Talks and Interviews:                                Some videos selected by topic of interest

The Well-Tuned Brain: In this interview with Connie Martinson the continuity between my recent book The Well-Tuned Brain: Neuroscience & the Life Well Lived and its companion volume, American Mania, becomes readily apparent. To achieve "a well tuned brain," a play on JS Bach's handbook for music students entitled The Well-Tempered Clavier, is a lifetime's work -- as is the challenge of becoming a fine musician. As we discuss in the interview this personal quest lies not only knowing oneself and the science of who we are as creatures of this planet, but also in crafting the capacity for empathic understanding that is the bedrock of human society. When it comes to self-understanding we must not only be open to embracing new ideas but also willingly remind ourselves of those stories of insight and human caring, built over generations, which in today's frenzy we increasingly overlook, even ignore.

 
The Foundations of Eudaimonia: From the Greek, Eudaimonia in English approximates to the concept of human flourishing. As Aristotle cautioned,  Eudaimonia is to be distinguished from hedonia - from pleasure and from fleeting happiness - for rather it infers the sustained happiness and contentment  that flows from a life lived rich in purpose. This video is of a lecture I gave before a public audience at UCLA's Semel Institute to launch the Semel Healthy Campus Eudaimonia Awards, now given each year to individuals within the University community demonstrating  generosity, selflessness, resilience, and inspiration in the face of hardship with a dedication to the common good and to the flourishing of others. My purpose here was to reinforce that the foundations of human thriving, as the reflected in the Declarations of the United States Founding Fathers, with their call for Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, have deeper roots than the 18th Century Enlightenment in that they are indelibly represented in the ancient philosophy of the Greeks, from whom we still have to learn when considering how to live with purpose,  as individuals in fellowship. 

Market Mayhem: In October of 2008, following the world-wide financial seizure that had been precipitated by the sub-prime mortgage crisis and the bursting of the housing bubble, I traveled to Camden, Maine, for the annual Pop!Tech conference. This 20 minute talk describes the instinctual and social behaviors that balance a market economy and how, in the face of abundance (defined as a surfeit of choice, opportunity and material goods) the natural short-term proclivities of the ancient brain easily run away to greed and confusion. From the neuroscience perspective, the basic message is that the market mayhem of 2008, which heralded  the Great Recession, was predictable: America’s short-term, reward-driven culture pushes the physiological limits of our evolutionary inheritance and erodes self-command.
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What is American Mania? Here, from the archives, is a wide-ranging discussion with Charlie Rose. In this interview we discuss the concept of American Mania, outlining not only the science and cultural shifts that that are described in American Mania: When More is Not Enough, but also the nascent ideas that were to lead to the writing of its sequel, The Well-Tuned Brain. The conversation is not without humor. I suggested early on in the interview that in today's turbo-charged world  we each live somewhere between distraction and frenzy, with few of us knowing how to handle the seductive opportunity, excitement, and excess of modern day living. Charlie Rose readily agreed, offering with a smile that when it comes to such challenge he had become "exhibit A."

The Migrant Temperament: In understanding American culture it is important to recognize that we are a self-selected population of migrants. Only 2-3 percent of the human race move to raise a family  far from where they were born. And yet some 98 percent of those living in the US are migrants who have arrived within the last 300 years, the rest having walked here from Asia millennia ago. Furthermore some 20 percent of the American population continues to move within the U. S. each year, often fragmenting families as they do so. As I detailed in the early chapters of American Mania, this propensity overlaps with the energy, curiosity, and risk taking found in the entrepreneur -- and it is in part genetically driven. In this brief clip from the documentary "Consume this Movie," produced and directed by Gene Brokoff, I comment upon these phenomena, together with Cecile Andrews of the Simplicity movement.

A Mood Apart: This is an early interview from 1997, when A Mood Apart: Depression, Mania, and Other Afflictions of the Self was first published.
I include it here because, for those interested in mood disturbance, the discussion offers a succinct review of the symptoms of  mania and depression. The book, described by William Styron (author of Darkness Visible) as "a brilliant work that speaks in eloquent and human terms," documents the experience of six characters, whose lives provide the opportunity for me to explore in depth genetics, the brain sciences, historical, psychological, and cultural perspectives using an integrated treatment approach.  Recently A Mood Apart has been reprinted  (May, 2015) with a new introduction and an updated appendix of the medications most commonly used in mood disorder.

The Creative Process: Through advances in neuroscience we are beginning to better understand the the biology of the creative process. There are also fascinating and controversial links between creativity and mood disorders. In this video of a symposium held at the Library of Congress on February 3rd, 2009, in honor of Mendelssohn's 200th birthday, I team up with Professor Kay Redfield Jamison, of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, and Professor Terrance Ketter from Stanford University. to explore the effects of depression on creativity. Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)  was a child prodigy and is now one of the most popular composers of the romantic era. Instrumental in the revival of interest in J S Bach's music, which had been neglected for decades, he long suffered ill health and after the death of his sister, with whom he was very close, he died at the age of 38, probably by suicide. In my discussion I also touch upon the life and work of artist Vincent van Gogh.