Conquering Fear with Alex Honnold

13:03Alex Honnold:Ooh. No. So I actually, most people who say they're afraid of heights, I don't think they're actually afraid of heights. I think they're afraid of falling to their death, which I think is totally fair. And that's what, like, I'm afraid of falling to my death.

13:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay, the comedian, Stephen Wright, said, I'm not afraid of heights, I'm afraid of widths. And I said, that's very insightful. Because if you're very high up, but you're walking on a broad swath of - Well, that's exactly, yeah, you're afraid of falling to your death. Right, but if something's narrow, that's when you're afraid of the height. Yeah. But the higher you are, isn't that more scary

13:38Alex Honnold:than if you're not as high? I mean, once you're more than 40 or 50 feet off the ground, you're basically gonna die either way. Right. So what's the difference between being 1 ,000 feet or 2 ,000 feet? I mean, in general, I like being really high.

13:48Neil deGrasse Tyson:Don't be so calm about that sentence. No, that's so pragmatic. But this is a next sentence. I know. Because it makes sense. You're dead anyway, so what's the difference? You know what? I used to be afraid for a very short period of time. I used to be afraid of flying. And I would get in the plane, and I'd be white-knuckling, and I'd be like, oh, my God, oh, my God. I don't remember the exact flight, but I remember when the plane took off and we were no longer on the ground, something said to me it's over so relax if the plane crashed right now you're gonna die most likely you're going to die so what difference does it make if it crashes from 30 000 feet because here you are not even 100 feet off the ground and if this plane went down you would die so it's the same thing so the psychology is he's taken away you he you have taken away this issue and minimized it because you've said it doesn't matter if it's a thousand or fifty The death is the outcome.

14:42So you've just made something that could be big and dramatic like Chuck's fear of flying and put it in its own box.

14:48Alex Honnold:Yeah, or you've just kept it. Basically, I have a fear of death. I have a fear of falling to my death, just like anybody. Yeah. I try my absolute best to not fall to my death. I don't believe you. Well, I mean, because if I honestly didn't care, then I wouldn't do any practice. I wouldn't prep. I wouldn't train. I would just show up and be like, screw it. You know, if it works out, it works out. You actually don't want to die. Well, so like, if you've seen the film Free Solo, I mean, that documents two years of direct training and prep for this one climb. But before that, I'd spent another six or seven years sort of building up to it.

15:14Alex Honnold:So I'm like, oh, I spent eight or nine years building up to this one climb. And then people are like, you have a death wish. And I'm like, well, if I had a death wish, I would have just gone and done it. I wouldn't have spent nine years training for it. You know, it's like, right. Okay, so is it fair to say - Yeah, getting drunk and saying, yeehaw. Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's the death wish. Yeah, but I was like, hold my beer, I'm going for it. It's like, well, that's the death wish. This one time, yeah.

15:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:Is it fair to say that your level of preparation systematically reduced your fear factor.

15:39Alex Honnold:Yeah, so I mean, if you take risk as sort of the likelihood of something bad happening, I changed my risk. You know, with the free soloing, if you look at the risk, the consequences are basically always death, but the likelihood of falling off is determined by how much you've practiced, how well-trained you are, the weather, you know, like all kinds of factors. So you're telling me,

15:56Neil deGrasse Tyson:you were so prepared for this climb, we should be less impressed than we all were for having watched you accomplish it.

16:02Alex Honnold:Well, I think that the impressive part is the amount of effort that goes in to the preparation. Which the film captured. Yeah, which I think does a good job of. No, I think the impressive part is the doing. Because let's be honest, are you still the only one who's done it? Yeah, exactly. Look at him. This guy. I swear to God. I don't know what's wrong with you. All this climate done f***ed up your brain. Because I ain't never seen nobody who has summited achievement like you have. And he's like, yeah, I guess. I mean, you know, whatever. I kind of did it. Very Mike Tyson about it. Like, well, whatever.

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21:07is it possible to be overconfident and then you sort of let down your cautions

21:16Neil deGrasse Tyson:and is that a part of your brain that you access and think about actively

21:21Alex Honnold:yeah you're definitely trying to avoid being i don't think i've ever been too overconfident i don't know other people might say differently i don't know but yeah Yeah, that's certainly something to avoid. I mean, the thing with free soloing is you definitely never want to overstate your, or like over, you don't want to exceed your capabilities. Right. So you have to keep a pretty clear-eyed view of what you're capable of. So you have to match your expectations

21:39Neil deGrasse Tyson:with your abilities at all times.

21:41Alex Honnold:Yeah, exactly. That's cool. Okay. So your planning, I'm guessing, is pretty much meticulous. For hard free solos, for sure. So what point is there when you think, I've overthought this, and all of a sudden these things start to spiral around in your mind? Do you get to that point, or are you disciplined enough just to keep it at my tickets. Yeah, it's about discipline, I guess. I don't know if I've ever been accused of overthinking anything. All right. No, I don't know. So it was interesting. So part of my process with freestelling El Cap was I knew that it would be the most consequential climb in my life.

22:11Alex Honnold:I knew that it would be the most important thing I'd ever done. I knew that the film, you know, had the potential to be great and whatever, you know, I knew it'd be a big deal. But I didn't want it to, I didn't want to put it on too much of a pedestal in my mind because I already knew that there was a big mental challenge involved and believing that I could do it and whatever else.

22:28Alex Honnold:thing you ever do. It's like, I don't really need added pressure because there was already, just the fact that it's a 3000 foot face and it hasn't been done, it's really hard. And, you know, I felt like that was enough. And so I was kind of like, well, I don't want to, when so actually, so part of my planning was that, you know, I had a couple of months in Yosemite in the springtime, which is kind of like the time to do the free solo. But right after that, I'd agreed to go on this expedition to Alaska to climb some walls. And that was kind of training for this expedition to Antarctica later in the year to climb some other walls.

22:55Alex Honnold:And so I was kind of looking at Antarctica has walls? Yeah, some insane, like a granite - Ice face? No, like granite teeth, like just giant jagged faces sticking out of the glaciers.

23:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:I was in Antarctica a year and a half ago.

23:07Alex Honnold:I must have been in the wrong part of Antarctica. Were you on the coast or in the - Yeah, coast, coast. Yeah, no, in the interior, there are giant mountains sticking up all over. Okay. It's totally amazing. You have 40 below zero, yeah, okay. Well, actually in the sun, I mean, it's chilly. But it's not that chilly. It's okay. You can climb barehanded in the sun sometimes. Oh, it's unpleasant, but it's fun. But anyway, the point being that I had sort of planned these other expeditions with the intention of making my Yosemite season feel like training for these other trips. And so obviously I was intending to freestyle a cap.

23:34Alex Honnold:I wanted to climb a cap. I knew that'd be so important to me. But at the same time, I'm kind of like, well, this is just practice for these other trips. And you know, it's all part of my year because I didn't want to put undue pressure. I didn't need to put extra pressure onto something that already felt like a lot. Do you have that point where you're mid-climb and you think, shit, I left the light on in in the bathroom and you've lost your concentration? Or are you able to discipline yourself? And it goes back to that point of discipline. Do you have a better example

23:58Neil deGrasse Tyson:than leaving a light on in the bathroom? No, you know, something comes out. Same thing, I left the stove on.

24:03Alex Honnold:I've left the lights on in the van. You look down and you see your van parked down at the bottom in El Cap Meadow and you're like, God damn it, I left the lights on on the inside. I've done that a bunch of times where your headlights are on and you're like, oh man. But then if you get down fast enough, you haven't killed your battery, so it's fine. So you're able to shut that down in your own mentality quickly? Well, it's not even that. So, I mean, with free-selling all cap, it took almost four hours. And so, you know, realistically, unless you're a highly trained monk or something, everybody's mind wanders all the time for four hours.

24:31So how do you, remember the Iron Man interview? And it wasn't until later in his career that he was able to get out of his own head and finish the race in first place. But it took that time to not listen to the sort of things about whatever it was going on in his head. So are you able to shut that right down?

24:50Alex Honnold:Yeah, I don't think it's a matter of discipline. I think that with hard free-souling, when you're doing something hard, you're just focused. You're just doing the thing. Actually, it's kind of akin to running. I'm sure you've spent a lot of time running in your life. Too long, yes. It's like if you're doing some casual jogging, you're thinking about all kinds of things. You're thinking about your life and your friends. But if you're sprinting all out, if you're chasing the ball towards a goal, you're not thinking about anything. That's a fair point. Very good point. Can I ask you this? Does this ever happen?

25:15where your brain somewhat bifurcates into two distinct consciousness where one is totally locked in on what you're doing, so much so that it opens up another part of your brain where you're kind of thinking about other things. Not like I left the lights on, but like deep philosophical issues that are running through your brain. You mean like, why am I doing this?

25:46Neil deGrasse Tyson:Existential questions. That's very funny.

25:47Alex Honnold:No, I mean, I think for me, the closest thing to a bifurcation like that is occasionally when I'm really doing something, like I'm performing, then you're like so on autopilot that it's almost like your body's just doing a thing. Yes. And you're not really, you're like along for the ride almost. It's almost like you're there for the ride. But I've never really experienced the other part where it's like, but some part of my mind is thinking about other things. It's just that you're just doing it and you're not thinking about things. It's like, I mean, I've always assumed that's kind of like what a gymnast must feel like when they're executing their routine or something.

26:15Alex Honnold:They're just like, their body is moving, they're doing a thing, they're not thinking about it, they're not. For me, the closest thing is like riding a motorcycle. I ride motorcycles. And so when you're traveling at 90, 110 miles an hour. You're focused. You're very focused. And the deal is, if I'm not focused, I'm going to die. But the longer you stay focused because you can't, the longer you stay focused, your mind starts to not wonder, but it starts to think about other things in a different level of consciousness. That's all I was asking.

26:47Neil deGrasse Tyson:So evolutionarily, fear is a very important feature in the history of our species because that preserves our species. It's like, no, I'm not going to do that. And where does that come from? Because everyone who said, that's a cuddly lion. I want to go pet it. If you didn't fear the lion, you were summarily removed from the gene pool. Yeah, by the way, I love those videos. Love them. So are you, however, the subset of people who are fearless and manage to not die actually have outsized impact on the advance of civilization. Otherwise, we'd all still be in the cave. So are you one of these people in our species that retained the level of fear that was genetically removed by other forces, but you're still there helping our species.

27:51Alex Honnold:I don't think so. I think that's overstating. I think that, I mean, I experienced fear just like anybody else.

27:56Neil deGrasse Tyson:I put you up on an evolutionary pedestal. But no, he was like this. No, let's not get crazy. I'm still scared of the dark. Yeah, he wasn't.

28:05Alex Honnold:No, I mean, I think that if anything, I've just had so much practice being scared. that I've gotten good differentiating, you know, what's well-known. I love that. Oh, I love that. It's like a common muscle memory almost. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah, we just get used to it. I mean, I think that most people who are really crippled by fear, it's because they don't experience that much fear. Like, they're not scared enough in a way. They haven't had to manage their fear enough.

28:26Neil deGrasse Tyson:Do you have a fear appetite so that you got to go see scary movies all the time as well?

28:31Alex Honnold:Or jump out of airplanes? I have jumped out of airplanes. But no, I hate horror because I actually think that the whole genre is stupid because jump cuts and startling moves and weird things, that's always going to startle you. That's designed to scare you. I don't really want to feel fear. I'm with you on that. I wouldn't intentionally go on. I just think the whole thing is stupid. As a black man, my life is scary enough. I don't need to sit and watch things.

28:57Neil deGrasse Tyson:If you don't climb a rock face risking death after a certain amount of time, do you get antsy? That's a good question. Go back and put your life at risk. It's itchy to climb? Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, you know we call that an adrenaline junkie.

29:14Alex Honnold:No, it's hard to say. I mean, I get itchy to climb, but like I'll go climbing this afternoon, but it'll be in a gym, it'll be totally safe. But I'll still be excited to go climbing. Yeah, you're excited. That's tapping into something there. Motivation. The motivation to do El Capitan, the motivation to do, and we haven't discussed it, the Taipei 101, which you streamed live on Netflix. So what's the motivation? because for me, I'm in competition with opponents or if a tennis pro or a soccer player, are you just in competition with yourself? Yeah, it's like a journey of self, I mean, I hate to say self-mastery or whatever, but I mean, you're basically just, you know, I spend most of my year climbing in the gym, doing like what I'm going to do this afternoon, just go, you train, you work out, you climb.

29:57Alex Honnold:And then every once in a while, you kind of want to test yourself or see if you're capable of the things that you wish you were capable of or that you want to be capable of.

30:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:You're competing against yourself. Yeah, I mean basically because we only just met but as best as I can judge You don't look like a publicity hound

30:16Alex Honnold:Well some would say it's streaming a building climb live on Netflix is about as public facing as it gets but That is a very good point I don't know ever but to be fair. I would have done it for free That's what I was gonna say However, you're not the guy with the camera. Yeah, exactly right everybody else. Yeah. Yeah, who's who's riding your eye there? yeah was it i'm trying to remember the uh the documentary if i recall correctly they were showing you as a little kid climbing everything everything in the house no matter what it was you were up on it you were never down on the ground yeah i'm seeing that with my kids a little bit now oh really if that's nature or nurture you know but very cool you got something wrong with the ground you got a problem with the ground i just well actually i i love i love the view honestly i love being up high i love seeing lots of things i like you know like getting on top of

31:02Neil deGrasse Tyson:Let me just throw in a little bit of physics here, if I may. Okay, as you ascend, you're putting energy into that ascent, obviously, muscle energy, and 100 % of that energy is what kills you when you hit the ground if you fall. Oh, wow. It's an exact match. You're storing up potential energy. Correct, correct. So that if you were to fall, it's that energy that hits the ground. You basically killed yourself with the energy that you use to ascend. That's kind of wild. I remember that if I ever fought. I'd be like, are we saving for this?

31:38Alex Honnold:On the way down. Samuel O 'Neill Tyson!

31:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:And on Earth, we have a surface gravity that gives you your current weight. What are you at, 160 pounds? Yeah, 160. Yeah, okay. Those were the days. I was going to say, I remember those days. Damn. He doesn't want to carry up any more fat than is necessary. I guess. So on Earth, you weigh 160 pounds, but on a pulsar, the gravity is, it's like a dense ball of neutrons. The gravity is so severe that the energy to ascend the thickness of a sheet of paper equals what it would take to climb a thousand foot rock face just to step onto that sheet of paper. Wow. So rock climbing would be very different on different surfaces, planetary surfaces.

32:30Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, pretty hard on pulsars. And a little easier on the moon and even on Mars. On Mars, you'd weigh 100 pounds. Or no, 46, 4. You weigh 60 pounds on Mars. That would really help.

32:41Alex Honnold:That'd be tremendously beneficial to my government.

32:43Neil deGrasse Tyson:That's excellent. A long time ago, I was in a mild car accident. You know, nobody, no blood. But I found it hard to get back into a car for weeks after that. Just, it was such an assault. on my concept of safety. I guess they say the same thing about if you fall off a horse, get back on the horse. So does this happen among rock climbers? If you made a mistake or you fall, is there a barrier that prevents you from recovering? Yeah, I believe it's how fast you can clean your underwear.

33:24Alex Honnold:I think there's probably two different scale sets. So if something happens, like say you're free soloing something and you break a handhold, like a very quick, immediate thing that sort of jolts the panic system, where you're suddenly like, oh, I'm flooded with adrenaline, I just had a near-death experience. There's recovering from that, which there's no real trick to it, I don't think. I mean, you take some deep breaths, you can pose yourself, you try to pull it together, and you just carry on. But then what you're describing, if you have an actual accident of some kind, though a small fender-penter is maybe not a real accident, but if somebody actually has real trauma, like they have a horrendous, like something happens to them, they need a surgery.

33:57Alex Honnold:I mean, that's kind of a different level of coming back from, and I've thankfully never really experienced

34:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:true accidents like that. I'm saying I felt it with no physical trauma. It was just emotional for me. So you're drawing a line between - Well, I'm trying - A recovering from something that had no real consequences to something that did.

34:12Alex Honnold:Yeah, I feel like emotional sort of mental recovery is different between like acute small-scale things and then big picture giant things. Right. I don't know. But I just think that the small-scale things, at least for me, I've just gotten better at with practice because you just have so many little things happen while you're climbing where you're like, wow, I'm really scared. And then you're like, well, what am I going to do other than just pull myself back together, take some breaths. So you voluntarily had your brain scanned? Is that right? I did. Yeah, actually a journalist had approached me for a science magazine about doing a profile basically around this brain scan.

34:44Alex Honnold:And it was with a woman that was doing research on high sensation seeking individuals, which I think in her case was more around drug addicts and things and people like struggling with addiction. but it's kind of the same personality traits, I guess. And anyway, so yeah, I had an fMRI and they looked at my brain a bit. They'd have been looking at the amygdala, so that sort of fear factor. And from memory, you kind of registered less than the control during the test. So are you putting that down to nature or is this something you've nurtured? Yeah, so in the film Free Solo, there's this very short scene where they kind of show the brain scan and it's like, oh, it's less than normal.

35:21Alex Honnold:And so I think most people watch that scene and they come away from it being like, there's something wrong with this brain. But with the long form version in the magazine article and all that, it was kind of exactly that. It's like, is this nature versus nurture or whatever? And I think that to me, the obvious thing is that it was more nurture. Not so much that it was nurture. It was basically just practice. I think what you're saying is that the repetition of what you do over a very long period of time blunted your amygdala response. Yeah, so the fMRI scan, you're in this safe metal tube. You lie there and you see black and white photos that are just random black and white photos.

35:58Alex Honnold:And they light up different parts of your brain depending on what you're seeing. And so some of them, there'll be a black and white photo of a handgun or something. That triggers fear in people or the fear response. But I was kind of like, I've spent my whole life getting deeply afraid for my life on cliffs. I'm kind of like, lying in this little tube looking at photos is just not scary. It's like, had they thrown a snake into the tube, it would have been freaking scary. Why did it have to be snakes?

36:21Neil deGrasse Tyson:Or even like a rat, you know,

36:22Alex Honnold:I'd have been thrown like a rat or like a big spider. You know, there are plenty of things that could have lit up my fear response for sure. But looking at black and white photos, not one of them. And to me, that's nurture. It's like if you spend your whole life getting scared, you just require a higher threshold. That's a good answer there. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Makes sense. Well, let's jump into your foundation, the Honnold Foundation. You like, remember the surfer Kai Lenny? Yes. He's well into environmental projects, just like you are with solar energy projects. So please expand on this whole foundation that you formed and does it have its roots in the fact that you spend so much of your time in the great outdoors?

36:58Alex Honnold:Yeah, I mean, I think that's exactly it. I mean, I founded the Honol Foundation in 2012, I think, and I was living in my van at the time and I started earning more than I needed. You were living in your van? I lived in my van. Down by the river. Well, down by the cliff. Parking the base of the cliff, yeah, for sure.

37:13Neil deGrasse Tyson:So you're living in a van, which is pretty inexpensive life.

37:17Alex Honnold:Yeah, I was living on 10, 12K a year or something. It's a pretty easy lifestyle, because you're literally only spending money on food and gas, and you're just driving around climbing full time. And the thing is that I was living exactly the life that I wanted. You know, I was super happy. I was pursuing all these climbing goals. I was, you know, basically I was living my best life. And did you stink? Well, I mean, there was nobody around to know. So it doesn't matter.

37:38Neil deGrasse Tyson:Because we have money on a van and food. He didn't stay on shower or bathing or soap. Yeah, but listen, they kept the bears away.

37:46Alex Honnold:Yeah, exactly. So I started earning more than I needed and I felt like I should give what I didn't need to things that mattered. And so I obviously cared about the environment because I was living in nature quite a bit. And then it basically came down to what could have the most benefit for environmental causes but also help human population in some way. Because basically I traveled enough through climbing that I was like, nobody cares about the environment unless their basic needs are met. Like when you travel to rural communities, that's always the case. That's a great point. So I was kind of like, well, if you're going to try to protect the environment.

38:17Alex Honnold:It's a misery to compare, to care about the environment. I mean, yeah, basically. And so it's kind of like, if you're gonna support environmental projects, they have to improve standard of living life. They have to help human communities in those places. And so that's why we've been supporting community solar ever since then. Fantastic.

38:31Neil deGrasse Tyson:Another quote from my father, it's not good enough to be right. You also have to be effective. And your foundation takes -

38:39Alex Honnold:Yeah, I think energy access is the base for so many different things. Yeah. That kind of - Worldwide too. Yeah, globally we're talking. So it's still going strong? Yeah, this year we'll pass$20 million in total giving. What? Congratulations. Way to go. Way to go, man. It's crazy because when I started the Honolulu Foundation, I donated$50K the first year. It sort of like went from me giving$50K a year to now, yeah, we've passed$20 million. $20 million. Which I'm like, oh, it's pretty cool. And by the way, once again, whenever this comes up, I feel it incumbent upon me to remind all of you watching that solar energy is still the cheapest energy on the planet.

39:15Okay? And in space. and in space. That's right. So I don't care what you've been told, you know, drill, baby, drill. It's not the way to go.

39:28Alex Honnold:Yeah, I feel the exact same way. You know, since 2012, I was like, this is obviously the future. Like this is, this is where energy should be coming from. Absolutely.

39:35Neil deGrasse Tyson:And you've got a podcast. Gives you some platform there.

39:38Alex Honnold:Yeah. Yeah. I host a podcast called Planet Visionaries. Planet Visionaries.

39:41Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah. Good.

39:42Alex Honnold:Yeah. There's others of like mind and soul. Well, it's a word about Rolex and so I'm mostly interviewing Rolex ambassadors and basically conservationists, people who are working, a lot of like marine biologists and divers and sort of, I don't know, like marine photographers and things like that. Yeah, they've definitely been supporting conservation and exploration type efforts for, I don't know, 80 years. Wow, super cool, man. Maybe 100 years. Way to go, Rolex, who knew? I know, it is surprising. But actually, it's been a real pleasure hosting the podcast because just like you guys, I mean, you get to meet all these interesting people who are doing incredible things.

40:14Alex Honnold:and so it's pretty inspiring because people who have devoted themselves to one niche and were restoring coral in certain places. And it's like, who knew that you could restore? Yeah, and what platform do they possibly have to tell people without what you're providing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, you ain't going on a tonight show restoring coral.

40:31Neil deGrasse Tyson:Well, good to hear about this, and it's not just you climbing mountains, it's you making a difference in the world. Not enough people think or feel this way.

40:40Alex Honnold:What's the classic, I mean, I love climbing mountains, but at a certain point you're like, maybe I should try to do something useful as well. Yeah, make something of your life. Yeah, exactly, exactly.

40:48Neil deGrasse Tyson:Well, Alex, thanks for sharing some of your day with us. It's a pleasure. And did you climb up the side of the road center to get - Is that how you got here? Is that how you got on the fifth floor? You got on the fifth floor. If you give me permission, I will for sure. I got all my climbing stuff with me. You gotta never leave home without it. All right, this, we gotta wrap. Well, we gotta wrap this segment. This segment, oh yes. Yes. That's right, we gotta get inside the man's brain. We're not going home just yet. Okay, okay. Coming up, we're going to reach out to our neuroscientist at large, Dr.

41:20Neil deGrasse Tyson:Professor Heather Berlin. All right. When we come back on StarTalk Special Edition.

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42:46Alex Honnold:I'm Joel Cherico, and I support StarTalk on Patreon. on. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

43:00Neil deGrasse Tyson:Gary, time to bring in our next guest. Yes. Which is one of my faves. She is without a doubt one of our favorites. Fascinating guest. Alex Honnold. Fascinating. Because all of the achievement and the modesty was just, the humility was amazing. We gotta get inside his brain. Let's do it. And that's what Heather is here for. Yes. Heather Berlin. Hello. Yes. Clinical psychologist. That's your, that's your, is that your day job? Clinical psychologist? Neuroscientist, clinical psychologist. Yeah. And crime fighter at night. You're at the Icahn School of Medicine, Mount Sinai, New York. I was born in that hospital, Mount Sinai Hospital.

43:37Neil deGrasse Tyson:Most people, most amazing people are born in Mount Sinai. You guys born there? They don't have that in Philly. Yeah, you don't have, you weren't born there? They don't have Mount Sinai. All right, all right. So tell us, how does fear manifest in the brain? And I've heard the amygdala. What is that? Which I've surely mispronounced. I'm just. The amygdala is a key brain region involved in fear, but it's this, I think a lot of people think that fear lives in the amygdala, and that's not quite how it works. The amygdala is more like the smoke alarm. It detects something happening in the environment.

44:18It says, danger, danger, something could be happening. We need to gear up. So then it activates other parts of the brain, which then decide whether we need to sort of act on this. So it's a trigger. It's a trigger. It's sort of an alarm response that can be trained to either sort of be louder or to kind of dampen down, depending on our experience. And so what I'm curious, because we just take it for granted that a lion with big teeth that's chasing you is something that you should fear.

44:48Neil deGrasse Tyson:But is that evolutionary? The portfolio of things that scare us, that's not learned, is it? So it's a bit of both. We are actually born, our research has shown that we're born with certain predispositions, evolutionarily sort of programmed, that we're more likely to be fearful of certain things like spiders or heights, right, because of our history and our interaction with them than we are to say of, you know, electrical sockets. Right. Oh, because electrical sockets are modern and we didn't have a chance to evolve. Right. Being afraid. Oh, okay. That's why all my kids have Afros.

45:32Neil deGrasse Tyson:Wait, so that's an interesting point. If we wanted evolution to continue to work, you would just let kids put stuff in the socket, and they would die, and those who did would die. They would remove from the gene pool. Those who watched the others die would learn. Would live. And that would be whatever. We would be feeding the amygdala of what you should be afraid of. Right. So, I mean, there's a bit of both, though, because you can also learn fears, right, By either watching something happen to someone else or having an experience yourself, let's say you get into a bad car accident, you might start to fear that.

46:07So you have lived experience, which can program, and then you also have kind of pre-installed predispositions to be more likely to be fearful of these things that we've learned from our past.

46:17Neil deGrasse Tyson:Okay. But do you get a point where fear can almost paralyze or does paralyze a person? I mean, fear can be maladaptive. Not literally paralyze. It just prevents you from reacting. So there's a healthy amount of fear. And you don't want too little, you don't want too much. Too much, and if you freeze and you can't respond or run, let's say, from the tiger, you're dead. But if you're not afraid enough, you're dead. So it's this middle ground that is really the healthy fear. And then we get into psychological disorders. Sometimes it's too little or too much, and that's where the problems start to arise.

46:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:How much do we need people in modern society who are fear-resistant? and there are people who might don't fear getting arrested. I mean, there's the bad side of this curve. People who don't fear repercussions for wrongdoings. That's right. And that's because, frankly, I'm made of Teflon. Well, I mean, when you look at it, if you look at population genetics, there's things that remain in the population because it's an adaptive niche, right? So if everyone's playing by the rules, it's actually adaptive for those to be outside that to be more risk-taking risk-takers and so we find that genetically speaking there's a certain gene that codes for people who are more risk-averse but also who take more risks and there's niches within the population for both those people to have an advantage now if everyone like once you get past a certain amount you know percentage of the population then it becomes maladaptive so it kind of like we work together as a whole organism, if you think of us as a population, to keep a certain amount of risk takers because that's adaptive for us as a society.

47:59They're the ones who are going to look and go a little further and explore.

48:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Right, because I said in the first segment, because it made sense to me, not because I researched it the way you have, that we need some risk takers that remain among us lest we all still be living in the cave. Absolutely, exactly. So it's actually adaptive for there to be certain people out there who are more likely to take risks. Right. For the benefit of us all. For the benefit of us all. Exactly. They're the ones who are going to taste that fruit and see if it's poison or not. Right. Exactly. As the head swells up. If you're not already this person that would go and do something adventurous, how do you sort of push your own envelope when it comes to fear?

48:40Are there techniques and skills? Absolutely. So something that I kind of prescribe to patients, especially people who are risk-averse as well, so they kind of are avoiding things too much, is to kind of take these micro risks where your brain is just making predictions all the time about what it expects. And you have to kind of change this algorithm. And you do that by training it, by actually being a little uncomfortable, letting yourself, you know, do it where it's not overwhelming, where you're flooding. It's called flooding, where it's just too much. But you feel a little uncomfortable and your brain starts, and then nothing bad happens.

49:13Your brain starts to learn, okay, you know, discomfort doesn't mean danger.

49:18Neil deGrasse Tyson:In that case, it's not justified. Right. Let's say you're afraid of taking elevators. Maybe you just, I say, okay, you're going to take just the elevator one floor and get off. I know it's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to feel, but after that, you're like, oh, nothing bad happened. The brain starts to change its prediction and that alarm response, the amygdala, it starts to go down. And that's how you gradually train yourself. And if you take someone like rock climbing or free soloing, where you don't just start out climbing El Capitan. You're doing it little micro risks over and over where every time you do it, you feel a little bit safer and a little bit safer.

49:52And then you build up to these things where, you know, you expand the comfort zone. Yes. What happens in the brain when the fear becomes irrational? And then what do you do to deal with that?

50:05Neil deGrasse Tyson:We like fear of the number 13. Yes. Trichidekaphobia. That's a phobia. Just phobias. A phobia in general. So it becomes irrational. You have to kind of attack it from both ends, like top down, bottom up. So the bottom up is you kind of have to train, you have to embody it. You have to actually do the things, like let the number 13 sit there and, you know, you still do the thing you're afraid to do because the number 13 is there, or whatever it may be. And then nothing bad happens. It starts to train the brain at a sort of unconscious level. But then there's the top down where you can, it's called cognitive reframing.

50:37So you think of things in a slightly different way. So let's say you're afraid of something, the heart is racing, you're thinking, oh my God, I'm panicking, something bad's going to happen. You reframe it and say, you know what, my body is preparing for action. You know, this isn't such a bad thing. I can still do things even if I'm feeling afraid if you reframe it in that way. So there's a cognitive aspect to it and then there's the sort of just behaviorally you have to keep doing it over and over again to teach your brain not to fear it. And over time, the fear goes down.

51:04Neil deGrasse Tyson:This sounds like what a psychologist would help a person to achieve. But in the future, the future of neuroscience seems to me, you just go in there and nip-tuck a few neurons, and then the symptoms go away like this. Is that the future of your field? There are some, and even with drugs, that you can sort of unlearn. So fear is about association. You associate something, a stimulus, with it's fearful. You can pull apart that association with certain drugs. So you train someone to fear, you know, like Pavlov's dogs can be trained to hear the bell and saliva starts coming. You can train people to fear something, let's say a white rabbit, right?

51:42And then you can unpair that with certain drugs. I don't think it's dramatic as you have to go in with certain neural implants. Ultimately, though, the fear circuits we understand so well that we could potentially go in there.

51:54Neil deGrasse Tyson:Admit it. That's what you really want to do in people's brains. I do like manipulating people's brains. So when Alex was talking about, you know what, if I fall from 50 feet, it's the same as falling from 1 ,000 feet. How is he dealing with that fear aspect? And how does he cognitively arrange himself? Yeah, that's a really good question. So that's something that I call controlled surrender. So basically, and I used to actually also, you had mentioned a fear of flying. I used to have a fear of flying. And the way that I got over it, it's not like knowing the statistics cognitively and all that.

52:24None of that. It's a feeling, right? And it comes up from. So when I finally, it's acceptance. Okay, when I get in the plane, I have no control. It's letting go. I don't have control. And if this plane goes down, I'm going to die. And once you fully accept that, the fear starts to go down. Because it's the holding on of control that actually is creating the anxiety. But once you just accept it, and Buddhists and mystics and all, the Stoics have said this.

52:50Neil deGrasse Tyson:And there's that Christian prayer, which is, God give me the power to change the things I can and to accept the things I can't. Exactly. That's the soul of this. Yes. Which is why I'm drunk on every flight. But this is, I mean, with Alex, like he, you know, once he passes, let's say whatever it was, 50 feet, there's an acceptance. No matter what, if I fall, I'm going to die. And once you accept it, it kind of calms the fear circuit. I said it kind of made it smaller, less of a threat. Yes. To allow it to just be in your head and start to eat away at you. So I was a geek kid, and I would always have data override my feelings.

53:29Neil deGrasse Tyson:I could do it like that. The plane is shaking. I said, no, I know how many planes fall out of the sky, and it's this little, and it had this many flights. So you were able to, like, cognitive your way out. Well, that's the top-down. You must have very strong top-down processing that you can— Yeah, very good prefrontal cortex. That's the part of the brain that's involved in that. That's the part right here? Yeah, right in front above the eyes. that you could, and sometimes control like that is really good. Like we need that, right? To override. But other times, like with Alex, once he's trained so well and his kind of body and brain know what to do, when you start putting in that top down, you start becoming too consciously aware and thinking too much, it messes you up.

54:09Right. Because the training, and then you actually, once you've trained like to perform at your best, you actually have to stop trying so hard. You have to let go. It's almost like your body knows better than your thought process. Than your conscious brain. So is that what's going on in professional athletes? It's not even just athletes, musicians, surgeons. They've trained to the level that they don't have to think about it. And in fact, if they start to think about it, because consciousness is very good at certain things, but has a limited capacity. The unconscious, it's so large. If you start to consciously think about it, it kind of messes up the flow of things.

54:48Like if you had to think about how am I walking and balancing at the same time and all that, it wouldn't work as well. Or when you're a professional athlete, what angle am I going to hit that ball? It will mess you up. So once you've trained, the training lives in your neural circuits. And what your job is— It's what people call muscle memory.

55:06Neil deGrasse Tyson:Muscle memory, yeah. Absolutely. So letting go isn't chaos. It's actually trusting the control you've already built in. And once you have, your whole job is to not think about it. because when you start to infuse that top-down processing, while it's good in some cases, in those particular cases, it can be detrimental. So is it kind of like you've actually trained these neurological pathways to fire in a certain way, and then if you just let them do it, then they'll just do it? Pretty much, yeah, pretty much. And we've seen that even just with patients with brain damage. This one patient, he actually had his hippocampus, the part of the brain having to do with long-term memories.

55:46was completely damaged. And so he couldn't even hold consciousness from one minute to the next. He would forget. So every minute he felt like, I'm just waking up now. He had a diary. I'm waking up now. I'm just waking up now. And so he was in an institution. He couldn't function. But he was a pianist. And if they could get him to start playing the music, he could play an entire beautiful piece through all the way to the end. Because it was a different part of his brain. And once you activated that part of the brain, or with Alzheimer's patients, if you get them to start, they can't even speak at a certain point.

56:17You get them to start singing a song from their era of their childhood or happy birthday, they can suddenly sing the whole thing to completion.

56:24Neil deGrasse Tyson:So that reminds me, we interviewed Daniel Levitin, who he was a musician and a neuroscientist, and he wrote a whole book on how music just manifests differently in your brain and how anything sort of rhythmic changes what would otherwise be manifesting if it was not rhythmic or was not serenaded by music. And fascinating. Music is really powerful, and it's related to language as well, and it's how we remember things, right, with rhythm and dance. And so it goes very deep to our evolutionary roots as well. But the thing about— Especially since every culture has some musical tradition. Yes. Yeah, and before we could write things down, the way we remember things with song, right, song and rhyme and rhythm.

57:09And so I think it's deep in sort of our subcortical parts of our brain. And like I said, the prefrontal cortex is important for certain things. And some people who are too under control, they need more control. They need more prefrontal cortex function. And others need less to actually do their best.

57:25Neil deGrasse Tyson:So our guy, Alex, would you say because he was very comfortable in himself, it was balanced for whatever his desires and needs were. But for someone else, it could put their life at risk. Oh, absolutely. I mean, if you're too much of a risk taker without the training, you know, that's dangerous. If you overthink too much, though, on the other end of the spectrum, that can be dangerous too. And that also leads to anxiety. So the difference between fear is that something is in your present moment and it triggers this whole neurological response. It's actually happening. It's actually happening. Anxiety is just anticipation of a future threat.

58:02It's fully cognitive. And certain people who are just obsessing and thinking and worrying all the time, that's not adaptive. You've got to train them to actually turn that part of their brain down.

58:12Neil deGrasse Tyson:Now, did you put all this, I heard rumor, I heard tell, you put all this together in a TED Talk? Yes. And what was the title of the TED Talk? The TED Talk is related to, it's similar, the book I'm working on as well. It's The Fine Art of Losing Control. Nice. And it's about how to control the dial, how to turn it up when you need it and turn it down. Cool. So gaining control by letting go in a controlled way. See, my book would be called The Hot Mess of Losing Control. So when you say about dialing up, dialing down, if you have certain areas of the brain, you were talking about the hippocampus that was damaged in one patient, is there a way to circumnavigate that you as a person can control yourself with a dial up, dial down sort of scenario?

58:59Neil deGrasse Tyson:No, you need professional help. That's why you have to book time with her on her couch. I wasn't talking about me. I'm asking for a friend. Yes, exactly. Someone I know, I've heard of. He looks a lot like me. There are techniques that you can learn how to basically control your brain. Once you understand how it works, then we can figure out ways to control it. And everybody's brain is slightly different, right? So it's like everyone's brain is like a thumbprint. So some people need more of one thing. Some people need more of another. Some people, like I said, need more control. So we have to turn up the prefrontal cortex and there are techniques to do that.

59:33Some people need less and we have to train them how to turn it down. So they can be less fearful and less anxious.

59:39Neil deGrasse Tyson:Yeah, in terms of up and down, I was once at a funeral of a 17-year-old kid who died of brain cancer. And I played with him once when I was just a child. But there was a family friend. So I went to the funeral in a church with an organ playing. And they brought the busloads of kids from the high school. And they were weeping as they were holding each other. Very, very sad. And I started welling up. And I said, I don't know this kid. I played with him when I was three. So why am I crying? I'm crying because everybody else is crying, but I don't know him. And then I did the math on how many people die every day in the city versus how many people are born.

1:00:15Neil deGrasse Tyson:And I just sucked back up the tears, and I watched it anthropologically. Damn, that's cold-blooded. It's interesting getting insight into how your mind works. We were going to get an annexing break. That's what we're going to do. Hey, you should have just cried. Yeah, I just, I rationalize. I don't mind crying, but I want a reason for it, not just because everybody else is. Everybody has different defense mechanisms, and one of them is rationalization. I mean, not that this is a bad thing. I mean, it could be very adaptive. Yeah, it's adaptive in certain contexts. That's why the brain evolved these mechanisms, right?

1:00:50To be able to sort of rationalize your way out of it or intellectualize your way out of certain trauma, let's say.

1:00:56Neil deGrasse Tyson:You know how this manifested? September 11th. I'm four blocks from the collapsed buildings. There are people, adults, weeping, carrying their kids to safety, and I'm completely in control. and I'm, we gotta get my kid, he's there, let's load up the supplies, come out, and so, it's adaptive to be able to be in control when emotions are heightened and to train yourself, I mean, I don't, you know, maybe there were things that you've done in the past that allow you to have gotten to that place. Yeah. And what about this? Because I'm just the opposite. I am very, I am great in a crisis, but I think it's because I've actually experienced a lot of trauma.

1:01:37Right. I'm serious. Right. No, no, no. But you've trained yourself that this is a situation in which you, it's almost like this, you know, micro risks or micro fear, like micro over trauma over time. You've expanded your comfort zone. So normally what might stress you 10 years ago, you've had that much experience now when it falls within that space, that's your comfort zone. This is to say, though, I'm not, I'm not saying trauma is a good thing.

1:02:01Neil deGrasse Tyson:Everybody get traumatized. Too much trauma is not good, and that can lead to PTSD and all sorts of things. But the opposite of that, coddling, if you protect your children too much from any kind of feeling of being uncomfortable, that's actually not a good thing, and that can lead to more anxiety and inability to be able to cope in a threatening situation. It also leads to your kids saying stuff like, F you, Carol. Yeah, we got to land this plane. Do you have just some final reflective thoughts on what power we have over our own risk-taking? We all have much more control than we think we have.

1:02:42And I think it's really powerful to imbue yourself with that knowledge that you can actually make changes and you can improve, let's say, if you're afraid of things. Like there's science behind it and it works. People can overcome fears. That being said, as much as being able to control your brain and yourself can be really important and empowering, it's also just as important to be able to let go sometimes and stop thinking and just be. Yeah. And just have acceptance and be present and let go of control. Party! Time to party! I don't think that was Heather's message. Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Maybe I heard something that wasn't there.

1:03:21I say party, but just don't overdo it. All right.

1:03:24Neil deGrasse Tyson:So, Heather, will you come back when your book comes out? Absolutely. All right. Excellent. You're our conduit to the neuroscience universe. I love that. I put that on my business card. Thanks for coming back to StarTalk. Thanks for having me. Chuck, Gary. Always a pleasure. That's another wrap for StarTalk Special Edition. Neil deGrasse Tyson here. You're a personal astrophysicist. As always, keep looking up.

1:03:59Do you love hair-raising allegedly true stories about the paranormal? Then you should summon the podcast Scared to Death. It's the popular horror series with more than 60 million downloads to its name. And it's co-hosted by me, Dan Cummins. And me, Lindsay, co-host and also Dan's wife. Each week on Scared to Death, we share bone-chilling tales from old books and creepy corners of the web. and even some submitted by our listeners, all designed to make you want to sleep with the lights on. Think you can handle the horror? Tune in to Scared to Death every Tuesday at the stroke of midnight to find out.

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