0:00

one is being told that

0:03

one's doing is practicing a

0:05

science of seeing things as they really

0:07

are. all along the way one is actually

0:09

being given a kind of conceptual framework and

0:11

script for how to understand and

0:13

relate to the mind. that involves a

0:15

kind of, you might say, baby version

0:18

or minimal version of a Buddhist psychology.

0:20

That is a skill. That is a practice.

0:24

But it's not a kind

0:26

of disinterested examination

0:28

of how things are neutrally

0:32

So in saying that it's not a science,

0:34

I don't mean to say that it's anti science

0:36

or opposed to science. I mean to say

0:38

it's just different. and that casting

0:40

it in the rhetoric of science really

0:43

falsifies what it is.

0:49

welcome to brain science, the podcast that

0:51

explores how neuroscience is unraveling

0:53

the mystery of how our brain

0:55

makes us human. I'm your host, Dr.

0:58

Ginger Campbell, and this is episode two hundred

1:00

and two. The title

1:02

of this episode is Is

1:05

meditation a brain science?

1:07

And my guest is

1:09

philosopher Evan Thompson. Obviously,

1:12

The excerpt you just heard is a spoiler

1:15

Ginger Thompson clearly answers no

1:17

to this question. This

1:20

is doctor Thompson third appearance on

1:22

Neuroscience, and he is

1:23

uniquely positioned to answer

1:25

this challenging question.

1:27

Before we jump into the interview,

1:29

I just want to remind

1:30

you of a few things. First,

1:33

you can get complete show notes and episode

1:35

transcripts on our website at

1:37

brain science podcast dot com,

1:39

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Because brain science is independently

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donations. I'll be

2:24

back after the interview with a

2:26

summary of the key ideas and

2:28

a few brief announcements.

2:34

Thompson, welcome back to brain science.

2:37

Thank you. I'm glad to be back. I

2:39

was looking back at our old episodes

2:42

and realized that we first talked in

2:44

two thousand and twelve, which is

2:46

obviously ten years ago, and

2:48

we haven't really talked since around

2:50

two thousand fifteen when we talked about your

2:52

other book that I can't remember

2:54

the name of off the top of my head. But anyhow,

2:57

a few months ago when

2:59

I was preparing to release

3:01

your

3:02

original interview from

3:04

ten years ago, That's when I discovered

3:07

that she'd written this book in twenty twenty

3:09

that I had totally missed called why

3:11

I am not a Buddhist. And when

3:13

I read it, it really resonated

3:16

with me because when I first started

3:18

exploring neuroscience back in two thousand

3:20

three, I called myself

3:22

a Buddhist, but the more

3:24

I learned about how the brain really works,

3:27

the more it seemed

3:28

incompatible with

3:30

basic Buddhist ideas.

3:33

But the main reason I invited

3:35

you back is so that we can critically

3:38

examine

3:39

the claim that meditation is

3:43

a mind science. Now,

3:47

some of my listeners are gonna be thinking of

3:49

you as a proponent of embodied especially

3:51

since I just replayed that early interview.

3:54

So perhaps you could start out with

3:57

like you did in this new book

3:59

explaining

3:59

your unique background

4:02

and how it gives you a really

4:05

unusual perspective on this question.

4:08

I guess it depends how far back we go, but

4:10

I was raised as a teenager in

4:13

an alternative educational and

4:16

spiritual institute that was also

4:18

a commune So this is in the nineteen

4:20

seventies that was founded by my parents. It

4:22

was called the Lindisfarne Meditation. And

4:26

my dad had been a university professor

4:29

he quit the university as a tenured full professor

4:31

because he thought that the

4:33

universities really weren't advancing the

4:35

kind of knowledge that he

4:37

thought was needed to deal with

4:39

the times in which we were living. So this is

4:41

the early nineteen seventies and in a way a

4:43

precursor to all of the things we're dealing with now,

4:45

especially the climate crisis. So he thought that

4:47

there needed to be other modes of learning and other

4:49

modes of discussion. So he created this alternative

4:51

institute and he brought together scientists and

4:54

spiritual teachers, religious teachers,

4:56

philosophers, artists, poets, activists.

4:58

It was a kind of a salon in a way

5:01

of the counterculture in the nineteen seventies.

5:03

And it was in that context that I was

5:05

first exposed to Buddhism

5:08

and to meditation. Actually,

5:10

my father taught me meditation when I

5:12

was very young. He had been raised afflic

5:14

but left the church and then discovered yoga

5:17

and Hinduism on his own in the nineteen

5:19

fifties in LA and became a practitioner of

5:21

yoga meditation and taught me that when I was a little

5:23

kid. And so that was my first

5:25

real taste Meditation. But then growing up

5:27

at Lindisfarne, I encountered a lot

5:29

of different religious spiritual

5:31

teachers somewhere turn some Asian engaged

5:34

in conversations with scientists and

5:36

philosophers about the

5:38

mind. And

5:40

that then fueled my interest and propelled

5:42

me into college where

5:45

I majored in Asian studies. So

5:47

I studied Chinese language and Chinese

5:49

history and Asian philosophy. And

5:51

then when I was thinking of going on to

5:54

grad school, I really hit on

5:56

philosophy as the main thing that

5:58

was at the core of my interest. So I, you know, went

6:00

to grad school and got my PhD in philosophy.

6:02

But while I was writing my dissertation,

6:05

which turned out to be in the cognitive

6:07

science and philosophy of color

6:11

I worked in parallel

6:13

with a neuroscientist named Francisco

6:15

Varela, who I had met at Lindisfarne, who

6:18

was a pioneering neuroscientist tests

6:20

known for his work in theoretical biology and

6:22

his work on large scale

6:24

neural assembly, Michael activity,

6:26

and its relationship to cognition and consciousness.

6:29

But he was also a practicing Buddhist

6:31

and had been giving a series

6:33

of lectures on the relationship

6:36

between buddhist philosophy

6:38

and psychology, you could say, and

6:40

his own understanding of the mind and brain as

6:42

a neuroscientist, and he he

6:44

wanted to turn these lectures into a book.

6:46

So he knew that I had an undergraduate background

6:49

in Asian phosphate and Meditation, and

6:51

that I was now studying cognitive science in graduate

6:54

school. So he brought me to

6:56

Paris, which is where his lab was

6:58

at the time, to basically work with

7:00

him as a research assistant help him turn

7:02

these lectures into a book.

7:04

And that eventually became the book we

7:06

did also with Evan Roche, the

7:08

psychologist called the embodied mind,

7:10

that was published in ninety one, which is,

7:12

I think, fair to say, the first academic

7:15

book that explores the relationship between

7:18

Buddhist psychology and meditation

7:20

and cognitive science. And

7:22

pretty much ever since then, I've

7:24

been working to varying

7:26

degrees in that area, the book why

7:28

I'm not a Buddhist really came out of

7:31

much more recent work I had been doing in the

7:33

context of the Mind and Life Institute

7:35

and the dialogues that it has

7:38

fostered between scientists

7:40

and the Dalai Lama and

7:42

Buddhist scholars, especially in the Tibetan

7:44

tradition. it was through

7:46

my involvement in those

7:48

dialogues that I came to a place where I

7:50

felt I needed to write something that

7:52

expressed a more critical perspective on what I

7:54

saw going on in those dialogues, so

7:56

we can talk about more about that. But that's the

7:58

journey more or less from my

8:00

I both childhood really

8:02

into the writing of that book. So

8:04

the point that I want to emphasize

8:07

is that you've come to this with a

8:09

very deep background both in the

8:11

eastern thought and also

8:13

the cognitive science pieces

8:15

of this issue. I

8:17

doubt there's anybody else that

8:19

has quite the qualifications that you

8:21

do. There may be a few others,

8:23

but but yeah. Yeah.

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9:35

Most of my listeners

9:37

have heard this claim that meditation

9:39

is a and

9:42

I just wanna get right to the

9:44

point. What is wrong with this

9:46

claim? So in a

9:48

nutshell, I would say that

9:50

it involves

9:52

a distortion of

9:55

what meditation is

9:58

to say that it's a science. If

9:59

by science, we mean the way we

10:02

understand science in the modern world

10:04

as an experimental method

10:06

with models and theories and

10:08

testing in an experimental context

10:10

with controls and and so on. So

10:13

meditation is a

10:15

practice in which

10:17

first of all, there's no such thing as just

10:19

meditation. Meditation is like the word

10:21

sports. There's, you know, there's

10:23

fencing, there's badminton, there's hockey,

10:25

there's all their soccer. Maybe chess is a

10:27

sport. The word is elastic and can

10:29

cover different kinds of things. So meditation

10:31

can cover many different

10:33

ways of training

10:36

or appointing trying to turn

10:38

this into a verb, making oneself acquainted

10:40

with the mind experientially or

10:43

contemplation this related

10:45

word. And when one does this,

10:47

one is usually in

10:49

a there are

10:51

secular of can talk about that. But usually

10:54

one is within a tradition that

10:56

provides a world view, religious

10:58

in nature, and one is given

11:00

various kinds of scripts and

11:02

instructions for

11:04

shaping the mind, for engaging

11:06

in a repeated practice where

11:08

one trains and shapes the mind

11:11

according to certain norms and ideals

11:13

and standards. So in that

11:15

way, it's more like art. It's a practice of self

11:18

the way, you know, learning to play the piano

11:20

or engaging in ballet, for example,

11:23

is. There are methods to it.

11:25

There is training. There is rigor.

11:27

But to say that it's a science in the sense

11:29

that you're just starting with some

11:31

kind of observation of the mind as

11:33

it's given to you, and then you're discovering

11:36

the nature of the mind is

11:38

incredibly simplistic because you're

11:40

bringing a whole set of

11:43

concepts and norms and

11:46

ideals into what you're doing. So to give a very

11:48

concrete illustration, I talk about this

11:50

in the book. I've done a number of these

11:52

kinds of retreats, but I went at one point

11:54

on a treat. There was a seven

11:56

day vipasana

11:58

or insight, Buddhist insight

11:59

meditation retreat. And it was

12:02

designed especially for scientists and

12:04

clinicians. This was in two

12:06

thousand and eight, I think. And

12:08

so many people who were involved in

12:10

the clinical use of mindfulness

12:12

and meditation practices or scientists

12:14

studying meditation. Many people

12:16

involved in the Mind of Life Institute. were

12:18

at this meditation retreat. And

12:21

the rhetoric that we were

12:23

given at the outset of the retreat,

12:25

which is a kind of typical modern

12:27

Western Buddhist rhetoric is you're

12:30

gonna drop all your assumptions

12:32

and concepts and preconceptions and

12:34

you are going to pay attention to the

12:37

mind as it is in the

12:39

present And you are

12:41

going to learn to introspect

12:44

precisely, see the mind

12:46

as it truly is. And

12:48

in doing that, you are engaging in

12:50

a kind of introspective science.

12:54

Now there is a sense in which part of

12:56

that is true, which is you you're

12:58

instructed to try to follow your breath as a

13:00

beginning practice and you're told,

13:02

you know, it's not about thinking. It's

13:04

about just keeping your mind on the

13:06

breath and then noticing what happens to

13:08

the mind. when you do that, it get

13:10

distracted. You feel certain things.

13:12

You have to return. You have to drop the

13:14

Meditation. Return your attention. you

13:17

come to feel how that's subtly modulated

13:19

by different thoughts and feeling states and

13:21

memories. So you do become experientially

13:25

enlivened and acquainted and attuned

13:27

with all sorts of things going on.

13:29

You're doing this eight to ten hours a day,

13:31

and so your metabolism slows

13:33

down. yet

13:35

what one is being told

13:37

that one's doing is practicing

13:39

a science of seeing things as they

13:41

really are. All along the way,

13:43

one is being given a kind of conceptual

13:45

framework and script for how to

13:47

understand and relate to the mind

13:49

that involves a kind of you

13:51

might say baby version or minimal

13:53

version of a Buddhist psychology, a

13:55

Buddhist taxonomy of mental states.

13:58

Ideas already that are

13:59

closely related to, say,

14:02

karma, to how the mind

14:04

moves and acts, the clinging

14:06

or desire that goes along with that.

14:08

the idea you should not identify with

14:10

that. So there's a kind of norm of disidentification.

14:13

And so that

14:15

is a skill. That is a practice.

14:19

But it's not a kind

14:21

of disinterested examination

14:23

of how things are

14:25

neutrally. It's a

14:27

guided scripted practice according to certain

14:29

values and norms of ethical

14:31

self cultivation. So

14:33

in saying that it's not a science. I don't mean to

14:35

say that it's anti science or opposed to

14:37

science. I mean to say it's just

14:39

different and that casting it in the

14:41

rhetoric of science really

14:44

falsifies what it is in the same

14:46

way as if you were to say that

14:48

sculpture or painting is a

14:50

science. It's a craft. It's a

14:52

skill. It takes expertise. admits

14:54

of different levels of accomplishment, but

14:57

it's not a science in

14:59

the sense of science that we valorize.

15:02

here and now in our world, which is, you know, modern experimental

15:05

science where we

15:07

are pursuing it not

15:09

according to specifically religious

15:12

values that have to do with a

15:14

worldview where transitoryness

15:17

is suffering and one shouldn't cling to it,

15:19

for example. to into

15:21

science as a norm, people immediately

15:23

say, no, that's that's not

15:25

appropriate. So that's what happens

15:27

when meditation gets cast as a

15:29

science as it gets stored in.

15:31

It arises also

15:33

from a particular

15:37

way of thinking

15:39

about science that I don't think is

15:41

particularly good for science, which is

15:43

that it instrumentalizes the

15:45

investigation. So it basically It

15:48

sees science as, like, a

15:50

technique of investigation

15:52

and mastery. Sort of, like, science is

15:54

about instrumental and

15:57

control. That is certainly part of

15:59

science, but science in its source is not

16:01

that. So it takes that conception

16:03

and it puts it onto the mind because if you

16:06

say something like as some meditation

16:08

teachers do that what you're doing when you're

16:10

practicing meditation is cultivating an

16:12

inner telescope with which you

16:14

can look at the mind, the way Galileo

16:16

turns his telescope onto the

16:18

planets, the minute you say something like that, you're

16:20

treating your own subjectivity, your

16:22

own mental life as a tool, as

16:24

an instrument. And when you do that,

16:26

you can't help but objectify

16:28

yourself inwardly. that's

16:31

distorting because subjectivity

16:33

or consciousness or lived

16:35

experience is precisely that which is

16:37

not objective in that sense or not

16:39

objectifiable. It can never be

16:41

fully rendered in that objectifiable

16:44

way. So it it takes a particularly

16:47

technological conception of science

16:49

and then grafts it onto introspection,

16:54

instrumentalizing the experience in

16:56

a way that I think actually distorts the

16:58

experience of what's happening. And it

17:00

also doesn't take into account

17:02

how

17:02

we've learned that so

17:04

much of what our brain is actually doing is

17:07

inaccessible

17:07

to introspection. And

17:09

as Robert Burton once said,

17:12

expecting the mind to tell you

17:14

how it works is talking to a con

17:16

man. But what about

17:18

the attitude that goes hand in hand

17:20

with this about identifying the

17:23

mind with the brain. Even

17:25

though that doesn't really seem necessarily

17:27

consistent with Buddhism, certainly

17:30

not certain forms of Buddhism. So

17:33

there, I would say that we have a way of

17:35

talking in the context of

17:37

meditation about the mind and the brain that I

17:39

think reflects kind of a

17:41

generally schizoid way we have of talking

17:43

about the mind and the brain and our culture at

17:45

large, which is On the one hand, a

17:47

discourse of meditation directly

17:49

changes the brain. It affects your brain. You

17:51

can train your brain.

17:54

on what level that's very shallow because anything you do affects

17:56

your brain. I mean, when I get up in the morning, the first thing I

17:58

do is, you know, have a pot of tea. I mean, that affects

18:00

my brain. My brain is

18:02

constantly being affected So, of

18:04

course, if I going to

18:06

affect my brain, the

18:08

idea that meditation

18:10

gets its value from training

18:12

the brain seems to be as

18:14

misguided as saying ballet gets its

18:16

value from training your

18:18

muscles. Of course, training your muscles

18:20

is part of ballet. But

18:23

the point of ballet lies in a

18:25

completely different domain, which is the domain of

18:27

art and aesthetics and the point of

18:30

meditation lies in a completely different domain, which is

18:32

either in a secular context, you

18:34

could say health and well-being, or in a

18:36

religious context, to say

18:38

in Asian religions, particularly Buddhism, it

18:40

has to do with a conception of

18:42

liberation and awakening and

18:44

enlightenment. and a view of the origins

18:46

and overcoming of suffering.

18:49

Casting the value of meditation in terms of

18:51

changing the brain, I think, is

18:53

misguided And then the

18:56

idea, as you were saying, that when

18:58

we practice meditation, we're

19:00

seeing the mind as it fundamentally is

19:03

that I would say is philosophically very

19:05

problematic for a number of reasons.

19:08

One, if we think of the mind

19:10

as really rooted

19:12

and intertwined with our whole

19:15

bodily life, including of

19:17

course, our brains, then that's

19:19

not directly disclosing

19:21

to consciousness. Consciousness is in a way

19:23

a skewed sample of what's going on in

19:25

terms of the larger dynamics of the

19:27

organism or the person done.

19:29

So the idea that

19:32

consciousness would be revealed or the

19:34

minds and its workings would be revealed in

19:36

meditation doesn't seem right. And

19:38

then moreover, Although some

19:40

philosophical traditions would disagree with this, I would say

19:42

that consciousness doesn't

19:44

reveal its own inner

19:46

nature and its own dependencies

19:49

on things other than

19:51

itself, it doesn't reveal that

19:53

from within. You can have

19:55

profound states of altered

19:58

consciousness or dissolution of the subject object

19:59

structure in which awareness has

20:04

a quality that is, let's

20:06

say, experientially invariant

20:08

across different changing

20:10

states in waking and dreaming. You know, I wrote

20:12

a lot about this in my book, waking, dreaming,

20:14

being, which about before. So, of course, you can

20:16

have states in which consciousness presents that

20:19

way, but it doesn't in presenting that

20:21

way, disclose it's

20:23

generative source if you wanna put it

20:25

that way. It's not

20:27

scruggable in that way. So to say

20:29

that, oh, I'm sitting down and the

20:31

nature of the mind in its inner nature is

20:33

going to be revealed to me from a false point

20:35

of view. That doesn't seem like a

20:37

legitimate statement.

20:37

You talked about something called a category

20:39

mistake. Would you expand on what that

20:42

means? So, I mean,

20:44

an example would be what I was saying

20:46

earlier where if we say

20:48

that the right

20:51

perspective from which to understand meditation

20:53

is the effects that it has on

20:55

the brain. that's a kind of category

20:57

mistake. It's it's a perfectly legitimate

20:59

scientific question to ask whether practice of

21:01

meditation in various settings

21:03

according to various sets.

21:06

has long term measurable changes

21:08

on the brain. There's nothing wrong with asking

21:10

that. However, it's a bit

21:12

like asking this is an example I use in

21:14

the book, whether the

21:16

long term practice of playing a musical

21:18

instrument has effects on the

21:20

brain, it stands to reason that

21:22

it does. that would be an

21:24

interesting thing to investigate if we're

21:26

interested in the effects of

21:28

music on the brain and the

21:30

place of musical cognition in

21:32

relation to other kinds of cognition. But to say then that

21:36

the meaning or value of

21:38

music, its significance in human life is

21:40

to be understood by looking

21:42

at brain systems that are affected by it. That's

21:44

a category of mistake. It's a confusion of levels.

21:46

It's like the example I use in my

21:48

book is, suppose we take Yoyomo.

21:52

and we record with great precision

21:55

using high density EEG or

21:57

we put Yoyama on an F

21:59

MRI scanner and we record

22:01

with spatial precision what's going

22:03

on in his brain

22:05

when he plays box

22:07

cello suite number one.

22:09

Well, of course, it stands to

22:12

reason that there may be some unique

22:14

neural signatures compared to

22:17

say, an amateur cello player or certainly

22:19

compared to someone who can't play the cello at

22:21

all. Of course, it stands. The reason they're gonna be

22:23

differences. But if we thought we could

22:25

understand music, let

22:27

alone bock simply

22:30

by looking at

22:32

the neural activity that would

22:34

be a kind of category mistake or confusion

22:36

of levels. So, similarly, the

22:38

idea that we can establish

22:40

the value or validity of meditation

22:43

or understand what it is and what its purpose is by

22:45

looking at neural systems

22:47

affected by it. That's just the same

22:49

confusion. I was thinking we can understand bock

22:51

through looking at happens in your your mom's brain

22:53

when he's in the scanner. In other words,

22:55

meditation is a it's an individual

22:57

practice, but it's also a social practice,

22:59

and it's one that takes place in

23:01

a culture. So involves communities

23:03

of practitioners, culturally

23:05

transmitted norms, and conceptual frameworks, and you're

23:07

not gonna understand any of that if you're

23:09

looking just at the brain. Now, of

23:11

course, you know, neuroscientists who

23:14

work on meditation know this. I

23:16

mean, it's not that neuroscientists

23:18

are unaware of this. and neuroscientists who

23:20

are doing some of the most

23:22

pioneering and interesting work are very

23:24

concerned to bring, say, anthropologists

23:28

into the collaborative effort

23:30

to get a richer understanding

23:32

of social context. Cognitive scientists

23:35

in general who are doing the best work on meditation, they're aware of

23:37

this. But this is not reflected often

23:39

in the hype, even sometimes their own

23:41

hype. And the general

23:43

larger cultural discourse around meditation in the brain.

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24:52

Before

24:54

we talk

24:58

about the embodied approach, can you

25:00

talk a little bit more about

25:02

just this whole conflating of

25:04

the mind and brain. because

25:07

I think that's really an important

25:10

idea. So the way that I think

25:12

about this is if you

25:14

say the mind is in the brain

25:16

or the mind is what

25:18

the brain does, it's rather like

25:21

saying that flight is in the wings

25:23

of a bird or that flight is

25:25

what the wings of the bird does.

25:27

you can't have flight without wings and you

25:29

can't have a human mind without a

25:31

human brain. But

25:35

the wings generate lift,

25:37

which enables flight, and flight is

25:39

an activity of the whole animal in

25:41

its environment. So I think

25:44

of mind as an activity of the

25:46

whole organism or animal

25:48

or person in its environment. And

25:50

it comes about through the way that the brain

25:52

is able to relate us

25:55

to each other and to the environment, that's

25:58

where the domain of

25:59

mind or mental phenomena resides

26:03

not inside the

26:05

brain. Another example would be

26:07

to say that for example,

26:09

a cathedral isn't in its stones. You

26:11

need the stones for the cathedral,

26:13

but the cathedral as

26:15

a cathedral exists in

26:17

a public social sphere and

26:20

its architecture is determined

26:22

by conventions

26:24

and history and iconography

26:27

and stories about the gospels and so

26:29

on. And so the cathedral exists in

26:31

that domain of meaning

26:33

and the stones just considered

26:35

as stones they don't exist in that

26:37

domain of meaning unless you see

26:39

them through the cathedral. So if you

26:41

see the brain through the mind, in other words, you

26:43

see the brain, as

26:45

an organ or system in the

26:47

organism embedded in its environment that

26:49

is enabling the repertoire of

26:51

cognitive phenomena that we see different animals

26:55

capable of, then you see the

26:57

brain in light of the mind. But if you just say

26:59

the mind is in the brain, then

27:01

you miss that. So that in a

27:03

nutshell is sort of an analogy for

27:05

the embodied embedded view of

27:07

cognition. Howard Bauchner: And so this

27:09

embodied approach doesn't just apply to

27:11

people. Right? Any animal

27:13

with a certain amount of brainpower

27:15

has a mind that

27:18

consists of being embodied and

27:20

interacting with the world. Yeah.

27:22

I think so. So in animal

27:24

life, we know that the

27:26

nervous system is the crucial player for this.

27:28

The nervous system coupled to the rest of the body,

27:30

of course. There is an interesting question

27:33

whether we want to talk about mind or

27:36

cognition in a larger sense that

27:38

encompasses all of biological life.

27:40

I mean, if you see a bacterium able

27:43

to differentiate upwards of forty

27:45

different chemical gradients and

27:47

swim towards and away things and

27:49

do so where it's able to

27:52

keep track of the changes

27:54

in the rate of concentration of the

27:56

molecules over time and behave

27:58

appropriately. And so it has a kind of

27:59

version of bacterial memory, do we

28:02

wanna call that mind or cognition? I

28:04

mean, in a very general sense, I would

28:06

say, yes, it's not animal cognition,

28:08

but it's I sometimes use the

28:10

word which comes from Francis Corvella, the word

28:12

sense making that the organism makes

28:14

sense of its environment and that if you

28:16

don't wanna say that's mind, you can

28:18

say it's the roots of mind. It's

28:20

the precursor of mind. And

28:22

by some definitions, it's definitely

28:24

cognition. If you think of cognition

28:27

as being something that involves

28:29

some kind of decision.

28:31

So if you're gonna go toward or

28:34

away from a not just chemical, to

28:36

me that qualifies. What about the

28:40

claim that a

28:42

neuroscience has confirmed

28:44

that the self does not

28:47

exist. Yes. So this is one

28:49

that we hear a lot. Philosophers say

28:51

this and it gets repeated in

28:53

popular writings. So if we

28:55

think of the self in a very narrow way, we think

28:57

of it as a

28:59

unified Ginger

29:02

unchanged subject that

29:04

would also be the source of

29:07

agency. So an interchanging subject

29:09

and agent of action we think that in

29:11

that very narrow way, then

29:13

we could say, well, our

29:15

best science of the mind

29:18

doesn't give us any reason to believe that

29:20

the self is like that or that there is that

29:22

kind of a self. Because the

29:24

self or the person is something

29:26

that emerges through the

29:28

interaction of the brain body

29:30

cognition, environment, social

29:33

system, norms, So the

29:35

self, I would say, is a kind

29:37

of construction. So when people

29:39

say the self is an illusion, they

29:41

often think of

29:43

the self in this narrow way. And

29:45

then they think, we can't find any self like

29:47

that in the brain. So

29:49

then, therefore, there is no self but

29:51

it sure feels like there is that kind

29:53

of self, so it must be an illusion.

29:55

So I would say, first of

29:57

all, that that's too narrow a conception

30:00

of self. that the self is a construction, not

30:02

an illusion, not everything that's a

30:04

construction is illusory, and

30:07

that looking for it inside the brain

30:09

is not the right place to look for it. That's again, like,

30:11

trying to find flight inside the wings of

30:13

the bird. And that

30:16

this idea of

30:19

feeling that there is this kind of, like, inter

30:21

essential me behind my eyes that

30:23

also was, like, the source of my decisions

30:26

it's true that sometimes we feel like there's a

30:28

self like that. But I don't think

30:30

that's normally how we feel there is

30:32

a self. I think normally we feel

30:35

our selfhood in an

30:38

engaged way geared into the

30:40

world interaction with others

30:42

and that we don't feel it as this kind of

30:44

like distant spectator. In

30:46

fact, feeling it is that kind of distant spectator

30:48

is often a symptom of a kind

30:50

of depersonalization. So the whole language of

30:52

the self is an illusion. It's

30:54

a tendentious language because it starts

30:56

with a very narrow assumption

30:59

about how we should think

31:01

of what a self is or what a self

31:03

could be. And then it

31:05

superimposes it onto the

31:07

brain And then, of course, you're gonna come

31:09

up empty handed if you cast it that way.

31:11

But then, why would we cast it

31:13

that way from the beginning? I mean, there are

31:15

historical reasons why in

31:18

some context, it gets cast that way.

31:20

But generally speaking, I think we can

31:22

see with a little bit of reflection that's not

31:24

the right way to cast things. I think

31:26

we've got time to talk about one other

31:28

issue that's in there that relates to

31:30

actual I mean, you

31:32

have some wonderful chapters in

31:34

there about buddhist modernism, which we aren't gonna get

31:36

into, even though I'm gonna

31:38

encourage my readers to read the book,

31:40

to learn what that is because it's

31:42

really fascinating. There was

31:44

one chapter about a writer

31:46

who's written a book, why Buddhism

31:48

is True. It's really just

31:50

basically based on evolutionary

31:52

psychology, which that's not

31:54

even mainstream Neuroscience. But

31:57

Would you just talk a little

31:59

bit

31:59

about that argument? because that's

32:02

another thing people will hear. Buddhism

32:04

is somehow magically more scientific

32:06

and is because it's supported by Neuroscience.

32:09

This is

32:09

Robert Wright's book, why Buddhism is true. And

32:11

basically, what Wright does in that book, and I

32:13

should say for anybody who's interested

32:15

right invited me on to his podcast, and we had

32:17

a really long, I don't know, hour and a

32:20

half to hour conversation about his

32:22

book, my book, my critique, and, you

32:24

know, it was a great conversation. He's a

32:26

very generous person. So people can

32:28

check out if out if they want it on YouTube.

32:30

What's the name of his podcast? His podcast,

32:32

oh, I'm forgetting the name of it.

32:34

But if you it's Robert Wright with

32:36

a, yeah, WRIGHT

32:39

I'll look it up and put it in the show notes. Yeah. It's in

32:41

YouTube, the conversation that we hey. You actually interviewed me

32:43

twice. One for waking and dreaming being and one for

32:45

why I'm not able to stand. So they're

32:47

both in YouTube. So he wrote a book

32:49

called why Buddhism is Drew. And he

32:52

basically argued that if we strip

32:54

away from Buddhism, it's

32:56

let's say, religious metaphysical elements, and

32:58

we focus on its

33:02

psychological aspects that we

33:04

can make consistent with

33:06

or compatible with modern

33:08

science, that those

33:10

are true according

33:12

to the framework of evolutionary psychology.

33:14

So he uses evolutionary psychology,

33:17

which is the idea

33:19

that our mines

33:21

and brains were shaped

33:23

in the pleistocene under certain

33:25

selective pressures so that we have this kind

33:27

of collection of cognitive modules that have

33:29

been selected for various functions,

33:32

and we are according to

33:34

the evolutionary psychologist stone

33:37

age minds in the modern world

33:40

and says that

33:42

conception of the mind fits with the Buddhist

33:44

diagnosis of why we suffer

33:46

and why we experience craving and

33:49

attachment. And Buddhism gives us a way

33:51

of dealing with that predicament. So

33:54

I have a critique of this that involves

33:56

a number of different things.

33:58

One is the way that he, you

34:00

might say, sanitizes

34:03

Buddhism by trying to render it in a

34:05

particularly naturalistic way by the likes of

34:07

evolutionary psychology and how that distorts

34:11

core Buddhist commitments to

34:14

ideas of awakening and

34:16

ideas about the sort of ephemeral

34:18

or impermanent nature of the world. And

34:20

then I have a critique of evolutionary psychology, which is I just don't

34:22

think that the evolutionary psychology model of the

34:25

mind is credible on scientific grounds.

34:27

I don't think that the

34:29

brain is evolutionary psychology ways of understanding

34:31

what a module is. I think

34:33

that the trajectory of neuroscience

34:35

in the past twenty

34:37

five, thirty years has been to show the kind of

34:40

multiplexing and plasticity of

34:42

brain systems that make them not

34:44

identifiable with discrete

34:46

functional modules. I think

34:48

the Darwinian selectionist way

34:50

of understanding evolution that underwrites

34:52

evolutionary psychology is also problematic

34:54

within the domain of evolutionary biology.

34:57

So we could go into that, but that would be sort

34:59

of a whole other thing. And I describe

35:01

my reasons for on strictly

35:03

scientific grounds, not being persuaded by evolution

35:05

a nice psychology and then how that sort of

35:07

undercuts the argument for a

35:10

naturalized modern version of Buddhism being

35:12

true in his words. the appropriate question

35:14

is about Buddhism isn't really whether it's

35:16

true under that rendering.

35:18

The appropriate question is whether it's

35:20

a valuable human tradition with insight

35:22

that we can learn from in conversation with other traditions. And

35:24

that leads into the discussion of

35:26

of cosmopolitanism in the latter part of

35:28

the book or the end last chapter of

35:32

the book. Now,

35:34

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37:13

I want to talk about

37:16

cosmopolitanism, but first, I want to

37:18

make a comment about Wright's

37:20

embrace of

37:22

evolutionary psychology. I understand

37:24

that his background

37:26

was, but the middle was a baptismal,

37:28

of some sort. So I was struck

37:30

by the fact that he has

37:32

basically replaced original sin

37:34

with now we're stuck with the

37:36

caveman brain. Okay. It seems like

37:39

the same problem. We've just We're

37:41

still horribly flawed in that view. Yeah. I think there is an element

37:43

of that in his narrative, which is

37:45

this Darwinian evolutionary psychology

37:48

rendering of

37:50

our fundamental flaw that would

37:52

be original sin in the religious

37:54

narrative. And completely discounting

37:56

the fact that our success really

37:59

comes from being flexible and

38:02

adaptable. That just really

38:03

struck me really strongly. What

38:05

else would you like to share

38:07

before we close? Maybe I'll

38:09

just

38:09

say a little bit about work that I'm

38:12

doing now to wet people's appetite.

38:14

So I just finished a book with

38:16

two physicists our fellow

38:18

Glyser, who's a theoretical physicist at

38:20

Dartmouth and Adam Frank, who's an

38:22

astrophysicist at University of Rochester.

38:24

The book is called The Blind

38:26

Spot Experience science and the search And

38:28

it's a big picture, big idea book

38:30

that looks at the

38:34

relationship between science and lived

38:36

experience and the puzzles and

38:38

conundrums that science gets

38:40

itself into when it forgets its

38:43

source in lived experience. And so

38:45

we chart that across cosmology and

38:47

the nature of time and quantum physics,

38:49

the nature of matter, and neuroscience, and the

38:51

nature of consciousness, biology and the

38:53

nature of life. We end with a discussion of the planet and the

38:55

climate crisis. So that book

38:58

will probably be out

39:00

in ice

39:02

Spectrum, it will be out in early twenty twenty four, maybe late

39:04

twenty twenty three. MIT press is going to

39:06

publish it. I'm not sure the exact timetable. We're

39:09

just doing the sort

39:11

of final production revision of it now. So I

39:13

wanna mention that. And then a book that I'm

39:16

really in the early stages

39:18

of writing I can't say exactly

39:20

when it's going to appear is about

39:22

dying, the experience of

39:24

dying, and

39:27

the insight or light that can be shed on

39:29

that through contemplative practices

39:34

for meeting death and

39:36

contemplative practices in spice for

39:38

helping people undergo dying

39:41

combined with new

39:44

emerging research in neuroscience about what

39:46

happens to the brain in the dying

39:48

process. And that book I say

39:50

is probably still a couple

39:52

years away. And my

39:55

traditional question, advice

39:57

for students. You're further along

39:59

in your

39:59

career now. and change

40:02

universities. So I'd

40:04

like to have your current take on that

40:06

question. I think it

40:08

depends on the field my

40:11

feel is philosophy. I think one thing that's interesting,

40:13

at least in my experience, that's happening in

40:15

philosophy that I really want to encourage, and I think this

40:17

has to do with the

40:20

pandemic. you know, I have about

40:22

ten PhD students. They're all working on really significant

40:24

fundamental topics that affect

40:26

people's lives, things like grief,

40:29

and dying anxiety and they're using

40:32

neuroscience and phenomenology and philosophy

40:34

of mind to cast light on

40:36

these things. So I think

40:38

that is something I would encourage in

40:40

students that if you have an interest in something

40:42

that really has to do with sort of the existential

40:44

predicament of being human, you

40:46

should follow through with that and use that to enlivant

40:48

philosophy and use philosophy to eliminate

40:50

it. In

40:52

cognitive science, I think this

40:54

is an amazing time for

40:56

advances in collaborative

40:58

activity among neuroscientists and

41:01

psychologists. and anthropologists. And I think the one advice

41:03

there I would give, especially to undergraduates

41:05

and also to graduate

41:08

students, is really to try to work

41:10

in a transdisciplinary

41:12

way that links these different fields. I

41:14

mean, of course, if you're a molecular neurobiologist,

41:18

that's you know, you've got to be honest to the field of molecular or

41:20

neurobiology. If you're a

41:22

cognitive neuroscientist, you have to be honest

41:24

to the techniques of

41:26

EEG and F MRI and all that. But it's very

41:28

important, I think, to step

41:30

back and have a bigger

41:32

picture and a sense of

41:34

connection to other scientists,

41:36

particularly if you're studying the mind, those

41:38

who work in disciplines like Anthropologie, I

41:41

think the social context of

41:43

the mind is really important. So putting the

41:45

cognitive and neuroscience perspective together with the

41:47

say cognitive anthropology perspective, I think there's a

41:49

really great move that neuroscientists are working on, but it's still a

41:51

small group of people. So that's a direction I would

41:53

certainly encourage. So you closed the

41:55

book, Evan, with

41:58

talking about cosmopolitanism. And

41:59

I would like you to

42:02

tell us about

42:04

that. Yes.

42:05

So cosmopolitanism is

42:07

a philosophical idea that in

42:09

the western traditional philosophy goes

42:11

back to the Greeks. and

42:13

to the idea that we are all one

42:15

human family and we should

42:18

identify as citizens of the

42:20

world or as members of the human community

42:22

first and foremost rather than

42:24

exclusively with our immediate

42:26

local group or local tradition. And

42:28

in the context of the book, I

42:31

make the point that this way of thinking of there

42:33

being multiple human traditions that

42:36

don't have to agree with each other, but that can

42:38

engage in conversation with each other

42:40

about ethics, about

42:42

transformation, about mental cultivation,

42:44

that this is really the

42:46

context within which we should see

42:48

science Buddhism dialogue or the science meditation conversation Meditation

42:52

than a context in which

42:54

one tries to use

42:56

science to say prove

42:58

Buddhism or use Buddhism to

43:00

embellish Neuroscience or

43:02

Neuroscience to

43:04

prove the value of meditation or use

43:07

meditation to enhance science that

43:09

we should see this

43:11

in the larger space of a

43:14

conversation between different traditions

43:16

where attrition to be

43:19

specific like buddhism is a rich deep tradition with many insights

43:21

into the mind coming from a rigorous

43:24

intellectual tradition that's philosophical and

43:26

psychological. And of course, we can learn

43:28

from that But the way

43:30

to engage it is not

43:32

to go in and try

43:34

to prove it in a sort of partisan

43:36

way, nor is it to use

43:38

it to embellish

43:40

concepts about brain function

43:43

or concepts about whether we

43:45

are fundamentally pro social animals

43:47

or things like that. So that's kind

43:49

of how caused politics functions for me in the book. I I'm

43:52

gonna include some of those references in

43:54

my show

43:56

notes because I've really enjoyed reading about that. And I think

43:58

it really has a lot to say for

44:00

our current situation

44:02

that to find what we have

44:04

in common and appreciate

44:07

our differences is a balancing

44:09

act and it's got to have

44:11

both parts. Well,

44:12

I really enjoyed your book and I

44:13

look forward to getting the new one, the

44:16

blind spot. I usually get

44:18

MIT press

44:20

book So I will definitely look forward to that.

44:22

And I'm glad I found this

44:24

one because I'll just say in

44:28

closing that when I read your book, why I'm not a Buddhist, I I

44:30

had all these discomforts about

44:32

why I didn't feel

44:34

like Buddhist

44:36

really was quite the right like what you said, why

44:38

you're not a bit as it really spoke

44:40

to me personally, you know. But the other

44:43

thing you said that I wanna mention is that you point out

44:45

in your book that there's no one

44:47

Buddhism. That Buddhism really is I mean,

44:49

it's just like

44:52

Christianity or even Islam. It's got many different

44:54

schools of thought, so to speak.

44:56

And a long tradition of debating, and

44:58

I think it's really important for those

45:02

outside the tradition to realize that even though

45:04

the insight meditation people claim, hey,

45:06

we're getting back to the basics. what

45:10

everybody always does? Yeah.

45:12

Yeah. That's a a claim that many

45:14

people make. But if you look at it from a

45:16

historian's point of view, it's not accurate. put

45:19

it as many things that's always been evolving. And and

45:21

that doesn't invalidate the way that people pursue

45:23

it here and now. But the claim that

45:25

in pursuing it here and now, they're sort of recovering

45:27

an original form that should

45:29

be viewed with a great deal of

45:32

suspicion. I read history of Buddhism a while

45:34

back. I don't think I read the particular book

45:36

that you referred to

45:38

in this book, but I was struck by the fact that from its very

45:40

beginning, Buddhism has always adapted to

45:42

the culture it moved to. I mean, you

45:44

take going from India

45:46

to China, Evan at that

45:47

stage. It changed to

45:49

fit China. It went to

45:51

Japan. It changed to fit Japan. It came

45:53

to the west. It changed to

45:55

fit the west. you know, as

45:57

kind of opposite from Christianity goes and tries to make the people wherever it

45:59

goes, changed to

46:02

fit in. Yeah.

46:04

I think that's mainly a political thing difference between

46:06

them. They're both missionary religion, so they

46:08

both see converts. Which is something I

46:10

think people don't always appreciate. I

46:13

know that's a little off the subject

46:15

of neuroscience. But since there's so

46:17

many claims about biz

46:20

amount in the brain, I think it's worth

46:22

talking about. Thanks again for taking the time to talk with me.

46:24

Yeah. Thanks for inviting me again, and I'm

46:26

glad you discovered this book since it

46:28

doesn't show up on the neuroscience list, of

46:30

course, not being

46:32

a neuroscience but I'm glad you

46:34

found it and then it spoke to

46:36

you. Hope that means a lot

46:38

to me. Before I

46:39

review the key ideas, I

46:42

today's interview, I want to share a few brief announcements.

46:44

First, I want to thank those

46:46

of you who support Brain Science financially.

46:50

This podcast is independently produced and depends

46:52

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46:54

you. There are several ways that

46:56

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47:18

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47:22

You can help by sharing the show with others. Thanks

47:24

again for your support. Next,

47:26

I wanna remind you that

47:28

my book, are you sure, the

47:32

unconscious origins of certainty is

47:34

available in both ebook and

47:36

paper back from all the

47:38

major online book sellers. Please

47:40

consider gifting this book to someone you care

47:42

about. And if you're interested

47:44

in an autograph copy, just

47:46

email me

47:48

at brainscience podcast at gmail dot com. Finally, don't

47:50

forget to email me if you're

47:52

interested in helping with

47:54

or attending a talk or

47:56

meet up in April twenty

47:58

twenty three, either in

47:59

Amsterdam or Zurich. I

48:02

will be taking a cruise down the line

48:05

and I would like to use this as a chance

48:07

to meet listeners who live along

48:09

the route. Now I want to start

48:11

my episode review by thanking Evan

48:14

Thompson for taking the time to talk

48:16

with me again. I also want

48:18

to talk briefly about

48:20

why I chose this topic.

48:22

First, as an independent podcaster, I have

48:24

the freedom

48:25

to choose topics that I

48:27

find personally compelling. That

48:31

is certainly the case for the claim that meditation

48:33

is a mind science.

48:35

Before I launch

48:38

brain science, I considered myself a Buddhist. But

48:40

as I began to learn more about

48:42

how the brain really works, I

48:45

could not harmonize the dualistic Buddhist notion

48:47

of the mind with what I

48:49

was learning. More

48:52

importantly, Many Western buddhists and even respected

48:54

scientists have accepted the

48:57

claim that meditation is

48:59

a mind science. This

49:02

underpins the much larger

49:04

claim that Buddhism is

49:08

uniquely scientific. So

49:09

let's

49:10

review the problems

49:12

with this claim. Thompson

49:15

says that his objections are both

49:17

scientific and philosophic. Though it's fair to say that the focus

49:19

of today's conversation was on his

49:22

philosophical objections.

49:26

Why

49:26

does he reject the claim that

49:28

meditation is an introspective

49:30

science? His

49:32

main objection is that meditation

49:35

does not, as is often

49:37

claimed, provide a pure

49:39

neutral account of what is happening in

49:41

the mind. There are several

49:43

reasons for this. Whatever

49:46

sort of meditation one practices,

49:48

one has given instructions and

49:50

expectations that inevitably influence

49:54

the experience. A more obvious objection is that

49:56

the experience is not

49:58

independently verifiable.

49:59

Thompson didn't mention

50:02

this, but does

50:04

disqualify Meditation as a

50:06

scientific practice. Galileo

50:08

is often held up as a

50:10

role model of the scientific method

50:13

because the observations he did

50:15

with his telescope could be

50:17

repeated or replicated by

50:20

others. This is not possible

50:22

with meditation. Although, this

50:24

didn't come up during

50:27

our conversation, another

50:30

huge issue is that neuroscientists have learned that

50:32

most of what the brain does is

50:34

inaccessible to the

50:36

conscious mind. Thus even

50:38

if we could get objective

50:40

information through introspection, it

50:42

would be

50:44

woefully incomplete. But perhaps

50:46

the biggest argument in favor

50:48

of meditation seems to be that it

50:50

changes the brain in

50:52

ways that

50:54

can supposedly be replicated in different

50:56

meditators. Is that a

50:58

valid

50:58

argument in its favor?

51:01

Thompson says no because

51:04

everything you do changes your

51:06

brain. Actually, I

51:07

think that brings us to a much

51:09

more important problem with claiming

51:12

meditation is a mind

51:14

science. Because the

51:14

people making these claims are

51:16

often enamored of brain imaging, They

51:19

also tend to conflate the mind and the brain. The

51:21

whole point of embodied

51:23

cognition, which actually is

51:25

a philosophical position, is

51:28

that the mind is more than the brain, saying that

51:31

the mind is embodied recognizes

51:33

that the brain is

51:35

embedded in a body within

51:37

a world. In

51:40

his book, why I am non Thompson

51:43

introduced an analogy that he also

51:45

shared in the interview. He said,

51:47

birds need wings to fly, but

51:49

flight is not in the

51:51

wings. Sometimes those with

51:53

a brain centric view

51:56

will say, that the mind is what the brain

51:58

does. But

51:58

that's like saying

51:59

flying is what

52:02

wings do. but it

52:03

takes the entire bird to

52:06

fly. That's why

52:07

he said, mind is

52:09

an activity of the

52:12

whole organism. We

52:14

touched briefly on several other claims that

52:16

tend to go along with the brain

52:18

focused approach to meditation One

52:20

was the idea that neuroscience has proven the Buddhist claim that

52:23

the self does not exist.

52:27

here Here, The

52:28

idea is realizing that there is

52:30

no permanent unchanging self does

52:32

not make the self that the

52:36

brain constructs unreal or

52:38

an illusion. Modern physics has

52:40

taught us that solid objects are mostly

52:42

empty, but that doesn't make

52:45

the objects an illusion or

52:47

unreal. The fact that our

52:49

conscious experience of our inner world

52:51

is unreliable does not

52:53

negate the experience but

52:55

we can't look to it for an objective

52:58

understanding of what the mind is

53:00

doing. We also talked

53:02

about Robert Wright's use of evolutionary

53:04

psychology to prove that

53:07

Buddhism is true. I was struck by

53:09

the similarity of the claim that we are

53:11

stuck in a caveman brain

53:14

and original sin, but the strongest objections to

53:17

evolutionary psychology, rests on its

53:19

dependence on a modular view

53:21

of the mind that

53:23

does not fit contemporary

53:26

neuroscience. This chapter is

53:28

great if you're looking for a concise

53:30

critique of

53:32

evolutionary psychology. At the

53:34

end of the interview, we

53:36

talked very briefly about cosmopolitanism.

53:38

This is the idea that

53:40

we are citizens of the world

53:42

but that doesn't mean that we all have to have beliefs or

53:45

ways of life.

53:47

Cosmopolitanism offers

53:49

a ray of hope in our divided

53:52

world. I will include several

53:54

references about it in the

53:56

show notes. Much of Evan

53:57

Thompson's book, Wyam Evan, is

53:59

an argument against the claim

54:01

of many West

54:04

turn Buddhist, that Buddhism is uniquely scientific and

54:06

maybe not even a religion. He shows

54:08

why neither of

54:09

these claims stand up

54:11

to either scientific or

54:14

historical scrutiny. Obviously,

54:16

that topic is beyond the

54:18

scope of this podcast, but I

54:21

think Evan Thompson's book why I

54:23

am not a Buddhist is a worthwhile read for anyone who wants to learn

54:25

more about these topics.

54:28

That being said, I want to

54:29

close with a couple

54:32

of themes that have been running through brain science for many

54:36

years. First, since most of

54:38

our brain does

54:40

is not accessible introspection.

54:42

We cannot use meditation

54:44

or any other introspective technique,

54:48

including psychoanalysis, to determine

54:50

how it works. Even more

54:52

importantly, the mind is embodied.

54:55

This means that it's embedded

54:57

in a body that interacts

54:59

with its environment, you are not

55:01

a brain in a

55:04

bat. And because the

55:06

brain is not the mind, brain

55:08

alone is not enough.

55:11

I make

55:12

this last point because even though

55:15

I create a show about the brain.

55:17

I've tried not to fall prey

55:19

to neuromania. We are also

55:21

wired to be social. So

55:23

being human means being parts of

55:26

cultures. These cultures are

55:28

also constantly changing our

55:30

brains as well as our minds.

55:33

I

55:33

would love to

55:34

hear your feedback about this episode. Feel

55:36

free to send me email at

55:39

Neuroscience podcast at gmail dot

55:41

com. And can find complete show notes and

55:44

episode transcripts on my

55:46

website at brainscience Podcast

55:48

dot com. You can get

55:50

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56:14

Next month, I will be sharing the sixteenth

56:16

Annual Review episode. Until then,

56:18

I hope you will

56:19

check out my

56:22

other podcast

56:22

grain rainbows and books and ideas. Thanks again for listening. I

56:24

look forward to talking with you again

56:28

very soon.

56:31

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