You've bought a present for me in this box and I feel nervous and excited.

>> So, this is a human brain with a spinal cord. Such a masterpiece. But what people don't know is that we have four different structured parts of our brain that automatically shape how we think, feel, and behave. But what if it's not unconscious? What if we could pick and choose how we want to be in any moment on purpose? Like we can manifest our own mental health. And by the end of this conversation today, you're going to teach me how to do that.

>> Absolutely. You're going to so get it.

>> Harvard neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolty Taylor has transformed how we understand the brain through her research and own traumatic experience. She's teaching the world how to unlock every part of their brain to regain control of their thoughts, emotions, and behavior.

>> We have a problem. We are skewed as a society to the two parts of the left brain which focuses on me, the individual. How do I fit myself into a society? And trauma is living in there as is cravings and addiction. And we need this. It protects us. We get in trouble when this is the only portion of our brain that we value because look at the world we currently live in.

>> So is there a strategy for making sure that you don't act upon it?

>> Well, so many people are trying to get rid of their emotional reactivity. But the way to heal it is not to get rid of it. I mean, we're wired for this. Why do I want to just put myself in a little box and say, "I don't want to have pain. I don't want to be mad. I want to be a robot. I don't want to be a robot. I want to be a whole human with a whole brain. Like this is life and it lasts this long and then it's gone. And it took me losing the left side of my brain for 8 years to realize just how how precious this thing is.

>> So how do I control and protect my brain at all costs?

>> Well, there's a lot. So you ready? Want some hot stuff?

Dr. Jill Balty Taylor, what have you spent your professional career endeavoring to understand and why does it matter?

>> I am fascinated with how does our brain create our perception of reality and based on that information what a wonder it is any two of us can communicate at all. I think I am fascinated by what we are as biological creatures. And most of us are so consumed with everything outside of ourselves that we have missed the wonder of what we are as this biological conglomeration of cells. I think we're absolutely beautiful. You know, none of us came into this world with a road map about how to get it all right. And the road map is the brain cells. And when we understand the brain cells and what they do and how to work with them and how to keep them well, then we can manifest our own mental health.

>> And do you think the average person understands the brain? Did you understand the brain before you started studying it?

>> Well, I understood it because I had a brother who was diagnosed would be diagnosed with a brain disorder schizophrenia. So I became fascinated by five or six about what are we and why is he the way he is? We are so different from one another. Our interpretation of our experiences are so different from one another. What's what are we? I just I just became a philosopher very young and fascinated with the biology and the anatomy of what we are.

What do you think an understanding of the brain, the understanding that you're going to communicate to myself and my audience today, how do you think that can help me improve my life?

>> Oh my goodness. If I understand what part of me interacts with the external world and is smart and is good with details and is well organized, then I know how to use that part. And that's this. We are skewed as a society to that leftinking portion of our brain. In fact, as far as traditional medicine is concerned, that thinking portion of our brain is the only portion that is actually conscious. So then we live our lives literally with our left emotional tissue, our left our right emotional tissue and our right thinking tissue all as part of our unconscious brain. But what if it's not unconscious? What if we actually know what those groups of cells also do? So that when I'm experiencing my pain from the past, I can actually call on the portion of my brain that knows how to self soothe me so that I can lift myself out of my pain, learn from those experiences, and then live a more fulfilled life. It's the power to choose who and how we want to be in the world when we understand what our choices are.

>> So is it possible to choose which part of your brain to use in a certain moment?

>> Once you do it all the time, you're just probably not aware of it. Let's say you're going to have a business call and uh you got your stats and you got your data and you pick up the phone and you say, "Yes, this is Steve and blah blah blah." And you work into your details and then let's say uh someone peaks in to to let's say a little dog comes running in. Okay. Well, you're going to have a couple of responses potentially responses. One, you're going to smile, right? You just smiled. You just moved into, "Oh, I love my little fuzzy." And yeah, okay. Now you know now you're a little gentler because now you shifted into a different portion of your brain that is open to the present moment and now you just got uplifted. So we have these four different anatomically neuroanatomically structured parts of our brain and we can pick and choose who and how we want to be in any moment when we know what our choices are. But we don't know what our choices are as our society because we are functioning skewed to that left thinking portion of our brain and everything else is running on automatic.

>> And the left thinking portion of the brain is the what more logical

>> logical rational analytical likes to control people's places. There's a me uh definition ego center of I exist. I am Joe Bolty Taylor. This is my phone number. This is where I live. I know that this is where I begin and end, where my skin meets air because a group of cells tells me where I begin and end. But you've probably had flow moments where you were doing your sports or you were making love or you were whatever you were doing and and you didn't begin and end here. You were vast and open and you were this big energy ball that you are. But the left hemisphere focuses on that little group of cells and those skill sets and the right and the wrong and the good and bad and that that portion of the brain defines the social norm. And we all have to fit ourselves in the social norm. But it's only a quarter of our brain.

>> Is it making us unhappy the way that we use our brain currently?

>> Well, we're out of balance. We're completely out of balance because we're at the balance of the value of that left brain. What's going on in the right brain? The right brain is right here right now. We spend so much of our time. So fundamental differences between the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. And I know this only because I lost my left hemisphere and that's all I had for eight years. I had to use what I had currently going on in my right hemisphere after I lost those cells of the left hemisphere in order to rebuild the skill sets of the left brain so that I could become completely functional again. Are we unhappy? Well, that's not a happy part of the brain. When you're being analytical and organized and structured, you probably got that that burr that frown right there. You know, you're and and it's a different expression. Then as soon as, as I said, a little puppy comes in and then all of a sudden your face happens. Well, what happens is you're shifting into a different part of your brain. And that's what we do. We're running it on automatic. So, if we are running our brain on automatic, imagine how much better we might do if we were actually picking and choosing who and how we wanted to be on purpose.

>> And you're telling me that's possible.

>> Absolutely.

>> And by the end of this conversation today, you're going to teach me how to do that.

>> Absolutely. You're going to so get it. And it will. And once you see you, you will no longer ever not see you. And then you're going to see these four characters inside of yourself. And now you're going to be looking at your partner who you speak about often. And you're going to be going, "Oh yeah, I recognize all four parts of her, too." But what that means is that any relationship that we have, there's eight of us. There's eight of us. Eight very specific personalities in every relationship. So I have four very predictable character profiles, as do you. It's the way the anatomy of the brain is built.

>> You've bought a present for me in this box.

>> I did.

>> What is in that box? This is a very special brain with a spinal cord.

>> This is a real brain with

>> This is a real brain with a spinal cord.

>> A real spinal cord. A

>> And do you own this brain?

>> This I did this dissection and uh yes, this brain was specifically donated to me for educational purposes.

>> How old was the person? What was

>> in their 40s?

>> Do you know how they passed away?

>> Brain cancer.

>> And can you see the brain cancer?

>> You cannot. Not until I cut this open. And I've had this brain for over a decade and I haven't cut it open. It is very rare to have an dissection which is actually brain and spinal cord. Usually you dissect the brain and we learn about the brain but I wanted to have the brain and spinal cord because that's the central nervous system and it's a spectacular dissection.

>> Um I feel nervous and excited.

>> Excited is good. I'm excited cuz you're right here right now going, "Oh my gosh, something new."

>> Yeah, it's exciting. Right here, right now is an exciting time. Are you ready?

>> I am ready.

>> Okay.

>> Should I put my gloves on?

>> I encourage you to do so. Okay. So, this is a real human brain. And right now, it is um hydrated in rubbing alcohol. So, that's what this is. So, you don't have to be afraid of that. So, this is a real human brain and spinal cord.

>> So, you've heard about menitis.

>> Yeah. It's layers that support between the bone and the brain tissue and it protects it. So this is called these there are three layers called the meninges. So when you've heard of menitis. So this is the dura mater. It's very tough and you'll feel that. It's like a really tough lettuce. And this is is essentially strapping the brain into the cranial vault and holding it into position because you don't want this thing flopping around and having wounding and uh injury.

>> So it it straps it into here.

>> It well it straps it in certain spots. Yes. And generally often when you do a dissection, you actually have to uh put a like screwdriver in there to peel the dura off the bone. So it straps it into position. It's kind of like a bra for the brain.

>> Okay.

>> Okay. So this is the dura and then what I'm touching now is called the arachnoid and that's the second layer of the meningis. And what you're looking at in there is blood is blood inside of the blood vessels. So one of the things about why the brain is so fragile is the blood vessels are transparently thin.

>> So the pressurized system of what's going on inside of the cranial vault has to be highly regulated. And it's actually the pressure of the cranial vault versus the pressure in the thorax of the chest and the pressure of the abdomen. It's a system and they all work together in order to to keep everything well regulated homeostasis a state where the cells are happy and so the third layer is like right here and it's you can see this layer is peeled away the arachnoid and under here I'm now touching pia and pia is the external layer of the brains brain cells themselves the brain tissue so so this is a beautiful brain and it would be positioned in my head like this.

So front of the brain, back of the brain coming down, hanging down as the spinal cord. And then as you look at the spinal cord, this is called the cottoina or cotquina. And these are the nerves that are actually going to go down into your lower extremity. So all the information that's going to go down into your lower extremity to control your body is controlled and the sensory information is coming in through those nerve fibers.

>> Looks like a bunch of wise.

>> It does. Well, you know, we are quite a welldesigned machine in its own way. It a difference is we are organic. We are biological. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that we make as a society is we think ourselves and we think ourselves as a machine. Push it, push it, push it, push it, push it, push it, push it. Well, you can do that with a computer. You plug it in and it stays on until you turn it off or it blows up. We have to go to sleep. Yeah. Have a good time with that.

And when I say the 10th of December, 1996. Yes. Which was 4 years after I was born roughly. Mhm. You're 37 years old. Yes. What happened on that day? Can you give me a playbyplay?

>> Yes. Well, the day before that I was teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School and I am a gross anatomist which means cadaver entire body as well as hisytologology which is tissue as well as neuro. So I am all about anatomy. So I teaching and performing research at Harvard Medical School. And uh I woke up the next day and I was experiencing a major hemorrhage in the left half of my brain. So I woke up, I sat up and I immediately had a pulsing pound behind my left eye and uh generally I didn't have that and it was pretty severe and it got all of my attention and I have my before and after is before and after that morning.

>> What happens next? So, you've got a pulsing pain be behind your left eye. What did you do then?

>> Well, I thought, "Wow, that's weird." And it was the costic pain that you get when you bite into ice cream. It's like that freeze brain. Uh, and I thought, uh, okay. And I felt, uh, I felt suddenly weak. And, um, and I thought, okay. So, I got up and light was, um, kind of burning on my eyes. It was I didn't want light in the morning that day. So, I closed the curtains and I thought, well, let's get my blood flowing. Maybe I'll feel a little better. So, I jumped onto my cardio glider, which was a whole body full exercise machine. But I'm looking at my hands and realizing that my hands look like primitive claws, grasping onto the bar, and I look at my body and I'm thinking, "Whoa, I'm a weird looking thing." and my perception of reality shifted away from my perception of being the one on the machine having my normal morning experience to wow I was witnessing myself having this experience and I'd never had that happen before and I thought okay so this isn't helping so I get off the machine and I uh head across my living room table and I'm realizing Every movement is very rigid and very precise and I'm actually kind of directing. I felt very robotic getting into the bathroom. So I remember pulling on the water and when the water came out, it smashed into the tub and the volume just reverberated in my brain. It was so loud the sound was amplified and it pushed me against the wall. But when the volume hit, I'm a neuroanatomist. So what that means is that I'm teaching students about all of the anatomy here and which fibers are coming in and going where and what is the tracks of everything. And so sound comes into the ears and it goes right down to the pawns region of our brain down here. And this is where life and death is. This is where those cells, if you're going to inspire, you need your pounds and and your your medulla in order to have those cells functioning. So, when mine went were being disturbed, that was the moment I realized I've got a problem. This is a grave problem. Uh, this could kill me. So, I got out of the shower. I dressed mechanically, just dressed. I'm still going to work. And then my right arm went totally paralyzed by my side. And and it's really strange when a limb goes paralyzed. It doesn't just like drop down. It goes bomb. I mean, it's a heavy entity. And I thought, "Oh my gosh, paralysis. Oh my gosh, I'm having a stroke." And then I'm thinking, "Okay, you know, oh my gosh, how many brain scientists have the opportunity to study their own brain from the inside out?" And I literally thought, "Okay, I'll do this stroke thing for a week or two and then I'll get back to my job." Right? So then it was a matter of I have to get help. I have to communicate with the external world. And a problem was that the hemorrhage was happening inside of the left thinking portion of my brain which is where language is. So I was drifting for 4 hours. I was drifting in and out of the consciousness of the present moment. And the present moment the pres in in the present moment I don't know who I am. I don't know what I am. All I can know is what's in the present moment.

>> I was waffling back and forth because it was growing. It started small. So I had what we call an arteriovenus malf for an artery which is a high pressure system. It's bringing blood into the system. And then I have a vein and the vein is a no pressure, low pressure system. And then we have these little capillary networks in between.

Yeah, this is an es schemic stroke. I had the the uh the hemorrhagic stroke. So when you think about stroke, most people think, oh, blood clot and the blood clot blocks a So the thing about um arteries is they taper taper taper taper taper until they get down to the capillary level, which is where the blood uh the red blood cells kind of line up in single file and pass through that. And it's a very low pressure system, and then it absorbs back up into the vein. Well, what I had was the hemorrhagic stroke and a blood vessel exploded. And when it exploded, then the blood goes out into the extracellular matrix, which is extracellular between the cells and the cells cannot function. Blood is essentially poison to a cellular communication. So, it's no good. And whatever blood wherever it goes, those cells start going offline. And then as that uh hemorrhage grows inside of the brain across time, more and more cells are becoming incapacitated.

>> So you were in that moment unable to remember how to speak properly, unable to

>> nothing. I had nothing. I didn't even have me. I had no Jill Bolty Taylor because she was over in the left hemisphere. And eventually that whole hemisphere ended up swimming in a pool of blood and was nonfunctional. But it took four hours to get there. So, I was waffling into the present moment, blissful euphoria. I didn't exist. I h I know who I am and that I exist at all because I have a tiny little group of cells inside of my left hemisphere that tells me who I am. Have you ever awakened in a hotel somewhere because you've traveled so much and you're going, "Where am I?"

>> Yeah.

>> There's this blank, right? And it's like, "I don't know, but the bed's comfy." You know, what a nice room. you know, and all of a sudden you're just right here, right now, and you're not about the past, and you're not about the future, and you're just in the present moment. And joy lives in the present moment. Love lives in the present moment. Laughter lives in the present moment. The present moment is a fantastic place. And we are wired to that by literally half our brain. So why wouldn't we spend more time over here or at least balance it out? That's all I ever ask for. I am not here to uh uh you know uh as a waving the flag of the re of the right hemisphere. I want whole brain living. I want people to understand the different parts of their brain what they do so that it says okay so let's say do you meditate

I think about this the the so I look at the brain it's divided into four categories very specific anatomically each one of those result in a constellation of skill sets and then that constellation of skill sets actually manifests in our lives as personalities and we all have all four now do we all practice all four of us do we usually have a dominant you seem to like your left thinking brain a lot. When do you have fun? What does Steve do for fun?

>> okay so I when I look at a brain and this is totally randomly named um and I did that because I had to communicate about it somewhere so I call left thinking character one and I actually give that part of my brain a name I call her Helen hell on wheels she gets it done you're talking to Helen right now she's giving you facts and details she is all about what is right and wrong and good and bad how do I fit myself into a society how do I use my words in order to communicate So this is the part of us that goes to work. It's our A type personality.

>> So character 2 is going to be the left emotion. Now the difference between the the the things you can say predictably about the left hemisphere is it has linearity across time and it has me the individual and my emotional system then has my past pain and it wants and and it's kind of always looking for a reason to knee-jerk react and have emotional reactivity. So so many people are trying to fix or heal or get rid of their emotional reactivity when re this is a portion of our brain which is running constantly in the background to protect us from in the present moment when new information comes in. So we want to work with that and we want to appreciate it and we want to love on it and we want to be kind to it because it's generally not very happy because it is storing all of our pain from the past.

>> character two? I call mine Abby. We could spend a whole semester talking about character two because character two is our pain from the past and in our society everything's about our pain from the past and our professional self. Character three is going to be the emotional content of the right hemisphere. Well, this is right here right now. What am I experiencing emotionally? Experiential. This is where what's the temperature of the air? What does it feel like to have clothing on? What does that feel like on your body

>> when when you meditate? They ask you to be become aware of your environment, right?

>> And focus on your breath. Exactly. Because because they want you to expand yourself one out of the thinking consciousness and right and wrong and good and bad structure, the box that we think in of the left thinking and they want you to stop, you know, thinking about your girlfriend and boy, we didn't really end it very well or boy, I had a great morning this morning. Okay. So, so this is playful. So, character three, it's young. We have two little people inside of ourselves and that's the emotional. They're immature. We are feeling creatures as biological creatures. We are feeling creatures who think. So a lot of character 3es actually we have character 3 moments that land us in jail because it's not thinking about consequences of behavior. It's just thinking, "Oh yeah, the neighbor's pool. It's 3:00 in the morning. They won't notice. Let's go jump in their pool." And then the next thing we know, you know, we've been arrested.

So then character four is the thinking portion of our brain. This is our w this is our wisdom. We we go and we have experiences and we learn because neuroplasticity is real and every we have to have neuroplasticity these and this is all about the cells neurons in real time reaching out making new connections constantly but their cell bodies are in position but in order for me to make an association between you and something else then I actually grow to you and I grow to the something else and then I learn about that. So our capacity to learn is what neur is the underlying feature is neuroplasticity. I would not be sitting here talking to you today if neuroplasticity didn't turn on fire when I needed it for eight years and it took eight years for me to use what I had in this brain to rebuild the skill sets of this brain. But the thinking portion, the character 4 portion of our brain is the wisdom that we gain from the knowledge that we have had and we have associated it and we can relate to it. And this part all it cares about is that emotion that I felt that morning which was all all that I'm allowed alive at all. And when we can connect to that people, people people, you know, it's billiondoll industry of meditation to quiet what's going on in the left hemisphere so that we can open up the possibility to what's going on in the right hemisphere. And and it's it's our peace. We are wired at the core of our being of our right thinking tissue to feel peace. And we do not exist in a world that is peaceful. So if we are functioning on an extreme left brain left thinking and we are emotionally volatile when people insult us and we're all about the me me and we have forgotten about the we look at the world we currently live in. And right now we are so skewed to me the individual and I want more and I'm against you because you're not a part of my tribe.

Okay. Now I would like for you to pull your right one. The little Do you see how it's got a little little edge? Yeah. Yeah. Flip it up. It'll flip up. Yeah. And flip it all the way up. Now what you're doing right now is you are bringing light in from the lateral portion of your visual field.

Yeah. Yeah. So, right now you are purposely stimulating your left hemisphere. So I just want you to just how do you feel inside of your body? Just describe a few things to me. How do you feel

>> feeling analytical about anything? Think about

>> my back has got a little bit of a pain in it. Um but otherwise just very focused on doing this job as the host of the D of CEO.

>> Beautiful. Just focus which is what that left hemisphere should do. So go ahead and flip that down.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. And then just like stay for like 20 seconds and let everything kind of equilibrate to whatever the darkness is that's in there.

All right. Okay. Go ahead then and pull up the other side.

How do you feel?

Weirdly I felt more relaxed.

>> Now or before?

>> No, now I feel more relaxed.

>> Your whole body just went calm.

>> Yeah.

>> What else? Tell me something more. Any aches or pains in your body?

>> I just feel way more relaxed. I feel like I'm laying low on a sun lounger.

>> Yeah, that's what the right brain feels like. So you're bringing less information in from that the light of the lateral side of your visual field. It's hitting the medial portion of your retina and crossing into your right hemisphere. So what you're doing right now is you're sending light energy photons into the right hemisphere and it is pushing through. And now this is a an easy easy way for people to control and choose how they want to be between their two hemispheres and really get to know oh

>> how do I know this isn't just a placebo like how do I because I said I do feel way more relaxed like I can't be bothered to carry on this

>> well if you look at the anatomy if you look at the the anatomy this is where light is coming in on the um you can't really see it on here, but that's going to be information from your eyeballs, which would be sitting right here, right there.

>> This is fibers. You're wired for this. This is how you are wired. That's why everything about you, this isn't about a placebo having a behavioral impact. This is about the anatomy of the brain.

>> How do we do that? How do we heal our trauma from the past from a neurological perspective?

>> Well, I think what we do is we recognize first of all um the question everybody wants to heal it. So the way to heal it is not to get rid of it. I cannot get rid of my trauma from the past. My pain from the past is real and it is mine and it is expansive and it is mine and everybody has their pain from the past, their trauma. We all have trauma. So what do I do with that trauma? Do I let that trauma just fester in that character two part of my brain and then I just look at everyone else who's not like me now and say, "Well, you didn't have any trauma. You know, you're better off than I am." You know, I start making a negative, hostile judgment about, "Well, this is my trauma and I want to protect it." The purpose of trauma is to say to you, you're a biological creature. You're in the present moment. You're a real human being. You have a life. my life, part of my life is my trauma. And I will bounce from trauma to trauma to trauma to trauma. And if I look at the trauma and say, "This is a horrible thing." Well, maybe it was a horrible thing. And maybe that was 30 years ago and that was a horrible thing. And you're keep the more you think about it and you root into it. And the more often we run a circuit, the more of that circus, stronger that gets and begins to run on automatic. And so now I'm always worrying about, oh my god, am I going to have more trauma? and I put all my energy into that trauma. Well, what am I doing? It's just the same as if I'm just a workaholic and doing nothing but character one. And and so the power of whole brain living is to know that I I have four parts of me. And that trauma is important information. And let's say I I I was attacked or I was raped or I was I had a horrible experience with a person. And now in the future whenever I see a person that looks remotely like that I kneejerk away from that because I perceive myself from my drama that that's not safe. So I push it away. That is an appropriate response. But then I say, "Oh, but this is actually a different person." And I can open up my right hemisphere and with curiosity look at this new person and say, "Well, you might look like somebody who hurt me many years ago, but you're not that person. Who are you?" and make a connection in the present. So the trauma is supposed to be information. We get in trouble when we turn it into a lifestyle.

So how do I heal that? I acknowledge it. I value it. I say thank you to it. I acknowledge its its purpose and I pull my energy into the other parts of my brain. My character four, Queen Toad, can come in and self soothe me and hold me.

>> And what would character 4 say to the trauma?

>> You're loved. You're okay. Thank you. Thank you for this information. Thank you. And hold it. Well, trauma needs to be heard. Needs to be held and it needs to be heard. And and then it can like transform itself into into the next level of, oh, okay, I'm okay. Even though I had that trauma, even though I I had this stroke that all but killed me, I'm not resentful. Why would I be resentful? It's my life. This happened to be the life story of me. We all have a life story. So the question is, how much energy am I going to put into that and hold myself back when I have all these other incredible possibilities? And if I was hurt or I was raped, then I can actually if I want to take that anger because I matter than hell about it, then I can I can advocate for other people to help women get self-defense courses so that we can actually protect ourselves. I mean, I can turn it into something else. I can make lemonade out of lemons. We all can. We're wired for that.

You've talked a lot about how you think about the brain from a cellular perspective and how we keep it healthy from a cellular perspective. So I wanted to get some of your advice on lifestyle choices that I should be making to have an optimally healthy brain at the cellular level.

>> Number one, sleep. Sleep is everything. Sleep, sleep, sleep. These are billions, 800 billion cells that are eating and creating waste for you to have a consciousness in every instant. Imagine the number of cells it takes for you to just look at me and have a relationship in this moment with me. I mean, your brain is working hard. So, it's eating, it's creating waste. Go to sleep. Sleep should be a priority. And if you sleep then the micro ga can come out and then all the garbage and waste can get cleaned up. The waste gets pushed away and you wake up crisp and fresh the next day because your brain cells have been taken care of. What are you feeding them? If you are feeding them preservatives, you are preserving them. Oh my gosh. Pay attention to what you're consuming. Fresh fruits, fresh vegetables.

try to do it if you know I know we exist in a world where not everybody can eat organic but boy pesticides are poison. So paying attention to what we are consuming. How much sugar are we eating? Sugar. Sugar is just not a healthy choice no matter what. Now I love chocolate and I'm going to eat chocolate. It's my, you know, vice. I'm going to do it anyway. Dark chocolate. It's a bean. It's a vegetable.

Somebody said that to me once and I believed him. Okay, so um what are you eating? Movement. You have to move your body. You are an organism. So many of us think that especially if we're in that character one left thinking brain. My body is designed to like move my left my brain around. No, you are an organism. So finding ways to get yourself into the different characters is great for you.

>> Are you hopeful?

>> Completely 100%. That doesn't mean we couldn't be gone in an instant. But absolutely. That's the beauty of the right hemisphere is it is hope. It's possibility. And that's why when you talk to me about AI, yes, I think a lot about AI. AI is uh wow. I listen to your podcast. There's a whole lot of wow and I don't have that. And this is why

>> sensory, you know, it's hard. It's hard. You've had some really difficult conversations about, you know, the reality of of the potential dangers. But here's why that doesn't bother me. Because I have a whole brain. And my whole brain says, "Yes, that is that and that is going on and that is scary." And I think about it through the the perspective of a neuroanatomist. So I see the internet as like this higher level of consciousness that we're feeding ourselves into and everybody's plugged in. And now we're creating robots and consciousnesses that we'll think independent of us. So we're essentially creating an other that we cannot control. Well, I can't control who's got those nuclear codes. So from my perspective, I'm just glad I wake up every day and it's like, oh, I get another great day and it's like, woo, possibilities. So,

>> Had you not had the stroke, how different do you think your life would look? Oh, I'd be probably a professor of neuroanatomy at Harvard Medical School, teaching and performing research, doing that thing. That was my dream.

>> Do you think you'd be happier or less happy?

>> Oh, no. I'm so glad I had that stroke. I am so glad I had the stroke. It set me free. It set me free. Having the stroke set me free from having to live a life based on other people's expectations about what my life should be

>> because it changed something in your brain.

>> Because that went totally offline and it wasn't going to be a choice anymore.

is what do you do when your life doesn't turn out the way that you had hoped?

>> I thank the universe that option wasn't for me. Next. So easy. So easy. Thank you to that right hemisphere consciousness that connected to the universe with all those atoms and molecules and big old rocks floating around that that wasn't meant for me. Something better is on its way or I'm going to go paddle board. I'm perfectly good with that.