Today's guest is a woman I've been intrigued with for a while. She is a neuroscientist. She's an author, and she's an advisor who focuses on how to get peak mental performance. She wrote a best-selling book called The Source, which is all about things you can do to be your best self. She's a fascinating woman, and I'm grateful for our chat. Today's guest is Dr. Tara Swart. Shine that light on me. I'll sit and tell you my stories. Shine on me, and I will Just so you know, all this air conditioning and ice is really playing havoc with my throat.

Really? Yeah, because I'm not used to it.

Yeah, they don't have it in UK, huh? No. Yeah, sometimes I wonder. I find sometimes I'll go on vacation and I'll stay in a place that doesn't have air cond. It's cool because at first I'm like, this sucks. But then you feel a lot more connected to Nate, just the... I don't know what it is. The environment?

Yes. Minimum, yeah.

You feel way more connected to the environment when you don't have air conditioning, you don't have all these little comforts. Because you're always trying to balance everything for the perfect amount of comfort. That's what I feel like I'm trying to do these days. It's like I'm always trying to, okay, the air conditioner, am I laying the right... When I go to sleep, specifically, it's like, Am I laying the right way? It's like I have to have so many little things perfectly lined up or everything's not going to be okay.

But do you do that thing where you blast the air conditioning, but you sleep under loads of blankets? Yeah. Why? I don't get that. Why not just have the bedding that's correct for the temperature that it naturally is?

Yeah, I think because people have just gone rogue. People don't know how to just beat. People are just crazy like that. Really, they're really sleeper paths, I call them, because it's crazy. Yeah, you're right. I'm going to put it at 65 degrees, and I'm going to bundle up like I'm in Antarctica. Exactly. Yeah. And then the craziest stuff is sometimes you'll see, some people have a rainforest, they have an eye mask on. It literally seems like they're being... It's the same thing as if you were being tortured in a country. It's like they've got an eye mask, there's water dripping in the back. You're like, this is what they used to do to prisoners, it seems like.

Theo, I knew I was going to laugh with you, but I can't believe I've got the giggles already. Do you really? Yeah. Oh, well, I like an eye mask, personally, because I can't tolerate any light when I'm sleeping. But when you said, I have to be in the right position, do you actually know what the right position is, according to a neuroscientist?

Uh-uh. For sleeping? And I'm here with neuroscientists It's Tara Swart, and you're that brain, babe. You're the lady that knows about the brain.

I am.

And we're happy to hear about it today, and we're happy to have you. Do I know the right position? No, I don't. I sleep Yeah.

Tell me how you sleep.

I sleep on my side, I guess, and pillow between my legs, holding a pillow, and just hoping for the best, usually. What do you suggest?

So sleeping on your side is actually the best position.

So sleeping on your side is good? Yeah.

Okay. So left or right. I like to connect everything back to evolution. So When we slept in the cave, we co-slept, so we huddled together for warmth. We probably slept on our left side to protect our heart and have our dominant hand ready for an attack. But now it doesn't matter which side, but a side is better than back or front. The reason is that we're cleaning out our brain very actively overnight. If your neck is stretched like this, then it helps the waste products to get moved out through the lymphatic and lymphatic systems and excretory from your body.

Oh, nice. Yeah, so I'm doing okay.

No wonder you got such a sharp wit.

Yeah, maybe. It used to be better. I had so much stress over the past few years that a lot of my wit has started, has eroded, to be honest with you. I feel like it. I just know it. My brain used to have more fun, and now it feels like it has more responsibility. It doesn't have the ability to have as much fun, I guess. Some of that could be growing up. Some of that could be actually They're having more responsibility. But I think there's just a lot of stress in the world, it feels like, especially here in the States. I feel like everybody's stressed out. Is that something that you're noticing in you guys' field, or is that even something that you guys look at?

I changed career, actually, around the time of the global financial crisis. I went from being a psychiatrist in the National Health Service in the UK to becoming a stress expert and advisor for very senior leadership people in financial services. At that time, we were seeing a lot of high-profile suicides and heart attacks that were caused by stress, even if you weren't overweight or had high blood pressure, or smoked, or something like that. That was a time where a former psychiatrist could really find a niche in a new career to help highly stressed people. Then things seemed to calm down a bit, but I think the new normal was It's just that we're chronically stressed all the time, and then the pandemic happened. So unprecedented levels of stress, health, anxiety, actual illness, and potentially people dealing with death. So it just took things to the next level and meant that all of us were more stressed than we should be all the time. And the brain is constantly monitoring out our stress levels. There's a hormone called cortisol. When that's high all the time, the body literally goes into survival mode. I just feel like that's how so many of us, if not all of us, are at the moment.

Yeah, it feels like that. It feels like everybody's in survival mode. It feels like, why are we like this right now? What's going on? Is it really happening that people are more stressed, or is there just so much more awareness around it that we're also taking it on as a placebo type of thing?

I really don't agree with the latter because remember, I've been a psychiatrist for seven years before I even started coaching in this field. So There were reasons for people to be stressed and us to know about it for a long time. I think what's really changed at the start of the pandemic, I actually predicted this was going to be a mental health crisis. I also said it could be an opportunity for some spiritual revolution. I think that's happening for some people. People who are deep into that are really getting a lot out of it. But for most people, the pandemic happened, we came out of it and we thought, Okay, everything will just go back to normal. But actually, everyone's social circle shrank. We're more lost, lonely, and disconnected than I think ever before in the history of humanity. I think the genders have become very polarized in a way that's not good for either gender. I think that people are really struggling with what to do about that and often doing exactly the opposite of what they should be doing. Using your devices more when actually you should be connecting with people face-to-face more, for example.

But also because of devices and let's say, dating apps, for example, just using people as pieces of garbage that you can get through really quickly instead of forming actual deep, meaningful relationships that could nurture both parties.

Well, it makes sense. I mean, say if you're looking on Amazon and you see different items, you're like, I don't want this one, not this one, maybe this one. Let me read up on it. No, yes. And then you are looking on the same thing and it's people. It would make sense that you start to treat them the same way in a way without even realizing it, maybe, especially because of some of that phone access. What effects do we see when we're really stressed out that people may not notice? I had an experience years ago where I was extremely stressed. Some people I couldn't even talk to, some of my close friends, just because of the volume or the speed they communicated at, I just couldn't handle it. I was so burnt out. And I thought, though, that I just wasn't working hard enough. That was my first thought. I was like, I got to do better. I'm not doing well enough. And that just burnt me even more. What's the best way to recognize when you're somebody that's at the brink, before you get there, I guess?

I always said that one of the most cruel aspects of any mental health issue is that the first symptom is loss of insight. So that means that the first thing that happens to you is you actually lose the clarity that something is going wrong. Being aware is really important. Sometimes this will come from your friends and family saying, Theo, what's going on? You're working like a maniac and you don't really seem well. Or it could come from if you've had previous experiences. Maybe if you ever got into that place again now, you might recognize it quicker because you've been through it before. For sure. Something like journaling can really help with that as well for you to have a tangible thing that you can read saying, I'm not sleeping well, and that's usually a sign that I'm getting burnt out or I've drawn from my social circle.

Yeah, some reflection of yourself. Yeah.

Once you know what that is. I used to have in my journal a list of things to do when I'm stressed because I would find that when I get to the point of realizing that I'm stressed, I don't really have the high my mental functions of working my way out of it. But now I don't need to look at that list. It's very simple things. Talk to a friend, have a square of dark chocolate, take a nap, go for a walk. Nothing too extreme. Once you started doing those things a little bit, then it's obviously also important to address the cause of your stress. If for you it was working excessive hours, then trying to do whatever you can to minimize that in the near future, or if you possibly could take a quick digital detox break over a long weekend or something, you might feel a lot better. One of the things I learned is that if I just take two days of drinking lemon water in the morning and just slowing down and eating really clean, that it can make a big difference in just two days. If you say, I can't take proper time off for two months, but I can do this two days, you might be able to reset yourself.

I try to share a lot of information about resetting your nervous system. There are two modes we can be in, fight, flight, fight, or rest.

Is that three modes or no? Fright, flight, fight.

That's one of them.

That's one of the mode. That's one mode, yeah. Okay, that's one mode as three parts.

Yeah, it's like you get a shock, you want to run away, or you have to attack a predator thing. The other mode is rest and digest. That's the nice feeling you get after you've had a nice meal and you just feel a bit lazy and really calm. We want to be in the rest and digest mode more of the time, but we tend to find that we're hypervigilant, like looking out for the next threat. Actually, if you were willing to share, I have some research to share about the way that you grew up in that environment. There's a lot of breathing exercises that you can do to move yourself into the restful state. For me, things like going for a long walk in nature really helps me to get into that state. People have to identify what it is that for you can reset your nervous system really quick Exactly.

But it's up to you. It's up to us, right? I think sometimes we're all looking for something to fix us or a certain medicine or a certain tea or a certain... We're looking for something to get the job done for us. But in the end, you really have to take control of it.

Yeah. I mean, you mentioned medication, and I didn't even respond to that because to me, that's the absolute last resort. But I think culturally, the UK and the US are a little bit different on that. Oh, yeah.

We're pretty pilled up. We're like our pills. Yeah.

And I did It did actually bring you a little tea that's calming, nurturing one. So there's nothing wrong with that.

You brought me this nice gift, actually. Very sweet. I saw this store. I was walking in London and I saw it. It's called Fortnum & Mason. It was real fancy in there. But yeah, they got some nice tea right here. Rapsody. Botanical infusion. This looks nice. Maybe this little canister. Oh, it's a girl. Yeah, it looks nice. This is very sweet of you. Thank you.

You're welcome.

I'm going to remember to calm down and have me some of this. Is this for calming down? Good. I need it. It's hard. Yeah, it's hard to calm down. It's hard to calm down when you feel like, well, there's all this feeling these days, you have to fend for yourself. I think that's a big I think of a lot of stress right now is everybody feels that. In America, some of the fabric of our society has started to disappear. It's like a lot of things that we felt like people used to feel a sense of purpose from our country, and we're not feeling that now. And so immediately that gets very scary because then you're like, well, what do I belong to? And the closest thing you find is yourself or your family. And so those are the things you really start to lock in on.

Yeah. There's two things I want to say here. I'll start with myself and then come to you. I have worked very hard to create a large community of people around me that I really trust, that make me feel safe, although I agree that safety and peace and freedom have to come from yourself. But you also create the narrative that you have about the world through your experiences and your perception of the world ever since you were a child. But There's a choice as an adult that you can make to change some of that. I put things into place that I can see every day in my life that make me feel like the world is a safe place where I can take some risks and I can trust, and that could make my life better. But I can completely understand why if you haven't worked on that for decades, and maybe you don't know about things like neuroplasticity, which we can come on to, how you can change the pathways in your brain, that it's very easy to default to The world is not a safe place. I'm not safe. I can't trust anyone. I have to be careful.

This particularly came up for me when I was looking into some research, and you shared with me that, Well, I I went to put words into your mouth. I asked you to identify the first age at which you experienced some neglect or abuse or trauma in childhood. Would you like to share what you said?

Yeah, for sure. I talk about this sometimes on here, and I don't want to beat a dead horse, but this is an environment where it's helpful to share about that stuff. My mother had a condition, I think, where she couldn't share this. I say it's an emotional autism in a way, but she didn't know if there was something wrong with you. My mother didn't really build a connection with me when I was young. She didn't really look at me. She didn't touch me very much, and she couldn't tell if there was something wrong with me. If I was sitting somewhere crying, she If I didn't understand there was something wrong. Or if I looked scared, she didn't understand there was something wrong. Now, if I had a cut on my arm, she immediately could be like, Oh, what's going on here? Because it was very… I don't know if it was obvious.

It'sit was tangible. It's physical.

It was tangible, yeah. But anything that was intangible, like emotional, there was just no… There was nothing there. I think, yeah, when I grew up, it was just like that a lot. I was constantly in a fight or flight, Probably.

Yeah. I know that you want to heal and move on and not flog a dead horse, but I really feel like I can bring some new information to you that could really help you. Great. No, it's good. There's a psychological construct called Psychosocial Stages of Childhood Development. Now, Freud first described this and basically said, whether it's from zero to two or two to five or five to seven, whenever you feel like the first separation from parents or illness or something happened, there's a rewiring of that child's brain. Freud said, The outcome is always bad, so something goes wrong. You suffered neglect or trauma. This is what's going to be wrong with you. But Erichson came along later and said that it could be a vice or a virtue. So something could go wrong. Obviously, a lot of people end up with substance abuse or criminality and things like that. But if you're lucky, if you have one supportive adult in your life or you as a child make some amazing intuitive choice, then you can go down the other path. Now, for you, having experienced this from zero to 18 months, which is the first stage and then on, it's the vice and virtue are mistrust and trust.

If you go down the road of mistrust, it's feeling unsafe in your environment and having fear of future events. But it's also possible that you could have gone down the road of feeling safe in your environment and hopeful for future events. The piece I really loved, which is connected to the gift. After you shared that with me before I flew, I never, ever take a gift to someone if I'm going to do a podcast. I also think it's a little, maybe a slightly strange thing to do, but I just had this feeling in my heart, I really want to get him a gift. Obviously, that shop is very English, so that made sense. But I walked around the entire store and I looked at every tea, and it has like, teas and jams and cookies and stuff. I finally found that one and picked it. Then I did further research into Erichson, and he basically said that the way for you to heal is through nourishment and affection. That was exactly why I chose the gift that I chose for you. Obviously, my neuroscience experience brought me to an intuitive answer. But it also said that if you do the right work and you're still in the window of opportunity, in your 40s, midlife is actually a big opportunity to rewire your brain in a really healthy way, then the outcome that you could have would be a really positive experience of interdependence and relatedness.

Well, thank you. It's very sweet of you. And it's nice to have, and we'll make sure to keep it in here so we can remember that, too. Our listeners and viewers can look at it and remember that, too, that there's a way to move forward, right? That's the biggest thing. Because at a certain point, you There's part of you that gets tired of using the past as a crutch. There's a part of you that still is in some pain from it. And then there's a part of you that slowly comes along that really wants to move forward. And that part starts to grow. I've noticed that part grow in me more, especially in the past year. So I'm grateful for that. I never really thought that that would happen. But is there a way that people can choose the perspective that they want if they want to choose mistrust or trust now that they're an adult? Yeah.

So interestingly, Carl Jung, another psychologist, also said that 42 to 44 is the corridor of age where we go from not being our best selves to the ability to choose. I think you're in that age. Yeah, I'm in there. Yeah, and you said in the last year, it happened. Unless people have some crisis, like a divorce at the age of 35 or something, then people don't usually come to this point of, do I choose trust or mistrust, naturally, until about 42 to 44. First of all, obviously, you have to know that there are these options. If people Google Erichson's Stages of Psychosocial Development. Basically, trust versus mistrust is the first one. That was you. A lot of my CEO clients are in the industry versus inferiority one, which is age 5 to 7. Usually.

Is that like the... You always hear a lot about you don't think you're good enough or whatever.

Yeah, imposter syndrome.

Yeah, you always hear about that imposter syndrome. Yeah.

Is pornography causing a problem in your life?

That's a good question. It's a real question. It has in mind. It has at certain periods in my life, watching porno and everything and watching porno was making me... It was ruining my life. It was ruining my life, man. Made me feel just so much shame. That's what it did. Well, I'm watching pornography has become commonplace today. Oftentimes, men will use porno to numb the pain of loneliness, boredom, anxiety, and depression. That's all I want to introduce you to my friend, Stephen Wolt. Steve is the founder of Valor Recovery. He is a dear friend of mine. He is a dear friend of mine. Valor Recovery is a program to help men overcome porn abuse and sexual compulsivity. That's right. Their coaches are in long-term recovery, and they will be your partner, mentor, and spiritual guide to transcend problematic behaviors. There is zero commitment if you reach out to them. It's just the first step in trying to figure out if you may need some help, if you can get some help. To learn more about Valor Recovery, please visit them at valorrecoverycoaching. Com or email them at admin@valorrecoverycoaching. Com. The links will be on the YouTube.

Again, there's no commitment when you reach out to them. But I promise you, only something positive will come from you reaching out and figuring out what type of help, if any, could benefit you. Thank you. How do we adjust our perspective? Is it Is it that possible that we can adjust our perspective now?

Yeah. There's this amazing thing called neuroplasticity. When I was still at medical school, we didn't have sophisticated scanning techniques for brains or bodies. We had X-rays, and Oh, yeah.

And just asking people guessing?

Yeah, and just asking people guessing. Yeah, and neurology, a lot of guessing, because if someone had a brain tumor, but you knew where it was roughly, then you would say, Oh, now we know which part of the brain you use for writing. It was A lot of guesswork in neurology, particularly. Once we could scan brains, we could see how healthy brains are working. What's happening when you're experiencing an emotion or you're recalling a memory or you're making a decision? Or being really funny, we can see what's going on in the brain, which parts of the brain are interacting with each other, which systems are getting a lot of blood flow. We also then found out that, because we used to think that by the time you stopped physically growing, like age 18, that your brain became completely fixed, your personality, your IQ, et cetera. We now know that the brain actively grows and changes till we're about 25. If you think of a newborn baby, it can't do anything. Within 18 months-It's ridiculous, really.

If you look at him, you're like, This is ridiculous. You would never draft one on your fantasy team or whatever. It's bad. But anyway, go on. I like what God does, but some of that is The starting point is very far. You're far off the line, it feels like.

But isn't it incredible what happens within 18 months? Yeah. Then they're walking, they can control their own bladder and bowels. They can speak up to five languages if they've been exposed to different languages in the first few years of their life. That's the biggest example of neuroplasticity. That change is incredible, as you've just said. Then in teenage, there's quite a lot of change. The brain becomes a bit more sophisticated for adulthood. Then this process is going on really actively till we're about 25. Then from 25 to 70-ish, you have to put in more effort to get your brain to change, to get your brain to keep learning and growing. But it's absolutely possible. For some people, it's okay to plateau. If you get a job that you love and you want to do that for the rest of your life, and you married your high school sweetheart and nothing really to change, that's fine, too. But for a lot of us, this opportunity to think that you can really change your personality, your career, your community, your resilience throughout your life is like a beacon of hope.

Yeah, 100 %. Yeah, because you start to think, oh, it's too late. But you're saying it's not. No. Wonderful.

So once you know about... And also, I'm doing that thing about saying so the whole time, which I'm going to start doing.

Do people say it a lot? Yeah. Who does? Americans?

Well, an American producer told me that everybody does it.

Says so? Yeah. I don't know if we do. We might. I don't know. I don't know that much, but- Anyway. Yeah, I'm hopeful that you know what you're talking about because I don't.

If you know about neuroplasticity, that means you know that you have some options to change the way that you behave in the outside world or your thought patterns and your beliefs about yourself.

Right. You're saying there's still a lot of hope. There's still a lot of hope for people from 20 to 75. It shouldn't be anything you feel hopeless about. Your brain, you can still... And that's the main thing you got to change.

Yeah. And you might be able to identify what that is for yourself. But I think this Eric stages is a really helpful one because people can go and look up the age that they were when they first felt abandoned or neglected, and then work out what their particular issue is and work on that. But if I was doing a proper session with you, like I do with people, I would ask you, what is the repeated negative thought that you have about yourself?

I don't know if it's a thought, but it feels like a belief, and it just feels like I have to do something to be worth something. That's the biggest one. I think that was always there. Whatever I do isn't enough. This isn't good enough. You're not enough. That was a deep one. It's not even something I I think. It's just something that it's almost like a magnet that's inside of me, and it brings my other thoughts down to it a lot of times.

You've said the thought and the belief, which often what I have to do with people is dig under the thought to actually find out what the belief is that's driving that thought. Then I help people to create an affirmation that's the opposite of that belief.

Yeah, because sometimes it's like the thought will be, Man, this isn't good enough. It goes back to the belief that I would always set my goals ridiculous. So always I felt like I was underachieving, always. Because I didn't even know what my goals were, but I just knew that I needed to get my mother's attention. I needed to get some feeling. I needed to get some response, right? And I would try everything, and nothing worked. And so I think it created this thing inside of me where you always have to keep trying. There's never a piece. You have to keep trying, and it's always never going to work.

Everything you do will never be enough. Just to even get that minimal piece of attention from your primary caregiver.

Everything I do will never be enough. And so it started, then that went through my life, I guess.

Have you heard of a part of the brain called the amygdala? Yeah. This is where all our basic emotions come from.

Like caveman stuff, huh?

Yeah. There's that movie, I think it's called Free Solo, about the guy who climbs a crazy vertical cliff face in Yosemite.

Oh, yeah. That guy's really interesting.

Have you seen his brain scan?

No.

Okay, so they found out that basically he doesn't really have an amygdala or any activity in his amygdala, so he can't feel fear. That's why he'll do things that you and I would be like, I'm not going to do that because I'm going to die if I do that. Yeah.

My buddy Jeff was like that. He would always burn a lot of shit in his house and stuff, and he He was an idiot. Oh, wow. This is that guy's brain scan?

This is so cool that you do this, by the way.

Yeah. It's neat to be able to see things. Wow. So he doesn't have a fear. So some people have less fear than other people.

So fear is actually our most basic emotion. And in this movie, in this documentary, they showed that the reason he could do these crazy things was because he wasn't experiencing fear. But in similar research, we see that female primates who have physical damage to their amygdala will neglect or even physically abuse their babies. What's becoming interesting now is that this psychological stuff, like you say, I think my mom had some form of emotional autism, it's becoming much more aligned to physiological stuff. Now we say anything biological probably has a psychological element, and anything psychological may be underpinned by some neurological issue. It's perhaps too late to investigate that, but But it just makes the point that there are so many reasons you could have been like that, and none of them are actually to do with you.

Because as a youth, you think it's your... Of course, when you're a baby or a kid, everything in the world revolves around you. So if the world isn't giving you a lot of stuff back, then you think it's your fault. And so that's where you create ideas like, Oh, I'm not enough. Nothing I ever do will be enough.

And how do you think this has played out in your relationships with women throughout your life?

It's been tough, I think. It's been tough. I remember I would be... I didn't know how long to look at a girl when you looked at them. I would get super nervous. I remember in my 20s, if there was animacy or something, I got super. It made me super nervous. I always felt nervous. It gave me, yeah, sexual problems because just the mistrust. I think just not knowing how to be around somebody, those types of things for sure. And then I think fear. I put women on a pedestal a lot of times. It was like if they were always unattainable in a way inside of me. I'm not going to get a girl that I want. I'm just going to get a girl that I hope the best that a girl will want me. That was maybe some of my some thought patterns. Those aren't all the things that I have today. Some of that has certainly eroded, and I've learned a lot over the years and stuff. But those are some of the things I think, if that's what you're asking about. Yeah.

I mean, it makes sense because it's basically a mirror of no matter what I did, I couldn't get my mom's attention, so women must be so far away. I won't be able to get their attention. Yeah.

And then if one did, I would be overbearing sometimes. You learn all that stuff the hard way then. You're like, if a girl looks at you one time or even if she's just taking her garbage out or whatever, and you're hiding in the bushes or whatever. But even if she looks over, you're like, damn, this might be something real. I would adjust my plans. I'm going to go out of town. But then I'd seen this girl. I was like, maybe I'll stay in town a few extra days. Maybe I'll see this girl again. I based a lot of my life around the hope that there would be some connection. So that stuff, I think, wasn't very healthy. And then when I did get a connection with a woman, it was too much. It was very hard to lock in on a relationship. But I always found myself cheating, that thing.

Have you heard about this hormone called oxytocin. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, the way that we build the emotional architecture in our brains is through eye contact with our mom. You didn't have that. You also didn't get physical affection, which your mother holding you or cuddling you would induce oxytocin, and that would help to build healthy neural architecture in your emotional system. So you didn't have that.

No, the architecture was very limited. It was Luckily, it was a damn... It was more of a Hardees. I felt like that somebody had built a Tim Hortons inside of me. It was just more of a kebab shack than it was a real fixture of love, it felt like.

I was going to say, I don't know what Tim Hortons is, so I couldn't laugh at that joke.

It's just like a drive-through establishment. It wasn't a real place of... There wasn't a ton of value in the architecture, I don't think.

And In your life now, whether it's through friends, family, pets, sometimes even things like bathing or getting a massage, how much physical affection do you get?

Well, it's weird because I created a life that's isolating sometimes because I think that's maybe what I was used to. But now it's gotten better. I go do get more massages. I find myself I am able to lock in a little bit more on communication with women. I feel more confident. I've been done therapy for a long time. I did some ayahuasca seminars, things like that. So plant medicine. So there's been things that I think have helped me. Okay.

So for people who are lonely, because I think this is an issue as well at the moment. Bathing instead of showering actually gives you oxytocin because you're enveloped in warmth. It's like a hug. So that's one thing that people can do.

Oh, yeah. When you get out of a warm bath, you're just like, oh, man. Yeah. Yeah. You I just feel like a baby.

Do you think this is the reason that you sleep with the air conditioning on so high and so that you're wrapped up in lots of blankets?

It could be. I notice if I don't tuck the blanket under my feet, then it's very hard for me to sleep. So I'm still, yeah, I'm definitely a very tall baby, I think.

Yeah, I think so.

So that's okay. I have to remember that sometimes. I'm in recovery programs, and they're always like, We're all babies. We're just retarded. I don't know if people say, but we're just babies that are having a tough time. If you saw a baby smoking or drinking a coffee, you'd be like, God, this baby-is in a bad way. He isn't doing well. Yeah, or the baby was taking Propecia or something like, God, this baby needs some help.

Needs some help.

Yeah, I'm one of those babies, but I'm getting better. I feel like I'm a... Now I'm a camp counselor of the babies. I'm not as much. I'm still a baby, but I'm evolving out of it pretty quick, I hope.

Another tip for you. I'm pleased to hear that you're having massages and therapy. But I find that there's a place that talking therapy can't go beyond, and that is trauma that is stored in the body that you're not even consciously aware of. Have you heard of that book, The Body Keeps the Score? Yeah. It was written in the '70s, but it's back in the bestseller list, which is making me feel hopeful that more people are realizing that since the pandemic, that we've got trauma stored in our bodies. I've actually recently been doing some somatic therapy called Body Realignment. It seemed to be, for me, surfacing emotions that I perhaps don't allow myself to in talking therapy or in regular life. I think there are some emotions, for example, anger, that it's quite still socially unacceptable for women to express.

That's a good point. Yeah, women aren't allowed to get super angry, I guess.

When I did boxing, I actually felt like I released a lot of anger as well. I can only do that physically, whether it's through a sport or this body thing. I think for men, it might be things more like sadness that it's not socially acceptable to express as much.

Yeah, probably so. I think a little bit. Even though it's more now, I think people are... Now everything's a little bit more free. What type of trauma really can get held in our bodies?

Oh, all sorts. That phrase psychosomatic is that all the various emotions that we can feel can end up showing up as physical symptoms in our body. That can be actual illness, but also it can just be aches and pains. For me, it's like tense shoulders and just aches and pains. But when I actually had the body realignment therapy, there were parts of my body that I wouldn't even think, like the size of my ribs and things that was so painful. The therapists, they know which parts of your body certain emotions get stored in. I think for that one, you really have to find someone that can guide you through that. But another point that I really wanted to make is we talk a lot about trauma. You set such a great example to people of, Don't just keep focusing on the trauma and be a victim. I actually think we have as much access to generational healing as we do to generational trauma. Horrific things have happened in the past, like the Holocaust, Apartheid, slavery, the treatment of the first Americans.

Yeah, France went in the World Cup as well. Some people would tell me. That was bad.

It was pretty... Yeah, it will affect people for generations into the future. I think some people will. Yeah, totally.

Some people it will. But what were you going to say?

I was going to say that we can also get access to ancestral or ancient wisdom. If we put that together with the somatic stuff, think about what our ancestors when they didn't really have resources spare to have fun, right? But they danced, they drummed, they chanted, they hummed, they sang, they painted. These physical activities are actually really good for us and can help us to release some of that stored trauma. I'd love people to go away with that message that, yes, you might have stored trauma that talking therapy hasn't completely got rid of, but there are things that you can do at home. You don't have to pay for a massage. You can do self-massage, you can take a bath, you can dance around your living room. All of these things could also help you to release that trauma.

I've noticed there will be times where I've done yoga in a certain thing, and then I'll lay down after it, and tears will come out of my face. It's just pain, something being released. Sometimes a memory or something might be with it or a feeling. But it's pretty amazing that that thing can happen.

In yoga, hip opening, particularly, releases a lot of emotions. Again, people can Google some of the hip opening poses, and you're supposed stay in them for longer, five minutes. If it produces tears, then it's definitely helping release trauma. Yeah.

I feel like we've been all over the place right now. I want to talk... Let's go through a couple of things. I want to know, does stress affect men and women the same?

This is a really interesting one. There are different forms of stress. One is called adaptive stress, and it's actually a very healthy response to a short term stresser, like a deadline or a podcast interview or something. Then there's the chronic stress, which is bad for us because it starts to erode our immunity. It causes a lot of inflammation throughout the body. But the differences between men and women aren't with regard to those. It's with regard to how we respond to being in either of those situations. So men, and all of this is based on population norm studies, so it's most men and most women, but not all. Understood. Men are very good at reacting to a crisis and releasing all of that cortisol and adrenaline and fighting off the monster or whatever it is, but they have to rest afterwards. Women can actually find ways to recoup resilience during long periods of stress, so they'll still be dealing with the stressful thing, but at times they'll find, whether it's speaking with a girlfriend or taking a bath or going for a walk in nature, they find ways to keep their resources topped up so they don't have that crash that more men tend to have.

I I wonder sometimes if a lot of... Because we have so many... Everybody feels so stressed at it, and it seems like it's such a thing. I wonder, sometimes I think it used to be we had to literally be weary of a lying attack on us. It was really fight or flight. But now that's not the case. But I wonder if that thing that was worried about everything out here just started to go inside of us because there wasn't anything else out here to fight, Yeah, absolutely.

The biggest threats to our safety now are psychological threats. So things like your partner leaving you, you losing your job, your friend's not liking you anymore.

Yeah, the fear started to become internal as opposed to external. And I wonder if we're partially just in a phase of that. It's almost like an evolution because, yeah, the lions now are the fears inside of us. Like you're saying, our partner leaving us or us losing our ability to feed our families or a goal that we have not working out or something, losing a job.

The things that you need to keep your basic life on the road that it's on and not lose the things that make you feel psychologically safe.

Are you less stressful if you're in a relationship? Does relationships or love having somebody, a family, does that affect stress at all?

It depends what relationship, right? Good point. If it's an interdependent, trusting relationship where both parties are in it for the long term, then that inevitably will reduce your stress levels. But what I'm seeing a lot of at the moment, actually, is as women, we tend to be having the same conversation situations that, whether you're in your 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, of want to find a nice man and settle down. But just feeling like that desire for commitment isn't the as it was basically since there have been apps and stuff like that. But I've actually got some really close male friends, and they've been confiding in me recently that, A, they don't really talk to each other about deep things like they do with me, and that some of them have no one to confide in. Wow. And lovely guys who I think would make nice husbands for some of my friends, but have been so broken by toxic relationships that they've been in that they now just want non-committal casual relationships. This is where the problem starts, is where a guy says, let's say it was you and I, and you say, Tara, I've had all these issues.

I've just told you about my upbringing, mommy issues, et cetera. I can't commit to you, but we can hang out. But if I'm thinking, Well, I'd like to marry you, so I'm going to hang out with you in the hope that you'll get to know me and like me and change your mind, that happens so much. Then it leads to issues, obviously, for both parties when it doesn't work out. That's an incredibly stressful place to be in, no matter what gender you are. The outcome only reinforces for both that you're not worthy of love.

Yeah. How does it reinforce that?

For the woman, particularly if they're actually being intimate, she will be experiencing a lot of oxytocin. Basically, that happens through cuddling and physical intimacy, but off the scale when you orgasm. She'll be getting more and more bonded to the guy. If the guy has no intentions of this becoming a committed relationship, then he'll be experiencing a lot of reward, like the dopamine, the reward chemical, lots of testosterone. There's also this hormone called vasopressin, which in both genders is to do with our blood volume and our blood salt. But for men, it's also to do with bonding, social bonding, and not aggression, but aggression in terms of protecting and being possessive of your partner. If men don't get to have sex straight away, that hormone will build and build and build, and then they'll become bonded to the woman. Then they'll also start releasing oxytocin when they orgasm.

There's better value in creating a relationship if you don't have sex immediately.

It will work better for the woman in terms of chances of the man bonding with her.

I feel like sometimes I've romanticized the past, and it feels like that used to be more of the thing. People would wait till marriage for sex, and so that had a lot more value to it. Yeah, I think sex and animacies was I don't know, for a lot of guys, it got replaced by pornography, too. I think really damaged it, especially for me. Once I found pornography, there was a way to have a feeling, a connection with a woman that It was safe enough for me to be in. I knew I wasn't going to be hurt. There was some sexual reward to it, and I could start it and stop it as I wish. And it was the only relationship I could even really handle. I was in other relationships, but none of them were as long as my relationship with pornography, to be honest. Yeah. Right now, I think I'm 77 days off of pornography and 70 days off of masturbation. So I've had sexual activities, but I haven't been touching my wing or whatever. People just say different stuff. I'm saying, I don't know what they say in your country, topping off the-Wanking.

Yeah, okay. Wanking, whatever. Thinking of the queen or whatever they say. I don't know what they say. Queen takes rook or whatever. That's like a chest move. But yeah, so that's been different. For me, Maybe that's been different, but that was a huge thing.

How is it different?

Well, for one, I quit thinking about it. It's like, I don't think about pornography. I don't think about masturbation. I don't have that weird feeling where I'll masturbate, and then I'll just be laying there. I'm still right where I was, but I've ejaculated or whatever. Because sometimes semen, or some people call it, I don't know what people call it or whatever, party sauce or whatever. I don't even know what people call on the street or whatever. But I feel like the more I keep it in my body, the more masculine I feel, and the more of myself I feel, as opposed to just having a leak of it constantly. It was like almost had a leak of my masculinity. I would cause the leak, but the leak would happen. It was just like a dripping pipe. It was like, you look at a dripping pipe, you're like, you know. But you look at a pipe that's not dripping, you're like, Hey, this is some pretty good construction over here.

I love that phrase, leak of masculinity.

Yeah, that's what it felt like now that I really think about it. And then I start to look at women a little bit. I don't think of it just so much in... I've always thought of women in more than just a sexual sense, but the sexual part isn't as strong. It's not like, let me just think about sex. It's giving me a little bit more space in myself to be like, well, let me think about who this person is and do I really want to engage with them? It starts to give a little bit more value to sex for me. And by that happening, intimacy is created because for one, I have a little more intimacy with myself. I respect my intimacy a little bit more. I'm not just mastering it. I'm not just tossing my intimacy off to some person through a screen or something that doesn't really mean anything to me. And so I think those are some feelings in my head that start to happen, and I start to feel a little bit more, I don't know if it's integrity, but it is a little bit more of intimacy with myself.

That's lovely. One of the reasons that people resort to things like that, particularly after a breakup, is that the brain circuitry that is to do with unrequited love is relieved by certain activities because they cause the same chemical cocktail. Those activities are things like alcohol, cocaine, pornography. Yeah.

Yeah, sorry.

Yeah. Well, it makes it make This is why people go to those things. Obviously, they're addictive. Then it becomes something that you need to do more of to get the same reward.

That becomes your relationship. Then it's like, well, yeah, of course, other relationships are going to be different because I don't even realize the relationships that I put in front of human relationships.

The other thing is that pornography creates such an unrealistic, idealized version of what a woman should look like and what she should be prepared to do in an intimate relationship. Relationship or even not in an intimate relationship, like in a one night stand or very early in dating. That's very damaging to male and female relationships as well, the expectation that you will naturally have if you've been looking at that every day. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. And to not have it in my brain and it starts to my imagination starts to start up again. That's one thing that's disappeared over the years, I feel like, is our imagination, because we have access at anything you want to see. You want to see two gay guys attack a squirrel or whatever in a marina or whatever. But you can Google it right now and you'll find it. Anything you want to find out there, it's like we don't need our imagination. We used to have to imagine things. Yeah. And so now my imagination starts to start up again because I'm not attaching porn to women I meet now. And there, right there, squirrel attacks, twink, right there, that is. Yeah, I don't know. And that might have been the rebuttal. Who knows where the first attack started. But yeah, so that's something that's been really neat just on this recently that I've been doing and really seeing some reward from it. And you know what's so crazy? For years, I tried different blockers on computers and stuff. And I got started with this recovery coach, and he just said, Why don't you text me at night?

And he said, Tell me Tell me something that felt good during your day. Tell me something you felt like maybe you could have done a little bit differently. Then tell me how long you've been off of porn and how long you've been off of masturbation. For some reason, that's all it took. It's just been so easy.

Well, it's accountability.

Maybe that's it. It's like accountability with somebody that I trust.

And that you respect because you will feel like you've let them down if you can't send those messages.

That's a Yeah, it's funny. I didn't feel that as much, but I just felt I was shocked at how easy it started to help me. So that's one thing that's been really nice. Do couples What is the chemistry that happens in the brain if you're in a... If you've created a... You're in a comfortable relationship or you mentioned earlier that families have better chemistry if they sleep together. Can you say something like that? Or sleeping under one roof? A lot of my Mexican friends are always so happy, and most of their families live together.

Intergenerational.

Yeah. They sleep on each other's backs sometimes. They're really close knit. Yeah. What is it? Is there scientific evidence to back any of that up?

Yeah, lots. And the research was done on Prairie voles.

Prairie, like little animals? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Bring up one Prairie dog.

Prairie Vole, not dog.

Prairie vole, they call them. You all make everything fancy.

We know what they are. It's not a dog. It's like a little mouse thing.

It is, well.

Let's see who's right. See?

Prairie vole? I've never seen that. Oh, dang. That's Rodentia. Yeah. Wow. Is that a... That almost looks like a little bit of a hamster or something or a little gerble. Gerble? Yeah, you don't have them. You got them?

Gerble.

I guess that maybe the J is silent or whatever. It's not a That gerble, baby, look at them. Those are a couple. I'll make slippers out of them bad boys. I'll make a newborn a set of slippers with them little warm... Them little chunks of warmth.

No, those are beautiful. Make your slippers out of the marsh voles because they are promiscuous. These ones are monogamous. They mate for life.

Oh, they do? Oh, that's beautiful. They studied them and they found that these are healthier animals? Is that what you're going to tell me?

That's a little bit oversimplified. Okay. I would I would say that basically, they're the same vole, but some of them live in the prairie and some of them live in the marsh. In the marsh, there's plenty of food and shelter. Why not have sex with lots of other sheevals? Because you can.

It's partying. It's like being in the city. Yeah.

In the prairie, to make sure that your young would survive, it's more advantageous for you to settle down with one Mrs. Vol and protect the children, protect the territory, and share the job of finding food for them. So what happens in the Prairie Voles compared to the Marsh Voles is that certain receptors, so for some of the hormones we discussed, like oxytocin and vasopressin and dopamine. If we were Prairie voles rather than Marsh voles, and you would get a dopamine hit every time you saw me. You would choose me over a different vole. It's not like a new strange vole. You'd say, No, I'd rather stay with my vole. You'd have higher levels of vasopressin and oxytocin We'd both have more receptors in the reward centers of the brain for those hormones. We would just feel so good every time we see each other. If we saw the other one in distress, we would want to comfort them.

Why did they create more receptors?

We don't know why. It's not just that you have more of the hormone, but you have more of the receptors in certain parts of the brain. It's part of the bonding, increases the bonding, the fact that you've got more of the hormone and more of the receptors, and it's in the reward part of the brain. But actually, it's not just like if we just hung out together and looked after the babies and fed them and saw each other frequently, that would happen. But sexual activity actually intensifies the wiring. So it's like the genetics and the receptors load the gun, but actually having sex pulls the trigger.

Interesting. Well, so that's why you see if it's a healthy family, then that's why people want to be in a healthy family because it feels good. Yeah.

The co-sleeping is a different thing. That's oxytocin.

Co-sleeping?

Yeah, which is sleeping together, you two and the kids.

Are those people healthier?

Or even just the couple sleeping together because some people don't sleep together because they snore or whatever.

Oh, yeah. I know you're talking about people in New Jersey. I know it. I've been I'm in the air. The women snore, too. Dang. Yeah. You're like, Gosh, is this my wife or is this a refinery I'm laying next to? Anyway, with no other issues like that, it is more healthy for you to sleep together because you increase both of your levels of oxytocin will go up. So you feel better. Your brain feels better- Totally.sleeping with someone that it cares about or just anyone?

You would get some benefits It's not the same as sleeping with just anyone, but it's much more if it's somebody that you care about and that you love.

If a family is closer together, that's even more.

Indian families, like Mexican families, sleep together. Or at least one of the children, let's say there's a widowed grandparent, one of the grandchildren would sleep with them, so no one sleeps alone.

Wow, that's pretty cool. Are there animals that do that as well? Do you think that we learn that from?

All animals I can't believe that.

They do?

Well, obviously, some animals, like snow leopards, they're completely independent. They don't even stay with their children after a certain age. I know. It's really sad. But most animals will sleep together. There's a few things that go on there. One is that you actually share your gut microbiome. We have an oral microbiome, a skin microbiome, and a gut microbiome, which are the good bacteria that help us not just to digest and help our mental health, but also contribute to our immunity. So if we ate together, kissed, slept together, then I'm guessing I've got a better gut microbiome than you. I would actually donate healthy cells to you as part of a relationship. Really? Yeah, and improve your immunity.

Wow. So there's a lot of value in being close to someone, and there's a lot of neuroscientific value. That's cool. Yeah, I guess it makes sense. It certainly makes sense.

Well, we had to be part of a tribe to survive when we lived in the cave, right?

For sure. If you ever seen a group of puppies or whatever, somebody has a box of dogs or whatever, they always look like it. If you see them all right there by the mom, it looks like the funnest thing in the world.

Even just looking at a puppy with big eyes would make you release oxytocin.

God, then I need to start dating animals then. I don't know what you guys' laws are, but might have to come over there to do it. But here's some of the world's most solitary animals right here. Platypus. Yeah, I could see that maybe. Polar bear. That's sad, man. That's sad. Because it's so cold and they're just up there. And polar bears, every video, you see a polar bear, it's like the polar bear is looking for food. It's just like, God.

And the ice cubes are melting. Did I say ice cube?

It's floating on four grams of ice or whatever. It's just like, God, it just seems like a horrible life. Snow Leopard, Sandpiper, Hawaiian Monk Seal, the Chukwala Lizard.

Snow Leopard is beautiful. I feel like I would want to be one, but I wouldn't want to be on my own.

You'd have to be, though.

I'll just be a regular effort then.

That's fair. Okay, you're allowed, miss. First of all, I'd like to say thank you to Dan Morgan and everyone over at Morgan & Morgan. We had an issue with Ky, the hitchhiker, and he filed a lawsuit against us, and he made quite a hullabaloo. But Morgan & Morgan stuck with it until finally our case was dismissed. Morgan & Morgan is America's largest injury law firm. They have over 100 offices nationwide and more than 800 lawyers, with over $15 billion, covering over 300,000 clients. Morgan & Morgan has a proven track record of fighting to get you full and fair compensation. Submitting an injury claim with Morgan & Morgan is so easy. If you've ever been injured, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. Their fee is free unless they win. For more information, go to forthepeople. Com/thispastweekend, or dial pound law, pound 529, from your cell phone. That's forthepeople. Com/thispastweekend. Weekend, or dial pound law, pound 529 from your cell. This is a paid advertisement. What is it about love today that makes it seem like you think it's harder to find? Or am I just romanticizing it?

I think that one of the reasons is that we're living so much longer. To be honest, in cave times where all we had to do was survive to reproduce our genes, you and I, it wouldn't be worth us being alive anymore at the ages that we're at now. Now that we're living much longer and the divorce rates are 50%, people are looking for that second long relationship or even third long relationship that they might have in their life. I think it's just very hard. Obviously, people did stay together for 50 plus years or whatever. I just think society has changed. It's all about instant gratification and short termism and Our attention spans have changed because of the internet and smartphones and apps and things like that. It's just become more socially acceptable as well. In many cultures, they still won't divorce, but the cultures that we exist in, it's quite normal now.

It's a swap meet. It's very much a swap meet, it feels like. I know you talked about maybe coming out of the pandemic that people would sense a return maybe to faith. Is there any proof that having faith in higher power has a positive effect on your brain?

Yeah. Having a moderate amount of faith or some spiritual belief is beneficial for the brain. But having none or too much, like fundamentalism, is actually not good for your brain.

Really? How does having too much affect your brain negatively?

Well, it might become associated with certain levels of paranoia or mistrust or survival emotions like anger or hatred or fear, because it often means that you have to be against someone. Right.

So when you get to the point where you're against somebody or where you're so for just one thing that you're then inherently against other things. It's not as healthy for you. In your work, you advise a lot of very powerful people because I know that you have worked with a lot of a lot of the powers in the world will come to you to help them. What are problems that powerful people have and successful people have that maybe would surprise us, do you think? You don't have to It's not specific, but if you want to share anything.

Well, the first thing I will say is that the problems are pretty much exactly the same, whether it was a patient I saw in the National Health Service as a doctor or as it is now as an executive advisor to very senior people. Because I'm a stress expert, I do tend to see people who are managing really high levels of stress and complexity. They're also traveling a lot, so their sleep might be really disrupted. They often don't really believe in sleeping that much anyway. It's all those habits, people who don't get enough sleep who... I mean, they would tend to eat well because they can afford to, but they might not be eating in what I call a brain It's a first approach. They might be eating because they want to run a marathon or because they can afford expensive things, but that's not necessarily what's best for your brain, so I can help them with that.

Really, is eating in certain ways better for your brain? Because I find most of the time I eat just because I have to. If I didn't have to eat, a lot of times I would just keep working or doing something. I don't eat a lot of variety of stuff. I'm not a foodie, I guess. I maybe would be once I get married or something. If my wife wants to get something or order something, then I would try something more new or something. But I just usually make a quesadilla or have a smoothie because it's easy.

Wow. So you wait till you're hungry and then just eat something because you have to.

Yeah, that's how I am. It's a little bit... It's sad, really, but it's okay.

Maybe it's because you don't know that even though your brain is such a small percentage of your body weight, it uses up 20 to 30% everything that you eat.

Really? Yeah. Your brain does? Yeah.

Wow. So when you're asleep, your brain is using up 20% of what you ate that day.

What a beef, huh?

It's just energy hungry. That's what we would call it. And so when you're really focused on something like this, you're probably using up about 25%, but if you're under a lot of stress, your brain will take up 30% of what you're eating. Wow.

What happens to our brain while we're sleeping? Do you know?

We know quite a lot more about it now than we did, let's say, 20, 30 years ago, but we probably don't know everything. We actually don't. Well, we've only recently understood why we need to sleep for 8-9 hours, and that's because that cleaning process I mentioned.

What, with nine now?

Well, 8 hours and 15 minutes is the ideal in the population norm studies.

Let's round it up. I'll take nine if we're willing to do it.

Nine in bed so that you get at least seven to eight hours of sleep. Because that cleansing process takes seven to eight hours. That process is flushing out toxins that are exactly the same pathologies that we see in dementia and Alzheimer's and things like that. They build up due to the daily wear and tear of life, stress and alcohol and processed food and all that thing. I know there's a big debate in this country at the moment about ultra-processed food, but from a brain point of view, don't eat it.

Really? Yeah. It's really bad for you?

Really bad.

What are some What are the effects that processed foods have on your brain?

Well, everything comes down to inflammation. So these ultra-processed foods, for your body to break them down, is going to cause a lot of cell activity. And then it's also leaving the waste products from that food for your body to get rid of. And this is going to cause some of the cells to become inflamed. And when your body's under stress, and that's the only nutrition that it's getting, then basically your cortisol levels go up, and that crosses the blood-brain barrier. It supplies blood to the whole brain and body, and it will just cause inflammation in your gut. Your gut talks to your brain all the time. Your brain talks to your gut.

Gossiping.

But that's good. It's actually a three-way gossip because your gut microbiome also signals to the gut and the brain separately.

Wow. So your brain is super busy, huh? If it can have such an effect, then what are things you recommend that you would eat? I mean, obviously, some of it seems obvious or things you would or wouldn't.

I would suggest... This is ideal, okay? This is what I do, but it's taken me years to get to this point. I eat 30 different plant products per week. Now, that can include coffee, dark chocolate, spices. Especially if you eat a lot of Mexican food, it's actually not as hard as you think to do that, but you do need to vary the vegetables that you're using. In South America, they actually call squash, beans, and corn, the three sisters, and attribute that to the blue zones of longevity in parts of South America. Then you do need to eat some good quality protein, so lean proteins like eggs, yogurt, tofu. Fish, say it.

Can we do fish? Fish. Can we have it? Yeah. Oh, good. Fish. Yeah, I like fish. I like having fish.

Yeah, even like- And it looks cool if you see it in the water.

Because that's the only thing I don't like.

You have a thing about fish.

You think? Yeah. Maybe I do. But cows, you look at them, you're like, this thing is dumb as fuck. I'm not eating this thing. That's how I feel a lot of times, especially the one with a bell on his neck or whatever. You're like, This one's dumb, but at least he's trying to party. But it's like, it's like cows. I know people are like, meat eaters, you got to eat them. But sometimes I look at a cow and I'm like, Dang, man, I don't want to be eaten. This thing just seems dumb. No offense to cows either. But you know what I'm saying? Just like, they're just standing there. They could easily be victims of crime or whatever. But a fish, it just looks like that's how I would like to be.

Okay. So if you'd be an animal, you'd be a fish.

Yeah, or just something more exciting. Sometimes I think, Oh, I should eat things that are things that I want to be like. Maybe that would be cool.

That's actually cool because I tried to eat things that look like a brain, like a cauliflower or a donut.

Oh, really?

That's crazy, dude.

Wow, that's cool. It makes sense that it would help it. A donut looks just like a brain. I know. That's crazy.

Yeah. If you cut a cauliflower in half, it looks exactly like a brain, too. Yeah.

Wow.

Then the good fats. We can't forget the good fats for the brain. That is your oily fish, avocado, eggs, nuts, seeds, seeds, olive oil, all that thing. Then dark skinned foods are better for your brain than regular colored foods. Purple sprouting broccoli instead of green broccoli, strawberries instead of raspberries because that purple color has antioxidants in the skin of the food called anthocyanins, which really help with neuroplasticity, that process we talked about of changing your brain. I try to eat... I try to take the purple version of everything, but basically, quite just like saying dark skinned stuff is better for you.

Well, I mean, it depends. I think I've heard. I mean, I got BLM on me People like different things. Everybody likes somebody. Yeah, my friend only dates brothers, honestly. Yes, and there's a lot of value in that. So, yeah, I could certainly see that. Yeah, explain it.

Actually, can I share a story that is a really, really important one that had a massive impact on me? I would like to share it because I think it could really help people.

Yeah, I would love to hear it.

Standing on the street outside my house waiting for a taxi. A young blonde woman walked past me, but then I could see out of the corner of my eye that she stopped and turned around and came up to me. She said, Are you Tara Swart? I said, Yes. And she said, You saved my life. I was a bit taken aback. I said, What was it that I said that resonated with you? Because I feel like I can speak so broadly that I don't always know what it is. She said, I struggled with a really serious eating disorder for years, and I heard you say that you choose what you eat because it impacts your brain, and it immediately changed my relationship with food. I have heard... When I was a psychiatrist, the eating disorders ward was like a hopeless case. There was really not much we could do. I've heard that recently, the latest way of dealing with eating disorders is tying people to their beds and forcing them to eat. I can't believe that's helpful for anyone. But just hearing this person say that one thing I said changed her life so dramatically. It just made me feel like everything I've done has brought me to the right place.

That's wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. It's so powerful if somebody comes up and you can tell they're being real or when you know and they share something with you. You must get that. I meet a lot of people, and sometimes there's moments you're like, Oh, this is really cool. And it's like you could share. And sometimes you'll be having a bad day, and they'll tell you something that they heard you say that helped them. And you're like, Well, shit, tell it back to me right now. I know. Same. It's like, Well, look, thank you for coming back and telling me because it's the exact thing I needed to hear right now.

Sometimes people, my friends, send me a photo of a page from my book and they're like, you wrote this. Why are you being like this now?

I know it's so hard to help ourselves a lot of times, but that's why we need each other. My friend James Bacera, he always says that we're the keys to each other's locks, actually. Oh, I love that. I think you might have done a podcast in Venice one day. Did you ever do one in Venice?

Maybe with Sahara Rose. It hasn't come out yet.

No, this is with a man, Sanj.

Oh, Drew Purahet?

No, it was an Indian man.

Yeah, he's Indian. He is? Yeah.

Yeah, maybe it was him. Was it in Venice, do you think?

I was in LA. It was in LA?

Yeah. It looked like my friend James's Studio. I saw someone, I was like, Oh, that looked like James's Studio. Because I have no idea if it was or not. It looked a little similar.

Okay, let me ask you a question.

Okay.

Did you know that we actually have a second nose that's not connected to the brain?

We have a second nose more than the one on our face? Yeah. Okay.

It's called the voméros nasal organ, and it detects the smells of things that when you eat them, they give off a vapor like a spicy food, and it actually connects to your heart and makes your heart rate go up, but it doesn't connect directly to your brain. Dogs have them. It's got a special name in dogs, which I can't remember, but that's why they can smell pheromones. Also, I got this research from my colleague at MIT who creates artificial noses, and he's created an artificial nose that can detect prostate cancer before any of our current diagnostic tests can. No way. And, get this, this might cause some trouble for some people that you know. It can detect pregnancy earlier than any test at the moment, and it can tell who the father is. Nuh-uh.

Oh, my God. So it's going to be like Snory Povitch or whatever. What are they going to put the nose on?

I don't know.

How do they do it? They just hold it up to something?

Yeah.

And what's it made out of?

I think titanium, but it's connected to a machine, obviously. Okay. Yeah.

Wow. So it's a robotic nose that can tell if you have cancer. It can tell if you're pregnant and tell who the father is. What? I wonder how expensive it is. Hopefully, you can just put a dollar in the back of it and find out. Nanosnose. Here you go. Earlier this year, Mershin and his team-Yeah, Mershian.

He's my friend.

They had created a nanosnose, a robotic nose, power by AI that could identify cases of prostate cancer from urine samples with 70% accuracy. Wow. So really like a real piss sommelier or something they would call it, or urine sommelier. Wow, the nano nose. What else can it do? Early detection of lung cancer.

They'll start going across the cancers. So cats and dogs in old people's homes, they go and sit outside the door of the person that's dying. And that's because cell death starts to happen before you actually die, and it happens in a certain order, and they can smell when that's happening.

That's crazy.

Andreas Mershian also told me something, but I can't remember why. I'm going to say it on this podcast so I can send him the link and then ask him to explain. Okay, fair. Which is that if you inject rabbits with urine from pregnant women, they get their period. No. Wow.

If you inject them with urine from pregnant women, they get their period. Man. So next time a pregnant woman is like, I'm not a problem. I'll be like, Yeah, but you obviously are in some... You got sorcery running through your body right now because that's crazy. That's crazy to think that. I've never seen anything like that. I wouldn't even do it to anybody. And early, go back to that nano nose. I want to see what else it can do. That's It's fascinating to me. And do they show any use of that nano nose?

Yeah, for detecting cancer and pregnancy.

But I'm just wondering, do they have it on the end of the stick or something?

How it's actually used. Okay, how it's used. Yeah. He also told me that way more women are super smellers than men. Really? Yeah.

I could bet that because also women are, I think, over life, they're like the chefs, and they do more of the... They have to smell if the kid's okay or whatever, probably. Do you think that's why? Yeah, I think so.

It makes sense.

Okay. Electric nose accurately sniffs out hard to detect cancers. An odor-based test that sniffs out vapors emanating from blood samples was able to distinguish between benign and pancreatic and ovarian cancer with up to 95% accuracy. That's crazy.

But Theo wants to see a picture of how they use it, like what it looks like when they're actually sniffing patients. Leading cause of cancer deaths.

Does it show it?

And there's a one in five chance for a preventive medical checkup. The late detection of prostate cancer often means the removal of a part or the whole organ. You might have to have this in later. But there's hope. At the Park Scientific de Barcelona.

Wow, that's incredible. Where does our intuition and our gut instincts come from?

That's one of my favorite questions. Is it really? Yeah, I love intuition. It's like my superpower. Oh, yeah? Yeah. Basically, Basically- Because it's so cool.

It's like this ghost that's in us a little bit.

Yeah, the ghost of wisdom or something. I mean, Andreas Mershian also said to me that things like extra sensory perception, they're not woo- woo. He was actually Comparing that to the fact that most people don't know we have the second nose. He was like, There's science about it. We just haven't discovered it all yet. So intuition was a bit like that. People didn't… Because they couldn't see it. It wasn't tangible. They didn't really take it that seriously. I've been teaching at MIT for over 10 years now. Ten years ago, senior leaders would say, That's not a sense I would use at work. I'm not going to use that for higher or higher fire. But then actually the older, wiser guys would say, That's exactly the one I use for higher or higher because I've learned over time to trust it. I honed my intuition by journaling and reading over my journal and writing down every decision that I made. If logic told me one thing and intuition told me another, and I decided to trust my intuition more and more.

You really mapped it out.

Yeah. I think I was naturally quite intuitive, but sometimes I was afraid to trust it when I felt like something else was the right thing to do, logically. What we need to live our normal life is called our working memory, and it's stored in the outer cortex of the brain. Then our beliefs and thought patterns, what we were discussing earlier on, that's in systems in the limbic part of the brain, which is the shape and size of your clenched fist, so obviously yours is bigger than mine, and the cortex is around it. Then through a process called Hebbian learning, which is named after the neuroscientist Donald Hebb, because you can't remember everything that you've experienced in your life, but you have experienced it. So that information, like neurons that fire together, wire together, gets stored deeper in your spinal cord and your gut neurons. And that's why intuition is sometimes called gut instinct.

So that's why you feel it right there. You go there in your brain like, what is my gut telling me to do?

Yeah, like butterflies in your stomach tells you that you're nervous, right? Yeah. But the sense of like, this is the right thing for me to do, or this is the right person for me to date, You might not feel it viscerally, but you'll just get that sense.

Yeah, because over time, it's like, yeah, you have to believe that your intuition gets honed as well because of you've had experiences.

Yeah, but it can also... Actually, a really important point is that neuroplasticity can be a bad thing. If you repeatedly go for people that it ends up being a toxic relationship and you have a breakup that drags out and damages you, and then you don't really heal, and you just go back into a similar type of relationship, you're going to... That's your intuition telling you the wrong thing, right?

Right, but you're following it. Yeah. So you could actually, you could mold your intuition negatively as well.

Yeah. Oh, wow. Like obsessing over a breakup. That's neuroplasticity. Yeah.

Yeah. I used to do that, man. That was the worst. God, I would be so heartbroken, the most heartbroken freaking weirdo ever, dude. Smoking or whatever, just walking around the neighborhood. What else? How do we change our perspective? How do we use... Is our perspective our brain?

This is called the hard problem of neuroscience, and that is the question of whether our brain is our mind or our mind is our brain. Basically, if we're being very scientific, then our consciousness, which is everything that we think and feel, arises from neurons and chemicals that are physically part of our brain. There's a big move more recently, and this has happened in the past. In ancient times, we believed in seers and gamins and mystics and Things like clairvoyance and claircognizance and things like that. We've moved away from that in modern times.

Yeah, we believe in a lot more astrology, the moon, that thing as well. Yeah.

But science is now starting to look at some of this ancient wisdom in a way that we may have actually forgotten things that we knew before that are crucial to our mental health in the modern world. I mentioned some of those things already, like drumming and chanting, but But what we believe now is that our brain might actually be filtering our consciousness down so that we can survive in this material world. But actually, our minds are capable of a lot more than what we think now. In terms of perspective, that is all the filters that your childhood and your upbringing have put on how you see the world. You can absolutely challenge your perspective. It's not your brain. It's a version of reality that your brain is creating. I have some really favorite exercises that I have that people can do at home. One is if I have a dilemma, or particularly if I'm really struggling and just feeling like things aren't going to work out, I describe myself sitting here, what I'm wearing at my age, and I ask the question, What should I do? Or what's going to happen to me? When you're really a bit desperate.

Then I get up and I walk seven steps, and I turn around and I say, I'm Tara, seven years older than you, and I've seen what happens in your life in the next seven years. And I answer the question. I give advice. That's like- That's pretty cool. Thanks.

Because you're putting yourself in a place, and then you're using your same self- And my intuition. And your intuition. And who even knows what powers the world grants you if you say, okay, now I'm going to put myself seven years ahead and speak back to It often feels like there's so many hidden abilities that we have that we just don't know about yet. Even with five senses, it's like, I bet there's 30 senses. We just don't even know some of what they are yet.

There's up to 33.

Is there really? They told us there's five. Did they tell you that, dude?

Well, not at medical school. At medical school, I obviously knew there's more than five, but I didn't know there's 22 to 33.

They don't trust us with them, I think, yeah, you got it. I guess if you go to school, you get more senses.

What did you get? You don't get more. You've got them as well. You've got chronoception. You understand the passing of time.

You've got- I got five, but they give you five senses. Yeah. Touch, feel.

Touch and feel are the same.

Okay. Sorry. My bad, Doc. Touch. Taste. Taste, smell, sight.

Hearing.

And hearing. Yeah. Sorry. But there's more than that. Way more. Unreal. Wow. That'd be cool to go through all of them one day. Whenever I come to your country, we'll have to go through all of them. What country do you live in?

Live in London? Yeah. London is not a country. It isn't? No, it's a city. Yeah.

I told you guys. Enough with the attitude. All right. Yeah. Manchester is the real England. I'm joking. Well, people think different things.

Wow. So your perspective. You can Do that exercise or you can ask yourself, what advice would I give my brother? Because it's just about taking yourself one step out of the situation that you're in because then you can't see the wood for the trees.

Yeah, you're stuck in yourself. But yeah, what advice would I give my brother? That's a great idea. What advice would I give my sister? Because it is crazy. You'll give them the best advice, then you'll get off the phone and do the worst thing. Yeah, totally. That's so fascinating.

I mean, because some of my advice is pinned on social media, me my girlfriend were laughing so much about some of the things that I say. Then in my real life, I'm like, Why is this happening to me?

I know. It's so funny. I think we all take turns being something that someone needs to hear, even in the sense that somebody came to me in the airport and was telling me something like, Oh, man, where did you hear that? And you said that. I'm like, Jesus, well, I needed to hear that right now. It's like we all take turns, even throughout the day, throughout the moment, throughout the year, as being each other's champions certain little moments. I think that that's pretty remarkable. That's a gift. You've talked a lot about manifesting and stuff. Do you really believe in it?

A hundred %, yeah. I've been actively doing it myself, personally, 15 or 16 years. And then in 2019, my book, The Source, came out where I shared that more professionally. And the response to that was actually quite phenomenal in making me believe in it even more. Wow.

It's a best seller. Yeah. Yeah. Congratulations. Thank you. So cool. Thanks. So cool to write a book and have people want to absorb it. Tell me a little bit about that manifesting, because we forget about it. We forget sometimes that we're the captain of this ship. Sometimes we just feel like the stream owns everything.

I think some versions of manifestation can still make people feel like that because it's about the universe and vibrations. I wanted to explain manifestation through psychology and neuroscience in a way to say, Look, it's your brain that's doing it. It's not some outside force. I think that's way more empowering. That's what people really liked about it, that I write a lot about vision boards, but I call them action boards because I say, You can't just create a fantasy and then sit at home and wait for it to come true. Look at how hard you've worked to get to where you are. It's very easy for people to say, Oh, I'd love to have Theo von's life, but you've really struggled and worked really hard to get here. I absolutely say that that has to be of it. It can't just be expecting things to fall out of the sky and come into your life. But if manifestation is basically setting goals and desires, knowing what you want, finding images of them to put on a board that you can see at least twice a day. If it's only once a day, then seeing it just before you go to sleep because it imprints on your subconscious.

It can be very literal or it can be metaphorical, like something that you could have a horse on there and it could mean one thing to you and something else to me, for example. Basically, I ask people to make this board, look at it daily, visualize these things being true, because your brain doesn't actually know the difference between something happening in real life and a strong visualization. Then, Yeah. You won't be afraid of it if you've already visualized it. You won't meet that dream girl and say, Oh, maybe I'm not ready. You'll have told your brain that you're ready to take a healthy risk.

Wow. So your brain doesn't really know What's the difference between, say that again?

Between something that happened in real life or something that you strongly visualize?

Well, it's the same reason why when we watch a movie or something, we're able to get lost in it. We're able to believe in it because it... Wow. So you If you would create enough of a visualization for yourself, if you really were to powerfully start to focus on it and do that and build that ability to visualize something that your brain, at one point, would have to think it's so true that the world would meet you and put it into your life.

I love the way you put that.

Wow. Dude, that's crazy. And that's what feels like another sense. That, to me, feels like another sense that 200 years from now, they're going to be like, people are just going to be manifest. It's just everything. Everything is going to be so over-manifested. But you know what it is? That's one thing that I feel like there's some elite people in the world, and they really learned that. Sometimes when I see some people who are operating at a very elite level or the deep state or whatever, I start thinking, Oh, that's what they're using to the best of their ability. Wow. Yeah, your brain. And then the world is like, oh, well, it has to have happened because they put it in there so much. That's crazy. And what things can you manifest?

Because people write to me all the time saying what they manifested. So It could be a certain home, a relationship, a family, pregnancy, their own career. A lot of it is quitting their job and actually starting up the business that they've always wanted to do. Travel is quite a big one.

What are some side effects of the pandemic that we never treated as a society? Because that's fascinating to me. We went through it. And like you said earlier, now we're just here. We never looked at it. I mean, even in recovery rooms, the shutdown of all of the 12-step rooms, and people couldn't go to those meetings, killed. There's no way it didn't kill 100,000 people.

Oh, yeah, at least.

Just in those.

I think there were mental health issues during the pandemic, but there were slightly different ones since. Nobody's really talking about that, which is so scary. I think they involve three sorts of loss. A Loss of your sense of self and your purpose, who am I? What direction should I be going in? A breakdown of relationships, whether that's marriages, other romantic relationships, working relationships, friendships. People are more disconnected and lonely.

When some people lost a loved one and had to go to it over Zoom and never even got to grieve it or have the family be there together when they lost their grandmother. There are people that were hoping in the next couple of years, they would find a loved relationship, and then suddenly there's three years where they can't even date. What was the third one?

Sorry to interrupt you. The third one was going to be loss of actual loved ones in grief. I think one of the things I'm seeing, it may have been creeping up before the pandemic, but it feels very evident now is the world feels like a really difficult place for young men. The idea of what it means to be a man now doesn't feel clear. I've I've had male friends say to me that, yeah, we're equal, but we're still different. And men, they want to love and protect someone. But it feels like women are saying, I can do everything by myself now. I don't need you. So that feels really sad. And that's, I think, happening more in the younger generations than it did when we were that age.

Yeah, I think. And some people start to view themselves as men and women. I think some of the gender lines and stuff are getting blurred. And some of that, I think, is probably good because you want everybody to believe they can do anything because there has to be some value in being a man, just like there has to be some value in being a woman. We want her to be. I don't want to be with some woman, and it's a man. I would like her to be a woman most of the time. And so it's like, that's the thing.

Can I put that slightly differently? Yeah. I think it's about having masculine and feminine energies, which we can both be capable of. I think for a man, men are obviously physically stronger. There are things that men can do for women that could be helpful in terms of the fact that they've got more physical strength. But equally, men are capable of emotional intelligence and intuition, and it would be nice if that could be more balanced in both the genders.

Yeah, because I think in the end, I think it probably goes back to some of our nature, too. I think we want to have someone. Sometimes it's like, if you don't have somebody, you'll start turning into the thing you want, too, which is weird.

What do you mean?

I feel like sometimes if you're a Maybe you're a gal and you're having maybe trouble getting a guy or you're not having success in that world, you might start maybe doing more masculine stuff, maybe. You'll create what you need.

Yeah, I guess you have to. If you have to get on in life, you might have to do things that you didn't do if you were in partnership.

Yeah, that doesn't make any sense, really.

My bad. I didn't know where you were going with that.

No, I didn't know either. I was trying to think of an idea.

I thought you were going I was going to say something really outrageous.

Oh, no, I don't know what I was going to say, but whatever I said didn't really make any sense. Yeah, it is tough. I think it is interesting for young men. I think it's interesting a lot for just men these days. But But then also there was women... When women didn't have access to a lot of money or they didn't have money, they were taken advantage of. And so it's like, maybe this is just the eddy of the river, the path of it, that we have to get to a place where women have more finances and ability to make choices for their own. And then once they feel comfortable in that space, then they can let themselves just be women again. Does that make any sense?

I think it's a bit more complex.

Somebody's going to get upset about that.

Yeah, I think it's a bit more complex than that. I think we could say that both as men and women, and particularly as parents of the younger generations that are coming up now into adulthood, That we have a responsibility to not emasculate men to the point that they are taking their lives. Because women have changed a lot. If you think since cave times or even just since the 1950s, women have had financial independence. Women have been able to use contraception. Women have been able to use hair diet. It's completely changed how particularly older women can survive in society and be valued in society. But men haven't really changed that much, let's say, since the 1950s. There's obviously some evolution or adaptation that needs to happen because things were so unfair before. But I just think we've got to do it in a way that isn't unfair now, if you know what I Navigate it together in a way that men and women can be in harmony. Because when the #MeToo conversations first came out, obviously, there were a lot of women that were saying all the bad things about men that they could. I just kept repeating the same thing.

We have to remember, most men are good. There's no value in us suddenly dating men because this me too movement has come up. That's not going to help any gender.

That was a huge thing. Every man, men were scared to look at women. Men were scared to pat a woman on the back, even. It was definitely getting real risque out there.

I think even things like, should I hold the door open for a woman or not, is a confusing decision for men these days.

I agree. I'll be on an airplane, and a woman will maybe be about to lift her bag and put it up. And it's like, I don't know. Am I going to get the lady who's like, I can do it myself? Or am I going to just get the lady who is like, Thank you. Or just lets me feel good because I can do it and I'm able to help out. Not that she can't It's like, we want to do it. For a lot of guys, it wasn't that you can't do it. It was like, We want to do it. We want to be of service. We want to be able to show off a little bit. Give us something we can do. Yeah.

And I love it. I think It's great.

Yeah. I used to have this joke. This is a long time I forgot about this. It was like, I was talking about women want to be men. Now, you see women that are dead lifting weights. And I'll be like, if you put down the barbells and you look lost for a minute, Then a guy will show right up. There's something about the thing that you just... You want to be able to be a guy. And I think when it gets confusing as to what does that even mean? Where are you allowed to be? What are you allowed to do? Yeah, you start. And then also, all the sex toys came out, and you're like, well, we can't even... What are we doing? You know what I'm saying? My nuts are powered by battery powered by the Lord or whatever. I can't compete with these ingenuity or whatever people are using.

It's not the same as having an intimate relationship.

No, but it's also threatening when it's like, You hear something in the other room and it just sounds like it should have a fan belt on it. It's like some of these... I don't know. I think that's... I don't know what I'm talking about, but I'm alone.

I don't think we should end on this note, Theo.

I'm pretty lonely as well. What's something you feel like before you believe that you would like to share with us or something else we can think about?

Well, the main thing I would really love people to know, which is an umbrella over everything that we've talked about today, and like you've said, there's so much more we could talk about, is that you have so much potential in your brain. Your brain is amazing. And if you know how to use it properly, you can make your life so much better than you ever dreamed it could be.

Really? Yes. Wow. How does somebody who doesn't believe that start to believe it?

I would make a set of tweaks in some very basic fundamental areas, and I would make them microtweaks. Where I talk about sleep, diet, hydration, exercise, and stress management, I always say change 10 things by 1%, not one thing by 10%. If you went to bed half an hour earlier or you drank an extra glass of water every or you ate some more vegetables, and you walked a thousand steps more than you usually do and spent some time in nature, and we haven't even talked about neuroaesthetics, which is a whole other topic. Oh, gosh. Then if you do a few things like that every day, they're physical things that are building the foundation for your brain to be in a good environment where it can be better. I guarantee you feel so much better within a matter of weeks that you'll think, Okay, what else can I do? Then you can build it to a point where physically you're in really good condition. And then you could do a vision board or whatever your goal is. Maybe for part two, we could ask people to write in and say, This is what I'd like to achieve.

How could I do it?

Yeah, that'd be cool. Yeah. You know what? One thing you said, it's so easy to create a pattern. It feels hard. The first day is a little tough. The second day is a little bit tougher. But then that third day, you're like, holy shit, this is a pattern. And it feels different. And it feels cool, and then you get excited about it. And there's nothing bigger I've learned in my life, Tara, than realizing if you do this, and then you do that, and then you're like, oh, now the landscape looks different. Now, what else could I do? What else could I do?

Yeah, you're a classic example of that.

I just can't. Sometimes I'm like, what else can I do? What else? Like, holy shit. The world's like, I could do some. What else could I do? I I don't know. But man, it really is. Especially, there were times when I just didn't feel like I could do.

But also for you, there are millions of people that some of them you might know about, some you will never know about the influence that you've had on them. And that's another thing that you're doing passively by doing everything that you do, which is huge.

We don't know the effects that we're going to have on other people and stuff like that. It's pretty magical. That's why we need each other. We need each other to build our oxytocin up. Dude, we got to get more oxytocin going on.

Well, laughter creates it. So you're spreading oxytocin like crazy.

And do we have synthetic oxytocin or they don't have that?

I don't know if I even want to get you to Google this, but you can actually purchase it over the Internet. You obviously do not know what you are getting, so please be careful. In lab experiments, they used a nasal spray of oxytocin, and they showed guys pictures of women. They had rate them on attractiveness before and after taking the spray. They rated them all as more attractive after taking the spray. Yeah.

Yeah, dude. I looked up oxytocin and nose spray was the top search. So there's an oxytocin nose spray. Don't get crazy, guys. But maybe I'll take a hit of it next time we record.

What, you and I?

I'll take at least a hit.

I don't think you need to. That's quite insulting to me.

Oh, sorry. I'll let you take a hit. You're going to need it. I'll tell you, dude. If you look at me, you're going to need some oxytocin, man. Or we can give a little to a pup or something. Yeah. And see what he- Yeah, we could do that experiment.

Give some to a puppy and see what happens. Oh, hell, yeah. Is that How's it going?

I don't know. I'm sure some people write in the comments if it is or not. Tara Swart, thank you so much. Your book, The Source. I haven't read it, but I would like to. Okay. So I'm going to keep it on my list of stuff to read at some point. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you for just being somebody that wants to help share the information that you have and are learning. You're really on the forefront of things that are possible for the future. Neuroscience is crazy because we just don't know what our brain is capable of. What percentage of information about our brains do you think we currently know?

That's a really good question. It's hard to put a percentage on it, but if I think about how much has changed since I was at medical school, and if I align that with the fact that what we used to watch as science fiction as kids, like a lot of it's true now, I just don't think we know how much potential there is. I think all I can say is it's bigger than what we think. We're not capable of knowing that yet.

Yeah, it's crazy because we're not even capable of knowing it yet. That's the wild This thing, man, is we're not even capable. Again, you got to get there. Sometimes you got to get that next place to see what else is even possible.

Yeah. And now with AI and everything, it's just changed the whole...

Who knows? Yeah. I mean, we could both be Yeah. Who even knows? We can be living in an orphanage right now or something. Or who knows? Ai can do so many things. Dr. Tara Swart, thank you so much for coming. Thank you. Yeah. I look forward to catching up with you, too, when I'm in your country. I'd love that. Yeah. And your book, The Source. Are you still teaching in MIT? Yeah. Wow. That's crazy, dude. That's like really MIT, dude. I know.

Oh, yeah. That was something I manifested that I never thought. Really? Yeah.

And that's crazy because I don't even know where it is. You hear about it a lot. You're like, Oh, yeah, they're doing something illegal, it feels like, but probably pretty good. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming. Thank you, Theo. And thank you for my wonderful gift as well. Very sweet of you, love. I'm going to have a little bit of this when I'm feeling a bit down, mom. Good on you, miss. You're welcome. Now, I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves I must be cornerstone. But when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones. But it's going to take.