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In this episode, I’m diving deep into the world of biomedical engineering with Dr. Jeff Karp, a renowned professor of medicine at Harvard and an innovator in regenerative medicine. Dr. Karp shares his journey from overcoming ADHD to developing groundbreaking medical technologies inspired by nature. This episode provides insights into how we can harness the principles of nature to solve some of the most complex problems in medicine and beyond.

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Resources Mentioned:

• @mrjeffkarp
• Jeff Karp, PhD
• @gabbyreece
• GabrielleReese.com

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Show Sponsors:

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Time Stamps:

[00:00:00 – 00:06:00] Introduction to Dr. Jeff Karp
[00:06:01 – 00:15:00] Innovative Medical Technologies Inspired by Nature
[00:15:01 – 00:20:00] The Concept of Radical Simplicity
[00:20:01 – 00:30:00] Resilience and Adaptability in Research
[00:30:01 – 00:40:00] Applying Scientific Principles to Daily Life
[00:40:01 – End] Connecting with Nature and Enhancing Sensory Awareness

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Show Transcript:

[00:02:02] Jeff Karp: Thank you. Yeah, no, thanks for setting this up like so quickly and inviting me into your home and serving me lunch gluten freestyle. I mean, wow, it’s it’s 

[00:02:12] Gabby: selfishly motivated. I need you to focus and I have to say getting ready for this.

There’s nothing like you’re getting ready to do an interview with somebody who’s one of their superpowers is that they have ADHD and they talk about how they, you know, had challenges in school. And, um, they don’t want to sit in something too long. Their mind wanders. And I’m like, awesome. Let’s do a 75 minute interview that.

So that’s my favorite is how do we dip in and out and, you know, knocked out, not go down, uh, you know, sort of big holes on things, but let’s start, I want to start with you first. So I, I, I mentioned earlier, you know, you’ve, you’ve been at Harvard, MIT. So it’s safe to say that you figured out. I think based on a conversation maybe with a teacher.

What did you was it? What did you think about something? How did you think 

[00:03:02] Jeff Karp: about that? Yeah in between the second and third grade a tutor asked me that question Which I’d never been asked before and it changed my life 

[00:03:10] Gabby: yeah, and so I think there’s a lot of people who struggle struggle either with ADD or ADHD and and so you’ve written this book lit and I want to get into it life ignition tools But before that, I want to focus on something, uh, I mean, speaking to somebody who knows you very well and is close to you, because I always, I always think what’s forward facing about a lot of people is not their magic or what the obvious things that are produced.

It’s actually from this quiet magic corner that all of these great things happen, like you have, uh, invent sort of invented many things. Maybe you could just share, um, some of the things from your lab and from working with others that you’ve worked on. Some of the things that you’ve invented, 

[00:03:57] Jeff Karp: I’d be happy to, um, one of the things we invented is a surgical glue, um, that we demonstrated could seal holes inside a beating heart and, um, that glue we got regulatory approval for in Europe, uh, for vascular reconstruction.

Uh, and it’s in two clinical trials now, one for nerve reconstruction and one for hernia repair and, um, in the, in the journey of, of, of that project, we ran into a lot of walls because getting a glue to work inside of beating hearts, it’s like probably the hardest environment in the human body where a glue would need to work.

Because it’s moving. Because it’s moving, because it’s expanding and contracting, because you have the rush of blood, you know, 60 times a minute, and, um, and everything is covered in blood. The tissue is covered in blood. So we had to find a way to attach, to get the glue to attach strongly to the tissue and not just to the blood, like the cells that were, you know, on the, sitting there on the tissue. Um, so we turned to nature for inspiration. 

[00:05:03] Gabby: What inspired you in nature? Was something to do with plants opening and closing, or I’m just curious. 

[00:05:09] Jeff Karp: We looked at a lot of, well, what happened first was, so usually for, um, for us to take a bio inspired approach, what happens is we’re advancing on a project, and then we hit a wall, and we try all sorts of different things, and nothing works.

And by that point, we start to better understand the problem. We start to sort of gain some insights. Um, the insights might be just that we’re thinking about this completely the wrong way and we don’t know how to think about it. Um, which is really a key insight. Um, so what we do is then we say, okay, what creatures.

exist in nature that might teach us something and So if you look at like let’s say sandcastle worms that sit on rocks and the waves are constantly hitting them And they’re not moving. How does that work? Because that’s a very wet dynamic environment And there’s other creatures like that too Like sometimes you’ll see like a snail sitting on a leaf and it’s raining and it’s not falling off.

So how is it? And so we started looking at the secretions and the mechanisms that are used in nature to affix creatures to surfaces under wet, kind of moving environments, dynamic environments. And, uh, we learned a few things and then brought that back to the lab and it led us to try things we hadn’t tried before.

Um, and lo and behold, it, it enabled us to make progress where. You know, many on the team thought we couldn’t make more progress. 

[00:06:40] Gabby: How do you abandon? Cause I feel like this is true of beliefs as a person where, I mean, you could work on something for maybe years and be like, Oh, we’ve been looking at it all wrong.

Has this process made you more nimble at sort of going, I’m going to actually scrap everything. And be willing to be open to look at it completely differently. Cause I think that’s almost one of the most difficult things to do as a person. 

[00:07:07] Jeff Karp: Yeah. You know, I, I would say science is very difficult, um, you know, in just in general, like literally like nine out of 10 experiments.

Um, and I think the trick that I’ve learned when you kind of submerge yourself in that environment, you know, from the outside, you’d be like, Oh my God, how could I do that? And you know, that’s not for me, but, but to me, it’s, it’s the journey of gaining insights and understanding and the little incremental learnings that you get along the way that really is the fuel to keep going.

And so the nice thing about. Generally, academic research is that there’s no pressures other than, you know, you need to bring in grants to fund the research. And that’s challenging too, but there’s, you know, over time you can get better at writing grants by listening to the feedback that you get from the rejections.

And um, and there’s no, you don’t know whether something’s going to take a year or 10 years, but what you know is that. Um, by surrounding yourself with people, uh, from different disciplines and who think differently. And when you hit a challenge, you bring somebody new in who thinks about the problem a little bit differently.

You can constantly, um, be excited about what you’re doing, even when you’re not certain you’re going to get to a final goal because the focus is on that incremental learning and gaining insights. And I think that humans are just powered to thrive on that. 

[00:08:40] Gabby: Yeah, the mini The many little wins and possibilities and, and actually I think that’s a better way when everyone goes, Oh, you know, the journey, it’s not the, you know, destination, it’s the journey.

It’s a version of that, but with these sort of incredible learning and expanding opportunities on these paths. So, so we have heart blue 

[00:08:58] Jeff Karp: heart. Okay. Yeah. So we got one. Okay. There’s a hearing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We, um, so we developed in the lab, we discovered a couple molecules in combination that could activate the progenitor cells in the inner ear.

to divide and form new hair cells. Now, the hair cells are really important because you’re only born with about 000 in each ear. And it’s, this is in the inner ear. So it’s actually, you have to go past two membranes to get there. There’s the tympanic membrane that people know, the, um, the eardrum, but then there’s another membrane, the round window membrane, which is the entrance to the cochlea, which is the shell shaped structure in the ear, um, that contains these precious hair cells.

And. It’s not like hair on our heads. It’s actually like these little, um, cilia and they, when the sound hits them, they move. And then the cell converts that into an electrical signal that goes to a neuron and then to the brain. And so over time, just by the aging process, These cells start to die and so you can lose your hearing just by getting old which is called presbycusis But you can also lose it from certain drugs so there’s drugs like Cisplatin in a drug for treating tumors can kill hair cells certain types of antibiotics can kill hair cells Um, and then sudden noises, um, can, can kill the hair cells as well.

And um, the amazing thing is if we look at nature, um, birds and amphibians like frogs and toads can constantly regenerate their hearing throughout life, but mammals like humans can’t. Um, but what we know is when we kind of looked at this problem, we realized that the progenitor cells, the cells that can make the hair cells are still there.

Um, all the way, like, you know, we, we know this from cadaver kind of, you know, experiments. We know that they persist throughout life. So even if you lose your hearing, you still have these progenitor cells, kind of like a stem cell. 

[00:11:01] Gabby: Where’s the breakdown in the translation or where does the, where does that, because if the hair is there.

[00:11:08] Jeff Karp: are we breaking down? So what, what, yeah, so that’s a great question. So where the breakdown happens is that it’s almost like you can think of the progenitor cells as like the stem cell that can make more hair cells, these crucial special cells, but the hair cells die and they go away. So now you can’t sense or amplify the signals.

And so we discovered a couple of molecules that could cause this. stem cell or progenitor cell to divide. It never divides after birth. We got it to divide and form new hair cells. And so we took that into five clinical trials and a number of patients who had stable hearing loss for months and months, their hearing got better.

The results of that were not significant enough for us to bring it to patients as a new therapy. So we brought it back into the laboratory and now we’re using this new, um, AI technology that we have access to, to identify another target that we can then identify a molecule we can add to the cocktail that we’re developing and go back into trials.

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It feels like you really have a relationship with a going back to nature or biomimicry as a way. In your, in your lab, it’s in, I mean, I love the idea of biomimicry because we sort of really realized like in so many ways nature has, it really figured so many things figured out, even the fact that left alone, there’s no waste, right.

But it’s sort of this perfect system. Have you always had that thought or consideration even in your studies and everything of nature? 

[00:16:39] Jeff Karp: Well, when I was, um, in the, uh, third grade, we moved out to the country, um, and I’m talking like really out to the country, so. In 

[00:16:49] Gabby: Canada? 

[00:16:49] Jeff Karp: In Canada, yeah. They got a lot 

[00:16:50] Gabby: of country in Canada, right?

[00:16:53] Jeff Karp: Non developed lands, a lot of beautiful spots there. And, um, and so, You know, I wake up in the middle of the night, there’d be a pack of wolves on the front lawn. My driveway, we call the laneway because it was a thousand feet long, it went over a creek that had crayfish and snapping turtles and leeches and we had foxes and owls and all kinds of things.

And, um, I would get off the bus in the third grade and Kind of, you know, I had undiagnosed ADHD and learning differences. And so I, and I would, you know, I spent a lot of my life just trying to fit in to try and figure out like, what are the algorithms that people are living that allows people to connect and to learn and to, to function in school.

And so I really had to work hard at trying to figure it all out. So I’d get off the bus and I’d be exhausted, maybe demoralized, On certain days and as I walked along the laneway, I would look at the trees, you know There were no cell phones. There was no no, you know, no real kind of portable technologies that I would carry around so I would look at the you know the texture of the bark on the trees and the animals and it just Captivated me and it was almost like I felt like nature was hugging me as I was walking home You And the thought often that you know, I’d get off the bus and kind of be ruminating on what happened during the day.

And there was like, I felt this shift occur as I took more and more steps along, you know, on my journey through this, literally the driveway is carved through a forest. Um, and, uh, and I think to your, to your point, um, the process of evolution is an experimental process. It’s constantly, you know, it’s iterative, there’s trial and error, there’s, um, learnings and insights, there’s adaptations.

And so every single creature that’s alive today is here because it is alive. Overcome insurmountable challenges along the way and there’s so much to learn from every single creature every plant that exists Today, there’s so many solutions, you know around us In my lab, we look at those as ideas for solving problems.

And I think one of the considerations kind of of where we are in this current state of Being and our culture is a lot of creatures are becoming extinct, which we are Are Causing, but we can collectively, you know, kind of group together and prevent the destruction of these creatures, which we can learn from and be more connected to, um, because I think that, you know, when we start to study Creatures and the various adaptations that they have, um, evolved over time.

It just, it just fires up our curiosity and we, we have more appreciation for nature and gratitude for everything. 

[00:19:55] Gabby: So you also brought your, the spray, uh, proofy. Is that right? Proofy spray. Proofy, sorry. Yeah, yeah. Um, I’m just going to kind of dibble dabble on all of the things that you’ve been doing, cause there’s a lot, um, so pro fee is sort of, is it this idea of in lieu of a mask or cause let’s face it.

I’m, I’m, you know, we’re many years into this now. The masks don’t work. I mean, yes, if I coughed into your mouth and I was sick, that would be good if I had a mask on or you had a mask on, but short of that, you know, or doctors really after 15 minutes and all the things. So we’re not, we’re not debating masks.

This was inspired. Was this inspired by maybe people? Wearing masks or needing masks or just kind of where we’re at. 

[00:20:39] Jeff Karp: Well, what happened was, um, so when COVID hit and everything shut down, the lab shut down. Um, we asked this question, you know, how can we help in every single project? And, um, we were developing a nasal spray, um, to treat multiple sclerosis.

And, um, The nasal lining, there’s, there’s a lot of, um, uh, there’s a lot of immune cells in the nasal lining so we can target them if we have a nasal spray. Um, and then also, uh, the nasal lining is such that if we deliver drugs, uh, via a nasal spray, we can get drugs into the bloodstream very quickly, actually much faster than taking a pill.

So there’s a lot of reasons why you’d want to try to develop a nasal spray. So we had made a lot of progress on that, um, but then COVID hit. And we asked, how can we help? And, um, the data was coming in, um, and, you know, some previous reports as well as, um, some current, uh, experiments are being, were being performed that COVID spreads in droplets and these droplets can stay in the room, um, for long periods of time after someone leaves the room, you know, all different sizes.

And, um, and that the nasal lining is, was a major entry point for COVID. Uh, there’s these cells that produce mucin or mucus called goblet cells that they have receptors for COVID to anchor and take hold. And so actually for a lot of airborne pathogens, the nasal lining is a major site of entry. There was also a report, a really interesting report, that came out that showed that when COVID anchors into the nasal lining and it starts dividing, the virus, you know, infects the cells in the lining, but then those cells start budding off these little vesicles that then you can inhale and it can go into your lungs.

And that may be, One of the reasons why often when you have a nasal cold, it spreads to your lungs because, you know, viruses have all kinds of nifty ways of hijacking our biology. And so we started to think, okay, what if we could develop a nasal spray that could form a barrier to prevent the, um, The virus from entering from contacting the nasal lining.

What if that same coding could efficiently capture the droplets to prevent them from going, you know, kind of further into our system? And what if we could also have agents within that? Um, that spray that would neutralize pathogens, not just COVID, but we’re talking like RSV and the flu and other things as well.

And, um, and then we, uh, I’ve learned some pretty hard lessons along the way in taking like, you know, like, let’s say, um, advancing scientific discoveries, but trying to turn them into products that can help people realizing how important simplicity is. And, um, you mean 

[00:23:37] Gabby: as far as how to administer it? 

[00:23:41] Jeff Karp: across the board, ingredients, everything, everything.

Yeah. So it’s sort of like, um, I, I had this one experience where, um, and I, this is very ADHD. So, I mean, I have ADHD. You’re doing great. I’m all over the place. So, um, when I started my lab, one of the first projects that I worked on was taking stem cells out of the body. Manipulating them outside and then having a, uh, there was this project where we would infuse them intravenously and being able to target them in the bloodstream to different tissues.

And we had data showing that we could do this, that we could literally target cells after you systemically administer them. So you could have vision. If you had cells that could create bone, you could target osteoporosis with, uh, you know, just a simple intravenous infusion, target the cells to the heart to treat myocardial infarction and prevent, you know, heart failure from happening or to the brain.

And I went to, I was, I was certain this was going to be a company and we were going to help so many people. It was the first major project in my lab, you know, night before I was meeting with this big investor. I couldn’t sleep. And then the next day I go in, I present, I’m kind of nervous, but I’m like, I feel like I got it in the bag.

And the investor leans over and says, um, Jeff, this, this is really great, but we’re going to pass. And the reason was, um, the technology we had developed was too complicated. And it was just like a product of the algorithm that we, Submerse ourselves in an academia of, um, not really paying attention to the complexity of things.

In fact, there’s almost like this unwritten rule that the more complicated something is and if you achieve it, the higher the impact, you know, the greater, the better the journal you get into, the more excited people are. And so, um, I went, I think I was, I’m sort of bypassing the frustration of that moment because this was the first.

[00:25:33] Gabby: What do you do? Cause I’m sure you’re working on this. tirelessly for long periods of time, sacrificing elements of your life. Um, you know, I imagine even there’s been times where you’re probably extended in all ways, even, you know, financially, all the ways that we get extended when he’s like, Hey, this is great. And we’re going to pass.

What’s that night look like that night of sleep? What does that dinner conversation look like with your wife? Like, what, where do you go as the person? Because the thing is, as somebody who is not built like this. Me, I’m not, you know, I’m there’s something kind of so rudimentary in a way about me. Um, that, uh, I think people think that you’re, you wouldn’t be necessarily associated with all the feelings and the disappointments and the worry.

It’s like, oh, well, they’re so smart. They’ll just think their way out of it. So where do you go in the heart part of you? When that kind of disappointment shows up. 

[00:26:34] Jeff Karp: I think I think it becomes a moment that where the emotions just can’t be controlled and That ends up being really challenging because you know I think when let’s say if I haven’t suffered haven’t just suffered a major defeat or challenge There’s so many things that I feel like I can control Um, you know, in my day and, and, and there, or, or if I can’t, there’s things I can do to have better control, you know, my attention, like the way I eat, the way I sleep, like there’s so many things that can kind of change up, but when we suffer a setback or failure, a challenge is something like what, what I mentioned with this investor.

It just, it’s, it’s, it’s just devastating because that was the first major project of my lab. I’d put like everything into it and, um, and my, you know, I, I had trained in very entrepreneurial labs and where people were spinning things out all the time. And. I just felt like this was this was a win and and it wasn’t and so that, you know, kind of took me to this place.

But what I realized this kind of negative place. But what I’ve realized from encountering so many that so many times is that. After a good night’s sleep or two that if there’s almost like this kind of like after the rain moment where You can then look at the end your mind is open to Examine things that you are not able to examine when you’re at this pendulum swing of emotions And and start looking at things kind of differently and I started to realize I was like, wait a moment Here I am at the beginning of my career And Um, and what if I just simplified everything and that’s where this, this concept of radical simplicity was born and that term to me was important because, um, it is short, easy to remember, easy to bring to every project in the lab.

And that’s what, What we did is that we made it like guardrails for everything we did from then onward. And to me, it’s like those moments of failure. Like I can tell you like when I went up on the TEDMED stage at the Kennedy Center in D. C. with five high def cameras filming me and I stopped in the middle for like 20 seconds.

Not saying a word, just standing there on the stage, smiling, because they told us to smile if you stop. Um, you know, there’s so many things like that that have happened, or like the first hundred grants I wrote for my lab, 90 something were rejected, to the point where I would come home, my wife would say, she said this once, she said, Are you sure this is the right career for you?

Um, which I kind of feel maybe in some ways motivated me a little bit more, and like I think, you know, um, but what I realized, With each one of those grant rejections is even though it felt like I was being punched in the face and I had that emotional pendulum swing that I couldn’t control. I really wanted to bring that pendulum over, but there was no way it was going to happen unless I just got a good night’s sleep or two.

And when that pendulum started to come back, I realized that was a moment I could actually look at what the reviewers had said about my grant without sort of thinking nasty things about them in my mind, right? Like how crazy they were. They don’t 

[00:29:52] Gabby: even know they’re not even as smart as you guys. No, I mean, they’re money guys. What do they know? 

[00:29:57] Jeff Karp: Yeah, the, the reviewers, um, yeah, it’s, it’s kind of a, yeah, it’s an interesting conversation.

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[00:32:19] Jeff Karp: have, 

[00:32:21] Gabby: yeah. So it’s, you have done a lot. And so I was thinking about you and there are some of the immediate things that showed up for me. Um, before we get into lit was, yeah, but what is really the thing that we’re not seeing that is kind of the unique trait.

And so I decided I was going to call a friend of yours because you know, I have this sometimes with layered people think the most interesting thing about layered it’s sort of some of this obvious stuff. Um, it’s actually not the case for me. And so I called them and what Zem said, and this is how we met.

Is she’s like he’s a genuine solutionist for real and that there’s actually so few right? She talked about uh, dean, uh, what’s dean’s name? Uh came in. Yeah who invented, uh You know, what’s funny is I know him through almost like dirt biking and BMX. Do you know he had a love for that? I mean, he created the segue.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But there’s a lot of old school guys that actually knew him. I want to say Pennsylvania. I could be really wrong, but there was sort of like this movement that started in dirt BMX biking. And anyway, there was a sort of a connection there, but that she thinks that your ADHD along obviously with your brilliance and is it allows you to almost be around the corner that you see solutions to things and she said that it’s it’s so unique and um there’s a lot of people who maybe they act like they’re solving problems or they’re inventing things or they’re inventive but that people don’t realize um that you you really are doing that and and so I think there’s a lot of people living with things where they don’t fit into the way the regular world works.

That the majority of us are, are doing. And then there’s people like you who are like, Oh, well, why I should try to fit in. I actually think the better conversation is, which led me to my next thought about you, which is we as a world with the combination of technology, with the increase of Um, for, for whatever the myriad of reasons are there, there’s more people on a, a different spectrum, right?

Um, that you have this interesting combination. Yes. You’re here to solve problems and invent things and help society, but also you have this interesting merge of seeming disconnected in a certain way, like very intellectual and intellectualizing things and compartmentalizing. Yeah. But yet completely aware that you need to be connected to nature and your biology.

Cause I feel like you either have people like me who are like, Hey, let’s not ignore our biology or people who are just, you know, technocrats and talking about data and they’re in their boxes all day long. And you have this interesting thing besides inventing and creating solutions as being this very unusual person who kind of connects to both.

So I, I wondered if, Lit was also, um, and I know lit was supposed to be one kind of book, right? And then maybe your life sort of pointed out to you that it, it should be something else. 

[00:35:45] Jeff Karp: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:35:45] Gabby: So was this book your, 

[00:35:49] Jeff Karp: one of your ways of trying to do that? Well, actually, before answering that, I want to just reflect for a moment on what you said before.

Um, because I feel like What I do, everybody can do. I think that, and, and the reason why I, I, I feel that way really strongly, um, is that, um, I think all that I’m really doing, uh, and this is, I’m just sort of like stream of thought here, right? I think all I’m really doing is I am able, I’m, I’m, I’m just. I’m looking at the algorithms.

And when I mean algorithms, you could call them habits. You could call them patterns. I’m sort of deconstructing the patterns. And so I, and so when I see like, let’s say the standard approach in academia, for example, is, you know, You’re working on something, you go to a conference, you learn something, you come back, and you just add it to what you’re doing.

And then I look at that and I say, okay, but what’s the goal? If the goal is to help a patient, is that really gonna help? And so I see that there’s a tendency to be incremental. You read something, you see something, and you just sort of add it to what you’re doing, because no one’s ever added these two things together.

But then I’m sort of like, Looking at it and saying, okay, well, what’s the ultimate goal? We’re trying to help a patient. We’re trying to define a problem So i’m just focused on the problem definition And continually chipping away at that problem Definition and trying to make sure that that the project is angling towards that definition as we iterate it but what I I and that’s why I think everybody can do what i’m doing i i’m just I I think um I think that You When I was younger and when I was struggling with this undiagnosed ADHD and learning differences and eventually got diagnosed because my mom’s a warrior and went up against the school system and the teachers, nobody wanted to do anything.

And she literally went to the board of education herself with this massive file on everything that anyone had ever said or written about me, um, and got me identified, but I needed to develop. Tools for survival because I felt like I was almost like kind of looking back. I was like, like, if you think of the computer analogy, I had the hardware, but I didn’t have the software and I needed to through experiential, you know, interactions, like my experiences, I had to learn and try out.

I looked at how other people behaved and then I behaved that way and would see how that felt and where that. And then I would look at someone else and I would try that on anytime someone had an opinion. I would take that opinion on as my own opinion. I’d bring it up in a conversation, see what the reactions were, and then I would change the opinion based on the reactions to try to figure out because I was trying to fit in.

I was trying to assimilate. I was trying to survive. And so my whole life has been about almost like looking at everything is algorithms and sort of, um, never, never sticking with one for too long, always disrupting them, always trying new ones on. And so that’s why I feel. People can I think anybody can do it.

It’s just a path like it’s just it’s a process It’s not necessarily wake up tomorrow and say I’m gonna be able to do it But you can you can get on the path of doing you can start to observe the patterns sort of almost like kind of meta You know, like where you start to watch other people’s behaviors like one example So I’ll give you example on questions, I want to get back to your question.

No, no, I’m good. Okay, okay, so Um You can’t shake me, Josh. Okay, I’m not trying, I’m not trying. But I, uh, so when I, when I got to grad school, um, I thought I was really good at asking questions because I had learned when I, um, was between the second and third grade and the teacher, or the tutor asked me, how did you think about that, and that, question, all of a sudden there’s, I had this new awareness of thinking about thinking and that, that allowed me to bring this new awareness everywhere.

And that’s where I started to look at patterns in my own thinking and other people. I started to realize anytime I asked a question, um, I could hyper focus for a few moments afterwards on whatever was said, right? I feel everybody can do that by the way. Like when you ask a question, It’s like there, there’s something special about it just for a really short amount of time afterwards.

Like you’re, cause you’re like, you know, you’re connected. It’s like almost like it’s a way to connect with somebody in a really special way. And, and so I realized then what was said in that brief moment after the question that I asked That that would imprint in my mind. I could recall it later. I could connect it to other things that I knew.

And so I realized one of my survival skills was to ask questions when I got to University of Toronto and, um, I went to these invited lectures. Everybody. That’s what you do is academics. Go to invited lectures and, you know, kind of. I’m not really paying attention. Then the question answer period occurs, and it was like people were asking the most amazing questions, but they weren’t coming to me.

And I started to think like I thought I was really good at asking questions and here I was about to learn like a whole new level of question asking and what I was trying to figure out. So I started to shame myself like that’s like sort of like it, you know, these things trigger me to sort of start.

[00:41:23] Gabby: why didn’t I think of that or 

[00:41:25] Jeff Karp: think of that question? Why is that question not coming to me? How come it’s coming to them and not me? Like these are amazing questions and I’m not thinking of any of them, not one. And so, um, what I did was I started to, um, Um, I started to think about pattern recognition because I had been doing a lot of pattern recognition and the next seminar I went to, everybody was focused on what the speaker was saying, but I was focused on something completely different.

I was focused on the questions people were asking at the end of the seminar and I literally wrote them all down for weeks for like two or three months. So is that how you 

[00:41:59] Gabby: would put it together? Is through the questions? 

[00:42:02] Jeff Karp: So yeah, well, what happened was, is that as I was writing the questions down, you know, I got, let’s say, two or three months later, I started to look them over, and I realized there were patterns to the questions.

Each question that was asked could fit under like four or five different categories. And like, was the experiment working? There were a whole bunch of questions like that. Were the results important? There were a lot of like if someone was developing a diagnostic for blood and they did all their experiments in saltwater saline and they showed amazing results that it may not work in blood.

So, you know, but if people get excited, but then, you know, someone put up their hand and say, what about. Blood, you know, oh, no, I didn’t test it there yet. And then all of a sudden it’s not as exciting So there were all these questions and so the next seminar I went to I was like hyper focused I was really excited had my detective hat on The questions other people were asking were now coming to me because I saw the rationale behind the questions I started so so this was literally like My window into how questions are a skill that I can develop and get better, regardless of where you’re at anybody you can, you can hone your ability to ask high value questions and get better and better and better at it, just like anything.

And, um, and so I brought that to social settings because I, you know, there’s always in a social setting, someone who’s like a schmoozer or someone who’s really good at connecting with other people. So I start listening in. What are the questions they’re asking and how are they asking them? And then I can experiment with that and I can get better at connecting with people through so that that’s kind of what I’m getting at is that like, I feel like anybody can get better at asking questions, which when you when you ask high value questions, that’s how you do the most impactful work in everything.

And then when you, you know, connecting with people as well, it’s about the questions. And I find personally through experimenting that. It’s what I’ve observed and with myself as well, is that when I ask questions about things I’m genuinely curious about, then that leads to the deepest connections with the people that I’m interacting with, you know?

[00:44:12] Gabby: But you said, um, so on the academic, uh, that makes perfect sense. Um, on the human, you’ve been in a very long relationship with your wife, Jessica, you have two teenagers.

So there’s ways that, You know how like there are people very good at this, like they can know how to make other people feel good, but they’re sort of in there themselves. So it’s you connecting with them. And in what scenarios is someone connecting with you? Are they reaching you? Are they touching you?

Because it feels like, um, you know, for me personally, it’s like I sort of have these feelings and my opinions. And, and of course it’s, it’s all a made up, you know, matrix of input that I’ve had and, you know, all these things that why do I think that or believe that, but at what point, um, and maybe it’s your daughter, I don’t know, or your wife where they’re asking you a question and it’s only about you.

It’s not about your studying of algorithms or how people are working. But it’s just about the you that’s here. How, how did you develop that? Because it feels like you for what you’ve kind of that you, when you’re young, you go, Hey, maybe that’s not working. So I’m going to figure out how to make it work.

Cause I know a lot of people experience this. So then they figure out ways to be in the world to make it work. But then at what point do we have the way to come right back? To our, our authentic self. How do you find that within all of your assessing and reading of algorithms and going, well, that works.

[00:45:59] Jeff Karp: um, wow, what a question. Um, I, uh, I, I think what, what really just comes to mind is that I, I’m in touch with the cues that I get from my body and my mind and my interaction with others. And I’m also in touch with when I’m not getting those cues. So, cause I don’t always get the cues because I’m so like focused on my work or, you know, it’s so busy or there’s something happening.

I’m stressed or have anxiety or whatever, certain situations. And, um, but then usually what happens if I’m not accessing the cues in a particular moment, they’ll hit me at some point. Like when my head hits the It’s the pillow or, you know, certain times in the day when I’m, let’s say taking the dogs for a walk.

Um, there’s times that, um, and, and I think that we’re almost like in this, we have this culture where we’re taking our phones into the bathroom with us and when we’re on walks and, um, and, and, and I think that, um, That those I’ve discovered for me personally that those are the moments when I usually receive cues when I usually get Insights on things when I if my mind is like ruminating on a problem and it just doesn’t like it’s like the record skipping at One point like that’s when it occurs like in those moments.

And so if I’m on my phone then I don’t get those cues. And so I, and so I, um, uh, so there’ll also be situations where I’ll say something and I’m always reading reactions. In fact, sometimes my pendulum swings so far, like I’m giving a lecture and I’m like, Looking for cues as I’m going and if I’m not getting the cues from the audience I get very insecure that I’m not connecting and I start thinking about what can I do to connect more?

So sometimes I over sort of interpret and over read things in certain situations, which can be that’s hard Challenging. Yeah. Well, 

[00:48:09] Gabby: so so that’s this is all makes a lot of sense for the work you do and for you know I feel like we all are here and have a contribution and purpose and it makes Perfect sense for all of this amazing work you’re doing and in your lab.

But let’s say you’re in an interpersonal moment and your wife’s like, Hey, or your daughter is like, are you listening? Or I’m making it up. Or you don’t understand. Or you’re no, you know, like what are the myriad of things that a teenage girl says? Yeah. Where do you find, so it’s instantaneous, right? And so, okay, you’re annoying.You’re not listening. You don’t hear me. Um, whatever. Where do you go right then? 

[00:48:54] Jeff Karp: So one example, a few months ago I was doing work and, um, my wife Jessica was in the car with my son, Josh, who’s 18 and they were driving somewhere and I was like, Oh yeah, I want to come. And I was doing work right before and I jumped in the back seat and I had my laptop open.

And I’m like kind of working in the backseat as they’re, as my wife’s driving and there was conversation going on and I was kind of participating in the conversation a little bit. Um, but I said something that, I forget what I said. You had a dad moment. I had, I said something and. Um, to my wife in the moment and I think it was more like the, not what I said, but like the tone of voice, the kind of, because I was working and my son Josh turned around and just let me have it, you know, like just was just, you know, he kind of stopped me in my tracks and, and said, you know, stop that right now.

You know, there was something like that. And. Um, that, um, immediately caused an emotional pendulum swing for me, right? Just instantaneous and, um, and it brought me to the place of realizing that, um, my actions weren’t aligning with my values, my true intentions. And so I, I. Sort of like it’s almost like I felt my body get hotter. 

[00:50:32] Gabby: does it does this are you still observing it on some level even though you’re having these You know reaction. Are you still more observed? I’m fascinated because i’m pretty analytical. This is like a whole other level makes me feel like do you Or does it punch you straight in 

[00:50:48] Jeff Karp: your heart?

It punches me straight in the heart. And I, I feel myself get defensive in the moment, wanting to trigger to, to like, have like the ego, you know, kind of protect yourself, right? Like, and say something back immediately. Um, I used to do that a lot. Now I Fight it so that I it doesn’t happen. It’s definitely a fight, you know, like it’s not it doesn’t it doesn’t it’s not just like easy It’s not easy and I Reflect on it and when that happens like I’m reflecting on it for the rest of the day and maybe the next several days and I’m in and and also I Yeah, I mean, I just, I’m trying to figure out what can I change?

What can I do? How did that happen? Maybe this is a cue that I’ve taken on too much. Maybe this is a cue that, um, I am too, this is too about me, right? Because I think that, um, we had, uh, so in, um, in uh, September. of, um, last year, um, a friend of mine, Josh Flash, came and stayed with me, uh, with the family for 10 days.

And the mission was to observe me and all of my patterns and to give me suggestions of how I could do better. Um. 

[00:52:19] Gabby: Whose idea was this? 

[00:52:20] Jeff Karp: So josh, you must really 

[00:52:22] Gabby: trust 

[00:52:22] Jeff Karp: josh. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He’s amazing Um, so, uh, we have a mutual friend michael gale and he had done the same thing with michael um, which had led to and and the three of us like, um, Chat about all kinds of different things.

And so 

[00:52:36] Gabby: is he kind of a fly on the wall or does he get involved or how? Is he there? 

[00:52:40] Jeff Karp: Yeah, like he 

[00:52:41] Gabby: has breakfast at the table with everybody or dinner or whatever with the family or how’s he doing it? 

[00:52:45] Jeff Karp: He, um, well, he, he prepares meals too, right? Yeah. Yeah. He’s really, yeah, he, he, he was a chef and, and so, but he, um, like he would say things to me like, uh, Everywhere you walk, I hear you stomping.

I didn’t, I didn’t know about that. And he says, when he, when he said that I started, and then he said, every time you walk, you accelerate, you walk really fast. Um, and he would notice the multitasking that I would do. And he brought to my life, you know, this one thing at a time. Um, and not that I do that for everything, but it’s in my mind now, this one thing at a time.

Um, and he would like, I’d get to my son. My son was quarterback of the football team and I’d get to the football game with him and, um, I’d go to, Get out of the car. And he’s like, get back in. We need to do breath work. We need to have a transition. You were just working. We need to transition here before you go to the game.

And I’m like, but I hear the announcer. They’re about to start. I can’t miss it. He’s like, no, shut the door. 

[00:53:52] Gabby: Don’t bring that 

[00:53:53] Jeff Karp: energy. Don’t bring that energy. Yeah. And so that really was transformative for me, um, to try to it. To understand that I need transitions and kind of going back to the car moment, I needed a transition there and, and I was too back to back, like, you know, too focused on, Oh, I can just multitask and, and, and those two worlds just collide.

[00:54:16] Gabby: Yeah. 

[00:54:17] Jeff Karp: I, 

[00:54:18] Gabby: uh, so the other thing that jumped out at me and just to kind of put a small circle in, does that make sense about what I was saying about, we are moving into a world where At some level, if we don’t have a general understanding of who we are, just this kind of animals, our natural impulses that are built there to keep us to survive, right?

Two things survive and procreate. And that doesn’t mean you have to procreate. It means it’s pretty much a biological drive, but we do have a new world. How long it goes. I have no idea. Do you? Can you relate to that feeling of being of somebody who is could be a beautiful thread between the two? Because listen, I just like, for example, use Laird, who’s a very kind of, you know, integrated into nature person.

We do have to teach him a little bit about technology so he can sort of flow through the world. Doesn’t mean he’s got to be perfect in AI and know how to do all these things he doesn’t have. social media apps on his phone. He does use technology to communicate, to look at weather maps and other things as a tool.

Um, because it’s like, Hey, this is part of the world. Conversely, we can’t go so deep into that world and not really defer back to our biology. So when I, I, I feel that, uh, and in, and it feels like in the book too, that you’re sort of saying as deep as you could have the capacity. I mean, you say things like reading algorithms as patterns, That you’re also saying, Hey, I go and I take a box.

So I felt that that was actually beyond your inventions and your solutions. Another important thing that you represent, whether you know it or not, because there’s a lot more people who are sort of probably going like, I’m really good inside this place and I feel anxious and I feel alone and I feel isolated and I don’t feel good.

And so I thought that that was important. But the other thing that really jumped out for me is Jessica. I, I, I do see certain people, your wife, um, you know, you’re in a 20, 20 something year. Right. So I always feel like I’m so fascinated by what it is Jessica does for you because she probably goes, Oh, I get you.

I get, I get your mission because your mission is special and important and should be protected. It should be. Because there’s not many of you who can do it. Your intention you’re kind hearted you want to help people you want to help patients you move your lab to be near patients and closer in the action, right But that how what are the things she does that?

You guys can be in this dynamic because it she must it’s it must be pretty extraordinary 

[00:57:18] Jeff Karp: Yeah, yeah. No, I don’t think I’m an easy person to live with. 

[00:57:21] Gabby: Well, none of us are, just so we’re clear. Just so we’re clear and all of our weirdness, all of us. 

[00:57:26] Jeff Karp: Yeah. 

[00:57:27] Gabby: And cohabitation, even if you’re the coolest, look at Justin sitting over here, so easy.

It’s, it’s just, it’s a dance. 

[00:57:35] Jeff Karp: Yeah. 

[00:57:35] Gabby: So. 

[00:57:36] Jeff Karp: Yeah. Um, well, I’ll say, uh, one thing, um, I think is relevant. My, um, so, you. Jessica attended this group, uh, for partners of people who have ADHD and that was transformational for her because I think the group was discussing all the things their ADHD partners do and say and how they react in certain situations and the energy.

pendulum and the mood pendulum and, um, and, uh, I think that she realized in that experience that it wasn’t, it wasn’t me trying to do it to her, that this was not my intention, but yet this was a pattern, you know, um, of people who have ADHD and how they behave and interact. And I think Transcribed by https: otter.

ai One thing. Um, I mean, so many things. I mean, just, I mean, first of all, let me say for Jessica, right? Like she will call, like, she will call our son Josh, you know, like when he’s, you know, Coming home from football practice or wherever he wherever he was and she’ll just say to him like, you know, how much I love you Do you know how awesome you are?

Do you know how much I care for you? but like every day she’ll do that and And the same thing with Jordan as well like the car rides to the school and you know, Jordan Jessica just has a way of sort of diffusing situations when there’s anxiety, you know, Jordan You know has anxiety about her makeup and things that she’s doing.

Well, she’s a teenage girl man. It’s a hard deal. It’s hard yeah, it’s really hard, but Jessica has a way of Just transmitting to the kids in a way that they just listen You know, they stop sort of in their tracks and they listen to the words that she’s saying and they process it and then they incorporate it into their lives, like into their thinking and, um, and they, um, I mean, there’s just so much I could say about Jessica.

Um, 

[00:59:49] Gabby: but how, I mean, like, how do you go, how do you ask Jessica out on a date? Like, how are, how does that even like? Okay, here’s Jessica. I’m, I’m attracted to her. I’m interested in her. I’m curious about her. Um, is it, is it, is it analytical? Is there some impulse? Is it like, Hey, like, where, where does that come from?

[01:00:08] Jeff Karp: Well, I would say the, there’s like, there’s sort of like, um, things have changed kind of over time in, in terms of how we spend our time together. Right. And so I’d say now we’re in a phase where the time we’re spending together is with the kids. Um, and so that’s where most of the, um, the time is our son, Josh has an amazing girlfriend, Maya.

And so last night we were all out for dinner together and just like, um, you know, trying to do as many sort of family things as we can, cause Josh is going off to college. Um, I would say, 

[01:00:46] Gabby: what about when you’re trying to lure? 

[01:00:48] Jeff Karp: When I’m trying to woo her. Well, that’s something that I really need to work on That is something that I need to do better at.

[01:00:55] Gabby: Well, but listen Jeff You’ve done it well enough that she married you and has two children with you. Yeah, and and I have to say that you know, I guess because again a lot of people feel awkward or you know, uncomfortable. What do you think? Do you think you just showed her the you? And then she was like, okay.

I mean, cause I think sometimes we think it has to be a whole dance. And sometimes when we just show our genuine selves. Another person that’s it. That’s what they need. 

[01:01:29] Jeff Karp: Yeah. No, I think for me I have So for example, let’s say in the morning, right? Yeah You know before the kids have come down I had often have bursts of energy in the morning and Jessica’s a very spiritual stable grounded person, um, who has a very calm energy, um, most of the time, almost all the time, I would say very calm, very grounded.

Um, she’s a Pilates instructor. She has a Pilates studio. She, um, is very dedicated to learning and doing better at, you know, That Pilate, I mean, she’s an unbelievable Pilates instructor, um, and she constantly training and, you know, she’s very much connected to mind by, she’s like deeply teaching other people about mind body connection, where people have breakthroughs every day who she spends time with.

And she has such wisdom, um, of, you know, Um, from the heart space where I feel my work kind of puts this kind of cloud sometimes around the heart space and not that I, it’s, it’s like, I feel I, I, I lead with my heart, but I don’t always, um, I guess I don’t know. I don’t always like act based on my heart, you know, like I So it’s it’s there’s this sort of like, I don’t know.

I mean you’re sort of getting at something that i’m really deeply Trying to figure out and trying to it comes 

[01:02:59] Gabby: through in your book 

[01:03:00] Jeff Karp: Yeah, I 

[01:03:01] Gabby: feel it and the thing I it senses like you’re inspired by your heart, but maybe Then you create a strategy around that. 

[01:03:08] Jeff Karp: Yeah 

[01:03:09] Gabby: with and I I actually relate in a different way to that I I do appreciate you grilling me.

I just, that I, that I can grill you about this stuff, but I, I think a lot of people, maybe a parent might have a child and it’s like, Hey, is a hug ever just the best thing for you? Like if she comes up to you and just is the hug, like, that’s great. Yeah, I know. I love hugs. You know, because sometimes I think when somebody is, um, their brain is working in a different way, you just want to find the ways to connect with them.

What’s the best way. Cause it’s not just about you connecting with them. Me. It’s me also wanting to connect with you. Yeah. Um, can we just add the checklist though? Can we talk about the biking checklist? Sure. In your garage? I love that. Can you share? Cause you go, you like to walk the dogs, you go and you ride your bike.

Yeah. You even have your bike helmet here. I love that. Yeah. A lot of good riding here. 

[01:04:00] Jeff Karp: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 

[01:04:02] Gabby: So 

[01:04:02] Jeff Karp: you there’s a checklist. Is there not? I have a checklist. Sometimes I forget to look at the checklist. You 

[01:04:06] Gabby: need to have a checklist to look at the checklist? 

[01:04:09] Jeff Karp: Yeah, I have a checklist that um Is in the garage on like a whiteboard Um that basically just says all the things that I need to check out like, you know, the tire pressure the helmet the goggles The ankle reflective ankle straps that I put on, um, the, the tools that I bring with me when I go are the lights charged.

Um, yeah, there’s a lot of things on that list. And, um, and even when I look at it, I sometimes miss things, uh, when I’m out on a ride and I’m just like, Oh, I forgot to bring this or that. Um, you know, the bike lock, the, you know, that was, uh, I took my bike out the other day and I didn’t have a lock and I was, I was biked to a dinner.

And so they, they had to let me bring the bike into the, I mean, they, they let me bring the bike into the restaurant, which was incredible. But, um, yeah, I do have that checklist. 

[01:04:59] Gabby: When you’re at work and you’re working on a new invention, new product, a new solution, because that’s what you’re working on.

You’re working on better solutions. You probably don’t need those checklists. I know that there’s Methodical steps when you’re doing these processes, but is it is that much more fluid for you 

[01:05:17] Jeff Karp: much more fluid? I think I think that’s like the power of Neuroplasticity of kind of practicing something over and over again and sort of pushing the limits on it But constantly, you know kind of repeating it is that And that’s, to me, one of the things I started to reflect on a lot about the education system is I started to realize that in school that the knowledge kind of slipped away from me, but the, um, but, but my instincts were developed.

Like I had instincts about, um, you know, problems and ability to break them into smaller subsets or to look at them from different angles and, and then that can become automatic. And so we can actually use this wiring that we have so that our brains can do things very efficiently. And even You know, high level things we can start to do very efficiently.

Well, one of the people I interviewed, um, in the book was Chris Hadfield, um, who, uh, is an astronaut from Canada. Um, and, um, you know, he did, did a bunch of space missions where he was, you know, outside the, space station, essentially, you know, performing operations. And he, he said that, um, he had to practice every single thing that he could envisioning everything that could go wrong.

He said, there’s a, there’s like a sphere of things that can go wrong and you know, a smaller subset of that. And he said he would practice those. So he wouldn’t have to think about it when he was in space so that he could focus his attention on the things that he did were unexpected. Yeah. And I think that We can bring that to, you know, to, to, to so many things.

I want to actually just go back for a moment about, um, we were talking about family. And, and, and one thing that I realized is and something that happened during COVID. So when COVID hit, um, my life came to a, like a, You know, came crashing down in my living room. Um, and, um, I started to realize that I had become a workaholic and that, um, that I needed to, to, I needed to experience a different way of being.

And I, um, started look around, try to figure out what to do. And, um, Jessica had been engaging various spiritual leaders in the community, asking questions and just, you know, having various interactions. And, um, and, you know, over time I kind of was just thinking about it and she would talk and I would always like process what she said.

I don’t know if she knows like how deeply I am listening because I’m not, I’m sometimes not like looking somebody in the eyes when I’m listening, but I’m sort of like, I’m processing it in a kind of a different way because I’m sort of busy. Like, you know, my mind’s kind of jumping around and I’m trying, I’m like, but I am like sort of connecting it to things.

And I started to realize that like, that’s exactly what I needed. I needed to talk to the people that she was speaking to. So I asked her to introduce me. And, um, that was transformational. And I started practicing meditation, transcendental meditation, meditation never worked for me before. And I kind of had to experiment with a few different types, you know, apps and things, but I started to do the TM.

And I started to realize that, um, I had this experience when I was younger in college where I took magic mushrooms, um, such a dose that it was pretty significant dose, but where I had this experience where I could experience a thought entering my mind. It would stay there and then it would leave and another thought was kind of taking its place.

And I was kind of like, and I could feel the emotions of the thought that was in my mind, but then I could also feel the emotions go away and this new thought enter and the emotions change. And so when I started practicing meditation, um, I can, it was a parallel to that. I experienced that, um, how, So I’d be meditating, saying this word over and over in my mind, and then a thought would come in.

I’d have this emotional response. I’d want to get up and go do something. And then if I just was able to bring myself back to the word, then that thought would leave. But so would the emotion associated with it. And I started to bring that to my interactions with my family. And I realized there was almost like this energy of the conversation.

So if I was, you know, in a conversation with my son, I realized that if We’re talking and he’s saying something to me that I have these impulses to pull out my phone and say, Hey, look at this, or what about that? Or so say something to interject. And I realized that whenever I did that, it changed the energy from him to me.

It, um, and then he would stop. And I realized that wasn’t my intention. My intention is to support him, to find his voice, to continue speaking, and for the energy to be on him, not me, because I’ve had enough energy on me, you know, like it’s, it’s, it’s his time to, and so, That was really instrumental in helping me in all conversations to really, um, feel that energy of the conversation and realize when I’m pulling it towards me and to be asked, and then to ask myself, why do I need that energy at this moment?

And what’s the sort of Consequence of, of me doing that. And now most of the time I, I do feel triggered to say something. I do feel like I need to interject, but I’m able now most of the time, not all the time to just let it pass. And I feel like that’s brought me closer with my family. 

[01:11:07] Gabby: I think that’s something, uh, whatever level someone’s at, that would be helpful.

The art of listening or not reacting to our thoughts. is a forever and ongoing thing that is helpful. I, you know, it’s interesting when you talk to somebody who you just came to the planet with a different kind of octane to watch somebody where, you know, in certain ways it’s like, Oh man, how easy for you.

But then realizing also that there’s sort of backend work. That’s required to sort of drive that vehicle. Um, that I think I really commend you for I, I do want to say one thing and then I want to bring up some points of the book is you at some point, I think stopped going to class in college. Right, because it just was not working for you.

[01:11:57] Jeff Karp: I was too frustrated. I was angry. I couldn’t follow along even even after I had Um, you know been developing variety of tools and things it just it just wasn’t working for me So I stopped going and I had to find a a new way. Um, actually one of the things that I did was um Because i’m just experimenting with different ways to do things and what I realize is that for let’s say A lot of I was in engineering a lot of it’s math You And I realized that if I got the answers to the questions, that was a lot more exciting for me to study the answers and try to guess what the question was.

And so by doing that, that’s how I learned how to answer the questions as I did it backwards. And that I also for reading, I realized that If I start reading from the beginning, it’s like I want to get to that. Like there’s so much kind of fluff in writing that the main points I can’t, I want to get them right away.

And so what I would do is I would start at the end of a chapter, read backwards, and then I’d be like, well, what’s next? What’s going on? I don’t know. And now it’s almost like problem based learning. I’m now there’s a problem because I’ve read something. I don’t really understand it. Now I go and find the connection to, you know, connect everything together, but 

[01:13:15] Gabby: just streamline it in your own way to keep you engaged.

Yeah. Yeah. So speaking of that, I was kind of thinking and laughing. So lit life ignition tools. Um, it’s a, it’s a big book and if people have a DHD or ADD or maybe they don’t have a lot of time for you in this book, cause you, you share your story so people really can understand that you’ve had a journey and you’ve had a lot to navigate and you, and you talk about, um, you know, some core tenants.

If you said, Hey, if you were going to read one part of this book, one chapter of this Or one, you know, sort of one thing for people who they’re like, Hey, listen, I can’t read books. What is it? What really has shown up for you after finishing the book and sharing the book? 

[01:14:03] Jeff Karp: Hmm. Um, I’m trying to interpret your question.

Uh, yeah, yeah. So like one chapter, one, yeah, like, yeah, because 

[01:14:12] Gabby: so there’s the, there’s the story of, of your journey and then there’s, Sort of from real takeaways and I want to get into a couple things about how you pair for example living outside the box And pinching your brain Right those two things but if something if you sort of thought hey I know this information inside and out and if you really want to break it down to this Right that you’d want to give to your fellow humans that navigate the world Similar to you.

Yeah. What is that? 

[01:14:40] Jeff Karp: I think I, to me, the biggest thing from the book is Resensitizing our aliveness. It’s how when you know, you, you watch children play You watch children in their element, um, they’re just, you know, I had this conversation with a friend of mine recently, Bridge, um, and, um, we’re just talking about birds and, and how kids look at birds and think they’re magical creatures.

But as soon as you say, as an adult, you say, well, that’s a bird, then you take the magic away. And, um. I, to me, lit is, is, is resensitizing ourselves to that magic that’s all around us because um, there’s just so many tiny things that we can do during our day to tap into this wellspring of energy and Raise our ultimate baseline constantly to new levels And I’ll give you a bunch of examples.

Like one thing I do now is I walk around my neighborhood This isn’t in the book, but is an evolution of that The tools from the book. I walk around my neighborhood. So I used to walk around the neighborhood with my phone like this Watching like hbo the two dogs I’d go out for an hour walk and then I justify to myself that I got exercise They got exercise and I was able to watch something and I can talk to other people about it and um But what I realized is I’m completely missing something that is much, much, you know, a higher place, higher level, higher, whatever.

It was my connection to what’s, what’s around me. And so a bunch of, I started doing a bunch of things. I started, I set the intention, it never worked for me to set the intention of not using the device. It’s like, cause I, I kind of thought about it. It’s like, When I was born like that wasn’t an intention to not use technology.

It just doesn’t make any sense to me But if I set the intention I want to connect with the dogs Right, then if I’m on my phone, I can’t connect with the dogs so then I and then what I start doing is I get over my insecurities of talking to them and interacting with them because neighbors are seeing what I’m doing and Um, and I noticed one of the dogs looks back at me every minute and a half, another one every five minutes, and we make eye contact, and we both get this, like, one starts galloping whenever we make eye contact, and so, but now, I sort of, like, pinch my brain on that, like, I focus my attention, I think, like, wow, like, what’s happening there, like, isn’t this, like, What, like, just bring my curiosity to that, like that, like what just happened?

Like we made eye contact. There was this exchange of energy. We’re both feeling better because of it. Where else can I apply this? I started to experiment. I’d started to walk backwards sometimes with my dogs at night so I could see them walking towards me. Um, I was like, Oh, like that, like to, you know, there’s different perspective.

Different perspective. I started walking around my neighborhood and I. Okay. Would, um, focus on individual senses, I’d say sight. And I’d look at the bark of the trees and the tops of the trees and the clouds and the leaves And then I’d say, um hearing and I would listen for the birds and the other animals or the rustling of the the Wind and the leaves and I say touch and I’d feel the clothes on my skin I’d slow down and feel my heels hit the ground And I started to practice that and as I practiced it, I noticed that my gaze was more connected with what I was looking at.

Like I would walk by a tree and when I, before I did this, I, my eyes are going all over the place. Almost like on a screen when you’re looking at YouTube, your kind of eyes are, I feel like our eyes are being trained to just jump around. And so I felt like I was doing that out in nature, but where I was getting the best connections or the deepest connections is when I could.

And so I looked at the trees. Now I look at the trees and it’s like I walk by and I’m still looking at the tree and I’m looking at the shape and I’m looking at the texture and I’m thinking about it and I’m looking at the, the little plants that are growing on the side of the tree and trying to think like, where did they come from?

And, um, now I, I bought this microscope. I should have it with me, but I brought this, bought this microscope, a little screen. And a little tube and you put it on things and you can turn the focus knob and, and see the fractals of life, everything around us. Like you can see another dimension that you don’t typically see by just, and so that I’m using that as a way to train myself to see.

Behind everything like in when you interact with somebody you don’t know what they were just doing before you don’t know what they’re experiencing in their life You don’t know, you know, like there’s so much there. So to become more curious about everything and to me when when I start doing that like when I start eating and every every meal I have Like I try to close my eyes for a few bites and that changes the experience my wife’s Brothers children.

We went out for dinner with them in Toronto actually like a month ago or so and I said they’re like I don’t know like 8 and 11 or something like that. And I said to them. Hey, why don’t you close your eyes? Just for a few bites, right? We were at the sushi restaurant and they close their eyes and they’re like, oh my gosh It’s so different right like because it’s like all of a sudden you’re focusing in on Because we’re, we have all these, um, stimuli coming at us from all angles, but the stimuli are sound and sight and touch.

And it’s like, it’s all over the place, right? And taste. And so if we can start to focus in on individual senses, what I’ve realized is that you can resensitize those senses and it’s through our senses, how we experience the world. And so to me, that’s what really lit. is all about. That’s the cornerstone of LIT is it’s re sensitizing our aliveness and then also being open to all of these possibilities.

Often we only see narrow range of possibilities, sometimes only one in any scenario, but there are so many ways to do things and to me that’s the power of neurodiversity, of interacting with people who are think differently and, and, and And, um, are from different places and, and have different experiences is that we can uncover new possibilities that we can then experiment with, or even just think about.

And the contrast between what our way of being and our way of doing things and seeing other people do it helps us to realize whether what we’re doing is really serving us or whether we should be experimenting to try new things. Yeah. 

[01:21:24] Gabby: Bye. Bye. I think that is a really important point about those are the ways that we can really help each other is me understanding and learning about the way you do it and think, Oh, I, I could borrow some of that.

That would improve the way I do it. Um, and not being afraid of that. So can we, can we go, you, you mentioned pinching your brain and it’s a term you share in the book, but you, you do both. Very well, you pitching your brain, the sort of narrow focus, and then this idea of living outside the box is, have you gotten more fluid going in and out of these spaces?

And it was, it was just with a kind of awareness and practice. 

[01:22:03] Jeff Karp: Yeah, yeah, I think that’s exactly it. Like, I think, um, that, uh, there’s, there’s so many. Well, I mean, one thing that just jumps to mind is that. You know, and I went and checked it out. There’s nine hundred nine hundred billion dollars spent on marking marketing and advertising every year to hijack our attention 900 billion every year and so that’s like this massive force that we’re up against and in fact I use that in some some times as a way to sort of Shame myself right for going and being distracted because it’s such a powerful force.

How can you compete with 900 billion dollars? Um, and kind of actually going back to one of the other things you said earlier, I see us at at this Almost like this snapshot in evolution, right? Where we still have these animalistic, um, impulsive kind of wiring, um, but then we also have this wiring for consciousness.

And, and so, and, and I think that, um, Generally, what we see in evolution is things that don’t serve us kind of get evolved out over time. It can take hundreds or thousands, usually thousands of years. But we’re at this snapshot where we’re kind of have this interesting mix of consciousness. We have this amazing prefrontal cortex in our brain, the front part of our brain, that’s responsible for problem solving and decision making, emotional regulation.

We have this amazing ability of neuroplasticity to intentionally it’s neuroplasticity is the rewiring of our brain that happens intentionally or non intentionally. It’s just constantly happening. So why not make it intentional and rewire your brain in ways that are going to be helpful to you and that align with your values and that can serve you.

Um, but the challenges is that we have this impulsive kind of animalistic wiring as well. And so unless we have a strategy We’re just going to be into this low energy brain state, um, where, you know, we were hunters and gatherers for tens of thousands of years. And we needed to be in this low, we needed to gravitate to a low energy brain state and body state because we were outside working hard to survive.

And so. We naturally gravitate to low energy and low body energy states today, but we can consciously get ourselves off the couch or wherever we are and out experiencing and exploring and engaging in all these incredible things in life. And I mean, I’ll just give you a couple other kind of quick examples like.

One thing that I do now is like when I send an email and I don’t get a response right away. I, um, immediately I’m triggered to thinking, okay, I said too much or a text, right? Like I said too much. I said the wrong thing. Like when I texted you, right. I mean, I just kind of said a lot, right. And then I was thinking afterwards, maybe I did, maybe I said too much.

I’m not sure. Like I’m that I’m sort of, you know, I have these insecurities about that, but what I noticed is that there’s a possibility out there that I can engage to create a shift and that possibility for me is to say to ask the question, why, why do I, why am I thinking about this? Why am I triggered by this, that I’m not getting a response?

And I realized through sort of examining that, that it’s because I care because I care about connecting with other people. I care about About not offending people. I care about, you know, like, like building on connections. And so then I say, well, yeah, that’s it. And that’s, that’s a trait that is important to me.

And, and so that allows me to shift from being insecure to realizing that my sort of actions or the way I’m thinking about it is because I care. And and that makes me feel better. So like it’s sort of like there’s all these little things we can do like that just like I feel like another thing like with possibilities is it’s I almost see it’s almost like this like flywheel or something and you’re Examining you’re trying to find an understanding and each Scenario is like a click you’re clicking like no that didn’t work So it’s like click click click click and then it’s like boom got it and then you have this so it’s like You You’re taking, you’re taking these different frames of reference, these different views, these different possibilities.

You’re, and it’s connecting dots for you in a way that creates this, this way of understanding. And in that moment, maybe that doesn’t last forever, but in that moment, it just, it just can make you feel better and it can energize you. And so I’m constantly searching for Ways to do that and and so that’s like a big part of of lit It’s finding those little on ramps that can help raise your sort of baseline level of wellness and well being and You know and energy 

[01:27:00] Gabby: because you’ll react And act from a place you probably want to more often when you’re from that place.

I, you know, in reading lit, um, you ha you have a deep curiosity and I’m always interested, like, how are you balancing? I mean, you’re, Also having this lab. I mean, there’s other things on the line. You have people who work with you, money costs, deadlines. There’s just a lot to it and you make it sound easy, but there’s a lot.

Where, how do you live between kind of caution and creativity? Where, how, how have you created the tension between those two places? Cause a lot of us are there, right? We want to try something. Is that practical? But we want to be creative. We want to try something new. We want to. Look around the corner. We want to express something.

Um, we’re, we’re trying to stay responsible or cautious or whatever the things are that, that get told to us, especially, you know, you get older, then you have a family, then you have a mortgage, whatever those things are that keep us, um, contained were caution rules 

[01:28:05] Jeff Karp: versus creativity. So I’d say, wow, I love that question.

Um, I, I think what’s coming to me is so, so, Is, is that, um, Uh, if I’m not, if I’m just sort of operating alone, right, I’m going to tend to be in this cautious place and, and, and it’s going to, I think, make it diff, I might come up with ideas and sort of exercise creativity, but I might be cautious to take a step forward.

I may not only be cautious, I may not be motivated to take a step forward. And to me, the key to. Switching from caution to actionating on creativity and, you know, taking that step forward is, is to have the right energy of almost constellation of energies with the people around me. And so when that’s there, And there’s this sort of like excitement in the group, then that overcomes the cautiousness and we are, we’re motivated to take bigger risks and start trying things.

And then we, then I think the other reason I think that works is because then you have, You know, a neurodiverse team who is then collectively on an adventure to gain insights and look from different perspectives at whatever happens and you increase your chance of continuing to take the steps forward.

Whereas if you’re just operating based on your own experiences and wiring. You reduce the chance of being successful, you increase your chance of hitting roadblocks and, um, and, and sort of hitting dead ends that, that, that, like hitting points that seem like dead ends, but they may not be if you just had the right energies around the table to interpret and sort of energize the situation to keep moving forward.

[01:30:12] Gabby: Yeah, I love that. Actually, I mean, I told you earlier, we were talking with my daughter and I’m like, I’m such a. You know, a team player person. Cause you know, there’s even days where you’re down and people are like, Oh, we got this or you’re up and they’re not feeling good. And you’re like, Oh, we can, we got some workarounds.

We can, we can figure it out. It’s, it is amazing. I always loved that when one in one is three, there’s a magic in that, you know, the real magic of humans and cooperation. I think it’s, um, it’s, well, I don’t know if there’s too many things better than that. 

[01:30:45] Jeff Karp: I think one thing about it is that it’s always there.

Like it’s, it’s one of the beauties of life is that, um, we, um, we can always tap into the collective energy. Of others and that is it feels amazing when you’re resonating and you know I mean, it’s not always like that like sometimes in groups like we’re coming up with ideas and they’re not great idea Like, you know, we they just you know, kind of brainstorming and things like that but once we land on something And you know, there’s this and that’s what we look for It’s like something where that and to me that’s also like the beauty of the group is that you can You You can, you can, um, you can hash things out and figure out like what really is the best path forward and not everyone may think it’s the best path forward, but everybody’s engaged in learning and looking from different angles at the insights that are gained.

But I guess what, yeah, I guess what I’m really trying to say is that, The beauty of life is that we’re not in this alone. We’re in this together. And in fact, our wiring, a lot of it is, is, is, you know, it’s our evolutionary inheritance for tens of thousands of years. We worked as tribes. We worked in villages working together.

And it’s very unusual where we are today, you know, where we’re, you know, it’s a kind of almost like a me driven society. And where, you know, we live in houses where we may never talk to our neighbors. And there’s just, you know, four people in a house, for example, whereas we used to have be very closely living with 100 people in a village, and everybody’s helping each other out in all kinds of different ways.

And I feel a we don’t have to let our current circumstance dictate our present and future. We can actually recognize it and start to make having more collisions with neurodiverse people, you know, constantly in our lives. And I think that leads to all kinds of opportunities. Like you could, I mean, there’s so many examples where, you know, you meet somebody New and they are, they have some hobby or some sport and they’re like, Hey, come along.

Why don’t you, you know, like you want to learn how to play, um, this or that, or, you know, and then it just, it creates like, there’s all these and you, you don’t get 

[01:33:10] Gabby: scared. Like if it’s something really unknown to you or you just stay curious and go, I’ll just see what happens. 

[01:33:16] Jeff Karp: Well, I think the fear, as you were saying, the fear gets overridden by the collective energy, right?

And so I think that if you’re in a place where you’re constantly experiencing fear and that’s holding you back from taking steps forward, maybe, maybe likely what it means is that you’re not engaging the collective energy. Enough and I think everybody we’re wired to do that 

[01:33:43] Gabby: Right, 

[01:33:43] Jeff Karp: so and when we start doing that then I think so that could be a cue Right that that’s what we need to do is we need to get out there and start just interacting more with others and maybe in particular with people who are different from us and who think differently and who um Who process things differently and, and, and can, because I just think everything’s energy transfer.

I just, I really think the whole, like from the power of the sun, you know, we were talking about this a little bit earlier, right? Um, we had the power of the sun to photosynthesis to, um, All of life, right? And then once we have the beings of life, then they’re, they’re like when I was talking about the dogs, like when we were walking and we just make eye contact, there’s a transfer of energy there that in some ways is unexplainable.

If you think of we’re just electrons and protons and neutrons and just like, right? Like when you think about it at that level, like how is something in the distant Causing this energy transfer like it’s like, yeah, right. It’s unbelievable. It’s amazing 

[01:34:50] Gabby: because you have a Engineering scientific mind and you’ve been exposed to these environments What is your view if and let’s just use the word for sake of understanding not we don’t have to be literal of of God Like for you, are you somebody who’s like, oh, that’s very interesting But you know, it’s really just a bunch of molecules and it’s it’s You know, nothing solid matter and all these things.

Is there places in you, uh, that you, you experience the kind of, you know, it’s like when they hand you your son, your first child. And here’s this baby that there are for me. I, I feel this way when I go in nature and I, it’s like you were saying too, like the intricacies in these salt, small spaces that if you just slow down enough, they blow your mind.

I watched a bee dry itself off. I pulled it out of my pool the other day and I just put it on the side and I watched it dry its wings. You know how fragile and just intricate a wing is and you’re using the legs and wiping off the antennas and stuff. Is there room for you in the awe, not in the analyzing, just in straight awe of what this, you know, life, this experiment, this planet, you know, these relationships, does it ever just hit you, thunderbolt you?

[01:36:19] Jeff Karp: All the time. I think, um, like when I’m, and it, but, but it, to me, it’s a skill, like we have to practice it because our culture like flattens that our culture flattens our imagination and our curiosity and our creativity and, you know, just all kinds of thing atomizes our attention. And I think we, but we can get it back kind of like this whole resensitizing, you know, approach.

So as I, as I. You know, uh, try to connect more deeply with my food as I’m like slowing down to like experience the flavors as I’m looking outside and trying to focus on individual senses, then that evolves. Everything has a domino effect. So that evolves. And now I look and I see the birds and the birds are playing.

And I was like, well, I never used to see the birds playing, but like, I see the birds playing with each other and the squirrels are playing with each other. Like they’re playing games. And. There’s this whole interaction, you know, like the rabbits are watching the squirrels and the squirrels are watching the birds and the birds are watching for bigger birds.

Like there’s all sorts and the dogs that I’m walking are looking at everything, you know, and so to me, there’s like this. It’s like a playground in nature for all the creatures and yet they’re all, you know, trying to survive like the trees are, you know, I was in the jungle in Panama and I, and, and I, I just, you know, the trees are just trying to reach for the sun.

They’re just trying to reach for the sun and there’s trees that are, are just growing and they can’t get there, but they’re just patiently waiting for a time. big tree to fall over so that they can grow up and, and just going outside and, and, and recognizing what’s actually happening, how nature’s interacting with itself and this life force that’s all around us.

It’s within us. Like this idea that, that we can. Go for a bike ride or go surfing or walk or run or whatever it is, and it floods our brain with positive neurotransmitters. And we can feel amazing for hours afterwards. And we can access that every day. And there’s so many things like that. You don’t, it’s just like movement is one thing, but we’re accessing the life force, right?

Like that’s within us. Like I like to I don’t think I mentioned this before, but like in full transparency, when, when I does a new thing I’m practicing, when I go to the bathroom, right. I like to think about my biology. Right, like I like to think about everything that had to happen for, you know, when you eat something and your intestines and peristalsis And the absorption through the intestinal wall into the bloodstream and then the blood the diverse like, you know Blood vessels we have in all of our tissues and how how the vessels have to get to every single cell you know like we have to get the nutrients there and then The nutrients come out of the vessel and then they go back into the vessels and then they, you know, there’s all these filtering organs that we have and you know, to me, it’s just, I like to think about that when I think about that, right?

Like we’re not in control of most of that. It’s just happening. And when I think about that. It makes me feel better. It makes me feel good. It makes me feel like there’s that sense of awe that I’m able to access just sitting on the toilet, right? Does that inspire you 

[01:39:44] Gabby: maybe to take care? Because I that’s how I feel.

I always say is coming from athletics, you get injured enough times that you don’t need to learn what a gift feeling good is because you’ve had days where you Needed help leaving getting from, you know, up off the couch across, you know, to the next room And that the gift In these very quiet things, does that, the, does that sort of energize you into realizing like, holy cow, yeah, this in itself is a miracle I get to walk around in.

Is it always looked the way I want it to look? No. Does it always feel the way? No. You know, it’s like we spend most of our time criticizing it and the way we appear in our bodies and, oh, my knee hurts or whatever. But ultimately maybe that kind, those kinds of practices get you into being like, Oh wait, I can also maybe take care of it a little more.

[01:40:39] Jeff Karp: Absolutely. Like even I, I was cutting a hose, um, A couple months ago and it the knife slip. I was trying to do it really fast and you know Usually i’m pretty careful, but I slipped and I cut myself pretty bad cut. 

[01:40:50] Gabby: Yeah, 

[01:40:51] Jeff Karp: and um, but like a month later It’s like almost perfectly healed and so And and and I feel again like that’s an opportunity for us to look at that and say well, what just happened?

How did that happen? Like I didn’t control that like that’s incredible. Like we we watch the movie Terminator and see how you Chopped up and then it reassembles and we’re like, wow, that’s amazing. But, but we have that, those superpowers, you know, like we have, um, I’ve, I’ve had a lot of, um, sports injuries.

Um, I tore my terrace major when I was, um, uh, water skiing. I tried to do some crazy thing. I used to teach water skiing when I was, uh, uh, at camp and, um, my grandmother was having her 80th. Birthday reunion or whatever it was and I was like, hey, come watch me do all these tricks and I did could I didn’t do them properly but I tore my terrace major and I Went in and anyhow, this is kind of a long story short It was one of the most painful experiences in my life because they had to go in with a spoon Because it was already too late and scrape the tissue off the bone so it could reheal But I did the exercises at home where like, you know, I couldn’t lift this arm I couldn’t literally couldn’t go above like here went in.

Um, and and and then the the physical therapist gave me the Actions to do at home and you know, I just lie down like this and then every day a little bit better a little bit better a little bit better and it was like, I feel we’re just our bodies are designed to heal themselves to regenerate. Sometimes they just need some cues.

They just need to be in a certain position. We just kind of have to help it along in some ways. And I think that’s also the placebo effect, right? Big time. Big time, right? Because and I’ve been reading up on it. And I think there’s like a sense that in the hunter gatherer kind of, you know, times, let’s say, like, go back 10 years ago.

And before that, it was like this, this sort of evolutionary pressure that where it was like, you know, If we believe that the concoction we’re putting together or what we’re doing, the ritual, the ceremony is helping us, then that actually would help us if we could believe in it. It would actually help us and that would help us survive, would help us to live.

But we needed some like, it’s like this sort of like, um, we needed the belief. Right. We have to believe if we don’t believe I think that we then nature just kind of eats itself up and regenerates, you know It just sort of that’s like if you go into the forest and you’re not prepared and you spend enough time there It’s just gonna eat you up, you know Like this was and you’re just getting and not just that you’re gonna get regenerated into new life Like that’s what life is all about.

It’s constant Regeneration and so I think the idea is that um If we believe, and that’s what the placebo effect really is, is that if you have a belief that what you’re getting is going to be helpful and, um, useful for you and have a function, then often it actually will. And there’s amazing studies that I’ve looked at, like stem cell transplants, like where, um, Like graft versus host disease, people get bone marrow transplants, very like, you know, it’s just terrible.

A lot of people die. And for some stem cell therapies, there was a response rate for the placebo, which was just like a saline injection. Like 50 percent of the patients, it like cured their graft versus host disease for certain organs. Like it’s like, it’s unbelievable what just positive belief can do.

And to me, that’s tapping into the life force. That’s, to me, what God really is. Whether you call it God or, I don’t personally see God as being male or female or, you know, I just see sort of like, and, and, and, a thought came to me on a bike ride a month or two ago, which is, Nature got itself to the moon.

[01:44:54] Gabby: Yeah. 

[01:44:55] Jeff Karp: Right? Mm hmm. And that, I started thinking, nature wanted to get to the moon before humans existed. Nature wanted to explore the cosmos before humans existed. Nature wanted to explore itself. Humans are just a vessel, a vehicle that nature is using to explore itself, to explore the cosmos, to get to, like, we are nature. You know, and that’s why when we go out into nature, we feel so good because We’re experiencing ourselves. We’re experiencing what we are. 

[01:45:28] Gabby: Yeah, it’s the Makes so much sense nature when you go there and you don’t even have you can’t have a word for it Just makes sense. Like you said it’s like fitting in perfect with it Do 

[01:45:41] Jeff Karp: you sleep? I do. Yeah. No, I sleep. I try to sleep. Does that brain sleep? Yeah. Yeah. No, I do sleep. I I try to sleep. Um You Six and a half hours, but it’s kind of gone. It’s sometimes recently it’s been creeping a little bit under six. So yeah, I’ve been trying to, 

[01:45:56] Gabby: and what about entertainment? Could, do you have the capacity to even watch anything and be like, Oh, this is. Fun or i’m entertained or you’re like this is complete dribble. 

[01:46:05] Jeff Karp: No, no, no, I definitely I love. Um, I love all the disney movies that i’ve watched with my kids. I love um, you know, I also i’ve kind of come I have this belief that you know people say you are what you eat. I also feel like you are what you see What you hear what you consume and so I have a tendency to watch like action type things on uh, You On netflix and and i’ve been trying to transition that in an intentional way more to documentaries Um, it’s where the focus is more on learning.

I’m watching something on neanderthals now But but I do, you know, I love i’ve watched all you know, the whole game of thrones series I mean, you know all that kind of stuff. I I love watching that. I love watching, um, you know, I watched a bunch of Netflix documentaries on Roman history, Egyptian history, Japan history, and I’m just fascinated how, how it’s just so similar, the way that humans act and, and I, I, I do believe that, um, that humans, that, that we have this.

Um, that’s not all positive, you know, that we have, we do have this sort of like cruel heart, you know, this aspect, this, and, um, I’ve been studying a little bit, some of the work of Wade Davis, who’s an anthropologist at university of British Columbia. And he’s done written a number of books and, and done some amazing documentaries.

And he talks about that and he talks about how culture is really. A system of of dealing with the cruelness of our heart and sort of implementing strategies and tools to bring out the best in us. And I think that’s why history repeats itself is because if we don’t like if we live it, as I was saying before, like in this snap, we’re in the snapshot of evolution where we still have our animalistic And if we live with that, if we let that take over, then it takes us to a negative place.

But if we can move more towards consciousness, where we’re taking little intentional steps every day, and just trying to be open to the cues, and be a little bit more deliberate, then that will carry the day, and we will stop repeating history, and we will start, you know, living, you know, More interconnectedness with each other and with all of nature and really raising that baseline of wellness and You know our energy levels our mood everything elevates.

[01:48:38] Gabby: I think like you said earlier We’re we are in a transition Which is really uncomfortable because it almost feels like we’re breaking an old way and trying to do a new way And like, will we get there or not is the big question to this consciousness. Um, because the other, the, the, the, the cruelty is, is fear, right?

It’s like for me, when I see it, I’m like, Oh, this person wasn’t held in love. And you know, all of these things, they’re really afraid. And so now they’re going to punish everybody. Well, Jeff, I, I’ve already tortured you enough. I really believe I thought about it. Cause I always go along and I was like, Oh, or Jeff Carr.

Um, I want to end this with you say something pretty clearly. Um, it’s in your work where you talk about compassion and not living by your label. And I just thought that that was something really. important to bring up for everyone, because I think, uh, when people, we feel different or some, you know, we get labeled as something, um, sometimes people that becomes something that they wear instead of, you know, what’s unique and beautiful and different about them and the way that they’ll contribute to the world that we live in.

So I, I just wanted to bring that up because. You, for me, are an incredible example of somebody who I know it, it, it hasn’t been and probably isn’t an easy path, but yet, um, you know, you’re generating all this incredible work and tools to help people and, you know, your book and, and also figuring it out yourself. I really appreciate that. 

[01:50:23] Jeff Karp: Oh, thank you. Thank you for uh, this has been really a uh, I love your questions. I I feel um Yeah, I I just my mind’s like Racing with all kinds of all kinds of thoughts. Um And I mean on the on the label in particular. Yeah, I mean, I think Labels can be helpful. When I found out I had ADHD, that that was actually very helpful for me.

Um, to sort of, um, you know, is that that sort of like clicking of the wheel I was saying and then it was like, Whoa, wait a moment. Like that explains a lot now. And, um, but, but also it can be very harmful. And, and I just want to, I mean, another shout out to my mom who, um, You know, I was getting all these labels like, Oh, you’re lazy.

You’re not going to mount too much. You’re like, I, they asked me when I was younger, what do you want to be? And I said, a doctor. And they said, you better set your sights lower because you just don’t have that. You know, that’s not possible. Um, and, uh, and my mom would just tell me, you know, she’s like, no, you, you’ve superhero.

Powers like you and I think at some point I started to believe it and And and I just started to kind of play that out in my mind And when I was being taught various lessons or things in school, like I would sort of think oh, there’s something beyond here Like there’s something different and even if I couldn’t figure it out.

I would always think like maybe I could figure something out that nobody in the class knows, or maybe there’s, you know, I was always sort of thinking like that, like, and I was because of my mom, my mom was just such a big supporter and, and, um, and I think that a lot of kids like kind of slipped through the cracks and a lot of kids with ADHD, um, have addictions because that’s how they try to deal with, um, with the, you know, the mood and the energy swings and just, you know, Like the whole, the whole thing.

And, um, and, and what I think all we really need is just that support, you know, someone just to kind of hold their hand for a period of time that, especially, you know, in elementary school, um, and my mom was there to do it. 

[01:52:25] Gabby: And I think the other thing that always comes up for me is sometimes if someone is different, people who know them will know, like your mother knew you’re a smart person, like spend eight minutes with you.

And it’s like, you’d figure that out. The problem is. A lot of people can’t get past their own filter. So we’re walking around our world and people are experiencing you through their filter. And so I think that that’s really important for everyone to remember. Sometimes the input is through a very different and specific filter, and there’s going to be very few people that see us just for the sake of seeing us. And those are great coaches or great parents or great teachers or, you know, friends. And so you’re, you’re a great example of that. So the book is lit L I T. Jeff Karp. Thank you. Karp with a K. And uh, thanks everyone for listening. 

[01:53:19] Jeff Karp: Thank you. 

[01:53:21] Gabby: Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. If you want to learn more, there is a ton of valuable information on my website.

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About Jeff Karp, PhD

Jeff Karp, PhD, is a Harvard Medical School professor and MIT bioengineer dedicated to translating nature’s wisdom into both medical therapies—surgical glue inspired by slugs, a diagnostic for cancer based on the tentacles of jellyfish, and surgical staples based on the quills of a porcupine—and self-help tools to reclaim your energy and attention.