The Science of Ted Lasso with Jason Sudeikis, Brendan Hunt, and Neil deGrasse Tyson

[Music] this is star talk sports edition i'm neil degrasse tyson your personal astrophysicist and today we're going to take a deep dive into the waters of ted lasso 10 lasso uh if you haven't seen it on apple plus it's a it's a tv series but why it interests us in particular is because there's a lot of psychology sort of neuroscience going on in that show ted lasso is a coach an american coach coaching a uk football team soccer team and there's a lot of interpersonal dynamics that brings them to this program and anytime we have neuroscientist issues we bring in heather berlin she'll come in actually in the third segment of this program but in the meantime let me first introduce my to co-host chuck nice check hey neil i gotta tell ya all right dive into the waters of ted lasso sounds very erotic i like it okay everything is that way to you uh and we also we also of course have gary o'reilly gary always good to have you there a former professional soccer player in the uk yeah so this is right right down your alley here now of course uh in order to make this work it would it'd be better if we had like folks from the show so why not so we invited and they agreed to appear to the co-creators of the show jason sedakis and brendan hunt guys welcome to star talk sports edition hello thanks for having me here all right excellent excellent jason you and i met some years ago i think we just crossed paths in a in a sound studio but it was it was a fun a fun encounter and i'm i'm i don't know if i can officially call you a friend of mine but you're you're somebody i watch and follow and it's always great to see you uh doing very cool interesting things comedic and dramatic and the like but so thanks for being on the uh on the show so the two of you guys created this sort of fictitious character uh playing for a fictitious premier league football club and it's the show is is is globally famous on many levels and so what we want to know is uh how is it that ted lasso this character who is a is a he's a coach but he's got he's just really really a nice guy and it's like no these people don't exist they should they exist should there be a law against them why and then somehow it works and it works convincingly not in some weird fantasy way and so so we're going to delve into the the the how you guys turn ted lasso into a modern-day superhero with a different portfolio of powers that we normally find the power of marvelness power of kindness so let me lead off with with chuck and gary because they've been thinking about this like uh ever since we first floated the idea so gary i'm gonna let gary go first but i gotta say this before we start before we start i just gotta get this out of the way you know for for brian and jason um uh this is a thank you from from brendan i'm sorry brendan not brian brennan i'll get brian in here too though we'll get this straight in here i don't even know why i brought him up thank you brandon brendan's so much cooler but thank you to you guys from the rest of the world for making america give a damn about uh soccer because seriously yeah blasphemy without this show man seriously it's like i've never seen more people get into soccer because of you two that's the stealth mission there you go now they know the ball is inflated and not stuffed there you go baby steps baby steps babysitting this is the trojan horse we're actually just trying to get soccer going out there good grow the family so okay chaps here we go um strength listen to that they're anglicized brian get your chats on humankind's success has been on community and cooperation yeah you put ted in the all about me rolls royce us and them ferrari world of premier league football and you repeatedly demonstrate how we find common ground i mean what on earth inspired you to do that golly i mean i i think you know brent and i both come from um you know a background in improv uh improvisational comedy which is you know as as much of you know playing on a you know a team you know playing team sports as much as you know working in in some environment you know a chosen family environment and just that whole notion of you know yes and is like you you know sort of um you know like almost like a prayer in improv you know where you accept an idea you support the idea and then you add to it and so i think it was just rooted in the way that we all we we played together specifically brendan and i and our buddy joe kelly who we did these commercials back in 2013 and 2014 where that's where the character initially started and even the way we went about making those commercials for nbc sports you know with with the tottenham hotspurs and and uh etc we didn't write a script you know and this isn't a thing that we invented i mean they do this all the time on like shows like enthusiasm etc where we just had like beats written out but this was like a multi multi-million dollar like you know ad campaign and we were just i wouldn't say we were winging it because there was absolute intention behind everything we were doing we just didn't have a hard copy of the script that people were going through and we just trusted each other and we knew that if brenda and i knew we were making joe laugh and i was making brennan and joe laugh and brennan was making joe and i laughed then you just when you have that alchemy of a little triangle you just know that there's good stuff happening there and so we just sort of followed that and so it was made in kindness with friends and then that just like it was sort of in the dna of the thing it we didn't know we were doing it the very especially the very first one that it was that it was about because i would say the first commercial isn't about kindness it wasn't until we got to the second one that really unlocked ted's optimism and and um you know hopefulness uh and his you know curiosity and whatnot um and then by the time a couple years after that when we started talking about the tv show it we were really as a country like being inundated with a lot of negativity i mean little did we know how far you know the the prime example of of you know uh ignorance and arrogance hadn't quite come down the you know the the escalator in trump uh plaza yet but it was it was there was a disturbance in the force and so we wanted to make a show that didn't rely on sarcasm and cynicism i know i personally didn't want to play a character that would have felt derivative to david brent or michael scott you know uh you know all these great characters that were uh you know kicking butt on television so it was really about what we didn't want to do and it lent itself time and time again to you know kindness and and to like empathy words that we i don't think we were necessarily aware of you know i mean aware of yes but but i weren't speaking about in in the writers room or even in in my my dining room at my house in brooklyn joe and brenda and i sort of beat out the idea for this for the show so i got to compliment you as a scientist for viewing your your your sort of comedic commercial spots as tests you're testing the ideas 100 percent 100 yeah it's science yeah if you haven't you got to test it otherwise you know can we get a sense can we get a sense of uh the the meeting where uh this multi-million dollar project uh fronted by nbc and they asked for the script review um well the version of it is it's like hey hey brendan jason uh you know we we gave you a few million dollars can we say this could we see the script they didn't give that million dollars to us my man that was entirely for the purposes of the nbc's networks and reach outs but um what we didn't know about this meeting but this meeting kind of happened but we are at the tottenham hotspur training center we are in our rv me and joe and jason and jeff uh jason's manager we're playing catan and uh and we're watching literally playing some japan yeah we're remember we watched a ton of uh coming to america like just clips from coming to america just like on youtube we were just like we were passing time meanwhile outside this van go ahead brendan yeah like between setups like we've done one bit we're gonna do the next bit and we told them like oh yeah we'll do like ted like uh in uh like playing fifa so set that up we'll be there and they don't work that way so outside this you know rv of fun dozens of english crew members are just like what's happening sounds about right for the english yeah crew members but also nbc exactly sports executives you know like people being like what like dude what is going on what are they doing and we're just in there just you know i'll trade you wood for for you know for sheep you know and sellers have good just just like children you know and again but but but not being arrogant about it you know like just just we didn't know any better it was it was our ignorance towards the process you know and and and and their ignorance for hiring us so let's rewind it back to the the psychology what expertise did you draw from in psychology to and we for those of us who have watched series one and two you persistently infuse the plot lines with this material do do you actually retain a mental health professional on the show on the on the show no but i think a great number of our writing staff do personally 95 we're all in therapy everybody's in therapy we don't have a mental health professional exactly yeah you know what i mean a lot of it is rooted in in again tenants of improvisation which which have you know um you know very macro view versions of of you know and different sayings you know follow the follower you know like you know yes i am those notions but then then there was you know i would found the writings and the the philosophy of john wooden the the great ucla college basketball coach um to be profound and that and his his his philosophies were things that i used to teach when i coached improv teams and and taught improv and his pyramid of success was something that that i thought really broke down nicely to how to how an individual can conduct themselves within a group dynamic and be take care of themselves but then also support the people with them which is really you know an idea i ideal your head space to be in when when you know making stuff up on the fly you know much less life you know driving on the highway you know anything where you're dealing with the two of you as with comedic chops um and i think jason didn't you have a stint on saturday night live i have something i did for i did i was there briefly yeah yeah i hear they like to briefly so so so brennan jason good comedians have to completely understand their audience what they're thinking how they're going to emote and it seems to me that could not to not to trivialize any profession but that seems to me could is half of what therapy is knowing what the person is thinking because if you don't you're just shooting in the dark and the and the way you've been you you've scripted yourselves and the way you interact there's always a little bit of insight into what's going on in the person's head and so you're telling us that that comes to you from your comedic um backgrounds i'd say and like i'm not sure that we know what our audience is thinking so much as we give our audience a lot of credit you know we we just expect that our audience is is is bright and um as as i have saying that i've heard in improv the audience doesn't get what they want the audience wants what they get um so if we just assume that they're bright and they'll go along with us and if we're doing if we're doing our best then they're they're more likely to go along with us so that's all we can worry about there i think by the way brendan that's my same philosophy on christmas for my children just to let you know you want what you get [Laughter] mariah carey we have a rewrite on your hits on your christmas anthem my favorite quote that's exactly in line with that that was one that doug close said who's like you know improv guru who who i got the you know study with in the late 90s in chicago was like if you treat your audiences like poets and geniuses they will rise to the occasion and so so it really is less thinking about it's less thinking about what are they going to get this are they going to do that we we in every step of the process of creating the show we have been cognizant and intentional about leaving space for people to lean into it whether it be the you know brandon joe and i the fellow writers our fellow co-creator bill lawrence let him lean into it because he's done thousands of hours of television he knows the form so well and so we want our actors to lean into it to not just we're not they're not action figures that we're puppeteering and like you have to say the words just like this you know we have every actor lean in you know uh because we're americans and and you know the anglicized things like oh we don't we don't say it that way we said we like we had the word ma'am because you know ted said ma'am in the pilot so much and the very first time uh jeremy swift who played higgins called uh rebecca welton ma'am it sounded like mom and i was like oh that's a different show that's a different show we can't have that and and we and we do that with the prop department the the hair makeup people everybody we leave space and we try to do that for the audience too where i think some of the things you might be picking up neil you know not to talk about how the sausage is made too much but from my money we're really in the editing process we want to people to we want people to see the actors say the lines and for people to receive the line then show the actor receiving that line too because i feel that's how we watch things at home like we're all listening to each other now and that's the that for me is the 50 that uh you know sometimes when you have to you know on network television you have to get to the commercial breaking you only have like 20 minutes to tell this three act story we had the luxury of not having to follow that that paradigm because of being on streaming and being on apple tv plus and them accommodating our you know the the style we're trying to do where it wasn't boom boom boom we want to live leave space and grace for people to lean in and you know hear and receive the information in in time with the people we're going to take our first break in a couple of minutes but let me just add to that if you're giving me room to participate in the emotions of what you've written it is working because every episode that i've watched i there's some moment when i well up there's some tender moment i get a little teary emotionally teary and that wouldn't happen unless you you you invited me into what's going on and so i i'm feeling like and if you weren't willing to be invited i mean that's you know kicking and screaming i don't want to cry stop it right gary you got one last question before we hit the break yeah um okay so nice guys finish last right we've seen teams that win nasty dirty bend the rules break the rules whatever you can get away with maybe if you don't like the yankees that's the 77 and 78 yankees who won stuff and weren't liked because of it yet you end up micro dosing us you give us this kind of feel-good virus during your pandemic i mean what about that old adage nice guys finish last was it an intention up front to kind of stand it on its head yes we i mean 100 percent i mean i referenced like trump earlier and i didn't mean to be you know too cheeky about it but but i i have found that the worst version of a human man is is the cocktail of someone that is you know ignorant but arrogant you know what i mean and you can see that played comedically all the time you know someone uses the word versus military and a character is like oh yeah no i know what that word means yeah yeah versus military absolutely yeah yeah and you you clearly that they don't we wanted ted to be like hey what's that word mean wait what verse know what you know like like to be curious to be ignorant which nothing wrong with that but then to ask the question you know be like what what's what's what's going on there what's going on there and in the writers room we were conscious about not you know we were still very cynical and sarcastic in the writers room we just we just and those are sometimes you know comedically um our first choices and we would go to our second or third choice we would try to make the other choice of turning it on and said being like okay let's not let's not be let's not have someone to come in and go you know nice hat you know have them come in and be like be like like literally that's a great hat where'd you get that can i try it on like you know you know and just yes anding just supporting whatever was going on so may i please right now ask what does versus militude mean [Laughter] we will tell chuck over the break what very similitude means when we come back from the break gary i want to know if when you played were you a nice player or a mean player we're gonna find out when we come back star talk sports edition and we're we're unpacking ted lasso and all that is and what it means to us going forward as not only as a show but as civilization itself we're back star talk sports edition we're unpacking the psychological complexities of the hit tv series on apple plus ted lasso and in our third segment we're going to bring on our favorite neurologist uh neuroscientist and and you know who she is but right now we're in the middle of our conversation with jason sedakis and brendan hunt who were co-creators and writers and actors in that series and it contrasts really nasty people with really friendly happy people and i just want to know from my co-host here gary o'reilly gary when you played soccer were you one of the mean people or were you one of the nice people um naughty but nice oh that's mean if i ever heard it oh yeah so you there are moments when you have to be certain things moments when you have to be other things generally you would not want to hurt or be mean or nasty but sometimes you have to deal with it i mean there were certain rules when i came through as a professional player in the early stages if their tackle came in higher you came in higher yes just you know the rules were survive out there be this is no one's going to give you an easy passage here you're going to have to put up and deal with it so in certain circumstances you learn to be but generally i was the nicer variety but on occasion i could be they're not so nice i don't know about that gary you you you sound good i know yes does my nose grow yeah man let me just say this there's a picture of gary running down the pitch and he's wearing a pair of short shorts and he looks so handsome and good like i was attracted to you i was looking at him and i know any man who is wearing short shorts and looking that confident is kind of a dick okay it's lucky thanks chuck this is why i don't need enemies because i have these kind of friends so let me let me let me uh broaden this this platform here there's the the goodness in ted lasso there's the highly varied personality profiles of the players uh some go through evolution others just dip in and out of being mean and kind um but in the end of the day we're talking about leadership leadership and is there let me just tee up the ball with that and um you guys did where did this notion of leadership come from mixed in with this whole psychological profiling of nice people interacting with mean people some of it's intrinsic just to the notion of being a coach um and jason has much more experienced athletic coaches than i do you know i've experienced with acting teachers and acting coaches who had an impact but if we're making a show about a coach you know we want that coach to have have an impact and and ted's brand of leadership is how he goes about it which as jason says is you know partially drawn through john wooden and partially the uh the improv coaches that we've had um jason and if you want to get on that yeah i mean it was really about you know mentoring in general and then you could even go you know zoom out even further and say that it's about you know like parenthood or fatherhood you know specifically with this show but but it i had always felt that a good mentor was someone that saw something in you that your baggage disallowed you to see in yourself you know so so oh that's beautiful yeah that's a jason that's beautiful thank you but i mean i've benefited from that i've had you know you know i had a teacher sally shipley in high school who was like hey you you could do like this radio tv stuff like this this this um class we had in in um in high school where we made like a like a weekly television show you know like a news show but still you could do silly stuff like man on the street or or you know tina fey when i showed up at snl um you know as a writer was like she was like if you can improvise you can write you know you know lauren hired me you know i mean i think and i think that happens with a good you know creative partner a good romantic partner good coaches mentors a good teammate you know if someone that can say why are you being so hard on yourself you know like you know why aren't you seeing for yourself what i see for you and you that's in that's you can pair up any two people on the show that's what you know rebecca's doing for keely that's what you know ted is doing for for everyone that's what you know uh keeley does for roy you know it like it it it happens all over the place and you know we we have the opportunity to be you know to take life and create life while we're here living life and why not try to use that you know as best as you can and think that there's plenty there's plenty for everyone to there's plenty of pie for everyone to have a bite um and that yeah it was just it was it was rooted in that and and you know we also wanted to mess around with the assumptions of of toxic you know masculinity even though we weren't necessarily aware of that term but you know you put it in as as you know gary was saying like the the the ferrari you know ego driven world uh of professional sports or just athletics in general you know the preconception is that they're all a bunch of turkeys and like we wanted to show that yeah there are some but they some of those people just didn't realize that they can't be you know a better version of themselves and and yeah uh yeah they just want to be encouraged several several of the characters nearly all of the characters at some point you dragged them through the thistles you you put you put a little torture twist on them uh and on some of the conditions in the that you show they're treatable with medication you know such as anxiety such as the panic attacks but instead the show uses therapies rather than medication um what's the role of therapy relative to medications have you did you think through that sort of situation of using therapy may be medication in the show how did you come to that conclusion we did have an early you know a storyline about the roy kent character who was you know in in the uh the autumn of his career that maybe that was gonna lend itself to to uh self-medicating you know with pain pills you know and him trying i'm gonna play one more season if i just keep taking these you know because who wouldn't want to be paid a bunch of dough to play a game for a living and and also psychologically who am i if i'm not doing this i've done this since i was a little boy who am i you know after if i am not roy kent i mean that's what you know in the ninth episode 109 he has that whole conversation with keely about exactly that as he's being moved from a starter to to uh you know a support player off the bench and we did toy with the idea and it we just found ourselves time and time again wanting to have people to own their stuff especially especially like men men that have been deified made that have been have been uh paid well and yet they all still have the same stuff you know and we've had the same stuff for thousands of years you know it's like so we wanted to keep it at a mythological level again to allow people you know ourselves you know as writers and actors but then everyone in the audience to like lean in and maybe see versions of themselves in these different characters so you know you can maybe take the journey one episode with the keeley character and then you know then find yourself relating more to ted or rebecca's you know arc in a different episode but we just wanted people to care about these people so that the smallest arc like mattered you know it doesn't have to be saving the world it could be just saving saving face you know or saving their own heart in in that moment and i think that to do it without drugs to try to do it within oneself is what the whole second season is about and the first season really about you know realizing that you can lean on others um the the first season so like the the you know human element and and the you know the the healing powers of one another versus uh you know very you know like medication is super helpful to you know super but it's not as um probably it's not as fun to write you know opens pills unless the medication is abused right if it's just taken then nobody has any problems you've got nothing to write about yeah yeah and where about 95 of our writing staff has a psychologist i think we're a solid 60 has a psychiatrist too yeah so we're not taking some stand here by any means yeah yeah yeah right and that's the funny thing about you know when you're taking psych psychiatric uh um medication is that when you take it it just works and nobody knows you're taking it it's actually kind of boring i will say that that you know a book that came out right as we were writing the pilot was how to change your mind by michael pollan who who's talking about the use of you know um psilocybin and lsd and and mdma as a way to treat ptsd to treat depression to treat anxiety and and so ted was in we spoke about a lot you know me brendan joe and bill lawrence would uh about ted being the personification of mushrooms you know that there was an egolessness that he carries that when someone it presents themselves to him and they're angry like he knows that it's not about them like it's he's just a mirror for for that right then you know it's like it's like uh you know you never know what what battle someone's dealing with you know inside their own you know head heart and soul and so we just wanted to with ted was an opportunity to personify that and and he's almost like a weeble wobble if you remember those toys growing up you know like you know they get knocked down they get right back up and it feels funny because in today's day and age especially again you know over these last six years it was about fighting back punch back you know hit back harder like that became language yeah you know what you just made me think of something that is um just a great representation of that in actual sports i love watching the nfl when they put the microphones on the guys and you see them on the field right and you would think that they're out there just like i'm gonna kill you i'll rip your nuts off right but when you listen to them often they're talking to their opponent and they're just they're they don't help each other up they used to do that but they don't now coaches stop that but they look at each other and they go all right buddy hey man that was okay hey good good good one man that was good man all right i'll see what you did i see what you did there let's meet again right we'll see each other next time like they're not like i'm going to kill you it really is a positive experience and exchange you know it's it's pretty wild yeah let me tell you more it's more guaranteed yeah i'll tell you now when you're mic'd up you don't say none of that other stuff when that max on someone else are you just going to put i am going to pull your head out i am going to stick it in a bag and i'm taking it home with me yeah so you're saying they're acting i'm wearing a wire so so brandon let me i got another question here i was very happy the entire first season watching ted lasso be coach therapist basically all right he was coach and part-time therapist dealing with this conflagration of personalities but then you bring in an actual therapist and i thought to myself what's coach lasso gonna do does he have any job left now and then we find out that he could benefit from some therapy so i what was what was going on in the in the decision to bring on an actual professional therapist and a sports therapist even not just a random person off the out of the catalog yeah um i think uh a few things went into it um so i don't want to speak for jason here too much because but one thing that was big in my mind was that you know in season one we show ted having panic attacks and um and that's uh that's a that's a big thing and i personally kind of felt like it would be irresponsible of us to just kind of let that have floated out there like some kind of plot point for a couple of episodes as opposed to being something that indicated there was a larger thing to address so then it became how to address it and yeah there's there's just a lot of teams right now even even in england with all of its stigmas about mental health even in england plenty of teams now have a uh have a sports therapist on the on the side oh it's a regular thing okay it's becoming more and more yeah people are people are much more aware of it's not just your body it's the space between your ears that's really quite vital what what i'm interested in because wait wait gary i have brains between my ears not space that's because you have astrophysics going on i have more space in here than probably i should just saying i'm just saying you know that's what it is so in in a dressing room a locker room in a premier league team group dynamic is not everything but it's so vital you've got your individual components because there's always a star then you need a couple of water carriers then you need someone solid and dependable and you've got all of this going on and if you do not manage that whilst managing all of the other individual component parts it falls apart quickly that was my experience in clubs that i played with so how did you going into that look to see where you could mine your storylines i mean a lot more we're trojan horsing our own personal philosophies and stories you know one of the nice things about writing a show about you know in this tone which you know about not about but deals with you know and set in the realm of kindness and empathy is that our writer's room was very it was everybody was was open-hearted and and shared their experiences of dealing with you know within their own family you know within within other you know work situations you know uh possibly if people played you know sports or did anything ensemble based and you just kind of find out you know when you do like a show like this and you have people from different walks of life of how similar they are and how much things overlap and you're kind of like oh we call that something different but yeah we got that we do that and that was one of the neat things about the show finally coming out was then we had people like for us to have brenda and i to have the opportunity to you know do brene brown's podcast and all of her you know ackman and and skill set in in explaining like vulnerability and the vocabulary she used to explain the show back to us in a very like not aerodyne way but like with vocabulary that we never would have thought of in a million years it felt very similar to taking improv classes where it's like oh you're that's what it's called when i play like this you know as a kid oh i okay so i'm i'm heightening i just thought i was just making it funnier you know it's like you know that's called height you know it's given it gives you vocabulary for it you know in a way that we you know we just really leaned on each other and relied on each other and and felt vulnerable enough in the writers room to to share that and then once again when you get to the actors then they put their own experiences into it so it's really about just taking our own stuff and just you know hiding it in these people and that strikes me that that that's a big part of what therapy is is giving the vocabulary to describe stuff you know it's starting from we're trying to do this with kids now like would you having a feeling right now that we have to try to be able to describe for you and you know maybe where a lot of people get into trouble is that they're just going through stuff that they can't even describe and the more we can let people describe what they're going through maybe it'll be easier for them to deal with it you know it's funny i'm i'm listening to all of you right now that you keep this these words keep coming up during this conversation vulnerability and support and like you know teammates and you know therapists and it just occurred to me that you cannot give or receive support without being vulnerable because if you're giving support you have to trust you have to be vulnerable and open to trust that person to help them and if you're receiving it you have to be that much more vulnerable and open to receive it so it's uh it's actually a pretty brilliant construct for a sports um you know arena i i just love it it's the thing is chuck if you travel back to my time as a player you dealt with it on your own right there was no safety net there wasn't a therapist right you didn't want to talk to people around you because you would be weak and the whole thing about being a professional athlete in an ultra competitive environment is you are strong and show weakness and then everybody just you know you you generally don't play 100 fit in fact you'd never play 100 fit right you're always carrying some kind of injury physically now adding to the component of mental problems the things can really and you talk about how players go out of form and cannot deliver there's a lot of things going on now as as we understand there are therapists around to identify certain issues rather than have this person fall apart in front of you hey let me ask you this then all of you all of you let me ask you this because we're all running short on time are we running short on time so if you make it make it quick i'm gonna make it real quick make it quick okay because it looks like we're all from the same generation of suck it up as far as i can sell yeah all right so how do you feel about these athletes now who basically say look my mental health is more important than um you know achieving the win frankly yeah you got you got to support you got to support it i i think you know and different strokes for different folks but i'm not gonna it's hard it's really hard you know and and then you know to have social media be not so social sometimes yeah you know a bunch of strangers popping off at you and telling you you ain't this you ain't that like you know how dare you it's like you do it you try it like i don't want to be that guy you know towards you know any young man or woman these are also people the majority of them are also 25 or young kids like right yeah like you know not even fully formed so we've got to close out this segment and actually say goodbye to jason and brandon but i just want to uh just comment that in a very tight format of this program you managed to successfully go in and out of and explore every permutation of human dynamics and relationships and and only after i solved watched it did i say wow we just talked about boyfriend girlfriend mother father son daughter uh children uh old people young people death you know birth right it's all of that's in there it's like how did they do that how did they do that you know and and and and and you made me care about them and you're making me cry every episode so stop it no telling you that no no no my permission to carry on just saying brandon and jason jason first it's great to see you again dude likewise and um brandon it was uh great to meet you for the first time here and good luck with more seasons of the show you clearly teed up another season in that last episode of season two and so we're all waiting for that to drop uh so uh it's great just best to you keep keep up with the comedy uh we on star talk we're big fans of comedy here and we know that comedians hold the the spirit energy and the soul of what makes civilization work and so all of life is not just drama you have to smile every now and then and you guys know that that formula and recipe and you're inventing new formulas as you go along so dudes uh thanks for being on star talk absolutely thanks for having us thank you doctor all right when we come back we're gonna go to we're going to heather heather berlin uh she's our neuroscientist uh in residence and she's gonna unpack this episode as it has unfolded thus far on star talk sports edition we're back star talk sports edition we were unpacking the psychological dimensions of ted lasso the apple plus tv hit series that's all about sort of an american coach in the uk coaching soccer need to know anything about soccer and so it becomes a story about managing egos and how to be kind and the power of kindness kindness as a superpower even and we had jason sedakis and brendan hunt the two co-creators on and we learned a lot but we're going to learn some more because we're going to our neuroscientist at large heather berlin heather welcome back to star talk for the hundredth time always a pleasure always a pleasure thanks for having me okay yeah yeah so gary you know took the lead on this because that boy here did played some actual talker in the uk so gary why don't you lead off here with what questions you have for heather okay um welcome heather to this particular edition of star talk sports edition um please explain to us and particularly me what reactions go off in the brain when it's involved in an act of kindness because you've got the giver and the receiver and can you just explain what is going on so as i can understand a little bit better and is it better to give than it is to receive well in a in an interesting way you know giving or being kind is actually in some ways a selfish act because you're really ultimately you're helping yourself as well and we can see that in all sorts of changes in terms of neurochemistry being kind can decrease your cortisol levels and stress hormones which is good for the brain it releases oxytocin which is this very um pleasurable bonding hormone that's also released when you're in love it's released when a mother is breastfeeding her child which promotes bonding it's released during sex uh it releases dopamine which is a pleasure sort of uh neurotransmitter in the brain activates the pleasure centers of the brain you get increases in uh serotonin which helps regulate your mood so you know across the board it actually is really not only good for your physical health but also for your psychological health um so so in many ways it is much better to give than it is to receive although receiving feels nice and that is also pleasurable but there's something in particular in the act of giving in the act of kindness that that's almost um better than actually receiving something so it's symbiotic if it's actually a selfish act then i'm just going to start giving stuff to myself because then i'm getting double the benefits i'm the giver of the receiver but you know how you can't tickle yourself right because you're expecting it right only you can only get tickled by others so there's it's not the same just technically speaking giving to yourself is not the same because you're expecting it and it changes the way your brain responds to it just like you can't tickle yourself so i'm going to have to say that's that's your idea so now i'm going to learn to tickle myself yeah so so heather okay so we as we've been discussing with jason and brendan you know ted was micro dosing us with kindness as an audience yes so what is an audience were we feeling and how because this just thing just sort of crept up on us i've been like a stealthy little series and got us so what's going on when you witness these acts of kindness over and over and over again well i think you know just in terms of the ethos of what was happening in society at the time you know being in the midst of a pandemic having lots of sort of um narcissistic leaders um at the helm this was sort of a um you know showing us a glimpse again reminding us of the other side of humanity you know it was cathartic i think for people it also he was a role model in many ways not just for his teammates but for all of us you know handing out these words of wisdom you know these gems these coping mechanisms um uh showing us that you can succeed in helping people and having more of a cohesive environment rather than being against one another so i think all of those things were were very needed and are very needed not only when the show comes out but you know forever more um but the idea of this selflessness too of you know connecting in other people it's not about you it's about the other person and empathy and compassion and just reminding us that these are also human traits in addition to the you know more negative ones that we've been seeing a lot um recently heather i have a quote from william shakespeare and it's from the merchant of venice and let's just call it the quality of mercy and just listen to this the quality of mercy is not strained it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath it is twice blessed it blesseth him that gives and him that takes if only that guy knew how to write that would have been really good that was the first draft of ted lasso that's the merchant of venice where there's conflict and there's or do you have mercy are you gonna anyhow so so heather it looks like your profession was sort of deeply understood at least at some level by shakespeare 400 years ago yeah we're all just following his lead obviously um yeah so what do we need you for okay how it works at the normal level heather um is there is there a point where positivity becomes toxic and it can't be sustained within an individual within a group and then sometimes you just have to get angry to get something going in the right direction yeah i like that question yeah yeah i think positivity yeah who decided that happy people is the goal who why is should that be the objective here maybe if they're all angry with each other that would boil their blood and they'd go out and perform even better who are we to say that happy is good there's an element in the show where they where you know roy says we need to get jamie a little bit aggressive at one point because he needs some of that in order to perform well in season two jamie the player yeah um so yes there is too much there can be toxic sort of positivity you know when positivity is overused or as a defense mechanism which also happens to ted um where you don't actually ever deal with the negative emotions and you're just using this positivity to sort of as a shield um that that's that can be maladaptive we evolve negative emotions for a reason right we it would be maladaptive to not have any of them right pain helps keep us from you know like bumping into things and knocking our arm off right we need pain um to protect us we need anxiety or else we'd be doing really risky things without any forethought right so these these feelings are important and we need to there was this film inside out this pixar film where you know they just wanted happiness to win they were looking at all the emotions at the end realizing no you really need both in order to have happiness you need to have sadness so um anything that is gone to the extreme can tend to be maladaptive um and but but happiness in moderation i think is a good thing heather i love that i love that yeah i love that heather so can you experience uh positive and negative emotions sympathetically like watching a television show to make you more positive or negative so in order in other words can a television show elicit these feelings within yourself right causing you to be more of that or less of that yeah there are these knock-on effects so you know for example um one study had people um while they were in the scanner looking at brain activation viewing neutral scenes and then viewing aggressive um scenarios and when they were just simply watching like a film about aggression it decreased activation in their prefrontal cortex which is their sort of impulse control part of the brain and therefore you know if they then were to go outside right after watching the show they might have a tendency to be have less impulse control um but the same thing with eliciting emotions of joy as well so your brain you know we have these mirror neurons which are kind of like in some ways some things are involved in empathy um when we are having an emphasis we call them mirror mirror neurons mirror neurons yes which which really uh mimic other people's movements um and some people think they're about how you learn things it's very much involved in modeling behavior and learning and and some link it to empathy as well but in some ways you're actually enacting that experience um there's an empathy network in your brain that gets activated there's this really interesting study with olfaction where they collected stressful sweat from people about to jump out of an airplane or take a stressful exam and neutral sweat when people were working at the gym and then they gave them to other people to smell and they couldn't consciously take a difference but when they were in the scanner when they gave them the stress sweat it activated their empathy network of the brain so there are these signals coming into us whether it's olfaction or things that we're viewing that can actually activate these empathy networks and cause us to go on and be kinder our behavior is affected by all sorts of things because you know in the brain it doesn't know what's real and what's not it's just you know ones and zeros it's just information bits of information so whether you're really engaged in a happy situation or you're just watching it on tv the brain can experience it in a very similar way can i trick my brain because sometimes you get yourself up for a performance for your your event your game and then you have to bring yourself down i mean here's stories of michael jordan used to create something just so as he could that would help him energize and it was a fictitious thing he'd said someone had said something and it would raise his game what are we doing in that are we able to kind of dial up dial down with will i think yes um you know in so far as you have certain neural sort of networks that are wired up in your brain in a certain way and you have certain structures that have developed in a certain way so you have certain limitations right but you can dial yourself up to your highest end of let's say performance with certain limits even with you know they looked at people who did these heroic acts like in the moment um and they found that they often and they interviewed them after like strangers helping strangers suddenly and they find that the people who did these heroic acts actually have larger amygdala um this sort of emotional center of the brain than other people who didn't uh have do these heroic acts so they actually have structural differences in their brain and they found that when they responded they didn't think about it it was automatic so there are these automatic responses that we have so you can train yourself yes to an extent but there are other things that are just really innate and they also found these heroic people that they had um more responsive amygdala when they saw people in distress and with sociopaths for example they don't get that amygdala reaction they can see someone you know a picture of someone being murdered or babies chopped up or horrible things and they don't get that amygdala response so i think with anything you can train your brain to a certain point but if you just don't have that innate sort of structure um or neural network or wiring let's call it um it can be much more difficult is there such a thing as an amygdala hijack hi jackie and the amygdala yeah yeah so what what takes place in that scenario is it the opposite to what you've just described you mean somebody something taking over your emotional responses yeah um you know if something that's called marriage you know when people when you have a particular trigger and i think with ted lasso too you know um there are certain things that would trigger these panic attacks right and that in a way is is hijacking these amygdala it's tapping into your what we call the sympathetic nervous system and putting it in high gear whereas other people can have the same experience for them it might not do anything to them but if you have a history and certain trauma then you'll have these triggers that can just sort of um flip the switch and put you into this high like fight-or-flight response could you comment on some of the drugs that got mentioned so psilocybin was one of them i think yeah and i love this where can i get it where can i get it i love the idea of ted being stopped i got a guy i got a guy there's not a guy on the corner we know you have we holding out heather we know you're holding man uh no so i love the idea of you know how he mentioned that ted was like the personification of mushrooms and we're so we're using psychiatry now psilocybin um the ingredient in psychedelic mushrooms are being used to help treat depression and anxiety and we're trying to understand what's happening in the brain and why does it have such a profound effect and one of the things is that your ego in some ways dissolves so this boundary between self and other that we all normally have comes to disappear or and some people say your ego actually expands so that everyone is a part of it but this idea of then being one with everyone or everything and feeling their pain makes you less judgmental makes you sort of more empathetic understanding where they're coming from and therefore be better positioned to be able to help them because you're not coming at it with what's in it for me or with your own biases it's your true openness and i love that idea this metaphor with with ted being like on a permanent kind of mushroom trip without the psychedelic effect but the idea is that he's in some ways egoless in the way he you know people are insulting him all the time whatever he's just not taking it personally he understands where they're coming from and and doesn't react in ways like that are aggressive or defensive and i think that's just such a beautiful metaphor but that's one of the ways that you know from a science perspective one of the reasons why we think mushrooms are so helpful to help transform permanently transform someone's perspective and give them an insight just like the overview effect of astronauts you know when they see space earth from space they suddenly have this profound shift in their consciousness we're all in it together and it's the same thing that can happen with if you are permanently selfless and feel this connection with everyone else so what about leadership is that something you're you're born with or you develop it can you tell who's a leader by scanning their brain and what drug do you need for that there are no there are any there are some personality differences that would make someone be a better leader or a more natural leader i wouldn't say that there's one thing in the brain that you can sort of discern okay that like put them in category this would be a good leader this wouldn't but a certain constellation of personality types and also depending on what kind of leadership you're talking about you know so so you know a leader could be a kindergarten teacher you know who's helping children in this way and being a role model or it could be the ceo of you know a a financial institution and they're going to be different essential qualities that are needed to lead in those in those particular areas but the idea that there's sometimes when there's a sort of stressor a natural leader comes and rises up to meet the occasion um and usually it's somebody that has a lot of um either has had experience with trauma in the past and knows how to cope when things get really difficult and stressful um or it's somebody who's just very very grounded and has a very clear vision of what needs to be done and like where others can be sort of uncertain and there's some chaos somebody might rise up that says okay i can show you the way i have a very clear picture of what's happening but all of those things it's a it's really a mishmash of a lot of different personality traits that's hard to say you know this is the one thing that makes you a good leader so some people lead because they have a power and a force within them that people respond to but other people lead because people just want to follow them right there is no sort of aggression there there it's just wow that's an interesting i'm going to follow that person and so my sense is that the ted lasso character is is not one of these i'm at the top and you're not follow me because you must it's i'm going to say some things and you're going to realize it's really cool and it's going to work and he lets them take ownership of their own revelations and that seems to me to be a rather potent pathway so you know what's interesting about that neil there is a coaching term in football called guided discovery where you take a player and you show them something technical and you kind of get to a certain point and leave the rest for them to discover for themselves so knowing all along where they're gonna wear their heads yeah you know you you know you want them to be at this point you take them so far and then when they get there they are so better for the fact that they feel they've completed the thing themselves without you showing everything to them and saying this is what you gotta do do do do you take them so far then the rest and it empowers them to like that idea they take they take ownership of their own talent at that point yep there's two they're inside there's a scientific theory about this sort of um attaining high status which would be sort of being a leader that people look up to and want to follow and there's two different pathways to get there and one is the dominance path you know that's like the stalin and you know we can name a whole list of people um and using cohort coercion and all sorts of things to get power and other is the prestige path they call but that is just having being good at something having an internal quality like with ted he didn't rule in a strong way he had wisdom and after a while people said oh maybe this guy knows something maybe he's on to something you know rebecca's having problems with her mother she wants him to come to lunch because maybe he'll have some insights and so sometimes we we relate as we see something special in a person and say oh that's someone i can learn from from and then they start to gain status and prestige and sort of you know rise up in the hierarchy so you can either take power or you can earn it by just being really good at something that people admire but we got to bring this to a close so heather always good to have your insights and perspectives thanks for being such a friend of star talk here and gary great hearing you from the horse's mouth there you're welcome my friend you know soccer is still a little bit of a mystery to we americans and you're getting that here you're you're getting there you're yeah it's slow we're we're we're we're interested quicker than you think you're getting there quicker than you think the the women's team is stella chuck always good to have you man always a pleasure this has been star talk sports edition unpacking ted lasso and i'm neil degrasse tyson as always beating you to keep looking up [Music] you

Channel: StarTalk

Views: 115,916

Keywords: startalk, star talk, startalk radio, neil degrasse tyson, neil tyson, science, space, astrophysics, astronomy, podcast, space podcast, science podcast, astronomy podcast, niel degrasse tyson, physics, ted lasso, Jason Sudeikis

Id: M1XSvMdKHEY

Length: 59min 11sec (3551 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021