#138 - Dr. Yvonne Wong - ADHD & Autism are her SUPERPOWERS - Long Term Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
To my own ADHD and my autism as a superpower.
I can go to the gym, I can make some friends on campus.
This. You really have to have a
circumscribed interest to dive into that thing for so long, for
decades. If you look at the most I, I'm a
believer of we all know what's good and bad for us, it's just

(00:22):
so much easier to do the bad. Because without my autism I
wouldn't be able to have my PhD.Anything can be a cult.
Even some family dynamics are cults alike where there's high
control. OK, I can either lay lay down
there and do nothing all day andwatch Netflix, or I could build
something. I could have thoughtful

(00:43):
conversations like these on the podcast.
Though like we have the ability with all this new tech to
increase our like our health so that we can decrease mental
health. Issues.
There are going to be some dark days, you know, people die.
There are going to be some things that I just I look in the
mirror and I just feel unhappy with the way I look.

(01:04):
Or there's just like things thatI'm just memories flashback,
like nightmares pop up and then.Real.
Some religions, most religions are cults where especially if
there's high control, even in myfour years or six years, just
immersed in neuroscience and studying and reading like
hundreds of papers and coming out with like some expertise on

(01:27):
the subject. So having like good strong
social relationships is definitely one of the most
important things I think for, you know, maintaining your
mental health so. How's your day?
It's it's going well. I mean, I was busy.
I spent an hour in the car. Oh, really?

(01:49):
Yeah, yeah. Because I live in the West and I
drive my partner to downtown, gohere and it's like it's 1/2 hour
each way. Yeah.
So do you listen to podcasts at all when you're driving?
Yeah, yeah. Which?
One are your favorite pods. I tend to listen to like right
now I'm on the US politics and economy kick, right?
Yeah. So I'm into like, I'm, I'm

(02:13):
centrist part left and I'm into like Scott Galloway.
Like I don't mind him. I think I, I, I think he's a
little bit sometimes it's, it's a bit crude on the relationship
stuff. I don't agree with that, but his
economics. I like his philosophy on
rejection. Oh yeah.
I really like it like where as aas I guess he primarily talks to

(02:36):
men. Right, he does.
He does. Well, he's like, as a man, you
should go out there and just be comfortable being rejected.
So that's like life. It's gonna be 99% rejection like
a lot of men these days, right? They, I don't know.
I some of my friends, they don'tever want to try.
Yeah. Out there when it comes to
relationships, right? Because it's just, it's a lot on

(02:57):
you. Yeah.
And that's the thing I think part of like Scott Galloway's
like, take it specifically to men, which, you know, not every
woman agrees with some of his takes as some of it like, oh, I
don't know if you should try that strategy.
That seems very uncomfortable tothe woman, but whatever.
But his economics, like his, his, he's a business professor,

(03:18):
right? Like he's taught me a lot about
that. And his last, the last podcast
was with my favorite PhD in economics, podcaster Slash.
Like she's an expert in the US economy.
She's PhD. She advises, she writes for
Bloomberg, She has a podcast, she advises Congress.

(03:41):
Like she does everything. Doctor Catherine and Edwards
probably my like, I wish we had someone in Canada who was that
knowledgeable about the Canadianeconomy to tell the masses how
it works. Because I learned more about the
US economy from her than I do about the Canadian economy

(04:02):
overall. Because just podcasts are fun.
Yeah, that's fair. Hopefully yours is like being
listened to by lots of people, yeah.
Hopefully, I mean, I from the the advice that I've gotten from
podcasts that have done it for years is just to never stop.
And even Scott Galloway talks about it just to never just to

(04:22):
keep on going. And you know, if you if it
amalgamates to just nobody listens to it as much, then you
at least you built. Something and, and it's yours
too. Like it's like that's the
creative process. Not everything is going to be a
banger, and there are things that are hits, things that are

(04:42):
misses and stuff like that. So that's kind of cool.
Yeah, I had questions for you, but I'll save that to the end.
So yeah, for from mental health.So from your perspective as a
psychology professor, how have student mental health concerns
evolved over the past years, especially in a post academic

(05:02):
environment? Oh yeah, so well, I taught.
I taught before, during and after COVID and so I've also
been a student back in the 90s and early 2000s and mental
health was way more stigmatized at that point in time.

(05:24):
Now I feel like it's changed significantly.
We do. Even through my own education
and even learning about myself, I've realized like, well, what
our culture, I don't know, Asiancultures, they that tendency to
stigmatize usually comes at a cost of throwing people under

(05:45):
the bus to try and justify like some of the things that are done
wrong in society. You know, they'll blame mass
shootings, which true. Yeah, a lot of the cause of most
mass shootings is mental health disorders.
But it's like, it's not all of mental health, like mental
health issues. They anything depression,
anxiety, autism, IDHD, they all run on the spectrum and we

(06:09):
either, we all lie on that spectrum, whether it's like we
have show extreme symptoms or like mild to moderate or no
symptoms, still a spectrum. And so if we can all understand
that it is not an US versus themthing, we can be more
compassionate and empathetic to others if we know that we all
lie on this, this kind of continuum for any mental health

(06:33):
issue. So one of the things that I
tried to do in my classes, I don't know, you took my class,
you could take 2 is the stigmatized mental health
disorders in including traumaticbrain injury that was in
neuropsych. And you interviewed Evan and you
interviewed Allison. She was also another student in

(06:56):
that course. And I would consider all of them
neurodiverse because, you know, Evan had his TBI and Allison, I
can't really say much because that's Allison's story, but.
She she mentioned it the the thethe car hitter.
Oh yeah, yeah, I. Didn't realize yeah I forgot
about that part. Also like she shows others she's

(07:19):
very similar to me. Like, I have ADHD and I am
definitely autistic, right? And my son is diagnosed ADHD and
is on medication for it. And like, it took years for me
to figure out that I even had autism, but when I figured it
out, everything fell into place.And it's like, oh, it makes

(07:42):
sense now. Like my social life back then,
not great. My parents parenting style.
Yeah. Yeah.
Autism and ADHD explains it. Yeah, yeah.
It seems that you're very confident in in this sharing
this, right, which is a lot of people, you know, choose to hide
that. Yeah.

(08:03):
Did it? Did that take some work to do
or? I would definitely say that it
helped that I teach psychology, right?
Because as you learn, as you teach, you learn and you start
to put pieces together and part of the stigmatization is kind of
showing, showing diversity to people, right?
Like, one of the main ways of increasing empathy and

(08:27):
compassion in just the general population is exposing them to
differences in people, right? As it's the equivalent of like
some small town, you know, childhaving never seen a colored
person before coming into EU of A.
And then they realize, oh, my parents were wrong about that,
you know, or having never met a gay person before.

(08:47):
And suddenly they see like a whole ton of like, diverse
individuals, diverse sexualities, diverse genders.
They're like, oh, I think I haveto relearn some things, right?
And so when you expose people tolike functioning adults who have
maybe even like successful liveswho also experienced like

(09:07):
depression and anxiety, which I also experienced from like 16
all the way to like 36, like 20-2 decades of depression and
anxiety. And it wasn't cured right away.
It was like slow, slow couple ofyears of treatment.
If you can show that you've lived through things, that you

(09:30):
have your own neurodiversities, that you can overcome them, then
people are more likely to, you know, respect other individuals
who may have these things and not be as fearful or not be as,
you know, hateful. Right?
And maybe start being more empathetic or even become more

(09:52):
self aware and look into themselves in introspect and
realize hey I'm on the spectrum for this too or that too and
it's OK. Having these answers there, it's
like it provides an explanation as to who someone is, rather
than just going about the world feeling alienated, feeling
different. You actually have something to

(10:14):
work with, yeah. And then the kids who are
autistic or are do have ADHD. I've gotten some letters from
some some students and they're so heartfelt it makes me.
Yeah, no, it's I've been in a couple of your classes, right.
And like your openness to to mental health and just you

(10:36):
yourself sharing your own story just helps the students sitting
there going, huh, Like, how is this professor with their PhD
gone through and their entire life so open and compassionate
and wanting to share it. It gives the students a, you
know, that that permission to go.

(10:59):
I can maybe share it to my friend and then that friend, oh,
maybe they have it too. And then it's just instead of
just hiding, you get to open up and build each other up and be
free. Exactly.
It removes the stigma of having it and then in like, we're not
glorifying it, but we're understanding that it exists and

(11:24):
everybody should be treated withthe same compassion.
It doesn't matter what you have,right?
And honestly, I don't even thinksome mental health issues are
issues per SE. But again, all this is really my
own opinion. I don't represent anybody
else's. Like not my university or
whatnot, but it's all my own opinion.

(11:45):
But I, I've myself, like, I viewmy own ADHD and my autism as a
superpower because without my autism, I wouldn't be able to
have my PhD, right? Like, what person spends like,
you know, four years or six years just immersed in
neuroscience and studying and reading like hundreds of papers

(12:08):
and coming out with like some expertise on the subject?
Like, you really have to have a circumscribed interest to dive
into that thing for so long, fordecades.
Well, if you look at the most successful kind of business
people and the entrepreneurs, yeah, PhDs, like they usually
have some sort of condition. Yeah, some sort of that.

(12:34):
Requires them to be able to study for 12 hours straight and
just get out at a solution and be super focused.
Exactly. Yeah, it's a if you view it that
way, it's a superpower. It is.
It's awesome. And.
Same with the ADHD it's a superpower cause I I have so
much energy and now that I'm older not so much.

(12:54):
But when I was younger I was high functioning in my mental
health issues because of my ADHDright?
My ADHD would balance my autism out.
Like my autism would overstink and I would stop doing things
but my ADHD would be like I needto do something so it would like
drive me to do the work that I was supposed to do which would
decrease the anxiety. I don't know, if you do that,

(13:17):
could you imagine one day there'd be like decades later
people like man, I, I don't haveADHD.
What a bummer. You know, I wish, I wish I was
autistic. Like.
Flips around because like peoplethat are like ultra successful
start to realize that oh, this is actually what it empowers me.
There's nothing to be ashamed of.
But it's like, again, like I will openly also admit like my

(13:42):
friendship skills were not great.
What? What about it?
Did you just not pick up on certain social cues?
Or so part of autistic symptoms is that you don't pick up on
certain cues. For some it can be even internal
cues like hunger or yeah, awareness of your body state.

(14:04):
If you're cold or like starving,they're still starved to death.
They usually have some support in their life of people feeding
them, but it's like the reason why I bring my son his meals in
his bedroom so that he can keep programming and, well, his dad,
OK. That's funny.
Because his dad wants him, you know, to be a proper individual,

(14:27):
eat with the family. And I'm like, no, my mom brought
me my meals to my bedroom, too. Yeah.
That's my brother. He's he's always on this.
He's on scratch a lot actually. I.
Mean my brother, my son too. Yeah, he's on.
He's playing with the little cat.
He's got these, these like little sprunky things.
They're like they're singing monsters.
And then he he edits them and I just, he's given me the entire

(14:51):
lore and it's just, it's fascinating what he's done too.
He's makes little YouTube videos, make storylines for it.
And he's like at such a young age.
It's just blows my mind because when I was that age I was just
playing with trucks and being a normal kid, but when I see this
guy, how? Old is your brother.
He's seven. He goes to the school.

(15:12):
New Horizons. It's a smart school.
Yeah, yeah. And they test his IQ and
everything. Concordia or something.
No, no, no. It's insured Park.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's amazing and all those it's
like the it's like a Harvard andCherry Park, you know, all the
all the parents, but all the allthe kids when I when I get.
There, is he going to go into STEM collegiate?
Because there's some. Probably, I don't know, he's

(15:34):
he's got, let's just say a lot of doors open from from what
he's showing up because like he can spell.
When he was four, he was alreadyspelling like basic words.
He was already like DLG and he'devery time we'd drive around,
he'd look at the the sign. Nobody's taught him stop.

(15:54):
Like, oh, I read that Dollarama.Like what?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, I don't know how
to. I don't know how to read until I
was like 7, you know? Yeah.
No my son was the same. So my son at 19 months I have a
video he could recognize every letter of the alphabet and he
would like just list off the letters like put them near a
sign and he would like go to each letter and tell you each

(16:16):
letter. Did he like the alphabet lore
the the the ABC? Like they had like little
storylines for him. No, no, he I think I I gave him
a little let him watch like somealphabet, like play alphabet
games. But no, I don't know about that.

(16:37):
So it's, it's got a story like each letter has like their own
background. And then he, he got obsessed
with that. Oh, that's like, yeah, he'll
just like he loves stories. Yeah.
So and the way he learns is justthrough just the characters
within like the numbers or like the letters.
It's it's quite fascinating actually.
Oh cool. Yeah, yeah, sorry, keep

(16:57):
interrupting. Bad for the audio.
No, I don't think you're interrupting.
At all. Yeah, my son, actually.
But with his Scratch programming, it's actually an
outlet for him for gaming, but not gaming because he doesn't
game. Well, he does kind of game, but
he likes making them more. And so in Scratch he's made so
many games. They're mostly like fighting

(17:18):
games based on his love of like,Hollow Night.
But one of the things that's really impressed me with my kid
is that he knows more about geopolitics than I do.
Really. Yeah.
He can name every country in theworld, show you on the map, show
you the capitals. He can.
And now he knows Soviet history.So he knows all the flags now

(17:41):
like he would. He would play a game where he
would match the flags to the countries.
And then he's like, no, that's the Russian flag, but that's the
Soviet flag. This is the this is the Soviet
anthem. And he would incorporate them in
the games. He has this one little game.
I don't know if he published it on Scratch, but it has this.
The big bad villain is a ball with the like colored like the

(18:03):
Soviet flag with the sickle and the stars and like the hammer
thing. And then there's like a little
ball that you play that's Poland.
And then like you would shoot out like other countries that
were part of the Soviet Union. And that would be like, the game
is really hilarious because there's Molotov cocktails,
there's ballistic missiles, There's like just a whole bunch

(18:26):
of like attacks that are very relevant.
And then in the background, he has like, the Kremlin.
And it's just he knows so much more than we do.
This. This kid needs to start tutoring
like university students. He just likes it.
That's that's awesome. We went off but that's autism
guys like high functioning low support needs.

(18:49):
What? OK, So what are some of the most
effective strategies or habits you've seen students use to
maintain their well-being duringstressful semesters?
The first thing is I forgot to mention that in the change in
the mental health system, like mental health environment at

(19:09):
like in academics post pandemic is that we've gotten a lot more
accommodations. So one of the ways to help with
your mental health issues is 1. Make sure you're supported in in
those areas. So if you have like ADHD or
anxiety, you might want to get accommodations from the

(19:30):
university. I never got these when I was
going to university and never like I didn't actually even know
I needed them, but it would havehelped a lot with the test
anxiety, which I really only gotin my 4th year.
So it's OK, But yeah, so the first thing first is like EU of
A has now really developed its accommodations and accessibility

(19:53):
resources to help a lot of the students.
Like I think they're still kind of understaffed.
I would like if EU of A funded them more but I really shouldn't
say much because you know, that's not my area budgeting.
But they are really good to the students.
There's also a lot of mental health well and Wellness kind of

(20:17):
resources that you can access. There's therapy, free therapy
for students and you can just book it online now.
And given that there's a mental health crisis or sorry, mental
health treatment crisis, healthcare crisis in Alberta
where it's really hard to find treatment, the fact that EU of A
offers this for students is really cool.

(20:41):
So I'm not trying to plug EU of A at all, at all.
I'm just saying, like my university actually does offer a
lot of resources for the students.
So that's one thing. But then you also have to help
yourself, right? Like, I don't know you, you
treat your own, right? What do you do?
Yeah, I like to go for long runs.

(21:02):
I like to go to the gym, sauna, cold showers.
I guess they, they seem so basic, right?
Socializing with people, reading, getting my sleep.
But if I don't do this, then I'mcatapulted into dread in the
morning. Like I'll, I'll lay there in bed

(21:24):
and I'll go why? Like what?
I I feel depleted. And then I ruminate on things
even though I like doing them. Yeah, you know, and like
socializing, for instance, if I don't exercise, if I don't get
my sleep, Oh my God, why am I, why am I seeing this person?
And then I start to get negativethoughts.

(21:44):
And I at first I thought that these thoughts were just, you
know, they're just me being soft.
You know, that's just kind of what my dad grew up with.
And I kind of, I went through most of my life and I just, I
thought that way. I, I just went through it with
grit and I didn't, never really told anyone how I was feeling.

(22:08):
But then I realized after reading Dopamination by Anna
Lemke, just Gabramonte's books with the, the body when the body
says no, I'm listening to all these health podcasts that, oh,
I, I do have some work inside that needs, you know, healing.

(22:29):
And I, I, I'm still not 100%, right?
And I'll, you'll never fully know, right.
But with, with the these protocols like that I learned
from Andrew Huberman or just from, from books that I've read,
it's helped me have a stable life, it seems.
Yeah. And I can, I can connect and

(22:50):
it's still never going to be 100%.
And I've kind of accepted that that the days are just they're
going to be some dark days, you know, people die.
There are going to be some things that I just I look in the
mirror and I just feel unhappy with the way I look.
Or there's just like things thatI'm just memories flashback,
like nightmares pop up. And then, OK, I can either lay

(23:12):
lay down there and do nothing all day and watch Netflix, or I
could build something. I could have thoughtful
conversations like these on the podcast.
I can go to the gym. I can make some friends on
campus. This I I'm a believer of We all
know what's good and bad for us.It's just so much easier to do
the bad you. Know I totally agree but.

(23:34):
Yeah, so I I just follow the four pillars that Andrew
Huberman suggests, like exercise, sleep, socializing and
sleep. As long as I get through that,
then I can focus on, you know, just fun stuff like playing with
my brother and just, you know, making cute little videos.

(23:55):
I don't. Know just so sweet.
That's sweet. You help him with the editing.
Yeah, Yeah, yeah, yeah. What about you?
What do you? What?
Protocols. Do you?
I'm glad you asked because I have a different thing.
I, I learned we're all differentand for some socializing is very
important. And I think socially, the
aspects of your social and environment are very important

(24:16):
for like your mental health. But the way that we socialize is
going to be different for most people, right?
For you, it's like you like to go out, you're extroverted, you
go out and have make friends andstuff.
And I can get drained after likea day of teaching and
interacting with students. And I'm like, OK, it like
sometimes it's refreshing, but most of the times I'm like, I'm

(24:38):
done, right? But as long as I have my
partner, like my partner is probably the one I interact with
on a daily basis who does refresh me because we have that
close emotional intimacy. And also I feel really safe.
So having like good strong social relationships is
definitely one of the most important things, I think for,

(25:02):
you know, maintaining your mental health.
So also my partner is really like, not positive, but we share
the same humor and we're not both like going on a rumination
depression spiral. That can also be an issue too.
If you hang out with the wrong friends, they can lead you down
the dark. Path you bond over negativity.

(25:24):
Yes, that trauma bonding and that's not, it's like there's
some trauma bonding, that's fine, but like if you're
constantly ruminating about it, that's not fine.
Well, if you find no solutions like I Exactly.
If all you do is talk about how miserable life is and you don't
complain, complain. How can we fix it?
Then you know you got to, you got to think of solutions to get

(25:44):
better. Yeah, exactly.
Like there's a point where like having a common enemy is kind of
fun, but like at the same time, that's not what you want to talk
about like 24/7, right. And then for just like I have to
maintain my physical health likeyou, but I don't like working
out on my own. So I find, again, my autistic

(26:05):
side has selected two or three things that I really love doing
that are like physical activities.
First one is dance ballet. And you had Allison on.
I would say like, out of all thedance teachers I've had, she's
like the best. Oh, really?
What about to Allison? Shout out to Allison.

(26:26):
No, but she she could start her own cult.
She has that personality right? But no, I like she's a, she was
formal professional dancer and the techniques that she has,
like, they're from classical ballet, different styles.
So she teaches flamenco, but shealso shows us the difference

(26:48):
between like the other parts of Europe and the Russian ballet,
right? And then I learned so much from
her. I'm still sore from Wednesday's
class. Oh yeah, you were.
You were at her class. Oh, every Wednesday, every
Wednesday and maybe in next. Yeah, every Wednesday.
Even next in the summer, probably on Wednesdays as well
because she teaches for city, city arts or city events.

(27:12):
I don't know which one. City events in city Arts Council
or something. They're really cheap.
So her classes are so good. But that's because I love
ballet. I will even go to the ballet on
my own, which is another mental health thing.
It's like find those activities.And then I also do aerials.
I've been doing that like circusarts.
I've been doing that for like since 2009 when I first got in.

(27:36):
And because back then there was only one place you can learn
from and there was a wait list. So when I got on the wait list,
I like got into the class. I'm like, I'm holding my spot.
I'm not letting anyone in. So in the next couple of years,
that's what I did until I had mykid, took a break, then did some
more than COVID hit, took a break and then came back.

(27:56):
And like, I, it's something thatI really love.
And when you pay for something like classes, there's a part of
me that says if you miss that class, you're losing out on $32.
So I will like deliberately, even if I'm not feeling it, take
myself to class. And often times, like Allison's,

(28:18):
classes are 8:00 PM and I think that's pretty late, but.
It's like God, that 32 you're going to show up.
Is it a? Is it a per class?
Yeah, $32 per like as in I don'tknow how much hers are.
I think hers are cheaper, but for aerial arts it's like 30 to
$40 per class. Like it's, I think it's cheap

(28:40):
personally, because of all the equipment and skills and
everything that goes into it, plus the space and the
insurance, the insurance alone. But that's because I value it,
right? Like I think it's really
important to learn new things. I don't like coming out of a
class and not having progressed a little.

(29:01):
So I like constantly trying to progress.
I would learn even if it's like a slight tweak in your body or,
or slight tweak in your technique, you're like, Oh yeah,
that was different. That was good.
That made it better and then? That's probably why you're not
so keen on the workouts like thejust the Whistler thing because
it becomes really monotonous yeah after yeah after a month

(29:22):
and you when you yeah you need that stimulation with the ADHD
ran exactly yeah yeah, you need to constantly be getting better
with each iteration yeah that comes.
It's true. I feel like I like for mental
health again, like the body is really important because like
you said, but as like a lot of autistics, not all, but some are

(29:44):
very like hypersensitive to likesome are external things like
noise or touch. Like I, you know, you cut all
the tags off your, your clothingbecause they bother you, that
kind of hypersensitivity. But then you also have like
undersensitivity to social cues or a lack of sensitivity to your
own body cues. I often times forget to eat.

(30:04):
So I really my partner has alarms in his phone for like
8:00 AM eat breakfast, 11 AM eatlunch and then 4:00 PM eat
dinner so that we have time to prepare it and then eat it.
Like you put the alarms in thereso that we don't forget to eat.
Do you go through days sometimes?

(30:26):
When I was your age, yeah I would like not eat for a couple
of days or sometimes like I would only have the one meal
with my parents. I didn't even fasting before it
was. Great.
You know, I do it purposely, andwhen I first started, it's
painful. Like it's the most painful thing
ever. But for you, it was just
natural. When I wake up, I don't eat for

(30:47):
the day I come home. It's like, eat your wontons.
I'm like, no, I'm not. Yeah, but I but I heard it
increases the brain function too, like being in a fasted
state. Probably.
And anxiety. If you ever take my 371 class,
you'll notice that anxiety can increase your learning.

(31:07):
Like as in like your increased vagal nerve activation?
There we go. So maybe be anxious when I'm in
the in the classes then? No, it's probably why a lot of
the university students have anxiety.
It's anxiety that got them there.
It's like, what am I going to doall this need to do that?
It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which one?

(31:29):
Which classes are your favorite ones to teach?
I would say I don't know, I likethem all.
They all are different and I'm like teaching new one now that's
Psych 213, which when I taught it at another institution that
was Psych 211. It's the same, same course.
I like it because it's different, but I wouldn't say

(31:50):
it's my favorite. I just like like it because
again, it's stimulating because it's really challenging right
now. It's like, how do you get
students to succeed but also learn?
I I don't know if it's just me that notices, but in the first
week of class down to like the midpoint to like the end, you

(32:11):
can really see kind of the, the demeanor, the the, the face when
it comes to like the students. Yeah.
Like, do you notice this too? Like I noticed it myself and
like I feel I feel. More like there's like a group
of students are all gung ho by mid half of like a third of them
are out. And then by the end this

(32:33):
semester I had like 8, you know,12 to 8 students at 10 to 30
person class. Wow.
Yeah, you get weeded out, right.It gets it gets tough.
Oh. No they didn't.
They just stopped coming to class.
Yeah, because it becomes a lot and it's heavy to be able to
juggle everything. Yeah, yeah.

(32:53):
And like there were dedicated students like you.
I I remember you coming to classquite a bit.
I did. I came to pretty much every
single class I. Remember that This is good.
That's why I remember, yeah. Yeah, and I always, I always
keep, you know, I the profs perspective, right?
I always think, oh, they're just, they're just human, right.
I just because a lot of students, they seem to think

(33:15):
that the profs are these like I and mighty like they're, they're
scared to approach them. And I for a while I, I'm, I kind
of feel like that sometimes, butthen you know what, you build
rapport with them and then you you share kind of little
personal stories about like, oh,like, yeah, that coffee right
there. It tastes great so that you know

(33:35):
that restaurant. Yeah, because after you talk to
them so many times, you build rapport.
And that's just, I know so many profs right now and I just,
that's like a revelation. I've had like all the
celebrities, all the people in the world, like they're just
people, you know, just human andlike it.

(33:56):
It feels liberating to me that they're just like they feel
happy when they, you know, get ahug from or feel compassionate.
They feel sad when a friend, youknow, leaves too early and that
kind of stuff. Yeah, I don't know, like a lot
of people think of oh, the, the Prof like they, they're like
robots, they're aliens. They don't feel anything.

(34:18):
They're just like education machines.
But yeah, it, it definitely really helps when as a Prof like
you like shares a lot of personal stories.
I definitely derived a lot of value from, you know, That's why
I wanted to show up to every single class.
I was, yeah, I, I know my stories can be much, I, there
are a lot of stories I do not tell my students.

(34:39):
Like I've had a lot of life experiences, but I think when
students can connect to your life experiences, like the fact
is I had a lot of the boyfriends, I will tell you,
like my relationships were, you know, I've done all the types of
relationships. And so like if you, like, if the

(35:00):
students realize, oh, I went through all of the same things
that you did, like they might feel a little bit more
comfortable. And the main thing is, was it,
we'll talk about this later. But like one of the things I
learned from entrepreneurship was like, they don't care how
much there was a they don't carehow much you know until they
know how much you care. I still use that phrase, yeah,

(35:23):
for almost every class to kind of like, I tried to show
compassion and like, I'm pretty,I feel like I'm pretty lenient
with my students, although I like, sometimes have a heavy
hand because I have standards. We still have to follow
university policy. But like, I will try to
accommodate as much as I can when I can for, for my students,

(35:45):
right? Like within my power, right?
There's some things I just can'tdo.
Do you ever look at the rate my profs?
No, no, I can't handle a single negative comment which is also
part of treatment of the event like it's knowing how much you
can handle. I I always wondered that and
like there's all these people onthe rate my profs.
That leave Yelp. Yeah, comments, but they're not

(36:08):
like I they've never been reliable to me.
I don't know, like they, I've had profs that have a 5 and
they, they just didn't synchronize with my learning
style. But like I just have to, you
just have to adopt. And they're just like different
people. But like usually the people that
go on there are like very butt hurt because they got a bad
grade and it just, I don't know who like who made this?

(36:32):
Yeah. Secret to my classes attendance
like most people who succeed in my classes attend causation and
that's actually like shown in studies anyways like like higher
attendance tends to be correlated with higher grades
like on average it's not a guarantee do.
You think that it's just becausethey're absorbing more knowledge

(36:56):
or that they're making friends in that class and they study
more? Because I find when I, yeah,
when I, when I do show up there,like it's not as like I could
just get more done when I'm studying alone.
But since my friends are there, I'm encouraged to study and it
gets like competitive a little bit.

(37:16):
And I want to make sure I actually have like a decent
grade. So when they ask me, oh, how'd
you do? I don't want to.
I feel like that's the way that you get your studying done is
the social aspect. And some for some it's
competitive. Also, for some, it's like I tell
you what's on the exam if you show up, you know, like there's
a lot that there's on the exam that you learn in class.

(37:39):
Like yeah, there's also you alsomake your exams fun like they
you do like the little matching things.
Oh, thank you. Yeah, Yeah.
I don't know if I can do that next because we're changing over
to canvas. Yeah, yeah.
No more classy. I don't know how to use canvas
as well, so you'll have to bear like whoever takes my class
next. You have to bear with me, sorry.

(38:00):
Bear with the doctor. It's a learning.
It's a learning thing, learning.Curves though, yeah, exactly
pigs. Oh yeah, sorry we got off topic
there. Yeah, that's all right.
Do we? Go back, Do we go back?
How can we bridge the gap between academic knowledge of
mental health and the everyday struggles that people face with
issues like anxiety and depression?

(38:22):
Oh, OK, so this is neat because I think we've been kind of
pushing this. The whole podcast is like we've
kind of talked about like therapy and stuff, but we kind
of have to figure out what causes the mental health issues
and what makes it worse and whatmakes it better.
And so as you know, social is very important.

(38:45):
Your body and physical status isvery important.
Having the right supports for your academic, you know, whether
it's academics or even in your corporate life.
You do get some accommodations depending on where you work.
City of Edmonton gives really good accommodations for mental
health issues. Like they'll even change the

(39:06):
lighting for you if you have youhave epilepsy.
Right that out to ETS there. You go and then, but overall
it's like the goal of it is to reduce the stress that you
experience because stress can exacerbate mental health issues.
So I had, as I said, mental likeanxiety, severe anxiety and

(39:29):
severe depression from ages 16 all the way up to 36 ish, maybe
longer, maybe shorter because you know, I'm a therapy.
I didn't realize that possibly part of the reason I had mental
health issues was maybe because of the stressors, right?

(39:52):
And you like there's a link between stressors and mental
health. So part of the treatment could
be time management, cause often times lack of time is a huge
stress for me. That was my main thing.
And so by linking what you know causes those mental health

(40:12):
issues. That will help you address your
own personal issues with whatever you suffer from.
So my anxiety and depression came first.
I think it was triggered by, I don't know what's probably
triggered by family conflict when I was younger and then

(40:33):
separation. Like it's very common for
parents to get divorced as a separation.
So I think that didn't help. And then that triggered it, but
I stayed in it. And it is again common for you
to stay in it for a few years. And most people can come out of
a mental health issue episode, depression or anxiety, sometimes

(40:57):
naturally, sometimes, sometimes it takes a lot more time, like
for me 20 years. But 10% don't. 10% of people
don't even come out. That's a massive yeah.
Yeah, so, so understanding what makes it worse, what makes it
better. And even when you're in those
stages, some things can make your status worse.

(41:20):
Like did you know that as you get more educated the chance of
you having depression and anxiety increases?
No, I didn't. Yeah, 'cause it just 'cause you.
You ruminate more. You do think more.
Is it the stressors? Like I can't say it's causation,
right? It's correlation, but like one
Nature paper found that was it. It's about 69% of graduate

(41:48):
students have had at least one episode of anxiety or
depression. That's more than 1/4 of the
general population that has an like, you know, has ever had an
episode. So like that's almost 70% of
grad students have gone through either anxiety or depression.
And is that because one anxiety and like I said, makes you

(42:10):
smarter, like you retain more information when you're anxious.
So is it that grad school selects for people who are
highly anxious or is it your anxiety made you learn better so
that you learn more in grad school?
Or is it the stressors of grad school that make you more

(42:32):
anxious and depressed? Right.
We don't know. It's a it's correlative.
And as we teach, it's like, it'snot causation, but it's
definitely higher rates in more educated people.
So 1, I don't think we should stigmatize depression and
anxiety. And two, we by being able to

(42:54):
know like the data and we can better understand how to help it
in the real world. I would say like currently there
are some issues with the currentgovernance that I'm not really
happy with and they're re stigmatizing these mental health
issues and they're basically forcing on treatments that are

(43:16):
shown to not work, right. So we know what helps with
certain things like addictions, right?
We know what helps, but we can choose to do them.
Like harm reduction is a a very,it's an I'm so sorry.
It's OK. It's an effective way of
reducing like addictive symptomsand reducing harm.

(43:40):
But there's other ways like forced institutionalization,
which is great for the public. So we don't have those issues on
transit anymore, but it pushes again, the crime to different
areas. Like I said, my my part, sorry,
my son's father. My son and his father biked to a

(44:02):
place that's near an LRT station, but it's not near
downtown Edmonton where crime isreally high and like 45 minutes.
Their bikes were parked there, all four tires.
Wow, yeah, when you when you saythey're trying to re stigmatize
mental health. I think I just did it there.

(44:26):
I don't. I didn't mean to associate it
with crime, no. No, but what?
What do you mean by that? When they're like.
Just what I did, I'm calling myself out.
I I did that where they try to say that all the bad things are
because of people's mental health issues, that's not the
case, right? Yeah, but wouldn't that like

(44:48):
when saying it's a bad thing, wouldn't that motivate people to
kind of fix it? Like when you say we like, Oh
yeah, what you like? Yeah, they mental health causes
crime rates to go up. And let's say that there's.
I don't think that's true. Like maybe it is.
Yeah. It's not.
But maybe that will cause some concern for people to kind of

(45:10):
treat it, no? Right.
So there is a correlation, but it what it normally does when
you do that, that that kind of stigmatization by equating
mental health with crime causes people to hide it more because
they don't want to be associatedwith the negative.

(45:30):
But if you destigmatize it, you're able to get it more out
in the open. So when I talk about it in class
regarding my own personal issues, I talk about it in a
sense where like, like you said,I'm the Prof and I'm this like
really high and mighty thing up here with all these mental
health issues. You can be too, right?

(45:53):
Like, like it just goes to show it's like, no, not all mental
health issues are even curable. Like RFK is putting out the the
autism list. What is that?
Like just because you have autism doesn't make your family
destroyed. It's that's what there's that's
what he's saying that you can't live a normal life.

(46:14):
Yes, there's different levels ofautism, but what he's doing
doesn't allow for the nuance of understanding it.
It's when you stigmatize something, it ends up being all
or nothing. It's like you have autism or you
don't. Whereas as we know, it's a
spectrum, right? Yeah, there's some severe cases
that need a lot of help. We call those high support

(46:37):
needs. And if you put a lot of
resources to those high support needs, you end up getting like
at least solving a lot of those issues of, you know, parents
with no money to support their kids, they have to work.
But how do you primary caregive if you don't have the money to
do it? Like you would need time and
money to do those things. But if you stigmatize it, well

(47:02):
then like who's going to give you financial support for that?
So normally the government does.In fact, it used to be the like
the, even the Albertan government gives the money to
foster parents to, for certain foster kids that may have like
FASD or, you know, you know, kids with lack of impulse

(47:24):
control. And then they'll provide all the
monetary supports for the, the foster parents to, to provide
those resources for those kids. And that is a really good use of
public funds, I find, because 1,you end up developing
individuals that are a little bit more, you know, functional

(47:45):
in society instead of causing a negative spiral where you remove
all the funding, Parents are stuck in a sticky situation, the
children get no support. And then what happens?
Like all the bad stuff, right? And that's not due necessarily
because of the, the, you know, the mental health issue itself.

(48:09):
It really is due to the stigmatization that leads to
that lack of support. Yeah, it's like, oh, I got a kid
that doesn't bode well with the other, the other classmates,
Like I'm just going to tell thatkid to sit and behave, right.
They don't have the the resources or the tools because
maybe they're busy with work andthey just have, you know, they

(48:30):
don't have time to go on and do their own research because they
got to go and put food on the table.
They got to attend the, the birthdays going to be there for
Father's Day or something. And then you got the kid who's
there's never a solution in place.
And it is as they grow up, they just feel they become more
alienated and then alienated. And next thing you know, they're

(48:53):
not making friends. When they're not making friends,
they, they feel isolated. And what do they do?
They, they go inwards and they just withdraw and they start
doing things they shouldn't have.
And it's just this it's always it always goes back to
prevention is is better rent to to rather than finding a cure

(49:16):
for this person who just slashedtires right?
You go at the source you. Go.
And then, yeah, making sure thatyou have the the nurture in
there and the compassion and yes, all that is great, but
without the tools. Yeah, without the resources.
Without the resources you can't do much.

(49:36):
Exactly. Yeah.
And So what else it's like, and,and one of the things that's
really interesting about the data is like, not only is
anxiety, depression really common, you also find higher
rates of anxiety and depression in people who are smarter,

(49:58):
higher IQ, like there's a paper that I put you can link it,
right? But in autistic children, the
higher IQ, it's associated with higher anxiety.
So it's, it's really interestingbecause like there, there are
theories out there that I don't know which ones hold true, but

(50:22):
it seems like the more you know about the world, the more you
know both the positives, but also the negatives and you know
more in detail, more nuanced, right?
So some things that you know that you get like it could be
anything. It could be like what you're
wearing. I know this scarf, it has
neurons on it. No, no neural cells.

(50:44):
And that's like a, that's a Perkinje cell.
There's a pyramidal cell, that'sstellate cell, there's a bipolar
cell, right so. That's how you get invited to
parties. I'm.
The most boring person at the party.
Guys, look at look at my news. But yeah, sorry to cut you.
No, no. No, but knowing where it's made,
like I know it's made in China and like I bought it because

(51:07):
it's like silk. It has like it, it's like, it's
right after like the liberation day when you Trump announced the
tariffs, the person who sold these cars.
Just like I'm probably never going to be able to afford
shipping in from China again. So these are the last of my
stock guys. Buy it.
Yeah, Yeah. Buy us now.

(51:29):
Yeah. And then, like, if, you know,
even, like the conditions of where your clothing is made,
that can just lead to increased anxiety about certain choices.
Like you're starting to questionalmost every single choice you
make because you know so much about what's behind the scenes.
Why, if you're vegan, you would,you know you don't eat meat.

(51:51):
Sometimes, yes, for health reasons, sometimes compassion
reasons. Sometimes it's like the anxiety
of knowing that you're contributing to suffering,
right? Yeah, I know.
I that that makes so much sense because when I'm reading more
about just childhood trauma and like the state of the world, how
there's a billion people that are either overweight or obese,

(52:12):
which is like, oh, sorry, oh, no, it's all good.
It baffles my mind. Like, I'm like, why is the state
of the world like this? Why?
And then it it goes back to the saying of we suffer more in
imagination than in reality. Yeah.
Where they. Yeah.
You project onto the future of like, oh, ten years from now.

(52:33):
Who am I? What am I going to be when?
Oh, then you start to think of the, the, the cars out there and
oh, that this car crash that happened, that could have been
me. And you, look, you turn on the
news and oh, wow, war is rampant.
You talk to your friend. Oh, your friend has depression
and negativity. Just the way we're wired is so

(52:54):
much more powerful. I mean, evolutionary
psychologists. Yeah.
That's how we go about life to live.
And, and there's in the modern age, there's so much negativity
even with social media, right? All the dopamine levels and the
more information you extract, the more energy like negative

(53:15):
negativity. You just see like it seems like
everything could be negative. But that's why like for me,
meditation and prayer and sleep,like the, the ability to just
stop thinking is so important. The ability to just, that's why
working out right where you're just, you can't think about
anything because you're, you're breathing so hard and you're

(53:37):
going, you're trying your best. You don't have time to think
about, you know, what you're going to do tomorrow or that
worry back then or like that childhood trauma.
You're just, you're working out and you're like in that flow
state. That's why it's so important to
have some sort of outlet, because if you're smart and you
got no outlet, you got, you're just going to keep circling

(53:58):
until the circuit breaks. And that's why I like, you're
right, the smart people tend to like their their brains just
keep running. I don't know, Maybe it's just I
think I'm smart and I think thatall people who have high
intelligence constantly, their brains never turn off.
But that is my experience with all of my acquaintances with

(54:21):
like the high IQ's. It's like brains, our brains
never turn off. And that's part of why I like
when I, I'm in, I'm Buddhist. And so when I go to my temple
and I learned about our cultivation and our meditation
pack practice, most of that is trying to learn how to remove
thought, really not think, sit in the point of emptiness or at

(54:44):
most single pointed concentration.
So the goal is to get to emptiness, but we can't get
there, right? Or we can, right?
But that would be enlightenment.But the whole point is like,
you're right, everything is an illusion according to Buddhism.
Everything is like it's temporary, it's impermanent.
Even this table, it was at one point, I think a tree and maybe

(55:06):
some laminate particle board that's made out of maybe plastic
and or wood. But then it'll degrade in the
future. It's impermanent, everything's.
Impermanent we that that thoughtI got into.
I still am. I do meditate a lot, pretty much
twice a day, and impermanence tome was liberating at first, but

(55:29):
then I started thinking more about it and I'm like, then I
started thinking about death. I started thinking about okay,
it has no meaning then like everything is just going to go
away. But then the other side of it,
it's like liberating that all, like the suffering that I do
have it. It's not forever, it's
impermanence and, and like everything that you experience,

(55:51):
everything, it's all going to beliberated.
Everything always comes to end. And that's beautiful.
And it's just the, the identity,the, the Buddhist idea about
identity, how like you're not your own thoughts, you're not
your body. And sometimes you can't trust
your own thoughts because like, I, there's some certain thoughts
that come up and I'm like, that is not a great thought.

(56:12):
Like I'm, I'm ashamed of that thought.
I'm, that's not me. That happened in the past.
I made mistakes. And I just have to go.
You're not I I breathe in, breathe out, focus in my breath.
You're not your thoughts. You're not your body.
And you're just you. You're just, you're just being
you. And that's, it's hard to grapple

(56:32):
around that for people that haven't meditated.
And. Yeah, exactly.
But you're, you're not you. Yeah.
Yeah. In in that sense, that's the
wonderful thing. I think you just described the
first 3 noble truths of Buddhism.
The first truth is like all lifeis suffering.
The second truth is suffering has a cause.
Third truth is like you can end the cause of that suffering.

(56:52):
And the fourth noble truth is how do you do it?
And like you said, meditation where you kind of learn about
the impermanence of the world, then you learn about the
impermanence of yourself, and then you realize, hey, even
suffering is impermanent. And the only reason I'm
suffering is because I my attachment to whatever outcome I
wanted didn't happen. Well, that's a me problem, not

(57:16):
that thing that didn't happen, Right.
Like that's not the issue. The issue is I wanted that thing
to happen and it didn't or I wanted that and I didn't get it
right. Like those are what we call
attachments. And that's the spiritual side of
me that also helps with my mental health because.
Yeah, like. One thought that I that also
popped up too is like, at which point is an oak tree perfect,

(57:42):
right? Because we ruminate on, we
always want something to be perfect.
We have these expectations, these ideas about our mental
health. Like, why am I not happy?
Like I shouldn't be happy because like that's the meaning
of life, right? I should be happy all the time.
I need to be enlightened. Why don't I have the greatest
relationship with my my friends,my family?

(58:02):
Why can't I spend more time withthem?
Why can't I can't I get more sleep and like, no, 'cause like
that's it's never going to be perfect, 'cause if life was
perfect, what's the point, right?
It's just. That going back to life, life is
suffering life all life is suffering like life is even and
and in Sanskrit, it's not like the word suffering is is what we

(58:27):
mean. It's like even the mildest of
discontent would be considered suffering.
Like mild discontent. Like I'm kind of itchy here.
Like that would be a form of suffering.
Or like I'm just, I know that I'm feeling a little bit hungry.
That's like mild suffering, but it's not bothersome.

(58:49):
Like not all suffering is equal,but all life has all those.
Even desire, right? Because if you don't get it and
then and you'll like this. It's a naval Ravikan.
It's desire. Desire is a contract we make
with ourselves to be unhappy until we get what we want.
Oh that is neat, I've never heard that quote.

(59:10):
Isn't and then once we get that,that's on to the next, then it's
on to the next. And he's also the same guy that
said like, if you can't be happywith a cup of coffee with a
friend, you won't be happy on a yacht.
Exactly. It's so true.
It's it's so true. Realistically, what we have
right now, this is like a utopia, you know what I mean?

(59:31):
Like this is like for majority of the people, it's like being
in Canada, being like access to education, access to clean
water, to food, shelter, healthcare.
It's like it's great, but then no, it's.
It's nuanced though. There are some things we don't
have when that's fine, but the fact is like, do we really need

(59:51):
or want? Like as you said, desire is that
attachment that causes the suffering.
I like that. That's a big quote.
I didn't even remember the quote, but I know the I'll.
I'll send it to you. OK.
Thank you. That would be So what recent
discoveries in neuroscience do you think have the most
potential to transform how we understand cognition or

(01:00:13):
behavior? Well, I guess throughout this
whole podcast you emphasize health, right?
Like I've seen bits of your YouTube and our health does have
a direct correlation with our own thoughts and behaviors.
And even with your podcast, a lot of the pro podcasts out

(01:00:34):
there, they kind of focus on like productivity.
You like the human human podcastas well, right?
But there's been a lot of like new research into neuroscience
of how not just like you know, your, your health affect your
physical health affects your mental health, but also

(01:00:55):
understanding sometimes what you're born with.
So you've you remember the no, Do you remember the diocese, the
stress model? I don't know.
Bad because I I remember teaching this in psych.
One of five. No, I should have.
I should have. I should have gotten my notes
and. But the diastasis stress model

(01:01:15):
just says that diastasis, you'reborn with some stuff, right?
Like you're born with the genetic code for certain protein
expression and the stress part comes from the external
stressors that trigger that particular expression of those
proteins. So you might say be born with
some of the proteins are expressed that can lead to the

(01:01:38):
onset of schizophrenia. But if you never have a type of
stress that can start the production of those proteins,
you might never develop schizophrenia.
So that's the diastasis part, what you're born with.
And now I think the term that weuse called neurodiversity,
right? The diverse nature of everyone's
brains is what leads to the certain behaviors that we have

(01:02:02):
for this like ours, whether it'smanifestation of certain mental
health disorders or just, you know, regular everyday
behaviors. Some kids, my kid, your your
brother good at math programminglike just seeing certain
relationships. Your, your brother seems to love
stories and narratives, and that's like the way that your

(01:02:23):
brother's brain is wired. My son and I, we both have this
weird spatial logistical abilitythat I didn't realize that not
everybody had. But that's our neurodiversity.
That's what makes us able to do certain things that other people
can't do, like switch up formulas in our heads.
We can do that, but not everybody can do it.

(01:02:44):
I didn't know that actually until I started teaching and I
realized how come some students don't get this?
I'm like teaching it the way I would learn it.
And it seems it's very straightforward, right?
Yeah. So there's a lot of research
that now into these nerd, this nerd diversity, whether it's
autism or ADHD, and the fact that we now know that everybody

(01:03:11):
may manifest different traits makes us, and I think it helps
us with compassion, with our empathy associated with others.
I know in my classes, ADHD kids take my classes because they
know I have ADHD, right? And they excel in it because I
teach them the strategies that Iused to use to manage my ADHD so

(01:03:32):
that I could be academically successful, right?
And on top of that, we're developing a whole ton of new
technology that helps us investigate like our brain.
So even in the early 90s, we hadEEG, right?
If you remember, that's electroencephalography.
That's where you look at the surface electrical output of

(01:03:55):
your brain and these brain wavesthat you can measure.
We've seen it correlate with different states of arousal,
like meditation, Actually meditation.
There are apps that you can use with neurofeedback.
Like I showed you the Muse headbands in class, so you can
buy any one of those headbands online.

(01:04:17):
It will measure your brain wavesand tell you whether or not
you're meditating. The Muse app.
Yeah, You know, I volunteered toask for somebody up front.
Yeah. Yeah, you were.
Really good. You got your brain into like so
one of the things I show is likethe the app, it's like it's it's
a bio monitoring app that allowsme to track all four electrodes.

(01:04:39):
So they're 20 sorry, two up here, 2 on the side for this
little headset I got you to wear.
And then I told you to like close your eyes and then blink a
few times and you'd see the feedback.
It's like, OK, that's a motion artifact.
And then I got you to, like, start meditating.
And you didn't see it because your eyes were closed, but your
alpha frequency would go up. And that's how you knew you were

(01:05:02):
going into this calm state of calm wakefulness, right?
You're not asleep yet, right? That's when your delta waves
would go, you know, the increasein frequency, but you would see
like the different frequencies are associated with different
states. So these are what we call
feedback, like biofeedback devices, they give you feedback

(01:05:23):
about your biology, in this case, your brain.
So what we've like noticed lately is that with this
technology, we can do more research into like sleep and
sleep health. And we can see the stages of
sleep you go through. And if you don't get like the
deepest stages of sleep, how that can impact your physical

(01:05:44):
health. Like my partner has sleep apnea
nores when he doesn't have his constant, you know, continuous
pressure like air pressure. So he needs to sleep with that
sleeping mask, which I had no idea what it was until I met my
partner. I would teach it in class.
But it turns out if you have that, you can't get into the

(01:06:06):
deepest stages of sleep. You will fall into sleep and
then you'll stop breathing, right?
You'll snore and then you'll stop breathing and you'll wake
yourself up and you're constantly in stage 1/2 sleep,
but you never get to 3-4. You never rested.
Don't you sleep? You're just constantly fatigued.
So like we have the ability withall this new tech to increase

(01:06:27):
our like our health so that we can decrease mental health
issues. It's it's cool.
I actually dull. Or actually can you?
Oh, sorry. I'm gonna put that down.
I think I can't see you. There you go.
There. No way.
It's good. I think if we put it there we
go, OK, yeah, it's really cool. You mentioned that model.

(01:06:54):
I I knew it. I actually explained that to
some family and friends all the time, but I just didn't know the
the terminology. But, yeah, I, it's cool that
there's these the genetic components that makes you who
you are, but it's not until likea certain amount of stress opens

(01:07:15):
you up to inherit that condition.
Or I, it could be a good thing, though.
It could, it could push you to want to, you know, be really
good at math and you're just become fascinated because that
that just syncs up, right. Yeah, Yeah.
Or like for me, I did I tell youabout this condition called

(01:07:36):
hyperacusis. And then like that you're
sensitive. Yeah.
That I it was a lot of stress atwork.
And there is this that Co workerI told you about who just didn't
really bode well for my mental health because he was hating on
me for whatever his reason was. But yeah, I was going through

(01:07:56):
work, stressed out, going back home.
I just couldn't absorb it properly.
Yeah, I didn't. I had an outlet but I feel like
I was just not wanting to go to work and it felt so heavy.
And then just one day I woke up after a being in a party being
too close to the speakers and the sound just became too loud

(01:08:18):
and my ear started hurting and flooded to my left ear.
And I had to get a bunch of audio like tests and everything
was fine structurally and I wentto go see two ENT's.
Everything was fine. All these different appointments
and I was still suffering a lot and everything was just so much

(01:08:41):
pain. Sound of my own voice heard at
one point. Yeah.
Yeah. And so it was definitely
psychosomatic, but I think it was the triggers were there.
I don't know if it was because of the person at work, but it's
just, yeah, another person couldhave gone, have gone through the
same experiences I've had and have been fine, right.

(01:09:03):
And that's just. Or could have triggered
something else like that kind ofstress.
It triggered one of my acquaintances into his first
psychotic break and then that's how his schizophrenia came out
was he had a kid and he stopped sleeping and took 4 Tasers to
take him down and. Then yeah, with with the the

(01:09:25):
different waves, right. Testing someone's sleep, like
health really does influence your happiness.
I mean, there's just sounds obvious, right?
Of course you're gonna be happy healthier, but it's but when you
explain it and give people toolsas to OK meditation, sleep, then
you just expand their kind of their bandwidth to be able to

(01:09:47):
deal with life stressors. Yeah, yeah.
And there's also different typesof behavior like cognitive
behavioral therapy. So there's like the types that
you kind of emphasize is like the mindfulness based practices,
the meditation based practices. Those are like dialectical
behavioral therapy where you're linking your awareness to your,

(01:10:09):
of the, of, of stimuli in the world and in yourself.
And that linkage of the two allows you to gain a little bit
more insight into what causes stress, what triggers you, so
that you can decrease your triggers.
And then there's other types of therapy for me because, as I
said, my brain just does too much things all the time.

(01:10:31):
And So what really helped me wascognitive behavioral therapy.
And so like different types of therapy have come out to kind of
help people become aware of their stressors and become like
be able to cope kind of with it or even learn to remove the

(01:10:52):
stressors. For me, that was like, again,
self treated cognitive behavioral therapy where I had
to retrain my mind. Like I did so many things I did,
like I told the class, I did thegratitude journal at one point
and that was really cool. It worked for a bit, but it's
like a habit formation. You have to continue the habit
to maintain that level level of gratitude.

(01:11:14):
So a gratitude journal is where you instant because I used to
ruminate on the bad stuff, right?
And it's where you pick out likea few things every day and then
figure out why you like them andwhat you're grateful for.
So usually for me, that was really easy.
I liked landscapes. I liked like the sky, the
colors, the different colors. So usually like sunsets and

(01:11:36):
sunrises. I really liked different cloud
formations. I really liked I was happy when
my son would do something fun orwe bonded.
So I would like write down threethings.
But again, that's maintenance, right?
But it is so it is a type of therapy.
But the one that was most effective was cognitive

(01:11:57):
behavioral, as in you. I reframed all my thoughts.
I had to like take every negative thought, think of why
isn't, why am I thinking about that thought?
Is it true? And then reframe it.
Yeah. And if it is true, what can I
do? Yeah, about it.
Like am I just running around incircles when I can just take
what's in the middle and actually do something with it?

(01:12:20):
Or is it something I can't control?
Then why am I think about it in the first?
Place it's just yeah, why I can't do anything about it
exactly. Yeah, go about it.
It's I always think about kind of the inverse to where what
would I do to myself if I could make myself the most unhappiest,

(01:12:42):
right? Yeah.
And usually it's OK. Always see the negative.
Never get good sleep, sleep at very sporadic times, don't eat
healthy, stop seeing friends. And it becomes so like real,
like, oh gosh, like, like there's someone like that in the

(01:13:03):
world and like, you see it and then it takes.
So it's, it's so fast to be ableto deteriorate, right.
And it takes so long to build. And the way I explain it is it
takes years to build skyscrapers, right?
Yes, but it takes one dynamite to just.
Just blow it up. Blow it up, yeah.

(01:13:23):
Yeah, yeah, that is so true. I like.
That do you ever meet someone with that doesn't get affected
by stress? Yes, I've met too.
Yeah, like they just, they just seem like, oh, they just go
about life and nothing seems to faze them.
Yeah, So one I think was just naturally that way.
She was my son's daycare owner. She owned the daycare after

(01:13:50):
school care and there was right?Yes, exactly with all the
stress. Kids running.
Around and not only that. Stop.
Get off there, her. Son and her husband were
disabled. Never saw her like unhappy or in
the mood. She was always happy and I don't
know if she was ever like I. I don't know if I doubt it would
be masking she would have. Been so tired you think she was

(01:14:12):
suppressing it though. No, that's the thing.
Because she would have. You could see it on someone's
face. Yeah, exactly.
Like and because she experiencedhardship every day, like her
husband and her son were both, she was a primary caregiver for
both of them and she was runninga daycare.
Like that was the only person I think that I know for sure did

(01:14:33):
not process stress the same way.Then there's like theories that
like people who have psychopathic tendencies also
don't process stress. And she wasn't one of those.
She wasn't one of those. But some that have like no
remorse, no regret and no empathy.
Like, they don't feel that stress because for for me, I had

(01:14:58):
throughout my whole like teenageand then early 20s, maybe even
to my 30s, I had social anxiety.So you saying like going out and
meeting people, That is my worstnightmare, really.
Yeah. I hated it.
And then the only reason I got out of it and into like a
comfort zone of being able to tolerate being around people is

(01:15:19):
because later on, we'll talk about the MLM, right, the cult
stuff. And so they kind of force you.
They have some sort of like behavioral control.
But in the end, it taught me howto be social on the surface
level. Hey, small talk goes a long way
sometimes, yeah. And I was able to get people
like, you know, it's just one ofthe privileges I've have the

(01:15:42):
presenting the way I do is that people trust me really easily.
So I can get people to open up really quickly.
And that's one of the manipulations that they would
teach too. So I don't, I, I don't do that
anymore because I don't want to manipulate people.
So it's like you, if you're opening up, you're doing it for

(01:16:04):
yourself. I'm not trying to like get
anything from you anymore. Yeah, just to be there.
Yeah, without any kind of agenda, Right.
Exactly. Back then, like even sometimes
right when somebody opens up, there's like the underlying
thought of like, oh, this is like making my building me up

(01:16:26):
because they're distrust and I'mgoing to, I'm going to trust
them better. You're going to trust me.
And it's like, no, you're just being there for the sake of
being there. And I don't care if I never see
you again. And maybe that's even for the
better. Like sometimes people open up to
strangers because it's safe. They don't know who.
You are. I was.
I was at work with this one customer and it's like usually

(01:16:48):
signs he was, I was helping him unload the truck and I was like,
hey, man, how, how are you? And he was, he looked
disgruntled and he didn't seem like he had a good day.
So yeah, he's like, OK, man. And I said, oh, man, why just
OK? You know, he's like he's like he
pauses for a bit and he goes, well, today is my wife and I's

(01:17:11):
anniversary and we just he just he just filed for divorce and
I'll take taking the kids and I'm like, wow, that's that's
rough. Tough Tuesday.
Stuff like that. It probably felt good to just
unload, right? Yeah.
So you unloaded both the truck and you unloaded.
Unload the truck and the that's a good one.

(01:17:33):
That's a good one. I like that.
So can you can you break down how the brain responds to
chronic stress and why it's sucha critical issue, particularly
in younger populations? Yeah.
So that's the thing. I think every generation has

(01:17:55):
like chronic stress, right? Like every generation has its
own form of stress. And so I think I skipped the
second. One yeah, we can go back to it
later. Yeah, we.
Can go back after yeah? Yeah, so every generation I
think has like its own differenttype of stressors.
So I know for me, I know what kind of stressors triggered my

(01:18:16):
mental health issues, right? Social situations, social
anxiety was my biggest 1. So going to school, I'm glad I
had like safe people. Shout out to my undergrad
friends. They they were there for me and
they were my safe space. I used to study in.
You know the the link between Cameron Library and Cap?

(01:18:39):
Oh, that, that. Space link.
We used to call it link. The link.
I might start calling that now. The link the.
Link the two, but, but there's alot of links now on canvas that
we didn't have before. We even had a building that we
called V Wing because it was thewing of chemistry that looked
like AV. They knocked it down because of

(01:18:59):
the asbestos. Oh, not.
That and the dangers, like I think there were some like
crime, criminal instances in there because it was in the
basement, it was dark, but that was where my boyfriend's locker
was. We make out there a lot.
That's one way to remove chronicstress.
Like have you ever watched like That 70s Show and That 90s Show?

(01:19:23):
It was just like that, like kidsmaking out all over campus.
Great. Yeah, I was.
I was in Grade 7 and I, my firstgirlfriend.
I thought it'd be cool to make out with her and at her locker.
And it was like, right now it's like going looking back.
That was so cringe. Like, no, it is.
I'd do that. There was kids walking around

(01:19:43):
like horrified. They're like like Admin and
Delaney. Oh, that's cute.
One of my students, his name is Delaney.
No, I'm kidding. Maybe it's her.
It's beautiful if. Wow, good job.
Yeah. So like a lot as we know, like

(01:20:04):
stress can trigger any mental health issues because you're
born with certain things. So I was born more with like
the. Depression, anxiety proteins and
like the the, the ones that trigger like schizotypal, like
bad thoughts, right, or, or inaccurate thoughts.
So, so where you have your reality, your internal reality,

(01:20:27):
your thoughts don't kind of match the the external reality.
But yeah, those can trigger any type of those mental health
disorders. So in younger generations,
because you guys haven't experienced as much of the world
yet, a lot of just regular things can be stressful.

(01:20:49):
Learning how to socialize, that what's very stressful for me.
Learning how to like study, alsostressful.
Learning how to time manage. So if you have a more holistic
understanding of breasts and stressors, what is the stress?
What is the stressor, something that causes stress?
What kind of stresses do you get?

(01:21:10):
What can those stresses do to your body?
Right. And then understanding the
inside your your inside your internal awareness of your
stress state, your autonomic response to stress.
So like your sympathetic or parasympathetic response to
stress, you can use that understanding in your regular

(01:21:31):
everyday life. Like I taught this in Psych one
O 5 Psych 377 at times when we were talking about like the
divisions of the sympathetic nervous system, right?
You got the central nervous system, then you got the the
peripheral nervous system. In the peripheral nervous system
you have like the skeletal, skeletal muscles, like skeletal

(01:21:53):
nervous system. And then you have the so the
voluntary motor skills, then youhave the autonomic system then.
So the autonomic is all the automatic activity that happens
inside your body to whatever happens outside.
So breathing, heart rate and respiration, you know, blood
flow, the hunger. And then in that autonomic

(01:22:16):
nervous system it's divided intotwo divisions, the sympathetic
and the parasympathetic, right? In the sympathetic nervous
system is simplified like S sympathetic or stress.
S for stress, this is your fight, flight, freeze, or P
system where whenever you experience a stressor, you

(01:22:37):
respond in some of those ways. I mean, there's different ways
you respond and it can go from anything like mild discomfort or
even like you in some cultures, they train people to appease
when they're stressed, like, youknow, comfort other people and
to fighting. Like you turn red and you just
like go into a rage and you black out and you just like

(01:23:01):
there's destruction. And the other system is a
parasympathetic division where it's responsible for resting and
digesting. So this is where you, if you
activate that system, you can suppress your synthetic nervous
system. If you activate your synthetic
nervous system, it suppresses the parasympathetic.

(01:23:21):
And so in order to like deal with certain stressors, you have
to realize how you can regulate those two systems, right?
Like you do it through physical activity and meditation and
sleep. Those are like the best ways of
doing it. Honestly, I think those are
amazing for me. I could easily activate my

(01:23:43):
sympathetic nervous system just by thinking something like you.
Oh yeah, you go into a stress response, right?
And, and when you're constantly activating that like chronic
stress can lead to that chronic activation of that sympathetic
nervous system, which you know, if you remember from Psych one O

(01:24:04):
5, we talked about Han Celldier's general adaptation
syndrome, where you have that immediate stress response when
the stressor is first triggers your sympathetic response, then
you adapt to it. So my favorite example for
students is like the start of the semester, your stress levels

(01:24:25):
rise and then during the semester you like adapt to the
regular stress. You know that there's
assignments, you know that there's exams, you'll just come
to class, you'll just do the work, but you're just doing it
and like you're constantly stressed and anxious, but it's
not affecting your, you know, your work, you've adapted.
So that's the adaptation part. Then finally, by the time you

(01:24:48):
get to end of the assessment semester, some earlier, you're
exhausted and that's the exhaustion stage.
And the worst case scenarios of the exhaustion stage, which can
happen like with any prolonged stressor like the Ukraine, the
Russia, Ukraine war, right? If you're like in the bombing or
a long period of time, you're going to like exhaust all your

(01:25:11):
energy resources dealing with the adapting to the situation.
Your organs can fail. You can like have
immunosuppression or your death is the worst case scenario,
right? But like most of us just get
sick at the end of the semester,right?
And so like with chronic stress,you have to know that that's

(01:25:33):
going to take a toll on your body.
And is based on that when we talked about this before, it's
taking a toll on your mind. You're less able to help people.
You're more actually more cruel.You end up being like irritable
with your friends. And that can lead to a
deterioration of your social relationships, which are
supposed to help you with your mental health, like you can

(01:25:55):
exacerbate into a native spiral.So one of the things is like for
students, for the younger generation is learn about these
things. Education can solve a lot of
your problems. Even if you don't use it in your
career, you're going to use it in your regular everyday life.
You'll use the tricks that you learn in school.
Like I learned so many things inschool that I applied to this

(01:26:19):
day and the the ANS that are notnervous system divisions like
that. It's like that's what I apply
now. I activate my parasympathetic
nervous system by meditation or by breathing exercises or
cultivation or being present, and then it decreases my stress
response. Yeah, the way I remember the

(01:26:43):
parasympathetic is like a parachute.
It's like you're like coming down.
And then the sympathetic is likegoing, yeah, like dropping out
of the the plane. Yeah.
That's a good. Analogy I like that that's I
never forget it but yeah, it's just part of life is just going
about those two right and if youif you focus too much in the

(01:27:04):
parasympathetic like you're not going to get anything done
you're just going to be you can't you're being The Cave.
Maybe you're be blissed out, butyou're not going to make
anything out of your career. Nothing will get done.
But if you focus too much in thesympathetic then you will get
sick really quick and you won't get any rest.
And have you read Gabramonte's book When the Body Says No?

(01:27:26):
No. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's just a book about the stress and how all these people,
he makes a case of just people becoming sick with like, like
multiple sclerosis and cancers because of stress.
And he, you know, links it to all the stuff and it's the it's

(01:27:47):
crazy how many people out there are suffering due to their own
minds. Exactly.
Like it's just we in here, we can create catastrophe.
Like everything can be burning in the mind and everything can
be an uproar. But then it's usually not that
bad. You know, like rarely is it ever

(01:28:09):
that that bad. And even then you you hear of
stories of people that are actually the external side are
in an uproar, like they, but internally they're not fazed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is like kind of that
dichotomy, right? Where like somebody could be in

(01:28:29):
like in ruins and chaos, but they could be in peace versus
somebody could be surrounded by just great things, but they
could be in hell like. You know, chaos.
Yeah, how does your research or teaching in neuroscience
intersect with everyday decisionmaking or emotional regulation?

(01:28:51):
Oh. So with ask that question again
that was like, oh, there it is, Yeah, there you go.
How does your research or teaching in neuroscience
intersect with everyday decisionmaking or emotional regulation?
Oh, perfect. So The thing is like when I, I

(01:29:15):
don't do as much research as I used to, although I do more of
like the cheap, what I call cheap research things that you
can just acquire easy data without being invasive.
So basically questionnaires and service, right?
But one of the things that I've been looking at lately is mostly
like my own understanding of neurodiversity, right?

(01:29:37):
So I've been teaching a lot in like human neuropsychology and
neurobiology of learning and memory, but most of my
understanding comes from my own personal neurobi diversity, the
autism, the ADHD. And then I take that and I deep
dive into the literature, right into that research.

(01:30:01):
And so I really didn't even knowI had ADHD until my son was
diagnosed with it. And then, you know, when your
kids diagnosed with an illness, you're like, how did I fail?
And then I realized, OK, it wasn't, it was, it wasn't a
failure like, but no, most parents know if there's

(01:30:23):
something that's a little bit different about their kids.
Even at the earliest stages. When I had my son right in 2012,
he was so active compared to allthe other babies.
Like, he just would not let me put him down.
At three months, he could spend 4 hours in the Jolly Jumper.

(01:30:46):
For four hours. You're not even supposed to
leave him in for 20 minutes. He would cry and scream if I
took him out. Yeah, but he was great.
Like, he he loved the jumping. He and it turns out he was like
don't put me in the direction this.
Guy's a machine. He was a machine.
He still is a machine like that kid, but it's also with ADHD

(01:31:10):
comes all the other symptoms of like, you know, the attention
deficit, the hyperactivity, right?
I knew that from three months. Like he was just hyperactive and
anybody who carried him could not hold him for longer than
like a couple of minutes, right?He was not.
I carried other people's babies.I'm like, how are you so still?

(01:31:30):
And then mine does like wiggly jumping around trying to climb
everywhere. By the time he was six months,
he was climbing up and down the stairs.
By the time he was like like 9 months, he was on the big kids
structures in the playground climbing as high as he could.
He was walking like first time he saw a pretty girl in Mexico,

(01:31:50):
he walked to her. It's like that's his first
steps. It'll 1010 months.
Yeah. And yeah, so like, we knew he
had aged 80, like we knew there was something different about
him. And then by the time he went to
daycare like pre, not pre-K, even before pre-K, he was about

(01:32:11):
three or three or four years old, We had to move him from
daycare to daycare to daycare because he had behavioral
issues. And so we he, he would have
trouble transitioning, meaning going from task to task.
When he got on to a task and he was focused on it, that could
have been the autism, could havebeen the ADHD.

(01:32:32):
He was hyper focused. So if you ripped him away from
it, he would have tampered. DRAM jumps a three he.
Was getting He was getting kicked out of daycares.
Really. That must have been tough.
Yeah. You were like, are you mad at
all at the? No, no.
Like he was not. Yeah.
He was kicked out of the first one.
And then the second one was a day home and he was getting

(01:32:54):
bullied there. And then the third one was with
that Lady who just didn't experience stress, and she was
so good for him. And then his kindergarten
teacher said he is. I've taught thousands of
students. He is in the top 1% of activity
levels. Like she didn't say anything,
like she did not diagnose, but we got a letter from her and

(01:33:17):
other workers and we took it to the doctor immediately diagnosed
as ADHD. Once we gave the questionnaires
to everybody who can observe him, he was medicated as night
and day his behavior. So it just turns out, you know,
like autistic kids and ADHD kids, there is a delay in
frontal development. Pretty simple.

(01:33:40):
It's just like you lack the impulse control.
And you see this in FASD as well.
The kids who lack impulse control is their underdeveloped
frontal cortex. But I didn't realize that it
came from somewhere. There's some sort of dioceses
that he inherited. And then when I look deeper into
it, it's like, oh, I blame the father.
I'm like, Oh, no, it's totally you because you're just like,

(01:34:03):
this is father is active, so active.
But it didn't explain the the attentional deficits because his
dad was high functioning. And then I looked at myself and
I realized, oh, when I look at when I compare all the symptoms
to all the literature, I have those issues of hyper focus,
which again, could be the autism, could be the ADHD of

(01:34:26):
transitional issues. Like I can't pull my so you
know, we talked about tasks switching.
I don't know, maybe. Yeah, we did a little bit in 275
and 377. We talked about tasks switching
where there's different areas ofthe brain in the frontal areas
that need you need to activate to disengage from tasks.

(01:34:46):
I couldn't disengage and I also had trouble engaging like
starting in tasks. It's like, think fast and what's
that? Think fast and slow.
Yeah. By Daniel Yeah, yeah.
And so, so in the end, I, like, looked into all of these.
I also did the Simon Baron Cohen's autism spectrum

(01:35:08):
questionnaires. That's mostly for adults of kids
with autism. And it turns out we we all kind
of rank on that spectrum. And I ranked really high on the
on that spectrum. And that's when I realized,
like, I'm teaching about all these things, but I never really
applied it to myself. Maybe I should.

(01:35:29):
Yeah, I got, I figured out the depression, anxiety early on in
my teaching, but the ADHDI really didn't get until like
2012. Like I didn't really understand
and then linking it with autism and ADHD.
It also helps that you see a lotof representatives online model
like influence. Well, I wouldn't say they're

(01:35:50):
influencers, but they're just examples of people with those
disorders online. And you're like, oh, my symptoms
match up with your symptoms. I also do the ADHD thing on
where I go full fledge into one activity and then I get bored of
it, but I get really good at it.And then so I'll jump from like

(01:36:11):
different activities to activities like hobbies, right?
So right now I crochet a lot andI got pretty good at it and I
know I'm going to get bored at it at one point.
So like like just understanding myself then made me understand
why I made certain decisions like buying a lot of yarn for I

(01:36:34):
spent 90 bucks the other day at Michael's.
So it's like it makes me understand my decision making
abilities and now also understanding how to regulate my
autonomic system using the habits we're, I'm better able to
link what I know in neuroscienceto how to do these techniques in

(01:36:59):
real life to manage behavioral outcomes.
Yeah, it must be liberating, hey, to finally have answers
because you've gone through all your life prior to that going,
huh? Why do I just lose passion with
this endeavor? Like, I've gotten so good at it.
Why don't I just want to do it anymore?
And then, like with your kid, it's like, oh, like, why?

(01:37:21):
Why is he like this and all this?
But thank goodness it's while he's still young, right?
It's good to find these answers.And it's also good for him
because I understand him in the in a way that I let him be
himself. I don't necessarily want to
force them into anyone direction.
They're like, yes, I want to train them to be a better

(01:37:42):
individual. I don't want him to be
continually rude, but he's like just sassy.
And he is a good person. And so, I mean, I think that
alone is, is good enough. But like, I'm not going to RIP
him away from his computer if he's like spending hours on
scratch, right? Because he's actually creating
and doing something and learningthese skills that I think are

(01:38:05):
going to help him with his future.
Yes, Scratch, that's your kids on there when they're like when
they don't have to. Yeah, that's that's great.
That's awesome. Or like just even the, the as
long as you're optimizing or when it's just building
something the way I I there's people do too much consuming and

(01:38:28):
not as much producing, right? That's usually how I go about
it. And I tell my brother, you are a
producer. Do don't.
Yes, you can consume, but not asmuch as producing.
Versus I find myself if I'm consuming too much, I just feel
depleted and I feel useless. Versus if I'm doing the podcast

(01:38:49):
more, I'm actually building the body, the mind.
It's like, oh, I'm actually, I feel great.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's true. You feel more productive.
And one of the things that I didnotice, like I was just talking
with my partner the other day, is when I was your age, back in
the day. It makes me sound so old.
I used to have this anxiety about not being productive,

(01:39:12):
right? Like every activity that I was
doing, I was like worried it wasn't productive.
I should be studying. Like even if I was like watching
a movie with my friends, I'm like, I should be studying.
Or if I'm eating dinner, it's like, I should be doing this or
I should be cleaning my room. Like this weird anxiety that I
had kept me from ever being present.

(01:39:32):
And this emphasis on productivity really limited my
my activities. Yeah, there's this idea by
Chris, Chris Williamson. It's called the productivity,
productivity purgatory. And it's where you, when you go
out, oh, it's at sunlight to increase your cortisol, cortisol

(01:39:54):
levels when you go out there so you can enhance your circadian
rhythm, put it out and beat. Or when you're socializing,
you're making sure you're calming yourself down and
feeling more connected, right? Or when you're working out,
you're just increasing endorphins, becoming healthier.
It's like everything's for a reason.
Why can't you just? To do it to do it to do it.

(01:40:15):
Yeah, exactly. Like just eat food because it
tastes good, right? Or do.
This thing it doesn't matter if you make a hat or not.
To study because, you know, you do want to study, not because,
you know, for your future, for your knowledge and because you
can use that knowledge. It's like, no, that takes you
away from the moment. Yes, it's good to know all these
positives about sleep, about cold showers, about sauna, but

(01:40:38):
exercise. But when you put too much
emphasis on, like the the agendayou like, you go.
There's just too much. You're not living anymore.
Exactly. And then there's this quote by
Alan Watts. Was it is when you spend.
Yeah. When you spend too much time
improving your life, you forget to live it.

(01:41:00):
Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I I like that quote. I don't read enough Alan Watts,
but, well, I don't know. A lot of Buddhists do.
But yeah, it's it's really interesting because like once I
learned that being present is actually the source of my own
personal happiness, I started learning how to just switch into

(01:41:23):
that mindset a little bit more and I stopped worrying about
being productive. Like I still have the urge and
like, I should make a podcast. I should make those tutorial
YouTube videos that I said I've been make want to make for like
years. It'll be good for my career,
blah, blah. But like there was a point in
time I would just wanted to do it for the sake of doing it.
And now it's like I'm in that purgatory, that limbo.

(01:41:46):
It's like, well, you know, it's like it's important, but there
are other things that I could bedoing that actually help my
mental health. You know, I find crocheting is
one of them. Like it's type of meditation for
me. Like when you're focusing on
making something and even if it's like a useless something, I

(01:42:09):
make a lot of toys and they're pretty useless.
I consider, it's like, I almost consider like garbage.
Like I make something cute and it's like, OK, that's that's
nice. I don't want to keep a whole
bunch of clutter in the house. So I give them away.
But like those decisions that I'm making now are less
emphasizing the productivity andmore emphasizing my own internal

(01:42:33):
state, my desire to do like things I feel are are good for
me. The the progress, yeah, right.
Because, I mean, most of life it's all about the progress.
And it's 1% of it. It's the reward.
Yeah. When you train for a marathon,
you spend so much time with the diet, with like running all

(01:42:54):
those weekends. And then when you're actually in
the marathon day, you get to thefinish line and your euphoric
for a minute, 2 minutes, you getthe medal.
But if you hated every single moments of the diet, of those
early morning runs and the heat and the rain, it's like, why did

(01:43:16):
you have to go do do that? You know what I mean?
Yeah, exactly. It's like it's a journey, not
the destination. Yeah, yeah.
And so I've learned that and I've also learned like again,
it's not necessarily in my research or teaching of
neuroscience, but I've learned that when you, oh, I might have

(01:43:40):
just lost it. That's all right.
It's I didn't have one quote I wanted to share with you by
Robert Sapolsky, I think. Oh, yeah, yeah.
It's dopamine is not the happiness of pursuit.
It's the pursuit of happiness. True.
Or the dopamine is not the pursuit of happiness, it's the

(01:44:02):
happiness of pursuit. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
It's like the happiness you gainin doing that thing.
Well, that's what I was going at.
It's like like the reason why I do aerials, the reason why I do
dance like classes, the reason why I crochet is like that
mastery. It's a journey of getting
better. And when you have a destination
in the goal, it kind of like causes this abrupt end.

(01:44:25):
Whereas if you constantly know that you can get better even at
the tiny little things, that is the basis to mastery, I find.
And it's not about being better than everybody else because
someone is always going to be better than you.
It's a matter of being better than yourself.
Like the day before, right? Or last class last week, right?

(01:44:47):
And I I, I find that that's really important to me, is
learning about things about myself, learning that, yeah, I'm
going to do these things becauseI like it, not because it's
productive. Also, with my autism and ADHDI
have an inability to understand object permanence.

(01:45:10):
If it's out of sight, it literally is out of mind.
I will forget about it. Including food.
And so like I have learned to make hacks in my life to work on
the ADH to even take advantage of the ADHD.
Like I, if I go to my office right now, there are a few
things I need to get done. And I used to like really stress

(01:45:31):
out. It's like, oh, what if I forget?
What if I forget? These are deadlines.
Now I hack my ADHD when I turn on my computer, which is a
habit. I have everything open that I
need to do the work. Then it's like it, my ADHD takes
over and it's like, oh, it's there.
I better get it done. And then you just do it, and
then it's done. And then I also learned, like,

(01:45:54):
my anxiety lies in procrastination.
So when I have things to do and I can't get it done, I spend a
lot of energy thinking about it.So this is where the time
management skills come in. It's like if I can't get it done
without waiting for someone else, I'll put in my calendar
and to, you know, get that thingto do the thing when it's

(01:46:16):
available, right, so that I can push it from my mind.
So having like these tools like perspective memory aids, Google
Calendar, super helpful. And the other things are like, I
don't know if you watch was it human resources or big mouth
human resources? It's like a cartoon, but this is
logic Rock, played by Randall Park, one of my favorite Korean

(01:46:38):
American actors. I so funny, but he's like got
this inbox zero type logic like he's, he's got this formula for
inbox 0 meaning because I get a lot of student emails and like
how do I deal with like 3, a couple 100 emails a day.
Well, I use that technique that he like even before he stated

(01:47:00):
it, but I use the technique is like delegate, delete, delete
and like I will do as much as I can in order to get it off my
mind. That's the main thing is to
anxiety reduction is my overall goal for everything I do right
so that I figure out these theseare what other people would call

(01:47:23):
coping mechanisms, strategies. It's cool all the different
iterations you've had, right? Because a couple years back you
probably didn't have the system It's, but it's through the
little things with every single day.
And it's just like reveling in it and like celebrating it too.
Because, oh, yesterday I wasn't able to answer that e-mail

(01:47:45):
because of this framework. But then I adopted that.
Now it's fixed. And then it, it seems like
you've been doing it forever, but Oh yeah, you didn't.
But again. Nothing's ever perfect.
Yeah, I know it, know it. And it's just a lot of
reflection that I've done as well, like with it when it comes
to this podcast, like, oh, I used to never do that little

(01:48:05):
thing. I used to just go right into it
without any preamble. I used to not, you know, have a
system not give water. But then as they all build up,
right, you just forget that you started from zero.
Yeah. Exactly.
Putting conscious awareness to those times where you didn't
have it before and go on good job, you know, a little a little

(01:48:27):
pat in the back like. And it makes you more empathetic
to people who have are starting from nothing and don't have the
strategies that you have, right?Like one.
It also makes you a valuable source to them.
But sometimes people have to learn through their own, you
know, errors or inconveniences. So like, if you're more
empathetic with them because youknow that you started somewhere,

(01:48:51):
it makes for a better world. You're more compassionate.
It's not even just like the physicalities of it too.
It's not even it's about what's inside too, right?
Like are you, how are you viewing this thing?
Like the way you, we look at it,right?
You, you can't really quantify it because they're like things
that are physical, right? It's so much easier, like, oh, I

(01:49:12):
had this amount of emails, I answered this much, or I had
this amount of work done when itcomes to running, when it comes
to the exercise. But when it comes to like
inside, it's like like I, I actually did, I actually showed
up to that class and I didn't want to or I actually was there
for the student, even though, you know, I didn't really have

(01:49:36):
the time, but I still made the time and I made it all work.
And like, I feel like we don't give ourselves enough credit for
that. Like, oh, I still did it.
I still, I had a really bad morning, but I still got the day
done. You know, it's a big relief and
I'm going to do it. Tomorrow is going to be much
easier and I'm going to be more compassionate because I know

(01:49:58):
just how tough life can get. Like, I know how the mind works
and I'm and it's just I see other people suffering and I'm
like, oh, wow. Like I it's, it's liberating.
And yeah. And you have compassion for
yourself, like you start to learn to have compassion for
yourself so that you don't put so much pressure on you.
Yeah, yeah, a lot of the good I I like to ruminate a lot on the

(01:50:22):
on the bad and put it like the CBT method that you do it and
actually provide answers as to like why I do certain things
right. And that's to that's a net
positive for me, yeah. Yeah, that's cool.
Yeah. Yeah, you're doing the right
things. I think you're like one of those
model students who has figured it out for yourself, like.

(01:50:42):
You know what works for you. What psychological traits or
social conditions make individuals more susceptible to
cult influence or recruitment? A big jump for mental health,
but it's not, it's all related. So I guess maybe we should
explain why we're doing this topic first.

(01:51:04):
Like I was. I'll fully admit I was part of
an MLM cult for about 5 years and I lost quite a bit of money
to it. I still hold a lot of lingering
shame and it like even though I've been out for over half a
decade, it took me a long time to heal and to process and to

(01:51:26):
understand how it was even a cult and how cults tend to
predate on the vulnerable. And this is my first time
publicly addressing it. I like I address it with my
partner right? And it took me 3 years to get
comfortable telling him even like the slightest of details.

(01:51:47):
This is my first time in public talking about it because I feel
like I think I'm healed enough it doesn't hurt as much to talk
about. Well, it's a privilege you share
in your story here in the podcast.
Yeah. Oh have you ever seen the 1 John
Oliver's The John Oliver clip onbasically MLM's like Herbalife,

(01:52:16):
Amway other ones it I don't it came out a few years.
Ago I know I am my buddy. Actually, he wanted me to join.
Yeah, yeah, I could see him wanting you to join.
You're very extroverted. Yeah, yeah.
That was after I already been like, I already knew I was

(01:52:37):
cognizant of, yeah, bolts at thetime.
So like some of the wounds are still fresh.
Like when that clip came out, I was still like, like, it was
still hard for me to address it.It was painful to watch it
because it just addressed all ofthe things.
You should watch it too. It's really funny.

(01:52:59):
But it addresses a lot of the logistics as to why it doesn't
work and it makes so, so much sense.
So for my personal story, like the way that cults kind of
recruit or attract people, it's not like the person itself is

(01:53:19):
they're susceptible. It's like their situation.
They tend to the the people who become susceptible tend to be in
some sort of like transitional or vulnerable or like just a
state that doesn't wouldn't, they wouldn't normally be
attracted to that particular solution.
You would call it right. So I was recruited into an MLM

(01:53:41):
cult. MLM stands for multi level
marketing. So I was recorded into this
marketing cult by a really charming, really nice, like
charismatic young lady. And she was like about 10 years
younger than me. And I met her like that month

(01:54:02):
that I had just separated from my son's father.
So that's not a great time, right?
Like fresh separation, like you're learning about yourself
as like a single or a single parent.
You have a lot of issues like financial issues, lifestyle,

(01:54:23):
your identity, like everything is in flux at that time.
And so she sold me on this like lifestyle that really kind of
catered and worked on my insecurities at that time
because I was coming out of thatrelationship.
You know, you whenever you lose something like that, you've,
you, your self esteem is damaged, your self force is

(01:54:44):
damaged. Like you, you don't know who you
are, right? So and also I still didn't know
that I had ADHD or that autism, but I knew that I had anxiety
and depression. I just didn't know how to deal
with it. So I was still in like that kind
of mood, like that state. And so I'm this vulnerable state

(01:55:07):
of trying to find myself and I meet her and she shows you the
solution, right? And so this is where you're
susceptible. You're looking for any answer,
any solution to solve whatever pain in hurt is inside.
Come into here, you'll find all the answers and whether it be
financial freedom or just following your mojo like cool

(01:55:31):
the niche because you're you feel lost.
Yeah. Can I ask, have you had
experiences? I have, yeah.
It was a time in my life too, where I was very vulnerable.
My dad was had experienced a jobloss, a lot of financial
struggle I had. I was fired for my part time job
at Panda Express. I didn't really know where I was

(01:55:54):
going. I just got out of high school,
got back from a trip from one ofthe best experiences ever.
And then yeah, yeah, yeah. So and then this person at the
bank, he was, he was, I've knownhim before that.
And then we met at the bank. We just in a coincidence, it's

(01:56:14):
like, yeah, you should give me his card and like, yeah, man
make a lot of money. So I call phone him and I
attended the event. And.
It's just they, they Hulk you. It's like they, they, they the
keywords. You're like.
Right out of high school. Oh my God, you're so
susceptible. Like cause 'cause at that point
you don't really know what life is, no.

(01:56:36):
You don't. Like as much as high schoolers
and teenagers, I think you guys are adults, but like, there's a
lot of life experiences that I, I do you think it was like a,
like a, I wouldn't say it's a good experience.
Do you think it was useful for you?
It was great, but now I know what the tactics are for
persuasion, and I know if it's too good, if it's too good to be

(01:56:59):
true, it's. Yeah, it's probably great, you
know? Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah.
So that's a lot of when I, I read a lot of like books on
cults afterwards. Like first, actually, I started
with one, one tell all kind of free on the Internet PDF of a

(01:57:23):
survivor from the exact same cult that I was in.
And I read all of their experience and they went up to
this hugely successful level, but they divulged everything
about the finances and turns outit's all a lie.
Like all the money, it just flows up.

(01:57:44):
It's like, oh, it's, it is the American way after all.
It's pretty the 1% make a lot ofmoney, 99% fund them.
That's that was basically. Pyramid scheme, right?
Especially MLM's are pretty muchpyramid schemes.
Most of them are. Like they're legal pyramid
schemes, as in they lack the illegality because they will do

(01:58:07):
things like, oh, you're not allowed to do it this way, But
if you add in a distributor component or a customer
component, you're allowed to do it.
So if it's just a person wholesale buying for themselves
and they're recruiting other people to wholesale buy for
themselves and it's just self consumption, that is a pyramid
scheme. But if you have customers that

(01:58:28):
make up about 25 to 75% of that,you know, the volume that you
run through your business, then it's not a pure rescue.
Then the customers are part of this.
But The thing is like system, right?
Kind of, yeah, a lot of times like some MLM's are purely
customer based, customer driven,some are not.

(01:58:51):
Some are based on recruiting newpeople to do the Yeah wholesale
well if you get in. Then you're incentivized to get
more people too, because more people under you means more
money for you. And when you're on in the top,
yeah, you don't want to quit because you're making so much.
Yeah. You know, and like the the
pyramid, like it's just, it justflows up.

(01:59:12):
And if it becomes big enough, there's just thousands of people
making so much money. Yeah, that's right.
Oh, take your time, Take your time.
No worries. I'm going to read actually.
My there's are my alarms at workto take my breaks.
I just forgot to take them long since I didn't want to keep

(01:59:35):
checking my phone for what what time it is.
But yeah, sorry. Where were we?
Yeah, it just flows up pay and it's just yeah, yeah, it's a
terrible system, but it's a terrible system for sure.
But The thing is like, they wantyou to pay into it.
That's the main thing is like you run the volume you're ending
up, you end up funding their lifestyle.

(01:59:56):
But the part that makes it cultyis that like some cults are
worse than others. Like I spent that one summer
reading up on cults. After that one book I I actually
started with cults. Because it hurt less than
talking about multi level marketing.
So I started with like Nixio. I don't know if you know that

(02:00:17):
guy that Keith Rainieri was thishead of Nixio.
It turned into, it started as this entrepreneurial personal
growth like cult that ended up being just a sex trafficking
operation. The guy was sentenced to 120
years but mostly through becauseof the racketeering and the sex

(02:00:40):
trafficking charges and the factthat they involved in minor.
Otherwise I don't even know if like the actual entrepreneurial
money side of the cult aside from the racketeering would have
gotten him sentenced to anything.
So it's the fact that moved intosex that's why he got
prosecuted. Oh wow, so if he didn't involve
that he would have just kept going?

(02:01:01):
Bingo. Yeah, and he was like making
wrecking in millions from the people.
So that was interesting because it started off as a exactly and
multi level marketing thing, except for it was like marketing
these success courses, kind of like there's those life met like
coaching programs that are also multi level yours multi level

(02:01:26):
insurance slash, you know, banking or whatever, not
banking, but insurance slash investment.
Mine was, at least I got products from it.
Good skin care products for mine.
Nice, nice. I also learned a lot of like
entrepreneurial skills, like social skills.
I had to work up the social ladder.

(02:01:46):
So now I know how to do social situations without the anxiety,
which I think actually helped. And it because you, well, we'll
talk about cults. It brainwashes you because of
all of the control. So after Nexium I started into
serial killers. I read Ted 7 books about Ted

(02:02:08):
Bundy in one month and then I looked at other cults like the
Lawrence Sarah Lawrence cult where that was a horrible cult
with only students and there wasso much abuse.
So after reading all of like serial killers, Nixium, these

(02:02:31):
guys, I started realizing all these cults have like the same
mentality behind it and I started using doctor.
I don't know if you've read the cult of Trump.
It's written by Doctor Stephen Hassan.
So he used to be part of this one.
What's it called? The Moonies like this marriage

(02:02:52):
cult, I think it's South Korea. And basically it's a large cult
that matches people together andyou get married or something.
And he started realizing what were the actual causes of people
kind of staying in the cult. And he came up with this really
simplified model that I used today.

(02:03:14):
Like not saying Stephen Hassan doesn't have his own issues, but
his BITE model is pretty succinct.
It's BITE stands for behavioral informational thought and
emotional control. And it's these four things that
cults have control over people via different methods.
So that's the brainwashing side.So the brainwashing that they do

(02:03:39):
is in all of these different strategies, right?
So with any cult, you'll have these four types of control.
And I'll just tell you about mine, my experience.
So like any of those like entrepreneurial cults, like you
got to be successful and you have to do all these success
habits. And so that required recruiting

(02:04:02):
people through increasing your socialization skills, right?
You had to socialize it with them.
And then you would bring them inbecause you're such a good
person and they would see the person that you edify or glorify
as like almost God like, which is not good worshipping false
idol. I'm pretty sure that's like,
that's a sin, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

(02:04:24):
Yeah. So like they taught you to do
all these things, but in order to do them, you had to like
prepare yourself to do them. To be successful, you had to do
all of these things, which was basically the brainwashing, the
BITE model. So the behavioral control was

(02:04:45):
you could only talk to the people in your up line.
You can even do what's called cross line.
So meaning you would only like take advice or take like, you
know, yeah, advice or any information from people who were
like above you or what they would say more successful.
And they would say, why would you try and learn from someone

(02:05:06):
who who doesn't have the things that you want?
You want to learn from someone who has the things that you
want. And this is This is why you
should learn from these people because they have the lifestyle
that you want. And it turns out I even
brainwashed myself into thinkingI wanted that lifestyle because
of, like, the overexposure to the glorification of that
lifestyle. That's the American way.

(02:05:27):
Yeah, well, you think about a certain thing often.
Eventually, that lie becomes thetruth.
Yeah, exactly. So that that's like that
literally is like the remember Italked about.
Oh, maybe not in your class. Neurons that wire together fire

(02:05:49):
together. Donald Hep No, actually
Elizabeth Loftus, she, she did a, she did like the culminating
research on like misleading postevent information, what you
might call false memories, right?
In fact, even in the Ted Bundy book, she was an expert witness

(02:06:11):
for Ted Bundy saying that the witness was repeating
information that was primed or like kind of input into her from
the police officers. They were saying Carol de Roche
was lying. She was the only girl whoever
escaped Ted Bundy. Wow.
Well, there were a few that probably escaped, but she was

(02:06:34):
the only one who has ever caughtand then ran away.
Everybody else died. Good for her.
Yeah. And he never was like he was.
He was prosecuted for that case,but I think it's because several
years later, the investigator actually took his car and took
it apart and found her hairs in it.

(02:06:54):
Yeah. There's also a lot of serial
killers get a lot of fangirls, hey.
Yeah, that's what hyperstophiliawhere like people really love
that aspect and and I even have a little bit of that
hyperstophilia myself because why else would I?
Why else would I read 7 books onTed Bundy in a month, right?
It's like, it's intriguing, but it's this theory that it's like,

(02:07:18):
yeah, he's a psychopath, but he's my psychopath.
Yeah. I think it's also why people,
people voted for Donald Trump. Like, yeah, he's just, you know.
It's, I heard it so once from this evolutionary psychologist
that said that, oh, like it backthen, they could protect you.

(02:07:38):
And yes, they when there's somebody that would cause harm,
the potential to cause harm, they'd be able to kill them.
Yeah, yeah, to offset that harm for sure.
And so like a lot of this like control that the cults have over
you, every single cult had the behavioral part, they told you

(02:07:59):
what to do, the informational part, they told you what to
listen to, what to read. And there were rules on what
you, how you did it. There were like 10 steps for us
that every day we had to read 15minutes from these approved
books on the book list. Every day we had to listen to
all of our audio sent out by ourupline.
And that's the informational control, which leads to thought

(02:08:20):
control because they basically tell you what to think, what to
believe. Like coming into the cult, I
remember like in my 20s, never wanted to get married, never
really wanted kids. I had a kid.
But like, it wasn't a plan for to see, right?
No regrets. But they were glorifying, you

(02:08:42):
know, that traditional nuclear family model where the women are
at home and the men are out doing, you know, providing.
And I never believed in that. I was never raised with that
kind of mentality. Like I was raised, women can do
it all by themselves. We can, we can provide for
ourselves and basically don't choose a man if he's just going

(02:09:05):
to be a detriment to your life, right?
But no, no, we were taught, likein the cult, we're taught,
taught all these patriarchal rules that were part of the
basically the American Christiannationalist movement.
It turns out that cult actually has a huge basis in that
movement that led to the currentUS administration, right?

(02:09:28):
That whole project 2025, it's the same players.
But in the end, like they controlled your behavior,
controlled your information, controlled your thought, which
led to your controlling your emotions.
And the emotional control was like, it's the hardest because
for me, I think I, the autism actually kept me a little bit
distant from it because what I was lacking at that time, what

(02:09:52):
made them made me susceptible torecruitment was like, you know,
coming out fresh post separation, you lose a lot of
your social network. And they provided that.
But it was never as deep or as tight as the ones that I had in
my youth in my 20s, right? It was always on the surface
level and but other people I feel like connected way more

(02:10:17):
deeply with their upline becausethey controlled their emotions,
because you had counsel with them.
You had to go to them with your problems.
They would help you solve it because they live the lifestyle
that you want. So you want to solve problems
their way. And yeah, that all the behaviors

(02:10:38):
that you were supposed to do, itwas like three to four hours of
audios, one to two hours of communication, one like one to
two hours of like reading. And then the rest of the time
you had to go out and recruit, which they called show the plan
or has to be or start the process, right.
So that was a socializing aspect.

(02:10:59):
And if you couldn't do it, you there were like steps to doing
it. So it's all control.
It's high control. And some cults are OK and some
girls are really bad, like the Sarah Lawrence cult, but some
are like academia. Some would even say academia is
a cult, right? Right.
Because it takes a lot of your time.

(02:11:20):
You are required to read the books in order to pass the test,
right? But in the end, it's like the
you're paying for that education, but the ultimate goal
isn't to advance the university.Instead, that's yourself.
But when the cult ultimate goal is to advance, not yourself, not
for your own personal growth, not for the people in it.

(02:11:42):
And it's it's like for more selfish or nefarious or
manipulative reconstance, That'swhen the cult is bad.
Like anything can be a cult. Even some family dynamics are
cults alike where there's high control.
Some religions, most religions are cults where especially if
there's high control, even in myreligion, I try to keep an arm's

(02:12:05):
distance away. It's why I chose an environment
where I don't understand the language.
I don't speak Mandarin, so I don't.
I can't get involved with the politics.
I just can't. Yeah, yeah.
It really depends on who's in power and what their intentions
are, right. And it's like, like in a
business, usually the culture can be seen through the workers

(02:12:32):
because it trickles down. And you can, you can sense it
like from a, like a healthy perspective.
You can see the toxicity. If you submerge yourself a
little bit, you get to see all this is acidic.
Like this is not not good. But it's that need for
belonging, right? They really pull on your heart
strings when you're in your diretimes and in your experience or

(02:12:56):
studies. How do cults use manipulation
tactics that tap into basic human psychology?
Psychological needs like belonging or certainty.
Right. So in that half year where I did
that autistic rabbit holing, looking into cults like Nixium,
Sarah Lawrence, I listen to everything.
Like I even listen to court transcripts.

(02:13:19):
Wow, yeah. Like people who like not court
transcripts, rather whatever I could get my hands on.
But there were some. Were you teaching at this time
too? I was.
Oh wow. When was Keith Ranieri
prosecuted? Was like right before R Kelly
was prosecuted. Oh wow.
Yeah. So it's like he was sentenced to

(02:13:40):
120 years and then his case set precedents for R Kelly's case
because he was, they were able to like pin racketeering on him,
on Keith Rainieri, the leader ofNixium.
And they realized this is the same way that we're going to
prosecute R Kelly. Yeah.
So their their legal precedent set legal like they set legal

(02:14:01):
precedent for R Kelly. It's racketeering.
So I thought it was really interesting personally, But
there were as you know, like they don't release courts
transcripts for a while. So what I was doing was I was
listening to podcasts of people who were invited into the court
system. They would sit there every day
and then they would come out andthen they would talk about it,

(02:14:24):
right. So right now the new one is
Diddy, right? There's one influencer, I, I
don't listen to her too much because she it's negative.
It's not negative, it is negativity.
It's fascinating. But she does like serial
killings and murders and stuff. And they're like, I can only
take so much of that. But she is going into the Diddy

(02:14:44):
courtroom every day and then publish like doing her own
podcast, daily updates on these court trials.
So these were the things I wouldlisten to all, everything that
they remember from that day. They're only allowed to take
notes. They're not allowed to bring in
their phones. So all of these are from their
notes as they're going through the trial.
Yeah. Listening in.
Wow. Yeah, sorry, that was off

(02:15:05):
topics. But in that kind of journey, I
read a few books. I it was very shallow.
Like I wasn't really looking into the science of it, but I
did look at a lot of documentaries like the
fundamental, the FLDS cult, Right.
That one Netflix documentary called Keep Sweet Praying, Obey
the twin flames cult, the TikTokdance cult, the Mormon mums

(02:15:30):
cult, the one taste. These are all like they are
cults, right? And you can tell because I even
looked into the queen. You know that we have a queen of
Canada. We don't.
It's a cult. Have you heard of her?
I don't but Queen Elizabeth. Yeah, no, no, this, this was a

(02:15:51):
lady who I came out during the freedom convoys and she
developed a following of people who believe that she was the
queen of Canada and sent here byaliens to, you know, it kind of
falls apart after that. But she has a following of
people. They got an abandoned school
donated for their home base and they're violent.

(02:16:12):
Like they are threatening and violent.
And they're set up in a small town in Saskatchewan right now.
They're still there. That's yeah, I know.
That's crazy. But all of these people in all
these cults, they kind of dedicate like somehow they're
suckered into giving all of their energy, time resources,
mental energy to whoever's leader is right.

(02:16:36):
And so the manipulation tactics that make them give up all of
their energy, time, resources, like it does start first with
that brainwashing or that inherent belief in that
something that, that, that can solve your problem.
So I guess with the Queen of Canada, this, this was like just

(02:16:59):
during the pandemic, right when the truckers were occupying
Ottawa and basically creating a disturbance.
But there was this whole, like, whole resistance to public
health measures. We're wearing a mask.
People still have these like, ideas today that this is

(02:17:20):
unhealthy for you. Whereas like other cultures that
are more collective and educatedknow the public benefits of
keeping respiratory viruses to yourself, you know, So when I
looked into these that they all had similar cult parallels,

(02:17:40):
right? When you listen to those
documentaries, when you listen to the survivors, when you
listen to all of the people who escaped, right?
They all said that one, the cultrecruited them and preyed on
their vulnerabilities 2. They offered quick solutions,

(02:18:01):
right? Even though they're all lies,
they were quick solutions like you don't have enough money?
Come join our cult. We'll make we'll help you make
lots of money. You don't have any friends?
Well, we're all friendly here. Don't have enough sex?
Join one taste. That was a literal sex cult.
And yeah, it's like it all preyed on those things.

(02:18:23):
And often times we also stigmatize the people who joined
cults because we think, oh, they're more stupid or how could
they be? So, you know, weak or what not.
But it's like we're just all people in that time of life that
makes us more susceptible to trying to find anything to help

(02:18:46):
us. And you're in so much pain
trying to reduce that pain. You'll do anything to try to
reduce that pain, right? Or you don't have enough friends
or you have no friends. Suddenly you're accepted by this
group Who what they're doing is love bombing you.
Suddenly you're accepted into this group that loves you
unconditionally and then they take it away.

(02:19:09):
And then this is like one of those narcissistic love tactics.
Or are they like breadcrumb you they'll throw?
So after you've been recruited, after you've joined, the love
stops and then they give little bits of love or approval like
throughout, I don't know. Did you experience that in
yours? Yeah.
Bombing and then it went stop when you.

(02:19:29):
Well I wasn't there for very long.
I was only in like 3 months for me around.
Not even enough. Yeah, like not even 3 board
plans. I get the, I guess I was still
intact, which at that point, youknow, I was still kind of aware.
I still had friends and family, you know, so I was able to kind

(02:19:49):
of reflect and actually see it for what it is.
But from, for people there that I see, usually they, they don't
have much friends. They don't have a stable kind of
well-being. They grew up and they've just
always been at odds with their parents, with their siblings.

(02:20:14):
And it's it's hard to be able todetach yourself from that
because that's all you've got. Exactly.
It's like what I got to start from zero, like I got to this is
all I've got left. So even if I'm sure there's some
of them that know it's BS, right?
I'm sure there's some, but it's just that the thought of going

(02:20:34):
about the world, not having anything, not being part of
something is just too unbearablethat you repeat in your head
that this is what I need, this is what I want to do willingly.
Eventually, it becomes the truth.
Yeah, yeah. And that's true.
A lot of times the behavioral control keeps you in there,

(02:20:56):
right. Like I said, they spent, I spent
most of my time following what they recommended, right?
That's the behavioral part. And when you're sucked into it,
mostly because, like it, you're desperate.
Like some cults are pretty innocuous.
Like, I think it's fine if you're a little girl and you're
into like, Korean dramas or Korean pop, or you're into

(02:21:19):
Taylor Swift. I think that's pretty innocuous.
What makes it bad is when you'recoerced by the leader to spend
all of your money on them. Like Taylor Swift doesn't force
you to buy recorder tickets, butthey are really expensive,
right? Like that, that's not so bad,
right? But when it starts to limit your

(02:21:43):
exposure to the real world, because a lot of that the cult,
the parts of the cult that I wasin that made me more, that
manipulated me more, was basically isolating me away from
friends and family by saying, oh, those are negative people.
They're that you should limit your contact with them because

(02:22:03):
they're going to ruin your life or so that's one of those
manipulation tactics. Another is like, so they're
damaging your life, your relationships.
They're also like financially harming you, right?
If they're taking a lot of your money and your energy and your
time. There was a point in time where

(02:22:24):
I had just like lost my job and I knew what I was worth.
I knew what I was supposed to do, but they were trying to get
me to take something that was would keep me in desperation so
that I would stay with the cult.So they would they would send
job listings that were entirely like opposite my abilities,

(02:22:49):
right? I mean, if anything, I would
rather accept the desk job as a secretary than like an Amazon
Stocker. I don't have the capacity to do
that physically, right? So it's, it's, it's like, it was
like that they were deliberatelytrying to, I think put you in
desperate situations so that you're sucked in and then you're

(02:23:09):
kept in. So those are like more those
manipulative tactics. And then like you said, it taps
into your psychological needs. Like if you remember Maslow's
period of pyramid of needs hierarchy, you have your basic
physiological needs at the bottom, which I got myself.
I had my job, like pay for my house and my food.

(02:23:32):
Then it's like safety again. I did that myself, like food and
water and like safe house to live in.
Then then belonging is kind of where they put in.
And then later on you have to reach your esteem needs and then
yourself. Actualization.
If you haven't reached all of that yet, some of these

(02:23:52):
psychological needs are still influx.
You don't know where you're going to get them from.
At that time, I was obviously single, right, and they were
even trying to control the typesof relationships that you would
have, whether you should date someone who's willing to in open
like to be with us, like to joinus.
They should if if it's meant to be, they will understand, right?

(02:24:17):
And then that really limited my dating prospects.
Yeah. And I'd say, I'd say if you
can't even access safety, then you're at even a worse situation
'cause they're going to offer that to you.
And if even lower, if you can't access just the the needs, you
know, then they'll maybe if theygive you food and then they work
you your way up and then. Yeah, thankfully that cult was

(02:24:41):
looking for successful individuals.
It was mostly people with money because they wanted your money.
But the lot of that, a lot of that control makes you so tired,
you can't think critically anymore, right?
And a lot of the people were very, they were, they were
actually successful in their ownright.

(02:25:02):
You got doctors, lawyers, engineers.
Yeah, everybody, right. When, when credible people are
around you, right? You're like, huh, this, this.
It must be legit. Yeah, it must be legit.
But then when lack, when you don't have that critical
thinking, it's just you just kind of go with whatever.
Exactly. And a lot of times, like for

(02:25:26):
those kinds of cults, I I bet you you had it with yours.
You did you have meetings every month or twice a month?
Like a week, every week. Oh my God, yeah, OK.
Ours was every month sometimes or twice a month.
And then every quarter we had tohave a big conference that we'd
go to and it would be like 20,000 people or something or

(02:25:46):
10,000 to USALS. Like it's a huge amount of
people, but it would like gatherthe whole western US and Canada
in the same. Place the energy was
enthralling. It was certainly something that
was captivating and motivated you and wanted.
It made your dreams come true. And you.
Look at these people who are living your dream.

(02:26:06):
Yeah, they're on stage and you see everybody around with their
sparkling eyes. Yeah, yeah.
OK, so they didn't make you go? To one of those and the
presentations of how much money does everybody want to make and
then somebody's like 100 grand. It's like, yeah, that is
possible. It's like they they are granting
your wishes already. Yeah.

(02:26:27):
It's like, is it really that easy?
It's like then I now I always think nothing worth having comes
easy, right. Exactly.
It's like nothing worth having. You can't just make it.
You snap your fingers and. And even their strategies that
they're teaching you at those meetings every week, right?
Like you had to do the things that they needed you to do, but

(02:26:50):
they would always glorify or edify the same people who were
like making lots of money. And so if you see all these like
really intelligent people cheering on the person who's
actually technically sucking up all the volume, do you think
it's again, it's legit? But and like, that's part of
that behavioral tactic, right? So it seems like those harming

(02:27:15):
cults, their goal is twofold, money and power, right?
So whether it's like power over people or sexual power or just
taking their money, in order to get those things, you need to
recruit people, right? And so we already talked about
how they recruit people. And now we're talking about the
maintenance part, maintaining the obedience to the cult, the,

(02:27:39):
the MLM struck cults, the multi level marketing ones.
Those are the ones I'm more familiar with, like yours and
mine. We're multi level marketing,
right? And it's a numbers game, kind of
like Scott Galloway. The more that you approach, the
more chance someone will say yes, but 99% will be no, right?
And so it's a numbers game. And then you're taught in these

(02:27:59):
trainings. You're taught from the ground
up, which helped me because it taught me social skills.
But you learn how to be friendly.
You learn how to smile and chat with people.
You learn how to deepen those conversations quickly to earn
their trust. And then you're taught to
introduce them and get them intothose meetings so that they
start brainwashing themselves, right?

(02:28:22):
They listen to them. It's like, oh, yeah, that makes
sense. Oh, yeah, we can make lots of
money that way. And then you tell them, oh, you
have to come every week and thenyou have to come every month.
Those meetings are part of the brainwashing, right?
It's a whole grump. It works into that conformity.
You remember? I don't know.
Yeah, we took this in Psych one O 5 did.
Do you remember? I did the Solomon Ash

(02:28:43):
demonstration where I got everybody in class to answer the
wrong answer but the same wrong answer.
Yeah. No, I remember.
I remember that. Yeah.
Were you one of the people who showed up and knew what we were
doing? I actually was not there that
day, but I had I will showed up the next day.
Yeah. And my I had already read about
it. OK, OK.

(02:29:05):
So I kind of, I knew what was going on, yeah.
So this was Solomon. So you're one of those good
students. I just assume most students
don't read. Yeah, it's.
A really popular study. Yeah, Yeah.
It is so for I guess for the listeners.
The Solomon Ash conformity studywas done in which you had a

(02:29:27):
group of people that which you call Confederates.
They were the people who were kind of taught to answer a
specific answer, but that was a clearly wrong answer to a
question post. So in class, I made so the
students match the length of a line to A, a bunch of target
options. So I managed the target line to

(02:29:48):
a bunch of sample options. So if it was like this tall, it
would match like A. If it's this tall, it'd match B.
If it is this short, it would match C.
But I got everybody to answer the wrong answer.
One step over to the right and everybody knew what they were
doing. We did a couple of practice
runs. So then the next class, so in

(02:30:10):
the Ashe study, they brought theConfederates in and they had one
participant that was a true participant didn't know the
study. And then they asked everybody
the same question. Hey, match the, the line, the
target line to one of these reference lines and everybody
would answer the wrong line, butthey answered the same wrong

(02:30:31):
line. And then the participants either
had the option to conform to everybody else or answer the
right, you know, reference line,which was different from
everybody else. And what was really common is
that as the people who conformed, most people have
conformed, they would answer thewrong answer even though they

(02:30:52):
knew it was wrong. And when debriefed, often times
it's because you feel that feeling of discomfort of not
being like everybody else. That's what those meetings do.
You're set in a location. People are encouraged to cheer
for certain things. And then it's like crabs in the
bucket or monkeys going for a banana.

(02:31:17):
Like, they just learn to cheer for those certain things that
when you bring new people in, those new people learn how to
act to those certain things like, Oh yeah.
And cheer for like, like they applaud for certain like this.
This is how it is like if you ifyou brought a kid and you if you
told them pencils were called apples.
Yeah, they, they're just just going to submit.

(02:31:39):
That's what everybody was doing.And I want to, I want to feel
belong that if you get an adult who doesn't know any better,
especially in a state where they're not reflecting as much.
Yeah, they're just going to they're going to clap and
they're going to cheer when everybody's cheering.
I forget what which study this was.
I think there's a YouTube video on it.
But they brought in a bunch of people into this waiting room, I

(02:32:05):
think, for whatever appointments.
And then there's this, there's this bell that would ring.
And so at the start, they would have some actors stand up.
Like there'd be like maybe six of them.
And yeah, you. Heard of this?
It's another conformance study. Yeah.
And the people that would look around, there'd be like 2 of

(02:32:26):
them, they would, they would also stand up when the bell
rings. And then then they'd sit back
down after that. And then as soon as it would
ring again, they'd go back up. And slowly the actors would kind
of leave. And eventually there'd be no
actors. And you'd have these people who
don't know why they're doing it have the bell rang and they just

(02:32:49):
stand up. And there'd be no actors in it.
They just the system just. To itself.
Yeah, yeah. And it's just, I feel like
that's kind of how yeah, MLM's. Work that is exactly like,
that's one of those manipulationtactics.
They cater to that sense of, or they rather work on that

(02:33:10):
cognitive dissonance that happens when you know you're
right, but everybody else is doing the wrong thing.
It's like it feels so uncomfortable, it's so dissonant
that to just ease the discomfort, you just do what
everybody else is doing like that.
That happens quite a bit. I mean, it is an issue with some
conformist societies. It it's less with individualist

(02:33:33):
societies. Like you see lower numbers of
conforming participants in like Canada and US, but higher
numbers and things like, you know, Asian cultures.
But like, you can systematicallybasically tweak this study.
If you have one confederate thatanswers the a different wrong
answer, but it's still wrong, the likelihood of the up person

(02:33:56):
answering the right answer is higher because you see some
person dissenting. If the only one person answers
the right answers, that's enoughfor you to answer the right
answer, even though the rest of the room is answering the wrong
answer. So you can tell.
Like it's pretty easy to manipulate, but you have to like

(02:34:16):
have high control in order to keep people into those cults.
This is why they don't want you talking to people who dissent.
Yeah, because they'll be like, hey, Yvonne, right.
Like this is, don't you think that this may be bad because it
causes you to think. Yeah, not just think.
It's like you value the people who are talking to you, right?
And it's like, oh, this is this is not for A cause of just

(02:34:39):
talking to a friend right now. No, there's not as much thrill.
It's like that. Life isn't about the thrill,
right? Because with every single
interaction that you have in cults, it's like magical and
it's supposed to be like hearingcancer.
And yeah, yeah, that's true. They do granting wishes and it's
like everybody's googly eyed. But it's like life's not like

(02:35:00):
that, you know, you just so. You've got that thrill.
OK, so I never got that thrill per SE, especially every
meeting. It ended up just being boring.
And those. Oh, really?
I mean waste. Oh, yeah.
But I was in them for five years.
Oh. Right, five years.
Yeah, five years. But they taught you like as you
said, they taught you the solutions, which were most of

(02:35:22):
the eyes. They deified people who had more
money, and they also taught you how to answer negativity.
Negativity. It wasn't negative video.
It's just people who are trying to help you with what we call
thought stopping cliches. Have you heard of those?
These are like just automatic statements that come come out
when someone's trying to make you think or make you kind of

(02:35:45):
consider your position. And you come out with this like
comparing things to Hitler wouldbe a thought stopping cliche,
right? So one of the things they would
teach you is how to respond whensomeone said, Are you sure
you're in the right thing, Yvonne?
Maybe you should like, maybe take a step back from what

(02:36:07):
you're doing and, and, or thingslike you've changed.
I don't really know who you are anymore.
And I'd come out with like, but I've changed for the better.
You want me to stop my personal growth.
And these are the things that wewere taught to say.
Wow, right. So they even they prepared for
the they counteracted one of thepossible criticisms.

(02:36:30):
Exactly. And they kind of, they told you,
oh, this is going to happen. So it's kind of that
inoculation. Exactly.
Theory right where my. Goal with your podcast is
inoculate people from joining these cults.
Exposed to a lesser potent form,Yeah.
So that the body knows exactly. Just like a vaccine.

(02:36:51):
Yeah. Just tell you a little bit about
what you plan on, like those board plans and whatnot.
Think the goal is for you to change your values, to change it
so that matches theirs. Yeah.
Everything is like, it's almost like high pressure sales.
Yeah, a lot of times, like you got the twinkly eyes, right?
That's like high pressure sales.Yeah, what can understanding the

(02:37:14):
psychology of cults teach us about broader social phenomenon
like political radicalization oronline echo chambers?
So I got to say like the problemright now is I think I there's a
lot of researchers who have their own answers, right?

(02:37:38):
This problem about like cult is slowly being uncovered because
there's a lot of really detrimental ones out there.
Like this new social phenomenon of polar like political
radicalization. This polarization, I think did
start a lot with social media. I'm not like anti social media,

(02:38:01):
but the social media platforms have these algorithms that they
polarize you at an incredible weight rate.
If you don't curate it well, it's going to pull you in One
Direction or another. And then they start separating
people into these literally marketing camps, basically
trying to target you for ads. And this leads to this huge

(02:38:24):
division in politics and views in gender, understanding this
idea of woke versus not woke, like just away from the
centering of views that happens when you're exposed to people
who you're friends with, who might have different views than
you, right? And the trouble with exposure to
too much of it is again, the thought stopping cliches, right?

(02:38:48):
They, it doesn't encourage like natural discourse like this.
Like I could, we could start talking about like your God
versus my Buddhism. Like it.
There's lots of overlap. When we have discussed this
before, there's a lot of overlapbetween different religions, but
oftentimes online it ends up devolving into like or name

(02:39:13):
calling. It's like, oh, you believe in
that? You're in this subset of group,
and I can't connect you in any any way.
Yeah. But like if you talk to that, if
the same two people met in person, they probably have an
all right conversation. Yeah, I don't agree because like
it's harder to to harm a person that you can see like the

(02:39:36):
psychological distance is just so much closer just being in
proximity with a real human being.
If you remember who Milgram, Stanley Milgram shock
experiment, right? And there was a, they did a
systematic like psychological distancing where they looked at
how many people would shock a person up to 450 volts, which

(02:40:01):
would be the equivalent of like death, right?
Like, but of course it was an actor.
People didn't know that. So to alter psychological
distance, they would put them inseparate rooms where you could
only hear them, but you can see them is the likelihood of you
going up to 450 volts is higher.Then they put a window in and

(02:40:22):
you could see them. Then it lowers your tendency to
shock to the. To the Max voltage and then they
put you in the same room with them.
Lowers the tendency even more. When you were touching them
like, you know, you've been shielded, it basically went down
to almost nothing. Yeah.
That's why road rage is pretty big, hey?

(02:40:44):
And that's why people think always just like a vehicle and
like, no, there's an actual person person in there.
There's a person in there with their entire lives.
Yeah, with their day. They probably, they're a mom or
dad. They have kids or they're
somebody's sister, somebody's brother.
It's like we don't think about that when we we can't see them.

(02:41:05):
That reminds me of when I'm kindof I get annoyed sometimes with
people when I they'd cut me off sometimes or maybe they'd do
something, maybe talk on the phone near right next to me and
I'm disrupting my peace. But the bit the mic here to that
is asking them how their day is and like just having a 3 minute

(02:41:27):
conversation and then I I'm calm.
Rarely does it ever escalate to like, wow, this person sucks.
Yeah, like it happens. Yes, of course.
Like, oh, I should I it was a bad idea.
But yeah, usually it's like, oh,they're just a person.
And they're, oh, their name's John, and they're just maybe

(02:41:47):
stressed out. And, oh, we actually connect on
sports or we connect on podcasts.
And we are both, you know, really disciplined.
It's just something you can connect on something.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then social media polarizes
you and. Oh.
Completely. And the trouble is, like social
media is its own cult. When you get into your

(02:42:07):
algorithm, that's your cult, right?
That's your your debt. You're just brainwashing
yourself with the content that you consume.
So This is why it's so importantto curate your content because
you don't want to be, you know, self brainwashing yourself into
something that's like that mightnot be an ideal ideology that's

(02:42:31):
healthy for society, right? Or even healthy for yourself.
Like, you know, in cells exist and that itself is a cult.
Yeah, yeah, I've seen some like I went to the they used to have
a Reddit and that gun got that got taken down rather quickly

(02:42:51):
and now it's just insult tears in the subreddit.
Oh, OK. Yeah, they just like make fun of
insoles, which actually does nothelp them, no.
That's it's all. It's a different kind of
culture. Yeah, I know.
Exactly. Like the subreddits go crazy.
Yeah. But yeah, I do feel for insoles
like I It just sucks that they went this route.
You know where you can go at thegym, go study someone, build

(02:43:15):
yourself up maybe. Talk to a woman.
Talk. To a woman go just.
Talk to her as a person. Just live, realize everybody is
a. Person yeah, I just, it's tough,
but yeah, it's just cults can beseen everywhere and they can
really hijacked your mind into just thinking all sorts of

(02:43:36):
stuff. Yeah, exactly.
And that's actually part of whatlike we all know that the, the
current U.S. government is, is now far the right on the
political radicalization. Like in terms of its, the scale
of radicalization, then Republicans have passed, right?

(02:43:56):
It's just, it's not Republican anymore.
Like I, I'll be honest, if I wasto look at the values of the
1950s Republican, I probably would mesh on quite a few, not
all because again, I have a lot of Asian values that really
contradict a lot of American individualist values.
But like I can see the good parts.
Whereas I feel like now a lot ofthe, the polarization and

(02:44:21):
politicalization is like playingoff the suffering of the people.
And it's because they're suffering that they are in
trying to like do cruel acts on other people.
But thankfully, as we saw this Saturday, the No Kings Day, like
I don't know what the actual number, I've seen like numbers
from 4 to 5 million all the way up to like 14 million or 12

(02:44:45):
million people protested on No King's Day against, you know,
the mass deportations and all that stuff.
And you can tell that most people aren't part of the MAGA
cult. Most are not only about 30% are,
but those 30% are so loud and sopowerful right now that they

(02:45:06):
control a lot of the media. They control a lot of the social
media, They control a lot of thenarrative.
And that itself is very concerning because that's what
people consume, right, is the social media.
And if you can't have that kind of freedom of speech where

(02:45:28):
you're actually starting to censor like US senators from
asking questions, you're going to further cause harm to your
society. You're going to just cut it off
at the kneecaps. I mean, I think it's already
been cut off at the kneecaps, but you?
Must be you must have learned tofind the Silver Linings in,

(02:45:50):
like, the five years you've beenin the cult.
And kind of it's reflected in the way you go about things and
life, in the way it's. It all makes sense now.
Yeah. Like seeing the way people
interact and seeing how society's going.
And it's just. Yeah.
It also makes you more aware, like if part of it is just you

(02:46:11):
gain empathy for people who are coming out of cults, right?
And then you have to celebrate them.
You can't like re stigmatize it.You can't make them feel bad for
coming out of a cult. Like I watch a lot of like I
watch some talks by former whitesupremacist.
Oh wow. Yeah, white supremacist who they
will openly admit. Yeah, we used to beat up black

(02:46:33):
people for fun, right? And they'll come out and
they'll, they'll start speaking to the world about how wrong
their view was and, and how it was difficult to get out of it
and what got them out of it. And basically the unifying theme
is like, as long as you have those few social relationships
that you keep maintaining while you're in the cult, even like

(02:46:56):
they, they'll, they'll either like stop talking about it with
you, but they'll still be there for you.
That's enough safety to remove yourself from it.
The way I see it too, is it not even just in cults and just life
is like reality is like a straight line and many of us

(02:47:18):
actually all of us deviate away from that reality and we start
getting delusional And it's our family and friends always
realize back in and we always wedo the same for them.
And it's this constant system ofpulling each other back in.
And it's just if we didn't have the fabrics that under light us,
that connected us all together, and if we just stayed in our own

(02:47:41):
bubble, who's going to pull us back into reality?
We just get sucked into the vortex of who knows?
Yeah, I know. But.
I mean like not again not all cults are bad of.
Course. Right.
I I want to make sure that I don't stigmatize all cults.
Like I think it's fine if you'reteenager and or an adult,
doesn't matter what age, if you love Taylor Swift or BTSI, don't

(02:48:04):
I think that's fine, right. It's it's fine to like go deep
dive into that. That's kind of what autistic
people do. We just have these little
circumscribed interests and it'sfine if you find your social
group in other swifties. But what's not fine is when it
starts to harm you. But when it is great, it's like,

(02:48:25):
did you know, like the BTS Army,that's the fans of BTS, they
were able to raise what was it, $1 million for the Black Black
Lives Matter movement right whenGeorge Floyd died, that's when
they raised the $1 million like South.
And I don't know if it was just S Koreans, but I think it was
majority of South Koreans organizing funding for US.

(02:48:46):
That's yeah, that's, I didn't know that, but that's just
incredible, yeah. And then BTS matched it.
I'd be oh wow. Yeah, they paid another 1
million or something. The last group I'd, you know,
want like think of to not not that they're yeah, not that I'm
just saying like because they'reKoreans, I guess just.
So why would they care? It's so like, how does that

(02:49:07):
connect? Do you know what I mean?
As BTS army myself I did a lot of research on that.
I don't think it's a bad girl but like I I won't pay for any
of their merch. I did give get gifts so but like
they they realized that an earlyage that they loved rap, rap

(02:49:28):
predominantly black culture, right?
They appreciated that they didn't appropriate it.
They actually went overseas to learn it from.
Americans, that's awesome. So like they have a very deep
history, like their own deep history.
I mean, they were like 1514 years old going to America
learning about, you know, hip hop.

(02:49:49):
But it's like they understood the relevance that people are
people regardless of their skin color.
They had that empathy. They they had the right views
even though they were children. Like, they were literally, I
think the youngest was under like, about 20 years old at that
point. Right.
And that's when they raised the $1 million.

(02:50:10):
Yeah. Yeah, thank you so much for
thank you so much for this has been a phenomenal experience.
I it seemed like only yesterday it was my like one O 5 class and
you were there. I was just I didn't know
anything about academia. Like I had just come from like a
construction background and I didn't really know if I wanted

(02:50:31):
to do school. But then I started reading about
psychology and now here we are. You know, it's a thank you so
much. Oh, thank you for inviting me.
You're a really good person. Like I really, really enjoyed
how like you came up to my my guest speakers and like you

(02:50:52):
thank them. You just made them feel really
welcome. They they remembered you.
Oh, really? Obviously Evan does.
Yeah, but like, though the one for epilepsy also remembered
you. Yeah.
Like, Oh yeah, that really friendly kid.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I really just want to get to
know people, yeah. You're so outgoing and so
extroverted. You're just, you're a good

(02:51:14):
person. Like you honestly have a really
good heart. I do hope you I I think there
was a point you wanted to be a politician in the Philippines.
You're still. Yeah, yeah.
One of these days, yeah, I hope.You do you speak language and
everything right like you can. Function my my study be like the
mayor or something. Yeah, yeah, I know.

(02:51:35):
That's that's a great memory. Wow.
Yeah, I can really be a rememberthat.
That was you did tell me that like it's, I remember quite a
well, not quite a bit. I remember some things.
I know your your love for AndrewHuberman.
I love. I know it was because of you.
I was like, who is this guy? Yeah, I looked into him.
And then there was like some things that I didn't like.

(02:51:56):
But then I'm like, his science is is decent.
But like, yeah, yeah, it's, it'sthis is not bad.
Like in, in terms of science, I think Huberman actually does do
pretty well in terms of ideology.
It's like it's a bit of a bro podcast for me.
Bro, he's a. Little bit bro.
But you know what? You're a good bro.
You're. One of the good Bros.

(02:52:16):
Thank you. Thank you, Doctor.
Yvonne Wong. Thank you.
Yeah. You bring so much value to so
many lives on campus. And I feel that you're, your
honesty and just compassion for the students is making a great
positive change. And I yeah, thank you.

(02:52:37):
So. Much and thank you for those
kind. Words.
Yeah, yeah. And yeah.
As always, to everyone listeningand watching, there is a place
for you in this chaotic world. Never lose hope, strengthen your
faith and keep out long term. Doctor Yvonne Wong, everyone,
bye. Thank you guys.
Peace. That's it.

(02:53:00):
Oh, that was good. Thank you. 3.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}#138 - Dr. Yvonne Wong - ADHD & Autism are her SUPERPOWERS