Dr Paul. Zak: Why Building Trust, Engagement & Emotional Fitness is the Key to Creating Unforgettable Experiences and Thriving Relationships—at Work, in Business, and in Life.

Steve: [00:00:00] Paul, welcome to the Experienced Designers. Paul Zak: Thank you. My friend, Steve. Steve: Yeah, good to see you. Good to see you today. We are in rather, almost polar opposite ends of the world. Um, and I'm really curious to, uh, yeah, to kind of just, yeah, dive a little bit more into your background. I'm really curious about this topic. , I definitely come into this conversation today. As a novice, and I am I'm really curious to learn from you today as well, because the subject matter that you have been definitely focusing your career and and evolving your career on this is just so fascinating. So let's, so let's start let's just kick in like just just for the audience for like who are you, where are you, and what do you do. Paul Zak: Sure. Uh, thanks. Paul Zach, I am a professor at Claremont Graduate University in Southern California and the founder of the first neuroscience as a service company called Immersion Neuroscience. And I've spent most of my [00:01:00] career creating knowledge and technology so that people can live longer, happier and healthier lives Steve: I'm also an intern. Paul Zak: activity. I guess I left that out. I'm a brain guy. So yeah, we're going to Steve: You are a brain guy. Well, I was going to say, I think it wouldn't be a, it wouldn't be a podcast, talking to a brain guy if we're not talking about dopamine and oxytocin of course. So I'm really curious. I have watched your, your Ted talk, where you had the syringe with, with oxytocin, wasn't it? Was that correct? Yeah. So, yeah, really curious to dive in. You can see you've been really dedicating a lot of your kind of, yeah, your career to this, to this I've really created some really profound impacts in that in that area. So let's just dive in. Just tell us a bit about your your background, Paul, like in terms of like where does it kind of start for you like your your into the brain world? Um, where did you kind of start your work and your and your focus? Um, [00:02:00] Okay. Paul Zak: we always have people make a decision, an objectively measurable active decision. So I'm not a big believer in people's self report. The brain doesn't give us insights into his inside workings, just like your liver doesn't. , so we measure brain activity while people make decisions to really look at the variety of the human experience. I think decisions are a great way to understand. If you like chocolate ice cream and like vanilla, that's interesting. Why? I don't know, but your brain will tell us something about that. So, um, as you kind of suggested, I got well known, In neuroscience and in the media for really focusing on the brain activity that results in these positive social behaviors that we see a lot, but they're so normal that we sort of forget about them holding the door for someone smiling, being nice. So the bad behavior gets all the press and attention because it's rare and it's dangerous. But where's the good behavior come from? And by knowing the. Mechanisms in the brain that [00:03:00] the inflection point between good and bad. We really can really understand that variety of the human experience. Right? So we've known each other for a while. We've chatted. You seem like a wonderful person occasionally because you're a human, you have bad days and you yell at people rarely, maybe hopefully rarely, right? But Steve: Um, Um, Um, Paul Zak: in South Korea recently. Long flight, you know, you're not sleeping very well. I remember I got in the hotel and there was something wrong with the room and the lady was just, you know, language issues. And I remember I was kind of cranky with her. I was like, not very nice. You know, this lady's just trying to do her job. She doesn't know anything. And, and then I'm reflecting, well, Oh, I hadn't slept. Right. So when you don't sleep, you inhibit the ability to modulate your emotional responses just a little bit. And so you become a little more. Impulsive and aggressive. Okay, so [00:04:00] I understand why I did that. Now that poor lady doesn't know why I was such a cranky bastard, right? But again, that's that, that kind of inflection point. So again, 99 percent of the time I check in a hotel. I'm happy. I love to travel this one time. Well, maybe more than once, but at this particular instance, that was interesting. So if you know those mechanisms, you can ask, well, why did we get bad behavior? What shuts this down? So I've done work, for example, studying criminal psychopaths, at their brain activity. and have looked at people who like, why would you help someone out? Why would you spend your own resources to help someone when no one's looking? No one will know. That's also an interesting question. So from that, knowing about what is valued by humans, and a lot of that is a social component and our brains are anatomically very, very different than most other animals and that we're super sensitive to social information moves us into experiences. So if I value those positive social, emotional experiences. Then how might I work backwards and measure whether the [00:05:00] experiences I'm having are sufficiently valuable to me? Steve: Yes, that's amazing. But could I just ask, like, because you are some of your work, I think some of your earlier work was around your quite amazed. Those are neuro economics, which I'm really interested in. And I really wanted, like, kind of, there was an element here, which I was reading about, which is around economic decisions around trust and purchasing behavior. Um, from the kind of marketing perspective and how people, yeah, how do you build trust and make decisions is. Yeah. Thanks. Uh, particularly from a, yeah, from this perspective. So I was really just curious, like in your economics, like some of your work in there and what you discovered with some of your research and some of the, yeah, the work you did in this space. Um, Yeah, yeah, Paul Zak: cooperation almost all the time and they'll [00:06:00] share resources. So you have this conflict now between what we're seeing behaviorally, And these mechanisms of the brain that promote pro social behaviors and what the standard models that you're taught in economics one on one that you should be a selfish bastard bastard at all times because resources are valuable and good. So how do we balance that? And what we found is that for human beings are. Let's say, uh, psychologically healthy. We understand that there's a long game called life and if I you over steve. Not only would do you not want to play ball with me again do a project, uh, Be a friend whatever that is you will tell lots of people we have nice long memories that most animals don't And so the value of that long game is actually very important And this why this is why and written by this is some of my previous books that in most circumstances, business is a force for good I want to generate, you know, high customer lifetime value. I want to have that [00:07:00] customer come back over and over and over and, you know, have him or her be satisfied for the product or service I'm selling and it, it motivates. Good behaviors where when you see this sort of top down sort of, you know, Soviet or, you know, communist system where you're dictated to do, I'm going to take your resources and decide. Oh, there's no incentive to involve good behavior because there's no long game. There's just bureaucrats who are It's a very interesting different approach that there's a deep morality to voluntary exchange And if we understand that deep morality, then we can lean into it. Of course, there are exceptions for sure There's always exceptions right for lots of reasons But and those exceptions get lots of press because again, they're they're rare but for your work for my work I've, I've met so many, uh, you know, customers of our company or prospects and I'll say, that's an interesting problem. We're not a good fit for you, but I know this other guy, Steve, who'd be a perfect fit for you. And I will send [00:08:00] business to other people. Why would I Long game. Steve: Yeah, Paul Zak: prospects send me business or like, Hey, I love your product. I didn't need it. I know a guy and these people will like over the years, like they'll send lots of business to you because you are a fair dealer. And that's true in life, right? If I, if I want to be friends with you, Steve, and I'm, I don't know, you take me to lunch five times and I never take you to lunch or, you know, they're like, eh, This guy's kind of using this. That's not we're not fair dealing. We're not. We're not reciprocating. And so, um, oxytocin, this molecule, you mentioned that my work really expanded upon Steve: definitely. Paul Zak: to be part of a key network in the brain that functions as the golden rule. You're nice to me. My brain releases oxytocin and some other neurochemicals that motivates me. To reciprocate because that embeds me in community and that's his, that is how social creatures like humans survive. You have to be embedded in community, not ostracized, So, you know, think of, well, I'll stop [00:09:00] there, but you know, to what, what is truly valuable to you is money valuable. Sure. I like money. Money's good. But relationships also really, really valuable, right? So many times we'll trade off money to sustain relationships. And also, you know, you have gray hair Steve: interesting. Paul Zak: Isn't it wonderful when you, when you, um, I was younger, I kind of do that interior accounting, like who paid for lunch last time? And now I'm like, I don't even care. Food's cheap. I have these wonderful friends. I don't even care. I'll pay every time. It's just, you know, it makes me so happy to have people that I care about. The money's irrelevant. The relationships are what's most valuable, right? So that stage where you go, Oh, life is really about the quality of relationships. You know, that's what's important. And if I can make a quick segue, Recent research out Of oxford university showed about 50 Of people's happiness is due to the quality of their social relationships. And so the current work I've been doing is quantifying [00:10:00] quality. What does that mean neurologically? And giving people goals to actually build up the quality of those relationships. They can be happier, live longer, live healthier. Steve: Yeah, Paul Zak: I how Steve: I love Paul Zak: that. for a crazy segway Wow, what the Steve: I know. Paul Zak: there Steve: I know. Let's keep going. I love rabbit holes. Let's keep going. Um, so that's super interesting. Like quality. Like, how do you, how do you, let's keep going with that. So it's really, I'm really interested. Because I love that you've picked up that thing of like, okay, well, quality is a word, but what's the meaning behind that? Because there must be many different facets or levels of depth or meaning behind the word quality. It means different things to different people. Also, as well, just to kind of add into that, obviously, we're in this time where there's a lot of narrative around disconnect, obviously, some of the research in the younger generations. Hasn't, you know, is really showcasing that perhaps, you know, we are more separated than than ever before. Obviously, COVID was a very significant moment in time for that. Um, and obviously social [00:11:00] media, digitalization, et cetera. What do you see in that field around the human evolution and how we are, how that is impacting relationships? And what did you find anything in that research of looking at quality and those relationship angles? And what did you find? Paul Zak: Great question. Uh, and one of the fundamental questions about life. Um, so we do know that happy people live longer and they're less likely to get sick. So we should focus on unhappiness. Steve: Happy to answer that. Paul Zak: one of the major factors that affects our happiness, as you said, is interactions we have with other people. So. Uh, this may be very bad news for listeners. Your brain is a very lazy organ. so much energy to run your brain that it just wants to idle most of the time. So when we identified this social emotional evaluation network, which I've called immersion, which is a combination of neuroelectrical signals primarily associated with, with dopamine and oxytocin that you mentioned [00:12:00] earlier. about Steve: Um, Um, Um, Um, Paul Zak: and I never share anything about my life with you or with, or with my wife or whatever, I'm not really a good friend. I'm not, or I don't listen to you. I don't like I'm having a tough time. Like. Suck it up, dude, whatever, you know, like that wouldn't be very nice, right? So being present, being emotionally open are kind of the keys of building a strong relationship because the brain's lazy It doesn't invest a lot of resources Into every experience we have so I've asked you what you had for breakfast a week ago Probably don't know because it's not port and she plain flushes that out So this network for valuing social emotional experiences, which I've called immersion It's a combination of signals. I have to give it a name. It's a one second frequency signal that we can pull, uh, from the brain and we built technology to do that. Um, we showed recently that, um, you need six or [00:13:00] more of these high value experiences to be emotionally healthy. That is. brain is choosing how much to invest in these resources. Immersion is metabolically costly. It's investing in, Hey, I'm hanging with Steve. This is so fun. I'm getting a lot of value from this is awesome I'm, um, I don't know, doing accounting or I don't, something I don't like to do, like not getting a lot of value from that. So once we identified this, then we built this, this free app called six S I X that Uh, gives people goals and works in the background. You don't have to do anything, no journaling or anything. And it will link to your calendar and just tell you, Oh, here's the activities today, last week, the last month that are most valuable to you neurologically, that your brain is investing the resources to really absorb all that information. That's, what's making you happy. Do more of that. now to close that narrative arc almost always those those high value experiences involve other people. Steve: Um, Paul Zak: There can be experiences where [00:14:00] I'm So I do a lot of outdoor activities. So I was out in the mountains training with some friends on the weekend Super valuable. First of all, I was training with friends. So there's a social component there But even if I by myself, I'm running or whatever with my dog Sometimes I'll get these high value experiences like beautiful sunrise on top of mountain. Yeah, I can get that You But almost always it's those high value experiences or social experiences. So what's the takeaway from all this? We've got to invest in relationships to be happy and healthy requires actually making that investment. that means again, being open, listening, putting time into building those relationships to improve their quality. Steve: Yeah, with a very typically like lazy brain that doesn't like to you have to give it a kick start every time and make extra at this time for some people. Um, I, can I just duck back on immersion for a moment because it's something I picked up in some of the research that we did before this recording, um, was the, the combination [00:15:00] of the, the dopamine and oxytocin, which is this kind of combination. The immersion, is that correct? Just could you just explain that a little bit to me? I'm just really curious on this. 'cause I'm gonna get to immersion in a bit more detail around experience specifically. Um, but yeah. Paul Zak: let's, let's do that. Let's, let's Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: how do we, how do we create high value experiences? Why would businesses care about this My religion is customer lifetime value. Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: the customer so much that he or she wants to come back, have a raving fan. How do I do that? Well, right now we're kind of guessing. Uh, this could be, I mean, you're a pro Steve's. You do this for a living. you're more than guessing. You have a lot of history. You have a lot of training. Um, but ultimately absent measurement, you know, it's kind of guess and verify and then maybe pivot and improve. Right. And over time we get better. but everything from marketing materials to movies, to live experiences, we'd really like to [00:16:00] know second by second, which parts of the experience are most valuable for whom is it most valuable. and so post nine 11, seven, A lot of money went into the Department of Defense and we, my lab was funded with millions of dollars, honestly, um, to identify combinations of signals in the brain that would accurately and consistently predict what people would do after a message or an experience. the U.S Department of Defense and other agencies tasked us with, Building a neurologic test bed so they could essentially influence people's behaviors. So again, I'm a behavior guy. I'm not a feeling guy They don't they don't want to affect your feelings. I want they want to predict your behaviors So think of this as as dropping leaflets or voice of America or all this stuff that the US government does that tries to influence? People's behaviors and perceptions. You know, how, how do you get off Syria? Just, just, uh, besides just left Syria, how do we get the Syrians to want to cooperate with us goals? That's a big issue. And that, that at first requires communication, maybe [00:17:00] some resources, maybe some boots on the ground. I don't really know, but at a minimum, it requires communicating. Hey, we want to be friends with you and we're happy to help you form a new government. So how do we do that effectively? Right? Because you probably have for Syria, you probably have a short window in some. You know, flex in terms of who's going to be running that new country. Well, it's not a new country, but who's gonna be running that country now that, uh, Assad has left. And so you want to do that effectively. And so that's what we spent many, many years doing because of the lazy brain, almost incidentally in trying to understand, uh, These multiple signals in the brain, we looked at 140 different signals, uh, and, and started winnowing those down. We found how the brain values these social emotional experiences. So in order to influence your behavior, I've got to get your brain to invest the processing power that goes, Holy crap, the U S wants to help us. That's great. Or Holy crap, Steve just created the most amazing experience for my company and customers are going crazy [00:18:00] because they love it so much. So that's the kind of. Technology we built and then built a software platform that lets anybody measure where your brain loves in real time by applying algorithms that has pulled data from the cranial nerves. It's like the brain's output file, uh, by, by applying algorithms to smart watches and fitness wearables. And so we've been doing that for about seven and a half years. And it's super exciting to help. Organizations to give them a tool create great experiences for customers, to wow them, uh, to make sure that so many of the things we create as experienced designers, um, we love, but that's not, that's not what's important. It's nice that you love it as a, as a creator, but you really want the audience for that, to love it and to be wowed by it and potentially do influence behavior. So Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: we're kind of going full circle here. I'm sorry. I Steve: So, so the, so the influencing, no, no, no, this is all good. I think the, the, so just so I hear this [00:19:00] right as well from the influencing behavior, which was like some of the intention from the start, like the hypothesis or the focus to say, how can we influence behavior? Is there kind of a, does the response to the experience of how our brain respond come first? And then our behavior might change as a result of that experience. So it becomes potentially more like transformational. Am I reading it right? Does it come in by that order effectively? the research, even though the intention was more on behavioral focus, what you discover through the work was like, well, hang on a minute. There's actually other stuff we've learned through this experimentation. Is that kind of what Paul Zak: behavior comes from the brain, right? So it's Steve: comes from the brain? Yeah. So it came from there. Yeah. Okay. Just wanted to make sure I was clear on that. That's amazing. Paul Zak: so example, at least for people in the US, right? If you go to Disneyland or Disney World, time you get off that exciting ride, what do you exit into? shop. Steve: That's sharp. Paul Zak: You just had this crazy wild experience that's very rare [00:20:00] and you want to buy a picture of yourself on the crazy ride or buy a hat or whatever it is. And so that's leaning into when you have an extraordinary experience. I have this kind of halo period and that period probably is in the quarter of minutes in which you're so excited you can do that. So example, Steve. So, um, I'm a tall guy. And so tall people have a high center of gravity. We're always unstable. My center of gravity is too high. So, uh, anyway, um, I don't, I don't like heights. a tall person thing. Anyway, for TV, a couple of times I've gone skydiving and taking my blood before and after to see what happens. And the first time I was, they pitched this to me. I'm like, Oh, it's so perfect. Cause I'm a trust guy, right? Like trust your life to a stranger. It's tandem skydiving. Like I got to do that. Like it's just too perfect. And it was curious. Anyway, didn't want to do it. Had a little panic attacks beforehand. And, um, if you ever have been skydiving or doing something bungee Steve: I have. I've done both. Yeah. Yeah. Paul Zak: as soon as you get on the ground, they're like, You should sign up for our annual pass. You need [00:21:00] to do more and you're so ramped up. Right. That is amazing. Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: back to experiences, what I found, I said, I've run that experiment on myself, I think five times now that is take my blood before and after skydiving the first time. a kind of a arousal stress response, a little bit of oxytocin, and then it became this pure oxytocin dopamine response where I just love it. My fear of heights, by the way, went away immediately first time I was skydiving. So anyone's got a fear of heights. If you can skydive, it Steve: Just do it. Paul Zak: And, uh, and so it becomes just a joyful experience. And it's really. Becomes kind of addictive. Like this is so much fricking fun. It's just awesome. Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: want to kind of repeat this experience. Like, Oh, this is something that for me works for me. It may not work for other people. And so I think that's also the difficulty in experience design is, know, we're kind of thinking about that broad swath of, of customers or individuals who may enjoy this. one thing we found by measuring brain [00:22:00] activity, what people go through experiences is that sometimes the experience on average is not great, but you may have this of super fans typically between 10 and 20 percent we find neurologically that are over the moon. This is like me with skydiving. It's like an amazing experience and you want to do it over and over. And those individuals you want to identify, you want to engage with them. They, they, they will help you spread the word. They're super fans, right? So I want to Steve: Yeah. Yeah. And also, I mean, you can normally find them queuing up outside of an Apple store the day before the release of a new of a new iPhone. Yeah, definitely. Those kind of super fans who will do almost anything and very, very ramped up before they enter the store. Um, Pumping music, all the staff either side, clapping them in, high fiving. It's uh, yeah, it's designed in a way, I'm sure, to get people really ramped up and get them super, super pumped, ready to buy that next uh, iPhone. Paul Zak: But I think from experience design, I want to have a database of [00:23:00] those people. And I think what's been missing a lot on the superfans is they want to help you. They will spread the word they're leveraged. So, um, I live outside Southern California and so all the movie studios have fandom departments now they have for years, these fans that write fan fiction and they have a database and when they have a new movie coming out in the Marvel universe or whatever, they will engage those people or a year before Hey, we're going to have a special screening for you people because we love you and we're, they will, they will be leveraged points and so, and Isn't it? You're not abusing these people. It's a big part of their person. This is the comic con kind of people, right? So Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: They're buying costumes, they're doing cosplay and, and God bless them. that makes them happy, it doesn't hurt anybody. Go for it. Right? It's fun. Steve: So, so, um, one of the things with experience design is, um, and quite often, particularly when you're staging some kind of experience with some kind of customer experience, a moment in the customer journey or your or an employee experience, or it could be a live [00:24:00] event. Um, a lot of focus tends to be like, I tend to see it's a lot like top down or events tend to be kind of. let's say they're staged as an event rather than necessarily an experience. So a lot goes into the production and making sure everything's on time and those things, which is super valid. You need that. But also like when you're creating these kinds of moments for fans or audiences or experienced customers or employees, quite often you are. You're not quite sure how people are responding to that experience, and I think this is where this work. I'm really curious because 100 people you and I could go into the same same event at the same time. Watch an artist come on. We'll have a completely different experience of that actual event or the actual artists themselves or in the advert on TV or whatever it might be. So how does your work and how does the immersion tool and also the work that you do kind of. Identify that on a more kind of individual level, but then also on a more kind of, uh, ramped up numbers of, uh, [00:25:00] of data helped kind of, yeah, help maybe people like me experienced designers to refine those elements and use this as a way to kind of use it as an iterative tool, um, to help shape and maybe manipulate if you want to use that word in a positive way, of course, um, future interactions with our super fans, customers or whoever our target groups are Paul Zak: such a brilliant question, so you nailed it. here is iterative. That's what you said. I have a tool that allows me to, to think about which parts of the experience are most valuable, which are flat, uh, which don't work at all. Then I can iterate and make this thing better. So that's what we've really done. And, um, uh, you know, probably NDA from measuring lots of names, but, um, you know, publicly companies like Ogilvy used this for years, uh, Accenture's long term client, many others, their next experience design space, and they will do. You know, preliminary work, lots of research, smart people like you helping them [00:26:00] and then do a soft launch and then measure and begin to iterate. So, um, because there are hundreds of people every day measuring immersion for experiences, movies, um, A lot of those, uh, subscribers to our platform will share that data with us and ask for more insights. So the book I wrote a couple years ago, which is called Immersion, is based on about 50, 000 brain observations, which like no neuroscientist has ever had because no one has created a distributed neuroscience technology like I have. And so basically there's five components for experienced designers to really think about to make a really kind of kick ass experience. And they Steve: go for it. Paul Zak: CIRTA, Steve: Nope. Nope. Nope. Nope. Not like that. Paul Zak: Think about going to a movie theater. What happens here to talk to your friends and then the lights come down and you have trailers, you turn off your phones, right? So I'm setting up this experience and so we call this psychological safety. I want to make sure you're relaxed, psychologically comfortable. [00:27:00] your feet hurt or you have to pee or you're hungry, you're burning all kinds of bandwidth neurologically about that. You know, basic function rather than being really present for that experience and enjoying. So the first thing to make sure people are comfortable, don't, don't rush them through this. We sometimes think we want to be efficient, but let it in, let it feed in, you know, think about, um, I have a better example, but you know, think about sex, right? You, you want to spend time with your partner. You want to, you know, you know, it's, it's not a rush. There's no rush on this. Right. So Steve: Yep. Nope. Paul Zak: I wish I had a better example, but anyway, spend a little time. So S is for staging. Um, the eye is for immersion. So I want to create a peak immersion experience. What we found is that the most effective way to do that used to narrative is used a narrative arc. So because immersion is metabolically costly, if I have this narrative structure where I'm increasing tension and I'm having a human scale story with authentic emotions as social creatures. We dig that we're not running out of movies and novels, you know, we still [00:28:00] want to hear stories and those stories are, are human stories by and large, Steve: Mm hmm, yeah. Paul Zak: you know, the robot store, Wally it's anthropomorphized. Human to be honest. So, so if you can structure this, even for a live experience, think of this as a narrative arc, right? Where you have these different stages, you know, Freytag's triangle kind of thing. Um, that's important. Now that Freytag's triangle is not going to be straight up and straight down. It's going to have waves. So if it's an experience that lasts more than a, I don't know, 15 minutes, you do want to have some flat areas because these neurons will fatigue. And so even though the trend may be up, think about Um, you know, having areas where you can kind of let that person catch their breath neurologically. So you think of like a movie or long term, long form storytelling, the generally multiple storylines that have varying tension, right? Storyline one, hold attention point. Now start with storyline two and I built some tension that I bring in storyline three, right? So you want to modulate that tension so you don't just exhaust people. That's Steve: Yeah, exactly. Yep. Yep. Paul Zak: [00:29:00] SI is for immersion. That's really narrative arc. Um, the R'S for relevance. So as we discussed earlier, there's not one perfect experience for everybody. There's really thinking about what's relevant to you. So, uh, my, uh, children are now young adults in their twenties. If you show me a commercial for Huggies diapers, cute babies, you know, I'll watch it, but not relevant to me. Right? 20% autism. But if I have little infants at home. Super relevant, right? So, Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: the term of art in neuroscience is called top down control. If this is meaningful to me, the top part of my brain, my cortex, will actually direct the areas that process emotion to put more processing power in. Like, this is relevant to you. So really think about targeting for that audience, right? That's important. knows this, but neurologically we find this as well. so, uh, start two more components. T is for, uh, call that target, but who are your super fans? We talked about this earlier, engage those people, ask them to help you. They're going to respond. They're going to, you will influence them right away, [00:30:00] but ask them to help you. And you know, give them a forum, um, get a testimonial from them. Uh, ask them to come back, uh, you know, bring friends, you know, suggest someone that they know who would like this thing. I, They will, they want to do this. It's a big part of their experience. Um, and the a is for, um, action. So all this is to lead up to an action. So once I've a high immersion experience, you've got to ask for that action. And that action might be again, sign up for our annual pass. It might be. the product. It might be share with a friend. Um, and so we've taken these brain signals and convolve them in ways that maximize predictive accuracy, where immersion now will predict market outcomes by measuring us as few as 40 people. With 95 plus percent accuracy. So Steve: Wow. Paul Zak: uh, sales bump from advertising. So if you can get these people's brains to go, Holy crap, I love this thing. I get unconsciously people not going to be able to tell you this consciously. And we've asked people, do you like [00:31:00] this? Would you buy this thing? Those are very weakly associated with the brain activity because those are conscious, And you know this, Steve, like, people are nice, generally, like, you don't want to say, this sucks, this, I hate this, you know, I mean, a couple weird people will do that, but most people are like, hey, Steve made this and sure, yeah, it's pretty good, you know? So again, if liking predicts outcomes. Every experience would be a hit. Every movie would make a billion dollars. Right. But it, it doesn't because we're people unfairly to relate their unconscious emotional experience. And they're live just because either they don't know, or it's hard to know what my emotional state is, or I'm just trying to be nice. So, Steve: What came to mind as you were sharing that was, uh, in the US right now. I think there's an experience. I think it's currently still going. called, uh, over nightmare, uh, [00:32:00] which is, uh, basically a, um, yeah, a, a real life, um, horror experience. So you stay at this very looks like amateur bill style kind of hotel. Uh, and as part of your ticket purchase, you get. I think each you get one scary experience. I think it's on the ticket on the actual on the bump when you buy. So, but for me, I wouldn't go anywhere near that experience. Like for me, on a relevance perspective, I just wouldn't. I wouldn't be interested for some as part of like that initial staging, that anticipation moment before they go into the hotel or in that lobby where they may be having that first like stage you moment of just grounding before they really then go into the court and more immersive immersion element. Um, yeah. Yeah, it must be like terrifying or high, high levels of anticipation for those that really love that kind of, you know, that kind of experience, I guess. Um, so yeah, super interesting, super interesting. Um, just out of interest, the other thing that also came to mind as well [00:33:00] is even if, like, some of the work that I've been involved in mainly in like the employee experience field. Is and I know I can see this definitely from a like advertising films, artists, um, you know, live performance. Um, those kind of like events. I'm really curious because I think fixed your this, this app that you've launched six, I think could also play a part in this is. I'm also thinking around how do we look to measure, uh, people's response or people's, um, how they engage with a brand as a candidate as they're getting through maybe a recruitment process. Um, also, how does that experience impact that, like, brand perception or their response to that experience and maybe how negative it could be, um, and also, like, in the day to day work life, like, you know, say, You're welcome. In your Google calendar, you've got certain [00:34:00] mainstaying type meetings, or you've got your first performance review or coaching session with your, you know, your new boss, for example, you've just joined an organization where do you where do you see the kind of the opportunity areas in those types of everyday work life? And what do you think we could use or what we could learn from that? Paul Zak: I'm really passionate about the employee experience space. Uh, and, and we have a lot of, um, kind of deep, um, applications in that space for two reasons. One is, again, I said, my religion is CLV. I think the mapping is EX to CX to CLV. So. For the uninitiated employee Steve: Yes. Support. Paul Zak: experience to customer lifetime value, right? It's those employees that can add so much value to the experience. It may be online, but eventually almost, not always. Amazon is almost always automated. Um, I worked a lot with, uh, Zappos. Zappos is a big online shoe seller, Steve: It's amazing. I mean, Tony, unfortunately passed [00:35:00] yet. Paul Zak: Yeah, Tony was a, was a good friend and, uh, Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: And so it sent a lot of time early days at, at Zappos, which is famous where they're very happy employee culture. And, you know, they said, this is not, you know, private knowledge. They said, you know, if you've got a website, it's not that different than Walmart, lots of stuff. There are prices you can click, you call We will stay on the phone as long as you want. So their longest phone call now is 10 hours plus they're just having a great time. Like, Hey, me, that's creating value. So why would you spend 10 hours on the phone with a customer? Well, you're having a great time. I mean, they took breaks. Someone brought them food. They Steve: I think they got Peter, didn't they get Peter delivered or something? There was something, I don't remember yet. Hmm, yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Yep. Paul Zak: Holy [00:36:00] crap, you're on the phone for, how'd that happen? 10 hours, right? So he'll say, Oh, this is about connection. This is about care. So at Zappos, they call it PEC, personal emotional connection. I think that's a great approach for every organization. I do want those employees to have a personal emotional connection to the customer. their colleagues at work and really to the purpose of the organization. Why do we even exist? How do we improve ultimately, how do we improve people's lives? Why do they pay us for our product or service? So here's the other. So that's. practical revenue generating reason. I'm so excited about EX. The other reason is if you look at fertility rates and all the countries that we live in, every middle income country and above is below fertility replacement fertility. We are running out of humans, you guys. So you better nurture. These employees. And if you look at the instance of mental health disorders, burnout, it skews towards the young people. And so now you have fewer young people [00:37:00] going into the workforce and more of them dropping out. We better really take care of them. So I'm really passionate about the mental health issues around employee experience as well. So yeah, a free app six. Is being used in organizations as an employee benefit that guides individuals to build up their emotional fitness by giving them goals, have these six high value experiences per day. Organizations get anonymized data on whether they're creating a high immersion and psychologically safe workplace, that nice two by two matrix. We all like, am I creating an organizational culture in which people can thrive? They're putting a lot of energy, high immersion in what they're doing. They're passionate. That's awesome. And then table stakes is it's got to be psychologically safe. If I'm coming into work and people are screaming at me or throwing stuff, not appropriate. So that's, you know, that's table stakes. You got to fix that first. We worked with a hospital. I'm not going to even mention where it is that was losing money and had a new leadership come in and they had the [00:38:00] stereotypical surgeons who are, you know, billing a million dollars plus a year for the hospital, you know, screaming at people, throwing, you know, instruments across the room. fired. You got to go like if you're allowing that to happen, even among surgeons, it just infects the entire organization. Not appropriate. And these one of these searches like screw you. You know, I'm so valuable. Anyone will hire me. I'm like, an asshole. I mean, honestly, I don't want you here. You're a cancer on the whole organization. Get out. And so anyway, you know, I think that's the same way. It's kind of no asshole rule. Um, and so yeah. Yeah. So giving individuals a personal tool to see what they love doing to begin to, um, I call this neural job crafting. What parts of my job give me the most, most pleasure? Give me the most energy. Well, give me more of that. And then, know, since the war for talent has been won by talent, for sure, because we're short on talent, having that conversation, empowering that, that employee to talk to his or her supervisor and go, Hey, Bob. Hey, Susan. [00:39:00] I've been using this app six for the last three months. And you know what? I love working with my team, the accounting, not so much. And then maybe you have another employee that goes, you know, I'm not so great with a team, but now I'm by myself doing accounting. I'm like always having these. Oh, great. Let's start, let's start to do job crafting. Let's really get smart about this as opposed to this top down. You have to set of set of tasks. So, one of those weird things to you that, you know, and we all know if you love something, you just do it better because, Steve: Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Yeah, it does. It's it. Paul Zak: Okay. Steve: of engaging how whether they're higher or lower engaged or what the [00:40:00] experience they're having of those different tasks. Surely that would, in my mind, anyway, that gives a much greater level of granular insight to go. Okay, as an organization, we can see there are some heat maps here where our general, like, either our hiring hasn't quite been correct because we're actually hiring. Right. The wrong people. We need more of this kind of mindset or way of working. People actually enjoy these elements of work, and we can see that these elements where we have higher scores. Well, this is customer facing, and we really need that because we want to have highly engaged people at the front line engaging with our customers and they enjoy doing it. I don't know where it can get to that, but maybe it can, but that, that, that sounds super interesting, um, to be able to correlate it to task itself, um, and learn something about, I think, the value in this as well, like to learn some more about yourself, and some might be listening, going, yeah, but I know what I like, what I do, and what I don't like, I mean, I know I hate doing accounting and receipts, like, that's a fact, um, and I love Podcasting [00:41:00] and I love engaging with clients. Paul Zak: Yeah, Steve: like maybe it's like we kind of like it. I don't know. You see where I'm going with that. I know we can probably all be distinct to say I love that and I hate that. But is there a huge variance in the middle that we could learn about ourselves by measuring how we are experiencing different tasks or the work itself. Yeah. Because that's a different, that's a different thing. Paul Zak: it is brilliant again times to so what we find in the data is that people will know those extremes as you said, but how much task a versus task B. And these are, these are numerical values, right? You're, you're getting real numbers. So I can actually compare, uh, like the highest. You know, immersion probably for me right now is talking to you the rest of the day, you know, I have a couple of meetings and whatever, and I'll be working on my own. So this is probably the highlight of my day, but I'll know that by the end of the day, because my app will [00:42:00] just show me, uh, they have these little bubbles. The bigger the bubble, the more valuable it was. And I those bubbles a day. So super easy, super obvious. You can look at it for two seconds and know exactly which is most valuable. But in the middle, yeah, people just don't know. So, um, yeah. You know, uh, there's a lot of surprises in there. So I'll give you one example. Uh, and then there's a rig here for people who run organizations. Um, high value experiences are not always happy. So we had a user, we're recently is version two of this six app. We have a user of V1. And she got in a minor car accident, some older woman, uh, like backed up into her. And, um, anyway, this lady who's, you know, kind of a super fan of the company, her name is Deb. Uh, and so anyway, Deb emails me, she goes, you know, I looked at my app and when I had this minor, I, you know, there was an old lady who was not driving. Well, I was worried. She said, I was worried about her. I went and checked on her. It says she needed an ambulance. And that was a high value moment for me. Oh yeah, that's important. You don't want to repeat that, but your brain [00:43:00] goes, Oh yeah, this is really important. I'm going to put a lot of processing power in. This is, this is really important. So the rig is that there is published literature, not from us, but from other people showing that, uh, individuals who are working tend to get more high value moments at work. Then at leisure. Why is Steve: hmm. Mm Paul Zak: We have urgent things. We're working with other people generally, right? That social component adds more value to it. And so at leisure, if I'm, I don't know, drinking a beer, watching baseball, it's nice. It's nothing wrong with that, but I'm not putting a lot of energy and it's not, you know, I'm Steve: hmm. Yeah. Paul Zak: those challenge goals for individuals that are, you know, hard, but achievable, celebrating those victories, really creating this environment where we are, you know, working to change the world and, and we're getting the satisfaction from doing that. And it doesn't always have to be happiness inducing. But the [00:44:00] punchline for individuals is when you have more of these high value experiences, you're inducing neuroplasticity. Your brain actually gets better at being present, at being emotionally open. You are actually thriving as an individual. So believe that we have over, you know, 25 years of my life. So, you know, no big deal, Steve, I work slow, really found the first true neurologic measure of thriving And that is world changing. So Steve: What? Paul Zak: long, Steve: What? Paul Zak: I'm giving you, Steve: Wow. Paul Zak: is that in three years, a billion people worldwide use our free app to build up their emotional fitness, to be happier, to be healthier, and honestly, to connect to people. So you mentioned this earlier and we didn't pick up on it, but human connection is so important. So the app actually lets you share your data with other people. Other people. And so I'm going to build this group of individuals to be on this emotional fitness journey together. They're not going to see all my day. They'll just sort of see red and green. So if I say, Hey, Steve's been in the red zone for three [00:45:00] days, I can send you in the app an emoji, a Steve: Hmm. Paul Zak: up heart. God forbid, I could call you up, Steve, and go, Hey, my friend, you shared your data with me. It looks like you might be not doing so well. Now, you might say, Uh, I had the flu. Okay, that's, do you need something? You know, that's fine. My dog died. Okay, I understand that. Or, Yeah, I've been struggling. I don't really know why, but I'm like, dude, let's grab some lunch tomorrow. How about that? what, what good humans do. That's what friends do. That's what, what family does. And so by building in this social layer, we are trying to break apart this, as you mentioned in your intro, this pandemic induced loneliness, working at home, not talking to people. We have to connect to other people. Even introverts like me actually need social connection. Steve: Yeah. I agree. I agree. And, and there's, there's something with this as well around, so I have the AA ring, which I love, and I, when I first got this, it was really interesting and I've [00:46:00] learned, I actually genuinely have learned a lot about myself and there's more features being added all the time. And I, I always kind of said, wouldn't it be amazing to be able to connect to this kind of data? Like personal health data and that's the word personal data. Um, I've even tried, you know, for the, um, uh, Oh God, for the not, I'm not diabetic, but for the, um, Oh God, what's the, I've forgotten the, um, thank you. you. So I, I just experimented one is interesting. And my wife and I tried, tried one. And what was interesting was I realized that all of the. You know, you start to realize quite quickly of all of these kind of diets that have been pushed on us for so many years is actually like a lot of them are actually like bullshit because actually I could eat a croissant and Nina could eat equally the same croissant and we're responding very differently on how our body reacts to that croissant and, um, and to see the different spikes that we have for different things. So you can't universally say. This diet will help everybody because it [00:47:00] just won't. And I, I, I'm finding that I think this kind of personal data element super personalized to me, both in my fitness, how, what I eat, how I respond to this, to some of the foods, and also interestingly, how I respond to maybe work experiences or life experiences or event experiences. Um, how do we then bring all of that together in a way that I think could then be, I don't know, some people might freak out of giving away this amount of data. But I'm also like, I think it's super interesting for those that are interested in being who want to perform at their very best. Maybe at a certain point in their career, they want to be really performing optimally both on their body, their mind, uh, also how they're experiencing their energy. Um, I'd like, yeah, I'm really curious around that conversation of how we bring all those kind of elements together. Um, yeah, Paul Zak: should say that we, we did not prep before this, and I'm going you a brilliant third time out. So in two[00:48:00] adding an aura ring. So we, we need some wearable to get neurologic data. And in two weeks, we'll actually add an aura ring to it. So for aura ring users, it's, the you guys, it's Steve: I'll be using it. I'll be using it. Paul Zak: is terrible from the, from, you know, I have a company that does all this and we have smart people running it, but I don't care about money. I want people to just live happier and healthier to connect to each other. I want everyone to use the free app. There's a premium version if you want more features, but just use the free one. It's fine. I don't really care. So we're working really hard to support as many wearables as possible. And the kind of key takeaway here is that that data has got to be private to you. So, uh, if your organization gives you six as an employee benefit, they only see, uh, on a, on a daily or weekly basis, kind of good or bad because the average of where you are for, they don't see your calendar. They don't see, um, how many, um, high value moments they are. That's private to you. then we've trained a, um, um, [00:49:00] AI assistant that learns about you and starts giving you. Prospective advice after a week says hey Steve last week the most valuable things you did were these things You might want to do more of that and the least value things were doing accounting or if you know that already And so again you you know Here's things that you want to maybe outsource if you can and so by having a tool that's predictive Remember, it was built from the very beginning with Department of Defense of money was to predict behavior We can really Curate our lives for greater happiness. And that's, again, it's been the goal of my whole career for 25 years. So, um, I'm just super excited about this. I'm, I'm happy to share it with everybody. And like I said, I just want people to use it and get some value from it. So, Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: anyway, two weeks, uh, I'll email you, you can download it for your ordering Steve: I mean, that's cool. That's cool. Because I know, I know. Yeah, because when we spoke previously, it was, yeah, just in terms of it's, uh, yeah, the battery, the battery element. Um, I want to just revert back on this [00:50:00] word that you used, if I may. Um, the word thrive, which I thought was really interesting. Did you just share a bit more on that, Paul Zak: Yeah. Steve: in terms of, because thrive thriving is such a, I love the word thrive. It's such a great word. So I'm just, I'm curious to, um, dive into that a little bit more what you've learned from that. Paul Zak: sure. So yeah, so the question is, uh, so you have kids saved you, Steve: I do. I do. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Paul Zak: components in the scientific literature Um, tell us that we're thriving one is, and the most important is, are we engaged in life? Are we actually doing things with other people? Are we expending energy? Again, if you're just sitting on the couch doing nothing, you know, like your brother in [00:51:00] law who just plays video games all day, I made this up. Uh, you know, that guy's not thriving, right? He's, he's under stimulated. Um, so for thriving. So the opposite of thriving is. I'm withdrawing from life. We see this in, in people with many health disorders, mental health, but also physical health disorders, this sort of slow withdrawal, they begin to pull away happens in depression happens in anxiety happens in Parkinson's disease happens in autoimmune diseases where they just slowly engage less in life. And so of these five pillars, and I'll go through them in a second. The most important is Are you doing things? Are you out of the house? Are you talking to people? Are you taking a walk? Are you going to lunch? Right? So that thriving is creating these high value moments that you can capture with a six app. So those five pillars are exercise, sleep. So do you have an appropriate diet? Right. And that's generally modern amounts of food, mostly plant based. you sleeping well enough? And that's generally seven, eight hours a night for most people. If your sleep's not good [00:52:00] again, just like my example in South Korea, then know, your, your behavior suffer, your cognition suffers, uh, exercise 20 minutes a day is enough, take a walk for 20 minutes a day. By the way, for, for listeners, I have a dog. What I do is. I roll out of bed, I roll out of bed at 5 15 this morning, I made coffee, I put on a sweatshirt and I take my dog and I walk for half an hour every morning, unless it's just storming, right? But I just, even if my dog's in the kennel, I'll just take myself out with my leash and take my, so it's just a routine. So I think if you Steve: Yes. Paul Zak: It's cold. I don't want to go. I have to go. It's a routine. I'm just going to force myself and I got a big thing of coffee. So, you know, I survived. It was fine. Now the fourth is again, social engagement. Am I actually engaged with other people? That's about half our happiness. And the fifth is, which is [00:53:00] really interesting is your purpose in life and acting on it. besides your work, what, what makes you feel like you're adding value to the planet? And the six app, those almost involves other people. That six apples should pick up those purpose components. I'm going to give you a concrete example in a second, but let's suppose you want to be the world's, not the best, but you want to be a good rock climber. You're not training. You're training alone. Sometimes generally training with other people, right? So it's a social component and the six app will pick that up. so we have a number of police departments using the six app to help, uh, police officers build their emotional fitness, right? Just like you want to build your physical fitness. You need to build your emotional fitness. So as I said, at work, if you're a cop, you have some real exciting times. You're gonna get some peak moments you know, bad people, whatever, it's important for these, uh, Individuals that they have peak moments outside of work. And so whenever I talk to police departments, I'm like, don't just use this employee benefit at work [00:54:00] where it outside of when you get home, if you are so wiped out that you can't engage with your spouse, with your kids, with your friends, your roommate, whoever. not healthy. That's not sustainable. So really that, that, you know, sort of purpose component is what am I else I do? What's my application? What am I doing? That gives me energy. That, that makes, maybe it's going to the bar with my friends and watching a game. That's okay. That's fine. As long as you have something. You outside of work. If you're just working like an automaton, you're a robot. And again, that's not going to work. And we see this a lot in police officers. So in the U S at least fewer people going into policing, it's a pretty awful job in my view. And super high people get in year or two, three, and they're like, I'm done. I'm just, I don't want to Steve: Yeah. No, no. I, and I love that, that, that he, I think it's again, what I heard there was just like people like learning more about themselves so that they can do, create some of those like foundational building blocks. That gives them that creates this thriving [00:55:00] that creates this kind of engagement. Um, and I guess for some people that we're going, Yeah, I can do that. I've got that already in my life, and that's good. But I also think for a lot of people that don't, they don't necessarily are aware enough. And I think data can play a big part in them identifying that and creating more consistency in their kind of in their weekly or even daily routines. Because I think that's another key element is consistency. You talked about, you know, walking your dog every morning, um, I think that consistency and when you, when you have that level consistently over time, it gives you that good building block, um, to build out from, um, a question I had, and it goes back to your point that not all experiences have to be, um, you know, large scale kind of all bands walking down the street type things, but how is, how is rest and Not engaged. Important in the more holistic kind of experience as well. So it's kind of, uh, you see where because I know we [00:56:00] focus a lot on what gives us engagement or what is higher engagement. But are there actually where there's lower engagement is also good for us as well. I mean, it's kind of in balance in moderation. Um, log on as the Danish call it. But yes, Paul Zak: Great question. So again, just like that long form narrative arc, I want to have those flat areas or down areas. the brain needs to recover just like muscles need to recover. So why I think that the, you know, the research we've done, this is all public published research. And if you guys go to Google scholar, uh, you can, the papers are all publicly available. You can download Steve: we can do it. Paul Zak: You do need down times. You don't want to be on, on, on. And when we look at these, high value moments, they have generally troughs between them where you're recovering. So, that recovery is very important. And I think, you know, um, having a good sleep schedule, we call it sleep hygiene. You're going to bed roughly at the same time every night, having some downtime, really important. Uh, and you can [00:57:00] schedule that, right? You can just schedule, Hey, I'm not going to do any work after 6 p. m. You know, I mean, with obviously they're like, I have to do a 10 30 p. m. Zoom tonight to Europe. uh, anyway, that's fine. You know, whatever. I'll make up the sleep, but I think, you know, having that, that schedule is really important and the downtime is really important. So for listeners, if you are not sleeping well, you've got to solve that problem, right? For sure. If you don't sleep well, then you tend not to want to exercise. You tend not to, you know, people stress eat. So, you know, We've kind of fetishize avoiding stress, but we really want is this challenge stress. I want to have challenges and then have recovery time. So of those. If I don't have challenges, then there's nothing to recover. And then I'm just kind of a blob and that's not good either. So, just like, you know, if a stress was bad for you, then we would never exercise. That's, that's physiologically stressful, right? But you're doing that to build up your physical fitness. Steve: and strength. Yeah, Paul Zak: emotional fitness. We need Steve: [00:58:00] yeah. Paul Zak: ourselves, meet new people, go to, uh, You go to a bar, see up to two in the morning, listening to music. That's awesome, Steve: Yeah. Yeah. Paul Zak: You got every night that's gonna be, you're gonna be burnout, but, Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: push, push the limit a little bit. Steve: Yeah. And I think that's why I really, that's why I really love your mission as well, because I think, I think this, the, the building up of, uh, we, we talk, there's been, there's a lot of talk about physical and, you know, gym and exercise, but I think just in terms of, um, mindset and the whole physiological element, I think is, uh, this is an area where I think. Building up like mental strength and all of this area, I think there's way more we can do on that side. I think everybody I'm sure listening will be like, Yeah, I probably spend probably at times too much time working too much and not enough time in recovery or time for myself or reflection or whatever, whatever it is that gives us the energy and the kind of fill our cup again in order to kind of provide that balance. So I [00:59:00] think it's a. Yeah, I think it's we can all I think we could all help. We could all work a little bit more on ourselves from that perspective. Um, Paul Zak: you said, if I can interrupt, I like what you said about scheduling. So I will actually do this on my calendar that has recovery time. Steve: yeah, cool. Paul Zak: or whatever, you know, walking time or writing time. So I just scheduled that in like, okay, I have to follow my calendar. Sorry. I put in recovery time or, or, or hiking. I put hiking time. Right. So even people who are super busy can actually do this. If, if I'm just, my wife called me this morning, like, Hey, what are you doing today? I'm like, whatever my calendar tells me, I don't know. I haven't looked. It's too early. I haven't looked at my calendar, but, um, so it. Steve: yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, this is this is for those that actually really struggle with calendars because some people do from an organization point of view. like experimenting with an app like six could also like help get into some rhythm and some, um, consistency around some of these tasks, particularly if they're, uh, they're high on your natural engagement curve as [01:00:00] well. Um, Paul, as we come kind of, I, I, this has gone so way too fast. Um, I'd love to keep talking to you, uh, but I, I, I'm gonna, I've got, I've got some questions I wanted to ask you, which are going to be completely, um, Curveballs for you. Um, because I was, I was, I was thinking to myself, I've listened to some of the podcasts and I'm sure you get asked some fairly consistent questions and I wanted to be a standout, be a little bit different, um, from a, from a podcaster presenter perspective. Um, but I've got a couple of questions for you. Okay. So if you could design a neuroscientist dream theme park, what would it include? Paul Zak: Oh, such an evil question. I love it. Steve: Sorry, man. Paul Zak: Um, I think it would include, uh, yeah, it would include. So the brain loves anticipation. uh, in my book, I talked about taking my team to Disneyland and actually measuring immersion second by second [01:01:00] for the entire day. And what we found is that for almost every attraction was more valuable than the ride itself. Right there. The ride's three minute roller coaster or something, but the queuing this end is so smart about building a narrative around Steve: Yeah. Paul Zak: of eye candy. And so I think it's really thinking about building that anticipation, having the unexpected. Um, you know, building in these kind of changes, but also relative to our conversation, having these nice rest stations where you soak your feet in warm water. Like I, I would love to have that massage Steve: Yeah, Paul Zak: are sore. I think it's really having extraordinary experiences, but also having that, uh, recovery time and building that into the experience. Steve: yes. And, you know, interestingly, you're sharing that interface of a, of a, of a, uh, like a ride. Um, it actually, do you know, is you just [01:02:00] maybe recall a memory from, um, uh, Universal Studios in Los Angeles actually for, uh, the mummy ride where they have that amazing roller coaster, which is on the mummy movie franchise. And. In the interface when you obviously go through the turnstile and then you're, you know, you go around the corner inside and then you're met with this huge kind of, you know, huge queue and you're like, Um, yeah, okay. Um, but then you're actually surrounded and immersed in like Egypt because they've actually staged like the mummy movie, um, to keep you entertained. They've got like TVs everywhere with some of the movie playing. Uh, it's a very smart way of like building, keeping you entertained and also like building up that anticipation. Uh, as you're hearing that kind of rollercoaster, uh, rumbling away in the background and screams. Um, so yeah, it's very cool. Very cool. I love the anticipation part. Um, did you mention you have a dog? So you have a dog. Paul Zak: Yes. Steve: our, so my research team were right. Cause we're going, has he got a dog? I [01:03:00] think he's, I think we think he has a dog. So that's good that you mentioned your dog. Um, what's something your dog does that you wish you could measure with immersion tech? Paul Zak: Well, it's funny you asked that, uh, I actually have built a wearable for my dog, uh, and just Steve: Brilliant. Paul Zak: And I, I contacted all like the pet supply companies. I'm like, who wouldn't pay 5 a month to know if your dog's happy or not. So anyway, so I got my dog to have this wearable. Um, looks like this, you know, acclimated to his leg and I got really good signal. I'm like, Oh, how do I test this? This is where the biology comes in. I'm like, well, it's a male dog, so I'll scratch him. And then boop, boop, boop, boop, boop. You know, he really enjoyed the scratching and his immersion went off the charge and like Yeah, I think immersion is measuring the right thing here. He really likes to be scratched. So interestingly, we just, I have to suppress the name, but anyway, it was just contacted by a company, uh, that wants to show that happy cows make more milk [01:04:00] and I'm like, Oh, Steve: my God. Paul Zak: a, there's a branding film there. Like I want to be there. I will make a special wearable for the cows. I'll massage them, whatever it takes. I just want to get the data. It's be so interesting. So, Steve: Oh wow, Paul Zak: you know, Steve: that's awesome. Paul Zak: um, there's something very special about them. So again, for listeners, maybe who are lonely, who are maybe have trouble connecting, a dog is a great way to flex those, um, emotional connection muscles. And, uh, you know, you come home, that dog is happy to see you. And by the way, just moved recently. I walk my dog. I have met every neighbor. So Americans are then to be, and maybe it's Swedes too. They don't really talk to each other too much. Kind of, you know, we're a little isolated. I know everybody where I moved because I'm walking my dog twice a day and I'm seeing, I met all the dog walkers, but now I met all the people walking to their mailbox [01:05:00] and if you have a dog and I'm six foot four, I'm a big guy. You know, generally. Women don't want to, you know, I could be dangerous, who knows, but they see you with a dog, they'll come over and say, I'll come at your dog. Oh, you know, so it's a great hack to, Steve: Very much so, Paul Zak: facilitate those social connections. Steve: I have one more question because they're always in threes. Um, just, just from your, your lot, like your, your, well, yeah, your background, what's a wildly inaccurate myth about the brain that drives you crazy? Paul Zak: Oh gosh, how much time do we have? Um, I think Steve: Here we go. Paul Zak: most obvious one is you only use 10 percent of your brain. The brain is the most expensive real estate. in your body for sure. It's just like you don't only use 10 percent of your heart. Now you could, again, if I'm sitting still, I'm not using all my capacity in my heart. I may not be using all the capacity in my brain, but my brain's running all the time. Constantly. The nice thing about the brain and the heart is they all are adapting. If I do more cardiovascular exercise, I can increase my [01:06:00] cardiovascular tone with things like an app like six, I can actually increase my brain's adaptation to, you know, Being happy to building emotional fitness and so, you know, thinking about this as all these organs are adaptive, your kidneys are adaptive. I mean, come on. So, you know, the muscles. So your whole body is about adapting. And I think it's up to us to choose that level of adaptation. And if I want to be happier, healthier and live longer, I got to connect to other people. I've got to invest in them. So just to I mentioned to you, uh, yesterday worked out for five hours, the mountains with one of my best friends, we're sweaty. We got before three in the morning. We drove to the mountains. We did hard workouts. And then later in the afternoon, I had breakfast afterwards and just had a great time, five hours together. Great. friend. Three hours later, he texted me and he goes. Hey, and I live, you know, two hours away, so I'm, I'm a far away. And he said, Hey, I have a meeting near your house. You want to have breakfast tomorrow morning? And I'm like, how blessed am I that I have a friend [01:07:00] who after spending five hours with me, to spend more time with me. Like dear Steve: Beautiful. Yeah. Paul Zak: that's to me thriving, right? I able to build this set of individuals who are unrelated to me genetically, but value me enough. And I value them enough that I want to spend more time with them. Like. Steve: Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And that's a beautiful way, I think, to, uh, to conclude this amazing and fascinating, uh, episode with you, Paul. It's, um, all my conversations leading up, uh, to today, and also, um, uh, I'm confident there's, uh, going to be More conversations to be had as well after this podcast, but I'm firstly, I just want to share my gratitude for sharing your most valuable asset, which is your time. Um, and, uh, yeah, I love your energy and, um, and your passion for this, for this topic and subject. Uh, and thanks for, yeah, thanks for sharing and being, uh, being a good sport with this really appreciated the conversation today. Paul Zak: Well, if no one's told you this today, Steve, you are awesome. What a time with you. Thank you, my friend.[01:08:00] Steve: Thank you, my friend. And just a lot of final question. How can people contact you follow you connect with you where some of the best best places will obviously going to put some links to the six at Google Scholar and any other assets that you think we can share out to the audience will be in the show notes as always. Just any links or anywhere where where's the best place to find you. Paul Zak: Sure. Uh, easiest to find me on get immersion. com immersion with an eye. And if you're listening to this and you have questions, feel free to email me. And LinkedIn is always also good. Steve: Yeah, it's great. And I'll put all the links in the show notes as always. Brilliant. Paul, thank you so much, my friend and enjoy. Enjoy the rest of your day. Thanks again.