Arthur Brooks

That movie, The Matrix, came out 27 years ago.

I hate to shock and sadden you.

It'll make anybody who was alive then feel old.

But the plot of that movie was that a great artificial intelligence was dominating the human race and kept the human race placid in a pleasant simulation so that it could feed off human kinetic energy.

It kept them in pods and ran a simulation.

And the truth of the matter is that we are subjugated, not by people necessarily, but by algorithms that fundamentally are creating a simulated version of a real life that's pleasant enough, keeps us from being bored, and that feeds off our attention and energy and money.

We're living in the matrix.

And that's why people say, I don't know, it doesn't feel...

Like real dating.

It doesn't feel like real friends.

Scroll, scroll, scroll.

It doesn't feel like real achievement.

Game, game, game.

Because we're living in a simulation.

What's happening neurologically there?

So what's happening neurobiologically is that we're literally in the wrong half of our brains.

So this is the work of Ian McGilchrist, the great, have you had him on the show?

He's fantastic.

He's an Oxford neuroscientist.

He's a great genius.