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Tyson Popplestone is a Comedian from Melbourne Australia. Join him for a brand new interview each week.
Barb Oakley (00:00.589)
It's a bit chilly in the office here, so I'm just all hooded up and so forth
Tyson Popplestone (00:06.222)
Which part of New Zealand are you in right now? I've been to Wellington. Yeah, I went there back in 2018 and ran, I remember we were staying fairly central and I do a lot of running and I was running, there's a really nice path that sort of leads you around the lake towards the airport there and I kind of fell in love with the city, both for the running track and also the coffee options.
Barb Oakley (00:10.112)
Wellington.
Barb Oakley (00:31.401)
yes, both are optimal, about the only thing that is a bit difficult is that it's windy welly.
Tyson Popplestone (00:40.83)
Yeah, that's true. That's true. What is it that took you to Wellington?
Barb Oakley (00:45.549)
I'm working with the New Zealand Initiative and they have me traveling all over New Zealand to help open hearts and minds to really solidly research-based approaches to learning as opposed to, you know, kind of more ideologically based feel-good approaches that aren't really effective.
Tyson Popplestone (01:10.19)
There's some big differentiations there. It is interesting. mean, we may as well jump straight into something that I was keen to pick your brain around. I had a conversation with a friend yesterday and as much as I hate to admit it, I was terrible this Mother's Day. I fell for the oldest trick in the book. My wife said, you know what? I just want to be thought of. So I got her a card and she's like, oh, that's all you thought of, is it? And I was like, oh, okay. And I had my friend around and I was laughing with him.
Barb Oakley (01:32.951)
you
Tyson Popplestone (01:38.274)
And I'm 38 and he goes, well, you're almost 40 now. This is probably something you're just gonna be stuck with. And I thought that doesn't sound like a real positive approach to learning. It doesn't sound like a really adaptive mindset. And I thought it certainly doesn't give me much hope for the rest of my marriage that I can change my approach. But there are, I've noticed just in general conversations, like a lot of preconceived notions or assumptions.
about learning. And one of them that I noticed is, you know, once you hit a certain age, the idea of learning anything new, particularly outside of your field of study or your history of study is near impossible. And that's something that I've heard you speak to quite nicely with some quite hopeful information. thought maybe that could be a good launchpad into the rest of our conversation, the misconceptions around
what effective or the possibilities of learning are.
Barb Oakley (02:37.023)
Sounds like a great idea. I got lots to talk about there. okay. You want me to get going now?
Tyson Popplestone (02:40.573)
It's yeah, it's yeah. Sorry. Go. No, you go. You go.
Tyson Popplestone (02:47.042)
When you're ready, Bob, I'll hit record and we're up and away. Yeah. I can, sorry, I did a little sneaky hit of the record button. So if there's any of that you want me to cut out, you feel free and I'll just edit that part out. But otherwise, we're being caught.
Barb Oakley (02:51.079)
are we? Okay. Here I am surprised. Yeah.
Barb Oakley (03:03.393)
I think it's kind of fun. Yeah, no, I think it's kind of fun. it, here's, there's just so much about sort of how the brain changes as we get older. And.
What's funny is as we're first maturing, like you know we're toddlers, we're getting older and so forth, what happens is like our perceptual networks are at the back of the brain and they and and what happens is those kind of solidify in some sense first.
So our awareness of our surroundings, it makes sense. We sort of learn how to deal with our, what that input is as far as what we see and hear and feel and so forth from the real world. So that solidifies. But then as we grow a little older, then sort of other...
cognitive networks begin to kind of formulate and solidify and so forth. And as these cognitive networks solidify, what they do is they help us to, I mean, if you have no comprehension of a language that you're hearing, then it's...
it's really hard to be exposed to the language and have any idea of what they're talking about if you've never been exposed to it. But as you are exposed increasingly to it, your neural networks become kind of aligned to the input that you're getting from that language that you're hearing. And it...
Barb Oakley (05:09.405)
of gradually congeals in some way. It firms up and that's why as you get a little older it becomes harder to learn a different language because you're sort of a little bit set in the pathways that you've learned early on with that first language. But this too tells us that as if we have children
the more we can expose them to other languages when they're young, the more they'll kind of pick up those patterns naturally. So learning something like French isn't like, you know, I got to sit down and study my verb conjugations. A little kid is just like, I want to talk to that other little kid. And it's all really exciting. so...
Tyson Popplestone (05:51.555)
Thank
Barb Oakley (06:03.935)
So as we grow older, we become more set in our thinking in some sense. And this is a good thing because otherwise it's really hard to make sense of what you see and hear from the world. But it also means that you get set into the framework that you have grown into in life.
And it can become a little bit more difficult as you grow older to, you know, to climb out of those intellectual ruts in some sense. So, so I think it's really helpful to sometimes I have a mantra of grow comfortable with the feeling of being uncomfortable.
because it can feel very uncomfortable to say, try to learn a new language or to be exposed to a different culture or to be traveling in ways that make you feel uncomfortable, you know, because you're sitting up all night or something like that. But...
Tyson Popplestone (07:20.75)
you
Barb Oakley (07:26.241)
But what this can do is help keep your thinking a little bit more flexible. But in another direction altogether, and then I'll wrap this up, is people don't realize that they're one of the best ways as you grow older to help your brain remain sharp and cognitively flexible is to play action style, sort of shoot them up.
video games like Grand Theft Auto or that kind of thing because if you think about it from an evolutionary perspective if something pops up in front of you in real life and could kill you you become more cognitively aware and even in the play world of video games if you're playing a game where something could pop out and you know sort of
shoot your avatar or something, you start kind of becoming more perceptive. And there's great evidence that these sort of video game based approaches are so helpful in older individuals in improving their cognition that Adam Ghazali, for example, has a video games with the FDA.
for potential approval as a video game instead of a drug to help improve cognition.
Tyson Popplestone (09:01.774)
It's one of those things that I felt like over the last 15 years, when you speak about video games, it's always about the problems and about the violence and about just the frustrations that parents have to try and disconnect their kids. But I've noticed, I disconnect their kids from the video games, but it's one thing I've noticed fairly recently is that there seems to be a lot more evidence coming out around some of the benefits that we've possibly overlooked when it comes to that.
kind of stuff. is it particularly for that, like, was it the younger adults you were saying or for every age group? there's some benefits for like reaction time and I guess coordination and what sort of direction are we speaking about these learning benefits coming from with regards to the games?
Barb Oakley (09:47.891)
It seems that it can help pretty much at any age. And that's why the Army likes to recruit people who have good gaming experience because they're really an asset when you're talking about drones and, you know, working with some of these sort of virtual world type new approaches that we're having to warfare.
So it can be any age, but it's, to me, it's quite compelling that as you grow older.
If you even look at some of those research papers, it's amazing. They'll have like an image of a brain of a 20-year-old, and then there's the brain of the 60-year-old, and they'll say, hey, and then there's the 60-year-old after video game training.
And I'm telling you, it's even sharper, like it has more metabolism going on than the 20 year old's brain. So if you had to guess, you'd say, that's the 20 year old brain, not the 60 year old with this video game training. it's pretty nifty. So there's some evidence that
some supplements can be valuable. For example, green tea supplements. There's a recent study that they can be very, quite valuable for enhancing cognition. And it seems that it may actually be affecting some of the networks.
Barb Oakley (11:38.807)
that appear to be affected with Alzheimer's and affecting them in a positive way. So the whole Alzheimer's business is a really sad episode in research. It was basically held back by some 20 to 30 years based on fraudulent apparently research that was published in some of the top journals.
And what's really sad about it is they haven't changed things. Now they're saying, yeah, we've got new research coming out and it's really going to overcome the problems we had before. But they didn't fix the systemic issues of people in government being hand in hand with pharmaceutical industries.
which and professors and universities being complicit in hiding the fact that they had a lot of fraudsters making a whole bunch of money taking in literally billions of dollars and using them for fraudulent purposes. So, but that's another.
Tyson Popplestone (13:00.91)
It's such a wild topic. Yeah, well, I had a really great conversation with Dr. Ray Dorsey on here, probably coming up to 12 months ago. like one of the really things that I've found with the conversation around Alzheimer's is it seems to take so many directions. mean, like the political side of it is one thing. And then even just the direction that people seem to go, like is it a...
lack of social connection, is it dietary, is it herbicides and pesticides or environmental pollution? I mean, it seems like it's quite an easy subject to pull the wool over an unaware population's mind with what's causing it for financial purposes. what was it that sort of held the research back for 30 years? Was it in regards to a particular thing that was causing higher rates of Alzheimer's?
Barb Oakley (13:53.165)
It was a small cohort of researchers published images that were faked that supposedly showed that amyloid plaques were the real cause of Alzheimer's.
Pretty much all research over the last couple decades has focused on this idea that, it's these tangles, it's the plaques that cause Alzheimer's.
even though others would point out there's people who have a lot of these amyloid plaques in their brains and they don't have Alzheimer's they're doing just fine so what's the big deal and what this was doing because of this faked research with these and the images were actually quite clearly fraudulent
And so what happened was, you know, apparently nature was notified about these images and kind of sat on the notification. There were, there was also plenty of evidence given to the universities involved, evidence given to the government. And everybody would just kind of shuffle it to the side because
nobody wants to, it's very interesting fraud and really suspicious research in science. It never seems to be discovered until the ringleader has died because it's pretty hard for the dead person to come back and sue you. And so, you know, then all of a sudden this stuff comes out, but that makes it seem like fraud and, you know,
Tyson Popplestone (15:48.621)
Thank
Barb Oakley (15:56.43)
spurious research was only done in the past, which is not true at all. It's going on right now all around us, but it's, you know, we don't know about it, but because people are afraid to say things, because if you're a young scientist and you discover fraud, you don't want to say anything, especially if it's one of the major leaders in your field, because they've got lots of buddies and they can KO your
Tyson Popplestone (16:27.466)
Yeah, what was even been interesting over the last few years just to see credible scientists speak out like I'm thinking just in regards to COVID. I mean, it's becoming less of a controversial topic as we as we go on. But even now, like with a few years up our sleeves to look back and hear some of the voices which were, you know, well and truly credible, even at the time, being silenced and made to look like nut jobs based on who they were questioning.
And I'm speaking about people like Peter McCullough who are like well certified and credited cardiologists and sort of well and truly respected for all their time in the field up until recently. think like if you're gonna be able to shut down a voice like that and make them look like a bit of a nut job, I can't imagine the fear and sort of trembling that a new graduate who's discovered something that looks a little questionable would feel. Because it all of a sudden has a place as an asterisk over whether or not you're gonna be.
not just accept it, but even have a career as a scientist, at least a respected one.
Barb Oakley (17:29.537)
That's so true. fact,
What I'm working on now is a massive open online course on free speech and the importance of free speech and not suppressing critical voices, for example, in science that and we saw what the results were during COVID when these very well founded credible sources were were in essence called tinfoil hat nut jobs.
despite the fact they were from Stanford, Harvard, and Oxford. And this is why we need to have free speech.
And the challenge is with it though that whenever anyone doesn't want to have something said, for example, the government may not want you to say certain things about, you know, they've got their own approaches to COVID and they don't want to hear yours.
You know, they can really put terrible labels on people. They them racists, call them conspiracy theorists, call them just nut jobs when they're nothing of the sort, but then they get tarred publicly by these seemingly credible sources. it's not a good thing.
Tyson Popplestone (19:02.912)
Yeah, I think one of the really interesting things about it is just how effective it makes not having to really consider the idea of that person speaking. Because if you can just label someone, you know, to stick with a COVID example, an anti-vaxxer or, you know, a racist or a conspiracy theorist, all of a sudden, like, why would you spend any mental effort trying a challenge or
critique the ideas because you can just throw it in the basket of crazy and move on with your life. But yeah, there's so many really credible ideas that are sort of missed out on. And even the idea of, I just love that idea of debate. I enjoy watching Charlie Kirk, the political commentator, sort of the right-wing commentator in the States going to universities. And he's sort of controversial and he'll say it how it is. And like a lot of the teenagers in the universities will get upset, but.
One thing I love about him is he always says, debate is like, let's not fight, let's debate, let's talk. Let's talk about the controversial ideas that, okay, you think I'm crazy. What did I say that's crazy and why? Let's break it down, get to the middle of it. And it is amazing when you can have, you know, people from the left and the right come to an idea with the idea of not attacking each other, but to really get to the core of the idea. It seems, I don't know if it's just the people that I've been listening to, but it seems that, you know, the last...
I don't know, maybe 18 months. Some of the people that I've been listening to have gotten better at going the idea rather than the man. And I feel like I get dragged along for the ride with it. I'm like, oh yeah, why would I label that person an idiot based on the fact he's just got a different opinion? He's lovely. He's just trying to get to the bottom of an idea. But what was sort of the motivation for you to put that course together? Because it's definitely a trending topic, but it's, mean, whenever you say the phrase free speech at the moment, I think some people,
get a little bit defensive.
Barb Oakley (20:59.021)
Isn't that amazing that they do because it's really their means of being able to protect themselves and you can. It's it's easy to bias a population. And and I think what we're seeing is a bias against free speech.
because it doesn't behoove certain political parties to have free speech. And I know for me, I'm basically, you know, your typical classical liberal kind of person.
And what amazed me was I used to work as a Russian translator on Soviet trawlers. I learned Russian in the military. And what I could see there was how fearful people on the trawlers were about saying the wrong thing, whispering, even thinking the wrong thought.
And I thought, wow, it's a good thing we don't have that in the States. And then I began to see, a minute, at universities, that's exactly what's unfolding. You even hint at the wrong thought. It's suddenly you're a pariah. And it's completely different than I was growing up in the 1960s and 70s where universities
were supposed to be places where you're exposed to ideas that may sometimes make you feel uncomfortable, but you were taught to think critically about them. And that has fallen by the wayside. And it has made me really sad. And what's hard about it is there are great organizations that stand up for free speech.
Barb Oakley (23:10.157)
But you hardly hear a peep coming out of universities. And indeed, one of my favorite companies in the world is Coursera, because I think they're doing a great deal of good in educating the world, giving them insight into.
you know, if you're from a poor background, you know, in some place that doesn't have much access to great teaching or something, you can access world class professors on how to be an entrepreneur and market your business and, and all the latest advances in artificial intelligence. And it's fantastic. But, you know, out of the 6,000
and you know maybe 10,000 or more courses. There's not a single course on free speech on Coursera. And they're, you know, they're a great group. And I think it's just that no one has suggested to them, let's do a course on free speech. And so, so my hand went up and, and it's, so the course is coming out beautifully and it's, it's really quite exciting.
because the way we're approaching it is based off the work of the wonderful Arab sociologist of the 1400s, Ibn Khaldun. And he talked about the importance of societal cohesiveness in making groups be successful.
And free speech is often sort of a battle between the ones who want to have a cohesive society for good reasons and for maybe not so good reasons and those who want more flourishing of different opinions.
Tyson Popplestone (25:20.814)
Yeah. And so where do you even begin to structure a course like that? Because obviously it reaches far and wide, like the topic of free speech is like that topic of Alzheimer's. It's like, oh, there's so many directions you could turn and so many things you could look at. And it's such a hotly debated and highly sort of divisive topic. can imagine, especially, I don't know if it's the same with Coursera, but I mean, trying to introduce that to like a modern day university who's relying on funding from whoever it may be from.
a little bit more of a difficult course to get approved.
Barb Oakley (25:54.283)
Well, it's...
The way I'm approaching it is...
with respect for the differing approaches to free speech that are held by countries around the world and for good reasons and for different reasons. And so we try to give a sense of why are things different in different parts of the world. And we also talk about what are the motivations for suppressing free speech. Sometimes I have as a kind of a
tagline on the MOOC, free speech is like air. You don't miss it until it's gone. So you only really notice that free speech is important and missing when you yourself are bearing the brunt of someone saying, you can't say that.
And so we're just talking about the different motivations that can be out there for free speech, for suppressing free speech, the different motivations for why you might want it. And I think even though we're clearly stating that we think free speech is quite important, we're trying to...
Barb Oakley (27:22.071)
give a sense of the very different reasons that people or ways that different people around the world see free speech and also to enlighten people that surprisingly often, seemingly well-intentioned efforts to suppress free speech, you know, to help those who might be harmed by free
speech and so forth are actually not so beneficial, know, as one might think. People often just like to shut down free speech because it's something they don't want to hear or it helps boost their own platform.
And certainly at universities, for example, you don't want somebody going around and saying their Alzheimer's research is spurious. So you're going to attack that person and say they're racist. And you've got to shut their free speech down because it's racist when it actually has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the fact that they don't want somebody criticizing their university.
Tyson Popplestone (28:44.906)
Yeah, I am. Do you know Douglas Murray? I love I love Douglas Murray of I mean, I've got his books every time he's on a podcast. I'll try and tune I've really appreciated and learned so much from him. Like I love how bold he is with the way that he speaks. And I think I watched him on Joe Rogan's podcast, like maybe a month ago. And the comment section was really heavy, like more than I'd ever seen with criticism.
Barb Oakley (28:48.123)
yes.
Tyson Popplestone (29:12.404)
of him because he came out with it. I think the way he came out, he sort of had a chip on his shoulder and he was he was annoyed at Joe specifically in regards to like this Israel-Palestine debate. And he was saying that he had a essentially a lot of conspiracy theorists or unqualified people speaking on the topic who have gained traction, you know, in popularity based on their views and sort of convincing takes on this particular conflict.
And he was saying that he needs to be more selective and cautious with the level of sort of qualifications of the people that he speaks to about this. And a few of the things he says like, you should have at least been to Gaza or you should have at least studied it. And then they said, okay, so you're saying only experts are allowed to have an opinion on this. And he's saying, no, no, like anyone can have an opinion. And it was a really, you could kind of see the stickiness of, cause I have no doubt that Douglas Murray is a huge ambassador of free speech.
He's a brilliant guy with a brilliant mind. As I said, like I've got nothing but respect for him. But I think that's why it stood out more for me. Cause I was like, I don't think he recognises how this is coming across. He's sounding as though he's trying to be one of those voices that says like, hey, trust the experts. We were told a couple of years ago and I don't know. It was just eye opening in the sense of like even well intentioned people can sometimes accidentally appear at least.
to be a fan of censoring some forms of speech.
Barb Oakley (30:45.005)
That episode was, first off, it is really difficult when you are on a podcast to be able to think on your feet and be the perfect respondent on every issue. sometimes you can walk away and go, my word, why didn't I think of that? And I think what Douglas maybe could have,
you know, in a perfect world would have thought of is Joe Rogan never brings on a person to talk about martial arts, you know, who's not an expert in martial arts. mean, you know, what, so you, I want you to bring in, you know, a, you know, someone who's a kindergarten teacher to tell you about how you should perform at a world-class level with, you know,
kickboxing or whatever. He's not gonna do that. And what Douglas Murray was really trying to say was, you know, get somebody who least knows what they're talking about. And it's, I think it's pretty easy to have slipped into the trust the experts inadvertently. And if he had used that, just that idea of, hey, look, you've got to...
You know, you don't have people who know nothing about something. And there's, it is shocking how often I will see in the academic world, someone who knows just enough to, and has a credible perch.
and they present themselves as an expert on something and what they're really saying is just what people want to hear. They will make up research, they will cite research that says exactly the opposite. They will do things like, you know, gee, this framework work we've just developed for the government, you know, it just so happens that the only
Tyson Popplestone (32:49.688)
Thank
Barb Oakley (33:09.641)
device that can work for this framework is the one that my company develops. They're not going to say that kind of thing. And it is so hard for a person who is just a regular person in the outside world and you don't have a dog in the fight. Who can you trust? Sometimes you think, you know, I'm going to trust the expert from Stanford or Harvard. And sometimes they're really good.
Tyson Popplestone (33:16.686)
Thank you.
Barb Oakley (33:37.631)
And sometimes they have just gotten the placement to look really good and they're just singing the tune to rake in the books and say what people want to hear.
Tyson Popplestone (33:49.43)
Yeah, how was that process of sort of figuring that out been for you? Because, I mean, the university world, as you said earlier, it's changed significantly over the years. I mean, you only have to look back to the 60s. And it was it was like the political left who are sort of anti establishment and forcing the questions to be asked. and now it seems to have been flipped on their head and universities seem in a large part.
like they've turned into almost an echo chamber of the left's ideas or at least the slightly left's ideas. And as a result, I mean, I'm 38 and even I've noticed this transition in my own life, probably just pre-COVID. If you had said, trust the experts on this, I would have gone, of course, vaccinate your kids and whatever else the example might be. But I mean, just through that period.
Sort of like my whole world got tipped on its head and I was like, my gosh What do you mean? Like they were wrong about that in so many different areas on such a large scale And they were so confident with that but at least they appeared to be confident with it But I noticed my mom is is 60 67 nearly 68 and I noticed a real tendency in her if there's a if there's a health problem, it's straight to the doctor if there's
a political concern, you've got to trust the politician. And me and her, as well as we get on, we get on great, but we butt heads over this, because I'm like, mom, things have changed. Like just because they went to this college, it doesn't mean they're correct. Sometimes the 23 year old who got their information, you know, from a podcast, have actually got a bit more of credible grounding, but it's almost impossible to explain that. And I can't imagine, you know, for the generation before mine, how big a jump that is or how big a...
mental hurdle it is to navigate because forever you've trusted the experts. Like how has that been in your own life, particularly with, you know, having such a large part of that dealing with academics and like the university world.
Barb Oakley (35:55.585)
I guess there's sort of two thoughts that come to mind is, you know, the first one, think of the Russian mother whose son is killed in the war. And, you know, I...
was not too long ago in Ukraine. And so I do feel that the evidence is quite strong that there's one man, Putin, who's behind the push to attack and so forth.
And you think about how a Russian mother feels when her son is killed and you will read sometimes mothers are like, you know
I did the right thing. My son did the right thing. was really, and it was a praiseworthy thing that I am sacrificing my child for the country. And you just think that's a really good, she's a good mom. She really is, and she really believes that. And really it shows you that really good people can...
be misled, can think they're doing really good things and doing the right things and they're totally not.
Barb Oakley (37:29.887)
And you got to still love them as human beings. But you also have to realize what in your life is you, you know, are you kind of thinking you're altruistically doing the right thing, but maybe not because that's some of my research is in pathological altruism, thinking you're helping, but it's actually the road to hell is paved with good intentions. But the other thought is just
Tyson Popplestone (37:57.422)
Thank
Barb Oakley (37:59.743)
that back in the 1970s when I graduated from high school there was a huge argument. There were like two completely different sides. There was a side that said communism is the best thing since sliced cheese. It's just a wonderful thing for humankind and a lot of my professors kind of believed that and then there was if you read about it from people who were there it was like this is really horrible.
It is a devastation on mankind. And I was like, who's right? These are two contrasting views.
So I enlisted in the army. I mean, what do you do when you're a kid or young person? So I just thought, well, let me go see. And so I enlisted in the army to go to Vietnam and sort of see what was happening. And the war ended before I was there. So I instead ended up working as a Russian translator. And then I found that, hey, you know what? The people who said that communism is really a trap
and something horrible for mankind, they were the right ones. In fact,
when Robert Conquest was asked after he had gone into the Soviet archives to revise his book, The Great Terror, and he was asked, well, you know, would you like to change the name of your book, The Great Terror? And he apparently said, yes, I would like to change the name. I would like to change it to...
Barb Oakley (39:45.855)
I told you so, you effing fools, because he'd been just pilloried by the left that he was lying and making all this stuff up, and he wasn't. So that, I think that caused my worldview to shift rather early on. Not really enough, because I was really very trusting in, you know, governments and the right thing to do and so forth for a long, time.
Tyson Popplestone (39:57.774)
you
Barb Oakley (40:16.081)
And now I tend to be a little bit more, you know, I still can see things incorrectly, I'm sure, but I tend to be a little less trusting of myself and my opinions, certainly about who's the right person and who's the good, who is truly doing good in the world.
Tyson Popplestone (40:39.694)
Yeah, it makes it so much easier to speak with people. It's something that I've really been trying to focus on, you know, over the last couple of years, because just during that lockdown period, I would see someone post something and be like, man, you're an idiot. Like, I can't believe this is what you believe. we've got, and then I would see that same person at a, I do a lot of standup comedy. I'd go out to a standup comedy room and we'd be having a chat. And I'm like, oh my gosh, what am I, you're awesome. Like we're laughing, we're chatting. We've got so many common interests. I'd sort of pigeon a
you based on one particular view and it's I'd noticed in myself if I can hold some of my opinions a little a little less tightly and be open to the fact that the person might have good intentions despite the disagreement we have on politics or whatever it might be it makes I mean it certainly makes my life a lot easier but it makes it makes just having conversation with people from so many different perspectives a lot more enjoyable.
Barb Oakley (41:36.269)
I love that how you said I hold my opinions a little less tightly. That's a great way to think of it. I am trying to do that same thing. It really does help.
open your ability to truly understand other people's worldviews. And our mission in life is, I don't think to sit there and going around changing everybody's worldview, even though I'm here in New Zealand to help change people's worldviews about tea. But but I'm trying to do that through logic and laying things out, not
Tyson Popplestone (42:14.85)
Yeah.
Barb Oakley (42:23.747)
by just calling people names or, you know, and showing them how these new ideas can really be helpful for them.
Tyson Popplestone (42:33.738)
Yeah, maybe that comes back to what you were saying at the outset. can't remember the language you used, just the difference between like the structure with that part of your brain that allows you to be more flexible with what you see and what you believe as a young kid.
And as you get older, it sort of strengthens up and you become a little more or a little less open minded. I mean, I look at my, I've got a four year old and a two year old now. And my biggest frustration with my four year old is I'm trying to convince him to go for a particular football team and he's got 18 options. And one day he'll tell me, yeah, yeah, dad, I go for Carlton, which is my team. And I go, good, we got him. And the next day he'll go to kinder and he meets a Hawthorne supporter and a
you know, another football club supporter who goes down, hate Carlton. Like I go for these teams now. I'm like, mate, we need a little, we need a little more laser focus. I just want to lock this one thing in. But yeah, it is interesting how difficult it is. Like, and that's the perfect example, like holding my opinions a little less tightly is a good example of that because like those opinions have only become so solid.
since I've been an adult. Do you know what I mean? It was never like that as a kid. It was never something that I was born into just like buying with full conviction that this is the truth. for whatever reason, as you get older, I don't know what it is, but you seem to definitely lean in that direction.
Barb Oakley (43:55.869)
for sure. And I think what's sort of funny is we...
We get these opinions and we just, we can tend to hold on to them far longer than we should. just learning to, okay, that's my opinion, set it on a shelf. And a lot of times, I love Daniel Kahneman's expression, which was something along the lines of, nothing in life is as important as you think it is at the time you are thinking about it.
And then I realized, know, isn't it a wonderful thing that we might be doing things like worrying about which team our son is rooting for instead of worrying about whether our son is going to survive the bombing because he's off visiting grandma or something and that village gets bombed. sometimes it's just hard for us to appreciate
Tyson Popplestone (44:54.658)
Yeah. Yeah.
Barb Oakley (45:06.623)
the great things that we really do have in our lives. And I try to bring my thoughts back to that when I'm grumbling about something or other.
Tyson Popplestone (45:18.094)
I find it hard to imagine you grumbling about much, bub.
Barb Oakley (45:22.727)
no, but my husband will, he will, he's such a saint, you know, but he's a great sport. And so he's really good at jollying me out of, you know, whatever grumble I might have. But I think it's important to try to keep a positive attitude because especially as you get older,
Tyson Popplestone (45:38.222)
I
Barb Oakley (45:46.445)
you can focus too much on the negatives and forget about the positives and then it becomes too easy to just grumble.
Tyson Popplestone (45:59.406)
Is there anything that you do like with that in mind that allows you to sort of maintain a flexible bit more open Positive mindset because certainly I mean you can get it I feel like you get a certain vibe just sitting down with certain people and I would say I'll describe your vibe is like very relaxed and very positive and and like very in the conversation which is so enjoyable to talk to like it's so much more fun having a conversation which feels real rather than just like pre-rehearsed answers that you insert in the right moment, but the like that
idea of positivity, as I said before, I'm 38, I catch already glimpses of how people become cynical old men and it's yuck, I never want that. And there's certain tools like cognitive behaviour therapy I've found really helpful, like challenging negative and faulty thoughts has been great for me. What do you use? Is there anything that stands out on a regular basis that snaps you out of being grouchy when you catch yourself there?
Barb Oakley (46:54.901)
a good sleep always helps. But I do use some insights from cognitive psychology like, no, you're labeling, you're catastrophizing, you're thinking the worst of what could happen in this. At the same time, it's...
Tyson Popplestone (46:57.356)
That's true.
Barb Oakley (47:16.893)
It's a double edged sword because if we're always putting a Pollyanna face on the world, that's how we can fall into things like, you know, always trust your doctor, always trust your government, always trust, you know, and so some of that curmudgeon that arises in us as we get older is simply a result of knowing more about the world.
So, you know, but just trying to be aware of that, but also like even in this conversation, I was like, you know, how did we veer into this discussion? This is like, didn't see this coming. you know, and then there's this part of me that kind of goes.
Tyson Popplestone (47:43.97)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (47:59.662)
Yeah.
Barb Oakley (48:05.087)
Wait, now this is where I'm focusing on the negative. You know, I should try to spin it around, but it was so interesting that I could really, you know, stop or spin or something like that.
Tyson Popplestone (48:14.217)
Yeah.
That's a really good point. I'm glad you didn't because I was enjoying your perspective and I did pre warn you. said this could end up anywhere Bob. I didn't quite see that direction coming either but I'm glad I'm glad adventure out there. I have had in my mind a question that I wanted to throw at you and it was in regards to age. It seems to be a nice point to launch into it because
Barb Oakley (48:26.453)
You were right! You were right! Yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (48:43.726)
All right, so your mindset establishes certain patterns. There's certain things you believe about how intelligent you are, what you're capable of learning. The idea of changing that is a challenge. When it does come to learning for someone who might be middle-aged or a little bit older and they're already questioning their capacity to do it.
Is there any first steps that you encourage a person to take or does it really depend on what it is that they're learning?
Barb Oakley (49:15.661)
You know, I think it's both things are true at the same time. Like if you decide to become a world's expert in quantum physics at age, you know, 59, you got a long road to hoe. So.
Tyson Popplestone (49:34.094)
Thank you.
Barb Oakley (49:36.557)
there's some common sense involved. But what is truly interesting is that when you learn something new, no matter what age you are, those new neurons, there's about 1,400 new neurons born every day, especially in the hippocampus that is involved in learning and memory.
And these new neurons, they survive, thrive and grow. If you are learning something new, it's like they they hook on and when they hook on, that's when they they're activated and so they can survive and thrive. But if you're not learning anything new, these new neurons just die. But what the new neurons have is special qualities. They they help you learn more easily.
Barb Oakley (50:32.905)
So, you know, new learning, whatever you choose to be learning is really helpful for your psyche. During COVID, a lot of states shut down all, you know, schools and everything. Depression rates soared. And it wasn't just the COVID, it was the fact that new learning was...
suppressed. it's, you know, whatever you might choose to learn for whatever reason, the one thing I can urge you to do is to use retrieval practice like flashcards. And I tell you, you will swear you you've read something and so you've got it. Make a flashcard on a key
and test yourself the next day. Try it a couple of days and you will be amazed if you have like you know develop
like 30, 50 flashcards and things. When you kind of rethink about whatever that new thing is that you're learning over different days, you kind of you approach it from different neural neurons in a sense. And so you you kind of begin seeing it differently. So if on your flashcard you have some something, you know, you can do things like, you know, a vocabulary word.
foreign language or something, but you could also do things like, you know, how...
Barb Oakley (52:19.437)
How does this salience network of the brain interact with other networks? What are those other networks? then it kind of reminds you what are you thinking about? And it's amazing, no matter what your age, even if you're older, it will help those new neurons survive, and grow. And in fact, I have to mention, and my favorite flashcard system is smarterhumans.ai.
And what I like about them is that they link back to where you originally learned the material. there's really good flashcard systems like Anki and Kahoot and so forth, but it's harder to get a link back. And for me, like, know, sometimes I'll be, I've learned it. no, wait, did I, wait, what did it really say the first time I saw it? And then it helps me not to go back to that.
Tyson Popplestone (53:19.764)
Yeah, are you writing these down or smarterhumans.ai sounds as though it's something done on your iPhone or your computer. Does it matter for you whether it's written down or whether it's digital?
Barb Oakley (53:33.069)
For me, it's easier to be digital, even though there's some evidence that handwriting, especially for young children, is valuable. But at the same time, I like loading on an electronic document, like a book or a paper that I'm reading. And then I can tell it. I push the AI button and it generates a bunch of flashcards for me. And I can tweak them.
or get rid of the ones I think aren't important, but it's so easy and it really helps me get to what were the key ideas that I need to be remembering, that I want to be remembering.
Tyson Popplestone (54:18.126)
Yeah, and it's just incredible the amount of information you can get through with that approach, isn't it? I mean, I've fallen in love recently with chat GPT. just gets outside of this. like, I've got an online running coaching business. And so I work with a lot of people from all around the world. one of the or two of the parts of that online program is I'll do a podcast and I have a YouTube channel and forever because it's just me.
I would write the introduction to the podcast and then I would do chapter notes. And then if you wanted to get them abbreviated, it would cost hundreds of dollars. And I was like, oh my gosh, I don't know if I can justify all these costs. And all of a sudden there you can copy an episode of your podcast into ChatGPT or I use Riverside or what we're on right now. And it just generates these notes. And I go, oh my gosh, like the amount of time that just saved me is, I can't believe that cost me $50 a month. That's the best $50 I've ever spent.
Barb Oakley (55:14.045)
yeah, I love chat. GPT deep research is really good. And I've heard that Gemini subversion of deep research is really good too, but I haven't used it yet. Claude. Yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (55:25.535)
what is the deep research? I've got a tab open here. Yeah, okay. Yeah, what does the deep research do?
Barb Oakley (55:32.661)
Well, it's like 200 bucks a month, but my word, it will...
I can ask a question, let's say that I want to understand how the field of neural schemas and, you know, and I might load in 10 papers on neural schemas and I'm trying to write an article or research article on how they relate to neural manifolds, how they relate to neural schemas. And
Mostly people don't think about that. A schema is more like a, it's like the framework your brain uses to store information where a manifold is more like those, you know, how they will film sometimes and they will, they'll have a dancer and they'll just have little spots of light on them. And so you can only see the spots of light moving when they're dancing. That's like a neural schema.
is like things are moving in time but you have only an abstract part of the whole picture of how that person is moving.
And so both neural schemas, that framework of our knowledge, and manifolds, how that knowledge moves in time on a particular aspect, are very much related to one another. But how do you integrate a cohesive set of writing, which
Barb Oakley (57:12.629)
Chad GPT deep research really helped me to do that for this paper I'm working on now.
cognition has been deeply affected by too much neural offloading. You people who say, you can always just look it up. And in countries that have taken those educational approaches, which are student centered constructivist approaches, there's good evidence that IQ scores are actually declining in those countries that have adopted those Western
Tyson Popplestone (57:54.254)
Yeah, it's always interesting when you look back at history and you, I don't even know who said what I'm about to say, so feel free to correct me if you know it, somewhat, was years ago it was said that like the biggest problem for humanity in 100 years.
will be like how we're going to fill in all of our spare time. Like because technology and progress is going to allow us just to, okay, all of a sudden the farming is going to be done through all this latest and greatest technology. We'll have eight or 10 hours in a day to do what we want to do. But it always seems to turn out that we're able to fill in that new time with new resources. And I caught myself thinking this with AI recently. I'm like, man, this is saving me so much time, but it is incredible how quickly I'm like, now I can do this.
But the reason I say that is because I can imagine when it comes to the world of learning, like AI has thrown a real spanner in the works of, you know, what we thought we knew, but also what we might be capable of. Is there any real standout, like I know you just gave me a great example with the deep learning or the deep research, sorry. But is there anything else that really stands out to you in regards to learning based on like the tools we have access to now?
Barb Oakley (59:06.469)
there's so much. But before we even do that, I just like to say, wouldn't it be cool, like what I know that top researchers in the world are doing, they will load all of their research and then they'll go into things like chat GPT deep research and they'll say, look at all my research papers. Now look at the greater world. What?
innovative new direction based on my research should I be exploring that I haven't thought to explore before you know that kind of thing so they're really they're using it for creative to create attack creative new approaches for you wouldn't it be cool to and maybe you've done this but load all of your transcripts from all of your podcasts
say what are the common themes of things we've discussed now. Now tell me innovative new directions that I could be going with in these podcasts that I haven't explored before. Wouldn't it be cool to see what are the common threads of things you have explored over the past years? It would just be really interesting to do that.
Tyson Popplestone (01:00:14.648)
Yeah. Yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (01:00:29.102)
That is cool. Yeah, it's wild. It's wild. I just can't comprehend how much data it can chew through so easily. I'll throw challenges at it sometimes with an email. I'm like, will be a tough one to write. And four seconds later, I've got nine options, which all sound incredible. Oh my gosh. I would have been here for months and it wouldn't have sounded that good.
Barb Oakley (01:00:51.531)
yeah, used to be, I get an email, can you help me study for the Indonesian firefighters test? I don't know about anything about that. Now I can actually go into my bot, ask Barb, ask it to become an expert in Indonesian firefighting exams and then apply these ideas. And then I can actually respond in a helpful way instead of, I'm sorry,
Tyson Popplestone (01:01:01.902)
Thank
Barb Oakley (01:01:21.315)
I can't help you.
Tyson Popplestone (01:01:23.116)
That's so true. Yeah, it's a really good point. I mean, you've been speaking about it for years. So I know we're not going to do full justice to it in an hour of conversation. But for everyone who has enjoyed it and haven't heard of you, I'll make sure that I have all of your links and everything tagged in the description to this episode, Barb. I've got one eye on the clock because my wife's given me an hour and a half without the boys at home so we could sit down and have this chat. I know...
Barb Oakley (01:01:46.285)
The stink eye.
Tyson Popplestone (01:01:49.55)
It's not even, she's pretty relaxed. It's just avoiding the embarrassment of a two and four year old screaming in the office, coming to say hello and me having to look professional. so I'll wrap it up there, Barb. I really enjoyed that. Yeah, seriously, I was excited to speak to you. And as I said, I didn't know for sure which direction it would take. We took a couple of twists and turns, but it was a whole heap of fun doing it with you.
Barb Oakley (01:02:16.361)
Well, it was really a lot of fun. I may be in Australia in the final week of July. So if I am in your neck of the woods, it would be a treat to go out and my hubby and I could raise a glass of good cheer.
Tyson Popplestone (01:02:26.378)
Tyson Popplestone (01:02:38.431)
Absolutely, I'd love to do that. Are you going to be in Melbourne at all, do know?
Barb Oakley (01:02:42.771)
I might be. So I'll have to see. Yeah.
Tyson Popplestone (01:02:45.216)
Okay. Yeah, all right. Well, if you are, I'll make the effort. I'll come down and if you do have the time, let's do something. Because I'm in Melbourne quite, I'm about an hour and a half from there, but it's an easy drive and I'm in there a lot for comedy. So it be pretty easy for me, but I'll send you an email and yeah, if you're up for that and you've got the time, let's do it, bub.
Barb Oakley (01:03:05.208)
that would be great and maybe we can attend one of your gigs. That would be awesome.
Tyson Popplestone (01:03:09.902)
He might lose all respect. All right, Barb, thanks so much. Thanks everybody. I'll cut that off there. Barb, that was so much fun.
Barb Oakley (01:03:12.909)
I don't think so, but we'll see.