Dr. Sanjay Gupta: How Facts Can Fight A Pandemic

From the time the first U.S. cases of the coronavirus began to be reported a year ago, America found itself in a battle against two interconnected diseases. The first, COVID-19, has now claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and completely upended the ways we live, work, and interact with each other. And the second is a major reason why COVID-19 has had such a devastating toll: the spread of misinformation to downplay the seriousness of the virus. 

In this episode, President Clinton sits down with one of America’s most trusted doctors and journalists, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, to make sense of where we are in the fight against COVID-19 one year into the pandemic, dispel myths about the vaccines, and discuss his new book, Keep Sharp: Build a Better Brain at Any Age. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
When I was growing up in Arkansas. My mother was
a nurse and esthetist, so from an early age I
spent a lot of time in and around hospitals, which
led to a lifelong fascination with medicine, science, and public health.
That's why the COVID nineteen pandemic began to unfold. It
was so shocking and disheartening to see the way the

(00:26):
federal government and many others across our society responded. From
the time the first cases of the coronavirus began to
be reported here in the US just around this time
last year, America found itself in a battle against two
interconnected diseases. First COVID nineteen, which has now claimed hundreds
of thousands of lives and up ended the way we work, live,

(00:48):
and interact with each other. And the second is a
major reason why COVID was able to claim such a
devastating toll, the malignant spreading of misinformation and downplaying of
the seriousness of the virus. There were people with any
theological agenda telling the public that COVID nineteen was far
less dangerous than the flu, that different drugs or supplements

(01:11):
could effectively treat the virus, without any supporting evidence that
social distancing and the use of masks were unnecessary, long
after the science had shown otherwise that the number of cases, hospitalizations,
and deaths were overblown, even said that the doctors working
tirelessly on the front lines and risking their own lives

(01:31):
to save patients were inflating numbers from monetary gain. And
the list goes on and on. So why am I
telling you this? Because you can't effectively confront any health
crisis without clear, science driven information for the public. I'm
very grateful the new Biden administration is empowered scientists and

(01:52):
public health experts like Dr Fauci to speak to the
American people and guide our response. And I'm very grateful
too to all those who work so hard to cut
through misinformation so that people can stay informed and keep
themselves and their families and neighbors safe. And that's why
I'm glad to have someone with me today who's been
one of America's most trusted medical sources for decades and

(02:15):
especially over the last year, Dr Sanjay Gupta as CNN's
chief medical correspondent and an associate professor of neurosurgery at
Emory University Hospital in Atlanta. Throughout the pandemic. Sanjay's dispatches
have given practical tips for staying healthy and build trust
in science and medicine, including recently taking the COVID nineteen

(02:38):
vaccine on camera to prove its safety. He's also a
prolific author whose new book, Keep Sharp is full of
ways to improve brain health, something I have always been
interested in and at the age of seventy four of
now virtually obsessed by it. So Sanjay, thanks for being
here today. What an honor. Mr. Residents, So delighted to

(03:01):
be with you. I can see you the listeners, cannot
you look fantastic. I'll just throw that in there as well. Well,
I'm trying to follow the advice in your book. Uh,
we're nearly a year end of the pandemic of what
a year ago seemed to be concentrated in New York
and Washington State in California has now spread across the

(03:22):
country and it's still claiming a couple of thousands of
our citizens every day. So briefly, tell us, in broad strokes,
where are we now? What should someone listening know and do?
As we continue to navigate and hope for a time

(03:44):
of return to a more normal life. I when when
I first started reporting on this, there was all these
models we would we would look at, and I always
sort of picked a mid range model to share with
the public as part of our reports. You know, I
I justify it by looking at all the various factors.
UH didn't want to give the best case scenario because

(04:05):
that didn't look like it was gonna happen based on
what we were seeing initially, but the worst case scenario
was really frightening. Um over the last couple of weeks,
we have surpassed the worst case scenario model. And I'm
even careful and how I want to give that information
to the public. Who, I mean, what value does it serve?
But but the truth is that that is the case

(04:25):
that even if you looked at all the worst case models,
we're past those. So it's it's it's pretty it's pretty
dark days. There is going to be a peak and
then we will come out the back side of this curve.
The question is how high will be that peak, and
how long will we stay there? Will we how long
will we plateau there? And and and what's happening right now?

(04:46):
We'll dictate that and that's all human behavior. UH, the
the the The other thing I will say is that
the vaccines are incredible. They really are. Can can I
just tell you that the story because you you probab
know the story. But I am so blown away by
this story and I and I think it's also one
of the brightest spots in this pandemic. Just three or

(05:08):
four days after the genetic code for this virus was
shared with the world, just a couple of days after that,
the vaccine platforms were set. I mean, the amount of
scientific develop and these were guys who took a code
and we're writing down their their platform on the back
of napkins and sharing it with other scientists and doing

(05:30):
this over you know, over zoom calls because people were
talking all over the world. They came up with the
vaccine platform really fast. And two months after that genetic
code was initially shared, trials were started, shots were going
into arms. So it's an incredible, incredible story of medical innovation.
And I and I just you know, it's been so
few things to celebrate. I'll be honest with you, Mr President,

(05:53):
that I maybe get particularly excited about this, but there
are diseases that you will and I mean HIV, AIDS,
forty years been trying to get a vaccine and we
don't have one. To have to authorized vaccines within a
year by the end of two thousand twenty was truly
a remarkable thing, and I think, frankly, probably has changed

(06:17):
medical innovation forever, not just around pandemics, but just forever.
What we were able to do with our backs up
against the wall. The system doesn't get pressured like that
very often during times of conflict, yes, a pandemic. Some
of our greatest medical achievements come about during these very
dire circumstances, and that was the case here as well.

(06:37):
A lot of just ordinary citizens do wonder if there
is any chance, however, remote taking this vaccine could alter
their DNA. And the answer to that is no. But
why don't you explain to him, why why can't it
alter my DNA? It is a genetic based vaccine, but
it's an messenger RNA. This isn't sort of the blueprint

(07:01):
for anything that would come in there and basically compete
with your own blueprint. And if I can mispresent fight
just on the healthcare workers. So many healthcare workers who
are not getting vaccinated as well, have a distrust of
the entire system because many of them who who maybe

(07:21):
uh UM black or brown healthcare workers have seen some
of these vaccine trials in the past. They've seen other
medical trials that have been outright discriminatory, and I think
there is a real long standing uh hangover effect from that.
So I think that's that's driving a lot of vaccine

(07:43):
hesitancy among African Americans. Among Latinos as well. We've seen
that and there's been these incredible outreach campaigns like Morehouse
School of Medicine, and you've had people come and lead
vaccination campaigns. But I do think that that's driving it.
And that's been another theme we've seen throughout this pandemic,
these these disparities based on history, but this time there

(08:04):
was an effort to make sure we had a diverse
pool of people on whom the vaccine was says absolutely,
it was. It was a there was there was two
really interesting things. There was a commitment to really getting
that that the trial participants to to represent the burden
of this disease. Right. It wasn't just saying, hey, there's
twelve percent African Americans, is this percent this, and let's

(08:25):
do that in the trial. It's like who did this
disease burden. We should have that be representative in these
in the in the percentage of trial participants, and then
just about every step of the way in terms of
the vaccine development from the basic scientists. Uh, there's a
thirty four year old woman working at the ni H
named Kiszy Corbett who, first of all, she's thirty four

(08:48):
years old, so regardless of anything else, it's incredible that
she is at the forefront of developing a vaccine in
the middle of a pandemic, this black woman. I've interviewed her,
you know, several times, so improssed and had these incredible
ideas about how to really make this MR and a
vaccine work. But you had all these scientists every step
of the way who've been part of the process as well,

(09:09):
who are African American, who are Latino. But there's still hesitancy. Mr. President,
there's still there's still this this hesitancy that exists. It's
it's improved, but it's definitely out there. You know. If
Francis Collins, who he was there with me and when
I was President when we first sequenced the human genome,

(09:30):
is a very devout Christian and he wrote a book
about reconciling his faith with his scientific endeavors about three
years ago, and I just went back and reread it,
just because maybe we need to learn to speak two
people for whom religion is a factor in all this,

(09:53):
uh in a different way. And then then there are
those for whom it is, as you said, just politics,
who believe of some talk show host says something that
because I agree with them politically, that they're all of
a sudden, by definition, a greater authority than Sanjay Gupta.
I think that's absurd, and that's going to take longer

(10:13):
to fix. But we got to figure out a solution
to this. I mean the I was thinking about these
healthcare workers of our healthcare workforce has declined to take
the vaccine. When Governor Cloma, when New York was hit
so hard to send out a call, you know, for
I can't remember a hundred thousand or something retired healthcare

(10:34):
workers and others to come help. Thirty thou people came
from another other states to New York and risk their lives.
And and then all these volunteers, people who were in
vulnerable age groups themselves came back and to think that
they are now afraid some of them to accept the

(10:56):
fruits of their labor, their sacrifice. I was trying to
keep people alove. It's really troubling to me. One of
the things that I was so at the beginning of
the pandemic so heartened by. You remember seven o'clock every night,
you'd hear people banging on their pots and pans and
screaming and people pull the sirens, you know, and just
it was it was a very celebratory thing. And they're

(11:18):
celebrating healthcare workers and and I love that. And that was,
you know, spring of two thousand twenty. And now, Mr President,
I mean, things have changed, and and what has changed
is that those same healthcare workers, some of them get threatened,
you know, for wearing a mask. They get they get
an arguments with people. I mean, it's it's really it's

(11:41):
really incredible to me that that within this time period,
just how much our attitudes have shifted towards healthcare workers,
these heroes, these people who we really wanted to celebrate,
and now you know, they're just these bearers of bad
news who no one wants to really hear from. It's
it's it's a real cognitive dissonance. I think for for
healthcare workers. I was in the hospital the other day.

(12:04):
I'm still practicing, and I was up on the COVID unit.
I don't I'm I'm a neurosurgeon, so I'm not directly
taking care of COVID patients. But sometimes my patients will
end up on the COVID unit because they get diagnosed
with COVID. And I was up there, and you've seen
some of these images. I'm sure Mr President's COVID units.
But first of all, they're they're jam packed. Sometimes I

(12:26):
see use have a couple of extra beds. You're you're
finding space wherever you can find them. And they do
this thing called proning the patient. You may have heard.
It basically means to set a line on your back,
your line in your stomach, and they do this because
they found that it made it a lot easier for
people who with COVID to breathe. But they gotta then
strapped the patient in with these belts and these sheets

(12:48):
and everything, and the patient's not the most comfortable. But
then sometimes they bring in these iPads and the person
would be talking to their family and sometimes they'd be
saying goodbye and that and that that was true. I mean,
that's just I mean, I'm not trying to paint that.
I saw this so proning patients looking at iPads, and
I would see this, and then I would go home
in my car, drive by the gas station and I'm

(13:11):
filling my gas and I had my mask on, and
some guys give me a funny look like, hey, you know,
what's up with the masks sort of thing. It was whiplash.
I just saw a guy saying goodbye to his family
on his iPad, and you know, he's around my age,
and and uh and now some guy who's altar around
my age is given me a hard time about wearing
a mask. That was happening, like, you know, throughout this

(13:33):
this pandemic. I think for a lot of healthcare workers,
how can you not take this seriously? If you can
only see what I am seeing? What's your take on
what we should do now and in the future, even
if the hopefully knock on wood the threat of coronavirus
becomes more manageable than the receides. To restore faith in

(13:56):
basic scientific information, it's really hard for me to talk
to people because it's not like, you know, the people
that do this science work. It's their lives, they're dedicated,
they're good people, they have no interest in failing that
have Nobody can ever give me a motive for why
people would try to do something that's dishonest. It seems

(14:18):
so irrational. What what do you think we should do
going forward to try to shift this in our country,
even if it's a slow process. You know, I think
we can always do a better job in messaging. You know,
I think some of the back and forth, for example,
at the beginning on masks, I think we're you know,

(14:40):
left people confused about things, um even talking about the vaccines,
you know, being very careful and specific and how we
phrase things a genetic vaccine. But here's what that means.
You know, that that sort of stuff anticipating you know,
people's concerns as opposed to ignoring or even demeaning them,
which is why I think the arrogance sort of thing
comes in. But the biggest thing I think, Mr President,

(15:02):
is that it's just I think there's certain places in
our society that just have to be the honest brokers
they can they cannot be entangled with politics at all
in this regard. They have to be boring, disentangled sort
of institutions, and I think doctors is a general rule.
You know, people who are providing direct care to patients
do that. They look, I'm not always gonna tell you

(15:23):
what you want to hear, but you know that I'm
being a hunter percent honest with you, and I only
have your best interests in mind. Who are those people
in our society? Scientists, I think you know, and doctors
you know have helped that role in many and there's
others as well, not not just them, but I'm saying
that they've had that role. But once this process became
so entangled politically, I think that that was That's the

(15:43):
major thing that you have to avoid that at all costs.
People need to understand that. So I think if I
understood the scientific method better, that that knowledge, practical knowledge
that human beings used is always evolving. And we may
see facts today which seemed to be right, but a

(16:07):
new paradigm could take over tomorrow, or ten years from now,
or twenty years from now. But the way humanity progresses
is in these logical steps, which means you always have
to be prepared to meet you're wrong. We have too
many people in America today who believe that if they

(16:30):
ever have to admit they're wrong, they'll vanish and go away.
They won't exist anymore, you know. And I think we
have to get more comfortable with that. We need. It's
now seen as political betrayal, our professional suicide. And I
think that the whole business of science sees error as

(16:52):
your friend. And life is much more like science or
should be a healthy life than it is about dreading
error and claiming infallibility. Somehow we have to there's a
psychological key we have to unlock here. I think. I

(17:14):
think what you said is so is so, it's so right.
I think that um UM in in med school and
in residency training, this idea that you have to to
fail in order to learn um. It's almost more like battleship,
like I'm gonna zero in on the exact right thing,
but I have to make a bunch of attempts to

(17:35):
get there. Is sort of part of the culture. But
you're right, I think in many parts of our society
it's it's um. It's really it's really hard to to
to if you admit failure, have you lost trust or
is the public no longer going to trust you as much?
And if you're a scientist, that matters. So that it's
it's it makes it a very difficult situation. Science is

(17:56):
a process, and you don't become smaller by acknowledging error.
You become bigger and you grow more. We somehow we
got to get comfortable with that again, Yeah, I do.
Do you think it's a pendulum swing? Mr? President? I
mean are we are? We? Has this been a trajectory?
We were less and less comfortable with admitting error. Sure,

(18:20):
look up. What brought on the Age of reason centuries
ago was, in no small measure the reaction to institutions
and individuals that claimed infallibility and made decisions which had
disastrous results. So human reason the effort to think things
through and work with others who are thinking things through,

(18:43):
and then debate with people who disagreed with you as
you thought things through, we all believed it would lead
to something better. Uh. Then over time, over many centuries,
most self governing institutions have ultimately failed because of the

(19:04):
they like, the individual and collective discipline to deal with
thorny problems and disappointment, and the darker size of human
nature in terms of discrimination and fear of failure. So
it's it's it's a process you just have to keep going.

(19:24):
Stay tuned for more of the conversation after this short break.
So let me ask, let's let's shift a minute to
your new book, because before we started the conversation formally,

(19:45):
I told you, you you know, I've reached the age now
where building a better brain at any age it may
seem like a pipe brain, but it's a beautiful one
to me. And I don't know how long I'm gonna live.
I'm ust I'm the already the oldest man in my
family for three generations. But however long I live, I'd

(20:05):
like to hold on to my marbles as long as
I can. And you've written a book for people really
of all ages about the Can you briefly summarize what
do you think the most important thing to do in
maintaining and improving the way your brain works? Absolutely? Um,
This starts with they what they premised that the neuroscience
community is known for some time and the public is

(20:28):
now catching up. And that's that's part of what inspired
me to write the book, and that is that I
think for a long time, the widely held belief was
that when it came to your brain, when it came
to neurons in your brain cells. You had a certain
cash of of of these cells, and they slowly drained
sort of as life went on, wear and tear, kind
of like you see in other organs and other body

(20:50):
systems and things like that. There's only two times in
your life when you could actually grow new brain cells,
according to previously conventional wisdom, and that was in your
baby and developing, you know still and and then also
after a particular injury like a stroke or traumatic brain injury,
your brain might be a sort of stimulated to crown

(21:10):
new brain cells. Then that was it. That was the belief.
What we've learned over the last ten years is that
throughout your entire life you can go through the process
of what's called neurogenesis, which is basically the growth of
new brain cells that can happen throughout your entire life.
That may sound like a simple statement, but that was

(21:30):
that was that was very transformative in the world of neuroscience.
So if you could do if it happening, you're actually
growing new brain cells throughout your life, the next obvious
question was how do you do it? You know, what
do you do? And and that was that was the
real journey so I'll tell you some of the things
that I learned, and also prefaced by saying, there are

(21:51):
places around the world where rates of dementia are a
small fraction of what they are here in the United States.
And by the way, they typically have lower rates of
heart disease and diabetes and things like that as well.
That is true. We are all humans, and yet because
of where they live, how they live things like that,
they have a fraction of these diseases. That's so plague

(22:13):
us in this country. So the idea that the lifestyle
had something to do with it was was widely accepted.
It wasn't just going to be therapeutics and medicines. These
people who had much lower rates of disease weren't taking
any therapeutics and medicines. They just had lower rates. The
way I sort of approached it was to say, here's
the five pillars of how we live, how we move,

(22:35):
how we eat, how we rest, how we develop connections,
how we find purpose in our lives, and then basically
scientifically validate deconstruct one's life and say, here are the
best evidence based things you should be doing if you
want to have a sharp brain. Now, if you want
to develop this process of neurogenesis and you want to

(22:56):
protect your brain later. That's how I sort of approached it.
And and the evidence is incredible. You know, the evidence
has been there. In some ways, I just acted as
a translator, you know, between the neuroscience research that's magnificent
and wonderful and what the public wants to know. What
you're basically saying is exercise, appropriate risk, appropriate dot and

(23:17):
then having social connections and a and a purpose beyond yourself.
Those things are the five most important things. One thing
I will say is I avoided using certain words in
the book. I don't know if you've noticed that exercise
is not a word I use very often. I use
the word movement. And and I found that in many

(23:39):
of these places that I was describing, where they don't
have very high rates of dementia at all, there was
something else they often didn't have, and that was Jim's um.
I got nothing against gems, but my point is that
going to the gym wasn't really the point. The idea
of sitting or lying for twenty three hours a day

(24:00):
and then going to the gym for an hour day
wasn't really the point. That's not how human beings were designed,
so it was really all about movement. It was. It
was it was less of thinking of activity as the
cure and more like thinking of inactivity as the disease.
Just don't be inactive. If you're about to sit, ask
can I be standing instead? If you're about to, you know,

(24:21):
do something that's highly convenient, can I take a few
steps instead? It's a way of life, it's it's in
fact they found in these studies, and my mom loved
this part, but they said the intense exercise actually could
be actually counterproductive because in addition to releasing all these
wonderful when you move, you're you're releasing these neurotrophic factors

(24:43):
for the brain. It's like miracle grow for the brain.
That was a direct quote from a very prominent neuroscientist.
In case anyone bristles at that miracle grow for the brain.
You get that from your movement, and there's plenty of
evidence behind this. But if you intensely ran, you're also
releasing court saul and other stress hormones, which might actually
be counterproductive. So if it's your brain you're trying to

(25:06):
move forward, then a brisk walk is far better than
an intense run, which again maybe some people know this.
I don't think a lot of people do. They think
the harder and faster the better, not necessarily when it
comes to the brain. So, yeah, exercise, But but if
you want to talk about your brain, here's the best
way to think about exercise. Well, let me ask you
another related question of are there any exciting neuroscience developments

(25:33):
in terms of brain repair? One of the things I've learned,
even in just writing this book just and I want
to answer your question, but one thing I've learned is
that we do take a lot of things as preordained
as part of aging. We just sort of accepted that's
that's just, that's just me getting older. And I just
keep coming back to these stories. You know that I
that I've have people that I've met around the world

(25:55):
who you know, live in these other cultures. Who I
met this guy when I was in I lived in
the rainforest. For part of the story I was doing
a few years ago in the Bolivian rainforest, the Amazon,
and I was visiting with this group of this tribe
called the Chimani indigenous tribe. And I wanted to visit
with them because they had hardly any any any issues

(26:17):
with heart disease, and I was very intesitting heart disease,
as you know you and I've spent some time talking
about heart disease in the past. And when when I
got there, I met up with these men who I
couldn't tell how old they were, and it was fun
to ask them how old they were. And we were
having double translation because it was Spanish to Chimani and
then backed Chimani to Spanish to English. And they basically

(26:39):
said to me they didn't know how old they were,
and but they they had they had been born, and
they would die and they were they were simply in
that in between time right now. That's how they described
their age. But one of the guys took me fishing,
and we guessed, you know, based on various things, that
he was probably in his middle late seventies. He took
me fishing. We got on this little rowboat and he

(27:03):
he um, took off his shirt and he was really
he was really buff, you know, for for a guy
in his mid to late seventies, I was it was
kind of incredible. And then he perched on each on
the side of the boat, so one ft on on
one side of the boat is a small little rowboat.
And he was balanced there, and he was crouched down,
and he was spear fishing, and and his balance was perfect,

(27:23):
and he had no eyeglasses on, and and he was
listening to this guy very faintly calling out on the
shore about where the fish were, and he was trying
to spear them. Hearing sight everything. Now, I'm not saying
everybody is like that. All I'm saying is that it's possible.
It is possible. It is not preordained for us to

(27:44):
to have this gradual wear and tear phenomena that are
that our senses become increasingly blunted as we get old.
It's not preordained that we lose our memories and and
and all that sort of stuff. But we do count
on science too. There's there's incredible work going on with
trying to regenerate new parts of the brain um also

(28:05):
teach other parts of the brain how to take over function.
If someone has lost function after a head injury or
something like that, or a stroke, that's neural plasticity. So
those hearing neurons are not going to be responsible for sight.
I'm making that up, but I'm saying that you you
get that sort of that sort of recruitment within the
brain that that's happening, and that's that's pretty fascinating. Overall

(28:26):
research that's happening. We are still they're still doing a
lot with stem cell research UM, something that you've you've
known quite a bit about and you've you know, and
we're talking early nineties and some of the work that
you first helped the fund that's ongoing and some of
it's being used for things like a LS research and
still diabetes research, which is I think one of the

(28:48):
first things that really interested you. And some of the
stem cell work, it's all ongoing, uh, and it's UM
and it's it's fascinating things that have changed neuroscience in
informative ways. Our air bags and seatbelts because head injuries
have dramatically been reduced as a result of that. So,
you know, we have all these sort of all these

(29:11):
sort of colliding factors when it comes to how neuroscience
is going to to continue its upward trajectory. We'll be
right back. You had some interesting stuff in your book

(29:31):
about how well doing a crossword puzzles or math problems
oru or whatever. That's interesting, but you actually it's better
for your brain health if you have diverse contacts. And uh,
every day here we not do this bumble bee word
fuggle in the New York Times. And uh, what we

(29:55):
do is we do it on our own. Then we meet.
And I'd do it in part because we have about
the same levels of education and size vocabulary, you know,
and we see reality different. I mean, here's someone I'm
so close to, but like if a puzzle, let's say
he's got sixty words, there are times when I've had

(30:19):
as many as five words she didn't, and she's had
a five or six I didn't. And it's fascinating to
me just as a lesson in perception much less we're
not getting into psychology and feeling and all that that. E. O. Wilson,
the great microbiologists, first made this impression on me. But
he said, you know, diverse groups make better decisions than

(30:43):
homogeneous ones. Are loan geniuses. And uh Wilson's ninety and
sounds like he's forty. So you know, I do believe
that we need to keep striving for human connection as
long as a little bit. We're more likely to keep
vigorous and alert and relevant if we do well you know,

(31:05):
no surprise, Mr President, you've taken it a step further
even than I had considered in my book. I mean,
you're absolutely right, you know. I I think in some
ways what I was trying to get at in the
book was that we are not nearly nearly optimized enough
when it comes to our brains. Um And I'm talking

(31:26):
about individuals here, I'll meant, I'll I want to comment
on what you just said about the collective because I
think that's so interesting. But the the idea that individuals
are not yet optimized to be the best contributors to
the collective, I think it's also true, um and and
and in large parts because we didn't think we could
do it right. I think, with the heart, okay, yeah, run,

(31:48):
you know, do this, and I'll eat this kind of diet.
And and that was I'll keep my cholesterol below a
certain amount. All that sort of stuff was very true.
With the brain was like, it's in this black box, right,
I can't even see it. It's immutable, it's untouchable, it's impenetrable.
It is a black box measured only by its inputs
and its outputs. I don't even know how to measure it.
And so how do I change it? Right? In medicine,

(32:12):
things are more important because they are measurable, which makes
no sense. Why are you? Why are you more important?
Because I can measure you. There's things that are really important.
I just can't quite I have no context to give
you a measure of that, and therefore we ignore it.
And I think that's that has been true of the
brain for a long time. So most people don't even
try to optimize their brains, and you find that in

(32:35):
such simple ways you can dramatically improve your brain function.
And I'm not I'm not talking about memorizing a list
of ten disparate words, because that has no real relevance
for memory. Memory exists to serve you. Yes, it'll tell
you that an oven's hot, and tire your combine and
all that sort of stuff, But it mostly is just
your life narrative. It's your it's the story of us,

(32:58):
story of you. And so it's totally changeable, totally malleable.
Based on an experience you had today, a memory from
two days ago will change. And that's okay. That's how
memory works, and that's how it's supposed to work. It's
it's only there to serve you. And I think that
once you understand that, and you understand that you can
optimize your brain in pretty simple ways, then I can

(33:21):
dramatically improve people's level of of sharpness. I I use
that word, you know, colloquially, but you know they're of
all brain function. Now I can improve that, I think
with this, but also help protect that same brain for later,
so that that that that I think is is the
is the crux of it. And then all those people
can can add to a better collective, as you were describing,

(33:44):
a diverse collective that will generate knowledge for a society.
A few years ago, I wrote a report of a
study on one of the medical journals that I said,
we can form new neural networks and the brains that
much greater ages than we previously thought. And it said
that basically the most important thing you could do is

(34:06):
something new. So that if let's say you had made
a career as a physicist, instead of taking one last
stab at you know, funding the answers to the unified theory,
which requires an massive amount of brain power and knowledge,

(34:27):
the person in it his or her sixties or older
would be better off going with their grandchild. The Suzuki
piano if they've never played a piano before, and do
you agree with that that they're doing different things makes
a bigger difference. This idea that just doing something new

(34:49):
is building new roads in your brain. I this is
the thing, Mr President. You you we spent our brains
right now, and somebody's are operating like our COVID lives
are operating. At the house. You may know how to
get directly to the to the foundation, to the office,
to the grocery store. You know, you could do that
stuff with your eyes closed. You're really good at it.

(35:11):
And that's no problem. That's great as long as all
those roads and those buildings stay open and everything. But
if you start to build new roads in your brain
by doing some of these things, uh, you a have
new roads in your brain, which is kind of fun
because you can go take a drive and you'll see
patterns that you may have otherwise missed because you know

(35:32):
you have this new destinations. But also if the road
that you're used to traveling does become blocked or has
some construction needed because of an amyloid plaque, you've got
ten other roads now to choose from. So someone who
develops dementia later in life. On their brain scans, that
person looks like they have dementia, may not have any

(35:52):
cognitive symptoms because they've built up all this cognitive reserve.
That's the beauty of of of the neuro genesis and
build thing a new road. I mean, I know you're
left handed, Mr. President. Tonight when you have dinner, try
eating with your right hand instead of your left. Just
eat the entire meal with your right hand being the
dominant one, and you'll see things change. You'll first of all,

(36:13):
it's it's gonna be a lot harder than than than
you realize. And you're so used to eating. Putting a
fork to your mouth, cutting with your knife, try flipping it.
Tie your shoes, try flipping the loops the other way.
You know, you have to visualize that. But just little
things like that, get outside your comfort zone a little bit. Uh,
do something that scares you. As one of the adages
that a neuroscientist told me. Uh, And you're building new

(36:37):
roads in your brain and it's fun and it makes
you happy and it helps protect your brain later on.
That's that's what I think is so exciting. Well, let's
give me something to think about. Let's close coming back
to COVID just a moment. Uh. I personally believe that
reluctance to take the vaccine will go down dramatically as

(37:02):
evidence of its working goes up and as more people's
friends and neighbors do it. But tell people why it's
important to keep wearing their masks even after they've been vaccinated.
This is a really interesting thing and and it speaks
to understanding how the vaccine works. When they did these trials,
they you had people who basically within the tens of

(37:23):
thousands of people, they raised their hand if they got sick,
and then they were tested, and what they found was
that this vaccine was really good effective at keeping people
from getting sick, which is great. What they don't know
is how effective it is it keeping people from getting infected,
And they don't know how well the vaccine works at
keeping people from transmitting the virus. So important that it

(37:47):
keeps people from getting sick, but you could still carry
the virus. You could still transmit the virus even after
being vaccinated. That's why you still gotta wear a mask. Ultimately,
we'll get to enough people who won't get sick, then
maybe we can start to to gradually sort of lower
our defenses. But but that's why we have to do
it for now. Thank you very much. I love this conversation.

(38:10):
I'm very grateful to you. What an honor. Don't forget
the book. Keep sharp and goodbye, Sanji, good luck, goodbye,
Miss President. Thank you. Why Am I Telling You This
is a production of our Heart Radio, the Clinton Foundation
and at Will Media. Our executive producers are Craig Manascian

(38:30):
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(38:53):
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(39:38):
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