Oct 15, 2026 · 42 min · 11 segments
What makes an experience extraordinary? Paul Zak has spent more than a decade answering that question in his lab, measuring what he calls the brain's "give a damn" signal and building a company…
Paul ZakGuest
Eric JorgensonHost
So is this the I know you're coming off your third book now, but I think it's particularly interesting sometimes to look at that original book and book idea.
Was that the motivation for your first book was to sort of translate your academic learnings into something that was accessible to a broader audience?
So the first book came out of kind of fundamental work I had done showing that this neurochemical oxytocin that most people have heard of, that was my original research.
It's a portfolio of findings that tell us something, in our case, something important about human nature, nature of good and evil.
And then in my lab, and maybe this is helpful for listeners, you know, we, for successful research programs, so we have a lot of research going, we do 15, 20 projects a year.
And because we do applied behavioral neuroscience work, we're really always focused on problem solving and not kind of just kind of deep issues on how a nerve cell works or something.
So is this the I know you're coming off your third book now, but I think it's particularly interesting sometimes to look at that original book and book idea.
Was that the motivation for your first book was to sort of translate your academic learnings into something that was accessible to a broader audience?
So the first book came out of kind of fundamental work I had done showing that this neurochemical oxytocin that most people have heard of, that was my original research.
It's a portfolio of findings that tell us something, in our case, something important about human nature, nature of good and evil.
And then in my lab, and maybe this is helpful for listeners, you know, we, for successful research programs, so we have a lot of research going, we do 15, 20 projects a year.
And because we do applied behavioral neuroscience work, we're really always focused on problem solving and not kind of just kind of deep issues on how a nerve cell works or something.
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