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offer, all lowercase. That's

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shopify.com/special offer. What

0:31

is silence scary? It's

0:34

like it's scary because we have to face

0:36

ourselves. We have to face truth. There's

0:38

no more diversion. There's no

0:40

Netflix. There's no HBO Max. It's just

0:42

there in the moment with yourself, finding

0:47

out what's really real. Welcome

0:50

to Politicology. I'm

0:52

Ron. I'm a political scientist. I'm

0:54

a political scientist. I'm a political scientist. I'm

0:57

a political scientist. Welcome to Politicology. I'm

1:00

Ron Steslow. We live in

1:02

a loud world that's getting louder.

1:05

We encounter noise all around us.

1:08

From the chatter of polite conversations to street

1:10

noise in a big city. There's

1:12

actually construction going on on the street behind

1:15

me. To the constant

1:17

intrusion of the dings of

1:19

notifications. I don't need to tell you

1:21

this. You're on a device listening to a podcast. But

1:25

what is all of this noise doing to

1:27

us? And what does it mean

1:29

to find quiet in the midst of it? In

1:31

fact, what is silence anyway? How

1:35

can it affect our minds, our

1:37

bodies and our relationships? I'm

1:40

gonna discuss that today with the

1:42

authors of a terrific new book called

1:44

Golden. The Power of Silence in a

1:46

World of Noise. Justin

1:49

Talbot Zorn has been a policymaker

1:51

and a meditation teacher in the

1:53

United States Congress. He's a

1:55

Harvard and Oxford trained specialist in the

1:57

economics and psychology of wellbeing.

1:59

He's written for publications including the

2:02

Washington Post, the Atlantic, Harvard Business

2:04

Review, Time, and CNN. He's

2:07

also a co-founder of Astraea

2:09

Strategies, a consultancy that bridges

2:11

deep vision with impactful communications

2:13

and action. Justin, it's great

2:15

to meet you. Welcome to Philatecology. So

2:18

good to be here, Ron. Thank you. And

2:21

we're also joined by Lee Mars.

2:23

Lee is a collaboration consultant and

2:25

a leadership coach for major universities,

2:28

corporations, and federal agencies. He's

2:30

a longtime student of researchers and

2:33

practitioners of ritualized use of psychedelic

2:35

medicines in the West. Lee has

2:37

led a training program to promote

2:40

an experimental mindset among teams at

2:42

NASA and a decade-long cross-sector collaboration

2:45

to reduce toxic chemicals in products

2:47

in partnership with Green Science Policy

2:49

Institute, Harvard University, IKEA, Google,

2:51

and Kaiser Permanente. She

2:54

is also a co-founder of Astraea Strategies.

2:56

Lee, thank you for making the time.

2:58

Welcome to Philatecology. Thank you so much,

3:00

Ron. So

3:05

as I mentioned earlier before we started recording, there

3:08

rarely comes along the opportunity for a conversation

3:10

that I've looked forward to as much as

3:12

this one. For

3:15

lots of reasons, both political and

3:18

personal. Before

3:20

we dig in, though, why don't you share

3:23

a little bit more about your personal backgrounds,

3:26

and then we'll talk about what brought you to this

3:28

work. Lee, do you want to lead off? Yeah,

3:33

we came to this

3:35

work from a place of despondency.

3:37

Actually, our work in the world

3:40

was pretty noise-soaked, active,

3:44

important in our minds. We're working on

3:46

issues that we care so much about,

3:48

climate change, removing toxic chemicals, all kinds

3:50

of things. We are

3:52

both getting this sense that

3:55

more thinking and more talking, more

3:57

PowerPoints, more data, more meetings, All

4:00

these things were not going to be the way

4:02

to find the answers to these intractable problems. And

4:05

at that time, we had just met. We had

4:07

just been introduced, and we had an intuition that

4:10

the place to look was silence. The

4:13

answers may come in this open spaces beyond

4:15

all the mental stuff. So

4:18

we followed that hunch by writing an article

4:20

for Harvard Business Review, very brief, starting

4:23

looking at the auditory noise.

4:26

We'll go into the taxonomy of noise we cover in a

4:28

bit. But to our

4:31

surprise, that article went

4:33

viral, was widely shared, and

4:35

it really gave us pause, like there was something

4:37

here to investigate. And so that set us out

4:39

on a journey. Justin,

4:42

how about you? And for us, when

4:44

I think about this, Ron, where this started, I

4:47

think about that Harvard Business Review came

4:50

out right after the 2016 election,

4:52

that feeling of despondence that Lee was

4:54

talking about, just this feeling like, what

4:58

are we going to do about this

5:00

crazy world? How can we

5:02

possibly be effective in bringing more

5:04

sanity right now? And as

5:06

Lee mentioned, it was this sense

5:08

that maybe the problems have run

5:11

deeper than the usual diagnoses of

5:13

polarization and other

5:15

problems we're facing in our society. Maybe

5:18

the problem is much more fundamental, the

5:20

fact that we're bombarded with noise right

5:23

now. So we think

5:25

that that's why this Harvard Business Review

5:27

article resonated with people. It's the idea

5:29

that, as Lee mentioned, maybe the answers

5:32

come from the space beyond thinking and

5:34

talking, come from the open

5:36

space in between. And

5:39

in the article, we invited people to

5:41

take a break from one of life's

5:43

most pervasive responsibilities, which is having

5:45

to think of what to say. So

5:49

this article led

5:52

us to investigate what more we could

5:54

do in terms of bringing deeper

5:57

Inspiration and creativity and

5:59

energy. About

6:02

issues that matter and we

6:05

started interviewing different sorts people.

6:07

neuroscientists and poets and business

6:09

leaders, artists still makers, musicians,

6:12

someone incarcerated for thirty years

6:14

and death row for crimes

6:16

The evidence showed he didn't

6:19

commit. We into real

6:21

in all these people and exploring

6:23

this this question of how we

6:26

could bring more equal a brace

6:28

more com this more clarity to

6:30

our world our society we started

6:33

exploring it's I asked us. And

6:36

the question was. Posed. Silence.

6:38

What's the deepest once you've

6:41

ever known. And

6:43

the answers to us were so

6:45

surprising because you were describing states

6:48

of weren't always auditorily quiet and

6:50

births and deaths in moments of

6:53

our moments of just blind and

6:55

clarity in their lives that appeared

6:57

often unexpectedly in sometimes it was

7:00

running the perfect line. don't worry,

7:02

rapids or even the for yeah

7:04

market an all night dance party

7:07

Bosses describing we ask this question

7:09

was a silence has ever known.

7:11

They were describing moments of pristine.

7:14

Attention. And they

7:16

were all talking about had his moments

7:18

of pristine attention. Are

7:20

essential to what we were trying

7:23

to get. which is how do

7:25

we signed? More inspiration and energy

7:27

and clarity in this crazy world?

7:29

How do we help heal our

7:31

society? You.

7:34

Mention this question that you

7:36

asked all of your interviewees

7:38

and I'm. You actually

7:40

open the book with that question

7:43

in a beautiful inquiry that you

7:45

offer the reader before they even

7:47

die then and I feel that

7:49

be a really great place for

7:51

us. To start. we would you.

7:54

Be. Willing to read that for us. Absolutely.

7:59

Sector. One. an

8:01

invitation. What's the

8:03

deepest silence you've ever known? You

8:07

can trust the first memory that comes to you. No

8:11

need to overthink it. As

8:14

you remember the experience, see

8:16

if you can settle into it. Recall

8:19

where you are, what's

8:21

happening around you, and who, if

8:24

anyone, is present. See

8:28

if you can summon the atmosphere, the

8:32

quality of light, the

8:34

mood in the air, the

8:37

feeling in your body. Is

8:42

it quiet to the ears, or

8:45

is it the kind of silence that comes

8:47

when no person or thing is laying claim

8:49

on your attention? Is

8:52

it quiet to your nerves, or is

8:55

it the kind of silence that lives deeper still,

8:59

like when the turbulent waters of internal

9:01

chatter suddenly part, revealing

9:03

a clear path forward? Take

9:08

a moment to consider what might sound like

9:10

a strange question. Is

9:13

the silence simply the absence of

9:16

noise, or

9:18

is it also a presence unto

9:20

itself? Thank

9:24

you for that. Later

9:27

on, I want

9:30

to talk about the answer to that

9:32

question, being a presence unto itself. But

9:34

before we do, why

9:36

don't you share a little bit about what brought

9:40

you both to practicing silence in your own

9:42

lives? Justin?

9:48

Absolutely. For

9:50

me, it started with an interest in

9:52

meditation. When I was a teenager, facing

9:54

some feelings of depression at

9:56

times when I was a kid

9:58

around college, and and learning

10:01

about meditation actually from the Beatles of

10:03

all things, finding my interest

10:05

in meditating. And over

10:07

time I became something of what you'd call

10:09

a lapse meditator, I think you could say.

10:12

And that's the place from which I entered writing this book.

10:15

I was working in Congress, as you

10:17

mentioned. I served as legislative director for

10:19

three members of Congress. And

10:22

I was in a moment of life when, as

10:24

probably familiar to a lot of people, I was

10:26

often beating myself up for

10:28

not finding the time to meditate enough. And

10:32

I started realizing that beyond

10:34

all the tools and rules

10:36

of mindfulness, the bells and cushions

10:38

and retreats we're supposed to have,

10:41

we can simply tune into

10:43

silence. We can take just

10:46

a couple of moments, even if all

10:48

we have is a few

10:50

seconds, we can see how

10:52

deeply we can go into that silence.

10:55

So for me, that was

10:57

a realization that grew over time, grew

10:59

with this book. I have

11:01

two-year-old twins and a six-year-old at

11:03

home now, and like many people,

11:05

working from a home office. So

11:07

those moments of silence, of quiet,

11:09

are sometimes brief. So the

11:11

work for me is often not the quantity

11:14

of silence, but the quality. How

11:18

about you, Lane? Justin

11:21

and I share the lapsed meditator story.

11:23

I will say that when

11:25

I found meditation in my early 20s,

11:27

it was really a lifeline for me.

11:30

And so I did a lot

11:32

of Vipassana, in particular, meditation retreats,

11:34

deep long, silent meditation retreats. I

11:37

feel such gratitude for that time. But

11:40

as I transitioned to more of a family life

11:42

and bigger professional demands

11:44

and mothering and all these

11:46

things, I found that

11:48

my quiet... Well, the other thing is actually being

11:52

still physically. Maybe there's

11:54

walking meditation, but that sitting meditation was

11:56

actually quite difficult for me physically. I

12:00

couldn't hit comfortably without injury and I

12:03

once did a meditation retreat

12:05

entirely standing for six days because I

12:07

couldn't hit. Which I

12:09

don't recommend. Wow. So

12:13

what I found is after that sort of that

12:15

same kind of guilty struggle, even thinking as we

12:17

took on this book that we weren't going to

12:19

need to return to a meditation study, what I

12:22

found is actually the way I find quiet is

12:24

through movement and through dance. I'm

12:26

a dance teacher and a choreographer. And

12:29

so it's a very loud external

12:31

thump and beat that an internal

12:34

state of deep quiet focused attention

12:36

on connecting to

12:38

the movement and conveying that instantly

12:41

to a classroom of students. That

12:43

brings me deep quiet. And

12:45

you mentioned that my past in studies

12:47

with psychedelic leaders and pioneering researchers and

12:50

things and that's another place of deep

12:52

quiet. So we're interested in those places,

12:55

really broadening the dialogue,

12:57

broadening the offerings that

12:59

silence can come through any of these doorways

13:02

really. Quiet is what we think and experience

13:04

quiet to be. And

13:06

so the journey has been really rich and

13:08

beautiful and a deep gratitude for all the

13:10

meditation and that is one way, but one

13:12

way, one way. We're interested in all the

13:14

ways. You

13:23

know, I started my journey with,

13:25

we'll call it a silence practice, right?

13:27

Because it has taken many different forms

13:29

over the years, but it was in

13:31

and around 2016 and

13:34

this was a tumultuous period

13:37

for the country, for

13:39

a politics, but also for me personally, also

13:43

professionally. And what I found in

13:46

the years since is

13:49

a deep and

13:51

abiding power of that kind

13:53

of practice, the tuning into

13:55

the present moment. Sometimes

13:59

that's an actual. Auditory Silence Sometimes

14:01

silence takes a different form

14:03

which will talk about a

14:05

little bit later. I'm. The

14:08

one. I've shared this experience

14:10

with friends. In the political

14:12

world, I'm. Friends

14:14

in the Rat Race when we when

14:16

we get caught up in the chaos

14:19

and urgency of daily life I have

14:21

found a lot of resistance to the

14:23

idea of. Being. Still,

14:26

Have to equating your

14:28

mind. And

14:30

you know, often when we

14:32

talk about embracing quiet, limiting

14:35

noise sounds like it's revolutionary

14:37

in the twenty first century

14:39

world. Rates. But

14:41

there seems to be something inherently

14:43

scary. About silence. And

14:46

or before we go further I want

14:48

to talk a little bit about why

14:50

you note in the book what I

14:53

was something was familiar with that Mr.

14:55

Christian tradition. We have a thing called

14:57

the Dark Knight of the Soul which

14:59

is this wrestling. Wrestling

15:02

with the you know, with the

15:04

the longing for distraction. essentially I'm

15:06

And then you also mentioned this

15:08

experiment, which I hadn't heard of.

15:10

the for was actually stunning. which

15:12

I think sixty five or so

15:14

per cent of men and twenty

15:16

five percent of women. In

15:19

in this experiment would

15:21

rather receive electrical shocks

15:23

then it administered themselves

15:25

ah than indoor. Fifteen.

15:28

Minutes in a room without

15:30

devices or distractions in silence.

15:33

And the gender disparity there's very interested me. But

15:37

there's is beautiful quote from the book

15:39

or in that section and it says

15:41

the fear of Silence is the fear

15:44

of the unknown. But. It's also

15:46

the fear of what might become known. So.

15:49

I wonder if she could spend

15:51

a little time talking to us

15:54

about how you have found that

15:56

resistance and what's behind the fear.

15:59

Of what might be. known. Thank

16:01

you Ron. When we

16:04

look at this question, we have a chapter

16:06

of the book called Why Silence is Scary.

16:09

We've come to realize that at the first

16:11

level, silence is scary because of what we

16:14

today call FOMO. You know,

16:16

just the fear of missing out on what's happening,

16:18

the fear also of attending to what

16:21

needs to be attended to in our

16:23

lives. You know, because in our

16:25

world we need to earn a living, we

16:27

need to keep track of the weather, keep

16:30

track of situations for our family. So it's

16:32

something that runs deep in the

16:34

fabric of a human being to seek

16:36

information for survival and

16:39

also for the realization of our dreams

16:41

for thriving. It's natural. We

16:44

talk with neuroscientists and a variety of

16:46

academic psychologists about this. The

16:48

drive for the human being to

16:51

seek information is natural. It's

16:53

just that now we're at the unprecedented

16:56

all you can eat buffet of

16:58

information all the time. And

17:01

the flip side of that drive for information

17:03

is that yes, it's necessary for survival and

17:06

the realization of what we want to realize,

17:08

but it can also be a

17:11

diversion from needing to really look

17:13

at what's going on in our

17:15

lives and what's going on in

17:17

ourselves. And you know, back to

17:19

this being primarily a political

17:21

podcast run, you know, we could see

17:23

this manifest in politics. We

17:25

live in a culture where we

17:27

often mistake stress for

17:29

aliveness. We talked

17:32

with a neuroscientist and MD, PhD

17:34

researcher named Judson Brewer, who's one

17:36

of the leading researchers in the

17:38

science of the minds of meditators.

17:41

And one thing he explained to us is that in

17:44

his many years of studies of the

17:46

brains and meditators and also doing studies

17:48

with addiction research, he

17:51

found that there's one common denominator to

17:53

how people in these studies describe a

17:56

state of noisiness in their being.

17:59

And he said that that's a state of

18:01

contraction. And there's

18:03

one common denominator to what people

18:06

describe as a state of pristine

18:08

attention or silence, and that's

18:10

a state of expansion. But

18:13

what Dr. Brewer explained to us is

18:15

that as a society, we

18:17

tend to prize and prioritize the

18:19

dopamine rush, which is

18:22

all about that state of contraction.

18:25

We tend to associate progress

18:27

with that state of rush

18:29

and stress and contraction. Aristotle

18:33

had an idea of well-being that was

18:35

a lot different, called it eudaimonia, and

18:37

that was well-being, happiness, grounded

18:39

in virtue. And that

18:41

was the way Aristotle talked about this. And

18:44

other teachers, Gandhi had ways of talking about

18:46

this as well, was a state of well-being

18:49

that's grounded in expansiveness. And

18:52

that's where we can arrive to

18:55

through these practices of letting go of

18:58

all the mental stimuli from time to time.

19:02

Let's talk a little bit more about noise. Now,

19:05

one of the things I love about your

19:07

approach to this book is the rigor you brought to it.

19:10

Can you talk about

19:12

how you use

19:15

noise in the book? Cool?

19:18

Well, in two words, noise

19:20

is unwanted distractions. And

19:22

we're interested in how that happens in our

19:24

ears and that decibel level that I mentioned

19:27

the article first took on. And that's certainly

19:29

where we started with the approach. But

19:32

in today's world, it's also quite

19:34

interesting and important to incorporate the

19:38

noise that comes at us, usually through our

19:40

screens, that there's the mass proliferation

19:42

of information available to us. As

19:45

well as then what that looks

19:47

and feels like on the inside, how congested

19:51

it gets internally in our internal

19:53

soundscape. So to break those out,

19:56

most of us are familiar with auditory

19:58

noise measured in decibels. look

20:00

at how siren sounds in the

20:02

last 100 years have increased six-fold.

20:07

Emergency vehicles are a great proxy because they

20:09

need to cut through the surrounding DIN in

20:11

order to get our attention. So

20:13

those sounds have gone up from 96 decibels to 123

20:15

decibels. That

20:17

may not sound like a lot, but on a

20:19

logarithmic scale, that is

20:22

six times louder to the year. Across

20:25

Europe, an estimated 450 million people,

20:27

roughly 65% of the

20:29

population, live with noise levels that the

20:32

World Health Organization considers hazardous to our

20:34

health. So in

20:36

Europe, it's just doing a much better job measuring

20:39

all the auditory soundscape.

20:41

So that's where that statistic comes from.

20:44

Informationally, as

20:46

your listeners will no doubt recognize, there is

20:48

just so much more information to have at

20:50

hand, you know, at any given moment. In

20:54

2010, Eric Schmidt, the then CEO of Google,

20:56

estimated that every two days,

20:58

we now create as much information as we did

21:01

from the dawn of civilization to 2003. And

21:06

then other researchers are looking at how

21:08

we switch between online content every 19

21:11

seconds or so, which is astonishing, and

21:14

eating up about an hour of time a

21:16

day to just get back on track. For

21:20

me, it feels like sometimes far more, far

21:22

longer. So we're

21:24

really being inundated by information, taking in

21:26

something like five times the amount we

21:28

did just a generation ago. And

21:32

our capacity, so we

21:35

measure that attention, or cognitive scientists

21:38

measure that through bits of information.

21:41

Our ability to process bits of information has

21:43

not increased, but the demand

21:45

on our attention has increased exponentially. So

21:47

that's part of that problem. And

21:50

then we make a link here to what is that

21:53

due to our internal soundscape,

21:57

Ethan Cross, a professor at

21:59

University of Michigan. who wrote

22:01

a book about chatter, estimates that we listened

22:03

something to, to do

22:06

something like 320 state union

22:08

addresses a day of compressed

22:10

speech internally. And compressed

22:12

speech is like 4,000 words per

22:15

minute, he estimates. So that

22:17

chatter is not helpful, chatter.

22:20

It's not, it's rumination, it's

22:22

fear, it's anxiety. And we're seeing all

22:24

these, you know, all of these conditions

22:26

on their eyes. So

22:28

we make those links between those feedback

22:30

loops, noise begets noise, and we

22:32

wanted to take all those on because we feel

22:34

like that is at least

22:36

a good sampling of what most of

22:38

us are dealing with right now. Yeah,

22:41

and I think it's important to reiterate

22:43

this doesn't have to be auditory

22:47

sound waves, right, when we talk about

22:50

noise. And if

22:52

you want to try a little experiment, you

22:55

know, pause this podcast,

22:58

turn your phone all the way

23:01

off, just all the way off, go

23:03

put it in a drawer in another

23:05

room, come back to where

23:07

you're sitting, or just sit

23:09

anywhere. And

23:11

notice what that does to your body. Because

23:14

I've done this, and I feel

23:18

like a very

23:21

noticeable sort of tingle in my

23:23

limbs at the

23:26

sensation of being without

23:28

all of the distractions that come with the device

23:30

that you're tethered to 24-7. And

23:34

that's an absence of information that's

23:37

flowing into your consciousness every single

23:39

second of the day. Sometimes

23:41

you don't notice it until it's

23:43

gone. I

23:48

want to talk a little bit more about

23:50

how silence impacts our minds and our bodies.

23:54

You walk through some of

23:56

the telltale signs in the book Of...

24:00

Too much external stimulus and

24:02

internal chatter. Jonah

24:04

gives efforts a sense of what

24:06

that. What? That feels like in their

24:08

body because when I read that I thought. Oh.

24:11

Man, I, I know all of these I've

24:13

I identify with all of these things. I

24:15

can think back to moments when I saw

24:17

them. But. I

24:19

didn't know that they were signs of

24:21

too much external stimulus and now I

24:23

use them to sort of Trump's to

24:25

tune into myself. Right to to. oh

24:28

I recognize this. Know I can tune

24:30

into what's happening in my in my

24:32

body. Can you talk a bit more

24:34

about that? Yeah so to stop

24:36

a saying and we spoke with

24:39

that processor by a behavioral health

24:41

and medicine just was nice who

24:43

when we asked him for and

24:45

ah definition for internal silence at

24:47

some eggs aspiration. Perhaps with us

24:49

east coast players that people think

24:51

clay it is. Played is

24:53

what we experience. Client is being in

24:55

our bodies, in our minds, in our

24:57

relationships and our tests. And this was

25:00

really big turning one moment for us.

25:03

Helping us realize like yeah, this

25:05

is subjective experience as as noise

25:07

by the way and if we

25:09

can actually tune in to the

25:11

signals. For each of us. That

25:14

we are inundated with know what are

25:16

the signs of that? For me, I

25:18

get irritated. I get shirt with

25:20

the people I love most in my household.

25:22

I'm not real. That's not something that is

25:25

a my normal as some I go to.

25:27

So as irritation shows up and I know

25:29

it's time to him to mitigate some of

25:31

that noise I noticed physical cues I noticed

25:33

like a clinching in the jaw. And.

25:36

Notice tightness in my abdomen, my diaphragm,

25:38

and particular. So those are signals that

25:40

know there's just too much going on.

25:42

I'm overwhelmed and nervous system is overwhelmed.

25:44

It's time to turn down the volume.

25:47

Metaphorically we also look at

25:49

least the border. the signals.

25:51

That we are achieving. Keynote.

25:54

Clients The we're experiencing the quiet that

25:56

is our class so for me that

25:58

is. all

26:00

those things are relaxed, save the guy, relax the

26:02

jaws, you know, I'm not even thinking about those

26:04

things. But I'm also feeling connected

26:06

to more people,

26:09

more life, more sense of self, my

26:11

sense of a bigger

26:13

connection with the universe. You know, that's

26:15

me, right? That's my, my fondness is

26:17

a sense of ease and flow. And

26:21

so we turn the reader towards looking at

26:23

what are those signals that you are finding

26:25

more that quiet and keep doing that, even

26:27

if it's weird, even if it's wacky. That

26:29

professor told us about a guy in

26:31

his studies who was a chainsaw carver.

26:34

So he found his quiet through

26:36

flow states of needing every ounce,

26:38

every bit of attention, right? So

26:41

for that flow state, his ability to

26:43

have that self-referential thought that Csikszentmihalyi talks

26:45

about in intentional studies was not there.

26:48

He had to focus it all on carving the attention.

26:50

He's in a flow state. So

26:53

yeah, quiet is what you think quiet is. And

26:55

it might be surprising. Justin.

26:58

Oh yeah. Yeah, go ahead. What

27:00

Lee's describing brings us back to

27:02

what you asked about earlier, how

27:04

this book emerged. Because for

27:06

us it was this sense that the

27:09

whole nation was in that clenched

27:11

jaw state of

27:13

overstimulation. So when we

27:15

ask questions like, why is our politics

27:17

so crazy? Or why can't we mobilize

27:20

to do the things that we absolutely

27:22

need to do as societies? It's

27:25

like when we're in that state

27:27

of overstimulation with that

27:29

physical state of bracing

27:31

that comes with it.

27:33

There is a kind of

27:36

paralysis that keeps us from coming

27:38

together, from going deep in conversation,

27:40

from finding the creativity and inspiration

27:42

to be able to really find

27:44

our way to overcome challenges. So

27:48

we explored this idea with scientists, these

27:50

kinds of intuitions that we felt, these

27:52

kinds of experiences we felt in our

27:55

own lives around the effects of noise.

27:58

We explored this with me. physicians

28:03

across a variety of medical disciplines, psychologists,

28:06

neuroscientists. And

28:08

we learned about the ways that there's all

28:10

of these impacts of noise

28:13

on cardiovascular health, on risk of

28:15

stroke, on risk of depression, and

28:17

other mental health conditions. But

28:20

we started studying the story of how

28:22

in the 1850s, when Florence Nightingale was

28:24

serving as

28:27

the lead official in

28:30

a British medical hospital, British Army

28:32

medical hospital during the Crimean War,

28:35

she had to deal with improving

28:37

conditions where gangrene was

28:39

going unattended and the conditions

28:41

of sanitation, the

28:43

filth was just unbelievable. And

28:46

yet amidst all of that, she rated the

28:48

noise as a top tier concern, which at

28:50

the time seemed crazy. She said

28:52

that unnecessary noise is the most cruel

28:54

absence of care that can be inflicted

28:57

either on sick or well. And

29:00

what she meant by this was a recognition

29:02

all the way back then before science even

29:04

knew about this phenomenon, she was

29:06

pointing out that noise drives

29:08

the fight or flight response, which

29:11

inhibits the body's ability to heal.

29:14

And we've learned in recent decades

29:16

that it also inhibits the mind's

29:18

ability to learn to

29:21

hear what other people are

29:23

saying, and to think clearly,

29:25

ultimately. So there's all

29:27

these different levels to it. And

29:29

Florence Nightingale identified different kinds of

29:32

noise. She said that

29:34

it's really the kinds of noise

29:36

that make claims on our consciousness

29:38

that are the most pernicious, shattered

29:41

just outside of intelligibility in a

29:43

hallway is what she pointed to.

29:46

And this is the kind of thing that in

29:49

the age of social media, in the age of

29:51

leaving people waiting on a text thread, what did

29:53

that person mean by that? The

29:56

kinds of noise that reverberate

29:58

in our consciousness. This

30:01

is what we started to discover about the

30:03

feedback loops between the different kinds

30:05

of noise that Lee was describing. There's

30:08

more auditory noise in the world that's an empirical

30:10

fact. Even after the COVID

30:12

lockdowns, there's way more. And

30:15

then there's more informational noise, clearly,

30:17

arguably exponentially more. But

30:20

we've found that that also results

30:22

in more internal noise, which

30:24

is a big reason we think why the world

30:26

is in the state it's in. And

30:29

we feel like silence as this presence is

30:32

a way to be able to find the

30:34

energy and inspiration to, again, muster

30:36

what we need to do, to muster the energy

30:39

and courage that we need to overcome the challenges.

30:48

This is exactly what

30:50

I wanted to talk to you about, because

30:53

one of those telltale signs that

30:55

you mentioned in the book is rigidity in our

30:57

thinking and behaviors. That's the way you put it.

31:01

And immediately, that just made

31:04

me think of the

31:07

dialogue in our politics now,

31:11

both our thinking and our behaviors.

31:13

And I

31:15

wanted to explore that a little bit as

31:18

a consequence or a symptom of

31:20

too much external stimulus and internal

31:22

chatter. And I'd

31:25

love for you to talk a

31:27

little bit about equanimity as

31:30

a meditation teacher, I think that applies here. But

31:34

this rigidity in our thinking and behaviors, that

31:37

is caused by the overload

31:40

of internal chatter. What

31:43

could easing that do

31:45

to the way we figure

31:48

out how to solve problems with one

31:50

another i.e. politics? How

31:54

could that transform the way

31:58

we're currently doing it? everyone

32:00

would agree isn't really working.

32:05

Maybe I'll start us off and split

32:07

the work I'm doing with chemists and

32:09

people who care very much about the toxic

32:11

chemicals that are in our products that are

32:14

largely unregulated. That problem has

32:16

been a pretty intractable problem,

32:18

I'd say. And

32:20

when we're coming together, we're coming together

32:22

with scientists who've been studying that, but

32:24

also advocacy groups who are deeply concerned

32:26

about how to really mobilize things. And

32:28

then the government regulators and also the

32:30

businesses who want to do the right

32:32

thing. They're also not necessarily accustomed

32:34

to being in the same room. In fact, sometimes

32:37

they might make the other wrong and not have

32:39

a lot of space for, you know,

32:43

openness, for figuring out how they're

32:45

going to collaborate moving forward. So there's a place where

32:47

we can get rigid. And

32:50

when we do that work, there's a couple of

32:52

things we're trying to do. We're trying to bring

32:54

in novel thinking. We're trying to bring in real

32:56

breakthrough thinking that this problem is not going

32:58

to be solved, you know, thinking about it the

33:00

same way we have. And

33:05

arguably it's not going to be solved in the

33:07

four walls and fluorescent lighting. And when we're

33:09

disconnected from the actual harm being done in

33:11

the whole world and to our planet. So

33:14

we go out into the redwoods and do

33:16

this work and create an environment

33:18

where we're connecting as humans, right? And

33:20

we're getting away from informational inputs. And

33:23

our Wi-Fi doesn't work there. It's wonderful.

33:26

You know, we're limiting the amount of information

33:29

that comes into these what we call lightning

33:31

talks like brief 12 minute

33:34

PowerPoint presentations and then a lot of

33:36

space to contemplate and then time for

33:38

walks and all kinds of things. Connecting

33:40

as humans, connecting to the reason why

33:42

all that stuff that creates it just

33:44

a softer, more

33:46

spacious, more expansive to go back to

33:48

what Justin was pointing us towards with

33:50

just Judson Brewer. When we're thinking in

33:52

that place, novel ideas can be

33:54

made, new relationships

33:57

can be formed. It can be super powerful

33:59

for. addressing these issues. I've seen

34:01

it happen with these, you know,

34:03

unlikely characters, you know, forming alliances and

34:06

doing the work and making big changes

34:08

on, say, PFAS and different toxic chemicals.

34:10

So there's something about getting

34:12

quiet and getting back to our humanity, and

34:15

also getting quiet and expanding and

34:17

getting back to getting to a different way

34:19

of thinking where novel connections can be made.

34:21

That's where I'll start us off, but I

34:23

think Justin, take us here. Excellent.

34:27

And you mentioned around this

34:29

word equanimity, and we spoke with

34:31

a few people about this idea of

34:33

equanimity. It gets to the essence, one

34:35

of the essential questions we explored in

34:37

this book, which is whether or not

34:39

there even is such a thing as

34:41

silence. Because we're living in

34:43

a world that's always buzzing and vibrating,

34:46

and, you know, a mind that's totally

34:48

silent is, in a word, dead.

34:50

You know, the kind

34:52

of silence we're talking about is,

34:54

as Lee mentioned before, something subjective,

34:57

something in the human experience. You

34:59

know, when we asked that same professor we

35:02

were just talking about, Judson Brewer, about

35:04

the meaning of silence in

35:06

the mind, he talked about

35:08

the Theravada Buddhist idea of equanimity,

35:10

which is the absence of the push

35:12

or pull. You know,

35:15

and this is a subjective state. There's

35:17

probably not a state of total

35:19

absence of push or pull in

35:21

the world, total absence of noise.

35:24

There's a story from the 20th

35:26

century composer, John Cage, who in

35:29

the 1940s went into an anechoic

35:31

chamber, a totally soundless room.

35:33

And when he got there, he told

35:35

the engineer in charge that, hey, this

35:38

thing isn't working as advertised, because I

35:40

still hear two noises. There's one high

35:42

pitch sound and one low pitch sound.

35:44

And the engineer said, oh, the low

35:46

pitch sound is the sound of

35:49

your blood and circulation. And the

35:51

high pitch sound is the sound of your nervous

35:53

system and operation. You know, which

35:55

is just to say, there's nothing

35:58

In this world that's totally silent. The with

36:00

inexperienced, the absence of the push

36:03

or pull in our own experience

36:05

or least a reduction of that

36:07

push or pull that brings us

36:10

a way from a state of

36:12

appreciation that brings us a way.

36:14

pushes and pulls us western the

36:17

present moment. So.

36:19

When I think about this idea

36:21

of equanimity as getting beyond that

36:23

excessive pushing for comes back again

36:25

to the way things are structured

36:28

in our world because. I

36:30

sell a book that noises are

36:32

most celebrated addiction and a was

36:35

you were mentioned before run like

36:37

meditation it's it's. a really tough

36:39

Kings fans because so much of

36:41

our society is organized around the

36:44

idea that the push in the

36:46

pool equals progress. We. Want

36:48

to be tournaments? We wanna be moving.

36:51

You know we don't wanna state prison

36:53

because we gotta keep going. We got

36:55

to generate were information Silda space so

36:58

I love this question of like what's.

37:01

What's. Possible if we tune into

37:03

silence and this is a big. Question

37:08

of stores Premieres put in it's

37:10

essence kind of the comments thread

37:12

to talk about some of those

37:15

stories accomplice rest is what we

37:17

talk about. Silence since in was

37:19

you Miller says police did not

37:22

know. Silence. As

37:24

a police, it's letting go of

37:26

accepting that it's okay to not

37:28

sell the space. And

37:31

if you look at politics, these

37:33

dishes and culture and society is

37:35

all about suing the space. And

37:38

what happens when we don't feel

37:41

the urge to need to fill

37:43

the space is we signed to

37:45

the stories that the mind tunes.

37:47

The mind moves almost like com

37:49

stored. Fat.

37:53

Of really love that. Why?

37:57

Don't we talk a little bit about the historical.

37:59

Said. Africans assignments. Because.

38:04

This is not something novel

38:06

to the twenty first century,

38:08

right? Of course it isn't.

38:10

I'm. And when you.

38:13

When. You recognize. How.

38:16

All of the ancient traditions,

38:19

nearly all of them have

38:21

some form of practice designed

38:24

to orient the individual around.

38:27

Silence for lack of a

38:30

universal word. I'm. It.

38:32

Becomes. Very obvious

38:34

how much we're missing.

38:36

It is in. Today

38:40

I'm. Can. You.

38:42

Share a few a serve

38:45

landmarks throughout the historical record

38:47

that you studied that the

38:49

jumped out you. Know.

38:52

I learned a lot about the Tigris

38:55

as I mentioned ah from from when

38:57

you're chapters. I thought that was really,

38:59

really interesting. But

39:01

the is trying that me to sort

39:04

of pop your eyes open and say

39:06

oh like. With. This is the opposite.

39:08

This not a new thing, We're

39:11

we're was last with lost it somewhere

39:14

With last what's with this was the

39:16

ancients or what we're looking at. The

39:20

start is down their pants and. Then

39:23

is a eating in a

39:25

way our appreciation for. Me

39:28

and Neatness of Silence ours

39:30

are human wisdom have been

39:33

silent came in to the

39:35

towards the end of this

39:37

entire exploration and we're excited

39:39

to. Access.

39:43

It wasn't a kind of mean you

39:45

didn't have to believe in something necessarily

39:47

Elsa and don't want to seem to

39:49

attract all kinds of people everyone self

39:51

ownership over to take it on. Steam

39:54

sale celebrated in their own way and

39:56

lots of room for interpretation. so it's.

39:58

still accessible It

40:00

feels innate to us to be a human.

40:02

It feels scalable in a way that's different,

40:04

you know. Um, well,

40:07

when we were looking to historical figures,

40:09

one that came in as such a

40:11

teacher about silence is Gandhi. And

40:14

he took every Monday in silence,

40:17

even with

40:19

all he was doing, he would take

40:21

every Monday to be silent. And,

40:24

you know, his friends and his colleagues would try to talk

40:26

him out of that. And he

40:28

would refuse. It was a key,

40:31

you know, a keystone to his practice.

40:35

So every Monday he might attend a meeting that

40:37

was critical or happening, a conference or whatever, but

40:40

he wouldn't say a word. And

40:42

on Tuesdays when he'd emerge from that, he

40:44

would speak without notes and they're like

40:47

a rapturous flow. Yeah.

40:50

He often spoke about how in these

40:52

meetings that were, um, bloated

40:55

and windy, you know, people would beg for

40:57

more time from the chairman to speak longer

40:59

and they would always go over that time

41:01

they were allotted and he found a great

41:03

frustration. And so

41:05

we, we turned to him and he

41:07

also said that the seeker after truth

41:09

has to be silent. So

41:12

that, that really was

41:16

pretty opposed to our activist backgrounds and

41:18

mine and domestic violence and, you know,

41:20

breaking the silence and, you know, speaking

41:23

truth to power, which is all beautiful.

41:25

They have beautiful roots and we'll speak

41:27

to that, but it's almost like the

41:29

only way to be an activist, you

41:32

know, was just to react very quickly

41:34

and verbally in a way. And so

41:36

we really appreciated looking back historically to

41:39

the movements of justice, the Quakers, Gandhi,

41:41

Thomas Burton, and really where this,

41:44

um, appreciation for silence, that

41:46

silence could be the work of justice and

41:49

not just like a cop-out or a place

41:51

of complacency or complicity. That was

41:53

a great discovery for us. I

41:55

love that. I'm going to ask you about

41:57

the, uh, the Quakers and the Quakers. a

42:00

few minutes, but Justin, what stood out to you? You

42:03

know, one thing at first that

42:05

stuck out for us was that

42:07

human beings have always virtually always

42:09

complained about how noisy it is.

42:12

We look at some research that in

42:14

South Asia around 500

42:16

BC, there were descriptions of

42:18

the sounds of elephants and horses and

42:21

chariots and drums and tabors and lutes

42:23

and people screaming, eat yay and drink.

42:26

You know, 100 years ago, you still had people

42:28

in New York City talking about the noise. So

42:31

this is something that through all of

42:33

humanity, you know, people have said, what

42:35

era is, you know, noisier than the

42:37

previous? And we look to

42:40

it. You know, we used a

42:42

professor of African American theology,

42:45

Barbara Holmes, who says,

42:47

you know, back in the day, it was

42:49

just silence or donkeys. So

42:52

she doesn't give the old, old mystics

42:54

that much credit. There was silence everywhere.

42:56

So now she says, you know, it's

42:59

an intentional choice to need to seek

43:01

the silence in our lives. So

43:04

there's always been this human relationship with

43:06

silence and you could see it in

43:08

various myths and parables and biblical stories.

43:11

But Pythagoras, who you mentioned, strikes

43:14

us as a really important

43:17

example for the modern era.

43:20

And that's because we find that we're living

43:22

in a time when it seems

43:24

like the old ways of working just

43:27

aren't cutting it. Like

43:29

we need deeper means of

43:32

discovering new technologies, real technologies

43:34

to improve people's lives rather

43:36

than just juicing profits, real

43:39

solutions that are going to bring healing

43:41

to people who are suffering. And

43:45

Pythagoras, you know, might bring

43:47

back fearsome flashbacks to middle school math

43:49

class. You know, he's the namesake of

43:51

that geometric theorem for finding the long

43:54

side of a right triangle, but

43:56

he was a generative genius

43:58

of the sort that that we just don't

44:00

see too often these days.

44:04

He combined a kind of spiritual

44:06

and mystic awareness with real

44:08

world problem solving that allowed him to

44:11

still appear in middle school math textbooks.

44:14

He discovered so much in terms

44:16

of geometry, in terms of medicine,

44:18

in terms of geography, in meteorology,

44:20

in so many fields. And

44:23

in order to study in the

44:25

inner circle of Pythagoras' school, you

44:28

had to spend five years not

44:30

talking. The

44:33

understanding of historians is that he

44:35

required five years virtually in silence

44:37

just to study with him. So

44:41

we don't recommend anyone go spend five years

44:43

in the silence. I mentioned, you know, we

44:45

have two year old twins and

44:48

a six year old and I'm busy working

44:50

in politics and I believe the

44:52

same, she is a teenager. And

44:55

what we're talking about here though is how can

44:57

we bring this same logic?

45:00

Now, how can we explore the question,

45:02

what would five years in silence do

45:05

to the architecture of your mind?

45:09

And we ask that question, it's like

45:11

work backwards. What would

45:14

happen? And it comes back to what, you know,

45:16

I was just talking about how in this silence,

45:18

in this place of not having to fill the

45:20

space, as is the MO these days, there's

45:22

a turning toward truth. We're

45:24

not so interested in performing for other

45:26

people's expectations. We're not so interested in

45:29

the entertainment and the diversion, you know,

45:31

back to the question you asked before,

45:33

Ron, what is silence scary? It's

45:36

like it's scary because we have to

45:38

face ourselves. We have to face truth.

45:40

There's no more diversion. There's no Netflix.

45:42

There's no HBO Max, you know, it's just there

45:46

in the moment. With yourself,

45:48

with nature, finding out

45:51

what's really real. Thank

45:54

you to everyone at home and on the go. And

46:01

make sure you're subscribed so you get notified when

46:03

the second part of this conversation drops next week.

46:07

If you haven't yet, we'd appreciate it if

46:09

you could open up the Apple Podcast app

46:11

and give us a five-star rating and review

46:13

over there. This helps

46:15

us rise in the rankings so that

46:17

new people can discover Politicology organically. If

46:20

you have questions about anything we've talked

46:23

about, you can reach us, as always,

46:25

at podcast at politicology.com. And

46:28

even when we can't respond, we do read everything

46:30

you send us, whether it's an episode idea, a

46:33

guest recommendation, or just a simple note

46:35

about how the show has impacted you,

46:37

and we love hearing from you. I'm

46:39

Ron Steslow. I'll see you in the next episode.