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1:07

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for supporting brilliant .org/skeptic. Check it out.

2:31

My guest today is Dr. Amir

2:33

Raz, the world -renowned expert on

2:35

the science of suggestion and suggestibility

2:37

with recent positions as Canada Research

2:39

Chair, Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology and

2:41

Neurosurgery and Psychology at McGill University

2:43

and where I know him from

2:45

Chapman University's founding director of the

2:47

Institute for Interdisciplinary Brain and Behavioral

2:49

Sciences. We were colleagues there. I've

2:51

stopped teaching there a year and

2:54

a half ago. But we're still

2:56

colleagues. I'm not sure how that

2:58

works, but in any case, and

3:00

his son, his highly gifted son

3:02

was in my class. He took

3:04

my skepticism 101 class when he

3:06

was 15 years old and he

3:08

was the smartest kid in the

3:10

class. That was great. Formerly at

3:12

Columbia University and Cornell Medical Center,

3:14

his work has been covered widely

3:16

in the media, New York Times,

3:18

Scientific American Mind and other publications. has

3:20

over 200 peer -reviewed articles in

3:22

publications such as Nature and PNAS

3:25

and NeuroImage. And he won the

3:27

Young Investigator Award and Early Career

3:29

Award from the American Psychological Association.

3:31

He's a speaker in high demand.

3:33

He has a TEDx talk, for

3:35

example, When Can Deception Be Good

3:37

for You? I just watched that,

3:39

by the way. It was quite

3:41

good. And he's been featured in

3:43

documentaries for the BBC, National Geographic

3:45

and the CBC. And here's this

3:47

new book, The Suggestible Brain. The

3:49

Science and Magic of How We

3:51

Make Up Our Minds. Nice to

3:54

see you, how you doing? I'm

3:56

doing great, thank you very much

3:58

for having me on the show.

4:00

I love the book, you know,

4:02

you sent me early chapters, I

4:04

don't know, it must have been

4:06

two, three years ago when you

4:08

were working on it, and. wow, it's

4:10

so much better now, the stories you

4:12

tell, you open up. talking about your experiences

4:14

as a magician, which I love. There's

4:17

been a long time

4:19

connection between skeptics and magicians.

4:22

You know, Penn and Teller, The Amazing

4:24

Randy, and Banachek, and Jamie and

4:26

Swiss, and others that do this

4:28

for, I think a good reason,

4:31

but I'd like your explanation. What

4:33

do you think? scientists and

4:35

skeptics are so fascinated by magicians and

4:37

magic. Well, know, magicians, first

4:39

of all, being a magician really is

4:41

a privilege. And I started out

4:43

as a kid, not really knowing what

4:46

I'm getting myself into. It has

4:48

become, a life journey and very

4:50

meaningful one. I would say that

4:52

my magic actually informed my

4:54

decision to go into science.

4:56

I actually about it a little bit

4:58

in the book how that came about

5:00

but my interest and my research

5:02

into Hypnosis and into looking into altered

5:04

states of consciousness the effects of

5:06

suggestion and so on came primarily germinated,

5:08

marinated in my experiences

5:10

as a young magician.

5:13

interacting with audiences, and so on. Magicians.

5:16

are really clinicians of the public.

5:18

mean, they know how to

5:20

deceive, they know how to create

5:22

illusions, they know how to lie

5:25

with grace and elegance and flair. And

5:28

they do it for people's entertainment pleasure. And

5:31

that's why they're so

5:33

good also at detecting.

5:35

falsehoods and people who pretend that they

5:37

say all kinds of things that are

5:39

not true and so on. And

5:41

magicians are just very good at

5:43

guarding their secrets. They have been

5:45

very good at that. It's a

5:47

very private pottery of people who

5:49

are trying to be extremely careful

5:52

and discreet about what it is

5:54

that they know and the gizmos

5:56

and the props and the gimmicks

5:58

and the different tools that... they use

6:00

and many of and many of

6:02

the psychological methods. magicians use

6:04

are actually use are actually

6:07

not available to it it

6:09

or not I mean most psychologists

6:11

really know too much about

6:13

psychology of of magic. this And

6:16

this creates silos, it creates

6:18

silos of knowledge within the field

6:20

of psychology, within human behavior, behavior,

6:22

it comes to skepticism, when

6:24

it comes to identifying, it comes to

6:27

identifying... you know, certain things that

6:29

are not true or or they're or when it

6:31

comes to when it presentations, when it comes

6:33

to people saying things it comes they want to

6:35

direct you to a particular, uh, to place,

6:37

you to a have a lot of experience with

6:39

that. a So lot of experience with that so hence

6:42

nice. yeah Yeah, had nice yeah on

6:44

the show Swiss on of his books on of

6:46

his books were. magic and about this phenomenon, I've

6:48

long observed it. like to get your thoughts

6:50

on it. I'd like to get your thoughts there's

6:52

something about about that throws

6:54

people off. Also some

6:56

of the close up

6:58

press to digitation like Urgeller spoon bending. Most

7:00

people, especially Most people,

7:02

especially skeptics and scientists, have no

7:05

problem understanding that when makes makes

7:07

the Statue of Liberty disappear. they

7:09

don't think don't think for a moment that

7:11

moving atoms around or anything like that. They like

7:13

it's a magic trick. trick. And they

7:15

they seemed to accept big magic as, well,

7:17

of course, it's just magic. magic. But

7:19

with mentalism, I've heard a lot

7:22

of type and scientist type thinking, yeah, but how but how

7:24

did he know that I was

7:26

gonna pick this card or that he

7:28

knew the name of my grandmother, this

7:30

kind of stuff. Maybe there's there's

7:32

something else think I don't think it's or

7:34

or paranormal, but maybe they're able to

7:36

read my body language or how my

7:38

eyes are moving. Remember, Banacheck has this

7:40

great thing where he has the the trick

7:42

is, and then he has the person

7:45

look at his hand and then he he

7:47

his hand around around he stares at

7:49

their eyes. eyes. It is very And this is

7:51

very clever because people think tell me later. me later, I

7:53

think I must have been tracing out the

7:55

card with my eyes and he could read

7:57

the movement of my eyes. eyes. I'm just,

7:59

this is crap. but this, they always think there's

8:01

something else more complicated than it's just

8:03

a magic. Look, I was always attracted

8:05

to mentalism as a magician. I mean,

8:07

I could vanish handkerchiefs and coins and

8:09

that's fine, but I was really attracted

8:11

to mentalism from a very early age.

8:13

And I think mentalism does afford and

8:15

provide a very interesting trajectory into the

8:17

human mind in the sense that... People

8:19

feel a loss of agency when you

8:21

do a mental trick when you do

8:23

mentalism you begin to tinker Not with

8:26

the statue of liberty as you mentioned

8:28

and not with the stage illusion of

8:30

sorts when something you know when something

8:32

big disappears as impressive as that might

8:34

be You're actually tinkering you're messing with

8:36

their agency you're messing with their authorship.

8:38

They're no longer. Am I the author?

8:40

Is this my free will? Did I

8:42

choose this number or did he make

8:44

me choose this number? Did I choose

8:46

that card or did he lead me

8:48

to choosing that card? And these are

8:50

existential questions. I mean in people's minds,

8:52

they would like to know that they're

8:54

brushing their teeth because they want to

8:56

brush their teeth. They don't want, they're

8:58

not brushing their teeth because somebody's controlling

9:00

them to brush their teeth. The same

9:02

is true by the way in the

9:04

world of management. If you have a

9:06

supervisor or manager and they tell you

9:08

to do something, it's very different than

9:10

if you do it you do it

9:12

because you feel that this is your

9:14

idea because you know this is your

9:16

idea, and it's your prerogative and it's

9:18

your prerogative and it's your initiative and

9:20

it's your initiative and so on. So

9:22

there's something very elementary, very fundamental, very

9:24

rudimentary and very basic foundational about, you

9:26

know, tapping someone's ability to do something

9:28

because you want them to do it

9:30

versus if it comes from them. This

9:32

agency, this sense of free will, is

9:34

something that mentalism taps. Yeah, nice. I'll

9:36

tell you one last funny story about

9:38

this. I was on a scientific American

9:40

cruise where I was one of the

9:42

lecturers and so the dinners were... you

9:44

know, fun with all the people that

9:46

are mostly scientists and skeptics and so

9:48

on. Anyway, so at one of the

9:50

dinners, this guy tells me, look, I'm

9:53

a skeptic too, I don't believe me

9:55

this. And I know Ray Geller is,

9:57

he's kind of cheating when he bends.

9:59

But I saw this guy bend this.

10:01

spoon in a very peculiar way. It's

10:03

like it wasn't like twisted, you know,

10:05

where the bowl is just bent straight

10:07

down, but it was like twisted between

10:09

the handle and the bowl where the

10:11

neck had been twisted all the way

10:13

around. And that's just not, there's no

10:15

way he could just muscle that. And

10:17

as he's telling me this, I take

10:19

the spoon off the table and I

10:21

do the little move that Benacek taught

10:23

me. And then I, when he finished,

10:25

I held it up and said, did

10:27

it look anything like this? Oh, come

10:29

on, really? You know, I'll tell you

10:31

something about that particular move without getting

10:33

into the details, of course, but I

10:35

was once having a similar situation. I

10:37

was having dinner with a famous scientist

10:39

in Europe and he said to me,

10:41

I know you're a magician and I

10:43

know you can do like all these

10:45

things, but you know, bending metal, that's

10:47

a completely different thing. I mean, I've

10:49

seen people bend metal without really touching

10:51

it and I don't understand how they

10:53

do it. By the end of dinner,

10:55

his soup, you know, spoon was bent

10:57

with this particular twist, with this particular

10:59

twist that you just mentioned, which is

11:01

a variation on the technique. And he

11:03

said to me, wait a second, did

11:05

you do it? And I said, well,

11:07

who else is here? I mean, how

11:09

else would it happen? He said, but

11:11

you didn't touch it. I said, that's

11:13

right. I didn't touch it. And it

11:15

happened. So it means that, you know,

11:18

perhaps the soup did it or, you

11:20

know, or maybe the waiter and he

11:22

said, but wait a second, you have

11:24

to explain it to me. I said,

11:26

look, you don't understand. It's an illusion.

11:28

It's an illusion. It's an illusion. It's

11:30

not real. And he said, oh, so

11:32

the spoon is actually straight. It's just

11:34

an illusion. I was like, oh, this

11:36

can get so far, it can get

11:38

out of control so quickly when people

11:40

don't know or don't understand something. They

11:42

just can't wrap their hand around. They

11:44

cannot understand how to think about it.

11:46

They're so frustrated. They're so flustered. They

11:48

don't even know how to start thinking

11:50

about it. So even if you offer

11:52

them something that is patently false, like

11:54

I'm telling this is a visual...

11:56

illusion, although he can

11:58

hold it in

12:00

his hand and palpate

12:02

the distortion in

12:04

the the metal. It's so It's so

12:06

interesting for me to see how even

12:08

intelligent people and sometimes extremely intelligent people

12:10

fall into this trap time and again. this

12:13

trap time sometimes and sometimes do up

12:15

with the most unintelligent explanations for

12:17

it all. Yeah. for it

12:19

all. people have a hard time remembering

12:21

what the magician actually did. if I

12:23

recall I studies on this, they this, they the

12:26

story to make it seem it seem... even

12:28

less likely for you to explain why

12:30

it was a magic trick. He never

12:32

actually touched it. Well, touched it. Well, okay.

12:34

And Randy a funny story about going

12:36

on about show Barbara Walter's show, where already been

12:38

on and bent her and bent she swore

12:40

up and down he never touched

12:42

the key. never then they just played

12:44

the video back. they just played the

12:46

some moment he says, let

12:48

me just check to see if it's

12:50

see if it's course he touches it. of

12:53

And she's like, oh, it. but that's

12:55

not the way it, well, that's not the way,

12:57

well, well, oh. right there in the camera.

12:59

in her mind. her mind, it didn't happen

13:01

that way. it way. Sometimes, and people are not

13:03

trying to be manipulative about it.

13:05

mean, they really, truly, genuinely believe that

13:07

the performer did not touch the

13:09

physical And this is And this is also

13:11

important for them in order order to live

13:14

peacefully with the effect that they

13:16

just witnessed because convince you actually

13:18

convince yourself that this was not touched, it

13:20

makes it all the more miraculous. you then,

13:22

you know, you really need to resort to

13:24

other types of explanations. So I think

13:26

that sometimes people are sort of led into

13:28

it and sometimes they fall into it and

13:30

sometimes it's a combination of of both, but there's

13:33

no question that there's some very

13:35

effective techniques of through of through suggestion. you know

13:37

know forcing people or leading people down the

13:39

garden path of changing their memories and of

13:41

course this is this is well in

13:43

psychology through false memories memories work

13:45

of Elizabeth work of and other people

13:47

who are really showing how showing

13:50

how with narrative with with simple words

13:52

and words choices, you can actually

13:54

completely rewrite memories, including to very

13:56

important events in people's autobiographies. autobiographies.

13:59

Yeah. Another funny story from Ray Hyman

14:01

who blurbed your book about Erie Geller

14:04

that in the early days When

14:06

Erie would be tested by people like

14:08

Ray Hyman and nothing was working

14:10

He would then tell a story like

14:12

well, it's not working tonight But

14:14

last night you should have seen what

14:16

I did and then he repeats

14:18

everything he does And then Ray noticed

14:20

that a lot of the people

14:22

then later said this is what Geller

14:24

did as if they saw what

14:27

he Told them happened the night before

14:29

when they weren't even there Disincredible

14:31

people people like Ray Hyman are very

14:33

special and they're very few and

14:35

far between because He really is a

14:37

researcher scientist psychologist who spent most

14:39

of his life doing, you know research

14:41

in cognitive psychology and You know

14:43

lab work and and so on and

14:45

he understands quite a bit about

14:47

statistics and about the psychological literature on

14:50

the one hand On the other

14:52

hand, he's very well versed in magic

14:54

and in magic moves and in

14:56

magical techniques and and so on this

14:58

Marriage of magician scientist is not

15:00

very common. There are very few people

15:02

who are actually well versed in

15:04

both worlds at a high level It's

15:06

unfortunate, but it's true. Well, that's

15:08

why what makes what you're doing so

15:11

important even even more important and

15:13

entertaining It's really great Yeah, so you

15:15

talk a lot about suggestibility and

15:18

magic So

15:20

let's talk about the evolutionary origin

15:22

of this why why would we be

15:24

okay? First of all, let's define

15:26

what you mean by suggestibility because most

15:28

people think of it as gullibility

15:30

like it's a weakness, right? so suggestibility

15:33

really is the individual

15:35

ability to respond to suggestion

15:38

and You

15:40

know this maybe is you know begs

15:42

another question Which is you know, what

15:44

is your suggestion or how do you

15:46

define suggestion and and this is a

15:48

Conversation that we should probably have is

15:50

sort of the building blocks of what

15:52

we're talking about But I have to

15:54

say is a sort of a you

15:56

know preliminary comment that sometimes defining concepts

15:58

particularly concepts like art and love

16:00

and love and on. Sometimes the on

16:03

sometimes the finding concepts like

16:05

that more damage than good

16:07

sense that it the sense that

16:09

it creates some limitations on

16:11

the conversation creates creates all kinds

16:13

of in what people people

16:16

think because we do have in

16:18

practice kind of kind of an

16:20

intuitive understanding of what these things

16:22

mean. So we So we can deal with

16:24

art, we can deal with love, we we

16:26

can deal with consciousness even without

16:28

having a precise definition for it. And

16:30

the same is true for a term

16:32

like same is We understand a of what

16:35

suggestion is. We It's some kind of a

16:37

communication that is. gives us that talks

16:39

about, you know, somebody certain kind of

16:41

information you know, us without our knowledge

16:43

of like that. maybe without

16:45

do understand like that. And we

16:47

do understand intuitively that

16:49

we are exposed to to suggestions from

16:51

our spouses, from our our suggestions from

16:54

our our suggestions from our teachers, we

16:56

understand that in general. from

16:58

our teachers, we refers to that

17:00

in general. are we in the

17:02

sense that to how how susceptible, in

17:04

how vulnerable, how how acceptable

17:06

are we of a

17:08

particular suggestion? how So some

17:10

people, are we of a particular come

17:12

to them and you say, you look a little bit tired

17:14

to me today. you You You look to you know, you look

17:17

tired. you look a and they began to

17:19

feel sleepy. sleepy. This is a common thing. common

17:21

thing, out it's not we all know of the

17:23

quite, I mean, we all know

17:25

people like that. say, oh, oh, it's one uh, some

17:27

people say, oh. I must it's one

17:29

o 'clock, I'm really, I must

17:31

be very hungry now, it's and time

17:33

and they not and they're not anymore.

17:35

They're hungry, they're ready to ready to

17:37

horse. horse. Five five minutes earlier, 20 20

17:39

seconds earlier, were not they were not even

17:41

thinking about food. a particular, have a particular, there's

17:43

a particular suggestion, or if you want to

17:45

call it conditioning, if you want to, if

17:48

you want to call it, there's something

17:50

there that triggers them into a particular kind

17:52

of behavior, a particular kind of action. a

17:55

This is interesting of this has

17:57

been studied. this has been studied in

17:59

psychology. in different contexts. So for

18:01

example, we know that there's something called

18:03

hypnotic susceptibility or hypnotic suggestibility. These are

18:06

terms of art. There are very, you

18:08

know, some people make a career out

18:10

of defining and tweaking and working with

18:13

the semantics of what is the difference

18:15

between hypnotizability and hypnotic vulnerability and hypnotic

18:17

responsibility. I don't want to go there.

18:20

This is the kind of scholarship that

18:22

doesn't always, you know, help these kind

18:24

of conversations. But I've been in this

18:27

fold for many many years, for decades

18:29

actually, doing experiments and defining the terms

18:31

and refining them and changing them. And

18:34

I discovered some very interesting things. I

18:36

discovered that some people are extremely suggestible

18:38

in some domains of life, but not

18:41

in others. So some people can be

18:43

very hypnotizable, but very stubborn. For many

18:45

years, we thought that people who are

18:48

suggestible sort of our Star Trek fans.

18:50

They cry at the opera. These are

18:52

the people who miss the phone ringing

18:55

when they watch a movie. And so

18:57

on and so forth. And it turns

18:59

out that it's not as simple as

19:02

that. People who are highly suggestible are

19:04

not necessarily the best placebo responders in

19:06

the world. And the people who are

19:09

the best placebo responders in the world

19:11

are not necessarily highly suggestible in other

19:13

domains. So it's a very complicated field,

19:16

but all people are suggestible in some

19:18

domains. You just have to find the

19:20

domain for that particular person and you

19:23

can find the domain by getting to

19:25

know the person, by learning about their

19:27

hobbies, about their personality, sometimes about their

19:30

genetics, and you can find ways that

19:32

you can penetrate, you can tap that

19:34

suggestible fold that a person has. It

19:37

might be through a pet. It might

19:39

be through their kids, it might be

19:41

through a financial angle, it might be

19:44

through something that is near and dear

19:46

to their heart, it might be through

19:48

a trauma in their life, it might

19:51

be in different domains of life, but

19:53

we are all suggestible to some extent.

19:55

if we we can

19:58

just put our finger

20:00

on what it

20:02

is. Now and this is, I'm just gonna

20:04

make a just going to make a quick thing

20:06

here because I know that we have a lot

20:09

to talk about here. Suggestibility

20:11

is something we can actually

20:13

quantify. We can we can

20:15

actually do a suggestibility. test and the

20:17

psychometrics, psychometrics, or if you

20:20

want the test, retest, reliability of these

20:22

things is better than IQ tests. IQ

20:24

tests. the interesting point here is that that.

20:26

If you you were to give me an

20:28

IQ test, or I were to give you an

20:30

IQ test, we would both want our score

20:32

to be as high as possible. mean, it's human

20:34

I mean, I want my IQ score to be

20:36

high. Why? Because to don't know. It says something

20:38

about how intelligent I am how intelligent or smart

20:41

I am. how smart I I But if

20:43

I give you... a a suggestibility test? you

20:45

want your score to be your score to be

20:47

people high? I mean, some people to score low

20:49

on that would want you said before, low

20:51

maybe it's an indication or an

20:53

index of how said I am. Maybe

20:55

it's an index of how feeble -minded

20:58

I am, how an index of how gullible I

21:00

am, maybe it's an index

21:02

people who take a suggestibility

21:04

test, how spineless, how their

21:06

proclivity is to get as low

21:08

a score as possible because they feel

21:10

that that's an indication of how of

21:12

how... susceptible to manipulation they

21:14

be. And that's interesting thing because in

21:16

terms of the psychology of it... of

21:19

it, Suggestibility tests are probably better

21:21

than IQ tests in terms of

21:23

what they predict and how reliable

21:25

they predict it. it. Yeah. I'm going

21:27

to come back to come back to

21:29

that with hypnosis because I've seen seen

21:31

stage magicians or mentalists. whole you

21:34

know, get a whole group audience the audience and

21:36

they'll find like the six most hypnotizable people and

21:38

those are the ones that get up on get

21:40

up on sometimes on these TV shows, they start

21:42

off, the show starts the the people are

21:44

already on the stage. You don't see what

21:46

they did to weed out out on, so so on.

21:48

So I suspect there's something there. But But

21:50

I wanna drill down a little bit more

21:52

on the gullibility, susceptibility, suggestibility, whatever the right

21:54

word is because I've been having a debate

21:56

with myself, with it's in my next book with

21:58

a lot of my guests. of my guests. How rational

22:00

and animal are we? How gullible are

22:02

we to cults, to fake news, to,

22:04

you know, just bad ideas? And let

22:07

me just riff on this for a

22:09

second. So I tended, you know, is

22:11

a long career debunking nonsense to think

22:13

people are really gullible. And you could

22:15

succor almost anybody into believing some crazy

22:17

idea of flat earthers or UFOs or

22:19

whatever, but... I've now been rethinking it

22:22

because I think it is domain specific

22:24

like you said that is most people

22:26

most of the time are pretty rational.

22:28

You know they keep their jobs they

22:30

have families they got you know food

22:32

in the fridge gas in the tank

22:35

and so on and then and then

22:37

something happens. And we know who these

22:39

people are and otherwise they seem like

22:41

they're married they got kids they got

22:43

jobs. They're like normal people you know

22:45

this is one little domain right. And

22:48

so a lot of it comes from

22:50

I think social proof like. Most of

22:52

the things that I say I believe

22:54

I don't really understand. Like I'm not

22:56

a climate scientist. People send me these

22:58

papers. I can't really understand the modeling.

23:01

It's not what I do. I mostly

23:03

trust the scientists get it right most

23:05

of the time. So when I say

23:07

I accept climate science, I'm really just

23:09

signaling I trust that the experts are

23:11

probably right about this. And there's a

23:14

lot of research on this. on like

23:16

yeah students do you accept the theory

23:18

of evolution and they go yeah yeah

23:20

explain it and they can't explain it

23:22

they don't you know they give some

23:24

Lamarckian thing the draft stretches its neck

23:27

or whatever you know they don't really

23:29

know so in a way you know

23:31

when we say I believe it there

23:33

it's not gullible it's just like I

23:35

can't back check everything and it gets

23:37

even and it gets even more complicated

23:40

than that Michael because when somebody says

23:42

to you equal E equals E equals

23:44

MC squared What do you do with

23:46

that? And you know, and do you

23:48

just believe Einstein blindly? I mean, how

23:50

do you know it's not equals MC

23:52

to the power of 1.995? I mean,

23:55

there's all kinds of interesting questions and

23:57

debates that you have to ask yourself

23:59

about. How do we know that that's do

24:01

we know that that's actually

24:03

true? science where the comes into

24:06

the picture. come that's

24:08

where scientists come into the

24:10

picture and experimental science and evidence

24:12

and statistics and replicability and all

24:14

kinds of things that of Most

24:16

people know very little about,

24:19

and even if they know about

24:21

it, even if not about it, it's centerpiece

24:23

of their life, and they And

24:25

they don't... invest a a lot

24:27

of time into thinking about nuances

24:29

ways of presenting ways of presenting information

24:31

and about something is it mean

24:33

if something is statistically significant and

24:35

what kind of a correction

24:37

do you need? you need? It's just

24:39

not part of the lingo. It's not

24:41

part of what people do. It's

24:43

not. do. It's not. And when you're talking about fact

24:45

-checking. There's a very big

24:47

difference from fact -checking. If somebody said

24:50

that there were 10 ,000 people at

24:52

a rally a rally or were actually just

24:54

10 there, that's one kind of of

24:56

of information. It's It's completely different if

24:58

you say that that did a study

25:00

and we showed that this is an

25:02

effective treatment because there are many

25:04

ways to come to that conclusion and

25:06

there are many ways to rebut

25:08

that conclusion. And And when people are

25:10

not familiar with it, they're just looking

25:12

at the bottom line. at the where

25:14

suggestion becomes critical. Now it's about

25:17

about saying saying it. about

25:19

does about a he have a Harvard

25:21

degree or a a Bergen community Is this person

25:23

a doctor this is this person only

25:25

has a master's degree? person only wealth of

25:27

this person? Is he written up in

25:29

Forbes? the wealth of What kind of a suit

25:31

is he wearing? What kind of a

25:33

car is he driving? Does he have

25:35

white teeth of a suit is he teeth What kind

25:37

How long, how much does he charge

25:39

per hour? have white teeth? Are to see this

25:41

person? Let's maybe check his website. Is

25:43

he famous? How many followers? per hour? These are

25:46

all questions that influence people in

25:48

a tremendous way. a tremendous are

25:50

questions that also influence

25:52

not just people. just people, influence

25:54

neurophysiology. And this is

25:56

really what I'm trying to

25:58

say here. here. not a

26:00

theoretical, ethereal, cerebral thing that

26:03

we're talking about, about, know, philosophizing

26:05

about in some kind of

26:07

a grand scheme of abstract

26:09

scheme of This This

26:11

is palpable. This changes

26:13

neurobiology. This creates This creates

26:16

neurochemicals in the in the

26:18

brain. This This creates electrical currents

26:20

in the brain. This changes

26:23

the weights that we associate with

26:25

certain things. in very,

26:27

very real ways. ways. And as a

26:29

result of that, that, our physiology changes

26:31

are thinking. changes. This is what

26:33

This is what people don't always appreciate. They

26:36

think that this is all ethereal. They think

26:38

that this is all all in some kind of

26:40

a space that is completely abstract. it

26:42

is not abstract. not abstract. is

26:45

concrete. This This has to do

26:47

with changing molecules in your brain, forming

26:49

connections in your brain, and as

26:51

a result of of that, you can actually

26:53

change people, not just how they think. how they but

26:55

how they behave. behave. Well that astonishing factoid

26:57

in there your book about the blood

26:59

sugar level changing based on whether

27:02

you think. you think How sweet you

27:04

think the thing is you're eating. How

27:06

is that even possible? What's the mechanism?

27:08

the mechanism for that? In general, mechanisms that

27:10

are based on that are based on are

27:12

based on you do you expect do

27:14

what do you perceive, if you

27:17

perceive time passing a certain way,

27:19

you you think that you you a

27:21

certain amount, certain you burned a a certain

27:23

number of calories. If you you

27:25

think that something is gonna hurt you, if you think

27:27

that you be very painful going to All these

27:29

things have to do with to do with

27:32

neural mechanisms that we sometimes understand

27:34

and we sometimes we think that

27:36

we understand. we think that we matter

27:38

how you look at it, you look beginning

27:41

to unravel to things. And the way that

27:43

we do we do it... is by by

27:45

experimenting usually with small groups when

27:47

you you do with, when you do with

27:50

hypnosis or or with you don't

27:52

do it with with people. You don't do it

27:54

with a million people. You do it with 17

27:56

people it with 17 64. or 64, and you do you do

27:58

it with hypnotic suggestions and and you would...

28:00

suggestible people versus low suggestible people you do

28:02

it with people with a certain neuropsychiatric

28:04

or psychiatric problem and it gives you

28:06

evidence it gives you data and you

28:09

can do brain imaging and you can

28:11

see what changes in the brain but

28:13

you have to take it with a

28:15

grain of salt. These are small studies

28:17

they are revealing but they're not revealing

28:19

to the point of concluding in a

28:21

sweeping way about the population. Maybe it's

28:23

only relevant for people who have a

28:25

particular... mental condition, maybe it's only for

28:27

people who are highly suggestible, maybe it's

28:29

only for people who are susceptible to

28:31

hypnosis and so on. What we're beginning

28:33

to see though, is that we are

28:35

able to target, with suggestion, we're able

28:37

to target in some situations, particularly when

28:39

it comes to visual attention and experiments

28:41

that have to do with the senses,

28:43

let's say with the sense of taste,

28:45

hearing visual information, we are able to

28:47

target areas in the brain that are

28:49

known. to be allocating attention to specific

28:52

domains like the anterior singlet cortex or

28:54

other areas that have very specific anatomy,

28:56

very specific physiology, and we can show

28:58

that people who have the gift, I

29:00

call it the gift, of focusing in

29:02

such a tremendous, you know, laser beam

29:04

fashion on something, are able to activate

29:06

these areas in ways that other people

29:08

cannot. And this can happen momentarily. Sorry?

29:10

Yes, sometimes they're the open energetic areas,

29:12

absolutely. And they're able as a result

29:14

of that to sometimes see patterns that

29:16

do not exist. Because I mean, I

29:18

don't want to say that, you know,

29:20

these people are psychotic or anything of,

29:22

you know, of that nature. That's not

29:24

the direction that I'm going. I'm just

29:26

trying to say that the connection between

29:28

things is sometimes a function of how

29:30

much attention do we... invest in those

29:32

things. So if I sit here and

29:35

every time I sneeze the door opens,

29:37

at some point I'm going to think

29:39

that my sneezing is responsible for the

29:41

door opening. Of course this is

29:43

correlation, more than causation for

29:45

the most part, but most

29:47

part, would it happen many

29:49

times would it happen

29:51

that I come to

29:53

the conclusion that doing

29:55

sneezing is doing

29:57

that? And I can

29:59

lead people an think

30:01

that. I can

30:03

create an experimental situation

30:05

that would lead

30:07

people to do that.

30:09

And that's what

30:11

we often do. what we

30:13

how many repetitions

30:15

that they take for

30:17

somebody to start

30:20

believing. take for that they're actually

30:22

responsible for this. that they're How many

30:24

kind of, How many much information

30:26

does a person need need they

30:28

say, actually, I am the author

30:30

of this. I am causing

30:32

this. Although, you know, quite clearly, are they

30:34

are not the causal reason for

30:36

this to happen. Yeah, interesting.

30:39

I used as an I use this

30:41

example comparing Richard Feynman with John Nash in

30:43

one of my books. that, you know,

30:45

John Nash won Nash won the

30:47

Nobel for his discovery, game theory game

30:49

theory, mathematics. of course,

30:51

for of course, for quantum

30:53

electrodynamics and the Feynman diagrams.

30:56

So they they both saw patterns that no

30:58

one else had seen and they were amply

31:00

rewarded with Nobel Prizes. But but John patterns

31:02

that that didn't see, you know, because he's

31:04

schizophrenic. So there, you know, you're finding

31:06

patterns that are not real. not real. So it's a

31:08

a signal detection problem. And so Now

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ctmobile.com. You're seeing patterns aren't really there. aren't really

31:47

there. know, know, in my book, actually, I

31:49

talk about Feynman, who was who was hypnotized

31:51

at and, you know, the hypnotist, I mean, he know,

31:53

the hypnotist, I mean, he was hypnotized

31:56

at least three times in his

31:58

life kind kind of a public domain. wrote about

32:00

it. And it's really interesting

32:02

because you would think that somebody of

32:05

the caliber of Richard Feynman is not

32:07

just a critical thinker and, you know,

32:09

one of the marvels of, you know,

32:11

the human intellect. But you would think

32:13

that, you know, it would be difficult

32:15

to, you know, to pull a fast

32:18

one on him because he's just too

32:20

intelligent and too skeptical and so on.

32:22

And he was, but he was also

32:24

suggestible. And this is what most people...

32:26

miss in this equation. They think that

32:28

suggestibility means that you are inferior. They

32:31

take the word suggestibility or they take

32:33

this notion of suggestibility and they say

32:35

if I'm suggestible it means that I'm

32:37

weak. And that's not at all the

32:39

case. As a matter of fact, and

32:41

you know we were talking or you

32:44

mentioned it at the beginning, there are

32:46

evolutionary advantages to being suggestible allows you

32:48

to learn much faster. being suggestible allows

32:50

you to navigate the world much more

32:52

effectively and to be more adaptable because

32:54

you can learn from the experience of

32:57

others you can learn by what others

32:59

tell you you don't have to experience

33:01

it yourself if they suggest certain things

33:03

to you you say oh I can

33:05

learn from their experience and so on

33:07

it's a very important mechanism for humans

33:10

to learn from other people's insights from

33:12

their life experience from their even I

33:14

would say calculations from their observations. So

33:16

if somebody tells me something and I

33:18

trust that person and that person ranks

33:20

highly in my hierarchy of individuals that

33:23

I should listen to, why should I

33:25

question that? Why, I mean, why not

33:27

let this guide me in my life

33:29

and make some shortcuts? And in that

33:31

regard, suggestibility and being suggestible is very

33:33

important. The question is... Just like when

33:36

we are skeptical, you know, should we

33:38

skeptical of our belly buttons? I mean,

33:40

you cannot be skeptical of everything because

33:42

when you do that, you become paralyzed.

33:44

You never get out of bed. You

33:46

cannot be suggestible to the point that

33:49

you believe everything. Yeah. And that's

33:51

where it gets complicated.

33:53

So, all those So

33:55

all those degrees and

33:57

credentials and where you

33:59

went to school

34:02

and who you know

34:04

and those sorts

34:06

of things, those are

34:08

proxies those are proxies trust

34:10

and social proof proof that I

34:12

can trust I can trust what this

34:14

person tells me because look at all

34:16

these other characteristics that I already that I already

34:19

acknowledge are worthy. For some people, yes.

34:21

yes. For For some people, no. no. I

34:23

mean, we, I don't don't have to tell

34:25

you. We live at a time

34:27

where there's a backlash against a

34:29

certain elite kind of strata. elite kind

34:31

of, a lot, strata. And I don't

34:33

know, to be a PhD or

34:35

to be a DSC, to be

34:37

an MD I don't know, to be, to be a

34:39

it's a disadvantage to be a DSC, to be an

34:41

MD, And to be honest with

34:43

you, a Um, some people

34:46

are extremely impressed with, uh, physical

34:48

stature. Some people are extremely impressed

34:50

with wealth. wealth. Some people are extremely impressed

34:52

with with some people are extremely impressed

34:54

with humor, are so on and so forth,

34:56

impressed with also a cultural thing. and so

34:58

In different cultures, a cultural attribute

35:00

different meaning to different

35:02

aspects of human personality. meaning to

35:05

different aspects of human so on.

35:07

It's very important to understand.

35:09

so on. It's very very important to

35:11

explain. understand and it's very important to

35:13

changes over the lifespan.

35:16

changes over the to when you're young is

35:18

not necessarily what you're suggestable to when you're older older.

35:21

because you you change, of and

35:23

some of the that that you

35:25

have about certain topics changes. changes but

35:27

we're all we're all suggestible, and this is

35:29

the key. doesn't magician doesn't ask you

35:31

when they start doing a trick. They

35:33

don't ask you, you oh let me just

35:35

interview you first you see how suggestible

35:38

you are before I do you are trick.

35:40

do my trick but a magician would

35:42

sort of say before the person Can

35:44

you tell me a little bit about

35:46

the crowd? mean, is it children? mean, is

35:48

it it, Are they at workers at IBM?

35:50

Are at they Google employees? Are they you know,

35:52

educated people? What are What Are they are they? Are

35:54

they mostly in more in the the 40s? It's

35:57

very important to know these things you you

35:59

can actually tailor particular tricks to a particular

36:01

audience with higher statistical outcome like you

36:04

can you can tailor it in a

36:06

general way but a magician really if

36:08

if they're if they're good it's gonna

36:10

work I mean they know how to

36:12

work the audience regardless of all these

36:14

parameters that's funny yeah Mandy like to

36:16

say how easy it was to fool

36:18

a group of scientists particularly really smart

36:20

educated and and you know high status

36:22

scientists because they think they know what

36:25

he's going to do or they can

36:27

figure it out and it's always something

36:29

super simple. That's true and there's another

36:31

reason and I'm going to tell you

36:33

this this is what I found as

36:35

a scientist I mean I can tell

36:37

you so what Randy said is exactly

36:39

right I mean they think that they

36:41

know they think that you know it's

36:43

going to be difficult to trick them

36:46

and so on but there's another thing

36:48

that is actually a hindrance to being

36:50

a scientist. Let's go back to bending

36:52

a spoon like I, like I, you

36:54

know, we talked about before. If I

36:56

bend a spoon at a scientific conference,

36:58

you know, while we're, you know, having

37:00

a coffee break or while we're, you

37:02

know, over dinner or whatever, I'll bend

37:05

a spoon for their, you know, for

37:07

the entertainment pleasure of my colleagues. That's

37:09

great. And the first thing that they'll

37:11

say is something like, hey, can you

37:13

do it again with your sleeves rolled

37:15

up? So now I roll up my

37:17

sleeves and I do it again. And

37:19

they say, okay, so he can do

37:21

it with his sleeves rolled up. All

37:23

right, can you do it again? And

37:26

now I'll say, okay, but I'm going

37:28

to roll down my sleeves because it's

37:30

uncomfortable for me to have my sleeves

37:32

up. I'm going to roll down my

37:34

sleeves. We've already determined that the sleeves

37:36

have nothing to do with it. And

37:38

I do it again. And in the

37:40

scientists' mind, I'm doing it the same

37:42

way every time. And when I do

37:44

it with my sleeves up, I do

37:47

it using technique X. And when the

37:49

sleeves come down, I do it using

37:51

technique Y. So now they have no

37:53

control and they have no... No

37:55

idea how I'm

37:57

doing it because they're

37:59

only going by

38:01

the effect. Now, magicians

38:04

are sneaky that way. They can achieve

38:06

the same effect using different methods. And

38:08

what they do is they let you,

38:10

they deceive you with the methods So

38:12

what you're controlling for is irrelevant because

38:14

nature, when you're doing things in nature,

38:16

nature doesn't trick you. They, nature operates

38:18

in the same way. And that's why

38:20

scientists are used to thinking about things

38:22

in a certain way. they you.

38:25

roll your sleeves down, and that's

38:27

a big mistake. And it and

38:29

good magicians, smart magicians take advantage of

38:32

that. Yeah, that's a great story.

38:34

yeah I've hung around magicians for so

38:36

long, I've learned how a lot

38:38

of the tricks are done, and I'm

38:40

always disappointed that I know. I'd

38:42

really rather not know. because the explanation

38:44

is always something like That's

38:46

how they do it, really? That's all

38:48

it is? Oh no i I really

38:50

really the super complicated know that I

38:52

thought was going on. I have to

38:54

tell you that um think, and I

38:56

don't know if I'm speaking for other

38:58

magicians, but I definitely am speaking for

39:01

myself. um My sense of

39:03

wonder is a result of learning

39:05

a lot about magic and about,

39:07

you know, the stupid explanations and

39:09

the actual mundane things that

39:11

are going on in order

39:13

to achieve these magnificent effects.

39:15

um my door of wonder has

39:18

closed quite a bit. i mean, it's difficult

39:20

for me as somebody who's been in this

39:22

you know for such a long time. I

39:24

don't, I still I yearn, I really miss

39:26

that feeling that I had when I was

39:28

in first grade and I saw a magician

39:30

perform something and I was like, wow, you

39:32

know, and I would get like pilar erection

39:34

on my skin, you know, my hair would

39:37

go. And I would like, you know, I

39:39

would like to experience this again. It's very

39:41

difficult for me because I too much. And

39:43

as a result of that, when somebody's just

39:45

beginning to perform a trick, I'm already controlling

39:47

for certain things, and I'm looking at certain

39:49

things. uh a result of that,

39:51

I don't have the same enjoyment.

39:53

I can give it to others,

39:55

but I cannot experience it myself

39:57

because I'm sort of contaminated I'm

39:59

jaded. I'm tainted already, And I think I

40:01

think that it happens to

40:04

other magicians in the field

40:06

as well. Yeah, I've learned to I've

40:08

learned to just appreciate the

40:10

presentation and presentation. that goes into it. all

40:12

the practice that goes into it.

40:15

The example, the cups and the cups and

40:17

balls with clear plastic cups. see So

40:19

you can see exactly how it's done I I still

40:21

couldn't do it. it, because it takes

40:23

a lot of practice. It's a It's smooth

40:25

moves. Magicians are very interesting performers. They're

40:27

not just actors who are playing

40:29

the role of wizards. the They

40:32

also They also their own shows. own shows.

40:34

They decide They decide on the

40:36

tricks, they decide on the themes,

40:38

they decide When you connect things. a

40:40

comedy show, when you are doing

40:42

a comedy show, sometimes you're telling somebody else's

40:44

jokes. you're know, you you're doing, you know,

40:47

somebody else writes the text for you and

40:49

so on. on. Most magicians have

40:51

to perform. mean, they have

40:53

to perform. And, you know,

40:55

if know, if you... If a comedy show

40:57

kind of actor you bomb out with a

40:59

bad joke or something that is inappropriate

41:01

joke know something dud inappropriate audience doesn't a dud you

41:03

the audience doesn't take it. You pick

41:05

it up with the next line and

41:08

it's complete. If you're a a magician

41:10

and bombed out, you didn't do well

41:12

on a trick. This is is going

41:14

to be a serious scar on the I

41:16

mean, it's very difficult to recover from

41:18

that. recover from that. And are on their toes

41:20

all the time. the time. They have

41:23

to be. And And it creates some pressure.

41:25

It creates you know, on them to perform

41:27

and they need to be at the

41:29

top of their game. at the top of

41:31

their for calls for a

41:33

particular alertness and and

41:36

vigilance that sometimes is

41:38

not there for other other performers,

41:40

stage performers, and the

41:42

showmanship is tremendous. tremendous. Yeah. Yeah, on

41:44

the last point this,

41:46

this rationality, gullibility point. you

41:49

You know, there's a selection bias there of who

41:51

we pay attention to, the people that actually

41:53

fell for it. Like, these are are the people that

41:55

joined the cult and they committed suicide or you

41:57

know these are know, these are the people that turned

41:59

over more to Scientology or or whatever. But

42:01

there's a a base rate neglect. That is,

42:03

how many people did they try this on?

42:05

How many people have taken the Scientology Scientology or

42:08

held the little cans down at Hollywood and

42:10

Vine at where they set up their little

42:12

desk? where they You know, probably millions, you know? know,

42:14

probably of winnows down to just a handful

42:16

of people that fall for it. just a

42:18

handful other example is fall for it.

42:20

Or my other example is the Netflix documentary, I I

42:22

don't know if you've seen this, but

42:24

it features four women in their seen this, to

42:26

late know, it never married, looking for love, wanna

42:28

get married, have kids, start a family, the

42:30

whole thing, successful careers. the whole thing, successful careers. the

42:32

tender with his airplane guy who's a

42:35

good looking guy and he's looking

42:37

for love and so on. And

42:39

he's not just looking for sex. for love

42:41

and so on. And a long process looking takes

42:43

months. He actually gets them to wire

42:46

him tens of thousands of dollars, this

42:48

is the key. them to So him this handsome

42:50

international man of mystery at the key. So he's

42:52

got the plane. But they actually go

42:54

out on dates with him where they're

42:56

on the plane. They go to some

42:58

resort and island and all these romantic

43:01

things and they hold up and they have thousands

43:03

of texts from this guy. To

43:05

me, there's a lot of social proof. guy. To me,

43:07

that went into, before the moment where, you

43:09

know, he's in Switzerland on some trip on the

43:11

weekend and he calls the woman and says,

43:13

oh my God, the bank doesn't open on Monday

43:16

and I gotta give these guys the ,000 bucks.

43:18

Can you wire it? the I'm gonna close the

43:20

deal and make $10 million. Monday gonna, it's gonna

43:22

be great. We're gonna get married and all this.

43:24

can you do it! I'm going to course

43:26

what we don't know we don't know

43:28

How many many this on? he tried this

43:31

on, right? We always know the right,

43:33

that's right. Look, right. Look,

43:35

this is unfortunately people are, I

43:37

mean, are, I mean,

43:39

fortunately and unfortunately, people

43:42

are very, partial to

43:44

narratives. People love narratives if if

43:46

you have a compelling a

43:49

A fascinating narrative, Alice in know,

43:51

Alice in Wonderland of of

43:53

narrative, something that is

43:55

fantastic and and people go for

43:57

it. People like to think that.

44:00

their movie stars. People like to think

44:02

that to see themselves, you know,

44:04

doing things that you can only

44:06

see in the movies. And people

44:08

love legends and they love fairy

44:10

tales. And if you sell them

44:12

a good narrative and if they

44:14

can see themselves as being successful

44:16

and loved and so on, they'll

44:18

go for it. Yeah. Well, along

44:20

these lines, you discuss in your

44:22

book, Milgram Shock experiments in Zebardo's,

44:24

oh, Prison experiments, now most famous,

44:26

and all of psychology. Obedience to

44:28

authority, are these people just being

44:30

suggestible because of the authority of

44:32

Milgram and the White Coat or

44:34

Zimbardo, you know, at Stanford University.

44:36

What else might be going on

44:38

there in terms of social proof

44:40

or, you know, well, I'm at

44:43

Yale University, here's this guy with

44:45

a white coat. I can't really

44:47

be shocking these people to death,

44:49

can I? I mean, there must

44:51

be some other rationalization going on

44:53

there. Well, you know, succumbing to

44:55

authority is a huge thing. And

44:57

there's a big, there's a big

44:59

difference, really, a remarkable difference between

45:01

the Zimbabwe experiment and the Milgram

45:03

experiment. By the way, they were

45:05

contemporaries. They even went to the

45:07

same high school. The interesting thing

45:09

there is that Zimbabwe actually gave

45:11

his participants costumes to wear. And

45:13

they knew that what they were

45:15

doing was an act. From the

45:17

get-go, it was an act. They

45:19

just got very deeply into it.

45:21

They got so deep into the

45:23

act that they sort of forgot

45:25

or they turned off this particular

45:27

monitoring system that tells them they're

45:29

just acting and they're just wearing

45:31

clothes that, you know, of a

45:33

prisoner or sunglasses of a police

45:35

officer and so on. Zimbardo did

45:37

not, I'm sorry, Milgram did not

45:39

do this in the same way.

45:42

Milgram was a son of Holocaust

45:44

survivors and he was really interested

45:46

after having heard you know, certain

45:48

things at home from his parents

45:50

and so on. He was interested

45:52

in a second Holocaust. can we

45:54

we have this

45:56

happen again of

45:58

millions of people

46:00

will just go

46:02

with a particularly

46:04

enthusiastic leader or

46:06

a very dominant

46:08

figure? And he wanted to ask

46:10

to ask the question from that standpoint, So

46:12

he was the dominant figure, a Yale a

46:14

Yale a coat in a people what to

46:16

do and so on. to do and had a

46:18

slightly different question. a slightly different

46:21

question. the question that Zimbardo asked,

46:23

was also new for psychology because

46:25

he was actually one of the

46:27

first. one of the first got, got what we

46:29

what we call IRB, you know, institutional

46:31

review board approval. At Stanford, it was

46:33

early days, it was the was the so

46:35

it was not very sophisticated or very

46:37

refined, but he got it. refined,

46:40

but he got did something that today would

46:42

be very difficult to do and a

46:44

lot of people will get and a upset will

46:46

get, you know, somebody tried to do it. but

46:48

the effects are the same. It just shows you. same.

46:50

It just vulnerable we are to

46:53

social pressure, to authority, and

46:55

to figures. And I I think

46:57

that really there's no difference

46:59

today. today. You know, know, the dresses changed,

47:01

the the the

47:03

platforms change, the

47:05

techniques change. changed, it's the

47:07

same. the same. Yeah. I don't know if you know

47:09

if you know I did a

47:11

replication of the Milgram shock experiment for

47:13

experiment for Dateline Hansen was

47:15

the Hansen, was the built a

47:18

little toggle box toggle box

47:20

with the signals and so

47:22

forth and the lights

47:24

and and the lights, and we

47:26

people. seven people. The setup was were

47:28

trying out for a reality TV

47:30

show called What a Pain. And they And they

47:32

wanted to see, far know, how far they would

47:34

go and an shocks, right? right? So, and it

47:36

was, you know, under the guise of

47:38

NBC, so right? six of the seven to got

47:40

six of the seven to participate. what this

47:42

is, I'm woman said, this. know what this

47:44

is. I'm not doing this. that hadn't heard

47:46

amazed we got anybody shock heard of

47:48

the Milgram But a couple of the couple of

47:50

the guys were pretty enthusiastic about

47:52

it. Most went all the way, the way.

47:54

but it was clear they were

47:56

not comfortable doing this. I mean, they

47:58

were squirming and sweating. and groaning and

48:01

looking at the our actor playing

48:03

our direct director. director and you

48:05

sure? I I I don't really feel comfortable. You

48:07

must go on. must go on I go

48:09

on. all right you know and and You

48:11

know, and the same found the same

48:13

thing. So they're not mean, they're not

48:16

just blindly obeying some authority some I'm

48:18

an idiot an idiot a You

48:20

know, there's a lot of social

48:22

proof there. Yale you know PhD or NBC.

48:24

NBC I mean, NBC they can't possibly

48:26

be having me kill somebody on

48:28

film. kill mean, come on. That's right.

48:31

on film. must actually know what's going

48:33

on here. Somebody and Milgram reports

48:35

quite openly that people were squirming

48:37

and sweating reports quite signs of discomfort

48:39

and resistance and so on. and

48:42

But at the end of the day, they were pressing

48:44

the button. the end of the day, they were, they

48:46

were, you know, gaging up. and so on, but at the end

48:48

of the were doing it you know, I

48:50

have to say. and they were have

48:52

to say I have to say, I have to

48:54

say that today, We are dealing with

48:56

not the Milgram experiment, not the Zimbardo

48:58

experiment, but other social experiments are going

49:00

on in our society right now and

49:02

they're going on all the time. right

49:05

sometimes the experiment is about, when

49:07

do you not keep silent anymore

49:09

about something? when do you not keep I

49:11

mean these are about something. I

49:13

mean, these are experiments that are not

49:15

necessarily declared as such, but

49:17

it's our life. It's the fabric

49:19

of life. life today. of our

49:21

life today. All All right, let's talk about hypnosis. I'll

49:23

tee this up for you, because

49:26

we've all seen we've all seen the they give

49:28

a post they give suggestion. You won't

49:30

remember the number four. And then

49:32

they wake them up and say, then they you

49:34

know, count and say, okay, And you know, count to know,

49:36

end up at 11 fingers because, you because, know,

49:38

you know, the three... like they go one two five six two, three,

49:40

five, six. And they end up. Yeah, I

49:42

did a demonstration like that for National Geographic that

49:44

some point. that story. in Vegas was that in

49:47

Vegas? in Vegas to Vegas? a Yes, yes, in it

49:49

was in Vegas. a great story. is All

49:51

right, what is going on there? I mean,

49:53

where is the happened What happened? thing first thing

49:55

that we have to understand here is that a

49:57

a huge difference between stage hypnosis or what

49:59

what we usually you know refer to a

50:01

stage hypnosis which is a performance in

50:03

front of an audience and you invite

50:06

people to come to the stage and

50:08

you do some kind of a screening

50:10

on them and then you choose the

50:12

ones who are who seem to be

50:14

very susceptible and then you perform it

50:16

for the entertainment of the crowd because

50:18

you're going to do something really remarkable

50:20

or really funny or really ridiculous. So

50:22

people do all kinds of things. They

50:25

play, you know, double O7 maneuvers on

50:27

stage. They have sex with a chair.

50:29

They do all kinds of things that

50:31

would get the audience wild and, you

50:33

know, and entertained. But stage hypnosis is

50:35

actually different from medical hypnosis or from

50:37

psychological hypnosis that we do in the

50:39

clinic. Hypnosis, first and foremost, is an

50:41

acute intervention. that we are offering to

50:43

people that is based on suggestion, usually

50:46

for a specific problem. It could be

50:48

an open management, smoke cessation, you name

50:50

it. I mean, there's a whole bunch

50:52

of things. And there's a certain medical

50:54

literature, scientific literature associated with it. Sometimes

50:56

not very good, by the way. If

50:58

you go back in time, sometimes the

51:00

experiments were not very well done. But

51:02

with time, it has gotten a lot

51:05

better, and as a result, we know

51:07

a lot more about it. Stage hypnosis.

51:09

is a form of entertainment. I mean,

51:11

magicians do stage hypnosis without really knowing

51:13

anything about hypnosis. I mean, and it

51:15

just goes by the same name. So

51:17

they will, somebody would call themselves, I'm

51:19

a hypnotist, and actually they are just

51:21

a stage hypnotist doing stuff for college

51:24

kids or something like that, not to

51:26

be confused with an American board, you

51:28

know, certified individual who has the right

51:30

credentials. I have to say something about

51:32

not knowing the number four, like you

51:34

mentioned. In order not to know the

51:36

number four, you need to know it

51:38

so that you wouldn't know it. It's

51:40

really, it really is a very tricky

51:43

situation. In other words, you need to

51:45

know that you don't know the number

51:47

four. So you need to have sort

51:49

of a meta-cognitive process going on when

51:51

you count. You need to go one,

51:53

two, three, oh. Now it's going to

51:55

be four, but I don't know it.

51:57

Five, six, seven. So something needs to

51:59

be there to tell you, and this

52:01

is the one that you don't know.

52:04

And this is an interesting concept, because

52:06

metacognition is something that we do know

52:08

a little bit about. And what do

52:10

we do when we think about our

52:12

thinking? And you can actually think if

52:14

you go back to the experiment, the

52:16

Stanford Jail experiment. These people knew. that

52:18

they were acting. They knew that they

52:20

were actors playing the roles of prisoners.

52:23

They were actors playing the roles of

52:25

inmates. They knew it. But at some

52:27

point, it disappeared. At some point, you

52:29

know, it just dissipated or it was

52:31

so weak that they could ignore it.

52:33

The same thing happens here. People know

52:35

that they're not supposed to know the

52:37

number four, but they put it aside

52:39

in such a way that they are

52:42

sort of it doesn't bother them. It

52:44

doesn't bother them that they know it,

52:46

but it doesn't bother them that they

52:48

know that they know it. It's like

52:50

almost like ignoring something in your visual

52:52

field. It's a little bit like daydreaming.

52:54

Like when you daydream, your eyes are

52:56

open, but you're not processing the information.

52:58

You are completely absorbed in your internal

53:01

mental state. So you sit there, eyes

53:03

open, but you are invested internally in

53:05

your own thoughts. So something might be

53:07

happening in your visual field. Your brain

53:09

is registering it, but you are not

53:11

attentive. to it. We can create these

53:13

situations. We know how to create these

53:15

situations in the lab and ecologically in

53:17

the world. And we're getting better and

53:20

better at understanding what is happening at

53:22

the level of the brain. What is

53:24

happening at the level of brain states

53:26

that allows these situations to happen? How

53:28

long can we prolong them? And who

53:30

are the people who are more likely

53:32

to experience them? We know for example

53:34

that you know sometimes psychedelic drugs can

53:36

induce some of these states that are

53:38

very very similar. We know for example

53:41

that meditation, contemplative practice are also experiences

53:43

that that can help

53:45

get people to

53:47

these places and the

53:49

activate the same brain

53:51

structures. this is a So

53:53

structures. this is a

53:55

fascinating field of

53:57

study within the neuro

54:00

sciences within the psychological

54:02

sciences that we're

54:04

getting to know more

54:06

and more about. more

54:08

and it teaches us

54:10

a great deal

54:12

about mental health, about

54:14

about resilience, emotional resilience.

54:16

It resilience, teaches us

54:19

also about It know,

54:21

us also about, you know, How how

54:23

to how how to be a

54:25

better athlete to how to

54:27

use this mindset in order

54:29

to get more performance, physical

54:31

performance and so on. It's

54:33

a fascinating field that we

54:35

are getting more and more

54:37

knowledge on on and about it

54:39

not just experimentally, but with

54:41

applied techniques. but with applied techniques.

54:44

for a second. I know

54:46

the a second. I'm suppressing

54:48

it or whatever. suppressing it or

54:51

whatever. actors playing guards with the

54:53

mirrored with the mirrored sunglasses

54:55

and all that. shouldn't be They know they

54:57

shouldn't be doing this, but... it they They

54:59

just and then it, they ignore it. one

55:02

more step then let me just take

55:04

one more step. at Auschwitz know, the guards

55:06

at Auschwitz or whatever, I know this

55:08

is wrong. I know I shouldn't be

55:10

doing this. Or just take the slaveholders at

55:12

some level, know know, the 1800s America they had to know

55:14

these They had to know want people don't want

55:16

to be slaves. we That's why we have to chain

55:18

them up and beat them They don't want it. I

55:20

wouldn't want to do this. want to do this,

55:22

did it anyway. they did it anyway.

55:24

How did did they do that if they know,

55:26

or maybe they didn't know know, was a different

55:28

time and they didn't know was wrong time and

55:30

they know. You know, wrong. I don't know.

55:33

You know, role playing and role enactment

55:35

can sometimes become quite

55:37

real. can Um, if you

55:39

are, um, If you are an actor.

55:41

and you are you are playing a particular

55:43

role. you can can actually

55:45

get quite absorbed to the the point that

55:47

you are actually living you are playing. you are

55:49

playing. Now, playing. some people are better

55:51

at it at others, a but a lot

55:53

of it, a lot of it is

55:56

a function of the kind of feedback,

55:58

social feedback that you're getting from your...

56:00

peers and the kind of social fabric

56:02

that you are within, the milieu

56:04

that you're set in. These are

56:06

things that we are beginning to

56:08

understand more and more because in

56:10

science, when we do scientific experiments,

56:12

we usually do them in a

56:14

lab. We usually do them in

56:16

settings that are very clinical, very

56:18

anal, very, I would say, not

56:20

ecological. They don't necessarily reflect what's

56:22

happening or the way that we

56:24

behave in the outside world. We

56:26

process information on computer screens, we

56:28

do things in very controlled environments.

56:30

This is not necessarily what is

56:32

happening when we behave in the

56:34

world and when we're exposed to

56:36

all kinds of parameters that we

56:38

often not measure in a controlled

56:40

lab experiment. This is beginning to

56:42

change. Interesting. Yeah, I would recommend

56:44

people read Christopher Browning's book, Ordinary

56:46

Men. There's now a Netflix documentary

56:48

based on that, where they follow

56:50

the lives, he follows the lives

56:53

of this, a police battalion that

56:55

was part of the Einstein scrupen,

56:57

that followed the Vermont, the German

56:59

army, into Ukraine, for example, to

57:01

clean up after the army, kill

57:03

all the Jews, for example, in

57:05

others, but mostly Jews. And, you

57:07

know, these were ordinary men. You

57:09

know, they were slightly older than

57:11

the young men joining the army.

57:13

They were like late 20s, early

57:15

30s. And so the question is,

57:17

is, did they enjoy it? You

57:19

know, how did they do it?

57:21

How do they do it? How

57:23

do you get people to kill

57:25

people? So at first, you know,

57:27

it was the Holocaust by bullets.

57:29

It's called. Yeah. You know, they

57:31

just put the gun right up

57:33

to the back of the head.

57:35

Bam. Blood all over the place.

57:37

It's horrible. So then they moved

57:39

to having them shoot them further

57:41

away with rifles in the pit.

57:43

You can see pictures of this

57:45

and so on. And then ultimately

57:47

that, you know, Himmler went and

57:49

saw one of these and said,

57:51

we got to do something different

57:53

here. That's when they introduced gas

57:55

and that sort of thing in

57:57

the gas chambers. But, you know,

57:59

if you look at their lives,

58:01

you know, in the process of

58:03

doing this, there was some obedience

58:05

to authority. They weren't threatened. Like,

58:07

if you don't do this, you

58:09

know, we're going to shoot you

58:11

or whatever. It was nothing like

58:13

that. But there was a lot

58:15

of social pressure. Like, you know,

58:17

don't be a pussy and, you

58:20

know, we're all doing this, you

58:22

know, and then they all got

58:24

shit-faced afterwards, and there was a

58:26

lot of alcohol and other things

58:28

involved. You know, yes, I could,

58:30

I could, you know, in front

58:32

of everybody back out and say,

58:34

I'm not going to do it.

58:36

But, well, you know, that, that's

58:38

hard to do in front of

58:40

everybody. So, that is hard to

58:42

do. It's hard to do. And

58:44

it's not just a question of

58:46

peer pressure. It's also a question

58:48

of narrative. And, you know, what,

58:50

what is the overarching narrative that

58:52

you're selling to people? race, if

58:54

it's got like race overtones, if

58:56

it has to do with cleansing

58:58

or purging, if it has to,

59:00

whatever it is that you're selling,

59:02

whatever it is that you know

59:04

the overarching agenda is, people love

59:06

a good story. People embrace good

59:08

stories uncritically, uncritically. People are not

59:10

very critical when it comes to

59:12

these things. Again, the skepticism element

59:14

comes again into this into this

59:16

picture. People are not very good

59:18

at questioning. at asking, you know,

59:20

is this true, trying to verify,

59:22

trying to go and see if

59:24

something is falsifiable? It's not part

59:26

of the lingo of most people.

59:28

You need to be educated about

59:30

that. You need to acquire this

59:32

through education, through listening to people

59:34

who tell you about this, through

59:36

learning, really how to think critically.

59:38

This is something that is missing

59:40

in our society and... you are

59:42

trying to do the best you

59:44

can to remedy that. I'm trying

59:47

to do the best I can

59:49

to remedy that, but from the

59:51

scientific point of view, it's very

59:53

clear that we're vulnerable to it.

59:55

Yeah. Yeah, one more recommendation is

59:57

a book called The good

59:59

old days. days. And it's

1:00:01

a it's a collection of letters

1:00:03

from the Zysos and soldiers soldiers their wives

1:00:05

and families back home. And

1:00:07

the narrative was, this is really

1:00:09

brutal. It is nasty, but. but... If

1:00:11

we we weren't doing it, they'd be

1:00:13

doing it to us. to us. If this

1:00:16

war turns around, the Russians are gonna

1:00:18

treat treat my family, you guys, you would would

1:00:20

not believe. so So we need to win

1:00:22

this war. And besides that, the the

1:00:24

Jews started the whole thing, thing, they repeat

1:00:26

the stab in the back conspiracy theory

1:00:28

theory all that stuff. and all Okay, back

1:00:30

to Okay, back to hypnosis. So, the last time I

1:00:32

looked at this this was like the Ernst Hilgaard's theory

1:00:34

of the hidden observer. observer. which which is

1:00:36

sort of a metaphor, I don't know.

1:00:38

I There's somebody in there that knows

1:00:40

the there that knows the four, right? And that's somebody or a neural

1:00:42

a neural network or whatever it is.

1:00:44

There's some other module of the brain

1:00:46

that that keeps of stuff, even though the

1:00:48

conscious self is saying, I don't know

1:00:50

what it is, it is. Right? Is, but that's, that's that's

1:00:52

decades old now, that theory. What's the

1:00:54

latest we know on the neuroscience of

1:00:56

hypnosis and - And so, uh, what Hilkard did was

1:00:58

very interesting. uh, the notion of the notion of

1:01:01

the hidden observer, he basically told people

1:01:03

something like, you know, you're not gonna know, know,

1:01:05

I don't know, know, scissors or It's better over

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1:01:35

due. some objects. you know, and he would put a would

1:01:37

put a whole bunch of objects, and including scissors, what's

1:01:39

this, what's this, what's this, what's this, what's this.

1:01:41

And to the scissors, people what he pointed to don't know what, I don't

1:01:43

know what, I had some know this. I don't know what, I don't know, a

1:01:45

musical instrument. I don't know, I've never seen anything like that. of the

1:01:48

But he told he told them, of the hypnotic

1:01:50

induction. will know, he would say, what is, what is, what is, what I

1:01:52

touch your right shoulder, what is, what you will

1:01:54

know. is, what is, what is, what then what he did is, what is,

1:01:56

would say, what is this? what would say, I don't know. I

1:01:58

think it's a musical instrument. I think is, or that. And then

1:02:00

he would touch their right shoulder and

1:02:02

they would say, oh, it's scissors. I

1:02:04

can see that now that it's a

1:02:06

scissors. What we added to this original

1:02:08

pilgrid plot, which has to do with

1:02:11

metacognition and hypnosis and all these things,

1:02:13

is brain imaging. Today we have imaging

1:02:15

of the living human brain, which allows

1:02:17

us to, with sophisticated technology, see what

1:02:19

brain areas light up and what do

1:02:21

they do and what happens when you

1:02:23

have a hypnotic suggestion like that? what

1:02:25

happens when you're just hypnotized with no

1:02:27

suggestion, what's the difference between relaxation and

1:02:29

so on, and we're beginning to identify

1:02:32

different areas and different structures in the

1:02:34

brain, and we're beginning to see what's

1:02:36

the difference. And one of the things

1:02:38

that we notice is that people really

1:02:40

allocate attention very differently. The brain mechanisms

1:02:42

that have to do with attentional allocation

1:02:44

in the brain are being resourced very

1:02:46

differently when you are given. a hypnotic

1:02:48

suggestion to do something, let's say to

1:02:50

pay attention to something visually. For example,

1:02:52

if I tell you you don't know

1:02:55

scissors, basically what happens is they are

1:02:57

blocking that part of the table where

1:02:59

the scissors are. It's as if they

1:03:01

see something hazy there. They just can't

1:03:03

see what the object is. A little

1:03:05

bit like the daydreaming that I described

1:03:07

to you before. It's a little bit

1:03:09

like it's masked. This is like sort

1:03:11

of the metaphor or the representation of

1:03:13

what's going on. They can see that

1:03:16

there as an object there. but it's

1:03:18

too hazy to observe or it's too,

1:03:20

it's masked, it's behind a veil of

1:03:22

some sort. So it's not that they

1:03:24

see it and they say, oh this

1:03:26

is scissors and I'm not supposed to

1:03:28

know it, maybe they do it once

1:03:30

or twice at the beginning and then

1:03:32

they say, oh this is a part

1:03:34

of the table that I'm not supposed

1:03:36

to look at, I'm not supposed to

1:03:39

have access to. This is interesting because

1:03:41

when we do these experiments time and

1:03:43

again, time and again, we begin to

1:03:45

see that different people have different strategies

1:03:47

as to how to achieve it, but

1:03:49

they all use their attentional resources.

1:03:51

in different ways. ways. Sometimes

1:03:53

try to avert

1:03:55

their gaze. gaze. They They

1:03:57

try not to

1:04:00

look at the the object

1:04:02

directly. Sometimes they

1:04:04

try to look at

1:04:06

it obliquely it covert

1:04:08

attention. covert We can

1:04:10

see these attentional mechanisms working either in overdrive

1:04:12

or underdrive, depending on what the instruction

1:04:14

is and so on. So that's one

1:04:16

way. mean, there are many ways to

1:04:18

achieve this. I Now we know many ways

1:04:20

to attention Now we know that really

1:04:22

is a very powerful filter to also

1:04:25

regulating our emotions. It's not just regulating

1:04:27

our senses our our perceptions. It's also

1:04:29

a very strong filter of regulating

1:04:31

our emotions, what we allow ourselves to

1:04:33

get excited about, what we allow to

1:04:35

to get, you know, aggressive about. to

1:04:38

get, you know, attention is a

1:04:40

very strong mediator of behavior. If you

1:04:42

I I mean, you can create

1:04:44

a lot of self -regulation. It's a

1:04:46

function of temperament, of course. Some

1:04:48

people are more of course. Some mean, are

1:04:50

more trigger them very, very easily. you will

1:04:52

trigger them very, very easily. So element of personality

1:04:54

an and temperament, and things like

1:04:56

here and But it's also a

1:04:58

function of like that. You can train.

1:05:00

a your attention. You can

1:05:02

train your attentional system your attention, there

1:05:04

are ways to train the

1:05:06

brain. There are ways to train

1:05:08

the brain through cognitive training training

1:05:10

and certain exercises. How effective

1:05:13

they are to to be seen

1:05:15

but some people benefit from it

1:05:17

more than others and that's just

1:05:19

a fact of life there's no question

1:05:21

no question about these

1:05:23

people of your of your

1:05:25

experiments participants in in the

1:05:27

hypnotists show. They're not They're not just

1:05:30

going along and faking to not embarrass the

1:05:32

the or the magician. they

1:05:34

really are in some kind of

1:05:36

altered state of of consciousness. Right, and I

1:05:38

would say, Twilight Zone, between is

1:05:41

I would say, um, Are you just

1:05:43

doing it because of this role Are Are you just

1:05:45

doing it because of social compliance? you just trying

1:05:47

to be nice to me? Are you just

1:05:49

trying to know, for me not to lose face?

1:05:51

And that's why you're doing all these things. things, versus

1:05:54

you're doing this because you're

1:05:56

genuinely. genuinely entrenched in a

1:05:58

brain state that makes makes you... feel that

1:06:00

this is real, we can show a

1:06:02

whole spectrum. We can show a whole

1:06:05

spectrum of some people who are towards

1:06:07

this end and some people who are

1:06:09

towards this end. And we're trying to

1:06:12

understand what is it about some people

1:06:14

that are closer to this particular distribution

1:06:16

and people are a little bit close

1:06:18

to the other part of the distribution.

1:06:21

And we're beginning to see that this

1:06:23

has to do with certain genetic polymorphisms,

1:06:25

certain brain structures, certain connections between brain

1:06:27

areas. but we are identifying again and

1:06:30

again the same brain areas of interest.

1:06:32

We can name them, we can measure

1:06:34

them, we can see the connections, and

1:06:36

more importantly, we can see adjacent behaviors.

1:06:39

So for example, when people are, as

1:06:41

I mentioned before, psychedelic drugs, people who

1:06:43

are doing meditation, people are, you know,

1:06:46

Tibetan monks, people are doing, you know,

1:06:48

contemplative practice and so on, we can

1:06:50

see that some of the same areas

1:06:52

are involved. in these altered states of

1:06:55

consciousness, in these pattern recognition kind of

1:06:57

activities, in the ability to regulate pain,

1:06:59

in the ability to demonstrate resilience, to

1:07:01

recover from trauma and so on. And

1:07:04

this gives us the clues that we

1:07:06

are on some kind of an interesting

1:07:08

path where we can actually distill the

1:07:11

neurobiological substrates of these things. Yeah, one

1:07:13

of my favorite magicians on that is

1:07:15

Darren Brown, I'm sure you know him.

1:07:17

Of course. And, you know, he does

1:07:20

this hypnosis, he has this whole show

1:07:22

about faith healers, and which he kind

1:07:24

of makes the point indirectly that faith

1:07:26

healers are themselves kind of hypnotizing their

1:07:29

audience in a way, and putting them

1:07:31

in a state in which they're more

1:07:33

susceptible to their particular message, and then

1:07:36

he does it himself, using hypnosis. But

1:07:38

again, you know, we don't see where

1:07:40

those people came from. Are there ways

1:07:42

to test, you know, like if you

1:07:45

had 100 people in the room, could

1:07:47

you give me the, you know, through

1:07:49

however many hours you need to do

1:07:51

this, these are the 10 most susceptible

1:07:54

people? Yes, yes. I mean, so when

1:07:56

it comes to hypnotic susceptibility or hypnotic

1:07:58

suggestibility, I mean, we have very good

1:08:01

tools. We have very good instruments, psychological

1:08:03

instruments, where we can screen people and

1:08:05

sort of identify how good they are.

1:08:07

Remember, suggestion, hypnotic suggestion is just one

1:08:10

type of suggestion, but suggestion in general

1:08:12

is an uncritical acceptance of an opinion

1:08:14

or an idea or a behavior, which

1:08:16

really arises from either within us or...

1:08:19

the influence of others. It could be

1:08:21

me, it could be you. So there

1:08:23

are ways to test that. There really

1:08:25

are ways to test that and you

1:08:28

don't need to sort of take it

1:08:30

into a psychoanalytical domain or, you know,

1:08:32

or, you know, Zigmund Freud asking you

1:08:35

to lie on the couch. You can

1:08:37

do it in very practical ways, and

1:08:39

we have tests that do that. But

1:08:41

the take-home message is not just about

1:08:44

identifying the people who are very suggestible,

1:08:46

because they could be vice presidents of

1:08:48

companies, CEOs, or they could be the

1:08:50

janitor, or somebody else. The most important

1:08:53

thing is to understand that everyone is

1:08:55

highly susceptible to some form of suggestion.

1:08:57

This is something that a lot of

1:09:00

people miss. Often without realizing it, we

1:09:02

are suggestible and these suggestions shape our

1:09:04

perceptions. They color our behaviors, even our

1:09:06

physiological experiences in profound ways. And that's

1:09:09

really what I'm trying to drive home

1:09:11

in this book because the examples that

1:09:13

I give are real life examples. They're

1:09:15

not, I mean, they're from decades of

1:09:18

studies that I've done throughout my life,

1:09:20

also from my experience as a magician.

1:09:22

I mean, I remember... being a teenager

1:09:25

performing theatrical mind reading for you know

1:09:27

all kinds of audiences and people will

1:09:29

come to me people my parents age

1:09:31

will come to me after and consult

1:09:34

with me on life matters they will

1:09:36

say you know my aunt is dying

1:09:38

you know what do you recommend that

1:09:40

we do this or that or I'd

1:09:43

like to invest in this company I

1:09:45

was 16 you know I mean I

1:09:47

had no idea what and and it

1:09:49

was amazing to me that no matter

1:09:52

what disclaimers I would use no matter

1:09:54

how many times I will say this

1:09:56

is a show You know, these are

1:09:59

tricks. The mental part is so strong,

1:10:01

the effect is so compelling, that they

1:10:03

just forget about all these disclaimers. It's

1:10:05

what they want to hear, it's what

1:10:08

they want to see. It's not what

1:10:10

you say is what they think you

1:10:12

say. It's not what they see, it's

1:10:14

what they think you see. Yeah, we

1:10:17

did another TV show with James Van

1:10:19

Prague, who was a big psychic. Talked

1:10:21

into the dead in the 90s late

1:10:24

90s. So I was part of a

1:10:26

history chat history mysteries I think it

1:10:28

was so they filmed him for hours

1:10:30

and You could see how he got

1:10:33

information from people he would chit chat

1:10:35

with them on the brakes and things

1:10:37

like that and then come back to

1:10:39

the information he got because we've filmed

1:10:42

him Well, he didn't know he was

1:10:44

being filmed during the breaks So we

1:10:46

figured out how he was doing that

1:10:49

but the people themselves forgot you know

1:10:51

they'd say he I never told him

1:10:53

my grandfather's name was George It's like

1:10:55

actually you did and we'll show you

1:10:58

how you did it, you know, because

1:11:00

he's like I'm getting this name and

1:11:02

this initial and then he goes, yeah,

1:11:04

that is George, yeah, letter G, yeah,

1:11:07

George is my uncle, whatever it was,

1:11:09

you know, and then they'd forget that,

1:11:11

you know, back to the forgetting thing.

1:11:14

Yeah, okay, so. If you have some

1:11:16

theory of altered states of consciousness, you

1:11:18

must have a theory of consciousness. Do

1:11:20

you want to wade into the hard

1:11:23

problem of consciousness and give us your

1:11:25

explanation? What do you think is? Well,

1:11:27

the hard problem of consciousness. So, you

1:11:29

know, it's really interesting for me. So

1:11:32

I've been dealing with aspects of consciousness,

1:11:34

you know, most of my adult life

1:11:36

through experiments, through philosophical discussions, through debates,

1:11:38

through intellectual, you know, scientific conferences and

1:11:41

so on. I have to tell you,

1:11:43

and I'm being super honest, that I

1:11:45

have learned as much from my magic

1:11:48

experience, and being a magician in the

1:11:50

trenches, performing in front of audiences, making

1:11:52

people believe or remember certain things that

1:11:54

didn't happen, like you said, or making

1:11:57

people see. certain things

1:11:59

that were never there.

1:12:01

never there, or them forget things that

1:12:03

were there, I learned a lot

1:12:05

more, or as much. from my

1:12:08

magician role as I did as

1:12:10

a scientist, doing I did

1:12:12

as a scientist doing with

1:12:14

experiments with hypnosis you know, masking

1:12:16

and and reverse masking and

1:12:18

back back masking and stimuli and

1:12:21

all these things. and all these

1:12:23

And the reason I say this I say

1:12:25

this is because when When it comes to

1:12:27

consciousness, We have a

1:12:29

have a fairly of

1:12:32

what consciousness understanding of what consciousness

1:12:34

is, just like we have an intuitive

1:12:36

understanding of would like We would like to

1:12:38

think that we have free will. not

1:12:40

confusing free will with free speech or things

1:12:42

like that, just free will. just free will.

1:12:44

And ability to go and

1:12:46

tweak, to rattle that full free will, which

1:12:49

magicians, mentalist in mentalists in particular,

1:12:51

but magicians can do

1:12:53

so easily. so so easily going

1:12:55

going to college, without spending years and

1:12:57

years and years studying statistics and

1:12:59

research methods and methods to seminars and

1:13:01

all these things, you can do it

1:13:03

when you're 14. when You can do

1:13:06

it when you're 15. you're 15 and you

1:13:08

can do you can do it can make you can make

1:13:10

a living a good Being a good magician spend

1:13:12

most spend most of their life doing these

1:13:14

things and they can't make a good

1:13:16

living and this this is not about a living.

1:13:18

This is about, you know, what can

1:13:20

you you unravel Now, the the methods of a scientist

1:13:22

and the method of a magician are completely

1:13:24

different, but they can sort of converge in some

1:13:26

of the same questions. And what I'm trying

1:13:28

to say... And what I'm that to say sure

1:13:30

there are other professionals out there. They

1:13:32

could be marketers, could they could be they could be

1:13:34

barbers, they could be accountants, they could be

1:13:36

lawyers, they could be anything. they could be who

1:13:39

are also illuminating questions related to consciousness through

1:13:41

their own tools that I'm not familiar with.

1:13:43

I'm not, you know, I don't have... with.

1:13:45

I'm I'm not privy to what they're

1:13:47

able to do and I'm not

1:13:49

part of of their professional realm of techniques I

1:13:51

so on. the kind I think these

1:13:53

are the are of questions, these are the kind

1:13:56

of questions that can illuminate consciousness in many

1:13:58

interesting ways. It doesn't have to come. from

1:14:00

neuroscientists. It doesn't have to come from

1:14:02

psychologists. It doesn't have to come from

1:14:04

mathematicians or from computational cognitive scientists. It

1:14:07

could come from magicians. It could come

1:14:09

from people who are doing some human

1:14:11

interaction of some marketers. It could come

1:14:13

from other people. It's just a question

1:14:16

of refining the questions and trying to

1:14:18

systematically study them. And the reason I

1:14:20

say that I learned as much about

1:14:22

consciousness as a magician as I did

1:14:25

from being a scientist is because for

1:14:27

me magic. is not a one-trick thing.

1:14:29

It's not that I, you know, read

1:14:31

what's written on the cereal box and

1:14:33

I tried it and that made me

1:14:36

a minute. It's a lifelong pursuit. It's

1:14:38

a serious systematic study of a particular

1:14:40

body of knowledge and trying things and

1:14:42

being a member of a society, going

1:14:45

to conferences, associating with colleagues and so

1:14:47

on. The same thing is true as

1:14:49

a scientist. I don't know that I'm

1:14:51

the best magician within the scientist or

1:14:54

the best scientist within the magicians. But

1:14:56

it's very important to understand to understand.

1:14:58

that both of these worlds illuminated my

1:15:00

understanding of concepts like free will, conscious

1:15:03

and so on, in a very, very

1:15:05

big way. So I don't expect magicians

1:15:07

to know too much about neuropsychology. I

1:15:09

don't expect them to know too much

1:15:12

about brain structures, about things that are

1:15:14

related to the technical jargon and the

1:15:16

experiments that are related to neuroscience. I

1:15:18

don't think it's even necessary. But I

1:15:21

also have to appreciate that most neuroscientists,

1:15:23

most psychologists know very little, if anything

1:15:25

about magic and about the powerful techniques

1:15:27

that these performers, you know, actors playing

1:15:30

the role of wizards, can illuminate questions

1:15:32

that are related to consciousness in no,

1:15:34

you know, less fundamental and practical a

1:15:36

way. So to answer your question, I'm

1:15:39

blessed by having both these perspectives, and

1:15:41

I think that that gives me perhaps

1:15:43

something that most of my colleagues don't

1:15:45

have. One of my favorite conspiracy theories

1:15:48

that turned out to be a real

1:15:50

conspiracy when I was writing my conspiracy

1:15:52

book was MK. The CIA's program for

1:15:54

mind control, one of which was hypnosis.

1:15:56

You're not worried that the North Korea...

1:15:59

and the Chinese and the Russians are

1:16:01

using these techniques to, you know, create

1:16:03

super soldiers and so on. You know,

1:16:05

a lot of that didn't pan out.

1:16:08

You know, what are the limitations on,

1:16:10

let's say, government or terrorists using these

1:16:12

techniques to, I don't know, create an

1:16:14

assassin by hypnotizing them or teenage boys

1:16:17

that want to know if they can

1:16:19

hypnotize girls to get them to take

1:16:21

their clothes off, that kind of stuff.

1:16:23

I mean, how much can we really

1:16:26

control somebody else's mind? Or and then

1:16:28

we can move to the techniques you

1:16:30

can actually use to you know stop

1:16:32

smoking or lose weight or whatever These

1:16:35

are these are really hard question to

1:16:37

answers, but we have some leads that

1:16:39

can that can help us answer them

1:16:41

So we are all familiar with stories

1:16:44

about cults. They're well documented We know

1:16:46

that the energetic dominant enthusiastic, you know

1:16:48

aggressive cult leaders can actually fascinate crowds.

1:16:50

They can, you know, if you want

1:16:53

to call it mesmerize, if you want

1:16:55

to call it hypnotize, whatever you want

1:16:57

to call it, that's fine with me,

1:16:59

but they can captivate the imagination of

1:17:02

people to the point that they would

1:17:04

follow what the cult leader says uncritically.

1:17:06

Again, this word, uncritically. They will believe

1:17:08

things that are, you know, certainly false.

1:17:11

They would discount things when things don't

1:17:13

go right. They just say, oh, you

1:17:15

know, you didn't understand, we misunderstood, he

1:17:17

misspoke, whatever it is. So that's, we

1:17:19

know that, that's well documented. We also

1:17:22

know about mass hysteria. We know that,

1:17:24

you know, there's this phenomenon that is

1:17:26

again well documented throughout the ages going

1:17:28

back to medieval times and even before

1:17:31

that, you know, people can demonstrate these

1:17:33

mass hysteria kind of situations as a

1:17:35

result of particular rumor a particular suggestion

1:17:37

they think that there's a toxin in

1:17:40

the water they think that they're breathing

1:17:42

something in the air they begin to

1:17:44

you know have all kinds of things

1:17:46

we know about the Salem witch trials

1:17:49

we know these things these are things

1:17:51

that are part you know don't

1:17:53

need to go

1:17:55

to college and do a

1:17:58

a in in the

1:18:00

paranormal know order to

1:18:02

know that people

1:18:04

are complex. We are

1:18:07

very complex organisms. and

1:18:10

we have higher brain functions

1:18:12

that are very susceptible to stories,

1:18:14

narratives, ideas, beliefs. We know know

1:18:16

that we know how powerful that

1:18:18

can be. We can, We with

1:18:20

techniques like hypnosis and

1:18:23

with things like psychedelic drugs and

1:18:25

with digital platforms and with

1:18:27

information and by repeating information by

1:18:29

with artificial intelligence, with deep fakes

1:18:31

and so on, we can

1:18:33

really deep fakes and so on. We the way

1:18:35

people think in unprecedented ways. It's

1:18:37

not just a function of hypnosis. It's

1:18:39

not just a function of taking

1:18:41

people and hypnotizing them with a pendulum

1:18:43

or with other techniques that we

1:18:46

have. with other techniques that we have.

1:18:48

It's the convergence of what

1:18:50

we're beginning to have. have. We're beginning

1:18:52

to have information, we are

1:18:54

bombarded with information like never

1:18:56

before. like never we

1:18:58

are exposed to to explosive

1:19:01

amounts of information without being able to

1:19:03

screen it, without being able to

1:19:05

vet it. able to are beginning

1:19:07

are to believe things

1:19:09

based on our cultural upbringing.

1:19:12

based on on our religious

1:19:14

beliefs lack thereof. based on on

1:19:16

our education, on based on our social who

1:19:18

who are the people that we

1:19:20

talk to. to. Where do we do

1:19:22

we live, our geography? And this is this

1:19:25

is beginning to create

1:19:27

situations where people are only

1:19:29

people echo living in echo chambers or

1:19:31

in bubbles and they only speak to people

1:19:33

who think like them or behave like

1:19:35

them or so on, like but we

1:19:37

are beginning to we are beginning to certain things

1:19:39

that are completely untrue but are

1:19:41

liberating for us know we know we feel to

1:19:44

we feel very badly about the

1:19:46

white rhinos we just go into wikipedia

1:19:48

and we just rewrite the numbers

1:19:50

and there we save them rhinos out more

1:19:52

white rhinos out there you know they

1:19:54

were now they're they're not don't don't we

1:19:56

don't feel comfortable with the george

1:19:59

washington you know a slaveholder, we just go

1:20:01

and we change the Wikipedia entry or

1:20:03

we say something about that. This is

1:20:06

a new thing. It's a new thing

1:20:08

in our society. It's not just a

1:20:10

question of alternative facts. It's a question

1:20:12

of information. We have so much information.

1:20:15

We don't know what to do with

1:20:17

it. It comes from multiple sources. We

1:20:19

don't have the time. We spend our

1:20:22

days. scrolling up and down screens if

1:20:24

it's your smartphone if it's your laptop

1:20:26

if it's your tablet you know whatever

1:20:29

and it's just information addiction some people

1:20:31

are addicted to alcohol some people are

1:20:33

addicted to drugs we are getting to

1:20:36

be as a society we're addicted to

1:20:38

information we are bombarded with information and

1:20:40

we don't have the tools to deal

1:20:43

with that information onslaught as a result

1:20:45

suggestion becomes all the more powerful in

1:20:47

our lives it becomes all the more

1:20:49

concrete and elemental, it becomes rudimentary because

1:20:52

we are beginning to get more and

1:20:54

more. We make decisions based on suggestions,

1:20:56

not based on real information, because we

1:20:59

don't have the time to process the

1:21:01

information. We don't have the tools to

1:21:03

process the information. When you talk about

1:21:06

the Holocaust, you have become a scholar

1:21:08

of the Holocaust. You have read so

1:21:10

much about it. You have interviewed so

1:21:13

many people. You have spent time going

1:21:15

through historical records. And this is one

1:21:17

of the events in history that actually

1:21:20

has a mountain of evidence about it.

1:21:22

Compare it to other atrocities, other situations

1:21:24

where we don't have a lot of

1:21:26

evidence. People don't see that. They don't

1:21:29

understand. To them, it's all the same.

1:21:31

And they put things in a very

1:21:33

superficial plateau. The problem is that the

1:21:36

suggestions of an expert, the information of

1:21:38

an expert or somebody who invests. a

1:21:40

tremendous amount of their intellectual prowess into

1:21:43

a particular question becomes as valuable as

1:21:45

as you know the ruminations of somebody

1:21:47

who just learned about it five minutes

1:21:50

ago. And this is the problem that

1:21:52

we have and that's where suggestion becomes

1:21:54

so powerful because now it's about how

1:21:57

white your teeth are and how straight

1:21:59

they are. And that's very dangerous. Yeah.

1:22:01

All right last question. Is somebody dealing

1:22:03

with depression or anxiety or ADHD or

1:22:06

they just want to stop smoking or

1:22:08

drink less or lose some weight or

1:22:10

exercise? What can you recommend that they

1:22:13

do? So, you know, I have a

1:22:15

whole chapter on whether, you know, antidepressants,

1:22:17

for example, are working through the chemical

1:22:20

ingredients in them or through some kind

1:22:22

of a, you know, complex, suggestive process.

1:22:24

And when we look at the data

1:22:27

very critically and very carefully and very

1:22:29

carefully, and it's not, I'm not speaking

1:22:31

on behalf of Amir Raz, I'm speaking

1:22:34

here on behalf of, you know, a

1:22:36

large group of scientists who are looking

1:22:38

at these data for many many years

1:22:40

and doing all kinds of very sophisticated

1:22:43

statistical analysis, we see that the effects

1:22:45

are very very small. So when it

1:22:47

comes to, for example, depression and millions

1:22:50

of people, this is a very real

1:22:52

people, this is a very real disease

1:22:54

and a very serious disease and a

1:22:57

disorder that is not just debilitating in

1:22:59

terms of life quality and things like

1:23:01

that, but also in terms of suicidality

1:23:04

who's inflicted and so on. But we

1:23:06

are demonstrating time and again that some

1:23:08

drugs, antidepressants in particular, are not as

1:23:11

effective as we thought that they once

1:23:13

were. And we can demonstrate that there

1:23:15

are other techniques that are as good,

1:23:17

sometimes better, that antidepressants. And yet in

1:23:20

our society, that's the first thing that

1:23:22

we get. I mean, when we show

1:23:24

signs of depression and we go to

1:23:27

a psychiatrist, they usually give us antidepressants,

1:23:29

and that's a backbone drug in modern

1:23:31

psychiatry despite... in spite of all the

1:23:34

science that we know and you know

1:23:36

you gotta ask yourself why is this

1:23:38

happening why are we not doing something

1:23:41

about this this is scientific knowledge It's

1:23:43

not well It's not

1:23:45

well known from five

1:23:48

minutes ago. well

1:23:50

known for a while.

1:23:52

that Why is it

1:23:54

that it's happening? a

1:23:57

very is a very

1:23:59

complex answer to answer,

1:24:01

because it's not

1:24:04

just about knowledge. It's

1:24:06

not just about

1:24:08

what we know. It's

1:24:11

about about regulation and big

1:24:13

pharma and politics and insurance policies and

1:24:15

regulation. It's about all kinds of things

1:24:17

that have nothing to do with science

1:24:19

and have nothing to do with it.

1:24:21

And and we're looking at the data,

1:24:23

it's clear at plays a huge role a huge

1:24:26

role in getting into depression, getting out of

1:24:28

depression. And And, you know, if we understand that, we

1:24:30

can maybe do something about it in

1:24:32

a different way that we're doing today. Now,

1:24:34

I'm not Now, I'm not poopooing I'm

1:24:36

just saying there's something there that

1:24:38

suggests to us that antidepressants are

1:24:40

far, far away. the from the effectiveness

1:24:42

that we once attributed to them. And

1:24:44

they're probably on par with placebos for

1:24:46

most of of depression. And that's well documented.

1:24:48

in the the mental health literature. Now, what

1:24:50

about the stuff that is not documented

1:24:52

well in the mental health literature? in

1:24:54

Because we haven't even gotten there because

1:24:56

science takes time. Research takes time. It

1:24:58

takes effort. takes, know. takes time, When

1:25:01

it comes to these things, if you

1:25:03

can demonstrate this with it comes to these things,

1:25:05

if you for example, in antidepressants, what

1:25:07

else can you demonstrate? example, an What

1:25:09

I am what else can you say

1:25:12

what I am is that to

1:25:14

say here key the key about about that

1:25:16

it's not just a tool. a

1:25:18

tool. for magicians or but

1:25:21

a fundamental aspect of human nurse psychology. of

1:25:24

human It operates in

1:25:26

all areas of life. in

1:25:28

we understand how we works. how

1:25:30

allows us to works, it allows us

1:25:32

to harness its power improve

1:25:34

well well-being and and resist

1:25:37

manipulation, better navigate

1:25:39

our personal personal realities.

1:25:41

Ultimately, is

1:25:43

is not a sign of weakness, just like

1:25:45

we talked about before, but a complex. deeply

1:25:48

rooted aspect of the human mind that mind

1:25:50

that can leverage in all

1:25:52

kinds of ways. ways to our advantage to

1:25:55

our advantage from mental health,

1:25:57

like the depression that we talked

1:25:59

about talked things like performance in sports

1:26:01

all the way to self-regulation,

1:26:03

to resilience training, for example.

1:26:05

Our mindsets and the functionality

1:26:07

of our brains, our brain

1:26:10

states, are as trainable as

1:26:12

our anatomy. A lot of

1:26:14

people don't understand this concept.

1:26:16

Our physical bodies are controlled

1:26:18

by our minds in addition

1:26:20

to the muscles and the

1:26:22

glands that they're connected to.

1:26:24

And we should take advantage.

1:26:26

of the science and the

1:26:28

research findings that unravel how

1:26:30

we can better tap this

1:26:32

mind-body domain. And that's really

1:26:34

the point that I'm trying

1:26:36

to make. Yep. Well, you

1:26:39

make it brilliantly and very

1:26:41

readable. Here it is again,

1:26:43

the suggestible brain, the science

1:26:45

and magic of how we

1:26:47

make up our minds. It's

1:26:49

a fun read. Thanks, Amir.

1:26:51

Thanks for the book. Thanks

1:26:53

for your work. Thanks for

1:26:55

talking to me for so

1:26:57

long. And yeah, good, good,

1:26:59

good, good show. Thank you

1:27:01

Michael. I love your show

1:27:03

and it's an honor to

1:27:06

be speaking with you. I

1:27:08

really appreciate the opportunity and

1:27:10

I hope that my contribution

1:27:12

would actually tickle some of

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the people out there. Oh,

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