0:00

You are only remembering the last

0:02

time you remembered. And what

0:04

this really means is that our memories

0:06

are incredibly susceptible

0:09

to alterations. Welcome

0:19

to the one you feed throughout

0:21

time. Great thinkers have recognized the

0:23

importance of the thoughts we have, quotes

0:26

like garbage in, garbage out,

0:28

or you are what you think, ring

0:30

true, and yet for many of

0:32

us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower

0:35

us. We tend toward negativity, self

0:37

pity, jealousy, or fear.

0:40

We see what we don't have instead of what we

0:42

do. We think things that hold us

0:44

back and dampen our spirit. But

0:47

it's not just about thinking. Our

0:49

actions matter. It takes conscious,

0:51

consistent, and creative effort to make

0:53

a life worth living. This podcast

0:56

is about how other people keep themselves moving

0:58

in the right direction, how they feed

1:00

their good wolf. Thanks

1:16

for joining us on this episode. We

1:18

have Ella Francis Sanders and

1:20

internationally best selling author

1:22

and illustrator of three books. Her

1:25

third book, which Ella and Eric discussed

1:27

today, is Eating the Sun, Small

1:29

Musings on a Vast Universe. It

1:32

was the recipient of the two thousand nineteen

1:34

Whirling Prize for Prose and has been

1:36

translated into many languages. Hi,

1:39

Ella, welcome to the show. Hi thank

1:41

you for having me. I am really happy

1:43

to have you on. We are going to discuss,

1:45

among other things, your latest book called

1:47

Eating the Sun, small musings

1:50

on a vast universe. But before

1:52

we do that, we'll start, like we always do, with the parable.

1:55

There is a grandfather who's talking

1:57

with his grandson. He says, in life, there are

1:59

two wolves side of us that are always

2:01

at battle. What is a good wolf, which

2:03

represents things like kindness and bravery

2:06

and love, and the other is a bad

2:08

wolf, which represents things like greed

2:10

and hatred and fear. And the grandson

2:12

stops and he thinks about it for a second, and he looks up

2:15

at his grandpa says, well, grandfather, which

2:17

one wins? And the grandfather

2:19

says, the one you feed. So

2:21

I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable

2:24

means to you in your life and in the work

2:26

that you do. So I

2:29

think about this like a

2:32

type of conversation, a

2:34

very ongoing conversation, And this would

2:36

be a conversation between me and

2:39

these wolves,

2:41

and it would be the kind of conversation

2:44

that you can't pick up

2:46

exactly where you left it, and

2:50

this then extends into feeling like the

2:53

wolves have moved from where you lost

2:56

saw them or heard them,

2:58

and they've gone off to con room something

3:01

without you. So in

3:03

my little image of this, I go and I

3:06

find the walls, and I have to sit them down and

3:08

explain them that I need to do things today

3:11

and tell them what those things are. So

3:14

that's kind of what it played out as a little

3:16

scene in my head. And then in

3:18

terms of work and life,

3:21

I think that feeding

3:24

of the wolves

3:26

um is choosing.

3:30

I think about it as choosing possibility

3:32

over panic, because

3:34

for me, the kind of largest

3:37

parts of those two walls are probably fear

3:39

and anxiety, a kind of flight

3:42

response to a lot of triggers. And

3:44

then the antithesis of that

3:47

this good wolf would be. I found

3:49

it very difficult to think about the right words for it, but

3:51

it's sort of like an awareness

3:53

or a belief in my kind of human

3:57

weight and human substance,

4:00

and I guess the ability to find myself

4:02

convincing sort of I'm convincing to myself

4:05

in a myriad of ways. I

4:07

love that the two things you said there that were

4:09

great is that the wolves don't stay put. I

4:11

think that is absolutely true. If they stayed

4:13

where we left them, it would be easier. But

4:16

they're always moving and changing, just like

4:18

we are. And then I love that sort

4:20

of comparing possibility versus

4:22

panic. Those are good flip sides

4:25

because they both reflect uncertainty.

4:27

They both reflect like, well, I don't quite know

4:29

what's going to happen, and so one way

4:31

to interpret I don't know what's going to happen is oh

4:34

bad, bad bad. The other is, oh

4:37

wow, look at that I didn't expect,

4:39

you know, like something came out that I didn't expect.

4:42

Those are a good balance, and I think a lot of us

4:44

are in these times. In particular,

4:47

I think that the

4:49

panic one is getting a lot of attention.

4:52

We're very focused on the

4:55

narrative right now is these are very difficult

4:57

times. These are very hard times. These

4:59

are child lenging times like we've never had

5:01

before. You know, there's a lot of that

5:03

narrative. I hear it everywhere I turn.

5:06

There's very little of the other

5:08

narrative this as well. But there's

5:11

possibility in chaos,

5:13

there's possibility in change, There's

5:15

possibility and upheaval, And

5:18

I'd love to hear a little bit more of that

5:20

sort of conversation. And part of the reason I wanted

5:22

to talk to you was that

5:25

I felt like your book is a really

5:27

nice balm for

5:30

this very small minded

5:33

focus on only human

5:36

affairs and only the human affairs

5:38

that are occurring like right now.

5:41

Whereas you know, one of the ways I think

5:43

to move from panic to possibility,

5:45

to use your phrase in general, is to broaden

5:48

out our perspective. And one of

5:50

the best ways I know to broaden my perspective

5:52

is science. Science is an

5:55

extraordinarily perspective

5:57

broadening thing. Right You start talking about

6:00

billions of galaxies and all

6:02

that stuff, and you're like, WHOA, hang on, I'm part

6:04

of something really big here. And so

6:06

that was part of what I really wanted to explore with

6:08

this book, was a conversation about some of

6:10

these bigger, more timeless things

6:13

that can bring about a sense of wonder

6:15

and awe and wonder

6:18

and awe also, to use your words

6:20

again, lead us back to possibility. That's

6:22

a lot to go on. It does overlap

6:25

hugely and alarming lye the

6:27

panic side with what

6:29

is going on globally, and

6:32

what's going on globally and really every

6:34

corner that you want to look in on every

6:37

stone that you're going to turn over. And

6:39

I think it's in part sort of

6:42

I mean, fearmongering is maybe a strong

6:44

word, but news

6:47

excites the kind of human

6:49

response in often a very

6:51

negative way. And

6:54

I was reading an article yesterday

6:56

somebody had sent me, and it

6:59

was talking about Norwegians living

7:02

in the north of Norway and

7:04

how they think about

7:07

their extreme winters,

7:10

you know, freezing temperatures, maybe

7:13

three hours of barely their daylight, and

7:17

you know, the way we kind of think about the winter

7:19

is, oh, no, it's coming. What

7:21

are we going to do? Will we be warm

7:24

enough? Will we be able to do the things we know

7:26

enjoy? And they're not worried about it.

7:28

They look forward to the aspects

7:31

of it that are going to be more challenging. They

7:33

think, oh, we can go skiing

7:36

in the dark, and we can go outside and

7:38

look at the stars every morning. And

7:40

that kind of got me yesterday actually, because without

7:42

realizing the last five

7:45

six months, you lose track.

7:47

At this point, I have myself

7:51

been feeding the panic

7:53

more even though we're

7:55

not moving around as much, even though we're not

7:57

engaging with as many people or

7:59

as any things and

8:01

in fact, maybe it is the staying in one place

8:04

part that gives it is that it's

8:06

it's almost when you're in one place that wolf has

8:08

you in its sites. You

8:10

know, it can see you all the time, it knows where

8:12

you are. You're moving in smaller circles,

8:15

and it is really hard for people

8:17

to think and feel outside

8:20

of what feel like very

8:23

monumental and terrible

8:26

things and those are happening

8:28

to them personally maybe or the happening to people

8:31

that they know, or they can see

8:33

them, watch them read about them happening. So

8:36

absolutely with this book, I mean it was written

8:39

before much of what is

8:42

going on was even a flicker

8:44

on the horizon. But it

8:46

was about making people feel

8:49

small in good ways,

8:51

in ways that maybe

8:54

push the ego down a little bit, or

8:57

yeah, slow them down, because unless

8:59

you are moving slowly

9:02

and relatively gently, you just can't

9:05

notice a lot of what's good. I

9:07

think, yeah, that is a very

9:09

true statement. Unless you're moving slowly,

9:11

you can't notice a lot of what's good. Absolutely,

9:14

So speaking of moving slowly,

9:16

that's a great transition. We're going to talk about

9:18

things that move very slow, but they

9:21

move, which are plants. Your

9:23

book is called eating the Sun.

9:26

That's the title and obviously comes

9:28

from the fact that everything

9:31

we eat is partially

9:33

made from the Sun's energy. So let's

9:35

let's just talk a little bit about plants. What

9:38

are some of the things in your book that you wrote

9:40

about plants that you find most fascinating. Yes,

9:43

so the title eating the Son

9:45

is also the title of one of the earlier

9:47

chapters. And I

9:50

think I write at the end of this short essay

9:52

that I think I say something like,

9:54

it's astonishing to think that

9:56

we've been solo

9:59

powered, solar powered

10:01

since the beginning of anything

10:03

at all. It's all solar

10:06

powered, and now

10:08

talking about solar power seems maybe

10:10

less than the last five to ten years, but it's a

10:12

new shiny possibility

10:15

for greener living. And

10:17

I thought writing this thing, no,

10:19

no, no, it's ancient.

10:22

Yes, and we forget because we've

10:24

got a lot of things that we are

10:26

only here because we can eat the

10:29

nutrients that plants

10:31

produce. And so if you're eating

10:33

plants, or if you're eating the animals

10:36

that have eaten plants, all

10:38

of it is sun because

10:40

they use the light to photosynthesists,

10:43

and nearly all plants do this. It

10:46

seems kind of I'm going to

10:48

lack the right word, but it seems kind

10:51

of not rude or a

10:53

bit inflated to presume

10:56

that we're kind of here

10:58

on of our own. It's not our

11:01

own making. It is plants. So

11:03

I could have written fifty one essays

11:05

about plants, I'm sure, and I

11:08

liked too. I didn't really explore this in the

11:10

essay, but for me, I've thought it

11:12

quite maybe poetic because not I

11:14

don't know, too strong, not too strong, but this

11:17

idea that every time we're eating

11:20

something or picking something, it's like

11:22

a story that's been ended. I

11:24

think I used the phrase stories cut short, because

11:27

all these things growing our stories, and

11:29

they would be part of other stories were we not

11:31

to, you know, harvest them,

11:33

eat them, kill them. Whatever it

11:36

is. Yeah, plants are astounding.

11:38

You've got a phrase in the book that I love, which is

11:40

we humans are incredibly shortsighted

11:42

compared to plants, which is great.

11:45

I mean, certain plants certainly

11:47

outlive us, they're around a long

11:49

time. And the other

11:51

thing that's an emerging field, or maybe

11:53

it's maybe it's not emerging, but I'm hearing a lot

11:55

more about it is plant neurobiology,

11:58

right, and and sotis in that

12:00

field have have sort of found out that plants

12:03

possess characteristics like memory

12:05

and learning and problem solving, these

12:07

really remarkable things that

12:10

we just don't attribute that level of

12:12

intelligence is perhaps not the

12:14

right word, but will use it for for

12:17

common purposes. But what are some of the

12:19

things that you found out that plants could do that sort

12:21

of stoked your sense of wonder? So

12:23

I think you're right. It's important to

12:26

distinguish between intelligence

12:28

and consciousness, and scientists,

12:31

of course don't use those two things interchangeably,

12:34

but plants do possess types

12:36

of intelligence. As a precursor

12:39

to the things that I'll mention about plants,

12:42

I think it's important to remember that

12:44

humans and plants work at very

12:46

different speeds. For us, you

12:49

know, signals from our

12:51

brain to our hand happen incredibly

12:54

quickly. Signals within the brain

12:56

fire fractions of the second for

12:59

something a tree, they happen

13:01

at something like, I don't know, a fraction

13:04

of an inch in terms of

13:06

this travel so very

13:08

sluggish compared to our modes

13:11

of these signals. And

13:14

I think that's important to remember because it

13:16

puts the plant intelligence

13:19

in a in a kind of context. And

13:22

then the other thing is that if you go under

13:24

the soil, you have micro rhizal

13:27

fungi, and these are everywhere,

13:31

everywhere, everywhere, and they have a

13:33

symbiotic relationship with plants in

13:36

that the plant can't survive

13:38

without the fungi, and the fungi need

13:40

the plants to survive because they don't

13:42

have their own chlorophyll. So one

13:45

of the more astonishing things

13:48

about this micro rhizal fungi in the relationships

13:51

that it allows plants to have, is

13:53

that they can effectively communicate

13:56

with each other. If you think about

13:59

different types of tree in

14:01

a forest, maybe one year

14:04

an aspen is doing better than a

14:07

pine, and it will effectively

14:09

lend or give divert nutrients

14:12

to these other trees. Trees

14:14

that are ancient and intertwined

14:17

have been known to die at the same time

14:19

because they're so bound together. I

14:22

think that sometimes giving

14:25

plants sort of human characteristics can be

14:27

unhelpful, but to a large

14:29

extent, I think it is helpful

14:31

to give things human characteristics when it's important

14:34

that we can connect to them

14:37

and care about them, because that's how we're going to

14:39

keep them. Yeah, I agree. I think there's

14:41

a tendency. People say, well, we shouldn't

14:44

anthropomorphize things so much,

14:46

right, give things human tendencies, which

14:49

if we want to be strictly scientific

14:52

in our understanding of other things, can get

14:54

in the way. But to your point, if

14:56

what we're trying to build as some sort of empathy

14:58

with other things, if we're trying to build some

15:01

sort of connection so that we care more about

15:03

them, that's the way that we tend to

15:05

do it. So I don't think it's bad in that

15:07

sense. And yeah, plants are

15:09

sort of amazing. I read a book. I

15:12

want to read it again because I do not retain

15:14

facts. We're going to talk about memory here in a little

15:16

bit. Things just sort of come in and out of my head.

15:19

But it was called The Secret Life of Trees. And

15:21

it's astounding. I mean, like trees

15:23

are communicating with each other, they are

15:25

sending signals via the roots systems

15:28

warning of predators doing different.

15:30

I mean, it's really remarkable in

15:33

the way that they are connected and

15:35

that they are together. You have a lovely

15:37

line in the book talking about how

15:40

plants and trees share

15:42

food and help nourish their competitors,

15:44

and you say, apparently for no other reason

15:46

than that. Living becomes much easier

15:48

when you're helping others rather than simply

15:51

ensuring your own survival, which

15:53

is obviously a beautiful idea that pertains

15:56

very much to our human realm of living.

15:59

Becomes easier when helping others. And it

16:01

really does appear that plants do

16:03

this too, and that you know that a forest is

16:05

a really useful place for a tree

16:07

to be. They don't do as well when they're out

16:09

on their own, no, and they

16:12

do much better when they are in forests

16:15

and ecosystems that are varied,

16:17

that have variety. A lot of what we've

16:19

done in our kind of

16:22

modern agricultural

16:25

and more generous word than the one I'm thinking

16:27

of being encompassing of a

16:29

lot of taking things down and ripping

16:31

things out and leaching the

16:34

soil of nutrients. A lot

16:36

of what we've replaced natural,

16:39

beautiful, well functioning ecosystems

16:41

with will be trees

16:43

of say, one species.

16:46

It can't work in the same way. It needs

16:49

the variety in order

16:51

to stay healthy for what

16:53

can be thousands of years, which is

16:56

something that you can think about in the

16:58

context of humans, and

17:00

a lot of times in the book, what I'm saying

17:02

something, and it seems to be a

17:05

comment about plants, or it seems to be a comment

17:07

about planets, or it seems to be a

17:09

comment about the use of language and science.

17:12

What I'm trying to notdge

17:14

read it into is thinking about

17:17

themselves, and actually it will relate

17:19

just as strongly to us. That's wonderful.

17:22

And I think the thing that I haven't said

17:24

yet that I meant to say earlier is

17:26

we're discussing your books, and

17:29

your writing is beautiful and poetic,

17:32

and yet that's only part of your books, because

17:34

you're also an illustrator, and there are lovely illustrations

17:37

throughout the books that this

17:39

medium podcasting simply doesn't allow

17:41

me to convey. So I

17:44

think, in addition to the to the writing, I

17:46

just wanted to say the listeners like they're beautiful

17:48

books, you know, the way they're written, the way they're

17:50

drawn, and making it sound like it's just this collection

17:53

of science facts and that is not at all what

17:55

it is. Thank you. That's very kind.

18:24

The last thing I'll say about plants, and you

18:26

sort of use this phrase earlier, but I really

18:28

loved this sentence, and all of this

18:31

leaves us entirely at the mercy of

18:33

vegetation. Without plants and

18:35

what they do, there simply would be no life.

18:37

It's interesting to reflect back

18:39

on that at one point the Earth was primarily

18:42

anything that lived lived on carbon dioxide.

18:45

You know, we did not have an atmosphere

18:47

of oxygen until we begin to

18:49

get plants, you know, until plants sort

18:51

of figured out evolution got to the

18:53

point where it could photosynthesize. That's

18:56

when really the entire complexion

18:58

of the planet changed. Or practically, Yeah,

19:01

absolutely, there's a kind of audacity

19:04

I think that we walk

19:06

about with because we are at the mercy

19:08

of vegetation, and

19:11

when you look at how we behave

19:14

in our modern loud

19:16

ways, it's remarkable and horrifying

19:20

and sometimes amusing.

19:23

You have to laugh. I say this at

19:25

the beginning of the book, and it

19:28

may have come up later, but I it seems

19:30

like a good time to mention. It

19:32

is the sheer, ridiculous

19:36

nous of a lot of

19:38

what is happening and has happened and

19:40

has been able to happen. And I talk about

19:43

it in the context of I think scale

19:46

and being so absurdly

19:49

small as a person

19:51

compared to these huge,

19:54

unfathomable abstract

19:58

sizes and laws.

20:01

But it's so ridiculous that

20:03

sometimes the only two plausible

20:06

reactions I feel either to kind

20:09

of sob hysterically

20:12

or laugh. Sometimes

20:14

you just have to to laugh,

20:17

because a lot of

20:19

what we experience is absurd, and we

20:21

walk around thinking this

20:23

is normal, that is normal. Of course,

20:26

we go up forty seven floors to the office,

20:28

but it's just bizarre.

20:31

A lot of it. You can put on these sort of bizarre

20:33

glasses and then everything is usually entertaining.

20:36

Yes, yes, And that's back to that idea

20:39

of perspective that one of the things science

20:41

gives us is this astounding perspective.

20:44

In your book has lots of that

20:46

perspective, and I always think perspective

20:48

is interesting because on one hand, when we look

20:51

at things intergalactically

20:54

and time wise, we are the

20:56

tiniest fraction

20:58

of in anything, and

21:01

then if we go the other direction, we

21:03

start zooming in compared to an

21:05

atom, we are huge, we

21:07

are massive, we are monstrous. It's

21:10

it's so interesting that I can go either

21:12

way with that either direction on

21:15

that scale and have a very

21:17

different perspective of what I

21:19

am. Yeah, absolutely,

21:21

And you know, I don't know to

21:23

what extent. I've achieved this with the book,

21:26

but it's really hard for

21:28

most people to make

21:31

sense of these kinds of scales.

21:34

The numbers are unthinkably

21:38

huge, and you can give

21:40

things adjectives or diagrams

21:43

or long, science

21:46

heavy explanations, but a lot of the

21:48

time and you can understand

21:50

it on an intellectual level,

21:52

or believed you've understood these things on intellectual

21:55

level, but your body doesn't

21:57

really understand them at all, right,

22:00

nor is it designed to write. I've done

22:02

a lot of reading and studying unconsciousness,

22:05

and the consensus is sort of the way

22:07

that we view the world is

22:10

not in any way, shape or form the way the world

22:13

is. The way we view the world

22:15

is the way that our species

22:18

has constructed the world to make it most

22:20

likely that we survive in it.

22:23

So what we're actually seeing out there,

22:25

and what we're able to picture and imagine

22:27

and all that is not a necessarily

22:29

a very accurate picture of reality.

22:32

It is a entirely constructed

22:35

view that serves a certain

22:37

purpose, and that purpose is to

22:40

make us survive, which is

22:42

lovely and I'm glad it has happened

22:44

that way. And yet we get

22:46

really lost in thinking that

22:48

what we see is reality. I've I've got

22:50

this program I call Spiritual Habits

22:53

program, and one of the principles is we

22:55

don't see the world as it is. We see it as we

22:57

are, and we have so many different

22:59

filters on that we see the world

23:01

through. I find science and some of the facts

23:04

and the sort of things you do in that book really

23:06

good ways of illustrating like we're

23:08

not seeing reality. Like right now, I

23:11

don't know the exact numbers, but we are spinning

23:13

at a crazy fast rate. We

23:15

are hurtling through space at

23:18

an insane rate, and our entire solar

23:20

system is gravitating around.

23:22

We are in motion at breathtaking

23:24

speeds, and yet it seems like we are

23:27

just sitting here still. You and I am

23:29

in a conversation. Nothing's moving. Well,

23:31

I think the Earth rotates at something like

23:34

I think it's over a thousand males pera

23:37

in terms of rotation. I'm

23:39

full of numbers, so

23:41

I could have that wrong, but I believe

23:44

that we are our spinning.

23:46

It is alarming. And if

23:48

you sit and you try to think about that number,

23:52

you can't put those two things together.

23:54

Because you're right, We're still aren't

23:56

we We're not moving right,

23:58

you know, you maybe and think about how

24:00

fast a car drives or how fast

24:03

an airplane flies, And

24:06

it's just I think it's the

24:08

thing of recognizing within

24:10

the body something to be true or not.

24:13

I liked what you said about filters and

24:16

about kind of being

24:18

covered in them, partly because it would make for a

24:20

very interesting illustration to have someone

24:22

covered in all manner of filters. But you

24:25

don't notice when they maybe arrive,

24:28

and you don't notice because

24:30

the change can be quite subtle. You don't

24:32

notice how you're

24:35

thinking has been kind of shifted,

24:38

or why you're looking

24:40

at something in a different way.

24:43

And I think this bleeds

24:45

into quite nicely the question

24:48

of memory. You can kind of remember,

24:50

well, I thought about thing last

24:53

year in such a way, and now I think

24:55

about this thing in a different way this year. And I'm

24:57

not really quite sure how I got

24:59

there, but I did. So. I think

25:01

a lot of it is these little

25:04

kind of imperceptible journeys

25:06

or streets, because a lot of people do think

25:09

that they have things in hand, that

25:11

they know what's going to happen

25:13

next week, and I find that incredible.

25:16

I'm also weird because

25:19

you have no idea science

25:22

works in terms of laws,

25:24

and laws are the kind of what

25:27

if you like, So there are things

25:29

that we know happen so

25:32

that we can observe happening, and

25:34

then things like scientific theory give

25:37

you the why they happen. So

25:41

laws as we know them,

25:43

those things have been true since

25:45

the Big Bang. You know they

25:48

will. It's like sort of inertia

25:51

and science. You know that the idea that things will

25:53

keep moving unless they're given a reason to stop.

25:56

Everything that has ever happened

25:58

and that will ever happen. He's

26:00

a result of these laws that have been

26:03

around since the Big Bang, since

26:05

the beginning of anything. So it's

26:07

almost like they're in control.

26:11

You wouldn't want to call it fate, or you wouldn't want to

26:13

call it destiny or something like that. I don't really

26:15

like those ideas, but these

26:17

laws do decide

26:19

in a weird way because they've always been

26:21

there and we're kind of just milling

26:24

around down here thinking

26:26

that we know what we're going to have for lunch.

26:29

Right. There's a line that you use in

26:31

the section on the self, which if we have

26:33

time, we will get to But you say,

26:35

though frustrating, we cannot ever choose

26:37

or control the aspects of life that

26:40

ultimately influence what we say, do

26:42

or think. And that is a

26:45

deeply profound sentence because

26:48

it points to that

26:51

we think that we act upon the world,

26:55

but the world largely acts upon

26:57

us. And it's back to that idea of we

26:59

don't see the world as it is, we see it as

27:01

we are. All those filters that we're talking

27:03

about, that it's impossible to not see the

27:05

world through. All those

27:07

filters are the result of

27:10

all the experiences that have occurred

27:13

in our lives, all the things we've

27:15

been exposed to, the ideas we've been exposed

27:17

to, the conversations we've had. This

27:20

is a rabbit hole I don't go down too

27:22

often, which is the one about

27:24

free will. Right. I don't often go

27:26

down this rabbit hole because I don't find it a very useful

27:28

rabbit hole. But I think it's safe to say

27:31

that there is both more and less

27:33

free will than we think there is in a lot

27:35

of cases, and that it

27:37

can be profoundly disconcerting.

27:40

As you say in that line, it's frustrating

27:43

that we can't choose or control the aspects

27:45

of life that ultimately influence us. Right,

27:48

Like we're being influenced by the world around us,

27:50

and we don't get to choose what arrives. We

27:52

just have to do our best to

27:55

respond to it in a way that

27:57

is as skillful as as we're able to

27:59

make. Image. Yes, absolutely,

28:02

and it goes without saying.

28:04

But of course we have choices.

28:07

Of course we can move

28:09

in the directions we want to move in, and

28:12

there are things about the world that can make that

28:14

harder or easier. And

28:17

you can practice, you know, noticing

28:20

where the hardness and softness comes

28:22

from and alternately back

28:25

away from it or move into it. And

28:27

I like chaos too. I'd

28:29

like to mention chaos because people

28:32

either find this alarming to

28:35

a huge degree or reassuring,

28:38

and maybe there are some options in between,

28:41

but in general it seems to fall to one

28:43

of these extremes. The universe

28:46

is. This is not my opinion,

28:48

This is just the facts. The

28:51

universe is moving slowly,

28:53

but surely, I mean very slowly, imperceptibly

28:56

slowly, towards a kind of

28:58

ultimate chaos. You

29:00

can't put things back, and

29:03

a good example of this, because people don't really

29:05

know what that means. A good example of this

29:07

is kind of a mess or things

29:10

falling apart. So you can

29:12

push a pile of books or

29:15

a pile of papers onto the floor.

29:17

They will fall on the floor, but they're

29:19

never going to fall back up. This might be

29:21

too abstract of an example,

29:25

but there is innate chaos

29:27

about everything that

29:29

we encounter and live through. And

29:32

so this is something that

29:34

I do find useful to remember from time

29:36

to time because things can feel

29:38

out of hand right now, especially

29:41

for people personally, and

29:43

then more broadly, and you can kind

29:45

of think about the chaos that we create and

29:47

the chaos that we move within, and you

29:49

think about the kind of road of chaos

29:52

that the universe is on. It can't compete.

30:43

I think a lot of people when

30:46

things don't stay orderly

30:48

in their lives, whether that be their house or

30:50

their habits, or their kids or any number

30:53

of different things, we take it as a personal

30:55

failing. But the reality is that is

30:57

the nature of things. Things move from

31:00

being ordered to disorder. That's the

31:02

that's the direction they go. And

31:04

so putting order on things takes

31:06

an enormous amount of energy and and so

31:09

we do it, but we're not failing

31:11

when that order falls apart, because inevitably

31:14

it does. It's sort of like you know, I'm a big

31:16

proponent. I work with people on coaching on

31:18

planning your day right, and so we plan

31:20

our days. We we do our best,

31:22

and yet disorder, chaos, whatever you

31:24

wanna call it, intrudes constantly. It's

31:26

not that we're failing. That's just the

31:29

way it is. And I find that a

31:31

comforting fact because then

31:33

it's like, well, that's the way things are.

31:36

It's not like I'm awful. The distribution

31:38

of chaos often seems woefully

31:41

unfair, and it is, but it's

31:43

still it's a law of nature. So

31:45

let's talk a little bit about memory. I guess

31:47

everything we're talking about, to a certain extent can

31:50

be somewhat disconcerted, and this one is

31:52

I'm going to rephrase that from disconcerting

31:54

to what we are working on doing

31:57

here is unsettling

32:00

certainty. So we're trying to shake

32:02

loose certainty. And so if

32:04

the world is not already doing it enough for you,

32:06

here we are helping out. But

32:10

an area we feel very certain of

32:13

is our past, our memories. We go

32:16

that happened, This happened to me, This happened

32:18

to me, This happened to me. We feel very certain about our

32:20

memories but perhaps

32:23

we shouldn't. Perhaps we shouldn't.

32:25

Indeed, I liked your reframing

32:28

certainty. That was

32:30

good. Yes, this

32:33

chapter or essay was

32:36

given the title you

32:38

are only remembering the

32:41

last time you remembered. And

32:43

what this really means is that our

32:46

memories are incredibly

32:49

susceptible to alterations.

32:52

So, and to mention filters

32:55

again, the memories that we have

32:58

of the past all filtered

33:01

through the present moment.

33:05

This is because what the brain is

33:07

trying to do is provide

33:09

us with information to

33:11

make the good and useful decisions

33:14

in the present. It's not

33:16

concerned about what did happen,

33:20

It's concerned about now and

33:22

where you're going to go from this now. So

33:24

we have countless

33:27

memories, you know, boxes

33:30

and boxes of nostalgia.

33:34

Everybody does, and it

33:37

can be disappointing to

33:40

learn. And I was a little

33:42

bit disappointed to learn this too, that

33:45

you know, it's not like for a long

33:47

time, people thought believed

33:50

scientists thought the memory was like going

33:53

into a library that

33:55

was always there and picking up a book

33:58

off a shelf, and these books

34:00

were there, and you could take the book off and

34:03

you could look at it, and then you could put it back

34:06

that is not the case at all. So

34:10

this, yes, this um,

34:12

It comes back to the title of the chapter. Really,

34:15

you're not remembering the

34:17

memory. And this is the worst

34:19

bit for some people. The memories

34:22

that you pulled onto

34:24

the most, that you treasure the most, and

34:26

this doesn't detract from the beauty of those

34:28

memories, but the memories you hold

34:30

onto the most and go back over and

34:32

over and over, those ones are

34:34

going to be changed the most. Right, So,

34:37

in essence, what's happening you're saying is every

34:39

time we remember something, it's like we pull

34:41

it out to look at it, but

34:44

we alter it by looking at it. By

34:46

looking at it, we alter it, and then when we put

34:48

it back on the shelf, we don't put it back the way

34:50

it was when we pull it off the shelf. We

34:53

put it back on the shelf with the subtle alterations

34:55

we've made to it. And the more

34:57

often we do that, you're saying, the

35:00

or often we pull the memory out, the more

35:02

we alter it, which is profoundly

35:05

disconcerting. Well, it's

35:07

the reason why people will believe

35:10

that they have or think that they have a memory of

35:12

something happening. And it can be very, very vivid,

35:15

very colorful memories are often

35:18

accompanied by kind

35:20

of senses, you know, colors

35:23

or sounds, and it

35:25

will be wrong. They will meet

35:27

someone else who was maybe part of that memory, and they'll

35:29

say, no, I remember this happening. That didn't

35:31

happen. You know, she wasn't there at all. And

35:34

you can have a handful of people, are

35:36

room full of people with the shared memory, and

35:39

nobody can agree on anything, right.

35:41

It's fascinating, And there's a lot

35:43

of science to back all this up that

35:45

shows that, you know, our memories just aren't

35:48

as accurate as we think. Now I have

35:50

solved this problem by simply not

35:52

remembering much of anything. So what

35:55

I after reading your book, I've no longer

35:57

I used to look at this as a flaw. I used

35:59

to think it was a problem. Now what I realize

36:02

is I am just minimizing the amount

36:04

of inaccuracy that I introduced

36:06

into my life. If I just don't remember,

36:09

I can't get it wrong. Do you buy that

36:11

theory a little bit? But only because

36:13

I also forget a

36:15

lot. The other thing to know is

36:18

that you only have a certain amount

36:20

of room for memories

36:23

and for information, but particularly memories,

36:25

and so well,

36:27

there are information if you know, you

36:30

have to make room, if new things are coming

36:32

up, you have to make rooms

36:34

somehow. And there are

36:37

people frustrating me who seem

36:39

to remember everything that ever happened to them

36:42

in great technical detail, incorrect

36:45

detail exactly. So

36:50

so yeah, forgetting, I

36:53

am one, And you know, stressful

36:55

situations have

36:57

an effect on memory as well

37:00

on forgetting. I found myself

37:02

struggling more to remember

37:04

things will retain information in

37:07

the last six months. It's my entire

37:10

childhood that's just doesn't exist for me,

37:12

just not there. There's lots of different

37:14

theories on that we are nearly out

37:16

of time, and I can't

37:18

decide which place I want to take this. So

37:21

I think where we're going to take it

37:23

is we've talked a lot about science and the different

37:25

things of science, and there

37:28

was something at the end of the book. I don't say this to

37:30

be a braggart, but it's not often that I read

37:32

a book that I'm like, oh, I didn't

37:35

know that at all, Like I had no idea that

37:37

thing is, you know, like I've just done so much

37:39

reading, I'm old, I'm all these different

37:41

things, But in your book, I had

37:43

no idea of this concept

37:46

of the half life of facts. And

37:48

one of the things that I have been bothered by

37:50

in life is that science.

37:53

I go, Okay, science is

37:56

factual, and science is

37:58

it's good to base our decision and our

38:00

ideas on facts and science.

38:02

And yet I've gone, but science

38:06

changes. We now know things that a

38:08

hundred years ago we thought were a fact that

38:10

we now go, that's preposterous, it's not. And

38:12

so I just have always been like, how

38:14

much of what we know is really true?

38:17

And it actually turns out that there is

38:19

some study of this, that there is some

38:21

predictability to the way that

38:24

facts change over time. So can you share

38:26

a little bit about that, because I found that utterly fascinating.

38:29

Yeah, I do talk about this right right

38:32

at the end of the book. This is the last last

38:34

piece. And it's the last piece

38:36

for a reason, of course, because

38:39

I've written about all of these things, given

38:42

all of these numbers, and you

38:44

know, a lot of it's wonderful,

38:47

but I want people to get to

38:49

the end and know that, in

38:51

this kind of bizarre and

38:54

beautiful way, some of it

38:56

or all of it eventually might

39:00

not be true. So, and what

39:02

you're talking about is something called

39:04

science ento metrics,

39:07

which is wonderfully

39:09

the science of science. There

39:11

is a science of science, which is if

39:14

anybody ever needed some

39:16

reassurance that scientists are knowing

39:18

what you know, they study themselves. Uh

39:22

so, yeah, that half life usually

39:24

in science, what one would think of is kind

39:27

of in terms of radioactivity and atoms

39:30

and things decaying. And you can move this

39:32

across to information

39:34

into fact. So they

39:37

call it the half life of facts,

39:39

and it means the amount of time

39:41

it takes for half

39:44

of the kind of informational knowledge to become

39:47

untrue. Essentially, and

39:49

in the case of I

39:51

think I give two examples. I

39:54

think one of them is medicine. And

39:56

in terms of medicine, this this half life

39:58

is about four to five years, which

40:00

means that roughly half of

40:03

what we currently believe to be true

40:05

in medicine, about half of that in

40:08

forty five years we will go that

40:11

wasn't quite right, Yes, but the other half

40:13

will will still be holding up. And of course

40:15

we don't know which half, which makes it challenging,

40:18

but it gives us a sense of how certain we

40:20

can be about the facts

40:22

that we have at our disposal. Relating to medicine.

40:25

Now, yes, and you think about what victorians

40:27

were doing in terms

40:29

of the medicine, and it's quite

40:31

staggering. It's good that some

40:33

of these facts are moving on, it's yeah.

40:38

And then something like mathematics,

40:41

that half life is much much longer.

40:44

Yeah, Like I said, I find that absolutely fascinating.

40:47

I'm curious what the half life of

40:50

poorly conducted psychological studies

40:52

on college students are because

40:54

so much of my world is psychological.

40:56

And you're like, oh, okay, I'm reporting this

40:59

fact of a suddy that was done on eight

41:01

college students, and you know, the

41:03

half life of that is much less because

41:05

in that world there's a reproducibility

41:08

crisis going on, right, we can't even reproduce

41:10

some of these studies over and over and over again. So

41:13

the half life must be staggeringly short

41:15

there, if it exists at all. But I

41:17

find it really interesting that such a

41:19

thing exists, because, like

41:21

I said, I love science and I love

41:24

knowing things out there, and then there's just always

41:26

this part of me that's going, well,

41:28

how serious should I take that? You know, how

41:31

much do we really know? Is there a

41:33

place to look up the half life

41:35

of different disciplines? I would be fascinated

41:37

to know. I don't know if one, and

41:39

I don't know whether there would be because

41:41

it's not something that is routinely

41:44

discussed, but yeah,

41:46

if you look, you may find yes,

41:49

what is the what is the half life of

41:51

diet information? Another

41:54

area that seems completely fraught

41:56

with like what what do I actually

41:58

do here? Okay, well, well, thank you

42:00

so much. You and I are going to continue in the post show

42:02

conversation. We're probably going to talk a little

42:05

bit about the nature of the self, one

42:07

of my favorite topics, but from a scientific

42:09

perspective, not my usual Buddhist perspective,

42:12

as well as we're gonna use You've got another

42:15

lovely book called Lost in Translation,

42:17

which are words from other languages

42:20

that describe very common things

42:22

in our world, and so we might

42:24

we might talk about a couple of those, one of which

42:26

is I don't know if I'm gonna pronounce it right j s.

42:29

This refers to a joke so terrible and

42:31

unfunny that you cannot help but laugh, of

42:34

which I have told plenty of in my life. I'll

42:36

tell one right now. I'll give an example. What

42:39

did the fish say when you swam into the cement wall?

42:42

Damn that falls firmly

42:44

into that that fits. It

42:47

does, okay, you and I will continue in the post

42:49

show conversation listeners if you'd like access

42:51

to that, as well as an episode I do

42:53

weekly call the teaching a song and a poem

42:56

and an occasional joke. That's not a selling

42:58

point, I know after what I just said, you

43:00

can go to one you feed dot net slash join

43:02

and become a member of the community and get access to lots

43:05

of great stuff. Ella. Thank you so much

43:07

for coming on the show. I really enjoyed talking

43:09

with you. I think your books are are

43:11

lovely. The illustrations are beautiful, and they'll

43:13

be links in the show notes to them. Thank you, this was

43:16

lovely to talk. Thanks very much for having

43:18

me my pleasure. If

43:35

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