Dr. Ben Carson
Appearances
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Everything was an adventure. That was eight years ago. And I didn't really fully understand what was going on. To be honest with you, I thought we were just, you know, having different adventures. And, you know, it was something going to Boston on the train. But it was a very different neighborhood. Multifamily dwellings. Rats and roaches, broken glass all over the place, gangs, murders.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Both of my older cousins that we adored were killed. That's the kind of place that it was. And somehow we made it through all of that. My mother was working all the time because she didn't like the concept of being dependent on the government. And she worked as a domestic going from place to place. But her goal was to get us back to Detroit and to be independent.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And after a couple of years, she had saved enough to be able to do that. And, you know, it was still a multifamily dwelling, but And there were still rats and roaches and dilapidated housing. But nevertheless, she was independent. We were independent at that time. And the major story there is that both my brother and I were terrible students.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Thank you. Half a century.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We were at the bottom of the class, and kids made fun of us all the time. And, you know, I didn't like it very much, but I tried to act like it didn't bother me. But it did bother me quite a bit. But it bothered my mother more than it bothered me. And she just didn't know what to do. And she was convinced that we were going to have the same kind of life that she had. You know, menial jobs and...
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Not realizing the American dream. And she prayed for wisdom. And God gave it to her. At least in her opinion. My brother and I didn't think it was wise at all. Because it was to turn off the TV and make us read books. And we were not happy at all. In today's world, we probably would have called social services on her. But we had to read those books.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And the first book that I read was about a beaver. It was called Chip the Dam Builder. And it was a great book. I enjoyed that book so much that I started reading other animal books. I read every animal book in the Detroit Public Libraries. And then I started reading about plants, and then I started reading about rocks. because we live right by the railroad tracks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You get so used to the trains coming by. They make a lot of noise, you don't even hear it anymore. But there are all these rocks, and I would collect the rocks in a box and bring them home. and read about them. And pretty soon I could identify virtually any rock, where it came from, how it was formed. Still in the fifth grade. Still the dummy. Nobody knew about this project of mine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And then one day, Mr. Jake, the fifth grade science teacher, walked in and he held up this big, black, shiny rock. He says, can anybody tell me what this is? Well, I never raised my hand. I never answered questions. So I waited for one of the other students and nobody Nobody raised their hand. And I said, wow, this is my big chance. And I raised my hand. And Mr. Jake was shocked.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And all my classmates were turning around. Benny Carson's got his hand up. Oh, this is going to be good. And Mr. Jake said, Benny? And I said, Mr. Jake, that's Obsidian. And there was silence in the room because nobody knew whether it was right or wrong and they didn't know whether they should be impressed or whether they should be laughing. And Mr. Jake said, that's right, it is Obsidian.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I said, obsidian is formed after volcanic eruption and the lava flows down, it hits the water, there's a super cooling process, the elements coalesce, the surface glades. So everybody was staring at me. What in the world is going on here? But I was the most amazed person because it dawned on me at that moment. I said, you're no dummy at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
The reason you knew the answer is because you've been reading the books. I said, aren't you tired of being called a dummy? I said, what if you read books about all your subjects? From that point forward, you never saw me without a book. If I had five minutes, I was reading a book. I went from being called a dummy to being called a bookworm.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I would say marrying the right person. That's the secret to a successful marriage. Making sure that this is somebody that you really like, that you really have fun with. So many people, they get married on the basis of
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And within the space of a year and a half, I went from the bottom of the class to the top of the class. Wow. All the students who used to call me dummy were coming to me saying, Benny, Benny, how do you work this problem? And I would say, sit at my feet, youngster, while I instruct you. I was probably a little obnoxious. But it really changed the trajectory of my life significantly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But the other thing, probably just as importantly, is I hated poverty. You know, some people hate rats. Some people hate snakes and bugs. I hated poverty. And, you know, it really stung acutely. The teacher would sometimes say, everybody bring a nickel tomorrow because we're going to have popcorn balls. And they were beautifully wrapped in these cellophane balls.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
wrappings of different colors and they looked so good. And they only cost a nickel. Some kids actually would bring a dollar to the school and buy a whole bag of them. But, you know, I never had a popcorn ball. Because we never had an extra nickel. That's how bad things were. But I just hated poverty until I started reading those books, until I started reading about successful people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Surgeons, scientists, explorers and entrepreneurs, inventors. And as I read their stories, I began to realize that the person who has the most to do with what happens to you is you. And the person who determines your future is you. And then poverty didn't bother me because I knew that it was only temporary and that I had the ability to change it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I would have been about 10 or 11 at that point.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I knew I wanted to be a doctor. I've always been drawn toward medicine. I used to love hearing the stories about missionary doctors who travel all over the world at great personal expense and danger to bring not only physical but mental and spiritual health to people. And I actually had determined when I was eight years old that I was going to be a missionary doctor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Even when I was a terrible student, I was going to be a missionary doctor. And that was really my dream until I was 13. At age 13, having grown up in dire poverty, I decided I'd rather be rich. So missionary doctor was out. And psychiatrists was in. Because, you know, on TV, psychiatrists seemed like rich people. They lived in the mansions and drove Jaguars and had these big plush offices.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And all they had to do was talk to crazy people all day. And it seemed like I was doing that anyway. So I said, wow, this is going to work out really well. My brother knew about my interest in becoming a psychiatrist. He had a job and he bought me a subscription to Psychology Today. I started reading it and I became the local shrink in high school. Everybody would bring me their problems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I would sit them down, stroke my chin, say, tell me about your mama. I was all gung-ho. I majored in psychology at Yale, had interesting professors like Anna Freud, who was the daughter of Sigmund Freud, psychoanalysis. I was really heading down that pathway, and by the time I got to medical school, I was convinced I was going to be a psychiatrist. The rest of medicine really didn't interest me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Certainly surgery was not even on my radar at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Went into Yale from Southwestern High School in inner-city Detroit. That was a major culture shock, I must say. It was actually the first year that Yale admitted women, so there were a lot of changes going on on the campus. But it was the first time I'd seen real China and real silver and these beautiful paintings on the mahogany walls and Oriental rugs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It was a big change from what I was used to. And I was kind of enjoying it and having fun and really wasn't concentrating on my studies very much.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Oh yeah, yeah. She was, she was very proud. My brother had gone into the Navy and he subsequently came out of the Navy and went to University of Michigan, majored in engineering. And he ultimately started working in the aerospace industry. So he became the rocket scientist and I became the brain surgeon. But it all worked out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Yeah, it was a major change in my life. You know, I had a quick temper. I would get very angry. And when I got angry, I became irrational. I would just want to hurt people. I remember one time there was a a boy at school. I was in the third grade and we got in a fight and I hit him with a baseball bat and I got in a lot of trouble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I went home and I wanted to kill myself because I didn't want to face you know, the teachers and stuff back in school. And I remember my brother was there. I said, do you know where the rat poison is? And he said, why do you need rat poison? And I said, I need to kill myself. In third grade? And he said, you know, I know a much better way to kill yourself than rat poison. I said, yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
He said, yeah. What you do is you drink water until you burst. And that'll kill you. So I started drinking and drinking. And I just had to pee so much I forgot about killing myself. But I remember there was another time one of the neighbors had hit me with a A pebble, really. It didn't hurt at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I was just incensed that he would dare hit me, and I picked up a large rock, hurled it at him, broke his glasses, almost put his eye out. He had to get medical treatment. And... Another time I was in school, one of the boys tried to close my locker. I didn't want it closed. I struck him in the forehead with my fist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Unfortunately, he still had the lock in my hand, put a three-inch gash in his forehead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
He was bleeding all over the place. I almost got kicked out of school for that one. And then my mother was trying to get me to wear something I didn't want to wear. It picked up my hammer and went to hit her in the head with it. Unfortunately, my brother caught it from behind. Other than that, I was a pretty good kid. But you can see how that temper can get you in a lot of trouble.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
At age 14, another kid angered me and changed the channel that I was on. involved with him. I had a large camping knife. I tried to stab him in the abdomen. Wow. And fortunately, under his clothing, he had a large metal belt buckle and a knife blade struck it with such force that it broke. And he fled in terror.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But I was probably more horrified than he was because I realized at that moment how out of control I was. that I was trying to kill somebody over nothing. And I locked myself in the bathroom. And I just started contemplating my life. And I realized that with a temper like that, my options were jail, reform school, or the grave. None of those appealed to me. And I just...
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
started praying, I said, Lord, you've got to help me. I can't control my temper. I had read about behavioral modification in psychology today. But that's a very expensive proposition. We didn't have any money. And I said, Lord, you have to change me. There was a Bible, and I picked it up. And I turned to the book of Proverbs and started reading. And there were all these verses about anger.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Like Proverbs 19, 19, it says, there's no point getting an angry man out of trouble because he's just going to get right back into it. But there were encouraging verses like Proverbs 16, 32, mightier is the man who can control his temper than the man who can conquer a city. And there were also all these verses about fools, and they all seemed to fit the description of me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I stayed in that bathroom for three hours, praying and reading and contemplating. And during that time, it came to me that the reason that I was angry all the time is because I was selfish. Because it was always about me, me, my, and I. Somebody did this to me. They're in my space. I want this.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I said, if you learn how to take yourself out of the center of the equation and insert someone else, it will solve your problem. And it did. That was the last day I had an angry heartburst. Never had one since that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But it was because I realized that it was all about me. And to change that would make a huge difference in my life. So that was when I really found God that day. And I adopted him not only as my heavenly father, but as my earthly father, as the person to go to for everything. And it made a big difference in my life. I did have perhaps some unrealistic expectations.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Because one of the verses in the book of Proverbs, in the 10th chapter, it says, the expectations of the righteous shall come to be. So when it came time to me to apply to college, I only had enough money to apply to one college. But I wanted to go to Yale, so I applied to Yale as the only college.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I said, I'll get in because it says the expectation of the righteous, and I'm pretty righteous, so I said I should get in. And I did. Wow. So that's how I wound up there, but... Like I said, I was kind of overwhelmed with all the stuff going on there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think she kind of expected that I would.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Yeah, because she knew what a good student I was. I mean, I was getting A's and everything, had all these awards. So she said, why wouldn't you get an A? But I don't know that she fully understood the significance of that. But she was happy about it. But by the end of the first semester, I was in trouble. Because I was treating Yale like I treated Southwestern High School.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
At Southwestern High School, I didn't have to study. Or I could study in study hall and get an A on the test to next. I mean, it was just too easy. And I figured I could do that at Yale also. It wasn't working. And I was failing freshman chemistry. And you can't fail chemistry and get into medical school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
So I remember the night before the final exam, I just said, Lord, you know, all these years I thought I was going to be a doctor. And I thought you wanted me to be one, but if I fail chemistry, I'm not going to be a doctor. So would you actually show me what it is that you really want me to do? Or, alternatively and preferably, work a miracle?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Now, the chemistry professor had said, either because he was a very good guy or because he was very sadistic, He said, anybody who's failing the course, I will give you double credit on your final exam. So you could not only pass, you could actually get a good grade. And give you sort of that last hope before you get down. I think it was sadistic. But I was going to study all night. I took that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
thick stinko and pain chemistry book. I was going to go through the whole thing that night. Obviously that didn't work. I fell asleep and I dreamed I was in this auditorium. I was the only one there. There was a nebulous figure working out chemistry problems on the blackboard. And I awakened early that morning and that dream was so vivid. I went and I looked up everything that was in the dream.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
in the textbook and when i went to take the tests the next day i opened the book i heard the music from the twilight zone because i recognized the first problem as one of the ones i dreamed about are you serious absolutely and i turned the page and i recognized the next one and the next one and the next one i aced the exam because i'd just seen it the night before
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I just said, Lord, you'll never have to do this for me again. I will become a serious student. And I did. But then when I got to medical school, I had another problem because I did terribly on the first set of comprehensive exams to the point that my advisor, the person who was supposed to help me get through suggested that I drop out of medical school. Said, you're not cut out for medicine.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I was devastated. Since I was eight years old, I wanted to be a doctor. I finally get to medical school, and the person who's supposed to help me says, drop out. You can imagine the devastation. I went back to my apartment, and of course I prayed. I said, Lord, helped me to understand what I should do at this point. And I started thinking. I said, what kind of courses have you always struggled in?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, as everybody knows, cost of medical care is skyrocketing. It's much greater in this country than it is anywhere else in the world. And yet we don't have the best outcomes. We don't have the best longevity. So it makes you question the efficiency of our system. We spend $13,100 per capita per year in this country on health care.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I realized that I struggled in courses where I listened to a lot of boring lectures. Because I don't get anything out of boring lectures. Zero. Nothing. It's a waste of my time. And I was sitting in six hours worth of boring lectures every day. And what kind of courses do you do well? And I do well in courses where I do a lot of reading.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
So I made an executive decision to skip the boring lectures and to spend that time reading. The rest of medical school was a snap after that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And years later, when I was back at my medical school as the commencement speaker, I was looking for that counselor because I was going to tell him he wasn't cut out to be a counselor. But all of that, you know, helped me obviously in a very big way along my career. But I go back to thinking I was going to be a psychiatrist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Then I started listening to some of the lectures by the neurosurgeons and the incredible stuff that they were able to do with the brain and the spinal cord. And I was just so taken with it. And I started moving in that direction. That's what I want to do. Several people discouraged me. They said, that's not the right field for you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
At that time, there had been eight black neurosurgeons in the world. But, you know, the Lord does not distribute talent based on race. I continued to migrate in that direction. And that's how I ended up in neurosurgery. And I started out as an adult neurosurgeon, but I very soon started migrating toward pediatrics because I just love kids and the potential that exists in kids.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And also with kids, you can do things that you can't do in adults because of plasticity. The fact that all the neurons haven't decided what they want to do when they grow up yet. So you can do more radical things and it can still turn out okay. And, you know, the rest is history.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Things like hemispherectomies, where you take out half the brain to cure certain types of intractable seizures. The first one that I did was in 1985, a little girl from Denver. She said, I'm from Denverado. She was from Denver, Colorado. She was having up to 130 seizures every day. They had tried everything to stop them, even putting her into a pennebarbital coma for two weeks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But as soon as they lifted the common, the seizures started back up again. And the head of pediatric neurology at Hopkins is a much older fellow than myself. He said, would you consider doing a hemispherectomy? It's an operation that had really been first done by Walter Dandy in about 1930. And some others had tried it. And it was dramatically successful in stopping some of the seizure activity.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But the complication, the morbidity and the mortality was so high that it had fallen out of favor. So I read up on all the literature. I said, you know, a lot of these things that caused these people to die are things that we know how to deal with now that maybe they didn't know how to deal with in 1930 or 1940 or 1950.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And so maybe if we apply some of the modern techniques that we have, we can do this successfully. And that first operation on the little girl from Denver, was a spectacular success. She was very photogenic, as was her mother. It got a lot of attention. That brought in a lot of calls from other people from around the country who had children who had these intractable seizures.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Concierge practices, just to put that in perspective, cost generally $5,000 to $10,000. So it is really a problem. What do you need for good health care? A patient, a health care provider. That's all you need. Along came the middleman to facilitate the relationship. And now the middleman is the major entity controlling both of the other two. That's where all the money is going.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And we did several hemispherectomies. Got a lot of attention. That was probably my First 15 minutes of fame. You see, everybody gets 15 minutes of fame. That was my 15 minutes of fame. But then the next year, one of the obstetricians came to me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
34 years old, and one of the obstetricians said, Ben, I have this pregnant woman with twins, but one of the twins has a severe case of hydrocephalus, water on the brain, and the head is expanding so quickly it's going to cause her to go into premature labor, and both babies are going to be lost because their lungs are not mature enough to survive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And he said, do you think you could do an operation? By that time, I had sort of started developing a reputation as doing unusual things to save children. He said, do you think you could come up with an operation where you could operate on the hydrocephalic twin while it's still in the mother's womb? And I know you can't save that one, but we could save the other baby who's perfectly normal.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And there'd been a lot of talk about intrauterine surgery. New England Journal had an article about how it would be a very desirable thing, but that we weren't quite ready for that yet. But these babies needed it now. They couldn't wait until we were ready for it. So I contacted a neurosurgeon. in Philadelphia who'd been doing some experimental work on sheep with intrauterine surgery.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I said, Bob, do you think we could modify your technique and make it available for humans in a week? And we went to work on it. And we were ready to do it. But we couldn't do it at Hopkins. The ethics committee said, no, this is too far out. You just can't do this. So we went to one of the community hospitals and did it there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And could see the head of the hydrocephalic baby shrink right on the screen. and bought several more weeks of guest station. And when the babies were actually born, it was a big national news story. And everybody was saying, wow, this is incredible. But then there was a lot of criticism too. People saying we were ethically not ready to do something like this yet.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And some of the experts were critical. That is, until it became clear that not only was the normal baby okay, but the hydrocephalic baby was okay, too. And then they were saying, oh, I would have done that, too, under those circumstances. But that was my second 15 minutes of fame.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
The criticism was that this was too risky.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, I don't think they had a logical thing. They didn't have a logical alternative. Because I engaged in something I call the BWA, a best-worst analysis. In fact, I wrote a book called Take the Risk, which I explained the BWA to. But it involves four questions. What's the best thing that happens if I do this? What's the worst thing that happens if I do this?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
What's the best thing that happens if I don't do this? What's the worst thing that happens if I don't do this? And when you ask those four questions in this situation, there's only one option that works. You've got to do it. And I've asked those four questions about a lot of things during my neurosurgical career. And some people would say, Carson's a hot dog. He'll do anything. But it's not true.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It's done based on those four questions. And a lot of lives have been saved that perhaps would not have been saved by asking those questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
So what we need to do is have a system that takes us back to the healthcare provider and the patient. And we already actually have that. It's called health savings accounts. And, um, If you just modify that system a little bit, it will be very effective.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Yeah. Yeah, hemispherectomies are routinely done now. And at the time when I started doing them, they had completely fallen out of favor. I remember some medical students from Harvard called and they said, the professors here said that that we had misunderstood that you were not taking out half the brain to cure intractable seizures. I said, your professors are wrong.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We are doing... But it's done everywhere now, at virtually all children's hospitals. Some of the techniques have been improved upon and modified, as they are in all surgical procedures. But, yeah, that's... And intrauterine surgery is... done commonly in many pediatric hospitals now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Amazingly, I don't really care too much about criticism. I would only care about what God thinks. And even in my political career, when people have been critical, I don't really pay much attention to it. As long as God is not critical, I'm good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And when I say modify, allow, for instance, if a husband is having a procedure or something done and he's short $500, his wife can give it to him out of hers. or his brother or his cousin or his uncle or his aunt. And that way, every family becomes their own insurance company, interestingly enough.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It was a very interesting time in my life. I got very interested in conjoined twins just out of the blue. And I was saying, why is it that the, mortality rate is so high, why did they all die? And I concluded after much research that it was exsanguination or bleeding to death. And I said, you know, this is 1987. We should be able to keep people from bleeding to death. We must have some techniques.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I started thinking about it. You know, I talked to the chief of cardiothoracic surgery, who was a friend, and I said, Bruce, what do you guys do? You operate on little babies' hearts. How do you keep them from bleeding to death? And he told me about hypothermic arrest. You cool the body temperature, you pump all the blood out, stop the hearts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And you can operate for up to an hour before you have to restore the circulation without major damage to the brain. And I've started thinking, I said, what if when you got to the part of the separation where they all bleed to death, you put them on hypothermic arrest? And then you're able to get them separated and repair the vessels, pump the blood back in, start the heart up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And then I said, why am I thinking about this? I'm never going to see a set of twins like that. A few weeks later, there they were. And you know, the question was being asked of various surgical teams in different places around the world. Do you have a solution? because the parents didn't want to take the European solution, which was to choose which one should live and to sacrifice the other one.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I explained what I had been thinking. And everybody said, you know, that sounds like it might work. And we started. having some conferences on it, putting a team together. A few of us actually went over to Germany to examine the twins. And we came back and started doing practice sessions. where we would take two dowels and stick them together with Velcro and figure out what had to be done.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
The nurses designed special drapes that could be used so that when you pull the beds apart, the drapes would fall into place and maintain the sterility of the field. The head nurse in neuro became my psychiatrist. You know, I would lay down on the couch and close my eyes, and she would say, tell me what you need, tell me what instrument. And she'd put together all the packs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And it was really quite a team effort. You know, I got so much credit for doing it, but I couldn't have done it without all those people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
The surgical team itself was about 70 people. and 70 people 70 people and probably one of the the most interesting things is that uh the head of the department dr long uh who had always been a supporter of mine as a resident you know he would have these very prominent patients coming from all over the country all over the world and uh
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And you also modify it so that when a person dies, their health savings account can be given to one of their family members. So over the course of a generation or two, almost every family would have an enormous amount of power. And they would be able to control their own medical care that way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Anyone who didn't want me on their case, he would happily show them the door. I remember there was one guy, he said, I can't have a black person operating on me. And Dr. Long said, there's the door. He just didn't tolerate any of that kind of foolishness at all.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But as the head of the department, he could have had the right to have done the surgery with me as the assistant, but he insisted I be the primary surgeon and that he would assist.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
For most of it, part of the time the plastic surgeons were involved, but we did the lion's share. But a lot of people say, well, how can you stay awake that long? But you're not going to sleep. It's like being in the jungle with a hungry tiger. You're not going to sleep until you get out of there. But after the operation, I was sitting in my office with one of the other neurosurgeons.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We were discussing the case, and we both fell asleep in mid-sentence and woke up three hours later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We certainly did things that were non-traditional and that would not be what other people would do. That may be what she was talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We were both from Detroit, but we had to go to Yale to meet each other.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Yes. She was two years behind me. And I knew that she was a musician from a previous conversation. And the church that I was going to needed an organist. So I said, you know, would you like to come to our church and try out for organ? And she said, I haven't played for a while, but sure. And that didn't work out, but she started singing in the choir. And that fall at Thanksgiving,
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We both wanted to go back home for Thanksgiving, but neither of us had the money to go back home for Thanksgiving. But the school said, if you will recruit for them, they will pay the expenses of your going back home. So we were able to go back home on Yale's dime. uh, including their credit card.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
So we were able to go out and have dinner and lunch and, you know, we kind of discovered that we liked each other. And, um, when it was time to go back, you know, we had been out late that night and we had to drive all night to get the car back on time. It was a rental car.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
and fell asleep on Interstate 80 at Youngstown, Ohio, going 90 miles an hour, and awakened by the vibrations of the car as it was going off the road. And I whipped the wheel, and instead of the car going bouncing down the ravine, it just started spinning like a top. before you die, you see a video reel of your life. I did. And figured we were dead.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And also, they're going to be very interested in Uncle Joe who's smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. They're going to be hiding their cigarettes. That's a good point. That's a good point. That would save us an enormous amount of money. And the obvious question is, well, what about the people who are not employed, whose employer can't put money into their health savings account?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Car stopped on the lane next to the shoulder, and I could pull off just as an 18-wheeler came barreling through. And we just said to each other, I think the Lord just saved our lives. And he obviously did that for a reason. He's got something for us to do. And that was our first kiss, and that's when we started going together. And that was on November the 28th, 1972.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We celebrate the 28th of every month since then.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We might go out to dinner or have a special dinner or a special dessert or just acknowledge the fact that we're still alive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It's been about 600 months. Wow. People would have forgotten about us a long time ago.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We got married in July of 1975. Candy graduated in June of 75. We got married in July 75.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You know, I don't remember specifically. I mean, we always knew that we were going to get married. It's just, there wasn't really any other consideration.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Not as extreme as what I grew up in. You know, her mother was a school teacher. Her father had a problem with alcohol. Worked in a factory. So they were lower middle class. And her father died while she was in high school.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Yeah.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Oh, yeah. No, we would occasionally have interaction with him. The last time I saw him was at my wedding. But we didn't have a lot of contact with him. He refused to pay alimony. And my mother would take him to court and say he was going to pay, and then he never would. And she finally just gave up on it and just said, I'll just work three jobs.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Usually relatively brief, but I remember one time he took us to see a movie, that kind of thing. Never any prolonged interactions. But I wasn't angry with him. I just didn't for a number of years understand what the relationship was. I didn't know about his other family until some years after the divorce. My mother kind of shielded us from that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But even though as a child I prayed all the time that they would get back together, Later on in life, I understood why God never answered that prayer in the affirmative because he was involved with drugs and alcohol and women and things that would not have been a good influence on me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
What about them? Well, where does the money come from, that $13,100? It comes from the government. You just divert it and you wouldn't have to put as much into people's savings account. And it rolls over from year to year. So if you don't have any major thing done for several years, you've got a heck of a lot of money. And for many people, it would be the first time they ever owned anything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think it's different for different people. It's a matter of perspective. You know, one of the things my mother used to do is take us to the homes that she cleaned. And they were usually grand homes, beautiful neighborhoods. And then she'd bring us back to where we live and point out the drunk sitting on the corner with a bag drinking out like nobody knew what he was doing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And she would say, you have a choice. Would you rather live there where I work or on that corner drinking from a bag. And she always pointed out those contrasts and the fact that it's your choice. Nothing is written in stone that you have to go down one lane or the other. You get to make a choice. And understanding that, I think, made a huge difference for both myself and my brother.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
In fact, I always say, if everybody had my mother, I don't think we'd have any problems. And I think it's so important for children, no matter where they're born, no matter what their social circumstances, to see other perspectives. One of the things they do, for instance, in New Zealand,
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
which is sort of isolated out there in the ocean, is they require the children in their latter part of high school to go overseas somewhere to see other parts of the world and how people live. And the poorest people in the United States live much better than a lot of people in the world.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
My wife and I have been to 68 countries and we've lived overseas and we've seen a lot of stuff and it does make a big difference.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Australia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, when I was chief resident in neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins, we had the grand opening of the Neuroscience Center. And since Hopkins is like the modern birthplace of neurosurgery, all the bigwigs from around the world were there, including one of the bigwigs from Australia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And he took a liking to me and said, you should come to Australia to be our senior registrar at our major teaching hospital in Western Australia. And I said, Australia, you gotta be kidding me. I didn't say that out loud. But that's what I was thinking. And I kind of poo-pooed the idea. And it seemed like every time I turned around, There was somebody saying, good eye, mate. How you going?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And they learn how to manage money. They learn economics. It would make the medical system very transparent. It would have to be because people would want to know how much something costs. You're not going to keep using the system if you know it's coming out of your health savings account.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I just kept running into Australians everywhere. And it seemed like they were really nice people. And every time we turned the TV on, there was a special on about Australia. And I said to Candy, I think the Lord wants us to go to Australia. So she started doing some research. She discovered that they did have a whites-only policy
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But it was an unofficial policy, and it had officially been abolished in 1968. That was 1983. So we said, yeah, we're going to go to Australia. And off we went. Our friends were saying, you'll be back in three weeks. But little did they know, we only didn't have any more money. We couldn't come back. But the biggest problem was keeping up with all the dinner invitations. They love Americans.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But it turned out to be a God thing, because there were only four neurosurgical consultants in all of Western Australia. And once they discovered that I could operate, they left me largely in charge of things at the major teaching hospital, and they went out to the private hospitals. And I learned a lot from each one of them. There were things that they taught me that I had not learned at Hopkins.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But I was doing multiple major craniotomies every day. I got an enormous amount of experience doing complex cases. And when I came back to Hopkins, the position opened up for Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery. Normally, they would go out and get somebody with a lot of gray hair and a big resume. But Dr. Long said, well, Ben is only 33 years old, but he can do everything.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
So I became Chief of Pediatric Neurosurgery at a very young age. But I had been prepared for that by going to Australia.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We have done a lot of traveling.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
A combination. A combination of both.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
United States of America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Probably Australia. I enjoyed Australia a lot. We still have friends over there that we communicate with, and they've been over here to visit with us. But I also enjoyed South Africa. I've been there several times.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
separating twins. We separated a couple of sets of twins in South Africa.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, Elon Musk is an amazing person. And I think... Neuralink has some real potential. Obviously it's in its infancy right now. But of course any good thing we always find a way to pervert it also. So we obviously are going to have to be very careful with the way that we manipulate the human brain. It's the same thing with virtual reality and AI.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And your doctor is not going to say, let's just do another CAT scan to see how things are, unless he really wants one because it's coming out of your account. You're not going to let him do that. Why do you want to do another scan? And it's sort of like when you go to a hotel and you put your credit card down and the attendant says, you don't need that. All your expenses are taken care of.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Obviously, there are wonderful things that can be done with them. But anytime you have a new technology, people are going to try to use it in nefarious ways in order to enrich themselves. So we just have to be very careful.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Militarily, you could program people to be without a conscience and to act without a conscience and to become killing machines. I think that's a real possibility.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You would basically be able to control their emotions and tell them what to do. And they would do it without second thoughts about it. And they could be programmed to steal things, to do a whole bunch of things that people who are morally conscious would not do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You could create a lot of Mother Teresa's. and people who would just be programmed to do good things and to always be looking out for others. But you could also program people to become math wizards and very proficient at technical things. You know, I have mixed feelings about that kind of technology. Of course, I don't think we even understand the possibilities of what we can do.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But things like that, a lot of it will become more apparent as it's starting to be used.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I would prefer to see us spend more time cultivating the best of people by bringing them up the right way, having the right influences in their lives, bringing church and morality back, having a revival in our system, encouraging people to prepare themselves academically. creating the can-do attitude in America as opposed to the what can you do attitude.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Because I believe that the potential that exists in each human being is absolutely enormous if it's cultivated the correct way. I think anybody who has a normal brain can do almost anything. if that brain is programmed in the appropriate way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Oh, well, let me see the in-room dining menu as opposed to where's the nearest McDonald's. Has this been introduced anywhere? Not really. I've talked to Bobby Kennedy about it. He's very interested. He was receptive? He's very receptive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, there probably are some limitations, but they're nowhere near as low as we place them. And I think you can take a normal child, and I think you can make that person into a nuclear physicist. You just have to train them the right way. The brain has the capacity to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
No, I really haven't looked into that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
No, no. I suspect there's probably some interesting things going on there. But all they're doing is discovering some of the capacities, the hidden capacities of the brain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Because during those psychedelic experiences, some of the inhibitory forces that block things from happening are removed. and you begin to see and experience things that you might otherwise not. Some of which can be quite frightening and some of which can be very pleasant.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It doesn't really matter what I think about it. They're going to move forward. They can't resist. It's part of our, you know, they say curiosity kills the cat. Well, we got a lot of curiosity, and we're just going to keep moving forward with it. all of these interventions of the human brain because it's a vast unexplored territory.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It's the reason that I want to go into psychiatry and neurosurgery because the brain is one of the last frontiers. I had initially, I had toyed a little bit with the idea of becoming a cardiothoracic surgeon. I said, we know almost everything there is to know already about the heart. in the lungs. We know nothing about the brain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And as a medical student, I said, you could probably make significant contributions in neuro. It'd be hard to do that in cardiac.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, it's in the brain. It's in the human brain. It is not something that obviously we've been able to quantitate or understand completely. But it is clearly there. It's at a different level, I think, in human beings than it is in animals. And I think it's one of the mechanisms that allows us to communicate with God. Animals, I don't think, necessarily have the ability to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I don't think that we utilize our consciousness anywhere close to its capacity. I think a human brain that was functioning at capacity would be capable of things that are unimaginable to us. Do you think all consciousness is located inside the brain or do you think it... Yeah, I mean, I don't know how it emanates from the brain and how far it goes. But, you know, you've seen it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It would completely change our system and it would cost us a heck of a lot less money. And it would bring transparency to the system, which would bring its own set of improvements. Wow. I hope that happens. I hope it does too, you know, particularly with all the pressure that we have on the system with illegals who have come in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
People who have the ability to, if there was a fork on that table over there, cause it to move without actually touching it. They've somehow managed to do that. That's part of their stream of consciousness that has control of the environment. And it's something that we have very little understanding of. And there are people like J.S. Bach. Think about all the music that he was able to produce.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Incredible to be able to do a new mass or a new cantata in a matter of days. You think of somebody like George Frederick Handel, who produced The Messiah in three weeks. That's just incredible. How did they do that? It's hard to explain.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think the ability for it to change people's lives. The fact that you can take somebody who is moving in the wrong direction and they can undergo a conversion experience that makes them into a different person. But are they really a different person? They have the same arms and legs and the heart and lung.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But it's the brain, it's the mind that has changed them, that has made them into a different person. No other part of the body does that. That's why we spend so much time, my wife and I, trying to provide opportunities for children. That's why we created the Carson Scholars Fund. That's why we have the Little Patriots component of the American Cornerstone Institute.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Because we know that if you can positively affect the mind, the brain of a young person, you can change the trajectory of their life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, somebody told me that neurosurgeons die early. And I didn't believe it, so I wrote down the name of the last 10 neurosurgeons that I knew who died. And I calculated the average age of death, and it was 61. And I said, I'm going to retire when I turn 61 if I'm still alive.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, that same year I was asked to speak at the Presidential Prayer Breakfast as the keynote speaker, which I thought was very strange because I had spoken at the National Prayer Breakfast in 1997 when Bill Clinton was president. I didn't know anybody ever did it twice. But I did some research and found out that there was one person who had done it twice, and that was Billy Graham.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I said, that's pretty good company. So I agreed to do it. And after that speech, everybody was saying, you should run for president. I said, these people are crazy. Why would I do something like that? But I figured if I just ignored them, it would go away. But it didn't go away. Every place I went, there were people with placards, run, bend, run. I had over 500,000 petitions in my office.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I finally just said, Lord, you know I don't want to run for president. But if you really want me to, you have to give me all the things that a person who runs for president has. A Rolodex with all the important names, an organization, a lot of money. Next thing I knew, all those things were there. Our organization was raising more money than the RNC.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And it was a fascinating experience as I got out on the road, traveled to the smallest little hamlets in Tennessee or Alabama to the largest cities. I was impressed by the fact that most of the American populace has common sense. But I was disappointed that most of them did not have courage. Those people were not willing to stand up for what they believed in. They wanted to go along to get along.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
They didn't want to be canceled. And I realized that that was a problem for our country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
by talking to them, by asking them, why aren't you doing something about this? Because people realized that our country was moving in the wrong direction. But very few people were willing to do anything about it, to stand up for it. That's in the process of changing. We saw the manifestation of that in this last election. But it required a lot of people to be out there beating the bushes.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And that's why we were out there beating the bushes. And we'll continue to do so because we still have a ways to go. We're a heavily divided country. And we've lost a lot of our moral compass. You know, things like traditional marriage are not occurring anymore or are occurring late. We're not having children. In 1960, the average woman had 3.6 children. Now we're down to 1.6. That's a problem.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think so. Depends on how logic... Now, you know, there would be people who are very much entrenched in this system who make a lot of money out of this who would not be too happy about it, including some of the insurance companies, because they would see their source of enormous profits disappearing.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You know, in terms of traditional nuclear families, all you have to do is look at television for five minutes. Any new series that comes on before they introduce an alternative to the traditional nuclear family. The values, all of our values are being questioned. And people are being driven apart.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, we become irrelevant.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Hard to say. But probably pretty quickly. You see how much we've changed as a country just in the last 30 years? Things are going on now that no one would have imagined 30 years ago. And sometimes the country is hardly recognizable anymore. But I don't think that's the way that the majority of Americans want it to be.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And one of the things that we've been trying to do is get people to wake up, particularly people of faith. It doesn't have to be that we're denigrating marriage anymore. It doesn't have to be that we're mutilating little children and taking advantage of the fact that they're very suggestible and very curious and doing things to them that will ruin their lives forever.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Those things don't have to be. We don't have to have men playing in women's sports. All of these things are eroding our moral fabric. And that's exactly what those who want to fundamentally change us want. If you look at the congressional record from January the 10th, 1963, Congressman Herlong of Florida read into the congressional record the 45 goals of communism in America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And they included all of those things. Gaining control of the schools and the teacher unions so you can indoctrinate the kids. Gaining control of the media in Hollywood so you change the culture of America. Making sexual perversion normal, natural, and healthy. denigrating the role of the family, elevating the role of government. It's all in there.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And we need to understand that we're under attack and we have to fight back.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
There have been people who have been opposed to the American way and American values since the very beginning. The Europeans thought that we were crazy. They said, you can't run a nation on the will of the people. You have to have a monarch. You have to have a ruler. But in today's world, we have to contend with the factions that still believe that socialism and communism is a better way of life.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
That you give control of your life over to others who will guarantee that they will take care of you from the cradle to the grave. Even though it's never worked anywhere else, there are still those who push that and will continue to push it. And they've gained a lot of momentum You can see how a lot of the college students seem to be taking that as something that is good.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I don't think that they really understand what socialism and communism is. And they don't really understand how good they have it in this country. and what the opportunities are in this country for success.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But we have to continue to fight that fight and bring people to the point where they actually will look at the data, will look at what has happened historically, will look around them and see who really has their best interest in mind and who is utilizing them. And I think that's a fight that's worth engaging in.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Education. One of the things that You'll notice that the leftists in this country do is they shield people from information. You'll notice that the mainstream media did a very good job of keeping people away. from the knowledge of what was going on. I remember coming back from the airport and I asked the limo driver what his thoughts were about Hunter Biden's computer, his laptop.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It will be, but it's a concept that people can understand pretty easily.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
He didn't know anything about it because he listens to the wrong news sources. It was a complete shock to hear about that. And a lot of these children that you see on these campuses rallying for Hamas and against Israel, they don't know anything. They're shouting about the river to the sea. They don't know what river. They don't know what sea. They don't know what the whole conflict is all about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
They are manipulated because they're ignorant. And ignorance is bliss for the left because ignorant people are easy to manipulate.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
What about?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Man. It's not complicated. We've made it complicated because the more complex we can make it, the easier it is to deceive people and to continue scamming people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Mm-hmm. That has happened.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
No question about it. And that's the reason that my wife and I wrote our last book, The Perilous Fight, the attack on the American family, combating it. And we talk about the fact that parents have to take back that responsibility. You can't leave that to the rest of the world, including social media, or you will suffer the consequences of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You know, we only have one grandchild right now who's in adolescence. But she's wanting a cell phone and the parents are not giving her one. They say maybe a flip phone. But they fully recognize the deleterious effects of social media, which has other objectives rather than raising patriotic, successful individuals.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, the very best piece of advice would be to strengthen your relationship with God. You know, I don't want to preach, but I have a very strong faith in God. And he's answered so many of my requests, including a request for wisdom and direction when sometimes the way looks murky. Which way to go? He's never let me down.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But when you have that relationship with God, it automatically improves your relationship with other people, including your spouse and your children. And you begin to understand the responsibilities that you have, particularly as a role model, as a protector, as a provider.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, God tells you in the Bible, he says, you will find me when you seek me with all your heart. You've got to look for him. He's not going to force himself on you. But the word is there. There are other people there. But if you're looking earnestly for that relationship, you'll find it. There's no one-size-fits-all. You just have to know that you want it and to seek it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And I need to seek the bathroom once again.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Oh, dear, what do we have here?
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, my wife wasn't particularly enthusiastic at first until the grandchildren started coming along. And then she realized that we have to do this for their sake, for their future possibilities. And certainly you don't want your family to be adversely affected. And, you know, particularly one of my sons... is very entrepreneurial. We don't want his opportunities to be affected.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Better get them while you can.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But I think we all came to the understanding that we're working for the well-being of our country. And sometimes you have to sacrifice in order to do that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It didn't take very long once the grandchildren started popping out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, that really showed what kind of person he is because all the others gleefully walked by. And he came and stood by me and waited until the situation was rectified. He also was the only of the other candidates who complained to the media that they weren't asking me questions. Everybody else was glad they weren't asking me questions.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I don't know. I think maybe they were afraid to give me too much attention. Why? Because they knew that I had good answers. You know, they complained, they said, You don't know enough about foreign affairs. I did a one-hour press conference in South Carolina with all the major media. There were a lot of them there. Answered every single question. They never said a thing about it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think they were afraid that particularly a lot of the people that they count on... many of the minorities and disadvantaged people would identify with me and it would impact their base in a very negative way for them.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Grew up in Detroit and I thought my early life was kind of idyllic. We lived in one of those GI homes, 700 square feet, very small, about the size of my master bedroom now. But for me, it was ideal. There was a little lawn and, you know, we had a,
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, first of all, recognize that our nation was formed by the people. And that the government works for the people, not the other way around. And I think many people are starting to come to that understanding now. Many of these people that you just talked about who are running. It takes a lot of courage to do it. You have to be willing to sacrifice yourself and your family.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
There's no question about that. But the rewards are also great in that you bring the issues to the forefront, if you're a good politician. And you really work on behalf of the people fully recognizing that there are many people in the system who are not good people, who are doing things only to enhance their own position. to enhance their own wealth.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
It's no coincidence that many of the people who get into our government come in as people of moderate means and as multimillionaires. On the salary of a government worker, obviously there's some things going on there that aren't kosher. But to be on the other side of that, to actually represent the people is a great thing. And it's why we've been able to survive all of this time.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
As you remember, Ben Franklin, after the 1787 Constitutional Convention, was asked
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
sir what do we have here a monarchy or republic he said a republic if you can keep it the only way we can keep it is to have people who are willing to undergo that self-sacrifice and to make themselves truly the representatives of that which is good for the people you got involved well you didn't get involved you walked into the hud
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I got a lot of government experience very quickly. Because it was eight months before I had a deputy secretary. It was five months before I had any assistant secretaries. So every day was like drinking from the fire hydrant. And I didn't have a lot of buffer in between. So you had to learn stuff very, very quickly. And there were some people early on who were not the best people.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Let's just put it that way. But once we got our assistant secretaries and deputy secretary in place and surrounded ourselves with very confident and good people, we were able to move very rapidly. As I mentioned earlier, The fiscal situation was pretty bad when I got there. No audits for eight years.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
a family, my father, my mother, my brother and there was a school that was in walking distance and it all seemed okay until it fell apart when I was eight years old and my parents got divorced. Now I had noticed that my father wasn't around a lot but He was a factory worker and a part-time preacher. So, you know, he would hide behind the part-time preacher part.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And you always heard these horrible stories about the fiscal mismanagement at HUD and how money was missing and nobody knew where it was. You probably noticed that stopped about a year and a half into the Trump administration because we got it all straightened out. We were able to get Irv Dennis, who was a senior at Ernst & Young, senior partner. And he was reluctant at first, but...
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We bugged him until he finally agreed to come and to get the stuff under control. It made a huge difference once we were able to do that. And the real key for a secretary of any of the agencies is not necessarily to know everything, but it's to put people around you. who together know everything and to work closely with them and to be able to take information and to use it in an effective way.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
That's where wisdom comes. I'd rather have somebody who's very wise than somebody who's a know-it-all and is not wise.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, if you have a victor's mentality, it doesn't matter what happens to you, you'll rise to the top. you know, they can take everything away from you and you'll go from the C-suite to the street. But if you have a victor's mentality, you'll be right back up there before long.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
If you have a victim's mentality, I can dust you off and put a three-piece suit on you and put you in the C-street and you'll find your way back down. That's what I meant by that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, you know, as I mentioned before, I decided I wanted to retire at 61. I failed that retirement. But after the first Trump administration, I said, this time I'm really going to be the retire. But it wasn't many weeks later.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
After that election, seeing the direction that we were going in with the Biden administration, I said, I can't have any fun playing golf all day and cruising around the world and watching my country go down the tubes. So myself and some very talented people from HUD started the American Cornerstone Institute, which emphasizes the cornerstone principles that made us into a great country.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
You know, we didn't go from a bunch of ragtag militiamen to the pinnacle of the world by accident. It was because of what we believed in. And that was our faith, which teaches us how to relate to each other. Our Judeo-Christian values say, love your neighbor. Not cancel your neighbor if they have a different yard sign or you disagree with them, but love your neighbor.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
The second cornerstone being liberty, the freedom to live the life that you want to live, one way or the other, as long as it doesn't interfere with other people. And that liberty is what has attracted so many people from all over the world. and those who try to say that we're a horrible country, that we're racist systemically, that we don't treat people fairly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
If that were true, why would all these people be trying to get in here? Obviously, that's not true. And then the next cornerstone is community. You know, the ability to live together, to work together, to be happy together. That was one of the things that gave America a huge advantage and one of the reasons that we rose to the top so quickly.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And if we abandon that sense of community, we will sink just as rapidly. And then the fourth cornerstone, life. Honoring life from the womb to the tomb. And that means not only being pro-life and respecting what God has created, but also caring about those people on the street, many of whom are drug addicts. many of whom are mentally ill, can't take care of themselves.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We have a responsibility to deal with that, and it can't be just housing first. 90% of those people end up back on the street. It has to be also housing second. Why are they on the street? And housing third, fix it. You know, most of those drug addicts who are out there, if they could push a button and they wouldn't be a drug addict anymore, they'd wear that button out. But it's not that simple.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But it turned out he had another family. He had another family? He had another family. And that's why he wasn't around a lot. And that's what resulted in the divorce.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And we have to be willing to deal with that. We were, in fact, on the verge of a very exciting program in Los Angeles. I was working with Garcetti, who was the mayor, with Newsom, the governor, with several of the county executives to basically take care of the homelessness problem. And I think it would have worked. But just before we pulled the trigger, guess what happened? COVID.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Everything was off the table. But I do believe it is very possible for Democrats and Republicans to work together to solve these problems.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Basically, by using some of the government land. And in California at that time, there was a $200 million
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
billion dollar surplus they've squandered it now to provide some of the ancillary services particularly for the mentally ill i talked to the head of the american psychiatric society he said the vast majority of those people with regular counseling here and medications can become very functional And the same thing with the drug addicts.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But if you don't provide the ancillary services, it'll never happen. You just continue to accumulate more and more of those individuals. And the other thing that we would do is relax many of the regulations that prevent you from doing that.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
About anywhere from 40 to 60 percent are there because of mental illness or drug addiction.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
well consider the population that they have you know 30 plus million people you know that's 10 of our population so that's why they have the highest numbers i don't think there's anything special about california but other than the fact that they tolerate a lot of stuff. And they don't necessarily prosecute the people who distribute the drugs vigorously.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I don't know. I didn't know much about the other family. Still don't know much about them. But that resulted in the divorce.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I do a lot of lectures. We have a very significant social media presence. And that's primarily the way we get it out.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
All over the country. And I talk about it in many of the venues we go to. I'll talk about it tomorrow night in South Carolina. I'll talk about it next week in the places where we are doing things for Charlie Kirk's organization. I've been very impressed with the young people at the various universities with the Turning Point program. They're very interested in what we're talking about.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
people from lower-income neighborhoods are able to come to the talks.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
In many cases, yes. And then I have done a number of things that are on the Internet or on YouTube that they have access to.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Thank you. I'm delighted to be here. Thanks for having me.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I get a lot of letters and correspondence from people who are very grateful. And that's why we keep doing it. It would be much easier just to sit back and relax and put our feet up.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I would like for them to recognize that we are not enemies. W-A-N-E, Wayne, we are not enemies. Don't allow anybody to make you think that just because somebody disagrees with you that they're your enemy. Our strength in the past has come from the fact that we have learned to overcome our differences and work together. And if we can bring that sense back, our strength will be unlimited.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
They're in Detroit. I know one of the... women in the other family has told people that she's my half-sister. I've never met her. But that was devastating and we didn't have a place to live for a while. but some relatives in Boston took us in. One of my mother's older sisters and her husband.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, President Trump and I are still in communication. But I strongly feel that we need to move aside people who are older and push forward people who are younger. Because does it make a lot of sense for somebody who's probably not gonna be around in 20 years to be making policies that will impact people who will be here 20, 30, 40 years from now.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I think you can work very well in the background as an advisor and a consultant
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
We disseminate that. And sort of like yourself, what we're doing with American Cornerstone, with Carson Scholars, and various other endeavors, I think is very supportive of the administration. and what they're doing. So I still encourage people to go into government. One of the components of American Cornerstone is something we call the Executive Branch for America.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
And it's an online course that you can take that will teach you how the government works. all the ins and outs, how a bill becomes a bill, how finances are managed by the government, all the various intricacies. Why is that so important? Because if you go into government or you're one of the government staffers, it usually takes you a year to get acclimated to what's going on.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
by taking this online course free of charge, by the way, you can hit the ground running. And we need more conservatives in the federal government who actually know how things work.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
I'm enthusiastic. Seeing people... actually getting involved with trimming the fat. Those who are having the fat trimmed are screaming like wild pigs. But, you know, if we don't do this, we're going to go bankrupt. And the quality of everybody's life will suffer enormously if that's the case. Some people are able to see that and able to understand that, and some people are not.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
But I think we're making good progress.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Well, thank you for having me. Thank you for being a part of it.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Thank you.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Any place where we could find shelter. Any relatives or friends of my mother's.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Uh, just a matter of weeks before we found, before we found shelter in Boston. And, um.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Older. Two years older.
Shawn Ryan Show
#183 Dr. Ben Carson - Neuralink, God’s Hand in Neuroscience and Human Consciousness
Trying to find out where to be.