This 1 Thing Can Rewire Your Brain & Unlock the Focus Your Phone Steals From You

30:04Well, here's what I think is interesting. So a lot of people have the intuition that, well, people just like nature more. And so it just feels good. and that's why people are getting these benefits. And it's true. We had people, we did some of these studies in June when it was like 80 degrees Fahrenheit. These were done in Ann Arbor, your favorite place. It was about 80 degrees Fahrenheit. People loved the walk. They showed really healthy attention benefits. We also had people walk in January when it was 25 degrees Fahrenheit. People did not, participants did not like the walk in nature, but they showed the same attention benefits as the people that walked in June.

30:44So you don't have to like the nature to get these cognitive benefits, these attention and memory benefits. If you're freezing or sweating the whole time, it's not enjoyable. Right, it's not enjoyable. But there has to be some minimum threshold. Like people sometimes ask me, Mark, well, what if it's a wildfire or you're being chased by a bear? I would say, no, that's not going to be restorative. You're going to have to use a lot of directed attention. So the kind of nature experience we're talking about is like you feel safe, you know your your your minimum levels of comfort have been met yeah you don't have to love it you know it could be a rainy day it could be cloudy it could be snowing you can still get the the attention benefits interesting okay and what happens in the brain when we trade an hour in front of our screen for an hour in nature well i think you know we're you know so here's here's the interesting part about the, think about the direct brain implications.

31:41Have you ever been in an MRI scanner before? I have. Yeah. Yeah. Full body. Yeah. Yeah. Was it comfortable? No, no, I was not comfortable. Right. You're like for an hour in this tube. It's like, you can't move. It's not enjoyable. Right. So do you think I could give you a good nature experience in an MRI machine? No, no, that'd be tough. So that's the, that's part of the problem. So one of the reasons why it's hard to get direct brain evidence now is because I can't give people a good nature experience in the MRI scan. You're not in nature. You're surrounded by electronic, you know, a tube. Right.

32:14That's right. A superconducting magnet. Yes. But now what's really interesting is that there's now mobile brain imaging technology, like these caps that you can have people wear and have them go in nature. So that's what we're starting to do now is actually have people walk in nature while wearing what this is called functional near-infrared spectroscopy or F-NEERS. They're wearing this F-NEERS cap, walking in nature versus walking in more urban environments to see changes in the brain. And what we think is going to happen is that we think we're going to see the brain exerting less effort in nature versus the urban environment.

32:53That makes sense. We don't have the evidence yet. We don't have the evidence yet, but that's what we do. It makes sense. What effect does nature have on our nervous system? Well, some people have found that it can change heart rate and help people recover from stress. So again, Roger Ulrich has shown that if you kind of stress people out, like show them kind of disgusting pictures of people getting their hand chopped, which really stresses people out. If you then immediately show them pictures of nature, their stress response recovers faster than if you show them pictures of an urban environment.

33:29Interesting. Right afterwards. So interacting with nature might help people to recover from stress. So an urban environment, like just staring at straight lines all day long and concrete buildings and straight lines that don't mimic nature lines, I guess, doesn't support our health in any way I'm hearing. Right. And I don't want to... Maybe it doesn't hurt us, but it doesn't support our... Well, I don't want to demonize cities because there's other research that we do showing that cities are really great in other aspects. But it does seem like people do not like looking at straight lines and right angles.

34:12People really prefer looking at architecture that has more curvature, more fractalness. So fractalness is like if you see a snowflake, it's got a shape. if you zoom in on it same shape zoom in same shape so it doesn't matter what spatial scale you look at the snowflake um it's got the same shape nature is filled with fractals and people like that and um some architects take advantage of that like i don't know architect gaudi in barcelona he built these buildings yeah i was just in spain two weeks ago and i saw a gaudi building interesting yeah and and people really like that architecture yeah and it may be that that architecture might give people some psychological benefits.

34:54So I think this also has implications for how we design the built environment too. I saw a stat that the CDC has reported a 60 % increase of depression in U.S. adolescents and adults in the past decade. And I know, who is the author you're talking about? The Anxious Generation. I know he's got a lot of stats in there as well about teens and preteens and the depression rates and all these things like that. But how can we combat these rates with nature? And I'm also hearing about this terminology called forest bathing. What is that and how can we use that to support decreasing these rates? Right.

35:40So I think Jonathan Haidt would say that a lot of the rise in depression, anxiety is due to us being addicted to our smartphones and not connecting with each other anymore. We're doing a lot of social comparison. That's not healthy. And what we would say too, is that it's also robbing your attention. It feels easy to just kind of scroll through, but it's actually draining your attention. It's draining your battery. So, I mean, the first thing that I would say is that, you know, we need to get kids and adults interacting with nature more and getting these breaks and, and taking some pauses off of the device and going into, going into nature.

36:28Um, you know, going into nature is kind of interesting too. Um, we did a study where we had people walk in an indoor conservatory versus an indoor mall. and when people were walking in the indoor nature conservatory, it's really beautiful, it's Garfield Conservatory in Chicago, they thought more about other people and they thought less about themselves. So that's also very interesting that nature maybe has this effect of getting us to be less egocentric. Interesting. And thinking more about others. So explain this again. What is this? People went into a conservatory. So we had people walk in a conservatory, it's Garfield Conservatory, So it's like an indoor nature conservatory.

37:09There's big plants and trees indoors. Or we had them walk in Water Tower Mall in Chicago, a beautiful indoor mall, not very natural. And we gave people cell phones that pinged them and asked them questions like, what are you thinking about right now? And it turns out that when people were walking in the nature conservatory, they thought more about other people when they were in nature. but they thought more about themselves when they were in the mall. Why is that you think? Why are you thinking about yourself in a mall when there's also people around? I'm assuming, right? There's people walking around and you could see other people walking around.

37:49Yeah. Let's start with nature. I think part of it is that when you're in beautiful nature, I think it can sometimes make people feel a little bit small, but small in a good way that you kind of maybe feel like you're part of something bigger. You're in this awe-inspiring nature. You know, maybe my problems don't seem as big anymore. And I think it encourages people to feel more connected to the environment and also to other people. People are part of the environment. And we also think that actually kind of being, you know, less egocentric and thinking more about others probably takes energy. And so if you're boosting your directed attention.

38:33You think about others. You think about others. Interesting. In the mall, I mean, again, I don't want to think about buying for you. Exactly. What can I get for me? I want to look good. Which is... You're comparing yourself there with the people. What do they have? And I want that. And people felt more impulsive in the mall. So again, the environment was designed for that reason. They want people to buy things. So, you know, I think part of our research and what we talk about in the book too is that, you know, in part this is more than just nature. this is about the environment in general the physical environment in general and the physical environment in general has a significant impact on our behavior i think sometimes as humans we forget that because we have so much control over the environment but it doesn't mean that we're immune to the environment that's interesting there's this what is it called let me see i think i have something here that i want to ask you about um oh yeah have you seen the gen z trend of i need to touch grass no so there's this trend i guess on tiktok or social media of gen z people saying i need to go touch grass and i think it's about where there's just there's they're in an addiction loop they're on their phones non-stop they've been locked on their screens or they haven't gone outside and they feel like they need to go and actually feel the grass interesting and feel connected to something that's not just a digital device yes of just obsession or self-indulgence or whatever scarcity mindset of what you're lacking.

40:03Yes. What happens when we go and touch the ground and touch the grass, feel the dirt? Is there something that shifts instantly in our bodies when we touch grass? I mean, I think it kind of goes back to this connection element that I think you feel more connected to the physical world. There's this really interesting book called the Finnish way. And it's kind of cliche that the Nordic countries or the Scandinavian countries are just better at everything and they're happier. But one of the main things that the Finns do is they make sure they are out in nature all the time, even swimming in nature in really, really cold temperatures.

40:51Yes. And so one thing that we haven't talked about much. I've been to Poland that I've spent a week in Poland with Wim Hof, just being in frozen rivers. I mean, not completely frozen, but like very cold rivers. We climbed a mountain that was snow and ice, like without clothes on essentially, like just shorts and shoes. And it was just like extreme cold, but you felt happier. Even though it was uncomfortable, it was for a purpose, it was controlled. It wasn't like we're going to sit here for hours, you know, like die. It was extreme heat and extreme cold. We were doing five to 10 minutes on like ice baths and all this stuff.

41:30And there was something about feeling the cold air, being in cold water, jumping off of a cliff into a frozen river. It was something about being in barefoot and like skin to skin with the elements that was very healing. It was uncomfortable, but it was healing, freeing, invigorating. Yes. Um, life-giving, all these things. Yes. And I think that's one thing we haven't, you know, we've, because it's hard, these studies are harder to do. We've mostly focused on the visual of nature, the sounds of nature, but the tactile of nature is also really, really important. And so I think you're touching the grass.

42:10There's something about the feel of nature that's important, the bark of nature. You know, there have been these studies done in rodents where they give rodents like plastic toys versus like toys made of like that are like real wood right and the rodents brains like they have more synapses when they have the real really yeah so again like we evolved in nature this environment that we built is very very artificial right we weren't meant to like sit on a phone and touch this you know artificial thing we're meant to like touch the real rocks the real thing you know, to do things with our hands. And so, you know, that could be another element to it too.

42:55You've got, you've got four kids. Um, how do you fight against the temptations of the modern world and them being stuck in a school building all day and getting 10 minutes of recess or whatever it is and them being on computers now and how they're learning versus with books and just how do you deal with all this knowing that you're a busy professor with a lot of responsibilities and your kids are in school i'm assuming and but you know the side effects of all the things that they're experiencing yeah how do you combat against modern society peer pressure school systems that are slow to evolve and change to have more things for kids to feel in nature like how do you deal with this?

43:42It's challenging. Um, but I think, you know, it's moderation. Like we let our kids watch TV, you know, our oldest daughter, she has a cell phone. We don't let them have any social media. They don't have that. Um, and you know, we chose to live in any, we were lucky, we're fortunate. We chose to live in a neighborhood that's close to two nature trails. So the kids can go out there right now as we're having this conversation, My kids are at my wife's family's cottage that's like two hours north of Toronto where they're fishing. Wow, that's cool. So we try, you know, when we have the free time, we try to make it nature time.

44:24Yeah. But it's hard. Yeah. And I think this is one thing, Louis, that maybe we can all do together is that let's make it easier. Right? I mean, you know, this is important. And one thing that drives me crazy about schools is that they are kind of cutting recess. And imagine this. So right now they want to have an eight-hour school day. They don't want to give the kids too many breaks because they want to give them as much instruction as possible. But if four hours through the school day, if you're in direct attention fatigue state, you might not be getting anything out of the last four hours. Nothing.

45:00So imagine this. Imagine it's still the eight-hour school day. it's six hours of classroom instruction and two hours of being out in nature play outside it'd be amazing it's possible i mean it's possible that the kids might actually learn more do better do better so you know and i think if i say that to people they kind of just you know laugh at me like what is this you know yeah sounds too hippie or something like that but it is possible because Because just powering through doesn't seem like it works. Just like, you know, Matt Walker talked about sleep, right? It used to be thought, oh, you'll sleep when you're dead.

45:39You don't need sleep. No, it turns out if you don't sleep, you're gonna die. Yeah, earlier. Earlier, right? And I think we're kind of saying the same thing about nature, that if we're not interacting with nature and doing things in nature, we're just not gonna be our best selves. I've got twins on the way and it's 2025. and so I'm going to have two kids coming to the world in 2025. If you could say hypothetically in a perfect world, this is how you should set up your structure for your kids to thrive the best way possible. Whereas now when I see kids get out of the hospital or they're getting, I don't know, a million injections and they're put in plastic blankets right away, they've got shoes on their feet, they're covered in synthetic clothing right away, they probably don't even touch the ground, nature anymore, and they're put in controlled environments, perfect temperature, and then set in schools and industrial looking buildings for 20 something years of their life.

46:37If you could give a prescription for how parents could raise kids to try to set better conditions. Now, it may not be, they may not have the luxuries or the ability to move or create the environment, but if you could have the perfect environment as an environmental neuroscientist that could try to optimize the brain and the body connection with kids today what environment would you create for them how frequently would they be in nature what would you eliminate from their lives and what would you add i mean i think again it's gonna it's gonna it's gonna have a lot of real nature in their lives all the time and one thing that we find too in our studies you know adults typically like nature um but we've also done studies with kids and we say you know we show them pictures like what picture do you like you like this nature picture more this urban picture more the kids like urban better really yes why we don't know exactly do you show like a photo of like a beautiful lake and mountains and you show about a photo of new york city like buildings yeah the kids will gravitate towards the city that's right interesting and it's only when they get older do they start to like nature more so at four and five they prefer um urban as they get older they start to like nature more is it because it's so like foreign to them they're your your involuntary attention is like oh it's a shiny thing it's different and that could be part of it you know maybe the nature is too boring for them to some extent and even we have some collaborators in the uk you know you can't ask a six month old what do you like better but you can see what they look at and these six-month-olds look at urban it's got more attention than what grabbing it's like if you looked at uh whatever adore the explorer or something like a cartoon right it's got to grab your attention right versus looking outside you could be like what is this shiny bright light right right you know it's it's not going to be calming right right but so what i think is critical here though is that and the four and five-year-olds in our studies their preferences didn't match their parents either.

48:45It's only when they got older did their preferences look like their parents. So in some sense, this love of nature is learned. And so I think it's really, really important that we demonstrate that to our kids. We have to get out in nature. We have to show them that nature is important. We can't just tell them their inclination actually is to urban. So we have to show them that it's nature. And then, you know, there's so many things that we can do again humans have so much control over the physical environment but we've kind of built the physical environment to move goods efficiently and to house people efficiently we didn't build the environment to like give you the best attention or to make you more cooperative or to give you the most contentment so i think that's what we want to start to do we want this like this nature revolution that's going to incorporate nature into all these aspects and you know unfortunately too I feel like cities often, especially in North America, are so car-centric.

49:43So there's this beautiful park in Chicago, Jackson Park, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Same landscape architect that designed Central Park. But it doesn't have the same feel of Central Park. And I remember taking my kids to this park, and we're walking in the park, and this car zoomed by, and literally a hubcap flew off of the car right in front of us and started spinning around us. And it's like, okay, the nature is here, but the car traffic is wrecking it. So, again, what I'm suggesting is going to be very expensive, but it's almost like you have to separate the car traffic from these nature spaces and to keep them more pure, let people walk around in these spaces.

50:22It's going to be expensive, but I really think, I mean, again, we can do it. We have the control of the environment. Interesting. I grew up in Ohio. you grew up in the state of Michigan, unfortunately, but it's okay. And when I'm driving around Ohio, especially Northern Ohio, I see a lot of Amish communities up there. Right. I don't know if there's a lot of Amish in Michigan as well. Maybe the Southern part, Northern Ohio, Southern Michigan. And for whatever reason, I don't know all the studies and I don't know like the actual facts about it, but it seemed like they're out in nature a lot working.

50:58They're working with family. The Kids are working with the parents. Yeah. They're learning, working. They're in outdoors most of the time. From the outside observation, it doesn't look like there's a lot of obesity. Again, they're not using cell phones. They are. It's very minimal to just make business calls, I guess, or to deal with logistics. And is there any information around communities like Amish communities that seem to be working in nature more or other communities like that? on the health benefits that they have versus the rest of modern society or anything like that? It's a really good question.

51:39I know a little bit about allergens. For example, I've heard that the kids in those Amish communities don't usually have many allergies. Really? Why do you think that is? Because they're getting exposed. They're in nature. They're in nature. And there are some studies done in Finland of these forest schools where the kids are out in nature in school they don't like sit in the classroom they're like eating dirt like playing in dirt and the kids have better immune systems because they're they're ingesting the microbiota of nature which is beneficial so you're not getting a lot of like and shots also as kids like the amish or these other maybe not you know who knows but they're just they're more they're more exposing themselves to these things to these things which is allowing the immune system them to be stronger interesting yeah um you know again those communities are so different in so many ways but you know i think that i think one thing that you mentioned too is that the sterile environment that we're in has downsides right the natural environment's kind of dirty but it's good dirt interesting and and so i think we need to have more more exposure to that we don't need to be clean all the time we don't need to be clean especially as kids like allow kids feet and hands dirty sometimes i don't know if you can see this but like you're dirty your fingernails well it's right it's because my son and i we were picking black walnuts and i was opening the black wallets the black walnut juice is very staining i cannot get it off get it off i can't get it off um but there's something about getting our hands a little bit dirty that really is important.

53:17Is it better to have plants and a garden in your environment or is it better to be actually planting things in your environment? Is there differences of both? Well I think I think you you know people have different interests. I think there's there's definitely benefits to just having the nature around. There was my mentor Steve Kaplan with his wife Rachel Kaplan did do a study with gardeners and they did find that a lot of these gardeners did show a lot of benefits to gardening what was interesting though the gardeners that didn't use pesticides showed the most benefit really and they they thought the reason for that was that if you're so stressed out that the plant's going to die or something like that I need to protect this plant that's going to use a lot of directed attention and the people that just were more naturalistic with it, I think they were just letting nature take its course.

54:17They were just kind of going through the feeling of the gardening without that strong, strong attachment. And that might've been more, more beneficial. So again, yeah, I think if you can get your hands dirty a little bit, it's going to be beneficial. Yeah.

54:37What about grounding? Have you heard about grounding? You know, there's this, you know, kind of spiritual, uh, movement of people talking about grounding, which is essentially just having your bare feet on the ground, not like on a synthetic ground, but on the grass, on dirt, on rocks, on sand. And the, the benefits of that, is there any science that you're aware of around either the, uh, the earth's, um, you know, energetic forces on how it's connecting to the skin and how it actually gives you more energy? Have you had any research or study around that? I haven't seen anything like that. But again, I think it's kind of back to touching grass that, you know, again, the natural tactile stimulation might be beneficial getting those, getting those feelings.

55:30And again, a lot of people are just so disconnected. They don't do, people don't do anything with their hands anymore. I think actually engaging more with those, with that tactile stimulation, you know, could be beneficial. Why is it when I'm in the ocean, in a lake, in a pool, or in the shower, I feel more relaxed, and I feel like more ideas come to me when I'm immersed in water? Is there anything around how water impacts our brains and our health? I think it's also related to involuntary attention and people have found that blue spaces can have some of these benefits so water has this some of these fractal sounds it even has some of the you know waves kind of crashing has fractal stimulation so i think it's kind of again it's these nature patterns that that you're getting in water that might be leading to some of these benefits get capturing your involuntary attention really in a softly fascinating way do you think it has any besides the attention factor do you Do you think it has any health benefits to being in water?

56:35Do you know, have you seen those studies? I've seen a little bit, even they've been saying about like open water swimming can have some health benefits. Like swimming in the ocean or like swimming - Just in large bodies of water, not in like an indoor pool. Yeah, yeah. I don't know exactly what the mechanism is. Not a man-made water pool. Not a man-made pool, but - Being in open water can be beneficial. It's just more scary for me. If like a shark or like some weird fish is gonna come up, that's the only thing you're like, ah! maybe you're more focused about your attention like what is that feeling oh man um i used to go to uh the only time i went to michigan was in the summer i'd go for weekends to torch lake yeah you ever heard of torch lake i've been there this is probably one of the most beautiful places that i've ever been to in terms of a lake and it's all white sand and like this perfect blue lake yes it's unfortunate it's not in ohio and it's in michigan so i have to cross the border but it's beautiful it's beautiful and you feel it just feels so calming yes and it's a very deep and very deep the only negative thing i find with torch lake is that they have so many boats sometimes a lot of boats the summer has passed so that's my only complaint it's true you can't really enjoy it anymore because there's so many people there now right but otherwise you're right it's a fantastic thing again because it's just it's it's so softly fascinating it is incredible Yeah.

57:56What else is there in the research that you've seen recently about spirituality and nature? So it's really interesting that you asked that. So there was this private foundation called the TKF Foundation. Now they're called Nature Sacred. And they built like 150 parks in the D.C., Baltimore, Annapolis, Maryland area. And this foundation built these characteristic benches in these parks, these wooden benches. And underneath the bench was a journal or diary. And people could write their thoughts in the journal entry. So what this foundation did was they digitized all of these journal entries. So they had like 12 ,000 journal entries that they had digitized.

58:47and so we were interested in what are people thinking about or writing about um in these parks so one of my former students kate shirts she she analyzed all these journal entries and turns out people were pretty reflective um in these parks you know writing things about like nature and time and place but also things related to spirituality what was interesting too is that we had pictures for a lot of these parks. So we could like quantify how many curved edges there were in these parks. And it turned out that the amount of curved edges in the parks correlated with people writing more about spirituality.

59:29Really? Yeah. Huh. So it gets crazier. So why is that? You know, what's going on there? The more curved edges in the park. So what does a curved edge means so it man-made curves or curves of nature it could be both so uh like a tree will have a lot of curved edges some of these parcels had like a labyrinth like this kind of like maze that also had a walking maze yes so don't really know yeah was it something um about uh man made about the park or was all the natural things so what kate did is and that's very correlational We don't know what's going on there. So Kate designed a study where she would show people a picture of nature or a built environment.

1:00:14And we could manipulate how many curved edges there were in the environment by like how many trees there were or like how intricate was the architecture. And it turns out if the image had more curved edges, people thought more about spirituality. It gets even crazier. So one way that we manipulated curved edges was actually sometimes putting in water because flat water doesn't have a lot of curved edges. Yeah, yeah. So maybe there was just something about seeing water that you don't think about spirituality. I don't really believe that. But to get around that, what Kate did was she scrambled the image.

1:00:51So she would like take all the curved edges and then scramble it. So it looked like a Jackson Pollock painting. You can't really tell what it is, but it preserved all the curved edges. and it turns out if this image that looks like abstract art if it had more curved edges people thought more about spirituality interesting and that's kind of like independent of nature right it's just seeing curved edges do you have an example that in the book or is that more recent um we do have an example picture in in the book you know where it is uh skim through which it might take me a second here yeah i'm trying to find the one where it shows the image intact and then where we scrambled it.

1:01:31I've got it on my computer. Is this the page 140? Bingo. You got it. You got it. I saw this earlier in here. I thought. That's it. So it's like an image of a nature and then an image of just kind of like a building, I guess, and some benches. Right. And then you scramble the images. That's right. And so people looking at the nature one with more curved images still, even though it was scrambled, you can't really tell what it is. Right. It's still more pleasing. Well, you think more about spirituality. You think more about spirituality, just looking at a scrambled image of curves rather than straight lines from this other building.

1:02:10Let's see that. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Page 140. Nature and the mind. Yeah. And then you have the two - Yeah. So like the one on the right here has more curved edges. So people think more about spirituality, looking at that one versus that one. Yeah. And the page before, 138, you have something that has fewer curved edges. These are all fewer curved edges and more curved edges in nature versus less natural, fewer curved edges and more curved edges in urban cities. Yes. So if you're in an urban city, but the architecture is more curved and more flowing, it's going to be more aesthetically pleasing to think spiritually rather than...

1:02:56People like it more, but they'll also think more about spirituality. Interesting. So if you're in this environment, people think more about spirituality than this environment. And people think more about spirituality in this environment versus that. Interesting, isn't it? Yeah. With more curved edges. More curved edges. And a curved edge doesn't mean you have to have a big circular thing. It could be a little... It could be tons of leaves that have curved edges. That's right. That's right. Interesting. interesting that's really cool because in this one example here with fewer curved edges it's in the ocean so you see lots of water there might be benefits to seeing water or hearing the waves but you're not thinking as much if it's not as curved you're not it might not cause you to think as much about spirituality this is like one thing too where it's sort of like um I don't know, Lewis, if there's going to be like one perfect environment.

1:03:48It's like, what do you want people to get out of it? Like, do you want them to think about spirituality? Or do you want to improve their intention more? Right. Or maybe being in water is more healing for the body. That's right. It's like, what are the purposes of it? That's right. And I don't, I mean, not to get, you want to get more confusing. Do you know what the broken windows theory is? No. The broken windows theory is this sociology theory that if you see broken windows or graffiti or litter, it suggests that people aren't paying attention and you can like steal or commit crimes. Okay. Okay.

1:04:25So that's kind of interesting. You can commit crimes in that space? In that space because nobody's watching. It's like a social cue. It's abandoned. It's abandoned. Right. Right. So if there's something in there, go in there and no one's going to catch it. No one's going to catch it. No one's watching. And they've done these studies like in Europe. It's kind of interesting. They'll have a mailbox. The mailbox will have a package sticking out with like a$5 euro. And they're looking to see who steals the interest to bill. And if the mailbox has no graffiti, maybe 10 % of people steal the bill. But if the mailbox has graffiti on it, 30 % of people steal it.

1:05:06That's so interesting because they just psychologically think no one's going to catch me. That's right. No one's paying attention. Right. Right. No one's watching. So, but we wondered like, is it just the graffiti that's doing it or is it like the graffiti is kind of messy and somehow like processing this messiness might lead to more cheating? So we did a study where we gave people a kind of a stupid math test. They're like shown this matrix of numbers with two decimal points and they have to find the two that add up to 10. It's annoying. So they have to do this in a short amount of time. They get two minutes.

1:05:47And then we show them their answer and what the correct answer was. And we tell them beforehand, the more you get correct, we're going to pay you more. So it gives people the opportunity to cheat. Interesting. But in between, in between taking the math test and grading themselves, we show them images that are more disorderly or less disorderly. And it's just like the Jackson Pollock thing, just nonsense. It turns out if we show them the images that are more disorderly, they're more likely to cheat. And to cheat by a bigger amount. So that's kind of weird. Like, okay, these curved edges are causing people to think about spirituality, but they might also cause people to cheat more.

1:06:30That's interesting. I wonder if it's like I used to cheat all the time in school, like constantly. One, because I was in the bottom of my class. It's not like it's funny, but it's also like not a good thing. Right. It's like but I used to cheat all the time. It was almost like survival because I was in the bottom of my class. I had tutors every year all through high school, college, elementary school, everything. And I just I wasn't able to pay attention. It was very hard for me to pay focused attention. after the first hour of class i didn't understand what the teacher was saying i couldn't read and write and so i just felt like exhausted yeah and all i'm thinking about is when is school over so i can go play yeah and you're stuck in a little desk and you have to sit there like this and there's too much mental pressure the least it was for me yeah so it was almost like out of survival i just found ways to cheat on tests on homework and it's not like something i'm proud of like i want to look back at this, but it's really a survival strategy.

1:07:30And I wonder if there is any research to how much someone cheats or steals, if they're in nature more versus if they're just stuck in a industrial box at an industrial desk, eight hours a day being forced to pay attention to something that's really hard you don't understand and have pressure of performing well versus just being in nature. I wonder if I would have cheated less, you know, stole less, all these things, just being outside doing the work versus being inside doing the work. Yeah, that's an interesting question. So I don't know exactly for cheating. My hypothesis would be that if you're in more nature, it would lower cheating.

1:08:18That would be my hypothesis. You relax more, you're calm. Oh, I think, you know, in some sense, Lewis, I think cheating was the easy thing to do. And the hard thing to do would have been to not cheat. Yeah. And so, again, I think that depends on attention. And if you don't have enough directed attention, I think it's easier to go to your impulse. Of course. And not to control your impulse. The work that I know about nature and sort of, you know, what I call like bad behaviors, there have been studies with nature and aggression. And so these are really, really interesting studies in Chicago public housing projects, like the Robert Taylor homes that aren't around anymore.

1:09:00And these were not nice places to live. Some of the apartments had modest views of nature and some of them had like no views of nature. And it turns out the families that had the modest views of nature, the kids had better attention. They had better self-control. in the adults, there was lower aggression, better attention, and lower reported crime. And what's interesting too, this is just like the Roger Ulrich study. It's not like the wealthier, more educated families got the views of nature. These families are just randomly assigned to these different apartments and it had this significant impact on behavior.

1:09:38So I think that's really, really interesting. And we kind of followed up on that with a cell phone trace data set. So this is kind of a creepy data set, but interesting as a researcher, we knew where a hundred thousand people lived in Chicago, where 300 ,000 people lived in New York, and we knew where they went for an entire month. Wow. And so from those data, we could quantify, how often did you leave your neighborhood and go and visit a park? And we found that if in neighborhoods where people left their neighborhood more and went to visit a park, there was less reported crimes in those neighborhoods controlling for age, education, income, and ethnicity.

1:10:21So again, this is kind of, I think what's going on there is that when people go out and get a nature break, they're restoring their direct attention and they have more ability to control impulses. And what's interesting too, we also quantified how often people went to go to visit a museum. That did not relate to crime. So it seemed like it wasn't just going to anywhere that had cultural value or anywhere that was nice. It seemed to be specific to going to nature. Nature and the mind. I've got a couple of final questions for you here, but I want people to get the book, Nature and the Mind, the science of how nature improves cognitive, physical, and social wellbeing.

1:11:02It's probably something we need the most, but we've been lacking a lot in our lives, just in the modern society. there's so many things we can do to improve the quality of our life, but I think nature is definitely, it's free. It's something we can choose to do at any moment. It might just take a little time getting the nature if you're in an urban city. But in most places, you can go somewhere 10 minutes and be in a place where there's some trees, some grass and water, even if it's a controlled environment where you can just walk around in nature for a little bit. Even if there is cars and everything around you, you can still be in that space.

1:11:37It's a decision to do that unless you live, you know, in the middle of America where there's more open space and you're kind of living in nature already, but a lot of people are stuck in cities to try to earn money. I guess one thing I might mention a little bit there is that, you know, not all nature is created equally and, you know, some parks are nicer, more well maintained and others aren't. And like we did some studies in Chicago where we had students from the south and west side of Chicago go around and look at the parks in their neighborhood. And they had like data enabled cell phones and they could take pictures of the parks.

1:12:14And we wanted to ask them, like, do you feel safe in the park? Do you feel like the park is well maintained? And it turns out a lot of these kids said, you know, they didn't feel safe there. And so... So if you don't feel safe, you're not getting the benefits. You're not going to get the benefits. And so I think this is... It can't just be you put the park there. It's got to be well maintained and people have to feel safe there. There's crime happening there. There's no benefit. There's no benefit. And that's what I think is really kind of depressing is that in a lot of parts of the U.S. and big cities, there are some nice parks, but people don't feel safe in them, so they're not going to achieve the benefits.

1:12:55That's so interesting. You know, now you're saying this, something just came up to my mind. I got married earlier this year, and the morning of my uh wedding i remember i just like i felt like i needed to be in nature so i went by myself to just go kind of reflect on my life before getting married it wasn't like i was questioning whether i was getting married it's more just like oh this is happening this is a big moment yep let me go take some time to like just reflect on this before the madness of like you know people there and all this stuff and i went for a hike in nature by myself probably like an hour and a half, you know, over here, near here, there's a beautiful hike that's kind of in the middle of LA, but it feels like you're not in LA and you're surrounded by trees and you can't hear the cars and you just see the mountains in the horizon.

1:13:41It was such a spiritual reflective moment, being alone, taking a hike in nature before kind of this big life changing moment that was happening. And it really allowed me to reflect on everything, just kind of relax and call myself before what was about to happen. and I never regret going for a hike in nature. You know, when you do it, you never regret like, I wish I was like on my phone for the last hour. You're like, you always feel better. It's kind of like going to the gym. It's kind of like getting quality sleep. You never regret getting good sleep. You never regret eating a healthy meal. You regret eating like donuts all day, you know?

1:14:23So it's just something that we need to be baking into our, our daily routine the best way possible. Even if it's 10 minutes, it sounds like it can have incredible benefits. Huberman talks about waking up and looking at the horizon as the sun's coming up, obviously not direct sunlight, but as the light is coming up, like gazing your attention towards the horizon to get that natural kind of healing benefits to support your brain health, your body, the circadian rhythm, and it sounds like nature in general, being in nature where you feel safe adds so much more benefit than not doing it. Exactly. And kind of what you're saying, Lewis, too, is people actually underestimate how good they'll feel after going in nature.

1:15:11So people have done studies where they say, how much do you think you're going to like going on this nature walk before they go on the nature walk? And then they have another group of participants go on a nature walk and ask them afterwards, how much did you like going on the walk? And people underestimate how much they're going to like it. Really? So, and I think that's just about liking, but I think we're also underestimating how good it's going to be for our brains and for our attention and for our wellbeing. So I think we really are, as a society, underestimating the benefits of nature. Wow.

1:15:41Mark, is there anything else that you want to add about this that we haven't covered today? I think we hit a lot of the big ones. I think, you know, one thing too, that it's not all about liking that you don't have to love the nature walk to get these cognitive benefits. I think that's important. I think that you can get some of these benefits with the artificial nature, the pictures, the sound. It's not as strong as the real thing, but it can be really beneficial. The physical health benefits of nature. Spiritual health. Spiritual. and then also, you know, that people are less aggressive. And, you know, other studies have found that when people interact with nature, they see people as being more human, which I think is also kind of related to less aggression.

1:16:28So it's really beneficial at all these different levels. Yeah, a lot of benefits. I've got a question that I ask everyone towards the end. It's called the three truths. So imagine hypothetical scenario. you get to live as long as you want to live and you get to accomplish all of your goals that you have in life. You have unlimited directed attention, which allows you to focus on your goals and create the life you want. But for whatever reason, on the last day of your life, you have to take all of your life's work with you. So this book is gone. Anything else you've created, it's gone, hypothetically.

1:17:03But you get to leave behind three lessons to the world, three truths that you've learned about life that you'd like to leave behind what would those three truths be for you hmm so it's got to be different than stuff that I've done the same stuff it can be the same stuff could be anything at all okay professional personal information you know just some of a lesson you learned or what you think the world needs to hear Wow this is a that's a good I never thought about that before um i guess uh you know um the first one i mean why i got interested in psychology um is because my grandparents on my dad's side were holocaust survivors and um i just couldn't believe that people could do that to other people it just boggled my mind i kind of like obsessed over it I couldn't I couldn't wrap my head around it I just kind of thought well you know Germans must just be bad people and I remember sitting in an intro psychology class at Michigan and the professor showed us this Milgram experiment I don't know if you're familiar with that experiment but in the experiment there's two people one person is the teacher and one person is like the student and the student has to memorize all these words and the teacher kind of tests the student on the words and if the student gets a word wrong the teacher has to give the student electric shock and um so and this is they didn't really to the teacher they thought they were giving real electric shocks but it was set up that they weren't really giving electric shocks although there's still ethical problems with the stuff so anyway so they separate so the the student goes into some room and the teacher is um is reading um the words and testing testing the student and uh when he gets him wrong he has to give him electric shock and then like he gives push the button he thinks that that he's giving a real electric shock to the student and he can hear the student go ouch and uh and you keep increasing the more he gets wrong wrong greater of the shock the greater the shock okay and people don't want after it gets to a certain point where the guy's going oh this really hurts i don't want to do this anymore you know people say like look i want to stop doing it but then there's this experiment which says no you must continue you have to continue giving the shocks and you know like two-thirds of people deliver the shocks all the way to like you know almost like killing the person and i remember seeing that study and thinking oh my god like that just like rocked my world it was like I could do bad things you know I think I'm a nice person but maybe in different circumstances I could do bad yeah yeah and so I think that was a really strong lesson to me where it's not I mean we're all born with different capabilities but a lot of our behavior is very much determined by the environment and so interesting I just, so one takeaway I would think is that, you know, the environment really, really impacts our, our behavior.

1:20:16Like it can make somebody good. It can make somebody bad. And I think, you know, now we know so much about what makes it hard for people, like not having enough resources, worrying about food, you know, crime, all these things make it, make it hard. And I guess, you know, what we're trying to impose is like, hey, there's maybe we can design environments that can like make people good or better. And we need to take it seriously that we're not immune to the environment. So there's a lot in there. But I think that one takeaway that the environment that around us has so much impact on our behavior, like fundamental things that, you know, you might think, oh, somebody is a bad person or somebody is a good person.

1:20:56while it might not be so that's too simple you know you have to think about the person and all the environmental context that i've lived through okay so it's the first one that's the first one so what are these are pearls three truths yeah three lessons that you would share that you've learned from your life three lessons i learned from my life experience um

1:21:19you have to you have to do what you're passionate about you cannot um and i feel very fortunate that i'm i get to do what i love to do but the people that i see the most unhappy are not really doing things that they're most passionate about and maybe part of that too is feeling like it has purpose like I don't feel like I'm doing busy work I feel like this stuff that I'm doing it's meaningful it's meaningful it's meaningful third thing third thing

1:22:09well you know I know this one maybe it's kind of controversial I guess I guess I I'm not controversial. I don't know.

1:22:19I had a little bit of a complicated, not in a bad way, but I grew up as a kid. So my mom, she converted to Judaism. So half my family's not Jewish, half my family is Jewish. And I remember going to Hebrew school and I'm saying, you have to marry somebody Jewish. I said this to you. Yeah, or just in general. that like you know uh-huh and um and i didn't yeah somebody jewish but it was very complicated in my head it's like well like did dad do something wrong like um you know of course and i think what the truth is there is like i kind of maybe this is going to sound too simple i don't like groups i never like groups i never like clubs group thinking group thinker just like identifying in a group because I worry that when people identify as a group, they say like, I'm this thing.

1:23:18So you don't identify as a Michigan guy then, right? That's for fun. That's fun stuff. That's fun stuff.

1:23:28You got to break that identity. You know? You got to break that. I knew when I was saying this, I was like, Lewis is going to get me on this one. The one group you want to be a part of, you can't be anymore. Lewis is going to get me on this one. is that like you know i just feel like groups yeah invariably like when you're in a group you think you're better than the other group of course and it's excluding rather than excluding and and it always bothered me huh and um but you're also in group you're a professor of a you know of a university you're that's a group yeah professors you're a neuroscientist okay i'm in a neuroscientist community it's like you're in you're a mission share that it's not exclusive like you can you can bring people in so i guess i just feel like i you know i never really liked uh exclusive clubs and i guess i just kind of feel like you know we're all humans we're kind of all in the same boat yeah and uh i just kind of wish we're all trying to belong we're all trying to belong and uh i wish we could kind of see that more often that we're kind of you know we all kind of the same destiny and uh you know we just got to work together we can't be so tribal hanging on to interesting okay so when you when you cut up i come to football season when you cut yeah yeah when you cut up your alumni card send me a photo when you cut it up and say i'm no longer part of this group anymore uh i've got one final question for you mark this has been really inspiring nature and the mind the science of how nature improves cognitive physical and social well-being except for when you're part of the alumni group of Michigan.

1:25:08Final question for you is what's your definition of greatness?

1:25:15Boy, that's a hard question too.

1:25:27i think greatness is when when you kind of you know do you know abraham maslow maslow's hierarchy yeah i think the top of the hierarchy with self-actualization when you like become your best self and i kind of feel like that's the definition of greatness yeah there is becoming your best your best self that's good i know it might be kind of squishy like what does that mean but i guess when you define your own strengths and become the best version of yourself i think that's that's greatness that's cool mark thanks for being I appreciate it. Thank you very much. Go Buccas. Go blue. I have a brand new book called Make Money Easy.

1:26:14And if you're looking to create more financial freedom in your life, you want abundance in your life, and you want to stop making money hard in your life, but you want to make it easier, you want to make it flow, you want to feel abundant, then make sure to go to makemoneyeasybook.com right now and get yourself a copy. I really think this is going to help you transform your relationship with money this moment moving forward. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links.

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1:27:31I don't know.