The Crackin' Backs Podcast

The Great Rewiring: How Technology Hijacks Our Minds

• Dr. Terry Weyman and Dr. Spencer Baron

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Are our smartphones silently rewiring our brains? In this compelling episode of the Crackin' Backs Podcast, we sit down with Matthew Mattera—retired Naval officer, mental health advocate, and author of Hope: My Journey of Love, Loss, and Faith .​

Matthew shares his personal journey through profound loss, including the tragic suicide of his daughter, and how these experiences propelled him into the fight against the mental health crisis. He introduces the concept of "The Great Rewiring," exploring how the advent of smartphones and social media has fundamentally altered our cognitive functions and emotional well-being.​

Key Takeaways:

  • Understand how constant digital engagement affects adolescent brain development and mental health.
  • Learn about the manipulation of our brain's reward system by social media platforms.
  • Discover strategies to reclaim your mental space and foster real-world connections.​

Resources:

Join us as we delve into the unseen impacts of our digital lives and explore paths to mental resilience and authentic connection.

We are two sports chiropractors, seeking knowledge from some of the best resources in the world of health. From our perspective, health is more than just “Crackin Backs” but a deep dive into physical, mental, and nutritional well-being philosophies.

Join us as we talk to some of the greatest minds and discover some of the most incredible gems you can use to maintain a higher level of health. Crackin Backs Podcast

Dr. Spencer Baron:

What if the greatest threat to our mental health isn't trauma or genetics, but the very devices in our hands today on the crack and backs podcast, we're joined by Matthew Matera, a military veteran suicide prevention advocate and author of hope, my journey of love, loss and faith. He calls it the great rewiring, a silent systemic shift in how our brains are being hijacked by technology, dopamine and digital overload. From birth of the iPhone to the rise of algorithmic addiction, we are pulling back the curtain on how our minds are being reshaped and how we can fight back. This isn't just a conversation. It is truly a wake up call. Mac Matera man, the last time you were on you stunned us with all sorts of great philosophy and understanding about mental health, and just to you know, emphasize your history, which is unimaginable, losing six family members to suicide, and how that tragedy reshaped your life and ultimately led you to becoming a therapist, which is fantastic transition but But Since then, something's been brewing in you, a bigger picture, an idea of what really is going on in our culture today, which affects millions, if not billions of people across the globe. And you brilliantly, actually, I will say that Dr Terry alerted me to a saying that you have the great we rewiring. The great rewiring. I think that is a fantastic segue into what we're going to talk about today. So let's start here with what. What was that moment or series of moments that made you realize that mental health crisis wasn't just about trauma or diagnosis, but something much deeper that's happening to all of us,

Matthew Mattera:

yeah? Well, first off, yeah. One it is great to see you guys again and reconnect and unpack these really deep topics here. So I appreciate the opportunity to once again rejoin you and Dr Terry. And full disclosure, I'm not a mental health professional full time. I don't do I don't practice in that space, but I kind of like the way you put it, it's it's amateur therapy and sharing this, sharing the story of what my family and I've been through in that journey. So the great rewiring really came about as a result of a lot of the introspection after the loss of Elizabeth. A matter of fact, next month, May 12, would be 10 years since Elizabeth passed away 10 years ago, and that has been a an opportunity for my wife and I to really recap and regroup. And over these last several weeks, it's been really interesting, a lot of resurfacing, some tears, and in all of that, me whole, holding her and she holding me and holding our family together as we think about what has transpired over the last 10 years. In that journey, over these last 10 years, I leveraged a lot of my professional military experience. When I was active duty, I worked in the world of cognitive warfare. So cognitive warfare, that's psychological operations, that's information operations. We call it the Battle of hearts and minds and before warfare plays out in what we call the the physical domain, kinetic operations, where people are shooting at each other, where we're launching missiles, we're going in and we're taking territory and suppressing the enemy through through active fire, the real warfare starts here, First through the battle of ideas and how the narratives are shaped and how perceptions are shaped. And as we know, we're living in a very supercharged time right now, ideologically supercharged, especially here in Western culture, and more specifically, in the United States. And so in that journey of unpacking this came across the concept of a great rewiring. I was looking back in 2019 I saw several articles that popped up. This is going back in 2019 before I wrote my first book. And I was wondering, why is this? Why have the statistics just increased with mental health crisis, and specifically suicide and suicidal ideation, self destruction, death, despair, hopelessness, etc. And two articles that popped up, one was from NPR, and one was from Rolling Stone magazine, and both of them had on the almost the exact same headline, and it was essentially suicide on the on the rise amongst youth and young adults. We don't know why. And then y'all went into the body of the article, and both articles had this pinpoint time, they said, over the last 15 or so years, since 2007 and then the article went on. So if me being a problem solver, being a senior strategist in the military at the time, I said, Well, there's there's the rub, there's the X Factor. What happened? In 2007 that has caused this dramatic increase, what I found was a paradigm shift that I've come to term as the great rewiring. 2007 was that tipping point in something was transpired in our culture, in our society, that up until that point, we didn't have this apparatus or this capability, and that's because this the smartphone was released in 2007 the iPhone became the first actionable, large mass deployed information, information power system that was able to basically turn on the fire hose for for informational power and influence on the hearts of mind, hearts and minds of society, with specific focus on how does it impacted developing minds youth and young adults. So it's the out there the iPhone. It didn't just change communication. It outsourced cognition. It hijacked neurochemistry, and it launched the first mass experiment in digital dependency. So collectively and everything that nests underneath that came to turn that as the as the great rewiring. I

Dr. Spencer Baron:

think that's brilliant. And I want to emphasize how you had referred to it as an outsourcing. You know, we've outsourced our our thought process. I mean, unfortunately, even for myself, sometimes if I forget something, I don't, I don't depend on my memory. I just pull up, you know, the iPhone. So if you don't use it, you lose it, right? So I think it's in 2007 I didn't even realize that that was when all that transition started to take place. So how have you seen this shift and in more detail, reshape some of the way we actually think and experience the world around us?

Matthew Mattera:

Yeah, so great question. So the if you, if you think back during COVID, when, when the a lot of students were placed in a in an isolation type of environment where they were doing virtual learning, to include even adults. We were doing we were operating in a virtual environment, and that triggered a cascade of negative effect, especially in our youth and adults. What happens is the human mind, when it when it's engaged in a in an in person type of encounter, whether, if you and I were sitting at the table right now, instead of doing this virtually, our mind understands this is a real world engagement. When the parts of our brain that light up correspond to to the understanding this is a real this is not a synthetic. This is not a manufacturer. This is an organic engagement. And so we have so there's other parts of our brain that that that are activated to have situational awareness of what's going on around us. I'm looking I'm looking at you. I'm having eye contact, vice versa. I'm reading visual cues. That's an in person engagement versus on a screen. The parts of our brain that are activated are the parts same parts of the brain that have to interpret art, something that's synthetic, something that the same parts of our brain that have to read, read words and then synthesize that to have meaning. And so you look at the cascade effect of what that had on our youth, our young adults in that COVID environment. I watched it with my with my second daughter, who's now 17, and at the time, it had a, I don't want to say debilitating effect, but it had a negative it had an erosive effect on her cognition and her mental health, because she wasn't having that real, real, tangible engagement. Was it have to do with the great rewiring. The great rewiring introduced in our culture in 2007 the capability to interface with the world around us, not in an in person engagement, but rather through these screens and filters that that activated the parts of our brain that view the same way we view art, the same way we view reading, the same way we view anything that's symbolic versus real world engagement. That's the first thing. The second thing is embedded in the smartphone devices we have these social media platforms. So platforms like Tiktok, Instagram and Facebook are built around reward systems. They're modeled after reward systems, after the slot machine. Variable rewards, each like, each comment and each alert trains the brain to crave stimulation and external validation. And these platforms, they hijack the brain's dopamine loops, and it creates a dependence, and so algorithms, they then trigger emotional arousal, envy, just to keep you scrolling. And it's not a passive technology, it's psychological warfare optimized for engagement and well being.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, on a previous we had a guest who was a functional neurologist, and he told us something that you were right on the cusp of bringing up. I mean, now you. You obviously are sharing visual stimulus, you know, the likes the you know the images and all that. And you started to allude to the slot machine and its euphoria and dopamine response. Our functional neurologists had mentioned something really fascinating, and that is, if you notice slot machines, the numbers and the symbols scroll upwards. And it's no mistake that or accident that when we scroll, it goes upwards, upward transitions or saccades of the eyes stimulate dopamine in the brain, whereas reading a book or something online. Reading something online, your eyes are moving laterally, laterally, and that actually stimulates serotonin, so, you know, and that's why we tend to fall asleep if we're reading something but reading a book, that's right. So between all that, you know, the the mental, emotional and the physical manifestations is, I mean, how do you you can't beat that, you know you, you have to go cold turkey. Any suggestions on what somebody should do in a situation like, yeah,

Matthew Mattera:

so, well, first off, with the with the youth and young adults, you think about this for a second. These are, these are informational power power systems. These are systems that have been deployed to, really intended for, for a mind that with a neuroplasticity is not so vulnerable. And neuroplasticity basically the old saying you can't teach an old dog new tricks, right? Because we have certain behaviors that get baked in the neural pathways. And again, full disclosure to the audience, I'm not a neuroscientist or or behavioral health professional, but I did work in the from a from a weaponization perspective, from an understanding, from a military power perspective, how the human mind and how these things can be mechanized and weaponized for for good or for evil, and so for for benevolent purposes or malevolent purposes. So in the case of neuroplasticity, and it goes to your point, adolescent brains are still wiring. They're still being programmed. There's still there's still pliable. If you ever leave if you remember Play Doh, I used to play with Play Doh back when I was a kid. And you first take it out of the container, it's soft and pliable. You leave it out, eventually dries up and the form stays. So likewise, the the at the child adolescent mind is at the are are pliable. They're still forming their reward systems. And so social media alter alters that trajectory, and it pushes that validating, validation, seeking behavior. It attention, fragility, and we have the introduction of anxiety disorders and so on and so forth. And to your point, the the way the human mind is wired, even with with the light that comes through your phone, the blue light of the event, the nanometers of the color spectrum. All that plays a part into the neurochemistry in the activity that's taken place. And between, you know, the six inches between your ears and so, you know, putting your phone down at night, putting it away, setting up, setting a hard break, okay, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna disconnect from the digital domain, I want to engage in a real conversation with my wife and kids. Old Fashioned lane is laying down with your kids before they go to bed, and let's do a bedtime story turn the page. All those things that we take for granted that we consider old fashioned are really, really homeopathic, organic type of mental health mechanisms that that we can apply, and then understanding that, okay, I'm not going to get into this doom scroll to 11 o'clock at night. Swipe, swipe, swipe, all these different controls. We have to understand that there's a reason why we've seen this cascade effect of of cognitive decline, mental health decline in our culture. And it really starts. You can really pinpoint it. Okay, 2007 is when this great rewiring took place in our culture. Now, where now this, this device, has turned into this leash that is dictating us rather rather than us dictating it. You know,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I liked how you use the term weaponized, because it's almost like these, these little devices, have become, you know, little weapons that anybody can use to get information into us, right? And and I also look at, we're so concerned about our kids because our kids are so rewiring and teens, and you'll see, you can't see teens just walk around without or even young adults, did? They always have their phones, and they'll be sitting in around amongst their friends, and they all look at their phones instead of looking at their friends who are sitting right in front of them. But I'm also seeing something that's just as bad, and that's our age. You know parents, you know, and you'll see these parents get so mad at their kids, and yet, when you're talking to the kid, you look over and they're looking at their phones. And so I. Had, I've seen parents that their screen time is 12 hours and the kid is six hours, you know, so and now you're seeing grandparents stuck to their phone. So we know that neuroplasticity is we still have neuroplasticity, even though our Play Doh may be getting a little stiff, it's still, we can still learn stuff. So it's not just a kid thing. It's a full epidemic across the country. I'm guilty. Spencer's guilty. We're all guilty. And so what do you think of what do you think about this weaponization? Because that's a great term. You know, anytime we can make the negative sound better than the positive, how? What's your thoughts on these apps and algorithms. And do you see a solution for balance?

Matthew Mattera:

Well, I call it weaponizing, and that's deliberate, deliberate. It's not just something that's a familiar part of my lexicon of vocabulary, because I'm a military background, but in my world, before I retired, I understood, in my colleagues were very, very hyper aware that we there are adversaries and actors out there that do not have our best interest in mind as an American society, and so they understand the reward system, they understand human psychology. They understand it far better than we do in a lot of ways. So there are state actors that see this not as a convenience, but as a primary weapon system to do this generational to introduce generational decline into into the United States, into the American public. Because from from the American public comes the American defense aperture. In other words, as a country, we're an all volunteer force. And so if we can, intellectually and cognitively and emotionally and through the value system, erode that stability, erode that foundation, maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but the next generation will be in a weaker posture. Their cognitive immune system, so to speak, will be compromised and then vulnerable to to to any manner of, any manner of adversarial type of activity. So to your point about calling it a weapon system, it is, it is our adversaries, our state actor adversaries, Most assuredly see the these technology systems as as weapon systems. They don't see it as something just to be able to connect your bank online and be able to make life more convenient, open your you know, you got your house, the whole the Internet of Things, where your whole house is connected, and you can just through the through your app. We see that through the aperture of convenience. They see it through the aperture of cognitive influence and and it's top of mind to them. It's not an oh, by the way, that is, that is the primary means, because American society, any society is founded on these pillars of influence. Pillars of influence include faith and family, economics, entertainment, civics and so on. And so the American system has been the huge pillar of influence. Within the American system, society has been the pillar of entertainment. And so we're the ones that invented fast food and introduced it to the rest of the world. And so our adversaries understand that, and they see this as as cognitive fast food. They see this as the cognitive drive through to introduce the fast food to do did, to do the if you've if harkening back to that old there's a movie series, a movie that came out a few years back, several years back, called, uh, Super Size Me, where the gentleman ate McDonald's. Right? Not to call out McDonald's, but ate McDonald's for like, 30 days did? He did his baseline on the front end, got his blood levels done, did a checkup with the doctor, and then everything was normal. And then 30 days later, he came back to the doctor, checked in, and his blood pressure was up, his sugars were up. Everything was everything was off the charts. And so think of this as cognitive fast food, the informational diet. Food is to the body what information is to the mind. And so that has been something that that, then again, our adversaries overseas and internally. There's the the opportunity. Well, I can make more money if I have, if I have an app that has, I can monetize it. And so there's so we're being attacked from from the outside to these informational power systems. And then likewise, we're, we're exploiting our and we're attacking ourselves with these informational power systems. So it's we're being we're confronting this from two sides. And so to answer your question, what can people do? Well, one is awareness, understand, okay, how do we get here in the first place? Kind of doing a tactical pause, withdraw and say, Okay, wait a minute, everybody. We all understand something has happened. We have, as a society, just gone down this great road of cognitive decline, mental health, resilience, relationships, so on and so forth. Why is that? And everybody knows. Man, something changed. What is that? And I think we can pin it back to 2007 that great rewiring, where we're as a society. To your point. Doctor, Terry, it's not just the it's not just the youth and young adults. I'm doing it. You're doing it. Our grandparents are doing it. We're all being we're all sipping from this, from this fire hose of dopamine reward, getting lost in this echo chamber of informational power through a screen and So short answer, unplug. You got to unplug. You have to understand that this is something that that is kids is convenient, but we have to be the master of this versus the slave of this, and understand that this is something that is convenient. It is something that allows us to have greater connection if we manage it right. The irony that we call social media social media, yet, as resulted in so much anti social behavior, it's, it's so clever to call it social media when it actually does the very opposite. Talk about a massive gas lighting we call something that creates anti social behavior, if used chronically social media, and that's all part of the psyop. It's a massive psychological operation that's, that has, that's inundated our culture. So unplug. And when I say unplug doesn't mean I'm not telling folks, hey, go to throw your phone in the in the dumpster and go buy a flip phone. What I'm saying is you have to have awareness, understand, okay, this is something that, if I'm not careful with, it, can become my master.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

You know Elon Musk, they had, I heard him in a talk several years ago, and he was developing the neuralink. And the interview was like, wait, you want to put a chip in someone's brain and and so they can operate. And originally, he was doing it to bypass spinal cord injuries and diseases and get people walking again. And they and the interview was like, shocked, you're going, Wait, you're gonna have a computer attached to you. They can tell you what to do, what you do. And Elon kind of chuckled, and he goes, you already do that. You're the difference is, yours is you're you. It's already attached you. You carry it around with you. It's in your pocket. You'd never leave without it. The only difference is, now I free up your hand, and when you and when you started thinking about it, that it's like everything that the neuralink that the guy was afraid of, was already happening. And the only thing that he wasn't focused on was the neural Link can bypass the area of death of a spinal cord and reactivate and get people to walk again. He goes. So Elon was focusing is, well, you've already been taken over by computer. I'm just trying to get people to walk again and not have muscular dystrophy and different, different diseases. I'm trying to fix the diseases. But what you're worried about, you're already doing it. You're already attached to a computer so it, you know, we don't think about that. We think, oh my god, the implant is terrible. But if you can't, if you're not, you're already implanted. It's just on the external side. How do we how do we unplug? Sounds easy, but they say it's harder to quit than smoking. What's some strategies you have?

Matthew Mattera:

So one is the awareness piece, and you're and just to amplify that, that talking point you made about how we where attaches, we have something more powerful than any television studio, any radio station or any newspaper, if anybody reads newspapers anymore, right? All of that right here in this pocket sized payload that we carry with us constantly, where it's wherever we go, it's plugged in. It's plugged into us cognitively, right? So when I was working my last job, it's kind of a way of answering your question here. So when I was working my last job, on active duty, and then also as a defense contractor for a short season, where we worked at was a facility. It was a sensitive facility. The information inside of it had to be protected. Could not be exposed to the outside. One of the control measures that were in place is everybody had to leave their smartphones either in their car or there were lockers outside the building. Let me, let me really unpack that, because I went fast here for because the facility had such sensitive information, delicate had to be protected. Control measures hard. Control measures were put in place to say, hey, you can have your phone but not in this space. You can have your your social media, but not here, because what takes place here has to be protected and shielded from all of that. If Imagine if we treated our mind and our pattern of life, our families, everything about us with that same compartmentalize and understand this is a sensitive facility. I have to protect what goes in it. I have to protect what I put take out of it. I have to guard it. And I have to have real hard stops, visible hard stops. So sometimes to to do the unplug is you have to first off, recognize, is there an issue? And this is the whole point of this conversation. Yeah, there's an issue. There's a real there's a massive societal issue right now that's cascaded across generations. Now that we recognize what the issue is, we kind of unpacked a little bit how we got here and how it works, and why the issue was an issue. Now that we what do we do about it? Do we keep talking about. And return back to the to the cognitive cocaine, or do we say, oh, there's a, there's a I need to put a hard stop. I need to be able to put a heartbreak. And that's where self leadership is going to have to come in. And then that from that self leadership that's going to have to exude out to if, whether you're a single person and you're leading yourself, or you're a family person that's lead that you're a mother, a father, a leader in a family, exerting that leadership outward into family and potentially having to reset your digital pattern of life. And that means having boundaries. You know, we talk about having boundaries all the time when it comes to relationships, right? When we have a friend or a family member that we that we love and care about daily but there's some things going on their life that could potentially be toxic if we bleed into our lives, if we if we're in too close proximity. Likewise, the relationship with this needs to be treated the same exact way that it's useful. I enjoy it. It gives me an ease of maneuvering through my daily life, through banking and connecting and all that stuff, right? I can make phone calls with it. I could take pictures real time and capture moments. But I have to understand that if I let this thing in mesh with me and become so close where it's now dominant because it because it can, it can, it can, exerts dominance in, in Can, can inflict itself upon us very easily if we're not always top of mind understanding that this thing is powerful if we don't have those hard, hard boundaries. So cutting that off really comes down to self leadership awareness, and then self leadership. Like, okay, now that I know, what am I going to do about it? And that's having hard boundaries and hard breaks, like, okay, putting this away, and whether that's at dinner, not having phones at the dinner table. I mean, we all talk about it, but do we actually do it? And we talk about it because we think to ourselves, well, it's rude to be on your phone while you're at the dinner table. This goes beyond just just good etiquette. This has to do with our mental health and the cascade effect it's had on our and our culture, youth and young and old alike. And so putting the phone away at the dinner table, putting the phone away before bedtime, reconnecting organically, having real person to person engagement, understanding that social media is may say social, but it's social in name only because it has a propensity to dominate, because it ease it activates those dopamine those same dopamine loops that a drug addiction would activate, are the same dopamine loops in trigger mechanisms that the social media activates. Now what I'm not saying get off of social media. I have to use it. You guys have to use it, because it's a good opportunity for marketing and raising awareness and sharing information and broadcast as an information radiator. But at the same time, we have to be very cognizant and aware and have that self awareness be like, All right, I'm finding myself, wait a minute. I'm taking too I'm spending too much time on this, or, more importantly, as I'm reading this, what are the things that I'm feeling? Is it soliciting positive feelings about myself, or am I finding myself now becoming enamored with another person's life, and I'm looking at them like, man, they have it better than I do because on social media. Fact of the matter is, all these influencers on social media, when they do, whether they're doing a makeup tutorial, whether doing tutorial about their new car they've got, or whatever the case may be, they're they're giving you a 15 to 22nd snapshot of a curated, perfected portion of their life. And so those are all those different things that we have to get a lot smarter about this in order to become the master of it. We have to realize, hey, wait a minute, we've adopted this with Fast and Furious, uh, enthusiasm. Well, then without understanding, hey, wait a minute, where are the seat belts? Where's the speed limit sign? This is great. This is cool that we have smartphones and social media, but it's become our master rather than becoming a tool.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Spence. I got one more thing to add on that a lot of time we hear both from adults and kids, I'm bored. You see people when they're on the train or at the airport or sitting around, and they do it because they're bored when you when we all grew up, we didn't have it, so we had to find other ways to occupy our brain. What some strategies you have as a strategist, as a military intelligence officer, to help combat this and give parents, give kids something they can grab onto when they're bored, that they can try to try and break this, unplug and help their kids. This is all about mental health, and if we're bored, we're going to be bored 23 hours out of 24 you know, because we got nothing else going on. So can you give me some practical strategies that somebody can do, including myself, that to help break this barrier, not running to my phone to see if I got an email or a text or somebody wants to buy something on marketplace, you know, something. Can you give us some strategies that we can just. Do that help? I'm playing,

Matthew Mattera:

yeah. I'll give, yeah, absolutely. I'll give you an anecdote from my personal life. So my son is seven years old, and he's at that prime age where he's they are digital natives. Now, at this point, they were born into it. You and I remember when, the when the when the first cell phone came about, and it was, like, this big with a briefcase and, like, a long antenna.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

I still have it.

Matthew Mattera:

I remember. I remember seeing TV all the rich people had them, right, but so, but these, but this generation now is digital native. So talking about the anecdote. So my son, digital native, grew up with this stuff, and he likes to use his mom's tablet. My wife, Erica, she's got a tablet. Got the Big Apple tablet, things huge. And he likes to play his games, right? And he plays like, you know, Army games on it, plays Tetris, all this cool stuff, all fine and dandy. But what I notice is, if he's engaging with these through it, and it's all through a screen, it's all flat screen, he's moving these images around to accomplish an objective. And I found that when he's on that for too long, his attention span to real, real tactical engagement and tasks end up becoming deteriorated. And so it would cascade into school. I was like, you know, teacher, hey, you know your son is, he's kind of drifting off a little bit. We have these things. We have we have something tangible, you know, crayon, pencil. I have to take this tactile object, put in another tactile object, tangible, and then accomplish a task, not on a screen, but actually physically make a mark or whatever they can move the block from point A to point B. So what I did was, I said, here's what we do. I leveraged that, you know, that cognitive warfare piece that I did for, you know, 23 years, you know, this is, this is, I'm gonna scale a tactic from a from a large from the battlefield, and I'll scale that tactic down to my family. You know what I did? And it's gonna sound really silly and over simple. I bought him a box of Legos. I said, Let's do this. Let's build this together. Let's put it the kids obsessed with Legos. Now, what did he want for Christmas? He didn't want electronic. Didn't want to didn't want it said, Hey, Dad, I want this Lego, this Lego, this Lego. Speaking of Star Wars Legos, right now, right? And so he's building them his his sister, who's 17, she's into it, and she's building them to Christmas morning. I think I bought him one video game of Christmas morning. He didn't play that thing until, like, three days later, because he was so into the building, the Legos. So to kind of a long way of answering your question, we have to get back to tactile engagement, real world, physical my fingers have to touch a physical object, move it from point A to point B and build something or accomplish something. And the same thing goes to what Dr Spencer, Dr Barron, was talking about a book, right? Bring a book in the plane. Get back to get back to these, these, these old school habits that we have before this great rewiring took place, all those things. Let's resurrect those. Let's bring those back. Let's get back to playing outside. Go get some sunshine. Go get some vitamin D. It's all it's good for your cognitive domain. It's good for your mental health. Draw some pictures with your kids. Get your kids some coloring books. Get them some Legos, but take them outside and, you know, go for a walk, real world type of stuff that is going to rewire the rewiring. So the nice thing about the cool thing about rewiring, is that that tells you, oh, I can rewire it back to default. I can, I can always go back and put it back to the default operating system that our Creator imbued in us. But it's a matter of us season the initiative, recognizing that, recognize that there's an issue. How did we get here? Why is it happening? And now I know how to return back to default. Cognitive health mech, tools and mechanisms I can utilize to ensure that I always maintain that good, positive, default baseline.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Well, I think you'll be happy to know that, and this is probably one of the more overlooked and elementary perspectives, but I just read this morning that they're going to have a mandatory education back to learning how to write cursive penmanship. Wow, I did not realize that that was the lost art. They don't even teach that in school. They don't teach cursive writing in school anymore. Well, at least in Florida, that that's that is actually been proposed and is going to be mandated, mandate something simple as cursive penmanship, you know. So I want to ask you about, you know, the A this young generation's understanding of reality and truth. And I will say that, fortunately, you know, my Instagram, the algorithm, has provided me with two very special things, which I, I know we've been talking about all the negative aspects. But then there's the, you know, I my algorithm brings up a lot of funny things that I want to look at that. I will look at before bed so I laugh before I go to bed. Secondly is true, educational things, educational things that I can implement into a relationship, relationship with patients, relationship with significant others, family, and those are really good. But how do you how does one discern reality from truth, especially in a in this generation where you hear things that I'll hear something from, from, from, from one of my patients I go, Do you actually believe that you know that kind of

Matthew Mattera:

thing? Yeah, you know there's so there's disinformation and misinformation. And disinformation is something that is a word that's relatively new to to our modern lexicon. Disinformation comes from a Soviet word, a Russian word, disinformencia, and I'm probably may not be pronouncing that correctly, but it was coined by the infamous Joseph Stalin and he, he coined that as a way to try to take information that seemingly disparate points that putting together to make a new narrative, in order to in order to malevolently steer the target audience. Another way to put that is this, a fraud is a lie. A fraud is a lie wearing the skin of the truth. And so when we hear the term, we especially in our modern information environment today, we have the 24 hour news cycle. We have more 24 hour news outlets than here on your head. And we have the social media, which is just a more powerful, even more popular way of get people getting what they consider news. And so as a result, we have these two words disinformation and misinformation. Misinformation would be it is not necessarily a nefarious intent behind it. I just told you, Hey, be here at 11 and when I really meant 12, and we mixed up our times. I'm misinformed. There's not necessarily something that I'm trying to intentionally steer you and target you, to move you away from from from a, from a, from a desired effect. Versus disinformation is very intentional, strategically, surgically precise bits and pieces. It is the fraud which is the A LIE wearing the skin of the truth. What does it have to do with the actual truth? So in our modern information environment today, we were digitally connected. We have this fire hose of information just coming at us all the time through some type of screen, whereas the screen on the wall with a screen in our hand, and we put on the label of news, news triggers this, this Lagos, part of us as pathos, ethos and largos, pathos meaning empathy, emotional sense, right? That's the that's the funny puppy videos, right? Or you see the videos at at the during the holiday season, where you have the local animal shelter putting up all the animals and pictures of the animals looking sorry in their cages, and it's a hey, please donate now. It's triggering that emotional side of it, right? There's that ethos piece of it. There's your your logos, which is logic, right? So doctor in a white coat telling you, hey, take this three times a day. You're going to feel better. You trust it because, well, there's a guy, he's wearing a doctor's lab coat. It triggers that. And Pathos is that, that that, that connection where, you know, point A, A, B, C, and so I think that when it comes to the the the truth, we hear this a lot, well, this is my truth. I feel this way about that we're confusing Truth Act, you know, objective reality versus how I feel about something. And that has become a coin phrase. Well, my truth tells me that x, y and z, that's that, that's a that's a subconscious way of an individual. Rather than reconcile with reality, they'd rather curate themselves into an echo chamber of what makes them feel good because they haven't that they've either been it their informational diet has become so polluted with so much informational toxins, the misinformation, the disinformation, what we see in our screens, 24/7, that they they they really end up putting more gravity and more value and what they feel about something, rather than when the reality of something and there is objective truth. If I jump off a building that's 40 feet tall, the law of gravity is not going to feel that I could feel like I can fly all day. Law gravity is going to going to reconcile me. We're pretty fast that no, you can't fly, no matter what your personal truth may tell you, there's truth, objective truth, and there's just what you feel about something. And unfortunately, because of this great rewiring our because it, because it leverages that dopamine, emotional aspect of it, it curates that, it feeds that part of our human, human experience so much that then now we put. Much gravity around how we feel about something, my truth versus objective reality. And that's going to be, that's that, that's that's another reason, 125 why to institute the great unplugging in the great rewiring of the rewiring.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Matt, based on your military experience, I think you'll be able to understand that the fascination with some of these games, the Grand Theft Auto and things like that, the other aggressive military games, where killing someone and coming back to life, or being killed or shot at and coming back to life is probably one of the most critically negative reinforcements that I'm wondering. I mean, based on your history in the military, and you know, you've become somewhat desensitized to someone's life. Are we? Are we seeing? I mean, how do people realize how detrimental, yeah, those games are becoming

Matthew Mattera:

that that's a powerful question. Dr Barron, and it's funny mention that, because about two days ago, I was on my phone and I saw our so if you go on Instagram or any social media platform, there'll be ads from time to time, right? And I have, I have some games on my phone that I'll play, either just to occupy a little bit of time between reading or doing whatever. And so this ad came up, and it was an ad for a game where the where you could download it and you could be an actor in the game that that is basically, for all intents and purposes, engaging in lawless behavior, looting, rioting, whatever the case may be. And so you're the so the protagonist is the lawless one, and the antagonist is the law enforcement. So I can see the little character on the screen is it was demoing it, right? And it's the guy's got a got a face mask on, got a hoodie on, got a backpack on. He's going after law enforcement. There's a squad there's a set of squad cars, and he shooting the squad cars, and him and his little group could go in and pillage different local, local businesses, right? And the tar. I'm not the target audience for this stuff, but when I read, when I saw that come up on my screen, my alarms are going off of my cognitive warfare space, being working, being a cognitive warfare. Professional about culture because, because remember cognitive warfare, the target audience number one is the individuals. Individuals make up families. Families make up communities. Communities make up countries, right? And countries collectively as a culture or society. And so to you to answer your question shortly, is that there's there is nothing healthy or beneficial about anything that glorifies and glamorizes behaviors, that that that are gratuitous violence, that are lawless behavior, that are anti social behavior. And what we've seen through this modern through this modern, modern digital age, through the video game platforms, through the social media platforms, etc, that we have come to look at this, this lawless behavior, and almost glamorize that as Robin Hood. We put a Robin Hood type of, oh well, those are the good guys and law and order. Those are the bad guys cultural norms and structure and discipline, that's the bad we need to be reckless and wild and inflict inflict lawlessness and reckless behavior around the rest of society, because I'm going to do it. What's what works best for me, right? And so it's it appeals to that base desire of selfishness, appeals that base desire of of greed and materialism, all these different things. And I think that I'll tell you what Grand Theft Auto I when I was a kid, when I was younger, I remember seeing folks play, I'd be like, That is That is terrible. That was a horrible thing to me. It to me. It's just as bad as the the music platforms, music that we hear that glorifies drug drug abuse, alcoholism, sexual promiscuity, materialism. And then we wonder why we have all this, all this garbage in our culture right now, because our information environment, our information this, all ties to informational diet, our informational diet in Western culture since the advent of the of radio, music, television, now, social media and smartphones, all of that's the information environment. Food is the body. What information is the mind? And collectively, our informational diet, we've been pulling up to the trough of all the stuff that we should not be doing, everything that that causes a society to crumble is the very is inside that trough. We've been pulling up to that trough and just eating it. And then we wonder why we're having so much, so many issues in our culture, that stuff is terrible. I'm in, I'm in violent agreement with you that that that's the last thing anybody should be engaging in,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Matt, I think, you know, if you goose about the irony, you brought up what I was, you know, leading to the irony behind how much protest there is against. Yeah. I mean, I hate to pick on rap music, but that is probably one of the, one of the genres that is most filled with the decadence, you know, the drugging, the domestic violence, the killing of cops that you know, on and on. And I gotta tell you, some of that music has great beat. It fires me up. I'm listening to it in the gym. I'm singing, I'm singing the words, not realizing I'm on autopilot. I

Unknown:

go, What

Dr. Spencer Baron:

the hell am I singing? I'm talking about. And you can't help but your brain, you're getting brainwashed. You

Matthew Mattera:

are and we and we, the power of the human mind is, you know, this values is, here's an axiom, part of a cognitive warfare action that I utilize in my work, values plus belief multiplied by attitudes equal behavior. In other words, so your values are your are the base layer, your values of family life, sanctity of life. You know, another human being is precious and special, created in the image of God, not to get all preachy, but, you know, my that's what my faith value tells me. But human beings are special and sacred. Values of I'm going to steward what I've been trusted with. Meaning, you know, this is my house. I'm going to cut the grass. Those are values, right? Work, value, ethics, values. That's the base layer. Then what we believe, right? So our belief, because I value this now I believe it and I'm it is baked into me. It is part of my persona. I'm going to it's going to be my true north that I'm, that I'm navigate towards. Then we all that's in here, and then once we the veil between here and here, meaning the internal, the cognitive domain and the physical domain. That's the desk I'm touching. That's the microphone in front of me. That's all the physical domain, the veil, the barrier between the cognitive domain, which is invisible. You can't touch the cognitive domain. You can touch the brain. It's about, you know, three pounds, six inches between your ears. But what I can't touch is an idea. I can't touch a belief system. I can't touch a thought system that's invisible. Some people call that the spiritual domain. Some people but in military parlance, that's called the cognitive domain, the physical domain. I can touch. The veil between the cognitive and the physical is so thin, and where it gets thin is now your attitudes, your attitude, and how many times you've seen it before, you can almost read somebody's body language. You've probably heard this before. Man, don't before. Man, no, don't give me an attitude. They haven't even said anything. They just roll their eyes. Their posture changes, their deportment changes. Still internal, but now it's bleeding into the physical domain, and that is at is behaviors. So values plus beliefs multiplied by attitudes equal behaviors your pattern of life. So as a man thinketh, so is he? There's a scripture right there. As a as a person is positioned here, right when I say thinking, I'm not talking a fleeting thought that flies over your head. I'm talking about the thoughts that fly over your head and let them land and make a nest those as you think, as your pattern of thinking is, so your pattern of life will be maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but over time, it'll have propensity and cascade into your life. So the everything that we see that's man made, the microphone, the T, the computer we're talking on, first started out as an idea, or a series of ideas, in this invisible place, the cognitive domain. Those individuals that invented these things then went from from here, then sketched it out and drew it into the physical domain, they manifested it. Now it's something physical. It hasn't been built yet, but now it's actually something I can see with my font, one of my I can engage with one of one or more of my five tactile senses. Now I build it, and so now it's actually built out. So the house I'm in first started out as an idea got sketched on, sketched as a blueprint, manifested as in the physical domain. And then from there it actually got built. Patterns of Life were established in order to support the building of what first started here. That makes sense. What I'm saying

Dr. Spencer Baron:

very I'm so glad you mentioned it.

Matthew Mattera:

So this, this is, this is the this is truly where the battle for life truly starts at, right here, those six inches between your ears, regardless of what your faith value system is, or maybe your audience that they may be completely agnostic or atheist, one cannot debate though, that the human mind our our reality around us. It's not first shaped by reality. It's what we perceive it, but it first shaped by here. Everything that's man made first started out here in the mind. And we have to assume primacy once again, into the six inches between our ears and a lot we have to be the authority of that, not the not life around us, and certainly not this. And I'll say one more thing that. So we talked about values plus beliefs multiplied by attitudes equal behavior. So those values, beliefs and attitudes. Where does that all take place? At that all takes place the six inches between your ears, that cognitive domain. How do we shape the cognitive domain if we know that the physical reality. Around us, the microphone, the monitor, my pattern of life, how I engage with family, how I handle conflict, whatever the case may be. How do we shape this first? Because, if everything external to me is a manifestation of what's going on here, well what shapes this information, the cognitive domain is shaped by the inputs of everything we take in through one or more of our five tactile senses. When we're driving down the street and we see a set of red and blue lights behind us that triggers an autonomic response, right? Because we're conditioned to understand that that those red and blue lights are not just red and blue lights, because I don't get scared by red and blue lights on my Christmas tree, because as tree, because I associate a value to it. Okay? It's the information that's associated with it. Because what does those red and blue lights represent? Those red and blue lights represent law enforcement and so on and so forth, right? And so information that's everything we take in through our through our one or more of our five tactile senses, the two most powerful of all the five senses are the eyes and then the ears, the things you see, the things you hear, and then your sense of smell, then your sense of taste, then your sense of touch. And that's why children while still in utero, while babies are still in their mother's womb, there's been more books written about it than than I can count. And we know, you know what to do expect, What to Expect When You're Expecting books for new moms, right? I remember my wife and in that book, talk about, at a certain point, babies in their mother's womb, the free you know, the first of your five senses that come online is the sense of hearing. Yes, at eight, at eight months in the mother's womb, our sense of hearing comes online. And so that's why I remember, when I was I took my wife to go watch the movie rainbow, the latest, not the latest rainbow, but the rainbow, one of the rainbow ones. Right? Cool. Movie total, a total guy moving. What my wife went it was my birthday. Was back, and I guess it was a 2008 was a couple months before Isabella was born. Erica was eight months pregnant. Where babies do so it's in March, you know, February, March of 2008 I say, Hey, let's go to the movies. My birthday in April. So she get takes me. We go to the movie theater. What do you want to do, baby for your birthday? I want to watch Rambo, right? Go watch Rambo, coolest movie. And Erica in the scenes with all the explosion. Took my hand and put on put on her belly. She goes, feel that. And Isabella was kicking. Every time there was a loud noise or a boom, the baby would kick. Right. Cool story, but it drives home the point that the our information environment is what shapes us, and that information or environment what we're taking in. When I watched my father when I was a little kid. I told in the last podcast how I saw behaviors with my dad, alcoholism, physical abuse, drug addiction. I'm watching that's my information environment. I'm a little kid, and our five senses are scraping constantly observing this behavior. I'm hearing the arguments that ends up having a remaps neural pathways, and then we end up having, you know, people have PTSD, anxiety disorders, you name it. Again. I'm not a mental health professional, but I've walked this road enough to be to start connecting the dots with that, especially from a weaponizing perspective. Kind of a long rant there, but hopefully it kind of puts a pin on what you're talking about.

Dr. Terry Weyman:

Well, I guess I want to add something to that. You talk you you talked about the eyes and the ears right yet, when we see now people, and I've seen it lately, probably in the last two or three years, getting worse, I don't see anybody. Very rarely do you see somebody walking without headphones on or something their earbuds. People are either looking at their phone or they're walking around and they got headphones on or earbuds and listening, we all know if they're listening to music, what they're listening to, but we're constantly plugged into something they can't just just be unplugged. So what's your thoughts on the headphones? Well,

Matthew Mattera:

I think that what we listen to becomes a soundtrack for our life. And so if you watch a movie, I like, I'm a big action movie guy. And so take a movie like gladiator or Braveheart, any one of the battle scenes, right? And in the battle scenes, there's always this crescendo and amp up of music. There's, there's, take a movie like Terminator, there's all that, right? Now, let's, let's for a second, take the soundtrack out of it and it's just the scene, right? Does it have the same effect? No, it amplifies what we're already seeing. Two if I was to take that soundtrack out and replace it with, you know, Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata, it would be you'd have this dissonance like what I'm what I'm seeing real time, this violent action scene on Saving Private Ryan is not reconciling with what I'm hearing in the ears. Hearing acts as a force multiplier to the things we take into the stimuli we take into our eyes, and I think that the things that we are constantly plugged into here through our headphones, it acts as a soundtrack to what whether it's what we're listening to the car, what we're listening when we're listening at home, but. When we have it right here. Now we're isolated. These act as an isolation device. We tune out the rest of the world around us, and now it's hyper focused on that, whatever that soundtrack is, and subconsciously, it most certainly becomes a soundtrack to a person's pattern of life. Look at the look at the enduring themes and messages that are within certain genres of music, and then look at the target audience with that music. And then look at the out. Look at the outward pattern of life demonstrated by that target audience. Doesn't take a genius to figure out that the stuff that they're listening to is acting as a soundtrack to reinforce and normalize patterns of behavior that are resulting in the very, very system of decay that they're so trying hard to escape from

Dr. Terry Weyman:

it's so interesting. You mentioned soundtracks because there's a movie out right now called warfare, and I don't know if you've seen it as and warfare is, is a story. Well, not really a story, but happened in Iraq, and it was one of the paraphrase it, a guy, uh, who survived an ambush. They he doesn't remember it, and his buddy recreated it perfectly to down to everything on on the wall is exact. And the only reason I know is I have a an actor friend who's knows the director well. The one thing about this movie that's unique, there's no soundtrack interesting, and when you watch it, you don't realize that how much more real it feels, until afterwards they get they could be watching with because you realize there's no soundtrack, and you're like, Oh my God, how many, much different it made. So it's interesting. You mentioned soundtracks. Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Hey, Matt, before I delve into surveillance and privacy and autonomy, I want to, I want to have a confession. And that is my favorite movie. Was 300 which is

Dr. Terry Weyman:

soundtrack.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I could watch that movie and I feel like I could go run 100 miles. Oh, yeah. Kill anybody. Just run 100 miles.

Matthew Mattera:

That's a badass movie. Pardon me for saying

Dr. Spencer Baron:

that movie made gladiator look like a walk in the park. I like that. I love that too. But so you know, another irony that we're experiencing in modern era here is that, you know, apps that we feel most connected are also watching us very closely in your history, especially in military intelligence and things like that. How, what? How do we? How do we manage that? And what is it doing it to our psyche to know that, that even though we're sacrificing our privacy and our autonomy and we're being watched, what please

Matthew Mattera:

comment on something like that. Yeah. So these, these platforms that we have on our phones, these social media platforms. It might not be a social media platform. It could be something like Google Maps, right? These are all built by people a lot smarter than you and I. They leverage, they leverage human behavior professionals that that's all they do all day, every day. Is, is is big. You know, how does the human we're like a bunch of lab rats to them. They're very fascinated by how they can better, more perfect, perfectly. To use hate, to use that word more efficiently is a better way say it, exploit our vulnerabilities and proclivities as human beings. And that's what they do all day long. And these are high value, high dollar folks with a lot of letters after the name, hired by these companies, these tech companies, that being said. So understand, number one, you're not, you're not, you're not getting an app from Bob, the builder down the street that decided to make an app. Now this, this is a big company that hires very heavy intellectual heavyweights that know how to get in your head. Number one. Number two, some of these platforms are actually, remember, we talked about weapon systems and nefarious actors that are nefarious state actors in countries, not ours. Some of these platforms are developed by those nefarious actors that are looking to target the American culture as a whole. So when they see the cognitive decline and the behavioral decline around youth and young adults, and they when they hear about gram even grandma and grandpa, being more on their phone than engaged with the grandkids to them, it's a win, because they can stay there's they're playing the fourth they're playing four dimensional 100 year chess to to decline our our posture as as the, as the, as the great superpower is the great influence with the world. Okay, so what does that mean? Inside of these platforms, inside of these embedded, inside of these social media, or any app that we download how, and we're all guilty of it, we download an app and is the Accept Terms and Conditions, right? We bypass the Terms Conditions, because it's like, you gotta, you know, microscope to read it, and it takes like, three days. It reads bigger than the than the Declaration of Independence. It's just a yeah, whatever. I'm just gonna download it. What you're agreeing to is having, yeah. Access to your pattern of life with your photographs, if it's a social media, right? So we all post up photos on our Instagram. We've shared some pictures on Instagram. You You got I posted something up. I was on a date the other day and with my wife, and got a like, right? So we all but we have to grant access to that, and so we have to be more mindful of the controls that the app has, and be be masters of our phone go into the settings say, I do not want the phone to track this. I do not want my phone to track where I'm going. Because how many times, if you open your phone wide up and have it just as as the Wild West, you could be driving down the street, and if you were searching for, let's say for me, I'm a I'm a car guy, and I was looking at something about truck parks like a month ago, and I drove by an auto part place, and I just happened to open my social media, not my social media, but my my web browser. And sure enough, it's like, Hey, if you're looking for a discount, there's a place right here. I just drove by that place that's all, that's all geo fencing. There's this, there's, there's massive layers of metadata that are baked into this. Again, people a lot smarter than you and I, spend all day long developing these apps how to exploit human information, how to exploit human proclivity. And part of our proclivity is the consumerism that we have, and it's all about either one making a buck or two, if it's an overseas actor eroding and exerting malign influence and destabilization into our American culture. So we're getting it from two fronts. We're getting it from the domestic commercial side, and we're getting it from the overseas bad actor side. And at the end of the day, guess whose phone it is? It's your phone, it's my phone. They don't own it. I'm going to set the parameters on it. I'm going to know what. I'm going to choose, when to get on it, when to get off. I'm going to go into my settings, and I'm going to lock this thing down. But it's all about having the due diligence and awareness and conversations like that, like Doug we're having right now. Hopefully the audience says, listen to this. You know what? I need to check my settings on my phone. I need to really think about my kid's been on the phone a lot. Let me, let me dial this back a little bit and and reassert my rightful role as governor and leader, not just myself, but my family.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, actually, I gotta mention, I can't say it's a patient of mine, and I can't mention too much about him, because he's in a very high level of security for like cybersecurity and online intelligence and things like that for a very, very, very big company and I, we were having this conversation the other day. And for those who are listening that enjoy running distances, and there is an app called Map My Run that if, if I started thinking after I use it was started using it years ago, if somebody wanted to kill me, they'd know exactly where I'm at at any given time of the day. He told me that that app is barred from the military because people can easily find where you're at.

Matthew Mattera:

Yeah, there was that app was being utilized by some, by some folks in uniform overseas some time back, and they were utilizing it at a particular base, just for the normal runs, right? And they used to track their run, to track their progress, yeah. Well, the thing is, from an operational security perspective, it actually showed the location of the globe, where they were at and if any bet, again, there's bad actors out there that are not, you know, they're not. They don't see social media as just something. So to make you go buy more cheeseburgers or go buy a new pair of sneakers, they see this as an opportunity to find out, to to to not only exploit the cognitive security of American society as a whole, which is what they're doing, but they also see it as as an opportunity to exploit the physical and national security as well, because cognitive NASA security and physical security come under cognitive security. If our cognitive security space is good, and our hyper awareness, we understand our doors are locked, the doors of our mind are locked. Our eyes are locked, where our ears are locked. We're very mindful of what comes in, what goes out. Likewise, that's going to cascade into remember, everything starts here first, and then come to behaviors. We got to get this cognitive domain right first, to master this, then everything else falls in line with our pattern of life, to include things like using an app like that, but you're absolutely right. It was, it was something that the military some time ago said, Hey guys, no more using this. Because guess what we saw, you took a run, glad you went for a run, glad you got your exercise, but you did it on a base at a sensitive location, and people aren't supposed to know we're here

Dr. Spencer Baron:

in the first place. Right, right in the beginning. You don't question it until it starts to see a pattern. One last thing before we enter our rapid fire, questions that, if you recall, was a little exciting for you. What can we do? You know, to reclaim that you did mention a couple things to reclaim our minds. You know, back and take charge. But you know whether individuals, parents, educators or just a whole society, what can we do to undo some of

Unknown:

the damage that technology has? You

Dr. Spencer Baron:

know, has we've been encumbered with

Matthew Mattera:

with technology? Yeah, great question. So think about 2007 great rewiring. That's when it really. First started, right? So let's, let's think back. What was life before 2007 let's think back. How was our What was our power in life before when it came to personal engagement, Gage with our family, things we did before to entertain ourselves, to doctor, Terry's point, he said, hey, what can we what are some things we can do? Let's, let's think back. Let's go back to pre. 2007 2000 654, all the way back. Everything we did back then to stay connected, to stay balanced, to stay focused, to be able to have good, good men. And I'm not saying mental health was perfect before then. We've always had these challenges. It has just since spikes, since 2007 so let's go back pre circa 2007 and pull those things up. Take out the like, what like, for example, what I did, you know what? Let's buy some Legos. Let's go do those things. Let's go for a walk. Let's go to the let's go to the gym. Let's go exercise. Let's have real engagement, real encounters. Put the phone away. We didn't have cell phones at the dinner table before 2007 let's go back to that pretty easy, if you think about it. The steps are the answers right in front of our face. The hard part is saying is cutting that addiction. Like, because this, I tell you what you when you start doing this, people that dopamine hit is going to want to come and you're just like, I need to check my phone just one more time. That's the addiction, man. It's the same thing. I just need to, I just need to take one more hit, just one more hit, and I'll be good. Then I'll stop. You got it? Pornography does the same thing. It's all this stuff. You just gotta, like, nope. Put it away. Don't want it. Don't want this. Is this mastering me or I master a bit

Dr. Spencer Baron:

nice? I'm glad you made that metaphor of almost, you know, to the not just pornography, but like a drug, like a real, you know, hardcore drug. Let me do one more, whatever it is. And that's what our little phone is doing

Matthew Mattera:

that to us. It is because it's playing with the same it's playing with the same neuro centers that pornography plays with. That's pornography is terrible. Drugs are terrible. And if you're not careful, your smartphone, as benign as it seems can be, plays with those same centers. And oh, by the way, people a lot smarter than you and I know that, and they've engineered as such. So now that we know that, now that we're aware, like, Okay, we've been getting played, now it's time to reassert our dominance on the battlefield and be like, No, not anymore. I'm done being the chump for somebody else.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

You know, love it. I love that you're putting it that way. You're making making it seem like you could liberate yourself, and that is the challenge for yourself, Matt. Matt, we're gonna go into the rapid fire questions, of which I love. The answers need to be brief, but we always get caught up in you know. So question number one, are you ready? Matt, let's go for it. All right, my man, as a former naval officer, what's one Captain's orders you give yourself to stay mentally ship shape.

Matthew Mattera:

Once captain, Oh, wow. Stay guarded. Stay vigilant. Stay guarded. Stay vigilant. Very good.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Number two, what's your favorite? Now, when I refer to junk food, I'm referring to informational diet that you can't quit.

Matthew Mattera:

I am. I have turned into an AI geek. I'm just love playing with it. It's really interesting how, yeah, I almost tested to see how smart is this thing really, right? And I understand kind of, behind the scene, what's going on, but I like to try to see if I can break

Dr. Spencer Baron:

it nice. I know I have to say that when there's times I've used it and been very vague about something and it I feel like it's in my head. It's in my brain putting words out that I go, whoa. Well, people

Matthew Mattera:

smarter than you and I have done it for a reason, right? Part of the conversation?

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Yeah, thank you for that question. Number three, be honest, have you ever pretend, pretended your phone died just to sneak a little peace and quiet?

Matthew Mattera:

Yeah, yeah, I have, or Yes, I have. But one, even worse, I was just guilty. I've said, if I know I only have an engagement, like a conversation is like, Oh, this person's, uh, this is not going to be fun. Uh, I'll send an alarm about 10 minutes in to mimic, to mimic my, uh, mimic my, mimic my ringtone, and I'll be like, Oh, hold on one second. Let me take this call. That's terrible. That's a that's a psyop game. I'm psyop and people, that's awesome. That's

Dr. Spencer Baron:

awesome. Bonus closer to

Matthew Mattera:

my friends or family. I haven't done it to y'all, but there's been some folks out there that, over the years I've had to like, Oh, I gotta take this call.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Oh, exactly right. I'll actually preemptively have a friend of mine or my my mom or my bro call me, call me. Just call me at five, oh 10 or something, you know, right, same

Matthew Mattera:

concept. Yeah,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

all right. Question number four, what? What's a quirky self care ritual you stupidly love when you need a mood boost,

Matthew Mattera:

I go shave. So since I've since I shaved, unless I was deployed in certain locations, I didn't have to shave. But most of. Time if I was in Garrison, you know, in headquarters, obviously we're shaved clean cut. When I retired, one of the like, just decided let me grow it out and I do it for myself, because it's gonna sound crazy. I know my wife likes me clean shaven, yeah? So I know, like, if I'm clean shaven, it's gonna that's kind of her love language, yeah. So I'll get, I'll get more snuggles that way.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

I get it. I totally get it. All right. Question. Sorry, I had to laugh because I could totally relate to that question. Number five, if your life, if your life, had a theme song, and in your life, what? What would that be?

Matthew Mattera:

There's a song from the movie The Last Samurai. It's a, it's part of the soundtrack. And one of my favorite movies, I identify very closely with Captain Algren, who played by Tom Cruise, great movie. And so that song, there's a thunder called a way of life. I think Hans Zimmer wrote it, I'm not sure. But anyway, it's a it's a sound. It's no words to it, a way of life. And that soundtrack, and the way it flows through. It captures the essence of his journey. Very similar journey, very similar psyche, that similar traumas, and so with a way of life, one and there'd be one more, it's gonna sound cliche. I of the Tiger from Rocky. I love it. Eye of the Tiger. Man,

Dr. Spencer Baron:

we've heard that a few times, yeah, over the years. Oh, that's great, Matt, I just want to tell you, man, this was an electrifying conversation. Your knowledge base and understanding of human behavior and how it's influenced by this damn phone, you know, it's something that really needs to be reckoned with. And I want to thank you so much. And not to mention your voice is so pleasant to listen to, so thank you for that too. Appreciate

Matthew Mattera:

it. Thank you guys for the time. I enjoyed talking with you all. Appreciate it absolutely,

Dr. Terry Weyman:

man, my friend. Very good.

Dr. Spencer Baron:

Thank you for listening to today's episode of The cracking backs podcast. We hope you enjoyed it. Make sure you follow us on Instagram. At cracking backs podcast, catch new episodes every Monday. See you next time you.