The Physics of Focus: How a Nobel Prize-Losing Astrophysicist Cracked the Code on ADHD Success | Dr Brian Keating

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Science is what's called an infinite game.

There is no winning.

I can't win science.

You specialize in one field and it's incredible competition.

But as many of these people say, they basically are relay racers in this infinite chain.

This race that goes back to prehistoric times when the first person came out of a cave and said, What are those dots in the night?

What are those things up there?

Where do they come from?

Where do I come from?

So you're in this race, in this relay race, and you get the baton for a very short amount of time.

You run your leg, but your job is to pass it on.

So be a hero to other people.

Be in awe of other people that came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable in Mother Nature's undefeated.

Well, dude,

we started in the green room talking about how the last time we talked, I think was like

21, 20,

it was four or five years ago.

Both of us were in very different places.

It could have even been earlier than that.

I just looked at the episode.

I didn't even look at the time stamp.

It's so bad.

Both of us were in different places, right?

And we both kind of grown and have these brands and outlets.

Dude, you've just been doing so fun.

It's been so much fun to have, you know, had a chance to get to know you just a little bit, you know, a little bit

in the podcast.

And now just to see how far you've taken it, how much you professionalized it, you know, you've turned it into a business, as well as everything else you do.

And it's just so fun to be able to reconnect.

Yeah, likewise, man.

I've been following you and you're blowing up like the Big Bang yourself.

So it's a pleasure to be back on the show again.

We shouldn't wait, you know, for just every presidential election cycle to be together.

That's true.

That's true.

All right.

So I would not be doing myself justice if I didn't take this opportunity to ask you just a few of like

the nerdy questions that I have.

Cause,

you know, I was, my first interaction with your content was

when you rewrote the Galileo book or reprinted that book.

I heard you on the Aldisher show.

And I hear this, you know, this was very early in your kind of public persona.

And

I just thought it was like the coolest fucking thing.

I'm like, here's this nerdy dude who's like smart as hell, who's, you know, taking this knowledge, bringing it back into the world, like making it interesting again, talking about it.

And you and you and James were chopping it up.

And I was enamored by it.

And

that, and, and I've always been, I was this close to going to school for astronomy.

This close, this close.

I did not know that.

I did not know that.

Okay, so I went and looked at a bunch of schools that had astronomy programs, the last of which was Vassar College.

Wow.

The problem with with Vassar was their baseball field didn't have an outfield fence.

So I did not become an astronomer.

You want to talk about how trite some of the reasons are in which we choose the careers that we choose?

I was this,

that's what I wanted to go to school for.

And when I learned.

It's so funny that you say that because A, Edwin Hubble, who's the famous namesake of the Hubble Space Telescope, is the man who 100 years ago proposed that the universe is expanding and discovered evidence for it.

He was a great athlete too.

He was a runner, and

he had kind of this real devotion to his father.

His father was kind of domineering like many of our fathers can be.

And he was like, no, you're going to go to law school whether you like it or not.

And so he forced Edwin Hubble to go to law school and he went in the UK.

He went to Oxford.

And when he came back, he only came back with one noticeable difference, which is that he developed a posh British accent.

But he told his dad when he came back, he said,

father, you know, I've decided not to do laws.

And his father said, what?

He's outraged.

He said, father, I'd rather be a second-rate astronomer than a first-rate lawyer.

So apologies to all your lawyer.

My brother's a lawyer, so I like to tease him with that.

That's okay.

If you choose to be a lawyer, I think you're asking to be made fun of in some regard.

So

that's your life choice you made.

But it is funny how we make these small,

seemingly large decisions at the time seem small and become a math major, which I can do even less with.

So

but okay, so I want to talk.

I want to stay away from like aliens and shit.

As much as I find that interesting, that's not what I want to ask you about.

I was listening to a show the other day and I'm and I'm and I went back and I tried to figure out who it was that said this, but it was a

we'll call it verified scientist.

This guy like was not a armchair Twitter ex scientist.

He was on, I can't, geez, maybe it was Huberman or something.

I can't remember.

It doesn't matter.

But he threw out this kind of flippant comment or like contextual comment that that wasn't relevant to what they were talking about and he just like threw this in which is dark matter might not even exist on to the and then he just kept going and like in my mind i like went went like wait wait a minute i mean i don't know one way or the other

but

I don't feel like you can't just throw that out there and then move on.

So maybe like, maybe just break down for the audience, because I find this idea of dark matter to be very very intoxicating as much as I only understand half of it.

Maybe what the theory is, and like, is there anything new that has come out to this idea that maybe it doesn't actually exist?

Oh, yeah.

So that's a great question.

And look, dark matter along with dark energy make up a tremendous amount of what we know about the universe.

And yet we know almost nothing about these two substances.

To give you an idea of what I'm talking about, the universe, if you thought of the universe, the energy in the universe, as being a pie chart.

So go to Excel, type in the pie chart, and make it.

And the pie chart would have the following.

It would have these different components in it.

It would have matter, like you and I are made up of, you know, protons, neutrons, in my case, croutons, you know, baseballs, whatever you want.

It has all this matter in it.

And then it has different forms of what's called radiation, which sounds scary, but it's just light or radio waves, Wi-Fi, et cetera.

They put down, wrote down how much energy is in the form of light, you know, radiation, gamma rays, x-rays, whatever.

And then you wrote down, well, what's in the form of these other two components that we know to exist, but I'll tell you more about them in just a second.

You wrote down dark matter and dark energy.

So there's like four components on this pie chart.

Matter, radiation,

dark matter,

or dark energy.

And then you said, well, what does the pie chart look like?

Well, it would be about 70%

dark energy.

It would be about 29 percent uh dark matter so to speak and then it would be uh one percent everything else so you and i are kind of the the the sin not even the foam on the latte ryan we're like the cinnamon sprinkle dust you know you go to starbucks we're like nothing literally we're like one percent and and by the way most of the matter in the universe you know if you took that one percent now you can chunk it up into other things right you can say how much is the form of hydrogen How much is in the form of helium?

How much is the form of lithium, beryllium, boron?

You keep going up the periodic table.

And you'd get that 90% of that material that's in the form of matter, 90% of that 1%

is basically hydrogen, you know, the hydrogen or maybe it's slightly more hydrogen in the form of matter that we have in molecules.

Then the rest would be basically almost nothing.

So like the 10% of the 1% of the ordinary planets, rocks, stuff that we have is like stuff related to human beings.

Okay.

So we're almost not even the, we're like one grain of cinnamon, essentially, on the foam, on top of the latte, you know, sitting there steaming away.

So dark matter is the second most abundant source of energy, mass energy in the universe.

And we've known about its existence for 100 years.

We've been able to infer the existence of dark matter for almost 100 years.

And yet we've never ever detected it.

And it may be impossible to detect detect it.

So this person that you're listening to,

by the way, probably, you know, makes the rounds on podcast channels just the same.

And I know it's hard to sometimes tell the difference between a legitimate scientist, like I hope you're convinced I am, and someone who's might be doing stuff for clicks or for attention.

I don't know that person.

Maybe they are, maybe they're not legitimate.

But there's a lot of pseudoscience and nonsense that goes on on podcasts nowadays.

So you just have to consider the source.

But it is true that there could be no dark matter, but then you'd have to replace the effects that we know that dark matter manifests as.

You'd have to find another mechanism to reproduce those effects.

Nobody says that there aren't these properties of the following, you know, situation in a galaxy like the Milky Way galaxy that we live in.

There's sort of this

known problem that the stars in the Milky Way galaxy are rotating around the black hole in the center of the galaxy at an extremely high rate.

And

it's as if you were swinging

a ball on a string,

you're swinging a baseball on a string around your head.

It's going so fast, you can't account, like you couldn't account for it by the muscles of the person swinging it.

You'd have to find some other, maybe there's some wind that just so happens to be making a tornado, like a dust devil or whatever, right around the person.

But in other words, you'd have to come up with some other explanation besides the most simple explanation or the seemingly obvious explanation that there's dark matter.

So basically, how we know that something is there is because objects are being impacted by a force or

something of that nature.

We see the effect, but we're not seeing what's causing the effect.

And that's where the idea of dark matter, dark energy comes from.

Gotcha.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in a sense, we know that there's gravity.

We know there's electricity, magnetism, radiation, light.

We know about all these forces of nature.

And we know that, I mean, forms of dark matter don't have to be exotic things that we've never encountered before.

You know, for example, back in the 17 and 18th centuries, it was known that the planet Uranus, or as some people like to call it Uranus, let's talk about it.

More fun that way.

I like to, yeah, I like to drop that every now and then because NASA likes to get a very close look at Uranus.

So they were observing it and they observed back, you know, this is 300 years ago, that it was moving in a very strange way.

It was moving as if it was being pulled upon by some unknown source of gravitation they knew about gravity they knew what its orbit should be if the only other planets in the solar system were mercury venus earth mars jupiter and saturn and they couldn't account for the motion this is again very simple observations to do at the time even

and that a scientist predicted that actually

no there is another planet beyond the orbit of uranus and it's uh and we now know that as neptune and it was effectively dark matter it was pulling on

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Having a gravitational force just like we see with the stars in the Milky Way galaxy.

Now, we wouldn't say that, you know, Neptune is exotic matter.

It was just not illuminated.

It doesn't give off its own light.

So too, dark matter, we believe, if it's in the form of particles of an unknown composition, it can't be in the form of protons and neutrons.

Otherwise, it would interact with protons and neutrons, and we would see it by its heat and its light that it would give off.

The fact that we don't see it really means it should be called invisible matter, but dark matter kind of stuck, you know, it sounds more mysterious.

And then certainly dark energy is much more, even more mysterious.

We know even less about it, but we have tremendous amount of evidence for both of these terms.

So we know the, we have sort of the situation that Donald Rumsfeld would call known unknowns.

We know what we don't know, but we don't know exactly what that unknown is composed of.

Okay.

So now I want to take us slightly into tinfoil hat range.

Sasquatch out.

You know, Mike, you're competing with like Rogan and Diary of a CEO and

we got to.

I'm competing with the Sasquatch Files, brother.

I'm competing with UAP Chronicles.

Please don't, don't, don't, don't be afraid to branch out.

Yeah, I know.

If we want views, we have have to go conspiracy theories.

We got to go conspiracy.

We got to go saspots.

We got to go UFO, UAP, and all the moon landing stuff.

I'm going to stay inside dark matter, though, because this is where ultimately the question was going, right?

So the two-slit experiment, right?

Where

particles act as if they're being acted upon, but you have to look at, okay, the whole thing.

And you can explain that in better detail.

But...

you know, I was, I was watching kind of a breakdown of that.

Actually, I was watching the Y files.

I don't know, you know, the Y files with AJ Gentile.

I don't know if you've seen these.

Heard of it, but yeah.

Oh my God, dude.

Well, he's blown up lately because he was just on Rogan and then he was on

Sean Ryan's show.

But before that, he's got this amazing YouTube channel.

And you'll appreciate this.

I'm going to go contextual just for a second before I ask you this question because you'll appreciate this.

So what he does, and he, this dude is awesome, right?

So AJ Gentile, Y files, guys, if you're listening to this and you're interested in this shit at all, you will love this.

So what he does is the first

like two-thirds to 75% of the show, he tells the conspiracy theory as if it's it's 100% true.

Like it's written, you know, God came down from the heavens and said there were aliens in, you know, North Montana who, you know, whatever, right?

And then he takes the last 25%.

He basically debunks as much as he can of it.

And he says, you know, here's what's real.

Here's what's not.

Here's what, you know, could be whatever.

It's really cool.

Okay.

So he was doing this thing on the double slit experiment and and uh and he he threw out this idea or you know he was talking about how does that could there are people people who hypothesize that that could show multiple dimensions and maybe matter from another dimension is impacting us.

And so again, so taking this to our dark matter, is there a chance, is there a theory, or is it just way off base that this idea that dark matter, dark energy could possibly be other dimensions impacting our universe, our solar system?

Yeah, no, that's a very plausible scenario.

There are several challenges with it, but it is certainly one that is perceived as a potential explanation.

I should say the most likely explanation that scientists believe comes down to either changing the composition of matter in the universe to include this type of invisible matter, or to include matter that we already know exists.

We already know we have detected dark matter.

It's just a very

incomplete form of it.

They're called neutrinos.

So neutrinos are every bit as real a form of dark matter as protons are ordinary luminous matter, non-dark matter, or visible matter.

And these are mysterious particles that have very, very, very light weights, masses, very low masses, and they travel at very high velocities, close to the speed of light.

But they have exactly those properties.

They only interact with nuclear forces, so they don't interact with electrons or light.

So you can't see them.

But we've detected them for 85 years now or 80 years, known about their existence.

But the problem is they don't make up, they do make up some of that 20% or whatever, 25%

of the dark matter slice of that pie that we talked about.

But the amount that they make up is only about like a quarter of that amount at most.

So they're not sufficient to explain all the dark matter, but they give what's called an existence proof of it.

Like, you know, for example, if we knew that there,

so the fact that there were dinosaurs actually gives some tiny credibility to Lalachmanus Monster.

Okay.

I'm not saying it's high.

Don't take me out.

You know, but UCSD, you know, distinguished professor says Lachinus Monster is plausible.

You know, it's all over the New York.

It's a headline now.

You know that.

Now it is.

Now it's in the New York Post.

Okay, thank you.

We're having the California Post here soon, too.

So don't take it too seriously.

But the fact that there were once dinosaurs and there are still crocodiles,

you could say that that gives some credence.

You know, it's not like 0.00%

probability.

It's very low, but it's not zero.

So the fact that there are neutrinos gives a lot of credibility, though, on the other hand, that there could be an invisible, massive form of matter that's invisible to telescopes, but otherwise is not invisible to gravitational effects.

So

then you would say, well, what are some other plausible explanations?

So there's something called Occam's Razor, which states a very simple fact that Sherlock Holmes would, you know, the simplest

explanation is typically the correct one.

Now, in astrophysics and cosmology and quantum physics, There's no such thing as a simple explanation.

Everything is hard and it's fun and it's challenging and it's a puzzle and a mystery.

mystery and that's why I love it.

But it still is the case that there could be another explanation other than say neutrinos or something like supermassive neutrinos,

self-interacting dark.

It could be that we have to change the laws of gravity.

In other words, it could be that there is no new matter, but gravity is wrong once you get to scales of galaxies.

See, we don't see dark matter effects in our solar system.

As I said, the effect on Uranus was actually the fact of ordinary matter made of protons and neutrons, the planet Neptune.

We don't see it on these scales.

In fact, we don't even see it in the entirety of our local solar neighborhood.

It's only when you get to the scale of our Milky Way galaxy and other galaxies beyond the Milky Way that you can even detect that there is something strange going on with the rate of rotation of galaxies versus the amount of stars that they seem to have in them, stars made of...

protons and neutrons.

So what we have devised is that there could be, on the other hand, an alternative explanation where you'd have to modify the laws of gravity to explain the peculiar velocity effects of stars at the outskirts of massive galaxies like the Milky Way.

So that's another explanation.

Now, you might say, well, that's pretty far-fetched, but that's exactly what happened in 1915 with this guy over here, my friend who is visiting me at all times.

Where is this guy?

Come on.

He's around here somewhere.

I just picked him up today.

Well, I've got Albert Einstein somewhere around here.

Where is he hiding?

Oh, he's buried under my phone and under my new book, Into the Impossible.

So here's Albert Einstein.

So Albert Einstein said the following.

He said, actually, we shouldn't think of gravity as this, you know, kind of force that pulls on things, invisible ropes that are pulling on things.

We should think of it as the effect of mass that causes the actual fabric of space and time to warp like a bowling ball and a trampoline.

And in that way, he proposed that you actually have to change the laws of gravity to account for the peculiar properties of the planet Mercury.

At this time in 1915, Mercury, like Neptune, had this weird behavior.

It was orbiting in this strange way.

And in fact, the same guy, his name is Le Verrier, a French astronomer, who proposed the existence of Neptune, i.e.

dark matter,

to explain the peculiar properties of the planet Uranus.

The same guy proposed, well, I can do the same thing for Mercury.

And he proposed there was a new planet that you couldn't see because it was closer to the sun than Mercury.

And it was called Vulcan.

And so for many years, astronomers couldn't see it because it was so bright next to the sun.

But they postulated, well, this guy's pretty smart.

He must be right.

So he said, look for a planet closer to the sun.

than Mercury, and it was never found.

So instead, so dark matter succeeded with the case of Uranus, and it failed in the case of Mercury.

And what was needed in Mercury's case was to change the laws of physics.

So today, my colleagues work on these problems and I work on them too.

How can you explain it?

Is it a new particle?

Is it new matter like Neptune?

Or is it a new law of gravity like Einstein postulated?

And we're trying to find out the answer to those two questions, which one is right.

Okay, last, last, last science nerd question.

And then we're going to stay in the, in the, we're going to go,

we don't have to go aliens, but I'm very interested in

there's been a lot of, and it could be disinformation, whatever, around this gravitational propulsion system that we're, you know, obviously Rogan did a big thing of it 2017.

They had the Tic Tac thing came out.

There's been a lot of these, you know, quote unquote whistleblowers that somehow still have like, you know, security clearance.

So we have to kind of pass through a lot of filters of, you know, this could or could not be true.

But I'm assuming that.

to the extent that you just described the idea that we would have to change our understandings of gravity in order for this entire concept to be possible, would this potentially be the avenue to understanding that type of technology?

If it were even possible, right?

This idea of being able to bend gravity to move things and not have the g-force impact humans?

I mean,

nothing should be claimed to be impossible,

but what we're talking about in that case is

called manipulation of space-time.

And we do know that there are vast disturbances in space and time that are caused by actual forms of matter and energy that we know about.

And these have been tested to exquisite precision.

The challenge is that gravity is the weakest of all the forces.

So when I talked about dark matter, I didn't tell you that the worst scenario that scientists could find themselves in is if dark matter only interacts gravitationally.

In other words, if it's only

detectable via the fact that if you have enough of it, it will change the orbit of stars, for example.

Then you need a tremendous amount of it.

And there's no detection system that we know about that could actually get enough in your laboratory.

Think about it.

You need something like the mass of the Sun to change, or the mass of Neptune, you know, to change the orbit of another planet.

So to have a detection, you would need something planetary size, which is, and these planets are all six to ten times bigger than the Earth.

And so you're talking about things that are beyond the realm of science fiction.

But let's just say for the sake of example, some hyper-intelligent alien civilization has a bigger planet so they can fit more stuff on it.

Well, then you have this problem that the bigger planet has much higher gravity and it makes it even less likely that they have the capability to get off the Earth's surface.

You know, the SpaceX, you know, starship, it uses like 90% of its energy, its fuel, just to get, just to launch, let alone to traverse the galaxy, which we haven't been able to do.

The farthest object mankind has ever ever sent

is beyond the orbit of Pluto, but it's by light travel time, it's only one light day.

So if you shined a laser at it, it would take

a day to get to that spacecraft called Voyager 1.

And it was launched when I was a baby 50 years ago.

So you talk about like this incomprehensible size of our universe and how paltry a distance we've only been able to explore.

And then you think about, well, could there be aliens that are, are, you know, have all these properties?

I liken it sometimes to almost like a religious, you know, fixation that, yes, Jesus can do anything, you know, or God can do anything.

It's omnipotent, omniscient, et cetera.

But then when you start saying that the aliens can manipulate gravity, it's almost giving them.

godlike powers because other if they don't have the ability to actually warp you know space-time themselves then they have to use the tools that nature or god gave them which is just the same as we have so you'd have to have massive black holes.

You'd have to have, you know, incredibly sized planets.

You'd have to have, you know, the ability to

transcend the speed of light.

So these are all things that are literally supernatural.

So is it possible?

Yes, it can't prove that it's not, you know, that it is impossible.

That doesn't make it likely.

So these people that postulate these things,

they'll say that something is possible, just like I said.

Yes, you could actually have explained, you know, Mercury.

imagine like an alien has the same situation and wanted to trick us and started to play around with the orbit of Mercury.

It is, you know, humanly possible if you had some Death Star-like thing, you could actually make a planet the size of Mercury on the opposite side of the Sun so it's always interacting.

But is that likely?

Or is it likely, more likely that these people are having hallucinations or lying, are being psyoped by the U.S.

government, who's admitted to doing it?

Or, you know, is the U.S.

government only, you know, no other nations really claim that they're doing this that are transparent and accountable to the extent that you think the U.S.

is.

90% of

the sightings, of the claims, come from the United States, and 90% of those come from near-military bases or nuclear weapons or power sites.

So at some level, you have to ask Occam's razor question, you know, which is the simplest explanation and then take it from there.

So the leap from

what we see to what's claimed to be seen to what's known is an enormous chasm.

And the last thing I'll say is that we're often, you know, I'm often accused of being a gatekeeper or being a wet blanket or whatever, but you have to realize that comes with the tampering of

my hopes that I actually want it to be the case, you know, that there's life elsewhere in the solar system or in the universe, or, you know, maybe there are other universes.

You know, I study some wacko stuff too, but the difference is i guard against my desire innately to confirm the hypothesis that i want to be true yeah whereas these other people their first inclination is to go to the most you know kind of outlandish hypothesis and then claim cover-ups conspiracy and gatekeeping yeah i so i want to transition into

i think this is a perfect point because i i love the way that you finished that you know and i said I think before we went live that one of the things I've always been a fan, you know, even before you were ever on the show, I was a fan.

I was a fan from the first time I heard you on James's show because of,

I think there are very few people in your field who are able to

play with the tin foil hat ideas without like admonishing or demeaning the person who's throwing the idea out there, but then, but still, you're still willing to play with it, right?

But then, but you know, you're always back, here's where we actually are in what we have today and what really is working and what would have to be true for this.

And I think that that, you know, I've always appreciated that because, you know, and what I'll do sometimes with your work and guys, just so you know, you know, I'll have links to

everything that Brian does.

I'll have links to all the stuff, the books, highly, I'll go watch one of these crazy shows, right?

Because it's fun.

It's like, it's like watching, you know, it's like watching

a sitcom or something.

And they'll be talking about all this crazy shit.

And then I'll go to your ex and I'll like search your ex to see if you've like commented on that topic to be like, okay, now I kind of know like like what reality is like as of this moment.

You know, again, always, hey, anything's possible, your show into the impossible, right?

So we're, we're, we're seeking truth here.

But I think it's good to have a measured approach because you can, oh my gosh, you can absolutely get lost in this shit.

And there is nothing worse than someone, I believe, like one of the most annoying personalities is someone who does not understand that.

98% of the conspiracy theories are complete nonsense.

Like it's fun to play with them, but if you're actually believing all these things, you're having a hard time.

But you've been able to take this, what these topics that are, I mean, we just talked about some stuff that I'm assuming the majority of our audience may not even heard 90% of what you ever said before, right?

But it's so incredibly interesting.

And you've turned it into not just.

a brand, but a business.

You've been able to commercialize this in a way that is educational, that's inspiring, that brings all different types of thought in.

You've had tit for tats with different, with different scientific leaders back and forth.

You have legit haters.

Like, you know, you're in the game.

So what has that been like coming out of academia?

Obviously, you've been in front of crowds, you've taught.

So it's not like speaking in front of people is something you've never done before, but really coming out into the public with these ideas, sharing them and turning it into a brand and a business.

What has that been like for you?

Yeah, well, I mean, I have to say that my first point of contact with everything you're saying is out of a sense of simple decency and morality and obligations.

I think, you know, once I heard a statement that it was great that we had, you know, the Statue of Liberty and the Bill of Rights in America, but we should have a statue of responsibility and the bill of responsibility.

In other words, we focus so much on what we're entitled to, what we deserve, whether because we're smart or good looking or, you know, or both in both of our cases, right?

But if we had this ability, as if it's given to us, preordained as an entitlement, and I've never felt that way.

I feel like I'm so privileged to be a scientist.

I work at a public university in the state of California, UC San Diego.

I went to public schools my whole life.

And,

you know, so I believe that the public is my boss.

I believe that, you know, you pay your taxes, hopefully everybody out there.

And if you don't, I don't want to know about it right now, but we'll expect a letter from the Internal Revenue Service.

But the fact that you guys pay your taxes and some of that, not much, you know, especially in the state of California.

You know, I'm a public employee.

You know, it's not a huge amount, but we do get paid and we get paid to do what we would do for free.

The dirty little secret of scientists, whenever they whine, I always say, well, why don't you get a real job?

You know,

jokingly, I mean, I do feel like I have a real job.

I've taught, you know, 20 people to get PhDs.

I've taught 2,000, 3,000 undergraduate students.

I've written 800 letters of recommendation to get jobs for my students.

But the bottom line is that we are paid to do something most of us would do for free.

And because of that, it's like if somebody pays you to be an ice cream taster or to play professional baseball or whatever, right?

You have an obligation to give back to the people that pay your salary.

Fans, the organization, or in my case, the taxpayer.

So for me, I see the obligation to my boss.

Imagine you worked at Dairy Queen, right, Ryan?

And you're working at Dairy Queen and your boss comes in and

says, well, what are you up to, Ryan?

And you're like, well, you can't understand what I'm doing here.

You know, boss,

I'm so advanced.

I'm so erudite.

I'm so just like, just such a genius.

And that's the attitude of most scientists.

And I understand it because we want to work on stuff that's incredibly cutting edge, you know, rather than, you know, if you're an English professor, you don't teach the alphabet, right?

You want to teach like great literature.

And so too is science.

Like, I don't want to teach like, you know, one plus one equals two or one times one equals two,

as Terrence Howard and I have been beefing about.

Dynamite drama in there.

Dynamite.

So I'd rather do cutting-edge physics like I'm doing.

But we do have an obligation to explain what we do in the simplest possible terms, but no simpler.

We shouldn't dumb it down.

I hate that term when people say, oh, you're great at dumbing it down.

No, that means that you're dumb.

No, you're not dumb.

You're just an expert in some other field that I'm not an expert in.

So am I dumb?

No.

It's just, I haven't dedicated the time, effort, and skills that you have.

So

my basic point is, I don't, I believe that the university and professors in general kind of have this arrogance, which is, you know, you could say it's partially deserved.

But the best people, the people that I feel blessed to have, you know, as colleagues and as...

guests on my podcast and in this new book are people that see it as an obligation to give back to the public.

And that's what I love to do.

And it's a challenge.

You know, when I ask people to do it,

they'll either say one of two things, like, oh, that's really easy.

Like, I could do what Neil deGrasse Tyson does.

Like, he's not even a real scientist.

No, you couldn't.

No, you couldn't.

I've been on his podcast twice.

He's been on mine two or three times.

There's no way even I could do what he does.

Now, I do other things that he doesn't do, but that, and that's okay.

Or my colleagues will say that a real scientist doesn't do that.

A real scientist doesn't dumb things down or popularize it and write books and do podcasts and go on road.

But that's also nonsense because a real scientist has to be able to give back to the public who pay his or her salary, or else, guess what?

You're not going to to have a salary anymore and you're going to be unemployed doing what you love doing but not getting compensated for it what has been the general feedback that you've gotten from your colleagues as you've gone into this space um

because i have to imagine you know when you when you step out into the public eye you're under even more scrutiny than you would be if you're just i don't want to say just because i know if you're if you're trying to publish peer-reviewed articles et cetera obviously there's a lot of scrutiny that goes in there too but like as you expand these thoughts into the world of X and Facebook and Instagram, and now every armchair, you know, astro physicist who, you know,

watched one YouTube video and now understands what dark matter is, right?

Has an opinion on your take.

Like, like, how do you navigate that?

Like, how do you stay grounded in the work that you're doing when someone is calling something out or positioning an argument against you in which you just intrinsically know is either false or not based in real fact or they can't back it up.

Like, how do you stay committed to that mission despite that?

Well, first of all, I try to assume that everybody, you know, is a human being, not just some avatar with a made-up name.

But I only have that kind of blissful naivete until they give me a reason not to respect them and believe what they're saying and believe that they're a good faith actor.

Unfortunately, that happens way more times than I get, you know, positive commentary, you know, that we can engage.

Oops, hold on one second.

That we can engage and be respectful

and treat each other as colleagues.

So, when that happens, I'll continue indefinitely.

However, if you disrespect me, just like if you disrespect me in my face, like, you know, I can take care of myself.

You would never say that to me in my face, you know, be insulting like that, or we will have a problem.

And I'm, you know, I'm not a traditional academic in that sense.

Like, I don't back down from those things.

I train and I do all sorts of things.

But in my case, I'll treat you with the respect that you don't deserve at first, you know, because you might just be this keyboard warrior out there,

but only up until you kind of, you know, abuse that trust.

And so.

A lot of times, you know, I regret it because I am, you know, relatively friendly.

On the other hand, sometimes I've come to change my mind about certain topics that I've been very entrenched in.

I'll give you a hint.

I'll give you an example.

Like, recently, there have been cutbacks due to the Trump administration

sort of segregating grants that were earmarked to universities like Harvard, Columbia, UCLA, and others that it permitted the existence of these

truly anti-Semitic protests and encampments,

all in the name of Palestinian kind of

representation or grievances and boycotts.

And some of them are very violent.

We had a violent one here at UC San Diego that only lasted for four or five days.

And Harvard and Columbia had months or, you know, UCLA had five week long encampment, I believe it was.

And one of my colleagues, a math professor at UCLA, wrote this article and posted online.

He's one of the smartest human, he might be the smartest person on earth, you know, present company excluded, Terry Tao, won the Fields Medal, which is like the Nobel Prize of Math, even though it's actually harder to win in some ways.

But

he wrote this article that Trump, I'm an an award-winning mathematician, and Trump canceled my funding.

And so, you know, I went back and forth.

I was like, well, he didn't mention the fact that, you know, Jews were not allowed to go in certain parts of his campus.

I mean, just imagine like being at, you know, Rutgers or wherever, Vassar, you know, where you didn't go.

And you can't go there, Ryan, because they just don't like you.

They don't like white people, let's say.

I mean, this has happened literally.

Or they don't like Jews or they don't like blacks, I mean, or gays or trans.

They would be booted off campus in a millisecond if it was any other group.

And I felt like he's not paying attention.

He didn't even mention the fact that the UCLA grant was not restricted by Trump punitively because they don't like this mathematician.

They did it because UCLA permitted and encouraged, in some sense, this encampment to go on for weeks.

And it was very dangerous, hostile,

and unpleasant, and had no place in academia.

I actually testified in Congress last summer about my experiences here.

And it was a violation of my civil rights and other people's civil rights.

But anyway,

so

when I had this, you know, I had a debate with some people online, like, well, are they really canceling his funding?

Like, does he deserve it?

You know, how does this, you know, because he was working at a place that was discriminatory and hostile.

So I actually did change my mind in some sense that, like,

could it be done differently?

Could it be done in a more, you know, and I'm like very supportive of what Trump has done.

you know, for the campus climate and culture and standing up against anti-Semitism and any kind of discrimination.

So So I was very supportive of that, but it caused me to kind of reevaluate, you know, do I really have a true commitment to it?

And also help educate him.

I met with him on campus, on his campus last month, last week rather, and we had a great discussion.

I don't think he was aware of how his Jewish colleagues felt.

So it was a positive thing.

And so this is the kind of thing that can only happen thanks to the internet.

But because the internet has every, you know, every vice vector and valor known to humanity, sometimes

it's not worth it.

And sometimes I regret it.

And I'm trying to minimize the amount of regret time I spend on all these platforms.

And in general, I'm trying to reduce how much I spend rather than increase it.

But it is addictive, as you know, and it is something that has to be constantly monitored.

Yeah.

So I have a couple thoughts there.

I'm going to go backwards.

My first thought is...

I'm constantly torn on screen time because I think there are times when like, so your feed, your social media feed is a direct reflection on what you give your attention to.

So, one of the first things I do with anyone that I'm coaching in whatever capacity it is, whether a sales professional or a leader, is I literally have them, if it's a Zoom call, open up their Instagram and scroll their Instagram feed for me in the video.

And I'm, and we get to see firsthand what you give your attention to, right?

Now,

because, you know, I get.

How to coach baseball because my kid plays baseball and I into all kinds of baseball stuff.

I get Buffalo Bills stuff and I get leadership and motivational shit.

And crazy stuff.

Grinder, ads for Grinder.

Ads for Grinder.

Yep.

Grinder and Tinder and all the inders that, you know, come with being a single.

Well, I guess I'm, I guess if, if, if, I'm technically not single today.

So sorry, ladies.

Um, wow.

Oh, wait, wait.

New.

It's new.

It's a new thing.

But as of, you know, right now we're, we're, you know, we're, we're, we're, I can't say that I'm single today.

But so those ads are getting wasted on me, Instagram.

So I know you're listening, so you can stop showing them um

but my point is like if i'm if i take five minutes and i sit down and i get a new drill to do with my kids at baseball practice i get two cool motivational things getting hyped up and feeling good and i get a new conspiracy theory on aliens that like to harvest eyelashes in north jersey

Is that really time wasted?

I don't know, right?

I mean, again, if I do that for two hours, maybe.

but if I come out of it feeling positive with a new drill and some cool small talk conversation around aliens and stuff, you know, I think that's time well spent.

So I think we have to be very careful with that because I think there's a balance.

And I don't like when people are just, and I know, I don't think this is what you're saying, but I hear this advice a lot, just less.

I don't think just less.

It's more like what you're actually focusing on.

Okay, but I want to go into the other issue for a second, not the details.

I completely agree with your opinion, 100%.

And

taking out, we need to remove in this particular conversation your feelings on what is physically happening in Israel and Gaza today with what you were discussing, which is what was in reality happening on our college campuses, et cetera, and taking that stand.

Okay.

So you have this public platform.

You have a voice now where people listen to what you're saying and look to you, myself included, for

how does he feel about this particular topic?

You know, it may not always be this one, but a topic, if I hear you talk about it, I trust that you are,

I trust that you have, you've earned the right in my mind that when you say something, I believe you've thought about it, right?

Okay, so I want to talk about the changing your mind piece because

this is something that I feel like is one of the most

missed skills of our

any thought leaders in general as a very broad stroke term, right?

It's this, once I say a thing, I am like locked into this as my identity and I cannot change it.

And I see this in the archaeology community right now, right?

Like if you follow anything that's going on, like Graham Hancock is like kicked the fucking hornet's nest, you know, and now you have these people.

And again, this is a trite example, but you have these entrenched sides who refuse to even acknowledge that there could possibly be any other option than the option that's that we've been taught.

And you honestly, when you take in the data when you actually do the research which this ancient civilization is actually probably what i'm the most interested in in terms of like potential tinfoil hatchet but like i'm like you can't deny that we don't know everything right you just you can't you're seeing things everything's getting older okay so but these people many of them

refuse to change their stance or even acknowledge that there could be another option so i'm interested in How you approach changing your mind, how when you are sharing with your audience, hey, I had this take for a while.

I have now done X amount of research, come across X resources, talked to whoever, and I now, I'm now considering that this actual, this, I could have been wrong on this and this could be, how do you approach that in a way that

feels like you can get that message across and convey it and have people trust and respect that versus what I think happens sometimes is you just get pounced on for, oh, you're a flip-flopper, or oh, why didn't you know that from the beginning?

Or, you know, because I think that's what everyone's worried about is they're so worried about losing that credibility if they change their mind.

So, so being that you're willing to do that, I'm very interested in how you do that and maybe when you've seen that be successful for you, and maybe some of the things that you would sidestep if you were telling someone else how to do it.

Yeah, so there's a lot there.

I would say the

most kind of archetypal or stereotypical in a good way reactions of a scientist is surprise.

It's not Eureka, you know, I found what I wanted to find.

It's like, wow, that's weird.

Like, that wasn't supposed to be there.

Scientists are very good at detecting flaws.

I have a saying that flaws lead to new laws.

Like the fact that the orbit of Uranus did not match what was predicted by the laws of Newtonian gravity led to the discovery of a whole new planet.

So it was a flaw in our understanding or in the data that led to a new law.

Similarly, the flaws in Mercury's orbit led to the revolution of general relativity.

So I'd like to look for a few things.

I'd like to look for what's called epistemic humility.

Like, am I saying I know the answers?

I've interviewed, you know, as I said, 22 Nobel Prizes, field medalists, you know, just the top people.

And I've interviewed, and only a couple of them are really arrogant.

We'll describe why that is later and why that's necessary at some level, but can be dangerous in too large an amount.

But then I've interviewed other people that aren't, you know, that are just normal scientists or thought leaders or whatever.

And guess what?

Some of them are, you know, are arrogant, you know, you know whats.

And some of them are, you know, very humble.

But the people I resonate most with are the people that are humble.

If you have somebody who's like just got one message and never changes and cannot be ever tolerate even dissent and tries to shut it down,

then I don't have so much respect for you.

Whereas if you're willing ironically to say I'm wrong or I know I could be wrong or admit the possibility about about something, especially when it's not even in your field of expertise, then I have more respect for you, even though, you know, naively a kid might, like a child might say, well, why do you respect someone who admits they don't know something?

That's a childlike way of looking at wisdom, right?

So I'll give you an example.

Sam Harris.

So I had Sam Harris on.

And by the way, Ryan, you're, you know, this incredibly accomplished podcaster.

When you're on a podcast, forget about me, I'm not, I'm not looking for compliments or anything.

But when you're on a podcast live, like we're talking live right now, it's actually happening.

How do you know if you're doing a good job or a bad job?

Do you have any cues?

I'm curious as a podcaster myself.

I have some cues, but how do you know that you're doing a good job?

It's a good podcast, or if you're just kind of, or if you or the guest is not bringing the heat.

So I don't have a...

My best, I watch your energy.

So I'm watching your body language at all times.

So the audience knows.

And if you see, if you're watching in the YouTube video, I don't look directly into the camera.

And the reason I don't look directly into the camera is I'm not the one that I want you to focus on.

i want the audience to focus on you the guest and so what i do is i look at you and your body language the entire time and i can tell based on the way your shoulders move your facial expressions your head are you energized are you engaged are you are you thinking through are you excited for the next fucking question I'm gonna ask or are you like just all right just let's get through this like here's my talking points here's my book yeah here's what it is blah blah blah or I've been asked this question 10,000 times I really don't want to ask it again you know so so and, and I've tried to set my show up in a way to disrupt that.

Like, I don't have you do the 20 cent tour on your history to start the show.

Because my thought is if someone really wants to know, I'm bringing you on because I believe that you're an expert.

And if you listen to my show, hopefully you trust me that this guy or gal, whoever has value to you as an audience member, and that's why they're here.

I don't need.

to have you waste the first 10 minutes of the show telling me everything you did in your past.

That's how I try to get people off and get them going.

But so that's what I do.

I purposefully don't look into the camera.

I watch you, your body language, and then I adjust my tone, my cadence, and what I do

to how I see you responding.

I also am a terrible question answer, asker, as you can tell, because I have these huge diatribes in between questions, in which everyone who listens to the show, whether positively or negatively, gives me shit about.

So that's just the way it is.

Well, that's because you like me are probably micro-dosing autism at some level or ADD.

Well, let me give you, let me give you my, my real-time feedback because I think it's good.

A, well, first of all, I like your tips and I won't use the one about not looking simply because I spend a lot of money on a teleprompter that allows me to see from Elgato, not sponsored, but I can see you and I can also see, you know, like

the chat is there.

It's really good for Zoom calls, coaching calls.

So I would recommend you get these.

200 bucks on Amazon.

They're great.

They're great to have.

Elgato Prompter Pro.

And you just plug it in.

I've got a camp, my camera is a nice camera behind there, so I can look at you.

I could read stuff like right now, you know, I put some notes, like, I want to talk about the acronym, focus.

What does that say?

So I got that there.

So I can look at you.

And people, you know, humans are mammals, and mammals, you know, are both predators and prey in the past, right?

So we're kind of always looking at our eyes.

Our eyes are unique in that we have, you know, amongst most species, don't have the white part that we have, but mammals do.

So the white part is really strong cue that where your attention is devoted.

So humans don't trust people as much when they're not looking at each other.

Another kind of

instantiation of that is the joke that how do you know a scientist is

it's Kelly Clarkson here to talk all things Wayfair, the best place to buy furniture, decor, and anything else you can think of to create a home you absolutely love.

I know when I shop with Wayfair, I find options for every style, whether I'm filling boho or farmhouse, modern, traditional, French country.

I can find exactly what I need for my home and more.

no matter your space style or budget shopwayfair calm to make your home way more you Wayfair every style every home is outgoing he looks at your shoes when he talks to you right okay so so like attention but the the way that I do it and is when I am talking to a guest let's say I'm talking to a big shot like Sam Harris so setting up a Sam Harris involved like two producers his assistant whatever and they said well he's got one hour okay so he's got one hour on this day and so we did the podcast.

And then two hours go by, three hours go by.

At that point, I know he's deeply engaged.

And it's going to be, it's a good interview for him because nobody would say, like, if I have an out, I said, Ryan, I got to go in 32 minutes.

And then 32 minutes comes up.

And I'm like, well, I actually didn't have to go.

I'm actually saying I'm a liar, right?

I'm admitting that I'm not, I wasn't honest about, which is ironic for Sam because he has a book about lying, how you should never do it.

And but he has many, many flaws, as we can get into some other time.

But but, uh, so we had this great conversation, and we're talking.

And it goes, the other way is that, like, when you hear somebody say, like, oh, I've never thought of that before.

And they're, you know, or that's a really good question.

And they're actually kind of stumped a little bit.

Like, you know, I've never been asked, you know, about like, you know, the business side of my podcast.

Like, that's just not something that comes up mostly because I'm an astrophysicist, cosmologist, author, you know, and so forth.

So I'm not asked about my YouTube empire.

You know, I'm not like that, that level of greatness.

But those are cues that I use to kind of of lean into the fact that I'm doing a good job in real time.

And it's obvious sometimes when people aren't really good, but sometimes it's hard to tell.

Like if I'm looking down, I might just be just like you, Ryan, or I might be really introverted or body dysmorphic or something like that.

Like I might just not be.

So that's why I would caution you against the like not looking or like just judging the body language rather than like what other real-time feedback.

Because we all think we're great, you know, kind of raconteurs and

question askers, et cetera.

So anyway, those are my humble tips.

No, no, I think that's great.

And actually, I will tell you,

I am in the process.

I'm going to look into this.

I'm in the process of getting the setup so I can look through.

I don't have it.

That's why I do the don't look at them thing today.

Cause what I found is if like I use the camera right above the screen, it like looks weird.

So I was like, so I'm in, I am actually what a version of what you described, I'm in the process of getting because I agree with that.

But I think I love your point about listening to the feedback and

that idea of like,

I'm always trying to find, it's one of the reasons I don't do a ton of prep.

I do enough prep to understand what the person is trying to go.

But basically, you know, and how I describe it to people is like, I'm starting here and I want to end here.

And what happens in here?

I have no friggin' clue what happens in the middle.

And the reason is because what if, like, if I'm pre-planned, right?

And I'm just question, question, question, question.

Okay.

But But what if I ask you a question and man, I just see the fire in your eye.

You're like, that, for whatever reason, that topic's got you jacked up today.

You just read a report or

one of your students just came up and asked you this question that kind of stumped you a little.

Now you're pissed.

You're trying to figure it out.

You're, you know, you're talking to me, but at the, you know, some portion of your brain is, and that's what you really want to talk about.

Well, shit, I want to hear about that.

I don't, you know, I don't care what we came here to talk about.

I want to know what you're fired up about.

So, you know, I'm always trying to figure out like, what is this particular person fired up about today?

What are they interested in?

And one of the reasons I wanted to know about the, and I, I've also done this enough times.

Like I'm at like a thousand interviews.

Wow.

Not on this particular podcast.

That's a story for another day.

I have a former podcast story that would make you sick.

Oh man.

I was I was 11th in the world at one point in podcast in 2014.

I have a screenshot.

Ed Milet's two ahead of me.

Gary Vee's two behind me.

And I'm number 11 in the entire world.

Not just U.S.

I'm doing, the show is doing very well in the U.S.

Thank you for everyone that listens.

I love you so much.

Thank you.

Come back, subscribe, tell your friends, subscribe to Brian's show.

But at this point in 2014, 53,000 downloads a month was number 11 in the world.

And then I got a job that paid me more than I had ever made in my life, more than four times what my parents had ever made in a single year combined.

And I took that job.

And three months in, they told me I had to shut the podcast down.

And I did like an idiot but my point in saying all that is

where I wanted to go was I wanted to know the nerdy shit but then I wanted to transition in your business because I was interested but ultimately I wanted to get to your book and to me the easiest transition from the nerdy physics shit to the book was through Your business of coming out because where I really wanted to go with questions about the book, my leading question to your current book was,

you wrote, you know, losing the Nobel Prize, right?

All about losing Nobel Prize.

I can't imagine that there has been another human who's lost the Nobel Prize who then decided, I'm going to go tell the world that I lost the Nobel.

I mean, I just think, one, it speaks to your character.

Two, I think it, to me, it's just incredibly interesting that you would take that on, right?

There's a lot of ways that you could go with that.

And you decided to say, hey, like, here's what we did amazing.

Here's what we would have done.

Here's where I think maybe we could have gotten more.

Like, it's awesome.

I mean, it's phenomenal.

And now you've turned that into

a brand inside of your larger brand.

Right.

And now we're talking about focus.

And this idea that just has encaptured me about your book and where I want to finish our time together today is in particular the section around the physic, like this physics of focus.

Like, cause for me, being, you know, I've been diagnosed ADHD.

I got another diagnosis that was hyperactive bipolar.

Basically, the doctor said, there are portions of your brain spinning at 10,000 rotations a second, and there are portions of your brain spinning at 10 rotations a second.

And, you know, take some Adderall and you'll feel better.

Right.

So, like, you know, was essentially what they said.

I have toyed with the Adderall.

I don't particularly like it.

I've had to find other ways to, because I think you lose your creativity as much as, just so you know, guys, it works really, really well.

Especially if you snort it.

No, I don't recommend that.

But,

but,

but I, I have found I've lost, I, when I, when I tried to use that as a tool, I lost my creativity, which I didn't like.

So

I would love for you to dive in.

Why focus?

Like, why focus as a topic in general?

What is it about that?

And let's, like, what are the physics of focus?

Like, how does this,

how do we, because to me, and this is the last contextual thing I'll say, but my brain is like firing on all cylinders right now.

I have this saying that I tell people all the time.

What you focus on is who you become.

It's a derivative, I'm sure, of way smarter people who have said very similar things.

But

I firmly believe that.

I believe that focus is the success or the key to all success that we want in everything in our relationships and how we parent and how we interact with friends and the work we do, et cetera, et cetera.

Focus.

The ability to turn it on when necessary and to extend it as far as you can.

So

I hadn't even considered that there could be physics of focus.

So I don't know if we're talking actual particles in some regard, but like dive into this for me because

i i just this is a good question this is a question i have not been asked yeah um even by eminent you know podcasters like james altucher yesterday uh so also by the way i i cut out of getting my tattoo done to come over to do this so i went to my i i saw you look at my thing so guys if you're not on the youtube channel i have cellophane on my arm so from 8 30 to noon i was getting a tattoo done then i came over to do the podcast and i'm gonna drive back over and get the second half of the tattoo done after the show and it says no regurts that's amazing Ryan.

Thank you.

I've been, you know, I've had people like, you know, hang up on other people.

I've had Nobel Prize winners, you know, cancel other appointments to be on a podcast with me.

I've never had someone interrupt a tattoo to do a podcast.

Thank you, my brother.

Okay, so listen, focus to me is an acronym that stands for the following.

Stands for, it's like MAGA.

Okay.

Why is MAGA so resonant?

Why does it mean so much, good and bad, right?

I mean, there's no such thing as bad public, you know, so I don't know your audience.

Are they right?

Are they left?

I don't really care.

The point is, MAGA is a brilliant marketing gimmick, right?

It stands for make America great again.

So it's combining action word, verb, make, do something.

Don't just be idle.

America.

America is a concept.

It's a place.

It stirs emotions of patriotism.

Great.

Again, throwback.

And then looking forward again, it's going to happen again.

It's inevitable.

So I follow that kind of logic, at least, you know, in terms of marketing.

Focus to me is an acronym.

Follow one course until successful.

Okay, so follow.

To be a follower, you need to have also be a leader, right?

You go to Jocko Willings, you know, page, he's like leader and follower.

Okay, so follow, you need to have some perspective that you are not the only, you know, thing on God's green earth.

You are, you are one of many.

You're going to take a path, one path.

So ADHD people, and I know many of them in science, they're some of the most successful people I know in science on the internet.

One, their problem is shiny object syndrome.

They follow many courses.

Some of them are very successful.

I have no doubt you could have gotten the tattoo right now.

You could have your artist there inking you up and you could be, you know, probably, it might give you some weird, you know, I don't know, kind of bizarre, fetishistic thrill, right?

Like you're getting it, you're doing your two favorite things, well, two of your favorite things, right?

You're talking to me and you're getting a tat, okay?

One, one, not many, not multitask.

I know you can multitask, but we all think we're better at multitasking than we actually is.

All the research proves that.

I quote it in the book.

Until, oh sorry, course.

Course is a pathway.

It's a trajectory.

If you set out to go to the moon and you didn't have any idea which way you're going to go, people say, oh, shoot for the moon.

If even if you miss, you'll be among the stars.

That's horrible advice.

The stars are vast, cold, deadly, and rapaciously violent.

You don't want to be in the stars.

You'll be dead in just a few minutes if you go out into internet.

course that gets you to the moon so you can be nice and safe there.

So you need a course.

A course is a set of one zero-dimensional points that lead along a pathway.

Like you said before, you like to look at all explore different things.

That's great, but you have to choose at least one thing.

We're not going to talk about like how I am as a dad or you know what my wife thinks about you know the

anniversary card I got her.

You know so you're going to focus on one course until inevitable it's going to happen, Ryan.

You're going to achieve success.

Success is the goal, but you have to be ruthlessly,

you know, voraciously protective of your one

global research, which is your time and your attention.

The laureates that I talk about, so what is the Nobel Prize?

It's like the highest level of accolade in the world.

These are people that are way beyond intelligent.

They kind of enter a new atmosphere, new, new realm.

Some of them are like Olympic athletes, literally.

Some of them are brilliant in many other fields, whether it's from the Nobel Peace Prize people that I interviewed, Nobel Prize in Economics to the Physics Prize and Chemistry.

These people have this incredible depth.

They don't have, they have breath maybe sometimes, but they succeeded despite their breath because of their depth.

They followed in almost every case an intentional choice to cut out distractions and go deep on one thing.

And I like the, you know, a magnifying glass.

We both did it.

Don't deny that you did it.

You took a magnifying glass out there in Jersey, you shined it on some ants, okay, and you wanted to see what happened.

Let's say they didn't die, okay?

They lived.

The ants lived.

Or an army man.

Did you ever do that with with your army men?

I did that with my

I did it with all kinds of shit.

Okay, well, let's not get into like the federal crimes you committed as a kid.

But the ADD audio, ADHD, look, there are people in here I undoubtedly know are on the spectrum.

They're very deep on it in some cases, but they all had these tools.

And the tools are the superstructure, what James Clear would call the habits, the atomic habits.

Literally, they're atomic scientists.

They're building up from small things because you're going to fall to the level of your habits, basically.

You're going to relax to that.

So, what do they do?

They do the following: they do time boxing.

Nir Ayal wrote one of the blurbs in addition to Ali Abdal and Cal Newport and Sahil Bloom.

So, I got all these blurbs from the productivity expert.

This is a productivity book, whether you're a scientist or whether you're a lawyer or whether you're a car salesman.

I don't care what you are, because these tools will be useful, especially to people with ADHD, because they give you a framework that the greatest minds in human history-the the people that far exceed the Oscars or the Olympics or even the World Series or whatever, these people have done almost the impossible.

And they lean into their schedules, their boxing of their time, and even things

that you wouldn't think would allow you to concentrate your attention.

And that's like working with other people.

Some people that takes energy and drains them.

Other people, extroverted, they like it.

But you need to have some amount of it, some amount of collaborative nature, because no one gets a Nobel Prize alone.

No one person wins the World Series.

Yes, you can win Olympics or whatever, but it's an Oscar or whatever, but those aren't really the kind of legacy for the ages.

Like, I don't know, you know, half the people that have won a single gold medal in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta.

I don't know.

I can't remember a single one.

But I know every single Nobel Prize winner in this field.

Don't take, don't chase the shiny objects.

You can't start a fire.

You can't melt the army man or that fire ant that's coming after you you can't do it unless you use the magnifying glass pointed in exactly the right way to choose your lane and this is something james altituder disagreed with me about but he kind of you know we went back and forth i think he convinced me a little bit that sometimes you you do want to go into a different lane but focus on what you're trying to do because you don't have enough time to even master your own discipline let alone be a master of every single discipline so the last thing is about you know the book is is a is a guidebook to reclaim your attention so that you can do the greatest good for people around you, your family, and accumulate the influence and the power and the responsibility that you have and that you're capable of.

Yeah, I love that.

I want to hit you with one thought as we close here, our time together.

You know, I've been...

a big advocate for people with ADHD and neurodiversity in general ever since I got diagnosed because for so long it was used against me, right?

You're too much, you move too fast, you make decisions too quick, okay.

And I, and I've always said, hey, this, this harnessed properly, and I love the focus framework, harnessed properly is a superpower, absolutely.

And people said, well, describe that to me.

And I, and I didn't always have a great way to describe it.

I would say things like, you know, because one of the things about people, particularly with, with, uh, with hyperactivity as a neurodiversity, um, they don't see chaos.

Chaos doesn't bother them.

Like when the world is the most chaotic, they oftentimes can be the most common composed it's a very weird thing and you don't and you don't even you often don't understand it and i didn't have a good way of describing it until i saw the movie doon 2 because i i had forgotten this part in the book but um paul atreides takes the poison right and he's sitting there and is he's he has this vision and he's speaking to his mother and he says uh He says, our enemies are all around us, and there's infinite paths where we fail, but there's one path that I can see that takes us to the promised land and

to me

those who harness the ability to focus they see and follow the one path because when you when you have the million paths right when the when you are going in all these different directions you don't know which one ends up in in failure or in destruction.

But when you can stay focused and you can stay consistent and believe in the view and

your until part, right?

The commitment to until, you can see that path through destruction to the other side.

And I said, that's what it's, that's the good version.

The bad version is I'm thinking about aliens and superpowers and dark matter and math and you know what question I'm going to add next and what I want to have for lunch.

And, you know, I mean, like, that's the other side of it.

But, you know, I was like, that, but the ability to turn that on.

And I think this is the other thing that I say to people, and this is why I'm so excited about your book and why I want to get it in the hands of as many of my audience members as I possibly can.

Guys, I'll have links.

Scroll down, whether you're listening on YouTube or watching on YouTube, listening, wherever you are, just scroll down.

I have links to all of Brian's stuff.

Is that

if you can turn this power on, regardless of your neurodiversity or not,

it is an unlock to basically anything that you want in your life.

That's right.

Doesn't mean you can have everything, but anything if you can, if you can unlock this.

And you need, and this is what I tell people, you can't do this by accident.

It takes an intentional framework, whether it's the focus framework that you're teaching or some other framework that someone has, whatever it is, right?

You need that structure or you will not be able to get there.

That's right.

All these people, you know, we have a tendency to hero worship as human beings.

It's a natural kind of, you know, tribal thing that probably goes back to, you know, caveman origins.

And so the thing to think about, as I always say to, I talked to a group of high school kids a week or two ago, and I was like, you know, people worship different things in different fields, right?

I mean, a podcaster might worship, you know, Joe Rogan or Ryan Hanley.

You know, they might worship, you know, a sports hero, you know, and Manny Machado here in San Diego.

But

the fact is that these people are ordinary people at heart.

No one's a, you know, a Nobel Prize winning, you know, World Series champion and also, has a Pinterest, thriving Pinterest and

whatever, Etsy influencer status.

Okay, you have to choose.

And it's inevitable you're going to choose, but you should choose.

It shouldn't be the universe choosing for you or worse, randomly, just like how you got into things.

So the point is, in science, it's unlike...

you know, kind of a business, right?

If Apple, you know, doesn't sell you an iPhone,

then you're probably going to get one from, you know, Samsung or, you know, get an Android phone, right?

It's a zero, it's called a zero-sum game.

But science is what's called an infinite game.

So there is no winning.

I can't win science, you know, even if you win the Nobel Prize.

Like nobody cares on, you know, Jupiter if there are people there, like you won the Nobel Prize because you didn't win it.

You just specialize in one field and it's an incredible competition.

But

you know, as many of these people say, you know, they basically are

Relay racers in this infinite chain, this race that goes back to prehistoric times when the first person came out of a cave and said, what are those dots in the night?

What are those things up there?

Where do they come from?

Where do I come from?

So you're in this race, in this relay race, and you get the baton for a very short amount of time, you know, from after college and graduate school in my case, up until retirement in a decade or so for me.

So you run your leg, but your job is to pass it on.

So be a hero to other people.

be in awe of other people that came before you, but realize you're one part in this infinite race against an unbeatable.

And Mother Nature's undefeated.

We're never going to know everything.

So that can be applied in any field as long as you don't go out of your lane and try to do everything to all people at all times.

But, you know, in the book,

I also talk about you can't be immune to your own needs.

And I give like tips and, you know, drinking alcohol and coffee and sleep and all these practical things you never hear about when you're a student.

You never learn about it.

Like when you went to college and you saw your professor, you don't know.

You don't have any idea.

idea what do they do?

Like, what's their job?

Who pays them?

Like, how do they, what do they do in their off time?

Like, but I want to demystify for anyone who is in college or going to college and is interested in science.

You know, we're at the threshold of this incredible new era of discoveries and things like AI and quantum computing and all the rest.

We're at this amazing time.

Take advantage of it, but you know, do what your best to concentrate on what you uniquely can bring to the table.

Dude, love you.

Huge fan.

Appreciate the hell out of you and your time i know you're a busy guy means a lot to me uh guys like i said i'll have links to everything brian's doing including the book i highly recommend the book um and go down the chain right so hit the amazon you know most likely it'll be like people that bought this one also bought volume one also bought you know buy them all get all the go down the chain yeah yeah go right down you need to get one of those box sets like they have for game of thrones you know what i mean where you get all the keating books in one one or this other ryan uh ryan holiday the other ryan h that I know.

Uh, well, man, hey, I wish you nothing but the best, and I look forward to the next time we get to chat.

This is great.

Thanks, brother.

Congrats on your success, too, my friend.

Appreciate you.

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