I didn’t have a lot of social interactions. I was just working and I was getting burnt out. And I decided to go on a river rafting trip to Peru by myself because I had no friends. So I go on the river rafting trip and it’s great. It’s beautiful. We’re river rafting. We’re camping on Aztec burial sites and it is just spectacular. But I realized that I’m the weakest person on this trip. And when I got back after this wonderful two weeks in Peru, I said, I never want to feel like the weakest person on a trip like that again. And it was so great to be moving and to be exercising.

The Power of Exercise

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So I decided I’m going to go to the gym and I’m going to continue this physical activity at the gym. And somehow it stuck. I had let myself go, no exercise at all. And when I started going to the gym regularly, I noticed that that great mood that I found in Peru every day during the river rafting trip stayed with me. I think everybody in my lab loved it when I was going to the gym.

And I started to notice not only I got stronger, feeling better, that mood boost that I got from physical activity was so powerful. But then one day, you asked me about this revelation I had. It was one day I was sitting in my office writing a grant, which is usually something that I have to do very regularly, but usually something that I’m pulling my hair out. It’s so hard. It’s very competitive. I’m competing against Nobel laureates for the same pot of money.

And I had this thought that went through my mind, which was, “Gosh, writing went well today.” I’d never had that thought before ever in my, I’d been there for five years at NYU writing grants. And so I thought, oh, maybe I’m just having a good day. I’m feeling good. But I realized that the writing seemed to have been getting a little bit better over time.

The Exercise-Brain Connection

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I had noticed it a little bit if I think about it. And the only thing I had changed in my life was regular physical activity inspired by that trip to Peru. And so I’m a neuroscientist. I went to the literature and I asked, well, what do we know right now about what exactly exercise is doing? And it showed at that moment in time, about 10, 15 years ago, that exercise can improve your mood. Exercise actually makes your memory work better. And exercise improves the function of your prefrontal cortex. And I thought, wow, that is amazing.

A Personal Wake-Up Call

DR WENDY SUZUKI: But the last part of the story was that when all of this was going on, this was after this day of realizing, gosh, something’s, you know, my writing is better and maybe it’s exercise. I got a call from my mom who said that my father wasn’t feeling well and that he had gotten lost driving back from the coffee shop that he drove to every day, every afternoon for the last 20 years.

And the hippocampus, that structure critical for memory, is particularly important for spatial memory. And as an expert in the hippocampus, as I am, I knew that that was a telltale sign of dementia and maybe Alzheimer’s dementia. But as I talked to my father, and of course, we went and got him a neurology appointment, I saw that everything that seemed to be improving in me, that his memory focus completely and very, very suddenly diminished in him. His memory was terrible. He couldn’t focus. He was also very depressed because he could notice how poor his memory was.

And I think those things together, what I was noticing in myself, but the effects of physical activity on my own brain function, and seeing my father go through what was a really precipitous loss of his cognitive functions, that turned out to be Alzheimer’s dementia, made me think that the power of physical activity needed to be explored more deeply. And by me, I was waking up in the morning thinking about, what can I do to better understand how physical activity could be used, not just for me, for my students. Can they study better? Can they learn better? Can it help, maybe not my father, I wasn’t sure whether exercise could help my father at that point, but as people age, that was the revelation that I had that made me actually switch my research focus from memory function to understanding the effects of physical activity on the brain.

Brain Plasticity and Scientific Discovery

STEVEN BARTLETT: All of this is rooted in a fact that was once not considered a fact, which is the idea that our brains can change shape.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yeah. This idea of brain plasticity. I only really learned about this a couple of years ago. I think I, like many people, didn’t realize that, like muscles, my brain changes shape based on what I do.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And also what I consume. What is the evidence or the studies that we have that proves our brains do change shape?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah, that’s such a great question. And it takes me back to the first day of my freshman year at UC Berkeley. When I walked into the classroom, I didn’t know it at the time, but the classroom of the professor that discovered brain plasticity, her name is Marian Diamond, and she was the very first female PhD in neuroanatomy that UC Berkeley ever gave. I walked into her classroom in the 80s when I went to college, but she discovered this in the late 1960s when it was thought, as you said, that the adult brain can’t change at all. There’s absolutely no evidence for it. And that was true at the time. She thought, no, I don’t think that’s true.

The Groundbreaking Experiment

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Let’s do a simple experiment. Let’s try and look at the effects in two randomly grouped set of rats, one that lives in what they would consider an enriched environment. What would be an enriched environment? Well, for her, it was a rat cage full of toys that got changed out all the time, lots of other rats to play with, and lots of activity. I think of it as the Disney World of rat cages. And she compared the brains of those rats to rats that she raised in kind of a shoe box, a smaller environment. They got free food and water, all the food and water they could eat and drink, but maybe only one other rat and no toys.

Now if the adult rat, they were all the same age, they were adults, if the adult brain didn’t change, then there should be absolutely no difference between the brains raised in Disney World and the brains raised in the shoe box. But she found that the brains of those rats raised in the Disney World of rat cages, the outer covering of the brain, the outside of the brain here, I’m pointing to the outside of this brain model here, called the cortex. It was actually thicker.

She was a neuroanatomist and she showed that the thickness of this outer covering actually grew. What does that mean? There were more synaptic connections there, not in the whole brain, in certain brain areas that made sense. The visual cortical area, there was much more visual stimulation in the Disney World of rat cages. The motor areas were thicker, the somatosensory, the touch areas were thicker because they were interacting in a much more complex way with their touch system.

And that was the first demonstration the adult brain could change and that it would actually make the cortex of the brain grow. And now we know, what is it about the Disney World of rat cages? Is it the toys? Should we all be playing with toys? Later studies showed that you get almost identical effects just by giving rats a running wheel.

Physical Activity and Brain Changes

Physical activity is doing all of that, has the potential to change all of that in the rodent brain and now in the human brain.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Didn’t they find something similar with London taxi drivers? I always hear this. I thought it was like a, I wasn’t sure if it was true or like a rumor, but…

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No, no, no. It’s absolutely true. That is a different form of brain plasticity, which is something that we all do and my students do hopefully very well, which is learning.

So can learning the streets of London, which are… I can’t remember the number of different streets that London taxi cab drivers have to learn to pass the famous test called “the knowledge,” but I do remember that it takes them four years to study for this test. It is intense knowledge. You have to learn all the lawful ways to get from all the big landmarks to be a certified London taxi cab driver.

The London Taxi Driver Study

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And what my colleague Eleanor Maguire, a professor of neuroscience at University College London did, is she followed want to be London taxi cab drivers during their four years of the knowledge, this test for London taxi cab drivers, knowing that half of them were going to fail. They were not going to make it. And so she tested them at the beginning and asked, how is your memory? And how big is your hippocampus? Identical for all of the want to be London taxi cab drivers before they started.

STEVEN BARTLETT: She scanned their brains?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah, she scanned their brains and she tested their memory, behaviorally. Then they go through, half of them drop out, they don’t become London taxi cab drivers and half of them become certified London taxi cab drivers after successfully learning all of this. Now, let’s see, how big is your hippocampus and how good is your memory?

The people that passed the test and became London taxi cab drivers, the posterior part of their hippocampus, which is the part we know is important for with posteriors towards the back of the head. The posterior part of the hippocampus, which is kind of a cigar shaped structure that goes from the front part of the brain to the back part of the brain. That back part of the brain was significantly bigger in those London, successful London taxi cab drivers compared to the failed London taxi cab drivers.

And the memory of the successful London taxi cab drivers were now superior to the memory of the want to be London taxi cab drivers that failed. So that is an example of how intense learning in a particular part of the brain. We know the posterior hippocampus is absolutely involved in spatial learning. That can change the actual structure and the function.

Impact of Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: How much of a difference can we make? I’m 31 years old now. So if I got serious about my brain health, how much of a difference can I realistically see? You know, I’m trying to figure out if it’s worth it. If it’s worth caring about my brain. Is there any evidence within the literature, within studies that have been done that show if I start now, even though I’m like 30, 31 years old, my life will be different in the future in the areas that I care about profoundly if I start caring about my brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Let me be very, very concrete here. The answer is absolutely yes. First, I’m going to give you results from a study in people that are 65 and older. So study people that are 65 and older and asked, what is the probability of getting dementia in the next six years, depending on the level of activity that you have just right now?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Physical activity?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Physical activity. And they measured it in how many walks you take per week. And if you took three walks a week or more, you were 30% less likely to develop dementia in the next five years. So 30% less likely to develop dementia. My father passed away of Alzheimer’s dementia. That makes me sit up and take notice.

But the thing that should make you as a 31 year old really sit up and take notice is the larger correlations that show that the longer you have regular physical activity in your life, the longer you’re able to stave off dementia. The more active you are over your lifetime. That first study shows that it’s never too late to start. You can start walking regularly, which is doable when you’re perhaps at that age. But the longer you stay active, the bigger and fatter and fluffier your brain will be.

The Science Behind Brain Growth

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Why does that make sense? So one key piece of information that I haven’t told you yet is that we know that physical activity is releasing, every single time you move your body, you’re releasing a whole bunch of neurochemicals in your brain. Some of them make you just feel good. Serotonin, dopamine, noradrenaline, endorphins. Yeah, I feel good. If I go out for a walk, I feel better than if I had been sitting here for eight hours.

But the other thing that gets released every single time is growth factors. I like to call it a bubble bath of neurochemicals that happens every time you move your body. What that growth factor does is it goes directly into your hippocampus and it helps brand new cells grow in your hippocampus. The hippocampus is only one of two total brain areas where new cells can grow.

That’s not the same as synapses, which are connections in the cells that are already there. But the hippocampus can grow new cells and this is really important because many people know that the hippocampus is attacked first in Alzheimer’s dementia. So exercise is not going to eliminate that disease state, but if you start with a huge fluffy hippocampus, it’s going to take that disease that much longer to actually damage enough of your hippocampus so that you start seeing those telltale signs of memory impairment that comes with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia in general.

Same thing with your prefrontal cortex. Your prefrontal cortex can grow with physical activity that’s not neurons, but new synapses can grow, age and neurodegenerative disease states can damage cells, but also take away synapses.

Understanding Dementia and Alzheimer’s

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’ve got two questions on that. So the first is about dementia and Alzheimer’s. Do we know what’s causing it?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No. We still don’t know. Nope. And there’s not good drugs, unfortunately, right now.

STEVEN BARTLETT: There’s a lot of links to lifestyle choices there, right?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes, absolutely. And so, of course, from based on what I just said, my number one most powerful tool that you can do to protect your brain from aging and neurodegenerative disease states is start walking. Why do I start with that? Because everybody can walk. You don’t need to buy any new fitness outfits, just go out and walk more.

And then they say, oh, well, do I have to become a marathon runner? That could help, too. But everybody can walk. And from that study that I mentioned in the 65-year-old, 30% reduction in the probability of getting Alzheimer’s with just walking.

Physical Activity and Decision-Making

STEVEN BARTLETT: You said that if I go and start walking and I do exercise, my prefrontal cortex will grow, which is the decision-making center, right? So does that mean, then, that if I am somebody who is very sedentary, I don’t do much physical activity, that my decision-making will be worse compared to what it could be with the same person if they were active?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes. I mean, there is that potential. Brain plasticity and the neuroscience of brain plasticity tells us that absolutely, with physical activity, you have great potential to improve the function of your prefrontal cortex. I must specify a little bit. The main function that has been shown to be particularly sensitive to regular physical activity is shifting and focusing your attention. So being able to listen to me while you might be paying attention to the AV guy that might be telling you something right now. So to be able to do that effectively, that is one of the things that we know has helped with regular physical activity. Focus and attention, that kind of thing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay. And memory as well. Does that exist in the prefrontal cortex as well?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: There’s a form of memory, working memory, which is kind of scratchpad memory. It’s a memory that, when we used to have to remember telephone numbers, that ability to remember a seven-digit, at least in the United States, telephone number, it’s different from long-term memory formation, which is memory for facts and events that is dependent on the hippocampus.

Memory and Navigation

STEVEN BARTLETT: I feel like my memory is not great. Why is my memory not as good as other people? Because I noticed this when I was with my friend in Thailand many years ago. I think I was 21 years old. And we could leave the house and go on our little mopeds for about an hour, and he could navigate us back home without needing sat-nav or Google Maps. And if I go three minutes down the street, I’m lost.

And I always wondered why that was. And then even with names and stuff, I would always… He’s my best friend. He still is one of my best friends for seven, eight years. We ran a business together, and he would remember every name of every person, and I couldn’t. I wouldn’t. And so I’d always turn to him and say, what was that person’s name again? What’s that? And I always wondered why my memory… He seemed to have this incredible memory, and mine seems to be pretty rudimentary.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I would argue that, yeah, everybody has parts of their memory that aren’t as good as they want, but also other forms of memory that they’re very good at. So I would guess—I’ve only just met you today—that your memory for stories and storytelling and story progress is excellent, because it has to be for the job that you do. I bet you it’s much better than your friend that can navigate back. Not everybody has a perfect memory in all the different dimensions, and it’s like our personality. Some people have a wonderful sense of humor, and others don’t. It is about how our brains are wired, which is defined both by nature and nurture, our genes.

And if I went to a stand-up comedy class, I would probably get funnier, but there’s probably a limit to my funniness compared to other people.

Types of Memory

STEVEN BARTLETT: So there’s different types of memory?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: In your book, you talk about there being, I think, is it three different types of memory in total that are formed in the hippocampus?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: There’s lots of different names for forms of memory in the hippocampus. But I like to describe it as the hippocampus is critical for our memory for facts and events, also called declarative memory or cognitive memory. Another form of memory that’s dependent on a completely different structure is motor memory, the memory that you use to learn how to play tennis or pickleball or whatever you’re playing.

And it’s not declarative. I can’t declare how I do a backhand in tennis, but it is in your motor functions. This is dependent on the striatum, a motor-related structure. And then there’s the prefrontal cortex, dependent on that working memory or scratchpad memory, keeping things in mind. So you and I are both trying to remember what we’ve just said so we can link it to things that we might say in the future.

The Relationship Between Memory and Attention

STEVEN BARTLETT: One of the things that I found really interesting, both as a marketer, but also as a podcaster and as someone that’s making a lot of content and trying to get people’s attention, was as I was reading through your work, it became quite clear to me that there’s a bit of an overlap between memory and attention in many respects, because you were talking about these four things that make facts or events memorable. And many of those things are things that I think about as a marketer when I’m trying to get someone to engage with something, click on something, buy something. What are those four things? Can we go through them?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Absolutely. So I like to say there are four things that make memory stick. And this is after 25 or 30 years studying the hippocampus and how memories work. Number one is obvious: repetition. You remember things with repetition.

Number two, not as obvious, is association. The hippocampus is an associative structure. It associates one thing with the other. For example, your name and your face. So I’ve just met you, and I will remember your name and your face now. But it also helps you remember things like who’s married to each other, associating the husband with the wife. Have you heard of the memory palace?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So this is a technique that has been used for many, many ages to help remember things. And it is a strategy where you picture a special location that’s very familiar to you, like your childhood home. When you need to remember a list of items, you take an imaginative walk through that very familiar environment and place those items in particular locations in the environment. That is associating something really familiar, your childhood home, you know every corner of it, with the new thing you need to remember. And that works and has worked for memory champions for many years because the hippocampus associates things together.

That’s number two, association.

Novelty and Emotional Resonance

Number three is novelty. We remember novel things. I’ve never been to this particular studio ever before in my 26 years in New York and Brooklyn. So this is a novel thing, and I will remember coming here to do this podcast with you. Our brains—and this is where it interacts with the attention system. Our attention system focuses on things that are novel. Why? Because it could be dangerous. I’ve seen things over and over and over again. I don’t notice them. They go into the background. It’s not going to hurt me any, you know, it’s not going to cause me any danger.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Cliché. That’s why cliché doesn’t work in marketing.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Exactly. Yeah. But something novel, ooh, that really perks people up. I use that in my teaching all the time. Surprise students with an element of what you want them to learn, and they will remember it better.

But the fourth one, which is so powerful—and we know it intuitively, we understand this intuitively—is emotional resonance makes things more memorable. We remember the happiest and the saddest things in our lives because that emotional resonance solidifies those memories.

The Role of the Amygdala

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Where does that come from? It comes from a structure called the amygdala that sits right in front of the hippocampus, right in the front of the temporal lobe right here. And the hippocampus is right behind it. Amygdala means almond. It’s an almond-shaped structure, and it sits right in front of the kind of tube-shaped structure that is the hippocampus behind it. The amygdala is kind of infusing the hippocampus and kind of giving it a little jolt when it’s emotionally resonant, either really happy or really sad.

The Human Brain: A Tangible Wonder

STEVEN BARTLETT: You brought with you what you’ve told me is a real human brain.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes, I did.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Now, I’m not sure if you’re just winding me up, but we’re talking here about novelty and surprise and things you’ll never forget and emotional resonance. And as you were saying that, I was conscious that over in the corner of the room, it appears that there’s a human brain in a box. So Jack is just bringing the human brain in. I’ve never seen a human brain before.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You’ve never seen. That’s why I brought you gloves so you can hold it if you like, if you like.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you have permission to—if there is a human brain in this box and you’re not winding me up—did you have to get permission from the owner of that brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So this was purchased lawfully by my department, the Center for Neural Science at New York University. So it is lawfully ours to use as a teaching tool. And it does bring enormous novelty to any situation that I go into and makes people really think about their brain in a new way, which is why I bring it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is in that box?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: In this box is a real preserved human brain named Betty.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Was the person who used to own that brain called Betty?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No, we don’t know the name of the person. I named this brain Betty.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Can you tell if it’s a man or a woman?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No, I can’t.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh, men and women brains not different at all?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: They are, but in very, very subtle ways that we wouldn’t be able to tell just looking at the outside of the brain like this.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, I’m ready.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Are you ready?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think so.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Okay, so I’m going to open the hat box.

STEVEN BARTLETT: No way.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And I’m going to pull out.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you joking? Is that really a brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: It is a real preserved human brain. There it is: frontal lobe, occipital lobe for vision, occipital lobe back there. And in this brain, I don’t know if you can see it from over there. If I pull apart the two hemispheres, you can see how deep the folds of the brain, the surface is folded in that deep into the brain, which expands the surface area of the outside of the cortex.

The rat cortex is flat. There’s no folds. Humans and elephants and dolphins have lots of folds. They have much higher capacity for computation because of the folds that you see in this brain.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s smaller than I was expecting.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Really? Half the people say it’s smaller, half the people say, wow, that’s enormous. Interesting.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that the color of the brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: The color of the brain is darker than the real brain, if we opened up my head right now, because of the formaldehyde, the preservative chemical that this has been sitting in for at least 26 years. This brain has been in my department ever since I got here 26 years ago.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I feel like I probably should hold it.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I think you should hold it.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Oh my God. It’s wet.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes. So, I mean, that defined this person’s whole life—how they saw, felt, smelled, heard, and thought about the world. It’s right there in your one hand, in your right hand.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s crazy to think that this little thing is, oh, it’s different underneath.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: It’s crazy to think that this little thing, this little…

DR WENDY SUZUKI: That’s the start of the spinal cord right there that you’re pointing at.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And this stuff underneath at the back?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: That is the cerebellum, a brain structure critical for fine motor movement. So we wouldn’t be able to walk smoothly if you have damage in your cerebellum.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Isn’t it interesting that everything—as you say, everything this person worried about, every thought, every memory, every relationship, all of their education, the school they went to, the university, everything they saw and remembered, and all of their trauma and their anxiety and maybe their depression, everything they went through, even their last days before they died—is captured in this little ball of tofu that sits in my hand, an entire human being’s existence.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: It’s true.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What they watched on TV, their favorite movie, their favorite number, color, everything is in this tiny little ball of tofu. Oh gosh. It is amazing.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And actually, in real life, firm tofu is the consistency of the brain. I often bring in a block of firm tofu when I demo this for students, in addition to Betty.

A Life-Changing Discovery

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you remember the first time you saw a human brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I do.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Did it change how you think about your own brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: It changed my life because I was like, I want to study that. That is the coolest thing that I’ve ever seen in my whole life. And I want to study that, and I want to be just like her. And so it really like, okay, now I decided this is what I want to do. And it was life-changing.

The Life-Changing Impact of Understanding Your Brain

STEVEN BARTLETT: I say that because at the start of this conversation, we said that most of us don’t appreciate our brain. A lot of people don’t even realize it’s there. But the minute I had a brain scan one day, that brain scan really changed my life because seeing my own brain for the first time, it was the push that I needed to start caring more about how my decisions and behaviors are impacting it.

So let’s talk about how I can make that ball of tofu in my head super healthy, big, fat, and fluffy. You talked about exercise earlier on, but we didn’t really dig into exactly what you mean by exercise because exercise, I think, is multifaceted in definition. What kind of exercise should I be doing to make my ball of tofu in my head great, optimal?

The Role of Exercise in Brain Health

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Well, all the research shows that the best kind of exercise that you can do is anything that gives you aerobic activity—that is, getting your heart rate up. So that goes for, you know, power walking will get your heart rate up, soccer, so many different things—name your activity. So many people want to say, “Oh, my favorite activity, will that work?” And I always just say, “Is your heart rate up when you’re doing it?” If the answer is yes, then yeah, that works great.

We know that that level of aerobic activity is critical because that’s going to release that growth factor maximally to get into your hippocampus that will grow those new brain cells.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How much?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: So I have an answer to that. We did two different experiments in my lab. One in low-fit people—people that are really not exercising very much at all, less than 30 minutes in the last three weeks you’ve moved your body.

We asked, could we see any behavioral improvement in your memory function from your hippocampus or your ability to shift and focus attention if we asked you to move your body in an aerobic way for two to three times a week? We collaborated with a spin class—they’re clearly very aerobic.

And what we found was in those people that did successfully do two to three times a week of a 45-minute aerobic activity, their mood got significantly better, their memory function got better, and their ability to shift and focus attention got significantly better.

So that gives a little bit of a guideline for low-fit people—two to three times a week can start to give you some of those cognitive changes.

Tailoring Exercise for Fitness Levels

But you don’t look low-fit. So let me answer the question you’re about to ask me. You’re like, “What about me? I exercise pretty regularly, so how much do I need?” To answer that question, we went to another spin studio, and we said, “Look, we’re going to give you free classes. You could exercise as much as you want at this studio and go up to seven times a week.” The control was just to stay the same—they were working out twice a week at the studio.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Control was the other group that you were testing them against?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yes, exactly. And so what we found was basically every drop of sweat counted. The more you exercised, the more change in your brain we noted—both your hippocampal function, prefrontal function, and mood.

You were already getting benefits. You’re already going twice a week. But the more you did, the more brain changes you got. So that doesn’t give the formula that I would like, but we are heading in that direction, which is part of one of the questions that I want to answer. But I love to leave people with the idea that every drop of sweat counts for building your brain into the big, fat, fluffy brain that you really want.

Real-Life Benefits of Physical Activity

STEVEN BARTLETT: And then in the real world, again, making it super real for people, how does that change how I show up?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah. If you allow it to, it should have a beautiful effect on your mindset.

Your mindset around, “How often should I wake up 30 minutes early and do that walk before I start my day?” or “Accept the invitation to go walk the dog with a neighbor.” It’s not an obligation. It is something that you’re doing for yourself. It is going to have direct benefits on that ball of tofu, as you call it, in your head. It’s going to make it work better.

The Immediate Impact of Exercise

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: And I mean, I think the most immediate thing that I benefit from every single day is the mood boost that you get from that serotonin, dopamine, and noradrenaline that gets released every time you move your body.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I always think that because obviously I do a lot of podcasting, and I’m super reliant on my brain being attached to my mouth. And sometimes I notice that it’s not. You know what I mean? Sometimes I’m not articulate. I can’t get my thoughts together, whatever.

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And I always try and figure out the correlation between what I did that day when I have a good day versus a bad day. And also, I speak on stage sometimes, so I’ve often asked myself—because I saw Tony Robbins, the speaker, one day on a trampoline before he goes up on stage—I asked myself, “Okay, should I be doing a workout in my green room before I go up on stage for a big talk or presentation?” You think I should?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Oh, yeah, absolutely.

The Science Behind Pre-Performance Exercise

STEVEN BARTLETT: What’s the basis of that in science and neuroscience?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: The basis is that immediate effect. So, there are three key effects that we know happen every time you move your body.

First one is mood—you’re going to get your dopamine and serotonin up. Second is focus and attention. So, a single workout isn’t going to make more synapses in your prefrontal cortex. But the prefrontal cortex uses dopamine, and so it’s clear that even a single workout can make your prefrontal cortex work better in terms of focus and attention—also very important anytime you’re speaking.

And the third is reaction time. Your reaction time—motor, you’re working your motor cortex when you move your body—and your response and reaction time is significantly shorter after even a single workout compared to if you just don’t work out and sit alone.

So, great things to do before you stand up and speak.

The Impact of Caffeine on the Brain

STEVEN BARTLETT: What about coffee? I’m trying to figure out if coffee is good for my brain or bad for my brain. I had a couple of mixed messages around the impact it might be having.

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah. You know, caffeine is a stimulant, and people respond to that kind of stimulant in different ways. Overstimulation with caffeine is not good for your ability to put words together. You know, this is where I turn to a main theme in my book, Healthy Brain, Happy Life, which is self-experimentation.

For you, can you titrate your coffee to see what level of coffee is best for whatever—your podcast or when you’re giving a talk?

Exploring Alternatives to Boost Alertness

The other thing that can work similarly to coffee that I’ve started and that I do every morning is hot-cold contrast showers. That cold that you shower on yourself after the heat stimulates adrenaline in you—a natural adrenaline. It wakes you up. And, okay, it was painful the first few times I tried it. But then you get addicted to it, and I have forgotten to do it and gotten back in the shower just to douse myself with cold water because I feel better when I do that first thing in the morning.

So, lots of different things that one can explore with.

Behaviors That Destroy Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, on the other side of the coin then, what are some of the central behaviors that people do that destroy their brain?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Well, sedentary behavior is one of them. Not getting enough sleep is critical. We haven’t talked about sleep yet. Sleep is so important for normal functioning of the brain. I like to scare my students by saying that, you know, in torture situations, if you deprive a person of sleep for too long, they literally die. They die.

You cannot function if you are deprived of sleep for too many hours in a row. It’s that critical. Yet, we don’t. We happily, you know, watch too much Netflix at night and get only five hours of sleep when we could have had eight.

The Importance of Sleep for Brain Health

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: So what’s happening exactly? Why is it so important? Well, there are so many different things. I’m going to say two.

One is that we know that in regular healthy sleep, there is activity in the hippocampus that helps you strengthen the memories that you have formed in that previous day. It’s called consolidation, and it’s so important. If you shorten that, if you don’t get enough, you are not consolidating your normal everyday memories.

And second, it is the time during sleep when all the metabolites—all that garbage that your brain is producing, because all biological cells produce garbage—get cleaned up through the cerebrospinal fluid that is flowing through your brain. If you do not get enough sleep, you build up garbage metabolites in your brain. It’s like you have a gunky brain.

And do you feel like—I feel like I have gunk in my brain when I don’t sleep enough. That is exactly what is happening.

Nutrition and Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: When you think about things that we consume, like food and drink and alcohol and all these kinds of things, is there anything that if I’m trying to have an optimal brain, I should be having or not having?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah. Well, so I think the most evidence is around the benefit of the Mediterranean diet, which is basically all healthy, kind of organic—not organic, but non-processed is the word I was trying to think of—things to eat that are very, very colorful. There’s so much evidence about how good that is generally for the brain that that is my go-to.

Like, “What should I eat?” Well, is it on the Mediterranean diet? If it is, then go ahead. If it’s too processed, only do it just a little bit.

The Impact of Social Connections on Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is it true that if we have fewer friends, if we have fewer strong relationships, our brain will shrink and become more prone to dementia and Alzheimer’s and things like that?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Yes. We are social creatures, and there are really powerful studies that have shown the correlation between the number of social connections we have—including just saying hello to the barista at Starbucks. It’s not about a close friendship developed over 30 years; it’s simply about how many people you interact with and greet—and longevity.

The more people you are regularly interacting with, the longer you live. Overall longevity increases with these interactions. But if you look at brain health, absolutely, it’s very, very healthy for you. It also brings happiness. A friend and colleague of mine, Robert Waldinger, studied what makes people happy. The study started in the 1920s at Harvard, and after many decades, the answer was clear: what brings happiness is the strength of your social connections.

So it makes you happier, it makes you live longer, and yes, loneliness, on the flip side, causes stress. Long-term stress damages the brain and, in the long-term, can make it smaller and less healthy.

Morning Routines for Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: Do you have any brain routines, like a morning routine for your brain?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Absolutely. Every morning, I like to wake up and do a tea meditation. It’s a meditation over the brewing and drinking of tea, and this comes after many years of yo-yo meditating. I knew meditation was good, but I just couldn’t really get into it.

I was introduced to this form of meditation by a monk who invited me to tea and just did this silent meditation outdoors in a beautiful location. The ritual and sequence of brewing, drinking, steeping, and starting over kept me in the flow. I start with about a 45-minute tea meditation, followed by a 30-minute workout. I try to do cardio, strength training, yoga, or sometimes just mobility exercises. Then I have breakfast and go to work.

After that, I do a hot-cold contrast shower. It’s very helpful for my brain health because it gives me an adrenaline boost that energizes me. I love that feeling at the beginning of the day.

Factors That Harm Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: Let’s go back to that question because I want to close off on it: What would I have to do to destroy my brain? So, no sleep, being sedentary, having no friends, and smoking.

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Smoking is very bad for your health and your brain.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Okay, alcohol?

DR. WENDY SUZUKI: Alcohol, yes, long-term alcohol use can cause significant and named brain diseases. Even in moderation, studies now show that it’s not very good.

And the reason why it’s not good is that alcohol disrupts sleep. Even though people drink it to go to sleep faster, the sleep is much more superficial. It’s not deep or healthy sleep. So that is not good overall for sleep depth and health and therefore brain health.

The Impact of Lifestyle Choices on Brain Health

STEVEN BARTLETT: I’m going to eat a processed diet to hurt my brain and I’m not going to have a lifestyle that is novel because we talked about learning, so I’m not going to learn anything new. All of these things should shrink that little vacuum. You’re not going to be mindful also. Is there evidence that being mindful, which is like meditation, being in the moment helps the brain?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: It does, there’s beautiful studies showing brain plasticity in the areas that are important for focused attention. The practice of meditation is basically a practice of enriching the function of your prefrontal cortex. So you can focus on that object, either the breath or loving kindness is a form of meditation. So yes, there’s been studies that brain changes occur in long term meditators that are absolutely beneficial.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What if I’m on social media all the time because isn’t that good for me because I’m going to be seeing lots of new things all the time and I’ll be learning lots of new things. If I sat on a screen for seven hours a day, is that good for my brain, social media?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Does that take you away from real people and interacting with real people?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Yes.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: OK, then it’s modulated by the same thing. There’s a difference and I think your brain knows it. And look, there’s enormous amounts of evidence showing that the increase in use of social media, especially in young kids, correlate with huge increases in depression and anxiety levels, particularly in young girls. So when kids started getting the smartphones and started to spend more and more seven hours a day on social media, that’s when the anxiety and depression went up.

That’s for young kids. I use social media as well as a tool for business. That is a little bit different. I’m not 13 years old and you’re not 13 years old. So, you know, there’s some warnings, I think, that need to go into that. But let me be clear. No, it’s not the same. Social media is not the same as social interaction face to face with people.

The Physiological and Psychological Effects of Social Media

STEVEN BARTLETT: Are you concerned about what social media is doing to our brains? Because, you know, we hear those thoughts around, you know, young girls are struggling most with social media and we think to ourselves, well, that’s because there’s a lot of like comparison and all these kinds of things. And there’s a lot of like toxic messaging and such.

But if we think about the physiological consequences of social media, what it’s actually doing to our brains at a chemical level, what would you as a neuroscientist guess is the physiological harm to the brain? Not the sort of psychological, not the psychological, OK, oh, my God, she’s more this than me. But like the physiological harm.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: But the psychological harm causes stress. Stress releases stress hormone that goes into the brain that at too high and too constant a level can start to first damage connections and then kill cells. So it’s intertwined there. And that is part of what is happening. You can’t pull one one away from the other.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Because, you know, social media is designed to kind of it’s like pulling the slot machine handle. I pull down on the feed and I get ping. Oh, look, there’s a nice picture and ping. There’s notifications and comments, et cetera. It’s that, you know, I think about the constant, they say there’s constant dopamine here. Yeah, it refers to is it a dopamine hit? Is that’s what’s happening when we’re being stimulated by social media or a slot machine? And is there is there any harm in just a constant dopamine hit all day, every day?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Well, I would not. I’m going to answer that question by saying I would not want to be addicted to gambling. Gambling is addictive. It’s hard to get away. You lose all these other things that we just decided were all good for you, including sleep, including social connections, including exercise. And I think that’s part of what social media is doing for our young kids is not good that they’re not joining teams outside to be social and interactive. And in that kind of now, it seems like an old fashioned way, but it’s very, very powerful way for development and brain health.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I think I’m addicted to my phone and I often ask myself, is that is that a problem? And from what you said, it sounds like the problem is what I sacrifice through that, like addiction to that device. Is that that the issue?

The issue is I sacrifice social connections, maybe movement. Yeah. You know, although I do work out every day, but the brain is smart enough to know that there’s no substitute for real human connections.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Absolutely. Absolutely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And that’s going to make me what — I’m trying to I need you to help me scare me out of this phone addiction that I think I have. But I know many other people have as well.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So that is going to limit your potential for brain growth, for for brain plasticity, it is going to limit your possibility for for, you know, not to be dramatic, but joy in your life. There’s different kinds of joy that you have in real person to person social interactions that it feels pretty good on social media. You get lots of likes and, you know, but it’s not the same. And I would — I would say that to scare yourself out, you’re going to have to bite the bullet and do a two week phone detox. What would that do to you? How would you feel?

STEVEN BARTLETT: I just could never imagine such a thing. Well, which is a real shame, isn’t it, really? Because I just think about like my ancestors and my parents, they must they must think I’m so strange. But it’s just just a way that like when my phone dies, I’m like, I’m like, I’m like, nervously waiting for it to come back on. I’m like staring at like, oh, my God, like, what am I going to do with myself?

And I remember those studies they did on people where they gave them the choice of either sitting alone with their own thoughts or giving themselves an electric shock. And a huge amount of people in that study actually would rather give themselves an electric shock than just sit alone with their thoughts, because it’s some kind of stimulation.

That’s kind of how I think I am now. Like, I don’t know what I’d do without my phone. It’s really sad. I mean, there’s people listening to me now that think I’m an absolute like, I’m really sad, but it’s just the truth, you know, and I do wonder what it’s doing to my brain. But I think you’re right. I think it’s actually what it’s doing to my like, my life. Yeah, the joy, the connections, being being there to experience things.

Meditation and Creativity

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I mean, that point that you made is a very profound one. The not wanting to be alone with your thoughts is the core of meditation. Can you be alone with your thoughts and focus on something, something organic, usually the breath, but also a thought like loving kindness? That is a very powerful practice to do. And it’s hard.

I find it hard, too. And I actually I notice I find it harder when I’m — when I’m using social media and when I’m using my phone more. But I feel most creative and most imaginative when I do practice that, that is being alone with my thoughts, what comes into mind, how does my own imagination work, which is very much dependent on the hippocampus as well? It’s putting together all these things in your memory and new and interesting ways that are unique for you or unique for me.

And it doesn’t work the same if you are stimulating your brain with social media all the time.

STEVEN BARTLETT: You I mean, you wrote a book that kind of speaks to what we’re talking about here. You wrote a book about anxiety.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes, I did.

STEVEN BARTLETT: At 2021. I think the US version is called Good Anxiety, isn’t it? Yeah. Slightly different title in the US, in the UK. Why did you write a book about anxiety?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I wrote a book about anxiety because I started to notice my students getting much more anxious than they ever used to be. And this was before the pandemic.

The Rise of Anxiety in Society

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I mean, I had the idea to write this book in 2018, 2019. And so first I noticed in the students, they were getting so stressed out before finals. They never did that before. So many accommodations they were asking for. And what’s going on here? Then I realized it wasn’t just them. I’m getting more anxious as well. My friends are more anxious.

And I really wanted to dive into that. I didn’t want to be anxious in that way, because part of me was like, oh, I’m just New Yorker. I’m just anxious all the time. Right. Because that’s what New Yorkers are. No, this has changed. And we forget that before the pandemic, there was still global warming. There was still political issues that lots of people, including me and all of my students, were worried about. And that was the impetus for for trying to dive in and ask, well, I made my life happier with exercise. What is the approach when it’s anxiety and not clinical anxiety? I did not have clinical anxiety. And the vast majority of my students didn’t have clinical anxiety.

They had what I called everyday anxiety, just worried about the things that are going on in the world. And there were just more things to be worried about.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Is that normal? Is that human?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: That is human. Absolutely.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But is it human in the — is the quantity in which we experience it human?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I think it is.

STEVEN BARTLETT: I mean, because I think about my ancestors. I think they probably I don’t know. I always imagine my ancestors kind of just chilling, you know, like —

DR WENDY SUZUKI: They didn’t have — they didn’t have global warming. But the ocean is about to, you know, get sucked up in plastic and the ozone is going to come down. No worries like that at all.

STEVEN BARTLETT: But the everyday anxiety for me is like emails and WhatsApp.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Well, by everyday anxiety, I mean the anxiety that people are feeling today that is not at the clinical level. So all the things that we just mentioned, global warming and wars in multiple places in the world, all of that contributes to the higher level of anxiety.

And your ancestors and mine went through two world wars. But that was anxiety provoking. No question about it. But they weren’t also all the other things that were, you know, contributing to it, including the higher than, you know, extremely high anxiety and suicide levels of our young people that are, you know, strongly linked to social media. So that’s that’s another element.

Exploring the Nature and Prevalence of Anxiety

STEVEN BARTLETT: What did you find then when you started uncovering and trying to go on this search of figuring out, you know, the nature of anxiety and what we can do about it? Did you first find that you’re right in your hypothesis that it is increasing?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How much? Do you know how much?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You know, it shifted over the time that I wrote and published the book because I started in 2018 and then it was published in the middle of the pandemic in 2021, where anxiety levels went up approximately 20 percent worldwide.

So but the social media anxiety that is going up in girls even more than 20 percent. That’s kind of in parallel. So I actually don’t know how to integrate those two levels, but they’re both going in the same direction.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why are women, young women becoming more anxious and suicidality amongst that age group is rapidly increased?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You know, I think that it’s that comparison that that is so easy to do. And I see it in my own work at the university that when I was going to college, I had no idea what rank I was in, in number in the application. But they could see that immediately. They know exactly what number they are in each and every class they take in their whole high school class, in their application to the five schools that they apply to or 10 or 15 now that they’re applying to.

That gives a much higher level of stress when you know those numbers immediately that we never had. So there are stresses like that, that they’re experiencing.

STEVEN BARTLETT: More information. It’s funny because more social connection, but it’s a social connection, I don’t mean real world social connection, I mean, more followers and likes and people that can message me and tell me something and DM me or comment on my thing. More noise. The volume’s increased, which seems to be driving more anxiety. Where do we experience anxiety? From a physiological standpoint, where is anxiety? Because it feels like it’s in your chest.

The Physiology of Anxiety

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So anxiety is kind of a full body experience, and anxiety is strongly linked with the stress response. So an anxiety provoking situation, you meet somebody that you had a big fight with before. Oh, I’m anxious. I might have to speak to that person before.

That launches — that launches the stress response that is dependent on what’s called the sympathetic nervous system. And so this is where it becomes full body. So what happens when your fight or flight system is activated? Your heart rate goes up, your respiration goes up, your irises get bigger so you can see everything and look out for that that annoying person that you’re worried about.

And blood is shunted from your digestion and reproductive organs towards your muscles so you can fight or run away. That’s what all of our ancestors evolved to protect us from not the social media post, but the lion or the tiger that could come and attack us. So it made sense for that kind of stressor or that kind of threat. Unfortunately, our bodies do the same exact thing when the nasty DM comes in from somebody I wasn’t sure who it is, but they’re saying something really bad about something I care about a lot.

And we get this stress response. We get anxious because of that. And somebody asked me, does that mean our brain is not very smart? And the answer is, our stress and our threat system is not very smart. It isn’t differentiating between the line that could physically kill us and the DM that might wound our pride, but will not kill us. But it causes the same kind of stress response and anxiety response.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What do I do about that?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You have to learn how to turn the volume of your own anxiety down. And part of that is I’m not saying you have to not look at your DMs and not look at or not look at social media. There’s lots of ways to turn your anxiety down. We’ve already talked about some of those approaches. Exercise immediately decreases anxiety and depression levels.

Simple Techniques to Reduce Anxiety and Depression

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And there you don’t even have to get aerobic. Ten minutes of walking can significantly decrease your anxiety and depression levels. That is a powerful tool that everybody can use right here, right now. Breath meditation.

Did you know that breath meditation, that is deep breathing, is the oldest form of meditation? Why? Because equal and opposite to that fight or flight response that everybody seems to know about is the rest and digest part of your nervous system called the parasympathetic nervous system that calms you down. It slows your heart rate down, slows your respiration rate down and shunts blood from your muscles towards your digestion and reproductive organs so you can do those weekend rest and digest kinds of things.

Well, everybody should be asking, well, do I have that system? Yes, everybody has that system. Everybody has a parasympathetic nervous system. How do I activate that? The best and most effective way that you could activate that right now is take three deep breaths. Because that’s the only thing you have conscious control over that can launch all the rest of that parasympathetic activities, slowing your heart rate. I can’t slow my heart rate by thinking about it. Can I take three deep, slow breaths right now?

Absolutely. And monks, hundreds, if not thousands of years ago, realized that that is the thing that I can do immediately to slow my stress response down. It’s very, very powerful.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Sadness.

The Value of Difficult Emotions

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Sadness. Sadness is can be linked with anxiety. And, you know, sadness like anxiety is something that people, I think, would like to kick out of their lives and just never have any more at all. If I could get rid of sadness and anxiety, I would be the happiest person alive.

But would you? Because my argument in Good Anxiety, my book, Good Anxiety, is that these prickly emotions, these difficult emotions like anxiety, like sadness, are really, really valuable because they’re focusing us on things that we should be paying attention to, specifically anxiety. It is a warning system. Oh, there’s that person. Oh, you didn’t have a good interaction. You need to pay attention.

Now, should it throw you into a an anxiety attack? Perhaps not. Use some of these techniques like deep breathing and going for a walk. But it is a warning system. And why is this valuable? Here’s why it’s valuable. It’s valuable because when you know what you are worried about, your fears that your anxiety focuses you on, it actually tells you about what you hold most dear. In your life. And that is something that we should all really want to know. So if you’re a people pleaser, you are doing lots of things to maybe too many things to please people.

But that means that you care about personal interaction. And I start with this one because I’m a people pleaser. And I realized that people pleasing response and the anxiety that it does evoke is reminding me that what’s very, very valuable to me is that interaction with people. I care about that. That’s a beautiful thing. I value that in my life, in my personality.

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Do you think we could see love in the brain? Can you see if someone’s in love in the brain? We scan the brain of someone that’s in love when they’re interacting with their partner. Could we see that?

Love and the Brain

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes, in fact, they have scanned people who are in the throes of romantic love and people that are in, you know, many years into a loving relationship. And there are lots of reward areas that get activated when you’re scanning the brain of somebody that, you know, is in the throes of deep romantic love that is in the first few weeks.

You can’t get enough of the person. You’re with them all the time. You can’t stop thinking about them. A lot of the reward areas are activated. A lot of the social interaction areas, including the insula, a part of the brain right in the side here, just in the area near the ear, deep into the cortex, gets activated.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So that means then that if we don’t fall in love, if we don’t have those feelings, that part of our brain might shrink. Because if they say often things like you use it or you lose it, they say neurons that fire together, wire together. If I’m not in love, if I don’t have those social connections, will the love part of my brain get smaller? And would that make it more difficult to love in the future?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: That’s a great question. I think that that study has not been done. But absolutely, if you don’t use that part of the brain, you will not, you know, gain the function. And so, yeah, not not using your love part of your brain is not a nothing that I would ever recommend.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Some people, I guess, don’t have a choice. Well, I guess they have a choice in the sense that they can do things. They have optionality. But for whatever reason, some people don’t find love. It’s just an interesting observation, because in all other parts of the brain, you have to like.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You mean romantic love? Romantic love. Yeah. But but, you know, there’s all sorts of different kinds of love, deep friendship. It’s actually what I was going to say is that they tried to look at the difference between romantic love and maternal love or paternal love. And it turns out that long term relationships like romantic relationships, marriages that last for many years, start out, of course, in this romantic phase.

But it turns into more of a maternal paternal pattern when you go farther and farther along. That is a win. That is not something wrong with your brain. I think love does evolve over time. And there’s many different kinds of love beyond the romantic Hollywood, you know, and Disney kind of form of love.

STEVEN BARTLETT: So you can see the honeymoon phase in the brain. And then you can see the more mature love, I guess. In the brain. Yeah. Interesting. Oh, I guess the opposite of love, I guess, might be hate. But I think when another sort of thing that people might think of is the opposite of love would be rejection or heartbreak. And through all of our lives, we encounter heartbreak in many forms. We have a romantic heartbreak, but also other forms of heartbreak.

Grief, Loss and Finding Wisdom

STEVEN BARTLETT: As I read through your story, I could see moments in your story where you encountered various types of heartbreak, grief. You talked about your father passing away from Alzheimer’s.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Well, he had a heart attack. He had Alzheimer’s dementia when he passed away. He died of a heart attack.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And just three months after your dad’s death, your younger brother died of an unexpected heart attack. He’s 50. And you say in your book, Good Anxiety, in chapter four, you say the death was unfathomable.

As someone who studied the brain, and therefore has a really strong understanding of the physiology of the human mind, and has also written a book about anxiety. So you have this sort of two pronged approach towards understanding feelings and emotions. In those moments, what did you come to understand about the nature of emotion, the most intense emotions, and how they captivate us, and how we can find our path through the jungle?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yeah, I like that word that I used. It was unfathomable. Both of those losses at the same time, it was hard to process. And I remember the waves of grief that would come over. It wasn’t constant. It would be like waves. So I’d have one, and then it would recede, and I felt a little bit better. But then, unexpectedly, it would come again.

And I’d never, thank goodness, experienced that before. And it was in the middle of writing the book, Good Anxiety. And I put it aside because I couldn’t write when I was going through this terrible grief and had to do something that I’d never, ever had to do. And actually, it was my biggest fear, unnamed biggest fear in my life, was to have to give a eulogy. I have a fear of uncontrollable crying in public, and I’d always been afraid of eulogies. And I never had to give a eulogy. And I had to give this eulogy for my brother, another unfathomable, how could that be happening? And I got through that, and I learned something in the process.

And I remember working out to try and make myself feel better during this time. And the instructor said about the workout, with great pain comes great wisdom. And I just glommed on to that message because I was feeling great pain. What was the wisdom? Like, I need to find some wisdom. What is that wisdom?

And I realized, because I have to say something at this eulogy, that the wisdom was that on the other side of that unfathomable grief that I was feeling, the only reason why I was feeling that unfathomable grief is because of the deep love that I had, that it started with. So if I didn’t love them as much, I wouldn’t have as deep a grief.

So in fact, the grief and the depth of it was a sign of the love that I had for them. And that was the wisdom that I found, and that was the solace that I found, and that was the message that I gave in that eulogy. And then I became obsessed with the flip side of these awful emotions that we all go through. Grief is this one, because I have to go back and finish this book, Good Anxiety. How was I going to do that?

The book was transformed by that event, because I realized that if I could find the wisdom and the power of the most horrible emotion, I’m going to say grief, what is the flip side of anxiety? What is the gift? What is the superpower that comes from anxiety?

Finding Gifts and Superpowers in Difficult Emotions

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And I needed to find gifts and superpowers. And that’s why the book got written in that way. And I name superpowers that come from anxiety that was heightened after this terrible event. But I found them and I used them all the time. It was therapeutic, actually.

STEVEN BARTLETT: How did it change you, the loss of your brother and your father in such a short period of time? How are you a different person because of those two events?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You realize that everybody’s going to feel these emotions sometime in their life. And I can bring more empathy and compassion to those experienced for others. And I remember I never wanted to talk to people that had a loss. I never knew what to say. I knew I was going to say something wrong. I just had no idea. I felt lost. And it is I do feel wiser. I feel like I have more empathy. I have more knowledge.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Can I ask you a question, if there was a pill that you could take to not feel the grief? In the moment when you were in the throes of that grief, would you have taken it? And in hindsight now, would you have taken it?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No, I’m not a pill taker. I wasn’t clinically — I didn’t feel like I’m oh, I can’t, you know, go about my life. Go about my life. It was — it was a terrible emotion, but I didn’t feel completely debilitated with it. Other other people do. Maybe they would take the pill. I would not take the pill. And after the lessons that I learned from going through those emotions, absolutely, I would not take the pill.

And that was part of the lesson of writing this book, that anxiety is critical for us because anxiety and sadness and and anger are critical to help us appreciate those joyous moments of our lives. If we had no grief, no sadness, no anger ever, then every day would you know, it would just be mundane. But it gives that value. I mean, our highest highs are extra high because we know those lows.

And that also is probably how this grief that I experienced affects me. I appreciate — I appreciate the good times even more.

STEVEN BARTLETT: As a neuroscientist who understands the brain and the systems and then sort of neural pathways and all this stuff and how we think, and does that leave much room for spirituality and those kinds of things? Are you spiritual?

Science and Spirituality

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I am.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what does it make us when some people think about spirituality? They think they think it’s the opposite of neuroscience. They think, if I spoke to some people, some people that I know, they think of that the decisions and the feelings and energies are outside of our body, not going on in this ball of tofu. And then some like hardcore people, scientists will explain all of our experience through this ball of tofu. Where do you sit?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: So I’ve evolved over time. So when I was a young scientist, no spirituality, no religion, everything can be described by science. It’s like I have to prove it, prove it to me. I want to, you know, see the data. I happily went through that phase for many, many years of my life until I realized I didn’t even realize.

I think I needed something more in my life, and then I realized first there was a need, then there was a realization, well, can I really prove that the only thing that is true is that what I can prove? What if there are things beyond proving in the scientific method? And I think there are things that in the spiritual realm, in the religious realm that absolutely could be true, that cannot be solved, cannot be proven with the classic scientific method.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Things that you believe?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Yes.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What makes you believe them? Because on one hand, you said you kind of want to, which is an element of that. But as a, I’m interested as a scientist, as a neuroscientist, you must have been trained to be able to explain. That’s how you pass the exams, you must be able to explain why you have these beliefs. Do you, in that part of your life, do you just kind of say, I’ve felt it? Is that?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: No, it’s, well, part of it, yes, I do feel it. But it was the realization that the scientific method, in my opinion, is not the end all and be all that I thought it was when I was a young scientist. Can you prove that these other realms don’t exist? And if they exist in ways that cannot be proved in a scientific method, well, maybe your scientific method is wrong. Is that, is that a possibility?

STEVEN BARTLETT: Have you had an experience that made you believe in another realm?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Have I had an experience? I have, in my academic way, I have studied texts that are the oldest texts that we know, the Bible. And I was raised in a, actually, it was a half Christian, half Buddhist family. And but my core belief was Christianity. And so, yeah, I go to church. I really appreciate the power that religious beliefs bring to my life. It actually really decreases my anxiety. And that’s not the only reason why I did. I wasn’t looking for an anti-anxiety kind of solution. But I was looking for — Maybe something more than the scientific method in my life.

STEVEN BARTLETT: We’re going in one direction as a society, like more, I told you, I’m basically addicted to my phone. Screens, loneliness, less connection, less friends, less people we can turn to at a time of crisis, according to all the studies. And as we go further and further down that road, I think it’s making it more obvious of what’s at the end, the other end of the street.

And it’s robbing us of something at a really deep level that I think I’m noticing more and more as I grow older. I think that’s actually why I want to have kids now, because I think I’m in search of that greater meaning or purpose in my life beyond just like making more money or just, you know, all the superficial stuff. You said to me before we started speaking that you’re thinking a lot about community.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: I am.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Why?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Because I think it is a balm to students and to everybody.

The Importance of Community and Brain Health

DR WENDY SUZUKI: And I think those those events that we can create that bring people together and talking to each other and learning about each other are joyous events. And I see it in me and in the students that come to these events. It is clear that that is something that is a little bit unfamiliar to students right now, but has immediate effect.

STEVEN BARTLETT: What is the one thing we haven’t spoke about regarding Betty, the brain over there in the corner, but the brain in front of you, the most important thing about the brain that we didn’t discuss?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: You know, you only have one and we have an opportunity every single day to make it as healthy as it could be. I watched my father pass away with Alzheimer’s, dementia, and we have elderly people in my family as well. And. It motivates me even more to keep my brain healthy, to make as many friends as I can, to have as many connections as I can, because I want to be as happy as I can be for the rest of my life.

And I want to have and I want to have a big, fat, fluffy brain. So you only have one. And there are things you can do right now today to make it stronger.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Wendy, thank you so much. Thank you for the way that you deliver, I think, is so deep rooted in a really undeniable passion. And you’re on a real mission to make other people live better lives. And I think that’s something that deserves to be highly commended. It’s so apparent in everything you do that you’re so focused on helping others in a way that I don’t always see.

And that comes from reading through your story. I can see the pivotal moments throughout your story that sent you on that mission. And I do describe it as a mission. These two books are fantastic. You wrote the book in — that we published in 2015 called Healthy Brain, Happy Life. And then your second book, which came out in America called Good Anxiety, which is a phenomenal book that really helps to reframe how we think about anxiety. I think that reframing helps us experience it differently. But also, shall I say, dare I say, be grateful for the signal, the lessons that it’s there to teach us, the wisdom that it gives us.

Closing Tradition and Final Question

STEVEN BARTLETT: We have a closing tradition on this podcast, but the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they’re leaving it for. The question left for you is in this book. Oh. What do you think is the best quality of humanity?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Ooh. Compassion.

STEVEN BARTLETT: And what does that mean?

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Compassion means feeling. Feeling for the experience of others, both good and bad, so I can experience your joy compassionately and I could experience your grief compassionately. I think that is because I’ve been thinking so much about connection and community, that function of or emotion of compassion is really top of mind for me.

STEVEN BARTLETT: Wendy, thank you.

DR WENDY SUZUKI: Thank you.

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