#104: Intelligence Beyond the Brain - Nikolay Kukushkin, PhD

29:14You know, we can probably tell based on the changes in our emotion and energy levels, there's probably a way to tell what goes on in the body as well. It's a reciprocal connection. They both interplay with each other. Yes, like biology recently, I don't know what's happening there. I thought it was a field that was relatively well understood, but it's just, there's just some incredible... There's so much to understand. and it you know we always make everything neat in all of the papers and all the textbooks it's all it all seems that you just you know you you you do an experiment and it works out exactly as it is on the page in reality everything in biology is just so messy all you can do is grasp at some straws of meeting in this constant torrent of chaos and try to cling on to some patterns but oh i i definitely don't get a sense that biology is well understood i get a sense that most of it us you know will never get a chance to even conceptualize what it means and thankfully we can pick out some patterns and just you know try to hold on to them as best we can that's my that's my feeling of working in the lab.

30:31Yeah, the more we find, the more we realize. Absolutely. Yeah, could not agree more. So how do you see this, this influence in like treatments for like neurological conditions or diseases, like rooted in mental or memory dysfunction? You mean how our studies might apply to neurological conditions? Yeah.

31:07Well, I think the deepest bottom line of our study is that patterns matter. Patterns matter on a surprisingly fine scale. They matter for surprising range of cells. And I think the more we know about our body, the more attuned we will be to the patterns of input. And that means patterns of input into our brain, patterns of input into our body. What's the most effective prevention of dementia? all the things that we already know. Social relationships, healthy lifestyle, walking in the park, fulfilling job, all of that we know makes you a healthier person. But we don't know exactly what that means.

32:09We don't know exactly what is a healthy diet. We don't know exactly what kinds of patterns of social relationships make you the happiest. And there's a possibility that we might find out. We might be able to tell exactly with what frequency should we be eating exactly what kind of food to get exactly what kind of emotion. I mean, at the moment, this is science fiction. At the moment, it seems crazy. But the fact that patterns matter on a finer timescale that we previously believed makes it possible that in the future, we will be able to construct our experience based on what we know about how those patterns convert into what outcomes.

32:52I know it's very general at the moment. I don't have a specific technique to save yourself from from Alzheimer's, but I think those techniques might exist and it's up to us to find them out. And that's true for the brain. It's equally true for the body in health and disease. In cancer, for example, our standard paradigm now is to kill cancer cells with chemotherapy. Chemotherapy is poison. Poison for cancer cells, also poison for other cells. The goal is to keep that level of poison at the level that would kill the cancer cells as much as the patient can tolerate for as long as possible until all the cancer is dead, and then you take that poison away.

33:38But it might be that there's a better pattern. Maybe we can achieve better killing of cancer cells by administering some non-obvious pattern of stimulation, by putting in that poison not for a long period of time, but administering it in bursts that are unevenly spaced to take advantage of the memory of those cancer cells. There's a sizable body of research that now looks at cancer drug resistance as a form of memory in cancer cells and asks how can we make those forget that they are resistant to that drug so that we can kill them more efficiently. So that's an example from a devastating disease, but the same could apply in less terrifying situations.

34:24Obesity, just exercise. We don't have a theory of how to time processes in our life. We do that arbitrarily. We do that based on overall impressions that more often is better, less often is good, or vice versa. But we never have a precise theory of how to arrange those events in time to maximize health, to maximize well-being. And I think our research points to that being possible. That's as much as I can tell. wow that's also incredibly exciting it is has anything been discovered about cells forgetting and how that might be done or is that also in in early research well so there's a couple of different ways i think about forgetting um could tradition and right now i'm talking about mental forgetting you know forgetting as a as a as the psychological phenomenon.

35:25It used to be thought of as almost a passive process that things happen when we memorize, but then they just passively gradually weigh and get forgotten. And that's true to some extent. There does seem to be more information processing happening at the front end of memory formation and the back end, the removal of the memory is sort of just this process that mills over every memory, regardless of what it is to some extent. But we now know that there is, for example, active forgetting, that some memories are preferentially erased when the brain decides that it needs to get rid of them. Some memories are more stable and don't just passively disappear.

36:09So you can control the process of memory formation at the level of forgetting. We understand now that forgetting is equally as important for memory as memorizing itself. you don't want to retain every piece of information that passes through your brain. It would be counterproductive. You want to generalize, you want to remove specifics and focus on the big picture. So forgetting is just as much a part of memory formation as the learning, as the front end. So is the same true for ourselves? To some extent, yes. we know that there are both passive and active processes in the removal of this cellular memory that we're studying.

36:53It will eventually just disappear, but there might be a way to accelerate the process. That is something that we're very interested in because if we can figure out a way to accelerate the disappearance of that cellular memory, well that might point to a way to, for example, clear your brain of addiction. Let's say addiction is a pathological memory that you don't want, you want to get rid of it. If there was a pharmacological way that you could tell the cell to accelerate your forgetting and administer it just to your cells that are responsible for that addiction, that would be a great medical intervention.

37:30So that's something that we're interested in. It's a work in progress, early days. I can't tell you much about it, but definitely something that we're interested in. And who knows? Again, we don't yet know exactly what role body memory plays in our body. We can only speculate about that. But there probably are some body memories that we don't want. Probably some that we want to occasionally get rid of. And accelerating that forgetting process would definitely be beneficial. So stay tuned. Yeah, that would be, I mean, the addiction that would be massive and also i assume could be applied to so many different issues particularly societal issues it's really of course the difficulty is to to forget that but not forget everything else that you remember in your brain you know it would it would probably be easy to just wipe all the contents of the entire brain but well we don't want that either full data wire full reset factory reset yeah factory reset exactly yeah yeah yeah that's kind of actually reminiscent to what we're currently doing with our cells.

38:30We're trying to achieve a factory reset, basically. But it's easier with individual cells than with the entire brain. Yeah, it's a little bit more nuanced at that scale. So I've heard you suggest that the brain is based on memory rather than the other way around. Could you elaborate on that perspective? Well,

38:56In the past, people thought of memory as something that you plug into. It's something that's external to your brain. It's almost an object that you place somewhere in the brain and there it sits. And when you access it, you reach into this object and you grab it. And you can take it from there and place it somewhere else. But it's not what memory is. It's not even just how it works. It's not what it is. Memory is not an external object to the brain. It's not a standalone object. It's not dissociable from whatever is memorizing it. If we're talking about the brain, well, a memory is how that brain changes in response to experience.

39:34It's all the combination of all the changes, instant changes that immediately disappear, long-term changes that take forever to clear off. All of those changes taken together, that is what memory is. You can't separate one memory from another, and you can't separate memory from what memorizes it, because you can't separate a change from what is changing. That's maybe the best, the easiest way to put it. So that's what I mean by the brain is memories. Every single action, every single activity that happens in the brain modifies it in some way, big or small, short or long. And all of that is memory.

40:11So given your findings on the mass-based learning effect, Do you see, would that also, would that apply to full-size brains as well, to all learning? That's the part that we do know. That's our starting point for this research. The mass-based learning effect is one of the most fundamental properties of memory that we know about. It seems to work regardless of what kind of memory this is, good or bad, or procedural memory or episodic memory, whether it forms in humans or in mice or sea slugs or even if you study entire student classrooms and measure their performance. No matter what you look at, if you have the same amount of training, if you administer it in one crammed go, you form an inferior memory to if you administer that same amount of training in spaced intervals.

41:12That's as rock-solid as anything could possibly be. It was established by Ebinghaus, Herman Ebinghaus, this German researcher from the 1800s who studied his own memory. He memorized these nonsense words and repeated them to himself in very specific patterns and measured how well he remembered them. His whole life was an experiment. And he established this spacing effect first. So that has been seen in brain systems, but never outside the brain. So really the news of our work was that actually that famous psychological effect that we all know and love actually cells have it too. Cells also follow the same rule if you give them experiences in the form of chemicals and if you observe their memory in the form of this glowing artificial protein that they produce.

42:04And if you do that they also form a superior memory more of that glowing protein for a longer time if you administer the chemical pulses in spaced intervals rather than cramming them all in one. So that was the big story of our study, that this rule is not a brain thing, it's a cell thing. How does that, is there a limit for the time interval or is there like an optimal amount? I assume you had to... Yeah, no, of course. That's a very astute question, because it can be infinite. If it's infinite, if the time extends forever, well, then you just have individual single events. It's not a repetition.

42:48A cell has to have some peak, some moment in time when it decides that repetition is most meaningful. If it's zero, well, then you're cramming everything in one go. If it's infinitely long, then you're just doing single events on different days. But there is some optimal, we call it ITI, intratrial interval, that produces the superior memory. And what's interesting is that we think that different kinds of signals, so different kinds of signals can induce the cellular memory, produce this glowing protein that we're looking at. We can input different kinds of chemicals, all of them emulate signals from other cells, but there are different types of signals and so we can emulate them all independently.

43:35And all of them produce some response on our glowing protein produced this memory. But it appears that different signals are tuned to a different time interval. So some of them produce the most superior memory when the time interval is 10 minutes. Some of them produce it best when the time interval is 20 minutes. We suspect that another one produces it at much shorter time intervals. So we think that real life cellular experience is a combination of all those timelines because the cell is not just receiving a single signal at a time. It's constantly listening into thousands of different signals.

44:13And for each of those signals, there's some optimal timing when the cell responds to it maximally. And so its overall response is some averaged out response to all of these different timelines. That's how it analyzes the patterns. By combining all those patterns of all those chemicals into single response, it abstracts all of this timing information that is tuned to into a particular physiological state. So we think that Having those different molecules that are tuned to different time intervals, it is a way for a cell to analyze complex patterns of information.

44:54in a popular sort of contemplative research approach in neuroscience sort of where the eastern traditions are meeting neuroscience i guess you could say is that the self is a construct potentially of the brain and we spoke to Shamil Shandaria about the Bayesian brain hypotheses. And yeah, as you're probably familiar with the free energy principle and how the brain appears to construct reality. And we are now applying those models to AI and machine learning algorithms. So for anyone that doesn't know, basically, there's computational stacking within the brain that your brain is trying to predict reality just because it's computationally very explosive.

45:55there's a lot of data coming in from the senses and now potentially data coming in from the cells and your brain needs to take the past information and predict the future because there's just not enough bandwidth in the brain so yeah is it possible that what we call the self is also a construct of or an accumulation of kind of like accumulated memory, even cell memory. I think it's very reasonable to say that. I think that what you described as prediction, this top-down flow of information, that our brain conceptualizing this information that's coming from the senses, where does this top-down flow of information come from?

46:55Where do those predictions come from? They come from memory. So I use this in my book and in class, I use visual illusions. Well, for example, there's this one where you can see either a young woman turned away or an old woman that's kind of in profile. It's a clever picture, but you can only see one at a time. You can't see them both at the same time, Even though you understand exactly how it works, you see where all the lines go, no matter how hard you try, you can't see both pictures at the same time. Another one is like two faces and a vase in the middle. Very simple. Nothing's mysterious about this, but your perception can only focus on one or the other at that time.

47:37So that's the prediction. We like to believe that we just passively take in senses, analyze them, and come to a conclusion. But we're actually actively participating in our perception. where we're actively picking out things that we want to be perceiving. To perceive something, you have to decide that I'm either going to be looking at the faces or I'm going to be looking at the vase. You have to make that decision and then that's when you perceive it. But that decision originates from memory. You have to see faces at some point in your life. You have to see vases at some point to memorize what they look like, to carry that image in your mind and to pick it out from this chaos of sensory experience.

48:16So in that sense, yes absolutely, our self is a layering of such memories. It is a layering of predictions that predict predictions. It's overarching predictions that predict smaller predictions that predict even more specific predictions that predict even more specific predictions that predict what we will receive through our senses in real life. It's a nested hierarchy of levels of prediction, all of which are embedded in the memory of those cells that carry those signals around. So when we talk about cellular memories, that includes the memory of neurons. Yes, all those neurons are cells. Neurons are not different from any of those other cells.

49:01So definitely their cellular memories contribute to those nested levels of prediction that form who we are. Are other cells of the body also involved in those nested levels of prediction? Maybe, maybe. We don't know about that yet. That's not part of the free energy principle by Friston and Clark, but I can easily see that they are involved in those levels and they participate in either supplying the information into the brain, as we discussed, is possible for trauma, or even maybe are participating in predicting that information and in producing that top-down flow of information that predicts ongoing behavior.

49:44One good candidate could be glial cells that are inside the brain but are not neurons. They are well positioned to be non-neural cells that could retain some imprint of experience and could control the behavior of neurons responding to ongoing information. And so, yeah, easily the state of a glial cell could contribute to our sense of self. I wouldn't be surprised by that. Wow. There would be big updates with the model of our understanding of the world if that was the case. And yeah, as we said earlier, I think the more we discover, the more we realize we don't know. Of course, the more we realize we still have to learn.

50:36I mean, we're now at the point when we are beginning to, well, I would say what AI now does is maybe not emulates, but it is at least inspired by the electrical behavior of neurons. But this electrical behavior, those electrical signals that are passing between neurons, that is only one aspect of what they do. That is only one aspect of their physiology. There are thousands of other aspects of thousands of other processes that are happening in neurons that are not electrical pulses. And so I think that as we progress in technology and artificial intelligence, we will start incorporating more and more of those other neuronal biological processes and cellular processes into our models of intelligence.

51:29Right now it's all electrical pulses interacting with each other. But if we incorporate more cell-like behaviors, then our AI might become more biorealistic. It might have a more realistic memory, for example. It might respond to patterns of input more like a human would. It would learn from them in similar ways. It would modify itself, would be more flexible, maybe. so I would say that if I'm if I want to predict the the direction in which AI will go I think it will gradually become more and more similar to to the body and to cells specifically yeah and then you've also got like Penrose and Hammer-Off over there trying oh yeah with the microtubules yeah potential fundamental consciousness it's just yeah it's science has just become so interesting recently um i've also been following yeah michael levin professor michael levin's work pretty yeah pretty extensively and it seems like there would be a convergence and that it's about to or is already connecting pretty well with your work he's looking at bioelectricity with pattern memories for development and regeneration.

52:56Is that something that you have been looking into as well? I'm very inspired by Mike Levin's work. He's definitely a major role model for me. I look up to him and he's given me good advice. And we've shared our studies. We've sent them our cell lines, hopefully. they will do something interesting with them as well. Yeah, I think our biggest point of overlap with Mike Levin is that we both think of these cellular processes like memory, like cognition, not metaphorically, but literally. And that's a big part of our message to the world that when we're saying cellular memory or cellular cognition, as we already discussed, we're not using these words in quotation marks.

53:47We mean them literally. We mean that the more advanced forms of cognition and memory are built upon these molecular tools that have been around since before there were brains and animals and humans and anything like that. So all of these processes have deeper evolutionary roots than we like to believe. On that point, we truly agree. And I think that our work is supportive of each other's in that respect. As far as bioelectricity, well, I mean, anything that passes through a neuron or spikes is bioelectricity. So in a sense, I am studying bioelectricity. We haven't touched regeneration yet. So I would say that Mike Levin's work is more on the body side.

54:37We, because we're coming from the brains, we're more still on the neuroscience side, but we're working on very, very similar problems and definitely like-minded researchers. Amazing. Could you briefly describe what his fundamental findings have been that have surprised you? What his fundamental findings are? Well, I mean, there's a lot of research that comes out of Mike Levin's lab. A lot of it is theoretical. I would say his most fundamental findings are that... cells are not driven exclusively, and maybe not primarily, by their genetic constructions. But instead, their life is rich in communications with other cells in the body, and that communication is what sculpts our organism as it is.

55:41So we used to believe that everything in our body is given to us in those 20 ,000 genes in the sperm and an egg, and everything else is just this program unfolding in time, all those instructions unfolding in time. But actually, through communication channels such as bioelectricity that used to be ignored, but now turned out to be information-rich, cells can organize complex modes of communication that supplement and really build upon those genetic instructions given to us in evolution. So the way that it used to be thought of, we have genes, that sets up the body, and then on top of that, we have the brain, and that learns from experience.

56:24But what Mike Levin's work says is that all cells learn from experience, and that's most of what the organismal biology is. The very setup of our body, our very multicellularity, is cells learning from experience and organizing this body through communication with each other. So I think that's the deepest philosophical message of Mike Levin's work. And what was so surprising for me? Well, I thought that electricity was exclusive to neurons and that whatever happens in outside cells, that maybe affects their state, but it's not something that is information rich. Basically, I think in both his work and in our work, I'm surprised by how smart non-brain cells really are.

57:12We used to think of them as dumb, but actually they can be, I should say, almost as smart as neurons. Neurons maybe are a little bit smarter. Neurons operate on millisecond timescales that other cells maybe don't quite reach. Although, what else? We'll see. Just to circle back to an earlier question. Is that something that you think about much in terms of consciousness being fundamental? if cells are storing memory. I mean, the next question would be, where is that stored? And then at the same time, we have all the consciousness research happening and seemingly some evidence coming from Penrose and Amarov that at least the microtubules are heavily connected to consciousness.

58:07in the i think if we have uh anesthesia my understanding is they they modified an fmri scanner and i don't understand this well enough to be quoted on it but that they could see that the microtubules were functioning less or um and on the other side of that subjective conscious subjectively consciousness was being shut off so yeah is that something that you've put much thought behind, or is that a little bit further down the path as well? No, I think about consciousness a lot, and I'm aware of the microtubular hypotheses, theories. Since I completely understand them, I'm also a little bit scared of all the microtubule people because they are very aggressive for some reason.

58:55I don't know if people believe that consciousness is in microtubules. God forbid you say something against that. Oh, my God. So what I don't understand about those microtubular theories is, from what I understand, most of them are based on the fact that microtubules have quantum properties. they have many degrees of freedom and they can store their state, they can form memory, you can store memory in a microtubule, and that they are important for the functioning of the brain. I think all those three things are completely true, I don't disagree with any of them, But I don't know if that necessarily leads me to believe that microtubules carry consciousness.

59:51I think it's a big leap from saying that consciousness involves some quantum scale processes to the content of our consciousness is determined by quantum mechanics. I think that's a big leap. Everything involves quantum processes. Any chemical reaction involves quantum processes. So simply saying that there are some quanta flying around, that the quanta are involved, is not really saying anything. I think what is attractive about quantum mechanics with regards to consciousness, and I think that's where Penrose originally comes from, is this idea of a collapse. Of the wave function collapse. Because quantum mechanics tells us that particles exist in this ambiguous state.

1:00:37They're neither here nor there. They're neither a particle nor a wave. They are spread, their probability of existence is spread around this, you know, electron's probability is spread around the nucleus of an atom. And when you try to detect it, when you try to place a finger in it, when you try to put it into a machine that detects it, that's when it collapses into here or there. And so it seems that a similar thing is happening in our mind. It seems that interpretations of reality exist in this ambiguous state, and when you try to understand something, when you try to become aware of something, you are searching for ways to collapse that ambiguity into specific states, and it might resolve one way, or it might resolve another way, and that's when you become conscious of something.

1:01:29I think that is a good metaphor. I think it's an analogy that makes sense in the same way as a wave function collapses into different states of the particle, in the same way the network of our brain, the network activity of our brain can collapse into specific states of that brain. And in that sense, sure, it's similar, but I don't think it necessarily means that wave function collapse is at the heart of the collapse of this neuronal network into specific states. So I think that's why quantum mechanics is so attractive as an explanation for consciousness. So I simply don't see a need to invoke quantum mechanics to explain conscious processes.

1:02:11This need might arise in the future and I'm willing to accept that there's something about wave function collapse that is critical to the content of consciousness that I don't yet understand. But I don't yet know what that something would be. So I don't see a necessity for invoking quantum explanations in consciousness. What puzzles me about microtubules in memory, if you know memory really is stored in microtubules, that I don't understand how we explain, for example, the effect of protein synthesis inhibitors on reconsolidation of memory. So long-term memories are known to become malleable when you think of them.

1:03:04When you recall a memory, it turns into this temporarily malleable state. And during that state, you can disrupt that memory. if you give a protein synthesis inhibitor. So if you give a person that protein synthesis inhibitor, well, you shouldn't be giving it to a person because they're toxic. Let's say a rat. If you give a rat that protein synthesis inhibitor without it thinking about the memory, just at a random time, nothing will happen to that memory. But if you give it while it's thinking about that memory, as it's actively recalling it, and then you give that protein synthesis inhibitor, and it will forget that memory.

1:03:40So in that moment, it becomes flexible, and you can disrupt it by blocking the synthesis of proteins. If the memory is stored in a microtubule, why does that happen? A microtubule is already there. They don't need to get resynthesized at that time frame of a couple of hours when you would administer that drug. So that to me is the biggest question mark in memories being stored in microtubules. But you know, memories are not stored in any particular place. Memory is a stable state of a cell, of a molecule, of a neural pathway. For whatever reason, the cell has left its configuration where it was before and now it's stabilized itself into a new configuration.

1:04:27Where is this configuration stored? It's not stored in any particular molecule or any particular gene. It's stored in the configuration as a whole. Everything is different and nothing specifically. That's true for the cell. That's true for the brain. That's true for any vehicle of memory. And is a microtubule part of that configuration? 100%. I don't doubt that. I'm sure that microtubules store some of the changes that happen to brain cells or to other cells during experience. And that those changes are meaningful to what that cell does in the future. I just don't see a reason to privilege microtubules in such a way as some people do it.

1:05:09There's lots of other molecules in the cell that I love equally as much, and I think are equally wonderful and could store many different aspects of experience in equally sophisticated ways. And it looks like there's already enough to discover in the near future right in front of you. We probably don't potentially need to make that leap, but I agree. I see how they might start to make that leap just from, I mean, consciousness has been struggled with for a long time. And now we have quantum mechanics in some ways has also been struggled with for a long time. Yeah, it's attractive to connect those two mysterious things.

1:05:50And I think it also somehow subliminally, it elevates you. You know, we want to be mysterious. We don't want to be just dull electrical signals. We want to be, you know, another dimension of reality. And I think it's just an attractive thing, but I don't know. I'm okay with being just electrical signals. Yeah. I mean, it's already mind blowing. Yeah. It's complicated enough. It's not insulting to me.

1:06:21So yeah, we mentioned earlier your, your incredible book. I'll repeat it again but it was one of the most beautiful book covers I've ever seen that's upcoming in October I think you said so yeah, could you tell us a little bit about that the title that you've landed on and what it's about so the book is called One Hand Clapping, Unraveling the Mystery of the Human Mind and One Hand Clapping as you I'm sure know refers to a Zen koan a koan in Zen Buddhism is a riddle it's an unanswerable question. It's a riddle without a solution. And so in this book, in the same way as this koan asks a seemingly unanswerable question of how could a single hand produce the sound of clapping, in the same way we ask a question, I ask the question of how could a human mind exist in this world of atoms and molecules?

1:07:22You know, I had a student come to my office a few weeks ago and i think she put she asked me a question and i was like this is what my book is about i've been trying to phrase it for for years now and you've just captured it in one question she asked you know if life is all atoms and molecules and if we are just animals, then why does it feel so meaningful to be myself? That's really what the book is about. If we're in a science class, it seems that the world is made of the same stuff. Everything is made out of the same atoms, molecules, and chemically speaking, I'm pretty much equivalent to a mushroom, and even my neural organization is not that different from a mouse or a fruit fly.

1:08:14And yet it feels fundamentally different to be me. It feels different to be me versus all the other humans. You know, I have my own consciousness and it feels very different from looking at everybody else in third person. In the same way, it feels different to be a human compared to all those other animals. Even though science tells us that there is no better or worse evolved, that we are all evolved in the same way, we're equally developed, and for some reason it feels different to be a human. It feels different to be alive versus being not alive, even though we're made out of the same atoms.

1:08:55So where does this specialness come from? Where does this meaningfulness come from? And so it really is the same story. It is the same case of specialness. that we can trace from the very origin of life, through the birth of the cell, through the appearance of animals, and then vertebrates, and then mammals, and then primates, and then humans, and then our own self. It is the same common thread of I am special compared to everybody else. And so in the book I try to understand what does it mean to be me from the perspective of the world around me? What does it mean to be human, a conscious individual here now, from the perspective of the entire universe, life on earth as a whole?

1:09:44That's what the book is about. It sounds incredible. And I look forward to getting a copy. It's already out in Russia, I believe. How was it perceived there? Yeah, it did really well in Russia. So it was published a few years ago and won multiple awards and still selling very well. I would say that the Russian version is much thicker than the English version. It's a lot denser. I think that Russian people have more tolerance for longer form content and it took me a while to not even translate or or even rewrite, but to rethink the entire book from the perspective of an English-speaking audience.

1:10:27It wasn't really anything specific. It was a wonderfully interesting experience of just re-experiencing it in a different language. But yeah, it's still recognized and still sold in Russia, and I'm proud of that. Yeah, amazing. Amazing. Great work. And if anyone wants to find out more about you or your work, where's best to find you? Yeah, you can follow me on social media, Nico underscore Kokoschkin on X. You can go to my website, Nikolai Kokoschkin.com, or hold the links to all my writing, my book, my press appearances, and everything else that you might want to know about me. Everything's on the website.

1:11:19so I would say either one of the two Twitter or my website Amazing and we'll pop the notes below. Thank you so much. I really really enjoyed the conversation and yeah keep going I think you're doing incredible work. Thank you Josh it was a lot of fun. Thanks so much. Excited to see what happens in the future for you I'll keep you posted. Thank you so much for listening to the episode if you enjoyed it please if you could give us a like, a subscribe and hit the notification bell that would really help us out or just share this episode with a friend, share the course with a friend. Anything would go such a long way.

1:11:55Thank you so much and I hope to see you soon.