Arthur Brooks

And he brought back the whole idea of hemispheric lateralization.

That's the concept that the two halves of your brain do different things.

I mean, they do a lot of things the same too, but the fact is that they have different core competencies.

Now, when I was a kid in the 70s, this is long before you youngsters were born, there was this belief that there were right-brained and left-brained people.

Right-brained people were creative.

Left-brained people were analytical.

My mom, who was an artist, was a right-brained person.

My father, who was a mathematician, was a left-brained person.

Growing up, I was a right brain person like my mom because I was a musician.

I was a classical musician and I painted and I wrote poetry and then I got my PhD and I became apparently a left brain person because I became a scientist.

Well, the truth is that that theory didn't work.

What does work, however, is what Ian McGilchrist brought back to show that we ask and answer different questions with the different hemispheres of our brain.

The right hemisphere is the complex why, the mystery and meaning of life, the things that set us out in the hunt for the things that matter in life.

The left brain is the how to and what.

It's how we execute.

It's the linear side.

It's the analysis.

It's the engineering.

It's the apps of life or the left brain side.

And what's happening is when we're running a simulation of life, we're running a left brain simulation to meet our right brain questions of love and mystery and meaning.