0:00

Hello there . I'd like to start this episode

0:03

by asking you some questions . How

0:06

much sleep did you get last night ? Are

0:08

you eating a healthy diet today ? Have

0:11

you taken any exercise and had some breaks

0:13

in your day ? It turns out

0:15

that these things impact our brain's ability

0:17

to manage our body and to

0:19

use its budget wisely and effectively

0:21

. So think about what sort

0:23

of a day you're having as we dive into

0:26

this episode to find out more about

0:28

how the brain works . Welcome

0:32

to AWA's podcast , which

0:34

is all about the changing world of work and

0:37

trying to figure out what's right for each organisation

0:39

, because we know that every one is unique

0:42

. We talk to people who have

0:44

walked the walk , who've got the t-shirt

0:46

and who've learned lessons that they're happy

0:48

to share with us . I'm your

0:50

host , Karen Plum , and this is the

0:52

DNA of Work . At

0:57

AWA , we've been interested in

0:59

the brain for years . The vast

1:02

majority of our clients' businesses are

1:04

full of knowledge workers , people who

1:06

essentially think for a living . So

1:08

having their people bring their best brain

1:11

to work is vital for the performance

1:13

and success of the business and for

1:15

the health and wellbeing of those people . Nobody

1:18

wants people to burn out , but it seems

1:21

to us that a lot of managers and organisations

1:23

lack the understanding about

1:25

what helps people maintain a healthy brain

1:27

, body and balance through

1:29

their lives , privately and at work

1:31

. So , in addition to researching

1:34

the things that have the most impact on the brain

1:36

things like sleep , exercise

1:38

, hydration , interruptions , temperature

1:41

, air quality and so on and

1:43

embedding this in our approach , we're

1:46

also intensely curious about

1:48

the brain itself and how it works , so

1:50

we can share this within our team and

1:52

with our clients . A

1:54

nd we wanted to dig below the surface , beyond

1:57

a generalised understanding about the brain

1:59

. So AWA's Managing

2:01

Director Andrew Mawson and I talked

2:03

to Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett , neuroscientist

2:06

and psychologist . Lisa's

2:09

among the top 1% most cited

2:11

scientists in the world . She's

2:14

a prolific author and wrote two of

2:16

our favourite books "ow Emotions

2:18

Are Made and Seven and a Half

2:20

Lessons About the Brain . I

2:22

bet you're curious about the half lesson , aren't you

2:24

? Lisa's also

2:26

University Distinguished Professor of Psychology

2:29

at Northeastern University in Boston

2:31

, Massachusetts . The

2:33

conversation was very rich and , to do

2:35

it justice , we've created a two-part special

2:38

, of which this is the first . We

2:40

started the conversation by asking Lisa to

2:43

give us an understanding of what our

2:45

brains get up to every day .

2:47

Well , the first thing to realise is that your brain is only

2:49

three pounds, right , it's a three-pound blob

2:51

of meat , but it's actually the

2:53

most expensive organ that you own , so

2:56

it takes up about 20% of your metabolic

2:58

budget , even though it's

3:01

relatively smaller than some other

3:03

organs . The second thing

3:05

to realise is that it's a master

3:07

of deception, your brain , and

3:09

the reason why is that it's creating

3:12

your experience and it's controlling your actions

3:14

, all the while giving

3:16

itself the impression that

3:18

these experiences actually reveal

3:20

the way that it works , and

3:23

it doesn't . So another thing to realise is

3:25

that the way that you experience

3:27

yourself in the world doesn't

3:30

really pull back the veil of

3:32

how the brain is doing what it does . That's

3:35

important , because the way it feels

3:37

to us is

3:39

that we see things in the world , we

3:42

hear things in the world, they

3:44

trigger things inside us , inside

3:47

the brain , inside

3:49

the body , and then we

3:52

react to those things . So maybe

3:54

somebody scowls at us in a meeting

3:56

or they use a tone of voice that we're

3:58

not particularly happy with . The

4:02

thought is that that , or the way

4:04

you experience it , is that that triggers in us

4:06

emotions or thoughts

4:08

, and the thoughts and emotions might battle

4:11

for control of behavior . So

4:13

are you going to ask someone, are

4:15

you feeling okay ? Are you just going to react

4:18

with a snippy comment ? Are

4:20

you just going to avoid the person ? Are you just going

4:22

to ignore it ? These all seem to us

4:24

like, some of them

4:27

seem like knee-jerk reactions , others

4:29

seem like more considered reactions , but

4:32

to us it feels like there's a stimulus

4:34

out there . We process

4:36

that stimulus , then we react to it . That

4:39

is not how the brain is structured . That

4:41

is not how the brain works to

4:44

the best of our knowledge . So

4:46

science is always ongoing and it's

4:48

always revising its understanding based

4:51

on new discoveries and so on . But to

4:53

our best available understanding from

4:56

anatomy , from brain evolution

4:58

, from understanding about

5:01

the energetics

5:03

and metabolics of your body and how that works

5:05

, your brain is actually

5:07

not reacting to things in the

5:09

world . It's predicting

5:11

. And what I mean by that

5:14

is literally that

5:16

if we were to hold

5:18

constant , like , say , we take this moment

5:21

and we freeze it in time , your

5:24

brain is making

5:26

guesses about

5:28

what's going to happen next and

5:31

starting to prepare to

5:34

act in a particular way , to

5:37

experience the

5:39

world and itself

5:42

in a particular way . And when I say

5:44

it's preparing , what I mean

5:46

is it's starting to change the firing of its

5:48

own neurons in anticipation . So

5:51

it's making a guess and

5:53

that guess is based on priors

5:55

, it's based on past experiences that are similar

5:58

to the present in some way , and

6:00

it's not making one guess , it's making like a

6:02

sample of guesses , like a handful of guesses

6:05

, and then

6:07

the sensory signals from

6:09

the world and from the body

6:11

make their way to the brain

6:13

. So sights and sounds and smells , and

6:15

you know tugs and gurgles and whatever you

6:18

know , they make their way to the brain and

6:20

those incoming sense

6:22

data basically

6:24

confirm or modify the predictions

6:27

. So , really

6:30

, what's going on is this very complicated

6:33

guessing game whereby

6:35

the brain is attempting to prepare

6:39

in advance , to anticipate what's

6:41

going to happen and prepare in advance

6:43

, and then it waits

6:46

for the information to

6:48

either confirm those guesses or to change

6:50

them . And this is

6:53

a much more efficient

6:56

and metabolically effective

6:58

way of regulating

7:00

a body and dealing

7:02

with an ever-changing world . And

7:05

the reason why it's more metabolically efficient

7:07

is and I should say , metabolic

7:09

efficiency is like the key to

7:11

everything . Right , it's a key to everything

7:13

. It's a key to health and well-being

7:16

and happiness and productivity in

7:18

your life . So we're not going to reduce everything

7:20

to metabolism , but metabolic efficiency

7:23

is a key feature

7:25

of your brain and your body that

7:27

you're probably not very aware of , but that has

7:29

a huge impact on what your life

7:31

is like . And the

7:34

one other thing to keep in mind here is that

7:36

the reason why

7:39

or a reason why , maybe not the only

7:41

reason, why it's important

7:43

that things work this way is because if

7:46

your brain can't make a guess about

7:49

what's going to happen next , there

7:51

is an unlimited number of things that

7:53

can happen , and that

7:55

uncertainty is extremely

7:58

expensive . It's

8:00

also extremely uncomfortable . So

8:04

uncertainty, really

8:06

what a brain is opting for is

8:09

sort of bounded uncertainty . You can't

8:11

have boundless uncertainty , because no

8:13

animal , including humans , can function

8:15

like that .

8:17

Yeah , and essentially what we're

8:19

trying to do is to survive . So

8:21

the protection of that energy

8:24

and that metabolic load

8:26

on us, we're trying to reduce that

8:28

so that the brain can do all of the

8:31

things that, the other things

8:33

it needs to do ?

8:34

I think it's important to understand that the brain

8:36

is not attempting to reduce the

8:39

metabolic load , because you

8:41

could reduce the metabolic load by just sitting in a room and not

8:43

moving . Sitting in the dark and not moving,

8:45

that's called the dark room problem

8:48

that philosophers argue about . And living

8:50

organisms can't do that because

8:52

they die . So the

8:55

goal here is not that

8:57

the brain is attempting to not spend

8:59

. It's attempting to spend

9:02

wisely and

9:04

to spend

9:07

efficiently . So

9:09

the brain can anticipate

9:11

the needs of the body and the

9:13

requirements of the world when

9:16

you're sleeping , and it can do it when

9:18

you're exercising , and

9:20

it can do it when you're working

9:22

hard on a problem , and it

9:25

can even do it when you're seeking novelty

9:27

. Like you know , you're seeking uncertainty

9:29

, kind of deliberately for fun or for adventure

9:32

. Everything in

9:34

moderation , you know . But the

9:36

point being that and in fact actually I should

9:38

just say in exercise it's

9:40

a problem sometimes , right , like if your goal

9:42

is to run the fastest mile that you

9:44

ever could , you know to be as fast as possible . You

9:47

probably want to practice running a mile again

9:49

and again and again and again and again , and you

9:51

get faster and faster and faster and faster

9:53

and you burn fewer and fewer and fewer

9:55

calories doing it , because your brain gets really

9:58

practiced like building a skill

10:00

. But if you're exercising to

10:03

kind of keep your heart healthy and

10:05

to maybe keep your weight in check

10:07

and whatever , you have to mix it up . You

10:10

have to do interval training . You have to constantly

10:13

be doing something different and maybe

10:15

something even unexpected . Like in interval

10:17

training you have a trainer who's calling something

10:19

out to you that you don't expect , and then you have to do

10:22

it for 30 seconds and then you do something else for 30 seconds

10:24

and there's this constant change . Because

10:27

that way your brain can't get

10:29

practiced at it , it can't get

10:31

more efficient at it . You're actually trying

10:34

on purpose to burn

10:36

as many calories as possible , and

10:38

it's okay to do that as

10:40

long as you replenish

10:43

, as long as you get enough

10:45

sleep , as long as you eat

10:47

healthfully , as long as you drink enough water , and

10:49

so on and so forth . It's the same thing when you're working,

10:51

if you're working in a new environment

10:54

, or you're working on a new problem , or you're trying to

10:56

innovate right , you're trying to . You

10:58

know you have to fail quickly and fail

11:01

often in order to really produce something

11:03

. That's a lot of . That's

11:06

, like you know , interval training a little bit . You know it's

11:08

like there's a lot of costs there and

11:10

so it's not that you

11:12

can't absorb that cost

11:14

, it's that you have to take it into account

11:17

. You have to replenish , you have to make

11:19

sure that if

11:21

you're going to spend , spend , spend , you're doing

11:23

it in the most efficient way so that you're not being

11:25

wasteful, basically .

11:27

So I mean in terms of what

11:30

the brain does for us every

11:32

day, I guess , from my understanding

11:34

, there's a lot of stuff that it does

11:37

that we're not really very aware of

11:39

. It looks after all of

11:41

the systems within our body

11:43

, as well as doing the things that perhaps we

11:45

are more aware of , but , as you've explained

11:47

, perhaps you know , it's not even there working

11:50

in the way that we think it is

11:52

. So , in terms

11:55

of the workload of

11:57

the brain , do we have any

11:59

sense of how much

12:01

of that workload is dedicated to running

12:03

all of our systems in the background

12:05

?

12:06

Well , that's a good question , and

12:08

I just want to point out , though , to our

12:10

listeners that there's a, in

12:12

English we have this

12:14

way of speaking I've done it too where

12:17

I talk about the person and then I talk about

12:19

the brain , as if the brain is doing something

12:22

for the person . But your

12:24

brain is you , you are your brain

12:26

. That's where you - all

12:29

seeing , hearing , feeling , thinking,

12:31

is in your brain . When

12:34

you feel your heart beating , you don't feel your heart beating

12:36

in your body , You're feeling it in

12:38

your brain . When you see , you

12:40

don't see in your eyes . You need

12:42

your eyes to see , but where

12:45

the seeing happens is in the

12:47

brain . Everything is in the brain . Right

12:49

, if you pinch your skin or you take your pulse

12:51

, you're not feeling it, you know on your hand

12:53

, you're feeling it in your brain . So

12:55

the brain isn't doing

12:57

something for us . Your

13:00

brain is you , it's all I mean,

13:02

your body is you too , but your brain

13:04

is you . So

13:07

the brain isn't tricking us , it's

13:09

tricking itself . And why

13:11

the brain keeps itself unaware of some

13:13

things that I mean,

13:15

nobody knows the answer to that question . And

13:18

anyone who gives you a suggestion

13:20

for why - they're just making up a story

13:22

, nobody knows . But what

13:25

you're asking me is how much

13:27

of the brain's metabolic

13:29

budget is devoted to regulating

13:32

the body . And that's a tricky, it's

13:34

a great question , but it's a tricky question to answer

13:36

. And the reason why it's tricky

13:38

is that the

13:41

brain's regulation of the body , which is happening

13:43

24-7 , even right now

13:46

, as we speak and as our listeners

13:49

listen to us , everybody's

13:51

brain is regulating their body , coordinating

13:53

the systems and so on . The

13:55

thing is that that enterprise is not

13:57

separate from thinking and feeling and

13:59

seeing and hearing and so on . You

14:03

can't really separate the two and say

14:05

, well , this percentage

14:07

is devoted to the body and this

14:09

other percentage is devoted to thinking , because

14:12

they're not separate . You have a mind

14:15

because your brain is regulating

14:17

your body . The way that your

14:19

brain regulates your body is

14:22

by creating your mind

14:24

essentially . Everything

14:28

that you think , everything that you feel

14:30

, every decision you make, emerges

14:34

from exactly

14:36

the same neural

14:40

patterns as

14:42

the preparation

14:44

for your heart

14:46

rate to go up or down , for your lungs

14:48

to breathe more deeply or less , for

14:51

squirts of cortisol and immune function

14:55

to change , and the plans

14:57

for moving your body . It's

15:01

all really predictions

15:04

. The brain's predictions are the origin of

15:06

everything physical and also everything

15:08

mental . They start off

15:10

really as the same set

15:13

of signals that

15:16

then just are differentiated

15:19

and unpacked in different ways in

15:21

different processing streams in the brain

15:23

.

15:24

It's interesting when you talk to people about the

15:26

brain , because I think people just gloss

15:29

over stuff . I take the

15:31

view that human beings are basically brains

15:33

on legs, in effect . And

15:36

when you talk to people about their brain and you

15:38

say everything that you've ever done , everything

15:40

that you do , all these

15:42

issues around prediction , the

15:44

connection between your physiology

15:46

and your central nervous

15:49

system and your brain , it's all one

15:51

big system and it is

15:53

what you are - people just go

15:55

, yeah , okay . It's

15:57

almost like it's the significance

16:00

of it , it's almost like it doesn't

16:02

register, in a funny way .

16:05

I think it's because , first of all , we're unaware

16:07

largely of everything the brain is

16:09

doing to regulate the body . That's

16:11

by design , because if you were I mean

16:14

, just think about the last time you had stomach

16:19

cramps or where your chest was tight from having

16:21

a lung infection or something . When

16:24

you have something that you can actually sense

16:26

going on inside your body , or menstrual

16:28

cramps or whatever , you

16:31

have a hard time paying attention to anything outside

16:33

your own skin . Your attention is just

16:35

grabbed by the sensations

16:37

inside , and that

16:39

is by design . One

16:41

problem is we're not aware . We're not aware of all the drama

16:44

going on inside . Our

16:46

brains , don't make us aware of every

16:49

small sensory change inside our own

16:51

bodies . But what it does do is

16:53

it creates this

16:55

general feeling

16:58

which people call mood , or

17:01

a scientist like me would call it

17:03

affect with an A which,

17:06

these are simple feelings that are

17:08

always with you . They are like

17:10

a simple barometer of what's

17:12

going on inside your body and

17:15

what the state of your body

17:17

budgeting efforts are , so to

17:19

speak . You

17:21

feel pleasant , you feel unpleasant , you

17:24

feel worked up , you feel calm , you feel comfortable

17:27

, you feel uncomfortable . I

17:29

don't know if you've ever had the feeling where sometimes

17:31

the world just feels like

17:33

a hard place to be , or

17:36

sometimes things just feel like you

17:39

feel really in flow and everything feels

17:41

like it's clicking and it's easy . These

17:44

are simple feelings that are

17:47

directly yoked to

17:49

the metabolic state of the body

17:51

. Scientists can point

17:53

to brain regions where this

17:55

transformation is happening , but

17:58

nobody knows exactly how it's happening

18:00

and nobody knows why . But

18:03

it is , and

18:05

there are just hundreds and hundreds of studies

18:07

which make this link, it's really clear . Experimental

18:09

studies . So I feel comfortable saying this

18:11

, even though I don't actually understand the

18:13

mechanisms by which it's occurring . I

18:16

can point to brain regions and go well , it's

18:18

happening there , but more than that I

18:20

can't really say . However , these

18:24

aren't emotions , these are feelings

18:26

that are properties of consciousness . They're

18:28

with you all the time and oftentimes

18:31

we experience the

18:33

world in terms of these feelings

18:35

. And even somebody like

18:37

me who understands this can

18:40

, have a hard time sometimes separating

18:43

how I'm feeling

18:46

in a mood-related way from my

18:49

perceptions of the world . So you

18:51

know , yesterday I was having a tough

18:53

day, yesterday - it was a stressful day . What

18:56

is stress ? Stress is

18:58

your brain is preparing

19:00

your body for a big metabolic outlay . That's

19:04

it . That's what stress is . Cortisol

19:06

? Not a stress hormone . I

19:08

mean , it's a hormone that gets released in stress

19:10

, but it's also a hormone that gets

19:13

released when you drag yourself

19:15

out of bed in the morning , and it's a hormone

19:17

that is released right before you exercise

19:19

. It's a hormone that fluctuates

19:21

throughout the day , depending

19:23

on the metabolic needs of the body

19:25

, or really the brain's guesses

19:28

about the metabolic needs . So stress is just

19:30

your brain is anticipating

19:33

a big metabolic outlay and

19:35

my brain was anticipating a

19:37

day full of metabolic outlays

19:40

yesterday . And so to me

19:42

, I woke up in the morning and

19:44

I just was like , even before I got out of bed , you

19:47

know , I was like this is going to be a horrible day, I'm

19:51

feeling like the world is about to end . It

19:54

just felt . I felt really

19:56

unpleasant and just kind

19:58

of crabby . And

20:00

now , in a moment like that , I think to

20:02

myself okay , I really have to kind of grab

20:05

a hold of myself mentally and say

20:07

, okay , you're

20:09

having a body budgeting problem

20:11

today and you just have to take care

20:13

of yourself . So that means drinking

20:15

a lot of water , having some walks , taking

20:19

some breaks in between these

20:21

challenging meetings and stuff , because the world

20:23

isn't ending and everything really is okay

20:25

. You know , I'm just , I was just

20:28

prepared for a challenging

20:30

day , and so the

20:32

point that I'm trying to make here is that we

20:35

often take our mood to be an indicator

20:38

of how things are in the world , but

20:41

it's not . It's really

20:43

an indicator of how well

20:45

your brain is regulating your body , based

20:49

on or in response to

20:51

these guesses that it's making about

20:54

what the requirements are for

20:56

the day . And sometimes we

20:59

feel bad , like really

21:01

crappy , not because

21:03

something is wrong , but

21:06

because you're doing something hard and

21:09

you're draining your budget and you've got

21:11

to replenish , and

21:13

when you do that , life

21:16

goes more smoothly for you .

21:19

Just taking that a little bit further , you

21:21

know , of course at the moment we're seeing

21:23

quite a number of different countries

21:26

people suffering

21:28

from mental challenges and

21:31

you know the term burnout is a

21:34

term that's used a lot and certainly

21:36

was used a lot during the pandemic . What's

21:38

your articulation , you

21:40

know , from a neuroscience standpoint , of

21:42

the idea of burnout ? I mean , we've looked

21:44

at it a bit and it's a difficult concept

21:47

to bound and define precisely

21:49

. What would your articulation of that

21:52

be ?

21:52

Well , I think about burnout again

21:54

and I think about it in metabolic terms . So

21:57

the story that you

21:59

sometimes read you

22:01

know I don't know how it is in

22:03

the UK , in the US the

22:05

story that was in newspapers and

22:07

magazines and so on was that , you know , our

22:09

fight and flight circuits in our brains

22:12

were overactive and it exhausted us

22:14

and whatever and what have you . But the

22:16

problem with that story is there are no fight

22:18

and flight circuits in your brain . Those

22:21

circuits which are

22:23

located in part

22:25

in a part of the brain called the periaqueductal

22:28

gray , which is a midbrain area

22:30

, those circuits are for regulating

22:33

your body . They're not for fight

22:35

or flight . They happen to be driven hard

22:37

in circumstances where you

22:39

are faced with a threat . But

22:42

they also, we have experiments where

22:44

we show that using

22:47

very , very powerful brain imaging

22:49

like so powerful that the

22:52

images that come out almost look like an x-ray

22:54

of the brain . So we can see into

22:56

tiny little spots in

22:58

the brain stem and the subcortical areas

23:00

of a human brain . We

23:03

can have somebody do a task that's easier

23:05

than remembering a phone number and

23:08

we see changes in activity in those regions

23:10

, which track changes in heart rate and

23:12

respiration and so on . It's

23:15

not the case that we have these

23:17

circuits for freezing and fleeing

23:19

and fighting and so on

23:22

that are overactive . It's

23:24

that there's a lot of

23:26

uncertainty , and uncertainty

23:28

is very , very , very

23:30

expensive for a human brain , and

23:33

when there's a lot of uncertainty , the brain can't predict

23:35

well . And if the brain can't predict

23:37

well , it means that the brain

23:40

can't anticipate , can't

23:42

create an action plan with

23:46

a couple of options . It's

23:48

got to keep alive

23:50

many , many options over

23:52

a longer period of time , which is very

23:54

, very expensive . So

23:57

, if you think about it , one

24:00

part of the problem here is that even before

24:02

we had the COVID pandemic , we had a world

24:04

that was increasingly becoming uncertain

24:06

politically , economically

24:09

, health-wise

24:12

, and then there's the whole

24:14

climate catastrophe , really

24:17

. So you have all of that

24:19

. Then , on top

24:21

of that , you have

24:23

the COVID pandemic

24:25

, which is there is tremendous uncertainty and

24:27

real threat there for

24:30

a lot of people . So there's

24:32

a lot of cost . But

24:34

now what about the replenishing of that cost

24:36

? Because chronic stress , the kind

24:39

of stress that eats away at

24:41

your brain , basically like literally , almost,

24:44

we could say, is

24:47

not just the fact that you have a lot

24:49

of demand . There isn't

24:51

an opportunity to replenish what

24:53

you're spending , and so you're driving your

24:56

body budget into a deficit

24:58

. Basically , that would be the metaphor . So

25:01

are people sleeping enough ? Are

25:04

they eating healthfully , or do they eat

25:06

pseudo foods that look like food

25:08

but they're not really food , that are empty

25:11

in their nutrients ? I mean , I know I'm now sounding

25:13

like a mother , and my daughter can tell you,

25:15

like her eyes would be rolling back in her head when

25:17

I start to say things like this , but

25:19

I am actually speaking to you as a neuroscientist . Sleep,

25:23

healthful eating, enough protein

25:25

? Are you exercising

25:28

enough ? Are you going out for walks

25:30

? These are actually things that matter

25:33

a lot to the ease with which

25:35

your brain can manage your

25:37

body , and so sleep is

25:39

like, you could cure half

25:41

of the problems that people experience

25:43

if they could just get enough sleep . We

25:46

have in the developed world

25:49

we've created a cultural

25:51

environment that makes

25:54

it very , very easy for people to

25:57

drive their body

25:59

budgets into a deficit . And

26:01

then , on top of all of that

26:03

, you have the social aspects

26:06

, which I mean, what's

26:09

the most uncertain thing that you deal with

26:11

on a day to day basis ? Mostly

26:14

, it's other people , other

26:16

people . The best thing for a

26:18

human nervous system is another human

26:20

. The worst thing

26:23

for a human nervous system is

26:25

another human . I mean humans

26:27

- we are notoriously

26:30

unpredictable

26:32

, and so made

26:35

only more so by the kind

26:37

of political divisions that are happening

26:39

in many , many countries around the world , and so

26:41

basically , what I'm saying is people

26:44

feel burned out because there's

26:47

a perfect storm

26:49

of demand and

26:51

not enough replenishing

26:54

of what is being spent

26:56

, and that's how I think

26:58

about it . So

27:00

other people are a key part

27:03

of the picture here, yeah .

27:06

And we're going to pause it there . Maybe

27:08

it isn't the tense cliffhanger ending you expect

27:10

from a two-part drama on the telly , but

27:13

I think you'll agree it's worth pausing and

27:15

considering Lisa's last sentence . "So

27:18

other people are a key part of the picture

27:20

. We probably know instinctively

27:23

that other people impact our mood and how we

27:25

feel , but I certainly felt the

27:27

conundrum of other humans being the best

27:29

and the worst thing for the human

27:32

nervous system . Quite a showstopper

27:34

. And I think that I'll have

27:36

this in mind as I navigate life in the

27:38

coming days . In

27:40

part two , we continue the discussion

27:42

where we look at the world that parents are

27:44

navigating with their kids , curating

27:46

their experiences and gradually exposing

27:49

them to higher levels of uncertainty . We

27:52

look at the advice Lisa would give organizations

27:54

that have many thousands of brains within their

27:56

workforces , and we look

27:58

at how we can better understand why some

28:00

people are keen to reinstate the mental

28:03

models of the world that made them successful

28:05

, but which may not align with

28:07

what people in their teams and organizations

28:10

are looking for in this hybrid

28:12

working world . See

28:32

you next time . . If you'd like to hear future episodes of the DNA of work, just follow or like the show . You can contact us on our website advanced-workplace . com .