her own personality she does her own things like the the intellectual disabilities just is kind of a becomes almost like a background thing it is not what defines her she loves playing with dolls and Disney characters she loves listening to stories she loves reading books with you she loves love is love is playing on the trampoline and playing in her outdoor kitchen she loves playing with the neighborhoods Demi and Delilah they

“are her closest friends she loves all those things she has a huge personality and that's what”

defines her and our lives day to day not the diagnosis I've only known you a short while

and I'm in no position to psychoanalyze you but I I have to assume that something very powerful

about you and I'm also assuming about your wife Jen that your very clear complete lack of shame about the fact that she has down is it has to be a positive force here in this I'm not trying to take anything away from who she yeah Lindsay has an individual but I don't know if I want to darken the conversation with with a contrast right but I will I will I won't reveal who this person is but there's a very very famous neuroscientist who it was pretty well known that he had a

son who had epileptic seizures I mean what's the shame in that right but he was ashamed of his son he would bring him to events he wouldn't bring him to things I'm actually aware of several high-level scientists and I don't actually care for because I don't want to paint a negative view of scientists I could tell you a thousand stories about wonderful scientists doing wonderful things for every very bad story but I remember hearing this and thinking like this is crazy

someone who worked in his lab said yeah you know he's got a noble prize but he's he's incredibly ashamed of his son I thought like that's nuts I have a good friend in the positive side my good friend Eddie Chang who's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF and he works on epilepsy

so I think when parents have a shame about a child's condition yes that has to impact the way

“that the child moves in the world I think it's really awesome that there is like zero minus infinity”

shame detected like I hear I hear only I hear only glowing things and pride and and I also

don't detect any hints of like we're doing this really hard thing and therefore we're amazing

like you said she's just our daughter yeah and we have this relationship we're her parent she's our daughter and like we're just living life yeah which I think is awesome I think it's it's a it's a it's a real testament to who you are and I think it's a real end your wife and Lindsay and I think it's a testament to like what's possible when we get out of like what do people think yeah it just seems like every all goodness just emerges now to be clear I mean it's been a struggle for me too

I don't want to certainly pay myself as not having concerns about this or being worried what people will think about us or you know even our other kids when they're going through difficult stretches in their lives they're not doing the kinds of things that maybe I did right I

have to make myself okay with that and come to accept that and when I when I do that so I have

another son who we just love absolutely do love dearly who the college just wasn't for him you know I'm a PhD I'm a third generation PhD one on my mom's side and my dad is a PhD as well on college is just the root right I've been in academic life from my whole college it was just the root but it just wasn't for him and it just wasn't engaging with it and I kept and I mean this is I'm saying this was some shame myself right now that we kind of kept him in this path thinking this

is the right way to go and it was what had been cleared outside of the this isn't what he wants to be doing he finally came to us very clearly said that you know dad this is just not what I want to keep doing and when we finally let go of that and just let him do what he wanted to do which

is now he's in a trade school I've never seen him happier we're just so proud of him I like the

like a stop-up I met on the train yesterday morning taking this culinary class he's so proud of what he's doing just made feel so good about him and also about my son to let go of those things and just to love him for who he is every parent struggles of that every parent struggles with loving their kids for who they are and that takes some practice too and also some deliberate careful thought and attention and it's worth challenging yourself to do because of course it makes

the world a difference for them and we all struggle to do that somewhat with Lindsay she's a ray of sunshine we refer to her sometimes as a unicorn because there aren't too many out there and we learned a little while I don't know how true this is I don't know who comes up with these things but it turns out a collection of unicorns you know what it's as ostensibly called a blessing really really that's awesome who to guess I don't I don't yeah I want to put that

to some sort of actual test that is what they are apparently called as a blessing and that's certainly has been what she's been for us a lot of lessons in there and a lot of things for people to think about in terms of who they are and how they relate to to people if you don't mind I just like to peel back another layer on on relationships with I'll use the example of children but it could be with family other family member where that person is not typical of the the

average population and you describe Lindsay in this in this beautiful way I almost feel like she's

“like a bit in the room right and the way you describe her and I think when I'm out and about”

and I see a parent or parents with a kid who has and I don't know what the diagnoses are right I how could I an intellectual or some some sort of a typical behavior the way you describe her is very delightful yeah sometimes the behavior of children with with these challenges are disruptive yeah it's hard to not feel the shame of the parent you know like if a kid is being really loud or throwing a tantrum and this isn't a small child for instance or saying things that clearly

don't make sense and I don't expect you to be you know the ambassador for all these people I think we we as sentient well-meaning people around we don't quite know how to react to that but you want to say gosh I'm so sorry no of course not like that's their life you know who are you also don't want to perhaps ignore them but you also don't want people to feel like they're you're calling attention to them yeah do you have any ideas like our suggestions I mean I mean it's like

it must be it must be an odd experience to move through life that way and I'm so glad they

“don't isolate their kid yeah but I think we've all been in the circumstance we don't quite know how to”

react yeah so I think a good analog to this is this was stuttering and I think we all know how to do a stuttering somebody who has a stuttering is you wait patiently and you know you don't call attention to it you just wait patiently for them to express what they want to express and then you

you know how would you like me to to help in this particular case is there anything I can do to be of assistance how would you like me to to respond we can ask people that directly right and you know

“often often somebody a caretaker will will be able to tell you that but patience is I think the”

way to to deal with just to wait until whatever they're trying to do becomes clear and I think we can all do that with stuttering I think that's kind of understood and maybe that's the way I would think about it but yes some you know some differences are harder than others for sure yeah having grown up in a town Palo Alto where there are many many professors in high achieving parents and I could list off a dozen or more examples of where the kids either didn't follow the traditional

track yes you could say oh they didn't follow the traditional track but they became like a polishing Pulitzer when you are a writer you know something like that I'm not talking about that right I think it's so cool by the way that your son is in trade supply friends it from all walks of life and fulfillment is

I've never seen her son happier yes we're to academics you know my dad's an academic and I can say that

I actually think I would have been happy doing any number of things at one point I wanted to earn the fire service I absolutely my dad everyone's one I'll sorry dad they'll say like oh you know I don't think that would have been fulfilling I think it would be awesome I get workout the dog like I love serving others like get out you know and and do things and we're I'm friends with the local fire department when they come through like I certainly don't know what it is to do that profession

we'll like I think fulfillment can be found a number for sure for sure about engagement right yeah people like firefighters being a cop is a little tricky because some people like you in the job is much more from moment to moment is a lot less predicted sure I think one thing that we can do

and I I haven't always been great at this and my family told you it took me a while with my son to

“encourage him more down that path and I am just now realizing that's what I need to be doing”

is to fix you know I think kids will often often will feel like they're not following the right path and won't feel good about the path they're going down and that's where parents can really be helpful we have right outside my office window is a university of Chicago laboratory school which is a very elite private high school and it goes all the way through you know down to to preschool as well and the kids come out of there with a very clear expectation about what the right path is for

them and a lot of kids struggle with that I just had a faculty member in my office yesterday before I left to get on a flight with you describing how their children are struggling I think with expectations for what they ought to be doing that just don't fit with who they are and I think that's where parents can be really helpful for their kids is loving them for who they aren't helping them find what's going to make them the happiest and telling them making sure that

kids know that any path is okay you want to be a carpenter great that job won't be AI at least right or you know you want to be good at PhD fabulous whatever field go for it right trying to encourage

“kids with their passions and encouraging them to feel like it's okay that's important you have”

another side of you that most people aren't aware of that we somehow land on one of the years like somewhat randomly which is you enjoy a lot of as much time as possible in the out of doors you're a hunter in a fisherman now born so you want it to be grizzly atoms yeah when I was a kid but in some sense you you play him from time to time but not out on your own so you and your sons and sons and daughters go get out into the walls yeah I grew up in rural Iowa in the country

my dad and I went hunting and fishing all the time and I was a kid I was four years old the first time I went deer hunt with my dad and I love that time for for yeah I walked along because we would order them to get done the right oh yeah I know I remember years where the snow would feel like was up to my hips hunting deer and I went early December and I wouldn't carry a gun until I was 12 or or a bow I started bow hunting when I was 12 but before then you would you would push the deer you'd

walk through the woods with other guys my dad or or with the friends that we'd have it was a real community of people I mean the the social connection there was great we used to go hunting with the guy when I was a kid lane McDowell who was friends with my dad he was a football player for the University of Iowa and he played for the Detroit Lions it's just a big monster of a man fabulous guy and his son Thad who would go who's also my same age we played football together

against each other in high school but yeah I grew up doing that and then you know as I've got an older I've stayed connected to the outdoors I love being in the woods I love doing conservation kind of work there's kind of an element of caring for other people that also extends to caring for the woodlands that are out there I do a lot of invasive species removal we have enrolled 40 acres in the conservation reserve program planted 9000 trees on it and I see a lot of opportunities to connect

with people and places that other people wouldn't like I see the outdoors hunting and fishing you

almost never do that truly alone right you always have somebody with me when I'm fishing I always have

that is really so important in it and there was an element of this that came it just felt like it came right out of my research that happened last fall in Oregon my son my oldest son Ben is a 30 year PhD student at Oregon State pursuing a PhD there and bless his heart last spring he asks his dad to do the thing that may be just the happiest you could have done he said Dad would you like to come out here and go elk hunting with me like I you know I'm grew up in rural

Iowa the idea we'd be out in the mountains actually doing this just never with something that

occurred to me that we that we could do but he asked if we could do it and I was so excited we would get a week together out in the remote wilderness of Oregon just the two of us sitting around trees looking for elk it doesn't matter if you get one or not whatever that's not what it's about it's about being out there and seeing what what you see and being together and it was going to be fabulous and I so excited it's our last fall this was October and November can't quite

“remember the exact date went into northeast Oregon and we went out into the out in the woods”

were miles away from the years road we hike in it's really hard it's cold there's snow on the ground we got we're not really prepared for this first that time we've ever done this we don't have any chairs we're the starting thing we got backpacking tents freezing our butts off and the first day we go out to scout we don't know what we're doing here at all we're just going to say I don't know where the elk how do we do this we go down into this valley and we're not there for more

than 20 minutes maybe when our time alone suddenly becomes a little more social than I would have been otherwise we look behind us like three quarters of a mile up the valley we got this group of guys coming in camo down the way and my son Ben a little nervous about this right a little anxiety about reaching out and connecting with other people right a little like you'd have somebody sit down and see a train maybe I'll just keep to myself or on a plane just keep to myself

here we're out in the wilderness we got this group of hunters it's like a gang of men coming down the down the valley towards all in camo and so Ben's let's let's let's move on down let's let's get going and I said now let's let's stay and talk with these guys and the weight they come down when we start talking it turns out these guys have been hunting in this valley in this area for years

“for decades the older guy Dennis had been going with another older guy I think they got and”

connected through their church that the other older guy had passed away recently but they now they have another guy Cory who they who got and connected to them and the the kids are all with them Eric and and they were I think they were we're five at the time and we just started talking and then they start telling us how to do this and where we could go and how we could coordinate with each other to make sure we weren't you know we both had the best time that we could and

they told us whether there's a blind appear where you could hunt and and you could go down there and hunt in this other spot and we just started working together and they were delightful just like like just like it is when you reach out to connect with other people they reach back to you

they invited us to their tent for dinner just never get they got this huge this amazing wall

tent they've got a camp stove they've got a spring where they get fresh water they've got a bathroom where they are we walk into their tent it's heated we're freezing our tuck us off in the snow

“we walk into their tent the first thing they say to us would you like a red or white like”

I got wine and they did their cabin miles from it these guys were fabulous and it turned an event that was great for Ben and I into an even better event because we connected with these men who now just yesterday Cory sent me a text message saying it's time to apply for your out tags this is when we're going to go and this is going to come out in case you want to do this with us again and in fact Cory got in got an elk the first day ready filled his bull tag and

we were coming back from hunting Ben and I had seen one but we're able to get a shot I'd have

still amazing to see one and we're walking back and the young young kids Eric is leading this group

he says get on down there and show Cory how to bone out that that out I bone out many many deer so it's the only red meat we eat at the Venice in that that I get and so I know how to butcher these animals and prepare them to eat and they had just been hauling out these big quarters of animals like a hundred pound rib cage right there's a lot of bones and you don't need to be on a so I got to go down and help Cory and show him how to bone out the back strap

and the loins and all the meat that you actually eat and leave the bones that are there for the you know the cougars and stuff to get later I knew it was it was it was fabulous right and that the courage that I had to talk with them to connect with them out there again I felt just came straight from our research how easy it is to underestimate how positively other people will respond when you reach out to them and hear it would have been easy for us to be competitive or avoid this

and it was such a blessing to have connected with them and we've stayed connected with this sense and I hope I hope we see him again in the fall out there in the woods it would be fabulous wonderful men that's awesome and thanks for putting in a strong clear ethical picture of hunters I

yeah my friend Cam Haines is a serious about preserving wildlands and he's a very very serious

bow hunter and I mean they're really shining examples they're about apples out there too but I think people often have a certain stereotype of hunters you know and yet most of those people also buy store-bought meat from factory farms and so you know not to guilt anybody but there's a lot more to explore there so I appreciate not just the description of the beautiful social interaction and what grew from it but also the context there's a level of caring I mean I care about the woodlands and I

try to protect it as best akin to the deer kind of a threat a lot of ecological damage that they cause in the woodlands and the Midwest because they're just a lot of them it's a harvesting responsibly and respectfully I only help with a crossbow now for instance because I can be much more

“accurate with it and so I can take an animal ethically and you mainly and quickly and that's why”

why I do that so most of the hunters that I've ever met are that way they care about being outdoors they like being with each other getting an animal is a different is part of it but is not is not the main thing and yeah I'm I folks who don't hunt I think don't appreciate that that care that people have outdoors but have for the outdoors what a great lesson for your son he's lucky to have you as a dad it's awesome I was reflecting on a couple of things which leads to me

to probably what is the final question in a minute or two but I was just sort of truckling inside at one moment because you're describing that I'm thinking it's in my dad was a theoretical physicist right to bring me to work was a little different I mean we did make great many things together but but he realized in he's quite smart and he realized that I'm showing me a bunch of equations

on a whiteboard wasn't wasn't going to cut it so I'll never forget he started off as an experimentalist

“and so my first you like go to go to work with dad day was he took me to the lab and they had”

all these fruit out and a big tank of liquid nitrogen and we spent the day dipping bananas oh my god it's a liquid nitrogen smashing on a wall that's where like a six year old kid was talking about something I went back to school telling all my friends that I could shatter bananas all the stuff wasn't quite what you described but I've I've fishermen on my mom side and um yeah my girlfriend's family she's got a long long line of hunters and and farmer so

think they're going to put me in the test soon but well here's the parents doing great things with their kids well and that's the the question I was going to ask you know um not to uh in fact to do the opposite of of trivialize um older generations teaching younger generations about what proper social interactions are uh the other thing I was thinking um during your story is that you know this is how social dynamics and learning occurs in our species like if um

“that series that was on Netflix that chimbed empire series do you actually not say that no”

wow okay fascinating okay it's all about social dynamics and chimbed yeah um everything from covert gays and and they're brutal to each other they ostracize yeah there's it's very interesting and there's also a lot of beauty but it's not just a bunch of you know like happy chimps it's it's it's intense uh warring between new troops and so forth but he makes you think about our species right and I'm raising a puppy right now and I was telling my girlfriend because she's not raised a puppy

before she's like better at than I am already of course and I'm and I'm explained her I said you know the fastest way to train strummer or a little bulldog mastiff would be to get an older dog because here we are like teaching at these human cues and trying to but we really need to get into the mindset of a dog and I only a dog can really do that like there's so no's led there they're great at sensing literally the the autonomic tone of people around their sensitive to space here

we are saying sit and stay and do it like yeah they hear it but like we're bringing them it'll be like that's trying to learn how to use our noses to it to navigate so it is a fact that within every species the older members of that species teach the younger members of that species how to socialize and I could rad-loft lots of examples for my own life but I won't where I observed my mom and dad doing certain things in certain situations and so while I'm the one hand until now I feel like

we've been talking to the kind of like the young listeners and stuff the parents of kids or the two-be parents of kids or the siblings or the older or people who don't even have kids like modeling really good social interactions I firmly believe based on everything we've talked about today

that is every bit as critical as the person getting out there and and pushing themselves past their

anxiety to to to do the right things what we need to model better better every day social interactions and so it's clear you did that in this example and in another example so any ideas off the top of your head is to the let's just call it like the the 40 and up crowd like it's all it's kind of all in us to model really good social interactions because that's how just like

have yeah maybe they have a single parent or they're away from their parents or the ship past or maybe maybe mom or dad was kind of an nasty person unhappy person or overly outgoing and it got them hurt like like so what do you recommend people do to model really good social

interaction so pay attention to your habits that's the most important thing it's those little moments

and you know where I screw up I'm prone to a quick temper and where I've made I'm still have a I still have the college football player inside me you like to get into the head well I want to fix something right and so if someone's not going my way I'll try to fix it in some way and so I still have that inside me from time to time and I have to actively try to create habits that don't don't do that so you know get out of a situation if I'm getting frustrated

rather than try to respond and correct it in that moment but those little habits that's where it shows up people are watching people are watching you in those moments those little things that you

“think aren't that important are what folks are paying attention to in our research when I think”

about how you how you apply the stuff we're learning in our experiments about people being overly pessimistic about how others respond to them the way you apply that in your own life isn't that you learn how to behave differently from learning this is that you take that and you try to develop a little habit that then makes that something you do routinely over and over again so for instance one little thing that I have started doing with this routine little habit in mind

is I've made a habit when I get into my office and it's now expanded kind of beyond that but I started at the office I was realizing one day then when I get to the office where my where the door is to get into the building I've got maybe 150 yard walk through the the atrium in the middle of the building to the elevators up to the fourth floor down my halls to my office and I was usually making that walk with my head down focused on getting to work as quickly you know as I could

and I was passing all these people by without saying hello or higher or whatever and I was missing all these opportunities just to brighten my mood a little bit there and so I started you know doing a little happiness walk a little hello walk when I'd go from the door to my office right now when I walk in I keep my head up and I smile and say hello to almost everybody I pass if I can all right so this last quarter Nigel has been sitting right here to my right when I walk in

at the table in Keith who's got the biggest smile in the building one of our custodial staff

as delightful Mario's usually somewhere around the second floor I can give him a shout out

on the way in Ziya's often around the elevator when I walk in the Eric Virginia Jane Emma Joe my colleagues when I walk in I give him a shout out hello when I walk by their offices and that whole thing that just makes me a little brighter when I get to my office and it's also created a habit that I now just do without thinking right and those little moments that become

“part of who you are that's what people see and I think as a parent if you think about how can”

you cultivate those habits to do these things routinely because your kids are watching all the time that's what's going to matter I had a colleague one time I thought this was very wise he realized that he was sometimes swearing in class and I sometimes I'm guilty that dude that's my college football player come out I gotta be careful I try not to do that but I had one colleague who was adamant and this is really what got me started thinking about this years ago just you

never slip up in class because when you do that there people see that and they think that's who

you are and let's appropriate in that context and that's just not the way you want to be so he's made a habit never never never doing that anywhere in any part of his life so that he also doesn't do it in class I like the notion of classroom rules it's actually that the one of the only ways of survival social media is I don't get into exchanges that I wouldn't get into in a classroom and also don't honor the presence of comments you people can say what they want about me to a point

you know but when they started attacking each other you know I always think if I we were back in and undergraduate in graduate or medical school classroom I would never let this change occur in and this is my website so yeah blocked right you know and people they know you're blocking things you're delineal it's like it's not to avoid criticism it's like we're trying to keep a tone of education and respect right and and it can be heated but so I fully appreciate what you just said

“I think the key to that is that it's it's not a huge thing it's a small thing that you do”

routinely and over and over again and that's those small habits are important to keep in mind I've been told by some of the people that are regular kind of commenters and things that they feel safe to comment there which tells me they feel unsafe to comment elsewhere and the safe unsafe thing I'm not trying to like use like snowflake language I think like who wants you to go online just for people to like be nasty right so there's a lot of goodness to be had by

keeping classroom rules like well Nick thank you so much for coming here today and and sharing I I really appreciate you taking the time out of your schedule and I also really appreciate the

unexpected happiness health and connection which comes out very soon excited to read it and I have

“to say of all the guests we've ever had on this podcast I think you represent kind of extreme”

example of somebody whose work has informed their life and life has informed their word and that's

somewhat straightforward to do when it always makes for kind of the easier better obvious choice

like oh did research discovered you know this style of cardiovascular exercise is better than that when I'm going to do that one but as you pointed out it's brought many many rewards then it has a challenges but in your case your sensitivity to the the theme of your work which is that there's goodness and untapped beauty to be had in the in the spaces that we don't reflexively step into and that maybe even we initially are a little averse to that that's where where the real magic

“often lies and you applied in your own life in the realest of ways and you benefit to and that's”

the whole point so thank you for being both a scholar and a shining example of what you've taught

us today thank you so much Andrew it's been wonderful being here I really appreciate it thank you back again thank you I would love to thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Nick Epley to learn more about his work and to find a link to his new book entitled a little more social how small choices create unexpected happiness health and connection please see the links in the show note captions if you're learning from and are enjoying this podcast please subscribe

to our YouTube channel that's a terrific zero cost way to support us in addition please follow the podcast by clicking the follow button on both Spotify and Apple and on both Spotify and Apple you can leave us up to a five star review and you can now leave us comments at both Spotify and Apple please also check out the sponsors mentioned at the beginning and throughout today's episode

“that's the best way to support this podcast if you have questions for me or comments about the podcast”

or guest or topics that you like me to consider for the human lab podcast please put those in the comment section on YouTube I do read all the comments for those of you that haven't heard I have a new

book coming out it's my very first book it's entitled protocols an operating manual for the human

body this is a book that I've been working on for more than five years and that's based on more than 30 years of research and experience and it covers protocols for everything from sleep to exercise to stress control protocols related to focus and motivation and of course I provide the scientific substantiation for the protocols that are included the book is now available by presale at protocolsbook.com there you can find links to various vendors you can pick the one that you like best

again the book is called protocols an operating manual for the human body and if you're not already following me on social media I am human in lab on all social media platforms so that's Instagram x threads facebook and linkedin and on all those platforms I discuss science and science related tools some of which overlaps with the content of the human lab podcast but much of which is distinct from the information on the human lab podcast again it's human lab on all social media platforms

and if you haven't already subscribed to our neural network newsletter the neural network newsletter is a zero-cost monthly newsletter that includes podcasts summaries as well as what we call protocols in the form of one to three-page PDFs that cover everything from how to optimize your sleep how to optimize dopamine deliberate cold exposure we have a foundational fitness protocol that covers cardiovascular training and resistance training all of that is available completely zero-cost you

simply go to humanlab.com go to the menu tab in the top right corner scroll down to newsletter and enter your email and I should emphasize that we do not share your email with anybody. Thank you once again for joining me for today's discussion with Dr. Nick Epley and last but certainly not least thank you for your interest in science.