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Contrary to popular belief, trauma is extremely common. We all have jobs, life events, and unpleasant situations causing us daily stress. But when your body continues to re-live that stress for days, weeks, months, or even years, that stress changes your brain, creating trauma inside your mind, and that trauma can eventually manifest in your physical body.

As you can see, trauma isn’t what happens to you, but how you respond to the traumatic situation. Something that is traumatic to one person may be no big deal to the next. Whether something becomes traumatic or not has a great deal to do with who’s around you while you experience this event. Were you alone and scared, were you comforted by friends and family?

The problem with trauma is that it starts when something happens to us, but that’s not where it stops - it changes your brain. Once your brain changes and you’re in constant fight or flight mode, it can be hard to stay focused, feel joy, or experience pleasure until this trauma is healed. Luckily, modern psychological practices are developing innovative ways to heal from trauma that actually work.

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About Bessel van der Kolk:

Bessel van der Kolk is a psychiatrist noted for his research in the area of post-traumatic stress since the 1970s. His work focuses on the interaction of attachment, neurobiology, and developmental aspects of trauma’s effects on people. His major publication, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society, talks about how the role of trauma in psychiatric illness has changed over the past 20 years.

Dr. van der Kolk is past President of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, Professor of Psychiatry at Boston University Medical School, and Medical Director of the Trauma Center at JRI in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has taught at universities and hospitals across the United States and around the world, including Europe, Africa, Russia, Australia, Israel, and China.

Check out Bessel van der Kolk's latest book, “The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma” at https://www.amazon.com/Body-Keeps-Sco...

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Carrie Berk reveals how she transformed her struggle with anxiety and internet fame by changing her perception and finding her true voice as a writer.

Carrie Berk, author, journalist, and social media influencer with nearly 4 million TikTok followers, shares her journey through anxiety, internet fame, and personal growth.

Amid the pandemic and sudden online fame, Carrie faced intense anxiety, receiving harmful threats from strangers and grappling with the pressures of social media. Sharing her most vulnerable moments, including her first heartbreak at sixteen, Carrie emphasizes the importance of authenticity. Through therapy and self-discovery, she learned that while she couldn’t switch off her anxiety, she could change her response to it.

Carrie’s story is a perfect example of the resilience it takes to be a young person in today’s social climate, and proves how powerful self-confidence and inner strength can be.

We created this video in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators.

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About Carrie Berk:

Twenty-one-year-old Carrie Berk already has a life’s worth of accomplishments under her belt. It’s no wonder Bella Magazine declared her “an ambitious and dedicated boss babe,” and The Wall Street Journal dubbed her “a community-minded young creator.”

She is a verified content creator across several social media channels including TikTok (3.9M followers; 119M likes), Instagram (950K followers), Snapchat (133K followers), YouTube (101K followers) and Pinterest (227K followers; 10M monthly views), with a combined monthly engagement of more than 100M. Carrie has collaborated with top fashion, beauty, and lifestyle brands including Netflix, HBO Max, Walt Disney World, Pixar, Instagram, Revolve, Wet n Wild, MAC Cosmetics, Roller Rabbit, VS PINK, Alice + Olivia, Chips Ahoy!, Dunkin’ and more. She has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, New York Daily News and others.

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Futurist Ari Wallach asks, “how do you want to be remembered?”

Humans have a "lifetime bias." When we plan ahead, we do so by thinking in terms of years and decades rather than centuries and millennia.

We need to escape this short-term thinking if we want to be great ancestors to the generations of humans that will come after us.

One way to do so is through transgenerational empathy, by which we reconcile ourselves with the past in order to focus on the attributes that we want to pass on to the next generation.

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This video is part of The Progress Issue, a Big Think and Freethink special collaboration.

In this inaugural special issue we set out to explore progress — how it happens, how we nurture it and how we stifle it, and what changes are required in how we approach our most serious problems to ensure greater and more equitable progress for all.

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About Ari Wallach

Ari Wallach is an applied futurist and Executive Director of Longpath Labs. He is the author of Longpath: Becoming the Great Ancestors Our Future Needs by HarperCollins and the creator and host of the forthcoming series on PBS A Brief History of the Future, which is being executive produced by Kathryn Murdoch and Drake. He has been a strategy and foresight advisor to Fortune 100 companies, the US Department of State, the Ford Foundation, the UN Refugee Agency, the RacialEquity 2030 Challenge and Politico’s Long Game Forum. As adjunct associate professor at Columbia University he lectured on innovation, AI, and the future of public policy. Wallach's TED talk on Longpath has been viewed 2.6 million times and translated into 21 languages. Ari was the co-creator of 2008's pro-Obama The Great Schlep with Sarah Silverman. He has been featured in the New York Times, CNN, CNBC, Vox, and more. He lives in the lower Hudson Valley with his wife, three children and wonderdog Ozzie. More at Longpath.org and @ariw.

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Wondering how Pfizer and partner BioNTech developed a COVID-19 vaccine in record time without compromising safety? Dr Bill Gruber, SVP of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, explains the process from start to finish.

“I told my team, at first we were inspired by hope and now we’re inspired by reality,” Dr Gruber said. “If you bring critical science together, talented team members together, government, academia, industry, public health officials—you can achieve what was previously the unachievable.”

The Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 Vaccine has not been approved or licensed by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), but has been authorized for emergency use by FDA under an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to prevent COVID-19 for use in individuals 12 years of age and older. The emergency use of this product is only authorized for the duration of the emergency declaration unless ended sooner. See Fact Sheet: cvdvaccine-us.com/recipients.

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BILL GRUBER:

Dr. Bill Gruber is senior vice president of Pfizer Vaccine Clinical Research and Development, and is responsible for global clinical development of vaccines. Dr. Gruber was previously an associate professor of pediatrics at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine and also served as the director of the Diagnostic Virology Laboratory at Vanderbilt University Hospital. Dr. Gruber received his bachelor degree in mathematical sciences from Rice University, Houston, Texas, and his medical degree from Baylor College of Medicine, Houston, Texas. He is board-certified in pediatrics and pediatric infectious diseases and has authored or co-authored 140 original research articles and numerous invited articles and book chapters.

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TRANSCRIPT:

DR. BILL GRUBER: Historically, vaccines have been one of the most important medical intervention for public health. Diseases like smallpox that used to have a 30% mortality rate, that are completely wiped from the face of the Earth. When it looked like there was the potential for us to engage in moving forward a COVID-19 vaccine, there was the daunting challenge to do something that had never been done before. And that was to try to get a vaccine out within less than a year. That, I can tell you, is unprecedented in history.

My name is Bill Gruber. I head vaccine clinical research and development for Pfizer and I’ve been involved in vaccine development for over 35 years. If you had asked me at the time, “what did I think the chances of our success were at the very beginning of this?” I would say well less than 50% becau.....

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The U.S. military once used Google’s tech without their employees knowing. Anna Butrico explains the complicated history behind “Project Maven.”

Google famously used the slogan, “Don't be evil,” to guide its business practices.

However, many Google employees were upset when they learned that the company had partnered with the U.S. Department of Defense on Project Maven, whose goal was to produce AI that could track people and vehicles.

Is it immoral for a tech company to partner with the military to create war technology? Or is it immoral not to?

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About Anna Butrico:

Anna Butrico is Chief of Staff of Odgers Berndtson U.S. Anna supports the OBUS leadership team in driving the firm’s growth strategy. Prior to joining Odgers, Anna was a senior communications associate at the McChrystal Group, where she advised Fortune 100 leaders on how to tap into human potential to achieve stronger business outcomes. A communications expert and former speechwriter, she is the co-author, with GEN (Ret.) Stanley McChrystal, of Risk: A User’s Guide. Anna earned her undergraduate degree in English from Vanderbilt University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She also studied literature at St. Anne’s College at the University of Oxford.

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The renegade WW2 pilots who tried to end war as we know it

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Much has been written about World War II in the seven and a half decades since it ended in 1945. But as writer Malcolm Gladwell shows with his new book "The Bomber Mafia," some incredible stories and perspectives have been largely forgotten.

A group of pilots, led by Brigadier General Haywood Hansell, earned the derogatory nickname Bomber Mafia because of a not-widely-shared dream that they could use a few strategic bombings to lower the death toll and have a "clean" war.

"But that's not what war ever is," says Gladwell. "It never has that kind of fairy tale ending." A few failed attempts led to a changing of the guard, the invention of napalm, and a summer of attacks on Japanese cities that Gladwell says was at "a scale of destruction almost unmatched in human history."

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MALCOLM GLADWELL:

Malcolm Gladwell is bestselling author and host of the Revisionist History podcast. His latest book, “The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War” tells the story of a group of pilots with an idea that, had it succeeded, would have reinvented warfare as we know it

Read Malcolm Gladwell's newest book "The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation, and the Longest Night of the Second World War" at https://amzn.to/3gUrhmf

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TRANSCRIPT:

MALCOLM GLADWELL: Anyone who came home from the trenches of World War I came home permanently traumatized. The war was mindlessly brutal. There were battles in the First World War where hundreds of thousands of people, there was a battle in the First World War where a million men died. That experience could not be repeated. On the eve of the Second World War, there's a remarkable group of pilots who thought they could reinvent warfare and make war a more humane exercise, a kind of clean war. But that's not what war ever is. It never has that kind of fairytale ending.

My name is Malcolm Gladwell. I am a writer, host of the podcast "Revisionist History," and the author of the new book "The Bomber Mafia."

The story of the Bomber Mafia begins with a group of renegade pilots in central Alabama in the 1930s. They have become convinced that new technology, this new class of bombers, can make it possible to conduct a war where only a handful of people were killed. This is something that no one else in the military thought was even a remotely good idea. The term, "the Bomber Mafia," was not intended to be a compliment. They would always joke that if the people back in Washington knew what they were doing, they would all be fired.

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How love makes us feel can only be defined on an individual basis, but what it does to the body, specifically the brain, is now less abstract thanks to science. One of the problems with early-stage attraction, according to anthropologist Helen Fisher, is that it activates parts of the brain that are linked to drive, craving, obsession, and motivation, while other regions that deal with decision-making shut down. Dr. Fisher, professor Ted Fischer, and psychiatrist Gail Saltz explain the different types of love, explore the neuroscience of love and attraction, and share tips for sustaining relationships that are healthy and mutually beneficial.

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chapters:

0:00 Intro

0:32 Ted Fischer on love versus lust

0:56 Gail Saltz talks love and neurotransmitters

4:39 Helen Fisher on how love shuts down decision-making parts of our brains

8:15 Saltz on the science of a “good partner”

10:18 Helen Fisher on the importance of sex and romance for the brain and your relationship

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Frans de Waal has studied the behavior of primates for five decades. Some of his many important observations center around the evolution of morality and just how much we have in common with the animal kingdom.

The idea that animals are always in conflict with one another and competing for resources is “totally wrong,” de Waal says.

Other primates, specifically chimpanzees and bonobos, have demonstrated a range of traits and tendencies typically regarded as human, including empathy, friendship, reconciliation, altruism, and even adoption.

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FRANS DE WAAL:

Frans de Waal is a Dutch/American biologist and primatologist. He teaches at Emory University and directs the Living Links Center for the Study of Ape and Human Evolution, in Atlanta, Georgia. He is known for his popular books, such as Chimpanzee Politics (1982), Bonobo: The Forgotten Ape (1997) and The Age of Empathy (2009). He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences.

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TRANSCRIPT:

People sometimes describe nature as a dog-eat-dog world. Some of the biologists depict nature as a battlefield basically where selfish tendencies tend to prevail. And from morality, the evolution of morality there's very little room. What they mean is that all they see is competition. I win, you lose, winning is better than losing and so on. That's totally wrong. I fought against that sort of characterization of animal society all my life, because just like human society it is built on a lot of friendship and cooperation at the same time. We'd like to deny that connection that exists between us and animals. Certain tendencies, such as a sense of fairness, empathy, caring for others, helping others, following rules, punishing individuals who don't follow the rules, all of these tendencies can be observed in other primates. And they're saying these are the ingredients that we use to build a moral society.

The whole spectrum of both very positive behavior and very negative behavior can be seen in other animals. Animals can be heroic and they can be genuinely altruistic and we actively tested in our chimpanzees. We've done an experiment where a chimpanzee can choose between two options. One option rewards only himself, the other option rewards himself plus a partner who sits next to him. And our chimpanzees preferred the latter option. They prefer a task where they can reward the partner at the same time as themselves. The primates are a very cooperative society in general. The reason they live in groups is that on their own they cannot survive. So they have to have companions from whom they get support, with whom they live together, who help them find food, who warn them against predators. And they have long-term friendships in their society just like humans have. There's a lot of studies on how animals do favors for each other. And if you thin...

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The best orgasms come when you learn how to unlock a sexual “flow state.” Emily Nagoski, a sex educator, shares a meditation to help you get started. When you see an orgasm depicted in TV, film, or even porn, you can be virtually certain it was faked. This can feed misconceptions about there being a “correct” way to orgasm. In reality, orgasms are complex phenomena that can result from a wide range of stimuli, and they are orchestrated primarily by the brain, not only the genitals. Sex educator Emily Nagoski emphasizes the importance of familiarizing yourself with the full spectrum of pleasurable and arousing experiences, not just orgasms. Shifting focus from orgasms to overall pleasure can alleviate pressure, potentially leading to improved sexual experiences and, paradoxically, better orgasms.

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About Emily Nagoski: Emily Nagoski is the award-winning author of the New York Times bestselling Come As You Are and The Come As You Are Workbook, and coauthor, with her sister, Amelia, of New York Times bestseller Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle. She earned an M.S. in counseling and a Ph.D. in health behavior, both from Indiana University, with clinical and research training at the Kinsey Institute. Now she combines sex education and stress education to teach women to live with confidence and joy inside their bodies. She lives in Massachusetts with two dogs, a cat, and a cartoonist.

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Chloé Valdary shares the ancient Stoic principle that can defeat modern despair. It can be difficult to process sadness. People often try to numb it, avoid it, or deny that they’re even experiencing it, instead of better understanding and working through the emotion. The Stoics offer a more head-on approach. This school of philosophy is often falsely associated with the suppression of emotions. But it’s more accurate to say that the Stoics were interested in how people can respond virtuously to life’s trials and tragedies. The answer, according to general Stoic thought, is that we shouldn’t deny emotions or the things that make us feel pain or sadness, but rather strive to accept that which we cannot control and do our best to process our emotions in a way that puts us on a productive path forward. As Chloé Valdary, @cvaldary — an American writer and founder of the conflict-resolution program Theory of Enchantment — explains in this Big Think interview, Stoicism not only can help us work through sadness as individuals, but it can also teach us to recognize the many forms that suffering can take in others.

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Chapters:-

0:00 Transcending suffering

1:08 The origin of Stoic philosophy

2:40 How to practice ‘sympatheia’

4:48 Managing sadness with Stoicism

5:57 Developing inner strength: Know yourself, know others

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About Chloé Valdary: After spending a year as a Bartley fellow at the Wall Street Journal, Chloé Valdary developed The Theory of Enchantment, an innovative framework for compassionate antiracism that combines social emotional learning (SEL), character development, and interpersonal growth as tools for leadership development in the boardroom and beyond. Chloé has trained around the world, including in South Africa, The Netherlands, Germany, and Israel. Her clients have included high school and college students, government agencies, business teams, + many more. She has also lectured in universities across America, including Harvard and Georgetown. Her work has been covered in Psychology Today Magazine and her writings have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall St Journal

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