Tom: Hey everybody.
Welcome to "Impact Theory."
You're here because you believe that human
potential is nearly limitless, but you know
that having potential is not the same as doing
something with it.
Our goal with this show and company is to
introduce you to the people and amazing ideas
that are gonna help you actually execute on
your dreams.
All right.
Today's guest defies the convention of all
my normal intros.
Reading a list of his accomplishments would
be to miss the point entirely.
While he is the Emmy-nominated host of "Brain
Games," the highest-rated show in NatGeo's
history, airing in 45 languages across 171
countries, this modern-day performance philosopher
and filmmaker cannot be described in terms
of demographics in viewership; he must be
experienced.
You have to let him crawl inside your mind,
clear the cobwebs, and paint on the walls
of your brain like an artistic cave-dweller,
showing you a vision of the world not as it
is, but as it could be.
His infectious optimism has earned him the
name of "Wonder Junkie," but from where I'm
sitting, he is the "Wonder Dealer."
His shots of awe will leave anyone scratching
for more.
He spins ideas into a magical tapestry of
intellectual ecstasy like an Ibiza DJ in the
height of their powers.
His beautiful, transcendent, and paradigm-shifting
micro-documentaries may be born out of existential
anxiety, but they so manifestly capture the
agony and ecstasy of the human experience
that they've been viewed over 100 million
times.
His poetic, cosmological musings smash together
Shakespearean drama with Sagan-esque profundity
like the Hadron Collider smashes particles,
resulting in the same degree of revelatory
fireworks.
So, please, help me in welcoming the host
of the all new National Geographic show about
the birth and rise of the human species itself,
"Origins."
The one, and I assure you, only, Jason Silva.
Hi there, welcome.
It's so good to have you here.
Jason: Thank you for having me back.
Tom: Absolutely.
Jason: Thank you for that introduction.
Tom: That is truly, truly a pleasure.
Writing that for you, you have no idea, that
was the most fun I've ever had writing an
intro.
I was a wee bit indulgent in my desire to
have beautiful language, but I think you warrant
it.
Jason: I appreciate that, and it gives me
chills to know that my work has touched you
that way, because I sense a kindred spirit,
and something that I share with you is an
enthusiasm to celebrate those that have touched
me and inspired me.
You've heard me ranting and raving about Steven
Kotler and Jamie Wheal, and the folks behind
Neurohacker that I was telling you about before.
I can't overemphasize my passion for those
that have affected me, and I think a lot of
the fuel for my work is simply a desire to
give back in some fundamental way.
I have been shaken by literature, and ideas,
and media, and film, and individuals across
the world.
I have been shaken and touched with such a
profound intensity that I have had no choice
but to respond in some way.
One of my favorite thinkers, Ernest Becker,
used to say, "The difference between the artist
and the neurotic is that the neurotic is precisely
the one who cannot create.
He chokes in his introversion."
Tom: Ah, that's actually real interesting.
Jason: Yeah, but the neurotic and the artist
are both super sensitive; they both take in
the world with intensity.
But, again, the neurotic cannot create, so
he chokes on his introversions, whereas the
artist takes in the world and reworks it into
his art.
That's really my attempt and my inspiration.
I see that you are, in turn, doing that as
well, because I sensed artistry in your passions,
so thank you for that intro.
Thank you.
Tom: Dude, truly my pleasure.
One of the things that you lend credence to
in a way that I love, is the notion of being
an artist, being such a valid form of expression.
Growing up in the 80s, anyway, artists were
made fun of, right?
And that was, if you wanted to paint the picture
of the boyfriend who was not worthy of the
daughter in the movie, you just made him an
artist, right?
Jason: Okay.
Tom: And that was an easy way to dismiss him.
Jason: To dismiss somebody, because if you
couldn't sell it, if it couldn't be turned
into a commodity that had value in our capitalist
system, then it was dismissed.
"Oh, he's just a struggling artist," something
to be looked down upon.
Tom: Yeah, exactly.
But when you talk about artists as being something
that they're really playing a role in society,
and they take in the world, they repackage
it, and make it, I'll say, "Experienceable"?
You've never used that word?
That's how it feels to me.
Jason: Yeah, yeah.
Well, Marshall McLuhan, the media theorist,
used to say, "It's always been the artist
who recognizes that the future is the present
and uses his work to prepare the grounds for
it," so I've always felt that artistic interpretation
is precisely that: it's interpretation, it's
a focus on subjective experience, and intersubjectivity.
To experience art is to experience another
mind.
I think that the fraud of objectivity in the
world- I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm all
about empirical science and objectivity, but
I also believe that to dismiss the only point
of view we ever really get to know, which
is first person subjectivity ... to so easily
dismiss that is a wrong in our society.
What I love about art is that it emphasizes
the POV, it emphasizes the interpretation.
What I like about cinema even more than documentaries,
for example, is that cinema allows us to enter
the mind of somebody else for real.
Art is the lie that reveals the truth.
That's just what speaks to me, and so my videos,
I may be talking to the camera, they may technically
be vlogging videos, but I aspire for them
to be more cinematic and filmlike than to
pretend to be anything objective or empirical.
Tom: Which I love, because when you say that,
it's not a step down in value.
What I find so interesting, and I just had
the very good fortune of--for anyone out there
who's a fan of Jason Silva like I am--of watching
three of his new videos that haven't been
released yet.
Oh my god, they're so good.
In one of them, there's a moment where you're
cut so that you're facing yourself, and you're
talking about duality.
What I love is, you really do sit at this
intersection which I find incredibly useful,
which is, you recognize both the power of
the co-authored narrative of life, right?
Co-authoring the things you believe about
yourself.
You've talked very profoundly about the malleability
of the past through memories, and how we can
all change those.
But also, you're incredibly respected in the
scientific community, and I know that you
get outreach from a lot of very high-level
thinkers.
You were on Star Talk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.
People see that you can help people experience
both, right?
You can help people experience those moments
that can only be- In fact, I wore this shirt,
which is Carl Sagan, in your honor.
Jason: "Billions and billions."
Tom: Yes, because you have quoted him, and
just ... I don't know, you, seeing your reverence
for him and his work is really fascinating
to me.
You get somebody like this, who's really driven
by data, by science, but he so saw the beauty
in it, that I think your words were, "When
you hear Carl Sagan talking rhapsodic about
the universe, it sounds like he's coming."
You get that.
He's so enraptured with that moment.
That duality that you represent, it's interesting
to me, and the reason it's interesting to
me ... I'm the guy that's trying to show people
how they don't have to choose between executing
a business, living at the highest levels,
being the best in their field, whatever.
You can want to be the best parent, the fastest
runner of all time, astronaut, or business
leader; that, to me, is irrelevant, but you
truly, you're willing to say, "I want to be
the greatest of all time at that."
Being able to show people that I'm not choosing
between being an artist, being in love with
ideas.
In fact, people always give me credit for
being well-researched or whatever, it's because
I love the ideas.
I'm chasing my bliss.
I'm following something that I find innately
interesting.
What I really hope they take away from you
is that duality, that intersection of, "This
is a true futurist who understands the technology
and can talk as powerfully about hard science
and exponential curves, and where it's all
going, as he can," and I'm sure we will today,
"about psilocybin, about mystical experience,
about the ephemeral things that make this
life worth living."
Jason: I think that it's interesting you mention
Carl Sagan; I do love him, and I have said
that to see him talk, or to hear his words
when he's narrating "The Pale Blue Dot," the
sense of awe and the sense of reverence is
clear.
The reason I said it sounds like he's having
a cognitive orgasm is very real, and that's
a feeling, I think, that I chase as an existentialist:
this acute and agonizing self-awareness about
the human condition.
The paralyzing fear, the paralyzing incongruity
of mortal creatures who dream of immortality.
To have emerged from nothing, to have a name,
consciousness of self, deep inter-feeling,
an excruciating inner yearning and desire
for self-expression, and yet with all this
yet to die.
We are simultaneously infinite and finite.
Tolstoy used to say, "Man cannot live if he
can't find a way to bridge the infinite with
the finite."
That is the human condition.
I think that one of the ways that we do that
is by broadening our understanding of what
is; peering beyond the possible.
Maybe there's something beyond this mortal
coil.
Carl Sagan said it best: through that inquiry,
we actually get off.
He said, "Understanding is a kind of ecstasy."
So, even when he's talking about science--an
objective, empirical measurement of the world,
and the scientific process, and the importance
of not falling into dogma--even he is saying
that when you experience revelation, when
a subjective mind experiences what seems like
an objective truth, that becomes an ecstatic
experience to that subjective mind.
There is pleasure in understanding, so I don't
think we should hide that or dilute that fact.
When scientists are really dry when conveying
something amazing, I think they lose half
their audience, you know what I mean?
Tom: Yes.
You've seen "Contact," right?
Jason: I love that movie, thank you for bringing
it up.
Tom: Now, you know when Ellie says ... she's
going through the wormhole and she says, "They
should've sent a poet"?
Jason: Yes.
My favorite.
Tom: The line should be, "They should've sent
Jason Silva."
And I mean that.
When I think about what you were saying about
the academics, they lose their audience.
What I love about the Neil deGrasse Tyson
story is he meets Carl Sagan, Carl Sagan changes
his life by showing him kindness, and really
sitting and listening to him, and helps him
tap into the rapture that is that field of
study.
When I hear an idea, and then I hear that
same idea interpreted through you, I can feel
that idea.
There's so much power in being able to communicate
feeling, and one thing I want to do, I want
to put you in context for people, because
they're seeing you now, right?
They're seeing you in 2017, and you make sense
in 2017, but you don't make sense when you
first started doing "Shots of Awe" however
many years ago, and vlogging wasn't a thing,
and people weren't doing micro-documentaries.
No one was thinking of extemporaneously- You're
essentially like an improv rapper that takes
these really complicated ideas, synthesizes
them into this flow.
Flow on both levels.
The Steven Kotler, Jamie Weal idea of flow.
Flow Genome, [inaudible 00:12:47], but also
the notion of flow as in my flow when I'm
rapping, which is fucking unbelievable.
You go on these lyrical journeys through this
idea, smashing these things together.
When I was writing the intro for you, that
notion of smashing particles together, ideas
together in this way that you're able to synthesize
those things, is so incredible, and the reason
I'm really belaboring this point is because
I want people to understand, all around them
right now are these unbelievable ideas that
they're not seeing because they're not speaking
in the language of emotion.
They're not tapping into actually feeling
something about it.
Going back to, I want them to see you as the
alien they can all be, right?
Because you actually dared to be you when
it was super fucking weird, and I'm sure people
must have been like, "What is guy doing talking
to camera, going"- Because there are times
I see people in the background, so I know
you're not in some super isolated thing, you're
being a crazy man on the edge of some sea
cliff somewhere.
Jason: And the camera gave me the psychological
permission slip to do that, so if I was doing
that same thing, ranting and raving to myself
without somebody filing me, then there'd be
no difference between me and the crazy man.
It's always been about finding ways to legitimize
these meanderings, and diving into free association,
which is what these riffs are in my videos.
It's stream-of-consciousness in a very real
sense.
I try to put myself in an altered state before
I do it, and you talk about flow, whether
you're a freestyle rapper in flow, or a jazz
musician, or an elite athlete, flow is characterized
by getting outside yourself, and by "Outside
yourself," I mean "Beyond the monkey mind,
beyond the inner chatter, beyond the inner
critic and the questioning mind, the successive
rumination and self-consciousness that keeps
you deliberating whether you should ever get
out and do something.
Just overthinking, and too much scenario planning,
too much neocortical hardware, as Jamie Weal
calls it.
Cul-de-sacs and error messages running on
repeat in your brain and holding you back.
We've all suffered from anxiety, and self-consciousness,
and even depression all stem from excessive
rumination, but when you finally catch that
wave and you're the surfer, there's no time
to think anymore, you just start being; the
doer and the seer merge.
The other thing that happens when you're in
flow is you're sense of time disappears, so
there's selflessness, there's timelessness,
there's a sense of effortlessness in flow,
and there's a sense of information richness.
The kind of associations you're able to make--creativity
is just connecting things--increases, and
for somebody like me, whose disposition is
timid, and who would clearly identify in my
childhood as somebody who is really self-conscious,
like, just thinks too much, right?
Sometimes in a way that was not useful to
me, socially and/or creatively.
I was a stiff.
I was uptight.
I was the guy who never danced at parties.
So everybody's having ecstatic moment of no-mind
on the dance floor, and I'm just thinking,
"Oh, I'm not gonna do that.
I'll look silly," worried about what other
people think, and so on and so forth.
Sometimes it takes finding the right tool,
or instrument, or medium that you fall in
love with so much, that is stronger than your
self-consciousness and your resistance, so
that you can finally break through.
I think for me, just the emotional experience
of movie watching; the capacity of sitting
in the dark and being so deeply affected by
a piece of work made me want to make cinema,
make media as a control freak with a god complex,
which all filmmakers are.
We want to not just control how we feel, we
want to control how we make you feel.
David Lenson, in his book "On Drugs" calls
it "The desire for stewardship of internal
life."
It's a great line.
"Stewardship of internal life" means you want
to essentially pilot the experience that you're
having in the theater of your mind's eye.
Right?
You want to be the director in the editing
room, cutting the scene, adding the music,
adjusting the lighting, and creating the experience
that you're having as a viewer.
You're simultaneously creating and perceiving
your world at once.
You're in the movie "Inception," real time
authoring of your own subjective dreamscape
in real time.
That's where it comes from.
It's like, I love losing myself in flow, and
I'm a total control freak who wants to control
the way in which he loses himself, and wants
to make sure he captures the experience of
losing himself so that he can watch it later
as a reminder that it is possible.
All of it comes, again, from a desire to overcome
my own limitations, but also because the alternative,
to quote David Foster-Wallace, is one of my
favorite quotes of all time, "The alternative
to that is unconsciousness."
The default setting.
The rat race.
The constant gnawing sense of having had and
lost some infinite thing.
Anybody who's ever been genuinely inspired,
anybody who's ever experienced going down
the wormhole like Jodie Foster in "Contact"
and said "Oh my god, they should've sent a
poet," is privy to this sensation of connecting
with something larger than yourself.
You step aside, and you become more than what
you were, and so, who wouldn't want to return
to that.
But that?
That is fleeting.
That is temporary.
That is ephemeral.
That is rare, and often haphazard.
I don't accept these terms.
I didn't sign up for this.
How do I stabilize ecstasis?
How do I stabilize and eternalize inspiration?
Last night I sat on my laptop and looked up
some of my favorite movie scenes on YouTube,
and watched them right after the other to
get my brain into an aroused state of suggestibility
and emotion, to reconnect with feeling alive.
Because, again, the default setting is not
that.
That's not how we're wired.
Tom: I want to come back to the movie thing,
because as one of your viewers, I had a really
interesting experience with what you put out,
and we'll talk about that in a second.
But I really hope people are hearing what
you're saying, because ... I owe you an apology.
The first time I encountered you on the internet,
I was so blown away, the only thing I could
think is that you had a magical gift.
I wasn't thinking hard work, I wasn't thinking
practice, I was just so astonished and jealous
of your ability to do that, that some part
of my brain was like, "He must be born with
that."
Because the chasm between where I was and
where you were was just ... it seemed too
inhuman to ever cross, and now I know better,
and I know that it's something that you've
cultivated, and what I really want to make
sure people hear is that this is you overcoming
introversion.
It's you overcoming excessive self-talk in
your own mind that would otherwise paralyze
you.
Because the promise that I make to people
is that if you watch this show, you're gonna
be better and perform better than if you hadn't
watched the show, right?
And so, if they can see you in that context:
"Okay, this is a guy, a result of somewhere
I could go and where I could get," then that
hopefully really sets them free, because it
is astonishing how you've been able to leverage
flow triggers, an understanding of the brain,
a deep understanding of the brain, science,
technology, pharmacology, all of it that you've
done to really take yourself somewhere new.
Jason: Even as I've had success, I've had
a lot of moments where I created a video that
was beyond anything I thought I could do,
and it'd send my mind spiraling to this really
happy place, because now that this video exists
in the world, the rest of my life will just
springboard from that.
Now that I've made this, the rest is inevitably
good.
But you would think that that high would just
stay, and it hasn't.
I've struggled with mostly anxiety from the
fact that no matter how greatly I'm able to
channel my creativity to create something
in the world, that something is still a temporary
thing.
I make a video, I can only watch it so many
times before I'm sick of it, and there's the
desire for that next thing.
But what will sometimes haunt my dreams, still,
is unarticulated fear.
Just a general feeling of morose anxiety,
of just, "What if it all ends?
What does it all mean in the end?"
I went to see the movie "La La Land," and
I loved every second of it, but this goes
back to my view of the human condition.
I was simultaneously mourning the film as
it ended.
To fully and vividly live in the present is
also to be acquainted with the fact that it's
expiring as we live through it.
If we were infinite, if we knew that we had
forever, then it wouldn't matter, because
then it'd be like, "Well, I'll watch this
again tomorrow."
But to know that time is running out, whether
we live 90 years or 105, every day is a day
you'll never get back.
That is still a problem for me.
That's how intensely I love the human experience.
That's how much-
Tom: That quote that you said in Spanish,
obviously I don't know the Spanish, but it
translated, "The day is escaping me."
Jason: Si.
Se me escapa, me escapa el día.
"Se me escapa el día."
Tom: And that is exactly how I feel, like
the day is escaping me.
Jason: I can tell we relate on that together,
because that's the fire in our belly.
We wake up agitated, and some would say, many
psychologists would say, like, "Well, you
owe your success and your work to that angst."
Tom: Oh, for sure.
Jason: "Make friends with it, because without
it, you wouldn't have achieve what you have
achieved."
You know, Jamie Weal told me, he's like, "You
love your neurosis.
You love your pain and your angst because
it informs your work."
In a way, it's true.
It's why I've never really taken an antidepressant,
because when you read about what most people
who experience the intense polarity that we
do, the highs and the lows, it's like you
can get on a pill that will just numb you
out, that will just make everything "Eh."
But when I feel "Eh," it's the beginning of
"I'm not happy with this," you know?
I'd rather be crying or joyously celebrating.
Tom: That's not a statement you hear everyday.
No, I totally get that.
You've talked about, with love, that in many
ways, it's the agony of knowing that it's
temporary, and that it's either a delicate
moment with that person just knowing that
they're a delicate creature and that nothing
lasts forever.
Jason: Yeah.
Perhaps it is that fleetingness that impregnates
such moments with such beauty.
Tom: You said that we're insatiable wanting
machines.
And that sort of sits at the heart of the
human condition.
That, as soon as I heard that, I was like,
"That defines me."
I am an insatiable wanting machine, right?
And this is one of the reasons that I rail
against people chasing money so hard.
You'll never have enough, okay?
So don't even bother.
The same thing that you feel about however
much you're making now, you're gonna feel
whether you've got 10, 50, 100 million dollars
in the bank.
It literally won't matter because we're insatiable
wanting machines.
Why are we insatiable wanting machines?
Is it service, is it a hindrance?
Jason: It's a side effect of our wiring.
We are wired to seek out novelty.
Dopamine floods our system whenever we're
exposed to the new.
Originally, that is what made us explorers,
that is what made us spread our seed or semen
widely.
It was wired to procreate, wired for novelty,
wired for that new mate.
We also have hedonic adaptation.
Hedonic adaptation means that our hedonic
set point, what gives us pleasure today will
not give us pleasure tomorrow through repeated
exposure, because again, it becomes familiar.
Once it's familiar, it can be dismissed.
The brain is on to bigger and better things.
And it's responsible for our greatest achievements
as a species, right?
Going to the moon, building the internet.
We push the boundaries of novelty; we are
a novelty-creating engine.
We're the cutting edge of evolution.
Evolution creates novelty, right?
Live moves towards greater novelty and complexity,
that's what life is.
It's the anti-entropic force and the universe,
is life.
The problem is that if we're not constantly
creating, we're restless and depressed, and
also, that we don't get to enjoy that which
we create much either.
So, the ride is characterized by this drive,
by this itch, with not enough time in a state
of appreciation.
Tom: It's interesting, because I feel about
it the way that you feel about your neuroses,
which is that, for all its problems, there's
actually something amazing that it gives me.
I'll put it in more typical terms and I'll
call it hunger.
I'm fucking hungry.
I wake up everyday, and I want to do something,
and I want to do something big, and I think
that there's certain things in our culture
that we've decided it's okay to say you want
to do on a grand scale, but then there's other
things that we say that it's not okay to admit
that.
I think the reality is, everyone can look
inside themselves, they know what they really
want.
They might be embarrassed to admit it.
They might think it makes them a loser.
But they know.
They never own it, and because they don't
own it, they can't explore it.
Because they can't explore it, they're never
able to find out if there actually is a path
to doing something.
You and I were talking before the camera started
rolling, and I was saying, "'Impact Theory'
is me."
If anybody wanted to know, and I used to get
asked this all the time when I was at Quest,
"What would you do if you weren't at Quest?
If money were no object, what would you do?"
And I can actually say I've answered that
with, right?
The answer is "Impact Theory," and what is
"Impact Theory"?
"Impact Theory" is me answering the no-bullshit
question of "What does it take to influence
culture at the deepest level?"
And you know why I want to do it: I want to
pull people out of the Matrix.
And why do I want to pull people out of the
Matrix?
Because for me, there's a neurochemical addiction
to the moment of awakening.
I love seeing in somebody else where they
finally get it, that- We were talking about
"V for Vendetta," that they realized the prison
is fake, and this whole time they've been
trapped, and it's all of their own making.
That, to me, is the fucking juice; I'm just
wired to really enjoy that moment.
And then if you want to supercharge it, 10x
a thousand fold, whatever, let me realize
I was a part of it, that I helped in some
way.
Jason: Well, that's your symbolic immortality,
by the way.
Tom: That's a great point.
Jason: Ernest Becker says, "There's three
ways we respond to the terror of meaninglessness
in the face of mortality."
The first one is the religious impulse, we
talked about it last time.
The second one is the romantic impulse, where
you basically turn your girlfriend or boyfriend
into god, and by purging or rubbing up against
the infinite, they make you infinite.
But then, he ultimately says that to live
a heroic life--he talks about heroism, cosmic
heroism--is to want to create something that
is beyond you, and that's what you're doing
with "Impact Theory," which I think is a beautiful
thing.
Tom: But now do you want to go really deep
for a second?
Jason: Sure.
Tom: I know it's all a bullshit lie that is
being told to me by my genetics to make sure
that I keep moving, and pushing forward, and
trying to help the group so that the group
survives, right?
It's somewhat irrelevant if I survive.
But even in that, I just want myself to know
that even that is sort of a manipulation that
the brain plays on you, that I should be incentivized
to do something.
Oh, but it's positive, Jason, therefore it's
okay.
It's the same mechanisms at work, right?
But being aware of it, I think, puts you in
the driver's seat, which I find pretty interesting.
Jason: Yeah, absolutely.
Because you've also decided consciousness
is mediated by chemistry, and you have figured
out the knobs-and-levers approach.
"What do I need to do in my life to make my
subjective experience really enthralling,
because nature rewards me for doing what I'm
meant to do in this world."
If destiny is real, destiny is just you being
wired to do what you're meant to do, chemically,
biologically, genetically, and finding a way
to marry that to your subjective experience.
Follow your bliss and doors will open for
you where there were no doors.
Maybe Joseph Campbell was hinting at that.
Where nature marries subjective experience.
Where genetic predisposition and determinism
marries the feeling of volition, and agency,
and free will that a creative mind living
its bliss feels.
Maybe that's where they meet.
Tom: I think you're really on to something
there.
One of the opening lines of "The Power of
Myth" is, at least the interview series, where
Bill Moyers asks him, "What is it about this
that makes you think that everybody should
pay attention to it?"
Meaning mythology.
He said, "I don't think everybody should pay
attention to it just because somebody says
it's important."
He said, "I think, if properly introduced
to this subject, that it will catch you."
And he said, "You should only do what catches
you."
Putting it in the language that we were just
talking, it's when you align that thing that
you're wired to do, whatever that chemical
result, and then you follow it.
It's caught you.
You're not doing it out of obligation, and
that's something so many people are driven
by, obligation, right?
"I should do this, I should do that."
Instead of saying, "What catches me?
What pulls me through?"
Jason: Answer the call, yeah.
It's interesting, because any creative person,
at some point or another, has trusted the
process, has figured out how certain environments
can catalyze creativity, has figured out what
their triggers for flow are, whatever woo-woo
things fall into place that lead to the magic
of creativity.
I still believe in science, so I don't want
to surrender to magical thinking, but at the
end of the day, creativity is a form of magic.
Maybe there can be an explanation, but for
somebody who has an aversion to the concept
of faith, or believing in magic, really, I
still live as if I believe in magic, and partake
in the creative process.
I'm aware of the contradictions, but one of
the hallmarks of all mystical, creative epiphanies,
is a sense of paradoxicality so that you can
hold multiple truths in mind at once.
Seemingly contradictory ideas are reconciled
in that state of no-mind and ecstasy.
Tom: It's interesting that you say that.
I used to talk a lot about this, I don't know
why it hasn't been on my mind lately, but
I really believe that one of the abilities
you must cultivate if you want to be successful
is the ability to hold two competing ideas
in your head at the same time.
Here I have these two ideas; they compete
with each other, and I need to know when to
look at this one, and really pay attention
to it, and let my behavior be driven by this,
and when to look at this completely contradictory
thing and know when to lean on this one.
It's fucking fascinating.
Jason: When we leverage that, though, that
seems to serve us.
Right?
Tom: No question.
And maybe that points to the ... there is
no objective reality.
It's so hard to make things absolute.
I have a belief that human potential is nearly
limitless.
Now, why do I throw in "Nearly" limitless?
I do it partly to, because I'm holding competing
ideas in my head.
On the one hand, I believe human potential
is completely limitless, and then on the other
hand, I know if I step off the roof I'm gonna
fall and break something.
And how you reconcile those two things, it's
like-
Jason: Well, for me, that causes tremendous
anxiety.
Tom: Really?
Jason: Because I figure, as long as we're
young and healthy, and we take care of our
physical hardware--we get enough sleep, we
exercise, we eat well--we can more or less
take our physiology for granted.
Thankfully, I'm very healthy, but I've experienced
health scares in my life, mostly self-created.
Something happened and then I assumed it was
the worst.
But I can tell you that in the midst of a
panic attack, of a true ontological terror,
it doesn't matter if you think you're dying
or if you think you're going crazy, it's the
same thing.
You're losing your grip.
You're losing your grip, even on your own
stabilized identity, and I'm working on some
videos on the subject.
I think mental health, depression and anxiety
in this country, are chronic.
In the world, it's one of the most diagnosed
illnesses now, in the world.
More than physical illnesses.
Like, great, we have science, we have vaccines,
people living longer, healthier, but they're
fucking depressed and anxious.
We have not-good systems, I think, to fill
our holes.
Tom: It's so interesting.
One of the driving forces behind founding
the company was- Because people were like,
"Wait, why are changing your mission from
Quest, like this whole new thing?"
And to me it's not a different mission.
At Quest, what we were trying to do is wellness,
right?
So now you can get hyper-focused and and say,
"What's the tactic we're using?"
And the tactic there was to end metabolic
disease.
But at the end of the day, for me, and I'm
speaking for myself, not for my partners who
were focused on very different things, but
for me, it was ... there were people in my
life that I loved, and they were very unhappy.
Profoundly unhappy.
Playing the no-bullshit, what-would-it-take
game, I knew the answer was, you know, my
sister was clinically depressed.
To help her, she had to get in better shape,
because she was in this vicious cycle of food;
she had a negative self body image, the only
thing that gave her comfort was food, and
that gave her a more negative body image and
made her feel like she had no willpower and
all that, and so she just, super destructive.
So, by giving her food that she could choose
based on taste, and happened to be good for
her, it got her going in the opposite direction.
She started to feel better, look better, she
was making one simple choice: eat this bar
instead of a bag of M&M's or whatever.
So it got her going, helped build confidence,
all that.
It was really, really incredible.
But it was about wellness.
It was about wanting to see my sister happy,
right?
The other side of the coin was always mental
happiness.
I believe that we're living through two pandemics
right now: pandemic one is the pandemic of
the body.
It's very easy to see, people are morbidly
obese, super visible.
When somebody dies of diabetes, it's crazy.
They're literally burning alive from the inside
out.
It starts at the extremities, they start cutting
off toes, then foot, leg, and then you're
gone.
It's so visible, whereas mental illness, on
the other hand, the pandemic of the mind,
it's invisible.
Jason: Agreed.
There's Sam Harris, who's also brilliant and
I've consulted with on this topic, says, "Why
are we so concerned with the story?"
Look, the brain is wired to tell stories,
so when you're physically uncomfortable, it
will tell a story.
That discomfort will inform the story, and
give it a negative tinge.
Sometimes I feel anxious, and what I realize
is I just have to pee, but I was creating
this whole story.
And one of the things he said is that you
think of anxiety as just a peculiar sensation,
like when you have an itch.
When you have an itch, you scratch it if you
can, and if you can't, you just let the sensation
pass.
And he says, "Try to do the same thing when
you're feeling anxious."
Mindfulness meditators talk about that too.
"Okay, just let it come in.
Don't resist it.
If you can just feel it, breathe through it,"
and if you don't allow it to hijack you, it
will just pass like just another sensation.
Tom: That's really interesting.
I'll give you one of my anxiety triggers.
Jason: Yep.
Tom: Being cold.
Anybody that knows me knows I'm freaky about
being cold.
I do not like to be cold.
The reason I don't like to be cold is the
physiological response to cold is exactly
the same, that I get, anyway, when I'm anxious.
Jason: Well, there you go.
Tom: I feel slightly shivery, so if I'm super
warm but anxious, I'll feel that same sense
of being shivery.
So, getting cold makes me feel like I'm really
anxious about something.
So I'm like, "The fuck?"
But that analogy is very helpful, I will begin
employing it immediately.
Jason: Yeah, yeah.
I mean, it seems to work for me.
At least, definitely for exercise.
Tom: You've been involved with the XPRIZE,
I've been heavily involved in the XPRIZE,
consider myself sort of a junior futurist,
if you will.
I am very interested to ask you a question
which ... in fact, I'll ask now and then I'm
gonna give you a second to think about, because
your gonna resist answering this but I really
want you to take a shot.
Jason: Okay.
Tom: Peer inside the singularity.
What's in there?
We'll both do it, I won't leave you hanging.
They're gonna be absurd.
The whole point of the singularity is that
you can't see beyond it, so why is he asking
us to do that?
Jason: I think ... and I've thought about
this a lot-
Tom: So you don't even need a second, let's
go.
Jason: I think that to quantify-
Tom: First tell people what the singularity
is.
Jason: All right.
So, the singularity, for those who don't know,
in Silicon Valley vernacular, is kind of like
the rapture of the nerds.
It's engineered Nirvana, it's heaven.
It's human beings transcending mortality,
biology, even our cognition as it exists today
and phase change.
It's a metaphor borrowed from physics to describe
what happens when you go through a black hole.
The upcoming singularity, the one in which
humans transcend biology, aside from giving
us indefinite lifespans, potentially migrating
beyond biology or radically extending our
biological hardware, first of all we'll get
rid of the concept of death, and might eventually
rid us of the concept of time.
I liken it to the end of "Vanilla Sky" where
they sell Tom Cruise's character the idea
of the life extension lucid dream.
You'll live it in the perpetual present where
everything just improves, like a reality rendered
at the speed of thought.
What that looks like will be shaped by whatever
that particular mind dreams up.
I know that for me, it's probably gonna look
a lot like a collage of all my favorite movies.
It'll be an ageless present in which my favorite
scenes from my favorite movies unfold around
me forever.
That would be my singularity.
Utopia beyond time.
Tom: All right.
I so badly want to keep going down that rabbit
hole, but I'll reel us back in for a second
and say, as somebody who watches your Facebook,
it was really, really fascinating what you
were doing, showing clips from movies that
really moved you.
You want to talk about inviting someone inside
your mind, it was ... Because each moment
was emotional, I was feeling what you were
feeling.
Jason: Exactly.
Tom: And so, to see what you saw as beautiful
or poignant was so cool.
It was like the ultimate card to send to somebody.
In fact, it makes me want to do this for my
wife, just to be like, "Here are seven moments"-
Jason: "This is me."
Tom: Yeah!
Fuck!
"This is me!"
Fuck, dude.
And that was exactly how it felt watching
your stuff.
This is- You're either gonna get it or you're
gonna be like, "What?"
So, my wife knows the story.
I was on a business trip, and we were out,
there was four of us, and because I'm so secure
in my relationship with my wife, it was fun
to be around other people who were doing the
courtship ritual, but to be on the outside
of that.
But because they were all doing it, it was
like a heightened state, and I had this sweatshirt
on and I needed to take it off, and I turned
to the woman next to me.
I said, "This is gonna be oddly intimate,
but will you please hold the bottom of my
shirt for me so I can take my top shirt off
without it coming off.
And so she reached over and did it, and I
took my shirt off, and she was like, "That
really was strangely intimate."
And I thought, "Wow, we've shared" ... It's
such a small moment, right?
But it's so real, and so tangible, that it
really did have this intimacy about it.
Some of the clips that you put were small
like that, and so they this really real intimacy
where I felt like ... I fucking just stepped
into your mind a bit.
It was so fucking interesting.
Thank you for that.
I will be doing that for my wife.
Jason: You're welcome, man.
Tom: Talk to me about where do you want to
see cinema go.
Jason: It's interesting.
I, in trying to be as ambitious creatively,
but also pragmatic, as my clips have resonated,
it's created an interest in me for other projects
and opportunities, for other people's agendas,
so I get invited quite a bit to come inspire
audiences at big corporate key-notes for IBM,
and Intel, and Cisco, and that's great.
I'm lucky that I get to do that, and share
my mind with these people, and talk about
the singularity and the future.
It's all great.
The new show with "Origins" is great.
National Geographic, major platform, I hope
it does extraordinarily well.
I would also like to focus and put more resources
into doing special edition video content,
and what I mean by that is I'm an artist,
not an art factory.
Sometimes having to constantly be pushing
out content doesn't allow me to labor lovingly
on making a video perfect.
So, I guess it's figuring out a system that
financially makes sense for me to do that.
You always want to do your thing, and you're
not sure if your thing has mass-market appeal.
It's like, "Oh, Facebook is getting more crowded,
and the algorithms are making it harder for
people to, even your own fans to see your
content."
So it's like, "Well, what does one do?"
Tom: It's interesting, because anybody out
there who wants to make content, watch his
content, and one thing you're gonna see is
how much he has sort of three layers of content.
Layer one is completely unguarded and intimate,
and it's fun to watch you dip in and out of
what people think is Jason Silva, right?
I feel like I'm just one of your boys, and
we're hanging, and we're eating bitterballens,
and having a chat about the view, and all
of that.
And then there's the art machine, where your
shots have all been coming out every week
whether want it to or not, and it's beautiful
to watch you get into that state and really
create this stuff.
And then there's this new content that you're
about to put out, which we just looked at,
and it is artful.
Jason: Thank you.
Tom: It's artful on every level.
To me, as a fellow content creator, that's
the new game, right?
That's the new paradigm that everybody is
playing.
What are the layers to your creation?
Because you can't ... not everything that
we do can be this.
Right?
That's the fastest way to go broke.
But the audience is a certain percentage of
people around the world, right?
They want what we're doing, they want more,
they want different ways to engage in it,
and the fact that you're delivering on that
in all these Inception-like layers to your
personality is pretty intriguing.
Jason: Thanks, bro.
We'll have to keep it going.
Tom: Yeah, no question.
Jason: Hopefully I can.
Tom: No, you will, you will, man.
And that goes back to what I was saying, that
people see you in the context of somebody
who gave birth to something before it was
a thing.
To be Jason Silva now is almost a verb.
It's like, other people trying to do what
you do, getting in your flow states, create
the kind of things your creating.
It's really interesting, and it's beautiful
to watch you push, and going back to "We are
insatiable wanting machines," I'm glad, as
somebody who loves your content, I'm glad
that you're not satisfied.
All right, one last question.
Jason: Sure.
Tom: What's the impact that you want to have
on the world.
Jason: It certainly is life-affirming and
elating when you come across somebody who
has resonated with your content, because what
it feels like is the opposite of fear.
You feel your power to do good, and that's
awesome.
Not just feeling your power, right?
This is not like "I am powerful!"
Feeling your power to do good feels really
good, because it's like, "Oh, so, I guess
I can do something about my feeling of impotence
in the face of where the world is going with
politics," or in the face of whatever it is
that gets you down.
But that you can do good, so you can respond
to that malaise.
You can respond to the doom and gloom.
It's either that, or cower away and die.
I think I want something similar to what you
probably want, as well.
Positively impact people.
To be net good, that what we do in the world
raises the stage for others as well.
That would be the goal.
Tom: I love that.
Where can these guys find you online?
Jason: Facebook is great.
Facebook.com/JasonLSilva, or just look up
my Facebook page, which is verified.
It's easy to find.
Instagram, @jasonlsilva.
Twitter, @jasonsilva.
I mean, I'm on all the social media platforms.
A quick Google search, they should be able
to find it.
But definitely, for the videos, Facebook is
where I've seen the most growth, so I appreciate
when people come in there, and engage, and
share.
Tom: And don't forget the new show, which
I'm super hyped about.
"Origins."
Jason: Yes.
"Origins: The Journey of Humankind" is going
to chronicle the story of humanity through
a modern lens, so we start with today, and
then we trace back the origins of things like
language, fire, transportation, war.
We trace these things to their origins, to
the moments in which humanity was witnessing
the next big thing that transformed humans
into who we became.
It's gonna be really good.
National Geographic Channel.
Tom: Nice.
I'm super excited, man.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
Jason: Thanks for having me, bro.
Tom: Always a pleasure.
Jason: What a pleasure.
Thank you, man.
Tom: All right, guys.
I hope that you were paying attention to the
links he was giving you to follow him socially,
because I'm telling you, this guy is unbelievable.
The way that he's able to synthesize ideas
and DJ them, it's one of the most accurate
things you're ever gonna hear people say about
him is he is a DJ of ideas, and I think that
is so true.
The way that he is able to combine novel ideas
to literally collapse your reality tunnel,
as he says, and get you de-centered and seeing
the world in a totally new way.
It is absolutely astonishing, and from the
smallest moments that he's able to capture,
and stretch out, and really make you feel
something, to the grand moments, the way that
he talks about the cosmos and can really invite
you into the most complicated and seemingly
unreachable ideas that we have at the deepest
levels of neuroscience, cosmology, all of
it, but he makes it accessible, and he does
it by making it emotional.
He's gonna make it tangible, he's gonna make
you feel something.
He is the great translator, and he is able
to take the most audacious ideas, and make
you feel like you can make them your own,
and go out and do something with them.
He is an artist.
He is a poet.
And he is a scientist, even though he would
never use that word.
But it is beautiful, the dichotomy that he
represents, and the way that he's able to
bring it all together.
There is, in my opinion, no human being that
is anything like Jason Silva, so go check
him out.
Jason, thank you so much, man.
Jason: Thank you so much, bro.
Wow, what an honor.
Tom: Absolutely.
Guys, please give it up for Jason Silva.
Jason: Wow.
Tom: That was awesome, dude.
Hey everybody, thanks so much for joining
us for another episode of "Impact Theory."
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