Shaka Senghor spent nearly two decades of his life in prison, but he felt trapped long before his sentence began. 

“In life there are massive doors that stand in the way of our personal freedom,” explains the New York Times bestselling author and lecturer. “These narratives that imprison us – sometimes it’s guilt, sometimes it’s grief, sometimes it’s sadness – they lock us into a space where we feel like our whole world has contracted in a way that doesn’t allow us to move about freely within and outside of ourselves.”

From a very young age, Senghor, who grew up in Detroit, suffered a barrage of trauma. His childhood friend was murdered, he was robbed at gunpoint, he was seduced into the crack cocaine trade, and at the age of 17 he was shot multiple times. 

These are just a few of the disturbing events that made him believe there were only two eventualities to the life he was locked into: an early grave or a prison cell. When he turned 19, he made a grave mistake that led him down the latter path. 

“I was at my house and a car pulled up,” he remembers. “An argument ensued and escalated and I turned to walk away. But I heard what I thought was a car door opening. I remember my body tensing up. I was triggered by my prior experience and I fired what turned out to be four fatal shots. I was subsequently arrested and sentenced to second degree murder. It had all finally come true…I was destined to be an incarcerated soul.”

But instead accepting his fate and giving up on himself, Senghor chose to spend his 19 years in prison (seven of which were spent in solitary confinement) focusing on a journey of self-improvement. He spent the time educating and bettering himself in a bid to finally unlock his inner freedom, despite being behind bars.

“I was incarcerated well before I was in prison and I was free before the gates of prison opened up and let me out,” he says. “I think back on that time and think about how lucky and fortunate I was to find the keys that helped me regain a sense of what it means to be free. It started with what I call my three personal miracles. The first one was books. I remember reading Malcolm X’s autobiography and understanding that this man used education as a tool to escape prison. So I embarked on a quest to read as many books as I could and I began to feel just an inkling that there was a possibility of a life beyond bars.”

This first step was a relatively easy one, but his second and third would be harder pills to swallow: learning about the man he killed and discovering that his son knew the truth of his imprisonment. 

“Five years into my sentence I received a letter from a woman named Nancy. She began to articulate to me the man whose life I was responsible for taking,” says Senghor. “In that letter Nancy handed me the second key and that key was forgiveness.

“A few years later I received the third key, which also came in the form of a letter. This time it was from my own child. He told me that his mother told him that I was in prison for murder. I remember my heart breaking into pieces and I realized in that moment that I owe my son a father he can be proud of.”

These epiphanies gave Senghor mental clarity and a sense of freedom he hadn’t felt in years, which he put to use by redefining the harsh world around him. “I began to reshape how I thought about that environment,” he says. “Instead of a solitary confinement cell it became a university, it became a creator’s den, it became a meditation room. There was nothing more liberating to me than being able to reimagine the most brutal of environments as something positive.”

Senghor was released from prison in 2010 and has gone on to make the most of his freedom by becoming a celebrated author with Writing My Wrongs, a book that explores the idea that the troubled narratives we find ourselves in do not define us. He’s also an inspirational speaker, delving into the topics of fatherhood, masculinity and the power of transformation, and has delivered lectures on these subjects at educational facilities across the United States.

Freedom also continues to be a subject of interest to Senghor, even on the outside. His last book, Letters to the Sons of Society: A Father’s Invitation to Love, Honesty, and Freedom, contains a series of letters to his sons that traces his journey as a Black man in America. These letters unpack the toxic areas of masculinity and success that led him down the wrong path as a child, and also act as a guide to fathers who don’t know how to communicate love and to boys who have been forced to grow up before their time.

“Freedom to me is gratitude,” he says when asked what that word really means to him. “Freedom to me is dancing for no reason at all, it’s laughing late into the night. But the greatest expression of freedom to me now is the ability to emote and to cry. Freedom is trusting that the moment you’re in is divine. That’s what I choose to believe.”

We interviewed Shaka Senghor for Perception Box Stories Untangled, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Shaka Senghor’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Shaka Senghor explains how he found inner peace after life in prison is featured on Big Think.

When Jay Pharoah started doing impressions at age 6, he viewed the hobby as a way to escape a difficult childhood. As he honed his skills, his talent turned into a tool to impress his peers – and ultimately, a springboard for a successful career in comedy. 

“I would say it was a comfort blanket when I was 16,” he tells us when we sit down for a chat with Big Think. “Because I wasn’t popular in school. And then all of a sudden, somebody told somebody that I did impressions. And then people would come and ask me to do it. So it was a way for me to make people like me because obviously the person that I was… I was just quiet. They didn’t like that, you know?”

Fitting in with his peers was a challenge for the 35-year-old comedian – but his home life was even harder. “Growing up, my father, who was going through many transitions, was tough on me,” he says. “I would get beat. Sometimes my mom would have to jump in and stop things from going too far.”

Pharoah eventually let go of the resentment he held against his father and offered forgiveness instead, refusing to let the pain of the past overshadow his growth. “It all makes you who you are,” he says. “Had it been less arduous, I probably wouldn’t have tried so hard to get out of the house in that situation. Maybe I wouldn’t have worked as much to get my own source of income.”

He and his father are tight now, and he even considers him one of his best friends. Their relationship reached a milestone in 2022 when Pharoah was performing a comedy show in Australia that went particularly well. 

“I was just in a different zone,” he says. “When I got off that stage, my dad came up to me and hugged me. He said, ‘I have never ever seen you like that. Watching the people’s reaction was just insane.’ And he had never said that to me until that day. He was proud.”

In addition to multiple stand-up tours, and various TV and movie roles, Pharoah’s talent led him to a six-year stint on Saturday Night Live, where he gained fame for expertly mimicking the likes of Chris Rock, Dave Chapelle, Barack Obama, and more. Now, with the benefit of hindsight, he’s able to look back on his upbringing with a new perspective.

“As a kid, the only thing that you really want to do is you just really want to fit in,” he says. “It’s not until you get older that you realize that standouts aren’t supposed to fit in. You’re not supposed to fit in. Why? Because you have a certain light that other people don’t have.” 

To wrap up the conversation, we ask Pharoah what advice he’d give his younger self. His response is vulnerable and earnest.

“If I could say anything to the teenage version of myself that didn’t have friends and wasn’t popular, I would just tell him to hang in there. I’d be like, ‘Dude, hang in there because it’s all gonna flip for you in a few years.”

Then he cracks a smile. “And you haven’t got any booty yet, but it’s okay because there’s a lot of that in the future!” 

We interviewed Jay Pharoah for Question Your Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Jay Pharoah’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Ali Gray

This video Comedian Jay Pharoah on fear, forgiveness, and not fitting in is featured on Big Think.

Emotions are a powerful force. They’re so powerful, in fact, that sometimes it’s hard to look past our own feelings and see what others are experiencing. 

To better understand this concept, we sat down with Kristen A. Lindquist, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Powerful emotions feel like irrefutable facts,” she says. “They wash over us, take over our bodies and change our perceptions. We call this ‘affective realism,’ where your emotional experiences feel like they are the truth of the world around you, when in reality the culture we live in shapes your emotions…and your emotions serve as a lens for interpreting the world around you.”

Generally speaking, humans are born with the basic hardware that helps the brain create emotions and form physical responses to them – including tears when we’re sad, smiles when we’re happy and a pounding heartbeat when we’re afraid. But not all of the body’s responses are consistent from person to person. 

“In the United States, which is a highly individualistic society, anger is about making yourself different from those around you,” Lindquist says. “It’s about showing that some sort of violation has occurred, setting a line in the sand and saying, ‘You did something wrong to me.’” She explains that these feelings lead to increased levels of stress and an increase in inflammation in the body, which can contribute to cardiovascular disease over time. 

However, that same increase in inflammation is not seen in Japan as a response to anger. “In Japan, anger is a signal that harmony in the group has been disrupted and it’s a signal to mend bonds. A different physiological response to the same exact emotional experience,” she says.

Another key difference lies in how different cultures react to external factors and life experiences. Death is a significant one to analyze. For example, dying is most likely to be a solemn affair in European countries like England where it’s rarely discussed in detail and almost seen as taboo. Whereas in Mexico they have a very colorful national holiday (Día de los Muertos) to celebrate death, and they discuss it openly from a young age. Some research suggests that children growing up in a society that embraces death might be less fearful or anxious about death compared to those who have been shielded from it. Sadness is still experienced in these communities, but there is a positive outlook present because death is not viewed as such a finality.

And it’s not just how we experience our own emotions that differs in juxtaposing cultures. There have been studies into how we perceive emotions in others that offer surprising results. Lindquist references one such experiment in which test subjects were shown a series of randomized facial expressions on computer-generated faces and asked to identify which emotions they were seeing. Participants from China noticed a movement of an eyebrow or a wrinkling of the lip that Western subjects did not see. Likewise, subjects from the United Kingdom identified facial muscle movements associated with an emotion like anger that were not perceived to be associated with that emotion by those from China. In short, she explains that “we are imposing our own cultural biases onto people’s facial muscle movements.”

On the surface, this disconnect in emotional analysis and processing can seem disconcerting. How often are we misinterpreting social interactions – or being misunderstood, ourselves? But Lindquist recognizes it’s this diverse way of thinking that makes our world such a fascinating place to live. 

“If you recognize that everybody’s psychology is a little bit distinct and that you are perhaps imposing your own bias onto things and have more of an open mind about trying to learn what somebody is feeling, instead of assuming, then there’s more avenues for connections across groups,” she says. “This diversity in perceptions could lead us to better answers about how it is that the world works. Understanding that people don’t have the same emotional mind as us could really open our eyes to how we are perceiving interactions in day-to-day life.”

We spoke to Kristen A. Lindquist for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. This series dives into the science behind our thought patterns. Watch Kristen A. Lindquist’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video In your feelings? Turns out, we all experience emotions differently is featured on Big Think.

When Jason Derulo broke his neck in 2012, he saw his career flash before his eyes. He had spent years building a name for himself in the music industry by winning the 2006 season finale of the TV show Showtime at the Apollo, writing songs for the likes of Diddy and Lil Wayne, and starting his own record label. But after he fell rehearsing acrobatics for a dance routine, he feared it would all come crashing down.

“I thought of giving up…I thought it would be my demise,” the 33-year-old singer says. The grueling seven-month recovery process challenged his resolve and left him questioning his self-worth. “I couldn’t tie my shoes. I couldn’t take a shower by myself. It was a really kind of a debilitating place to be in, as you can imagine.”

But he got through the darkness using positive self-talk and gradually building his mental and physical strength through daily routines, which resulted in him creating some of his biggest hits to date. “I wrote songs like ‘Marry Me’, ‘Talk Dirty’, ‘Other Side and ‘Wiggle’ during that time period. I was writing a lot of songs that were uplifting to kind of lift me out of the negative space that I was in.”

Jason eventually made a full physical recovery – and his career followed suit. He’s now sold more than 250 million singles and released his first book, Sing Your Name Out Loud, which shares his 15 rules for artists and creators to start their own path of success. And with more than 58 million TikTok followers, he’s clearly reached the level of global superstar – something his younger self would have never believed.

“The first time I felt insecure was when I was a kid,” he says. “I was like, ‘Why am I fat?’ Why do I have asthma? Why do I have acne? Why me?’ I felt like I was alone. The only thing that could get me out of that place was working towards not being in that place. I started studying about health and jogging with my siblings in dry cleaner bags… now I know what it takes to be the best version of myself.”

When Jason became a father in 2021, his perception of the world changed yet again – and he shifted his focus from himself to his son, Jason Jr.

“He is my world. Everything is for him,” he says. “I didn’t get enough time with my dad as he was always chasing a dream. I want to break the mold in that perspective. Yes, I’m chasing my own dream, but my son needs his time – and I need my time with my son.”

We interviewed Jason Derulo for Question Your Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and broaden horizons. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Jason’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Jason Derulo gets real about his darkest moments: “I thought of giving up.” is featured on Big Think.

For many superheroes, there was a cataclysmic event that changed the course of their lives. For example, Victor Stone was injured by an interdimensional portal, Hal Jordan received a power ring from a dying alien, and Bruce Wayne’s parents were killed in front of him. 

Jim Lee, the legendary comic book artist, and Chief Creative Officer for DC Comics, experienced a similarly significant moment in his life. But even though he doesn’t don a mask or a cape, it did change everything for him. “When I was 4 or 5 years old, I remember wandering the streets of Seoul,” he says. “I must’ve crossed the street at a bad time because this small truck came and hit me, and I went underneath. It’s something that could’ve potentially ended my life.”

Luckily, it did not. But neither did he develop super strength from the accident. Instead, he received something that many of us understand all too well: super-strict parents. “The accident affected my parents in terms of how they raised me and the things they were concerned about as I continued to grow,” he says. 

One of their key concerns was about his future career. They wanted him to be a doctor; he wanted to be a comic book artist. “I looked at medicine as sort of this very long escalator that you got on, and you rode it all the way to the top, and you got off,” he says. “And I just didn’t want to get on that ride.”

Growing pains

As Lee grew up, he found out that there was another reason for his parents’ sternness and obsession with him following a traditional career path. “My parents fled North Korea when they were very young,” he says. “They grew up in a very destructive, crazy time. Their dream was to come to a safer, better country and provide a better life for their kids. I wish they had told me this when I was a kid because I didn’t know that was the plan! I just knew they were very aggressive in terms of how they wanted me to find true success.”

Moving to America from South Korea was tough for Lee. He didn’t speak the language, he felt like an outsider at school, and a future he didn’t want had already been laid out for him. But he did find solace in the comic book world’s most famous alien. 

“Superman was an immigrant,” Lee says. “He’s the ultimate immigrant. The last immigrant from a dead planet. I think I instantly glommed onto that as something that brought me into American culture and provided sanctuary. I understood this idea of putting on eyeglasses and being a different person because I think that’s what I was doing when I was going to school. I had my American side, and then when I was home, I had my Korean side.”

Secret’s out

There’s only so long a hero can maintain their secret identity from those close to them. After Lee graduated from Princeton with a degree in psychology, he revealed his true self to his parents and shared his plan to push back his application to medical school in order to focus his energy on breaking into the comic publishing industry. Unsurprisingly, they were not thrilled. “It got very heated and emotional, and it ultimately resulted in me running out of the house,” he says. “My father ran after me and calmed me down. I think they understood the level of commitment I had towards this dream. They were very tough on me, but at the same time, I’m thankful for that because I don’t think I’d be the person I am today without that push.”

Lee told his parents that if he couldn’t succeed as an artist within a year, then he would apply to medical school, so he had to bunker down and put the hours in. There was just one small problem: he had no idea where to begin. “I’d never drawn a comic book before,” he says. “I got a small drafting table and set it up literally next to my bed. Every day, I would wake up, roll straight from bed into the chair and start drawing. I did that each and every day to the point where my knuckles got really sore. Drawing was a brutal sort of physical transformation, going from being a civilian to someone that was drawing up to ten hours hunched over a drafting table each and every day. But I proved to myself that I could do it.”

Incredibly, it only took four months out of his 12-month countdown for him to get noticed, which he did by showing his work off to editors at a comic book convention. This landed him his first job at Marvel in 1987, where he had the opportunity to put his own stamp on titles such as the Uncanny X-Men and The Punisher. To this day, he still holds the Guinness World Record for best-selling single edition comic (over 8 million copies) with X-Men #1 (1991), for which he was the penciler and co-writer.

Lee then went on to start his own company, WildStorm Productions, which he eventually sold to DC in 1998. He joined DC at the same time and went on to illustrate various iterations of Batman and Superman, working alongside successful writers such as Scott Snyder. Over two decades later, he’s now the President, Publisher, and Chief Creative Officer of DC Comics. Not too shabby for someone who’d never drawn a comic before pursuing their dream, right?

Breaking the cycle

Lee may not have always agreed with his parents when he was younger – but he always recognized that they had his best interest in mind.

“I don’t think I have mixed feelings about the way my parents raised me,” Lee says. “I have perspective now, being almost 59 and having nine kids of my own, I understand where they came from. I’m so thankful that my kids have a different life and that they don’t have to necessarily have that vision and how they perceive themselves. They can embrace who they truly are in all aspects of life because that was not the experience I had as a kid.”

That’s an incredible gift to give to your children. Perhaps Lee has a superpower, after all.

We interviewed Jim Lee for Perception Box Stories Untangled, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Jim Lee’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Comics, trauma and art: the origin story of Jim Lee is featured on Big Think.

Science is full of drama. One century we’re basing the treatment of ailments on the four humors, then over two thousand years later, we find out it’s actually microbes messing with our bodies. For Dr André Fenton, a professor of neural science at NYU, the evolving nature of science is a challenge he knows all too well.

In 2011 he and Todd Sacktor, professor of neurology at the SUNY Downstate Medical Center, came up with a theory that suggested a molecule called PKMzeta, altered neurons in the brain to form long-term memories. They came to this conclusion by observing the behavior of rats and mice. First, they let their test subjects loose in a small arena and let them discover that certain areas of the enclosure would deliver shocks to their bodies. They quickly learned to avoid those routes.

Then, they injected their subjects with genetic elements called ZIP that would block PKMzeta. After the injections were received, the rodents did not recall which routes shocked them, suggesting that their memories had been wiped and that PKMzeta played an important role in memory formation.

Concrete, right? Well, that’s where the drama kicks in. Some scientists questioned these findings and conducted their own experiments. Richard Huganir, the director of the department of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, created a group of genetically engineered mice that couldn’t produce PKMzeta at all. He and his colleagues found that these rodents could produce long-term memories without the presence of PKMzeta, contradicting Fenton and Sacktor’s theory. Furthermore, when they injected them with ZIP their memories were erased, suggesting another molecule could be responsible for making memories since PKMzeta wasn’t present.

End of drama? Not a chance. Despite these contradictory findings, Fenton and Sacktor continued their research and found that another molecule, PKC-iota-lambda (iota for short), was very similar to the structure of PKMzeta. But instead of originating in the brain, it’s found all over the body and is used by cells to move proteins. In their initial research, they did record that iota was present in the early stages of memory formation in rodents but that it quickly disappeared. Since their theory was being disputed, they dug further into iota and found that there were high levels present in the animals where PKMzeta was blocked.

Following this discovery, they gave the PKMzeta-depleted mice a dose of a chemical that stopped iota from forming and found that they couldn’t pass their memory tests. The theory was that iota continued to grow in the neurons due to the lack of PKMzeta, taking on the role of memory formation. They then tested these two molecules against each other and found that iota wasn’t nearly as strong as PKMzeta when it came to animals performing complex memory tasks.

It’s this in-depth work and innovative thinking that led us to interview Fenton about the precarious nature of memories in humans (whose brains share many similarities with other mammals). If you thought mice brains were complex, you might want to strap yourself in for what’s going on in your head.

“I can’t trust my memory,” says Fenton, who is especially interested in the hippocampus and how it controls the ways we choose relevant information to process. “When we experience the world, we are using our brains, and the brain is a self-organizing system. Through its own use, it gets modified, so we’re not simply reproducing what it is that we have experienced – we’re reconstructing. We are building a new experience, and we tend to build those experiences according to the stories that make sense to our minds.”

In the human brain, there are approximately 100 billion neurons, all with varying abilities to communicate with the neurons they are connected to. These connective synapses usually grow stronger through continued use and weaken when they’re used rarely. “The strengthening and the weakening of those synapses is an active biochemical process that makes those adjustments,” Fenton says. “And when those adjustments persist, that’s what we call memory.”

And when these memories continue across different categories of information, that’s what we call a mindset – something that Fenton explains is integral to how we engage with and remember our environment.

“Cognitive psychologists knew long ago that mindset was crucial to not only how we perceive the world, but how we remember things from the world,” he says. “We can all experience what would appear to be the same thing. Look down the street. Everyone will focus their attention on different aspects of what’s available for them to recollect. Naturally, we can have a different recording of these events. So when we retell these stories, we reconstruct those events from fragments of our memory and build stories around our mindset.”

So how do we find truth and honesty in a world where we all interpret events differently? Fenton advises we all accept our shortcomings and keep an open mind.

“Recognize that we all have a distorted perception and that later we will have a distorted understanding and recollection of the perception called memory,” he says. “If you fundamentally believe that, it demands you act in the world with a certain sense of humility and empathy for others. When new evidence or a new point of view appears, be ready to consider it.”

We spoke to André Fenton for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. This series dives into the science behind our thought patterns. Watch André Fenton’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Can you trust your memory? This neuroscientist isn’t so sure is featured on Big Think.

“I like to blow shit up,” Cindy Gallop says when we ask her to introduce herself. “I am the Michael Bay of business.” The 63-year-old entrepreneur is certainly no wallflower. And it’s her brazen self-confidence and fierce independence that spurred her to launch MakeLoveNotPorn, a social sextech platform designed to promote positive sexual behavior and values, in 2009.

It’s not easy to tap into her vulnerable side, but even someone as self-assured as Cindy has had moments of self-doubt and vacillation in her life. And it’s that journey of personal growth that has helped her develop a few key life lessons that she hopes to pass onto the world…

We can choose our own path

Growing up, Cindy was surrounded by cultural and societal norms, which suggested that the path to happiness was finding a partner and starting a family. “From an early age, there’s this pressure on women to find ‘the one’,” she recalls. “My father was British, my mother is Malaysian/Chinese. Very entrenched in them is the belief that for a woman to be happy, she must find a partner and have children.”

But in her early 30s, Cindy had an epiphany. She decided to live on her own terms without being bogged down by what others thought or expected of her. “The single best moment in my life was when I realized I don’t give a damn about what anybody else thinks,” she says.

We should all speak more openly about sex

We understand that sex can be awkward to speak about, as it’s seen as an incredibly personal and delicate matter. But having ‘the talk’ with your children could save them a lot of pain in the future. “The absence of open conversations around sexuality creates a space for insecurities,” Cindy says. She discovered a trend where unrestricted access to explicit porn content online is coupled with society’s hesitation to talk about sex. This, she notes, has inadvertently made porn a default source of sex education, often leading to misconceptions and negative feelings about sex. Cindy believes that embracing our sexual identities is crucial. “Understanding and accepting our sexual selves can influence our self-worth, relationships, and overall well-being,” she says. “When we’re comfortable with our sexuality, feelings of guilt and shame diminish.”

We need to promote balanced perspectives

If you were asked what your biggest hope for the world was, you might take a pause to contemplate your answer. Not Cindy. She’s unwavering in her wish for a future where diverse perspectives, regardless of gender, influence our world. “Women need not to give a damn what anybody else thinks of them in the workplace,” she says. “I want women as leaders, women living their lives as they choose to. We live in a patriarchal society, and so we do not have gender equality in this world anywhere. And I can see so clearly in my mind’s eye how different everything would be – in a way that would enormously benefit men, as well as everybody else – when women lead.”

We interviewed Cindy Gallop for Question Your Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and broaden horizons. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Cindy’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series.

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Meet the woman who wants to change the way you think about sex is featured on Big Think.

At first glance, Neal Brennan seems like the kind of guy who has his shit together. He’s funny, charming, and has enjoyed a 30-year career as a successful stand-up comedian, writer, and producer, working on everything from SNL to Netflix specials. But his journey through comedy hasn’t always been easy – and his confidence took a few hits along the way.

“The biggest lie I’ve ever told myself is that I wasn’t capable of existing or thriving on my own,” Neal reveals when we sit down with him in L.A. He shifts in his seat as he prepares to pull back the curtain. “Okay, back story…”

The 49-year-old comedian candidly explains how he found himself working on the door of a comedy club as a teenager, where he struck up a friendship with the one and only Dave Chappelle. They went on to collaborate on a handful of small comedy projects together that gained some traction (e.g. the 1998 stoner movie Half-Baked), but in 2003 came what would be the opportunity of a lifetime: co-writing Chappelle’s Show. It was an instant classic that blended cultural commentary with a comedy style that made you wheeze and wince, but it all fell apart when Chapelle retreated to South Africa for almost a decade to hide from the pressures of press coverage. As the brain can so cruelly do, Brennan told himself his success was only thanks to Chappelle and that he wouldn’t be able to cut it alone – a perception that nearly destroyed him.

To help battle the self-doubt, Neal says he kept a physical reminder of his talents and success.

“I had an index card in my pocket of funny things that I’d written or done, whether they were sketches on the show or lines or whatever – things that I’d done as a reminder that I had some worth. If I felt like I was drowning or sinking, I could look at this and call off the dogs in my mind.”

Thankfully, he powered through that low point and found continued success in the comedy world – including hosting multiple podcasts and creating a hit Netflix special, 3 Mics. He’s developed relationships with some of the most well-known faces in comedy along the way – but he’s still navigating what role they play in his life.

“Right now, I’m a bit on the fence about how much of life is a solo endeavor and how much is healthy to invest in people. I was spending a lot of time and energy on people who weren’t reciprocating. So now I’ve withdrawn from a bunch of them. I thought there’d be this hole where they were and there isn’t,” he says.

“You’ve got to tell on yourself.”

Neal Brennan

“There’s not a lot I can’t share. I knew from therapy, and I knew from 12-step groups, you’ve got to tell on yourself. So I didn’t mind saying in 3 Mics that I’m a star fucker because it’s probably the biggest character flaw I have. And I wanted to say it, so I’d stopped doing it.”

By the end of our interview, Neal has explored all angles of his past, generously reflecting on both success and trauma. He’s put his life experiences under a microscope for the world to see.

Seems like a daunting task for some – but Neal handles it like a pro: “I think questioning our perceptions and the stories we tell ourselves and each other makes it more bearable to be in your human experience.”

We interviewed Neal Brennan for Question Your Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Neal’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Comedian Neal Brennan shares how to quiet your inner critic is featured on Big Think.

Have you ever told a story to your friends, and someone who was there interrupts you to say that’s not how it happened? Annoying, right? Chances are they’re not just being rude, they have genuinely perceived the events differently.

“We’re all living inside of our own perception box,” explains Dr. Heather Berlin, neuroscientist, clinical psychologist, and Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Neuroscience at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York. “Physically speaking, each brain is unique. It’s slightly different, and it’s shaped throughout our lives based on our experiences. Only you know your own first-person subjective experience. I will never know it. And although we might have similarities, there’s these differences that create our own box that we perceive the world through.”

Blending her experience in neurology with cognitive behavioral therapies and mindfulness, here she explains in more detail how our brains create these one-of-a-kind viewpoints over time, as well as how we can rewire and shape them for the better.

Your emotions manipulate your experiences

How we feel has a substantial influence on the cognitive process, including memory-making, reasoning, problem-solving and perception. “What you’re conscious of at any moment can affect what you perceive,” reveals Heather. “If you’re in a negative headspace, you’re going to start perceiving more negative things in your environment. If you’re in a positive headspace, you’re going to perceive more positive things, even though the environment may be exactly the same.”

Even the slightest hint of melancholia can adjust your perception detrimentally. For example, one scientific study showed that people who listened to sad music thought hills were actually steeper than they were. But the heart doesn’t always have to rule over the mind. You just need to be aware of the power your emotions hold before heading off to a major life event full to the brim with rage. “You can choose to attend to positive thoughts and have them grow within you rather than focusing your attention on negative thoughts,” says Heather, who received her doctorate in neuroscience from the University of Oxford, Master of Public Health from Harvard University, and Masters in Psychology from the New School for Social Research. “Being mindful is your brain controlling what you’re attending to and also controlling what you’re taking in, as well as how you’re reacting to the world.”

Your brain can only process so much

Although our brains are capable of processing vast amounts of information (the average person can process as much as 74 gigabytes of data a day), it is simply impossible to absorb and store every single bit that’s thrown our way. It would just be too overwhelming to remember every last detail, especially when a lot of it is unnecessary. The downside to our brain giving us a break, though, is missing out on key chunks from this onslaught of information, which in turn can establish biases based on patterns we’ve seen in the past.

“It’s easier to categorize things, so we develop these schemas,” explains Heather. “But the problem is that even though, on average, something might be true, it doesn’t mean that it’s true for every case. Let’s say a bias is that women were homemakers and men were more likely to be in the workplace. If you then saw a picture of a woman and a man and were asked which one is working in the office, you would be more likely to say the man because of prior expectations.”

Not all schemas are bad, as they can help us understand how to operate in social situations and what behaviors to expect from certain people. But when subjected to negative ones over time, we can unconsciously turn them into a negative bias.

“There needs to be a balance between having a schema that helps us perceive things in the world and not making over assumptions,” says Heather. “I notice a lot of modern commercials for laundry detergent where the man is at home doing the housework, which I love because that is reprogramming the brain to counteract biases. If we can figure out ways to expand this box that we’re living in, then we are better able to connect with other perspectives.”

Your brain has the ability to adapt and overcome

None of us are trapped in our ways of thinking. However extreme a perception may be, there’s always a way to reset our thoughts for the better. “We’re all a work in progress until our very last breath and there’s always room for change,” explains Heather, whose therapy sessions for anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and impulse control disorders explore dynamic unconscious processes, and focus on helping people reach their full potential through deep exploration of their thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. “I’ve had people come to therapy in their 70s for the first time because they say they’ve been depressed their whole lives and don’t want to die without having experienced joy.”

Sadly, negative life events influence your perceptions more than the positive ones. But understanding, accepting and owning that negativity is all part of changing your point of view. “Life is full of pain and that’s part of the journey,” she says. “But being able to contextualize that and weave it into your narrative is something we can all do. Knowing that our perception and sense of self is an illusion, in the sense that it’s a construct of our brain, gives us an opportunity to have some control over how our brain perceives the world. That’s where the power lies.”

We spoke to Heather Berlin for The Science of Perception Box, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. This series dives into the science behind our thought patterns. Watch Berlin’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Can you trust your own brain? Neuroscientist Heather Berlin explains is featured on Big Think.

“Sometimes I look back and think, ‘Wow, you were a warrior to go through what you went through,’” legendary Ravens’ tackle Michael Oher tells us. And after hearing his painful yet inspirational life story, we have to agree. 

The 37-year-old football star grew up in the aptly named Hurt Village, a neighborhood in Memphis plagued by poverty, gangs, and drugs. It was his family’s addiction to crack cocaine that led to him wandering the streets with his brothers when he was just a toddler.

“I was homeless at 3 years old and in and out of foster care from 3 to 10,” Oher reveals. “I was on the streets alone. When you’re walking around hungry, you’re angry all the time and upset at the world because you can’t do anything about it. You’re thinking: How can I cure this pain that I have?”

But he didn’t let this challenging upbringing stop him from developing positive perceptions about what waited ahead for him. He vividly remembers watching Michael Jordan play on TV as a child, a god-like figure that would become his inspiration to make something of his life. 

“I saw the future,” he explains. “I saw where I could end up if I gave 100%. It was that point right there that helped propel me – and it was pivotal. I understood the difference between kids who put in the work to be Michael Jordan and the kids who weren’t willing to put in the hard work to be successful.”

But before he could start meaningfully putting in the work, he needed to separate himself from the people who held him back: his own family. “I was tired of not having a routine, tired of going from house to house and couch surfing and having to run from the authorities,” he says. “I understood that you had to separate yourself from the people who aren’t willing to sacrifice and go out and do the things you need to do…you can’t allow those things to hold you back. Getting rid of that attachment to my family was the most important thing I did. If I didn’t, I’d still be in the same situation.”

It worked. Oher went on to become a unanimous All-American, a Super Bowl champion, had a movie released that was based on his life (The Blind Side), and started the family he always wanted (he has four children with his long-term partner). 

“I understood that it was up to me to go out there and chase that dream,” he explains. “Even though I was living in a shack with no locks on the doors and no windows, I didn’t see it that way. Everyone was in a tough situation. I just got up, made the bed that I had, and cleaned the room up when there was nothing. That was me healing what was around me.”

Although he’s tried, Oher says he will never truly heal from his past trauma – and he wants young people going through similar situations to be aware of that reality. But he does have tried-and-tested advice on how you can stop from drowning in the pain that comes with it. 

“Keep your head down, go out, meet people halfway, and do what’s right,” he advises. “If you stay consistent and find discipline, you can go out and be successful. Action is everything.”

We spoke to Michael Oher for Perception Box Stories Untangled, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Watch Michael Oher’s full interview above, and visit Perception Box to see more in this series. 

Words: Jamie Carson

This video Michael Oher on what “The Blind Side” didn’t show is featured on Big Think.