The Armen Show

How does our focused attention relate to what we call “consciousness”? What types of attention are out there, and what are the functions of each type? Professor Michael Graziano explores this and more in his book Rethinking Consciousness: A Scientific Theory of Subjective Experience.

Author Michael Graziano is Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Princeton University, and he has written multiple books on neuroscience, evolution, and human nature. The Graziano Lab at Princeton focuses on the brain basis of consciousness, based on attention schema theory, which was formulated by Professor Graziano.

I talked with Professor Graziano about his book and concepts related to consciousness. The mechanistic approach he brings to the topic is something that I am able to relate with.

Show notes:

• what Professor Graziano works on with students in the Graziano lab
• how the brain basis of consciousness is studied, and ways that we accept consciousness as defined
• what the attention schema theory is, and how the model has two functions for daily living
• the way that signals compete with each other in the computational process of attention
• how a frog’s form of attention differs from that of a person, and the types of awareness that exist
• what “biased competition” is, and and the battle for incoming stimuli to the cortex
• why covert and overt attention are both needed, and how they differ
• consciousness only being present in a few types of organisms/mammals
• the concept of affordance, and how the brain works tirelessly as a prediction machine
• why consciousness is defined as a hard problem, and if that difficulty can be usurped with some research method

It was swell to have Professor Graziano on episode 239 of the show. You can check out his lab page at Princeton, see his research publications, or check out his book Rethinking Consciousness on Amazon.

I like people who put their thoughts out there, and furthermore, when they have a “Principles” page on their website that describes the thoughts that guide them. Cameron Porter joins on episode 238 of the show, not only as a former Major League Soccer striker on various teams, but as a current founder and funder for AlleyCorp, an organization that builds transformative companies in New York City.

At AlleyCorp, Cameron “…is responsible for new company R&D, due diligence on seed investments, as well the development of internal tools/initiatives.” Regarding his academic experience, he “… studied computer science at Princeton University where he was recognized as an Academic All-American and William Winston Roper Trophy finalist for high scholastic rank and outstanding qualities of sportsmanship.”

Before the episode, I had checked out his speaking with David Perell on The North Star Podcast, and enjoyed their discussion. My discussion with Cameron ranged from his mindset, to his soccer experiences, to his founding and funding practice.

Show notes:

• how Cameron ended up in the founding/funding category at AlleyCorp, transitioning away from his professional soccer career [2:20]
• the concept of how greatness is not able to be planned, and the way this message has attached to Cameron’s path [3:40]
• what a long-term perspective can provide, and an example of a project that took this perspective into account [5:20]
• some of the takeaways that Cameron got from his time at Princeton, including those related to people [6:55]
• the way that Cameron sees the soccer portion of his career in relation to what he currently does [10:20]
• some differences that may have existed between Cameron and some of his fellow soccer players [12:00]
• what led Cameron to playing in the position of striker on the field [14:00]
• examples of a fork in life that Cameron had other than the knee injury that impacted his career [14:00]
• the concept of whether something will matter in 5 years [18:20]
• creation versus consumption, and Cameron’s principle of looking at output instead of input, personally or in the workplace [22:45]
• incompetence over malice, and how to look at the feedback or commentary that others send to you [26:45]
• perspective on fear, alternatively looked at as uncertainty [30:00]
• whether Cameron thought he might have some sort of large injury before it happened on the field [32:10]
• entropy in socialization and life, and the way that Cameron would want entropy to be represented in his outputs/projects [34:00]
• how podcasts are not as constrained in direction as some other mediums that exist [37:30]
• if Cameron would make a podcast, and what it would be about [39:00]
• whether audio, video, or text input/output is most preferred by Cameron for content purposes [42:45]

I sure enjoyed having Cameron on the episode. His thoughts are clear, and on point, and he has a warm nature. To the potential of a follow-up episode in a year, to compare the deltas from where he and I were at during the time of this episode. To more good things. You can check out his website at incremental.nyc

Here we are on episode 237 with music producer Bob Varo. He originates out of the European nation of Belgium, and makes music of the rock or metal variation, or it may be alternative.

We talked about a lot of his musical experiences, what he aims to do in music production in the future, and how his experience has been coming to Los Angeles a few times from Belgium.

Show notes:

• the country of Belgium that Bob originates from, and places he has been in or around there
• what some of the differences are between his experiences in the music production field in Belgium versus Los Angeles
• where Bob has performed or done musical work over the years
• how Bob looks to add value to artists he works with, whether it be songwriting, recording, or mixing/mastering
• why it is important to flow with the current methods of sound and music generation, with more technological possibilities
• challenges that can come up when working with a certain artist
• how I met Bob at a house party in the first place
• some bands that Bob has known of, or identifies with, or would be glad to work with if given the opportunity
• why taking classes can create a small-world scenario that leads to memories for your select grouping
• one of Bob’s studio/travel experiences through parts of northern Europe
• the difference between those who release music as albums versus “big-hit” singles one after another

Glad to have Bob on the show.

Does the mind have less depth to it than is readily assumed? Are we able to multitask at all? Professor Nick Chater joins on episode 236 to discuss the qualities of the brain that give it depth or the illusion of mental depth.

Professor Chater is Professor of Behavioral Science at Warwick Business School, has over 200 publications, and has been editor for Cognitive Science and Psychological Review journals.

His research focuses on the cognitive and behavioral sciences, including reasoning, decision-making, and language. He has done experimental, computational, and mathematical studies of basic mental processes.

Show notes:

• Professor Chater’s research and past content, as well as his educational history
• how the myth of unconscious thought is not applicable
• why multitasking is not the way that the brain is built to handle projects and tasks
• the way that the material in Professor Chater’s book connects with the interpreter concept from past episodes
• how little we can see with our eyes at any one time
• risk-seeking qualities versus risk-averse nature in decision-making
• how feelings are invented in response to physiological base responses and other processes underneath
• the way that some are able to have a sense of other’s feelings, like Gary from a past episode
• if it is reasonable to look at what we do in a stimulus-response form of maneuvering

I was glad to have Professor Chater on the show. You can check out his faculty page to see his breadth of publications.

Episode 235 comes into the forefront with master trainer and fitness coach Kai Boyer. Her coaching style comes with a great sense of the physiology behind movements. She has solutions for how workouts should be adjusted, in order to make up for gaps in muscular fitness building.

Kai provides a lot of services through her coaching, including a weight loss program, strength training, high performance sports training, interval training, post-surgical rehabilitation, and mean plan building. The main philosophy of her training is the concept of Kaizen, which is about little improvements over time.

I like that concept because we can deconstruct most things in life into little battles to work through, and then the large thing is no longer large. It’s like one of those physics activation energy graphs having a lower required activation energy for the goal you want. Kai uses it for fitness (and her name is in the word Kaizen), but it is able to be applied to various life hurdles.

Show notes:

• how Kai got into the fitness category in the first place
• the way that Kai built her current client base, and the types of individuals she has worked with in recent times
• why nutrition is so important to fitness, even though it doesn’t fit the intuitive thought that the workout is the main component
• what Kai eats during a normal week, and what a person would want to include in their diet to be able to build fitness
• what workouts to add in to example workout programs to fill in gaps that may exist
• how most people don’t like to stretch, and what that can lead to
• where certain sports players usually get injured
• how many days of strength and workout training one should have as part of a healthy week
• whether a person should be more focused on calorie reduction or workout increases, based on their current plan

Having Kai on the show was neat, and she is a straightforward individual. You can check out her site and what she brings to the table at Kai Boyer Fitness.

Episode 234 gets into the swing of things with guest Dean Hallett, Founder & CEO of Hallett Leadership. During his 17-year tenure at Fox Studios, where he served as CFO, Dean developed a unique and highly effective 9-month leadership training program for early and mid-career managers. The program’s success at breaking down silos across Fox, and fostering a culture of collaboration, led to Dean’s promotion to Senior Executive VP of Operations & Management. Today, the program Dean pioneered at Fox is called the Accelerated Leadership Program (ALP), which “develops tomorrow’s leaders today.”

Decades of experience in a space is something that gives refinement we highly desire when we are looking for a person of quality. Dean has some baseline rules for leadership, as well as understanding of how to facilitate levels of leadership underneath him.

I spoke with Dean about a variety of topics related to leadership, his experience at Fox and Disney, personality traits that matter in organizational leadership, and more.

Show notes:

• how Dean deviated from his earlier public accounting track to his positions as CFO of large corporations
• why being somewhat introverted can bring value to an organization, and how introverts sometimes have the most to offer
• what some examples of Dean providing leadership consisted of
• how the reward structure of a corporation affects what people target their efforts toward, and how shifting this reward structure is important for improved culture
• what some of the qualities are that Dean looks for in people working around and under him, to have a highly-effective organization
• why letting people work their own way and be creative leads to positive and potentially surprisingly positive results
• how Dean feels about feeling comfort in life, versus expanding one’s zone
• what books have been read by Dean for understanding, including Collaboration Begins With You by Ken Blanchard, and The Tao to High-Performance Leadership by Jack Zwissig
• why storytelling has a compelling force to it
• how being fearful of training and developing your people sends them away, as opposed to the alternative

It was a pleasure to speak with Dean during this episode, and hear some other stories about his life experiences. He is a full person, as I would describe it, and is on the way in his new path. I always connect more with individuals building their own name and entities. You can check out his coaching material at Hallett Leadership.

Humans have evolved to become more domesticated, and there are multiple variables at work causing this shift. It wasn’t always this way, and human species have had a two-sided relationship with virtue and violence a long period of time. Dr. Richard Wrangham, author of The Goodness Paradox, joins on episode 233 to discuss this shift and relationship.

Professor Wrangham (PhD, Cambridge University, 1975) is Ruth B. Moore Professor of Biological Anthropology at Harvard University and founded the Kibale Chimpanzee Project in 1987. He has conducted extensive research on primate ecology, nutrition, and social behavior. He is best known for his work on the evolution of human warfare, described in the book Demonic Males, and on the role of cooking in human evolution, described in the book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human. Together with Elizabeth Ross, he co-founded the Kasiisi Project in 1997, and serves as a patron of the Great Apes Survival Partnership (GRASP).

It was neat to talk with Professor Wrangham about the ways that evolution has impacted humans as they have progressed. We also included some material on his understanding of cooking and its impacts.

Show notes:

• how proactive and reactive aggression differ, and why that is important
• some of the ways that Professor Wrangham has done research on chimpanzees to understand more about humans
• where humans stand on the threshold of reactive and proactive aggression
• the elements that separated Homo sapiens from the other species of humans
• how intra and inter group cooperation without expectation of future returns works in principle but struggles in person
• the impact of capital punishment as a way to reduce societal reactive aggression via conformity
• the window of socialization that exists early in life
• how the leaders of alpha males of a group impact the rest of the group, and what happens when they die off or are vanquished

Glad to have Dr. Wrangham on the show~ You can check out The Goodness Paradox on Amazon, look at his faculty page, or check out his chimpanzee project website.

As a sociologist and physician, Dr. Nicholas A. Christakis has done research on social networks and the socioeconomic, biosocial, and evolutionary determinants of behavior, health, and longevity. His most recent book Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society shows how evolution has united humanity and put us on a fitting path of progression.

Dr. Christakis is the Sterling Professor of Social and Natural Science at Yale University. He received an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, and an M.P.H. from the Harvard School of Public Health. His Ph. D. in sociology is from the University of Pennsylvania. He was voted one of Time’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2009.

His book Blueprint was recently mentioned by Bill Gates in a tweet, as well as on his Gates Notes website. He mentions that Robert Sapolsky of my past reading (Behave) gives “…you a framework down to the biological and hormonal level, while Christakis focuses more on person-to-person interactions.”

Show notes:

• what it means for society to have developed into a way of being that is good, and why evolution may have directed that way
• how relationship dynamics like monogamy or social structure would develop in similar environments given enough time
• why a fixed social environment creates one type of winning people, and a fluid social environment creates a different set
• the impact that removing a leader of a group has on the group
• what repeats in society from millions of years ago to now
• how pair-bonding can be impacted by certain neurotransmitters, and what this represents about us
• the kind of research that Dr. Christakis has done, and his views on the current social networks that are popular in society
• the way that some past recurring events were responses to human needs, though those civilizations may have not known the “why”
• what unintentional, intentional, and artificial communities can tell us about the way people function as a group

It was great to have Dr. Christakis on the show. You can check out Blueprint on Amazon, his Wikipedia, or his Yale faculty page.

When it comes to anti-aging research, Dr. David A. Sinclair of Harvard Medical School is on the forefront of research and innovation. He joins on episode 231 to discuss his new book Lifespan: Why We Age – and Why We Don’t Have To.

Dr. Sinclair, Ph.D., A.O. is a Professor in the Department of Genetics and co-Director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. He is best known for his work on understanding why we age and how to slow its effects. He obtained his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 1995.

He worked as a postdoctoral researcher at M.I.T. with Dr. Leonard Guarente where he co discovered a cause of aging for yeast as well as the role of Sir2 in epigenetic changes driven by genome instability. In 1999 he was recruited to Harvard Medical School where he has been teaching aging biology and translational medicine for aging for the past 16 years. He was also on TIME magazine’s 2014 list of the “100 most influential people in the world”.

Show notes:

• Dr. Sinclair’s background, and what led him into the field of anti-aging research
• what it is about adversity that leads to a chemical response in the body, across sirtuins and more
• how aging is not yet thought of as a disease, and how that can change through communication efforts
• why society and people can seem stuck in a slowed form of evolution as compared with where we are headed
• why studying organisms fighting adversity, similar to how Dr. Cockell studied extremophiles, is the way to find most answers
• how stress at a cellular level is different from psychological stress that releases cortisol in the bloodstream
• what it means to have senescent cells accumulate in the body as one ages over time
• how an optic nerve was regrown in a mouse, and what that means for our potential nerve-based regrowth
• what kinds of demands Dr. Sinclair has on his time with regards to the research he does
• how the Horvath Clock represents true age of a person beyond external appearance and other metrics

This was an enjoyable episode, and book, that is right on the forefront of aging research and technology. Dr. Sinclair is very active in this space, and it shows. You can check out his website, the book on Amazon, or some of his research.

Professor Steven C. Hayes of the University of Nevada is prolific in the category of psychological research. He has put out over 600 scientific articles and 44 books. Most of his research has been in the categories of human language and cognition as they relate to reducing human suffering. He has built a form called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is psychotherapy using mindfulness and acceptance.

“Dr. Hayes has been President of Division 25 of the APA, of the American Association of Applied and Preventive Psychology, the Association for Behavioral and Cognitive Therapy, and the Association for Contextual Behavioral Science. He was the first Secretary-Treasurer of the Association for Psychological Science, which he helped form and has served a 5 year term on the National Advisory Council for Drug Abuse in the National Institutes of Health.”

He joins me on this episode to discuss topics from his book “A Liberated Mind: How to Pivot Toward What Matters”. It was a great nonlinear discussion that brought up a lot of insights.

Show notes:

• why you need to be continually putting effort in some category to have a chance in it
• how those who are not ready for the difficult have no chance to acquire the great
• what it takes to pivot toward the things you are interested in
• how so many of your thoughts can run on auto-pilot until you deconstruct the steps leading to them
• where you need to go mentally to clear up a past issue and come to a conclusion
• and much more

You can check out A Liberated Mind on Amazon, or check out Dr. Hayes web page, or his Twitter.