Ep 1022 | The Hardest Phil Has Ever Laughed & a Renowned Psychiatrist Analyzes the Robertson Brain
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I am unashamed. What about you? Welcome back to Unashamed. There we go. Bless you, Zach. Excuse me. It's funny because that'll probably get cut out, but Zach just sneezed. And my daughter, Alex, has to listen to the podcast so she can write up copy and add copy and stuff for the podcast. And she was like, Dad, I mean, you sounded like Bill Phillips on the podcast Friday. And I was like...

Hey, you ain't there yet. It's because I had this terrible cold. I mean, she said, well, maybe when you lose your weight.

He won't sound so bad. For those who don't know, Bill Phillips breathes very heavily. He's got tiny nostrils. He changed his name to W-E. I don't know why you keep calling him that. Because he's Billy Red Shoes to me. I grew up with him, man. He'll never be W-E to me. Bill changed my name. Phil used to call him Red Shoes. Billy Red Shoes. He wore some- Red Converse. Red Converse back in the day. And then he was Bill-

Then he was W.E., so he's just kind of- Red Dog, was there a Red Dog in there? Red Dog, that was his stage name when he infamously missed-

Phil says it's 1,000, but I was there. It was more like 300, and we were hunting a hot hole. They run it on a loop at the tour. So every time I go through there, sometimes I take people through there. It's several videos, but I've seen that about four times, and I have to stop, and I laugh every time I see it. It's a famous story. We needed one duck for the limit, and here comes several hundred. We'll just leave it at that. And so...

They worked around and they just lit. Not just in the decoy. It was several hundred. You couldn't tell where the decoys started and began. I've watched the video all the time. It's literally they were feet in front of y'all. Oh, yeah. They were at our feet. And what's weird is there was really no plan. Everybody was kind of having a seal-a moment to draw attention. Well, you can hear when you listen to the video, you hear just this underlying chuckle.

Because everybody's like laughing, but not loud. So many ducks. So many ducks and they need one. And everybody's just like laughing. Like, can you believe that? Just keep piling and piling. We, you know, technically by the law, I'm sure the statute of limitations is going out. So how do you know who needs the one for their limit? Well, I'm sure it was Bill. Well, Phil assumed that. And so all of a sudden, without warning, Bill said, all right, red dog, shoot you one.

One for the land. He's like, and when he said it loud, so all these ducks, they got up in like three. It was a wave of getting up. Three wave. And W.E. A.K.A. Red Dog went boom, boom. I don't think he shot. No, he shot three times. Did he shoot three times? He shot three times. Boom. Boom.

And does not cut a feather, which at the moment seemed virtually impossible. Well, you got a hundred pellets, give or take. It

In one bullet. You and Dad, and I guess Benny Prince was there, and y'all are rolling around. Oh, no, not me. I didn't laugh because- Well, somebody laughed. Phil and Benny- Long and hard. There was a pause, and then they started laughing so hard. It's as hard as I've ever seen my dad laugh. He literally was rolling around in the grass. So W.E., which is what's- Here's the funny- And here's what made it more funny, because the film, we had one cameraman.

So it wasn't like you're filming. Like one wide shot of the whole thing. What's happening. But W.E. starts walking aimlessly to nowhere. We're out in the middle of nowhere. He was just getting away. He throws his gun down. He did. You never should throw your gun. It was unloaded, but still. It was the most embarrassing thing. It was. And so he became a red dog because of that, because Phil was referring to that.

And so what's funny is on the way home from that, you know, because I would sit there thinking, well, he just ruined one of the greatest scenes I've ever seen.

I mean, all these. Just the opposite. He made it so much better. I was like, well, we can't even run that. My dad said, oh, we're running that. That was amazing. He's like, all those years. Back in Phil's producer days. That's right. He said, all those years, he's been thinking, yeah, get me on the end of the blind. I'll show you what you'll do. He said he needed a good dose of humility.

So the rule on that is it doesn't matter how many ducks are there. If you do not bear down and pick out one, it is possible to miss hundreds of ducks because he was trying to shoot one. He just missed him three times, but it made it.

Look terrible because you would have think just in the backdrop, he would have hit something. Well, the fear would be in a moment like that is you would hit more than one because there was so many. That's what he said. He's like, I took one off to the side so I wouldn't kill over my limit. I was thinking, you were sitting there about to tinkle on yourself and you were nervous. But look, I would have been too. I mean, you got to remember when we back when we used to do those duck videos,

Every once in a while, a duck would come in perfect, and they would say, shoot him, Jace. And I have to admit, there was a gulp, because if you miss- There's a lot of pressure. You're going to watch it, and my dad and everyone else around are fixing to say, what are you doing? I mean, how could you miss that duck? Well, I hear from Bill- And you'll get a nickname that sticks with you the rest of your life. So I hear from Bill every so often. We probably call each other every other year.

And so he called me like two weeks ago. He says, hey, you know, he just starts writing. I hadn't talked to him in a year. Hey, so I'm sitting here and I'm down in my man cave, you know, which is downstairs and somebody's knocking on my door. He said, you know, they're knocking and knocking. I go up there and open the door and it's the pest man. Bonnie had ordered the pest man.

He said, and so he comes in, he looks at me and he says, he asked me, he said, did you go to Bowley junior high, which is a junior high here in West Monroe? He says, yeah. And he was like, do you know who I am? And Bill said, no. And he said, I'm Terry Elkins. And so he's calling me because Terry Elkins is the infamous fourth guy that got the whipping.

With me, Greg, Bill. Yeah. The guy had never. Y'all had pulled. I told him before on the podcast. This was before Jesus. Wow. Which podcast? Yeah, you're right. It's been a while. It's only a thousand to six. We pulled a big drunk. It was during my prodigal years, but I was still here. I was a double secret agent. And so we pulled a big drunk right just down the road from where we're sitting right now because Bill and them had a camp down here. His parents did. Yeah.

And so the neighbors called his parents because we tore stuff up and just act like a bunch of idiot teenagers. And so dad hears about it. Well, this is kind of when I'm starting now, my lifestyle is catching up with me. And so dad finds out about it. He comes over, gets me, tells them, if you ever want to come back down here to hunt or anything else, you'll come. Whatever he gets right now, you get or leave.

Of course, we're telling Terry, who's the pest man now where Bill was in Arkansas, to leave. Because we're like, dude, this is the first time you've ever been here. You don't have to come back. Don't ever come back. But you know what? Leave it. Elkis did a good job because he was like, nope, I'm getting whatever y'all get. And so dad lined us up. Probably had no idea.

Well, we're like 15, 16, 17-year-old boys, so it's not like we're kids. No, I remember he actually gave you an option because after he whipped you with a belt.

Lined up against the back of my grandpa's huge white Chrysler. Yeah. And you were there, weren't you? Oh, was I there? Because after he did that, he waved the belt in my face, and he said, were you taking notes? And I said, whoa. But my favorite thing he did was,

Because he gave a long speech, and I'm sure you've probably forgotten it. But one thing he said in there is he said, you boys are grown men. And so I'll tell you this. If y'all want to just go ahead and go hand to hand, we can do that. There's four of you.

And y'all may take me, but you'll never forget it the rest of your life. He said, or you can bend over that big car right there and drive

take some discipline for all the mischief y'all been doing. Well, nobody wanted a part of that. I can tell you that right. Dad's 78 right now dealing with a lot of illnesses and I still don't want to mess with him. No, but I did think that was crazy. I was like, whoa, what a lead up that was. Did you cry when you got the whooping? Did any of the girls? Oh, no. They didn't cry. They were,

girl man it didn't even I mean like it's a story now but it didn't even affect us at the moment to do better that's what's so sad yeah I've told the story before everybody gets to a point where you have to make a hard decision to do the right things you can't that and this goes into legalism stuff we're talking about on the podcast you can't force other people ultimately once they're old enough to do the right thing I mean you can try to shape and do the best you can and I've always told dad about that moment he loves it when I tell that story

I said, he was trying to do it. He was just trying to get us to listen. He was doing whatever he could. It actually was a pivotal moment in your lives. Yeah. That,

It started going upward, you know. Yeah. So Bill tells Terry just two weeks ago when he came to his house, he said, hey, Allen Robertson has made you famous. He's talked about you all across the U.S., which I have. Because dad, when he was whipping us, he had commentary for everybody. And Terry's commentary, he looked at him, he said, son, I don't know who you are.

Would you go home and tell your parents you got a whipping from Phil Robertson? But he was actually timing the lick. It's the syllable. Zach, you got to get the syllable. The syllabic. I mean, I know that everybody was thinking, boy, will he ever shut up? Because it was like, I don't know who you are. But then he actually realized this has probably been...

Quite the laceration. We were supposed to get three licks. So he said, but you tell your daddy why you got this. That's the way he did it. And it was like three or four rapid. And Bill's parents are standing there, his mom and his stepdad. And he looks up at them. He says, what do y'all think? This is your son. They were like, get him, Phil. So it was sanctioned by the parents. So it was like, son, this is embarrassing, but you're right here in front of your parents. Let's face it. That must be a family thing because my mom used to whip like that.

It was a public meeting before that was. I mean, the syllabic whooping, where every syllable was a lick. Oh, yeah. It was one of the top ten moments of my childhood. You've never forgotten it, right? No. All right. Well, we'll have to ask our next guest about this if that's one of the reasons why we turned out the way we did. I've recruited help for you guys.

Good. Well, we've got a very special guest. We're super excited. We feel like he's way out of our range, but we're going to try to do what we can to bring him into our redneck land and explain to us the thing. So Zach's going to tell us after the break who our guest is. Jace, you got a big unexpected tax bill recently, right? I did. I worked too hard, and I got to pay the piper.

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That's 1-800-958-1000. Or you can go to TNUSA.com slash unashamed. That's TNUSA.com slash unashamed. Welcome back to Unashamed. We have a very special guest, Dr. Daniel Amen, who's one of the most influential experts on brain health and mental health.

And so I'm starting to wonder, you know, Zach got Dr. He knows Dr. Ava. So he's got him to come on here. But do you think this is an intervention? I do think I will say that if you start looking at members of my family,

You would think, okay, we need some kind of brain specialist. He's the founder of BrainMD, Scan My Brain, 17 national public television shows, 12-time bestselling author. So obviously he knows a lot. I've watched some of your videos, Dr. Amen. I wasn't familiar with your work.

Super intrigued and super excited to have you on the Unashamed podcast. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me. I'm dying to see both of your brains. Oh, boy.

I don't know. It may be a disappointment. Now, you told us before we came on that you had scanned some of our family already. Would one of those maybe was Willie? I'm just throwing that out there. I don't know. And if you can't tell, you can just say it was it was the ugly brother. Yeah, no, I'd rather not say. OK, I have a lot of Robertson brains and they're all fascinating.

Well, and we're dealing with, you know, dad has recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, which we've talked about publicly. So we're dealing with it in real time. And I couldn't help but think when I was watching your videos, you know, how helpful the information is, just what you've done so far. So just maybe a starting place. I know Zach's got questions. Just tell us kind of what you do and kind of what got you into this to begin with. So when I was 18,

Vietnam was still going on and I was in the army and became an infantry medic. And that's where my love of medicine was born. But about a year into it, I realized I didn't like being shot at. So I got retrained as an x-ray technician and developed a passion for medical imaging. As our professors used to say, how do you know unless you look?

And then in 1975, I got out of the army, finished college, went to medical school. And when I was a second year medical student, my wife tried to kill herself. And I took her to see a wonderful psychiatrist. And I came to realize if he helped her, it wouldn't just help her. It would help me. It would help our kids. It would ultimately help our grandkids because they would be shaped differently.

by someone who was happier and more stable. But I fell in love with the only medical specialty that never looks at the organ it treats. And I knew it was wrong and I knew it had to change. And so for the last 35 years at Amen Clinics, I have 11 clinics around the United States, um,

We've been looking at the brain with a study called Brain Spect Imaging, and it looks at blood flow and activity. It looks at how your brain works. And we have the world's largest database of brain scans related to behavior, a quarter of a million scans worldwide.

on people from 155 countries. We did the big NFL study when the NFL was sort of lying. They had a problem with traumatic brain injury in football. We've scanned, you know, amazing athletes like Muhammad Ali, recording artists like Miley Cyrus, and all that's public.

But the big thing when I started looking at the brain, it literally changed everything in my life from how much sleep I get to what I eat to the sports I play. And what I learned is with a better brain always comes a better life. And when you talk about your dad with Alzheimer's,

Well, we can actually see that on scans decades before people have any symptoms. And just knowing your father has it means you should be on an Alzheimer's prevention program.

every day of your life, because you see how hard it is not just on the person, but on everyone who loves that person. So keeping your brain healthy is actually not just about you. It's about generations of you. And so I think everybody, by the time they're 50, should get a scan. You know, when I turned 50, my doctor wanted me to have a colonoscopy.

I asked him why he didn't want to look at my brain. It wasn't the other end just as important.

And so we'll have a fun discussion. You've talked a lot about the misdiagnoses of certain mental illnesses. One of the things that you said that resonated with me was that a lot of mental illness is brain injury. And you showed a graph one time when we were on a conference call together that was fascinating for me, too, of the prevalence of

of schizophrenia. It was like a heat map. And then you showed another one of the prevalence of Lyme's disease and that you overlay those and it was almost identical. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, how we currently treat Lyme?

mental illness, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety, and the kind of how you've uncovered some of the real causes of that, such as Lyme disease. Could you talk a little bit about that for our audience? I found that to be extremely fascinating. So in the United States, really all around the world, most, almost all psychiatric illnesses, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia,

They're made based on symptom cluster diagnoses. So, for example, Abraham Lincoln in 1840 was suicidal and he went to his doctor. And how did Dr. Anson Henry diagnose Lincoln with depression? He talked to him. He looked at him, looked for symptom clusters and then diagnosed and treated him.

That's still happening in 2025. You go to your family practice doctor, you go to your psychiatrist or psychiatric nurse practitioner, you tell them what you're experiencing or your family does, and they go, oh, you have this or you have that with no biological data. So

It's insane, right? The people that are guarding our sanity are insane because depression can come from low thyroid. Depression can come from having post-COVID. COVID is like this inflammatory bomb that goes off in your emotional brain. It can happen, yes, because you failed and had a loss, or it can happen because

Because you live in a mold filled environment in a place like Louisiana that rains a lot and floods a lot, that gives you mold, which then can attack your brain. And so making mold.

I just always say the one thing people remember me for is when I say psychiatrists are the only medical doctors that never look at the organ they treat. And because of that, they miss huge things like traumatic brain injury. If you go, "Hey, Daniel, what's the single most important thing you learned from a quarter of a million scans?"

Mild traumatic brain injury ruins people's lives and nobody knows because nobody looks. And the exciting thing that I learned is you can make your brain better, even if you've been bad to it. And so I watched the movie about your dad and he was bad.

to his brain. And there was trauma. So if you take trauma and alcohol, well, those are two things that significantly increases your risk for Alzheimer's disease. But if I had him, well, even now, I would want to look.

Because I have cases where it's not Alzheimer's disease. There's too much pressure in the brain and putting a shunt in helps. Or it's not Alzheimer's disease. They're living with an infection and treating the infection

That helps. One of the reasons I fell in love with imaging, one of my first patients, Matilda, 69, diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, almost burned her house down because she forgot something on the stove. And when I scanned her, she didn't have Alzheimer's disease. Her emotional brain was too busy. And on an antidepressant, she got her memory back.

And how do I know what's going on with you if I don't look? So just think of the chutzpah of all these doctors just passing out medication like candy. Last year, there were 340 million prescriptions in the United States for antidepressants.

with no biological data. It's just nuts. Do you prescribe them? Do you use the anti-inflammatory? I do when I think they're part of the solution. I do. But it's never the first and only thing I think about. If I really think you have bipolar disorder, I

Well, then I'm going to give you lithium or Lamictal. But I'm also going to work hard to get your brain healthy.

And I have a mnemonic I like called bright minds. You want to keep your brain healthy or rescue it. You have to prevent or treat the 11 major risk factors that steal your mind. And the H in bright minds is head trauma and the T is toxin. And the second I is infection. And so that's,

Just having a rational plan to keep your brain healthy is what I think all of us should want.

We talk a lot about cell phones, Jason, on this podcast. Dad, of course, has notoriously been anti-cell phone. Although he does depend on us to look up on our phones the weather and a lot of the important things, the hunting. But he's actually taken away cell phones and thrown them. Yeah.

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One of the things I thought you said was so true in the video I watched, and you just said it again, was every other doctor looks. I mean, you think about orthopedic, you think about the colon, like you mentioned, you think about internal medicine. I mean, everybody looks to diagnose, and you're right. It seems weird to me that people wouldn't look. And it was interesting because when I was reading about you on the internet, Doc, I

You, there are people that say, oh, he doesn't, you know, that you don't need that. And he's a quack and blah, blah, blah. It seemed like it was people from your field. And I just thought, well, what would be wrong with looking? I mean, in other words. To me, it reminded me of when he was talking, because I'm kind of a simple minded fella. It would be like, you know, everybody trying to figure out what's wrong with your vehicle. Yeah.

And no one would think. We're just standing around listening to it. Yeah, no one would think, well, how about we pop the hood or the infamous line? I know. It doesn't have any gas in it. But it's not a crazy thought. That's what I was thinking. I was just wondering, though, for the listener. So do you use your database, because you mentioned that, of all these brain scans to kind of coordinate and then make a decision? Yeah.

You know, I was wondering how the imaging actually translates to treatment. Yeah, to treatment or, you know, a rough idea of that process, because I'm curious about that. So if you came to see us, we would get to know you and take a very detailed history of your life.

And then we would test your brain and then we would scan it. We generally do two, one at rest, one when you concentrate. And we would take all of that information. So you came and said,

I'm depressed or I'm angry or I keep getting fired from my job. Well, that's really important information. And then we would test your brain, how positive or negative you are. How's your memory? How's your focus? And then we would use the images.

to guide what we do for you. But we don't make diagnoses from images. We make diagnoses from all the information. And so, for example, I saw a woman recently and she thought she had ADD. And her brain looked like she had a traumatic brain injury. You could just see part of her left temporal lobe had been bashed in, had been hurt. And

it's hard to concentrate if part of your brain has been damaged. And so most psychiatrists or family practice doctors would give her Adderall or Ritalin. And I'm like, no, we have to repair your brain first. And we use things like hyperbaric oxygen and certain supplements to help repair the brain. And then she can focus.

And it's just, you want to go not, oh, you have ADD. It's like, why do you have problems concentrating and problems with organization? And why do you lose words? As opposed to label equals drugs. Yeah, it's interesting. My previous career is I worked with, I worked in the pharmaceutical industry on the sales side of it. And, yeah,

I sold a lot of the psychotropic medications and until I ran across your work, which I found to be very compelling, I had similar thoughts just based on my interactions in the marketplace. Cause most of what I was seeing was that most of the, and you said this in one of your talks that most of the, um, psychotropic medications are prescribed by non-psychiatric physicians and, um, in a very short office visit of a primary care special or primary care physician. And, um,

And it just seemed to be, I'm doing this every day and I'm seeing how this has played out. And yeah, the data, the science, it seemed very subjective to me, at least. The way that they would talk about psychiatric medicine, it was very subjective. I'd never heard anybody scan in the brain or look at it other, more treating it holistically. You also mentioned

the role that the spiritual plays in this as well. I thought maybe you could talk a little bit about how the spiritual life plays into some of our illnesses. So I always think of my patients in four big circles. The first one is what's the biology? How healthy is your brain and body? And that's why we have to scan you. The second circle is your psychology. It's how do you think?

What did you grow up in? Your development, the traumas you experience in successes, too. And then there's the social circle. How's your relationships? How's your money? You know, we're just coming out of this crazy political season that was socially stressful for so many. And then the spiritual circle is ultimately, why do you care?

What is your deepest sense of meaning and purpose? And I think of it as your relationship with God, with the planet, with your past and your future. And there's a term called moral injury. And when you're trying to do the right thing, like I'm trying to move my field forward,

And yet I've been shamed and called a quack for 30 years. Well, that's a moral injury. Now I've figured out how to deal with these crazy people. Right. And I believe for me, God has been there every step because someone will write a hate piece on me. And then in the next hour, we've dramatically changed someone's life.

And so I tend to ignore the haters and focus on what I can control. But there, especially in this new internet world, there's a lot of moral injury because of the bullying, the shaming, and the lack, the loneliness and lack of purpose that our younger generation has.

Are you familiar with Jonathan Haidt's work? I know he wrote a book called, he's going to come on our podcast soon, The Anxious Generation. Yes, I love that book. Yeah, which I found to be very compelling about mental illness and particularly anxiety levels, depression in correlation to the adoption of the iPhone, social media. I mean, what are you seeing in terms of the effects that technology

technology is having on our mental health right now? It's wearing out our pleasure centers. So there's an area in the brain called the nucleus accumbens, and it responds to dopamine. So dopamine is the neurotransmitter that helps us feel good, that helps us focus, that gives us pleasure, that gives us motivation.

If you think of the iPhone or video games, it's like a little lever that just pushes dopamine over and over and over in that area of the brain. But the more you push on it, the more you begin to wear it out, just like cocaine.

And you need more and more to begin to feel anything at all. So these devices, and it started with video games in the late 80s.

It started with video games and all of a sudden technology is beginning to wear out the pleasure centers in the brain. And then if you add pornography to nine and 10 year old boys, it really becomes quite a disaster.

Would you say Dr. Amen to, cause we've got a lot of young parents out there listening and a lot of young people, um, that, that when it comes to the sort of things you mentioned, especially like video games and things like that, or just, you know, being on the devices, what is, should people just limit that? I mean, what, what do parents need to do? Because I know they're concerned about their kids doing just what you described. So, so what's, what's a good preventative, uh,

advice to parents out there and to people trying to, you know, make sure their kids are healthy and that they're not destroying their brains while they're young. Yeah. I just say no. Yeah. To devices and spend time rather than, you know, parents use smartphones as babysitters for kids and they're addictive. My, when I had my first grandchild,

And at the time, his parents weren't listening to me. And I could see when he was nine months old that he was addicted to the phone.

I mean, he knew how to use an iPhone. And I looked at them like, y'all are crazy. This is a bad thing. And whenever I would be with them, it's like phone pop up, phone pop up. And I'm like, no. And ultimately they got on board with it and they just see how addictive. And a lot of people who develop ticks from, um,

use. You really need to do detox. And, you know, the longer you can delay, and I think Jonathan Haidt recommended like 16 would be good. And I agree with that. If I was an evil ruler,

So I wrote about this in my book, The End of Mental Illness. I just imagined if I was an evil ruler and I wanted to create mental illness in America,

What would I do? I'd give children iPhones. Now I have 62 evil ruler strategies, right? Getting Girl Scouts to sell drugs to the American population, Girl Scout cookies, right? It's not good for you. That's another evil ruler strategy. Or just make everybody think alcohol is a health food and marijuana is innocuous. If I was an evil ruler, I'd...

I guess those things damage the brain. Well, while y'all were sleeping this morning, old Jace was living in the real world, going duck hunting at 430 this morning. And I pulled behind a car and the light is, it's two green lights to the right. And there's a flashing yellow arrow. And this person has stopped.

Like 4.30 in the morning. 4.30 in the morning. And there's no one else in sight on the road. There's no one coming in any direction. It's dark. And so I waited about 10 seconds. And so I figured they made this car and my truck specifically with a horn for moments like this.

Because there's no one here except me and you, and you are in my way. You're trying to get to the duck blind. Yeah, it's yellow and ducks are waiting. So I didn't just tap it. I laid on it. So they just took off in a hurry. You know, it's kind of like, oh, that was embarrassing.

I mean, just roared out way too fast. It is 4.30 in the morning. And from my observation, kind of like what you do, there's a lot of mischief going on at 4.30 in the morning or you're hunting. So they went out of sight. I take a left. And when you know that it wasn't 60 seconds and now I'm driving the speed limit and this person is in the right lane going way below the speed limit.

And I thought, okay, this person is either on drugs. I mean, Doc, you'll appreciate this. I was making a brain scan just based on behavior. I said, we have a problem here, and it's probably drugs. So when I got beside this person, I looked over because I couldn't help it, and they had a phone with a light. And for those of you listening, you won't appreciate this. It was one inch from her nose.

She's looking ahead and had her hand up here typing. And so what did I do? I got on that horn again. And all I did was just, I just pointed out, like, go. And went on around. It was a young girl. And I just thought, I mean, then you're telling this story right now. And I'm like, these are people, this is what they're doing. You cannot be any more dangerous than that. Yeah.

Dr. Abram, we call that redneck psychiatry is what we call that here in Louisiana. What would you call it? Love it. I think redneck psychiatry is great. Well, I told my wife about it and I said, look, everybody's up in arms. What's interesting is before you came on, we were talking about my dad issuing, what would we call that? Corporal punishment for grown men.

After my brother and his friends pulled a big drunk down here and it turned into a neighborhood spanking of grown men with parents saying, get them.

And it wasn't just like y'all had messed up. Y'all had damaged property. There were people threatening lawsuits. It was a happening. And my dad just said, hey, I know you're a grown man, but if you want to stay around here, I'm giving you three licks on the behind. And that might have been a moral injury, but it got your attention. So I told my wife today, I was like, you know, I would be for some kind of spanking if somebody's driving a car around

And they have the phone in between. She's like, Jace, you're being ridiculous. But I was like, what are you going to do about this problem? I mean, they are so addicted to the cell phone. They are oblivious. So you assumed that she was on drugs. It turns out she was just addicted. No, she was just on her cell phone. But it's just as a matter of addiction to Dr. Ava's point, too.

So I wanted to talk about a little bit about that, about family, because obviously we started out saying you've seen some brain scans. I really, after just talking to you and after now researching, I definitely think I need to get the brain scan. I just turned 60 this week. Obviously in our family, all my cousins, Doc, are looking at me because Zach's one of my cousins because I'm, you

you know, the second one in our family to reach 60. And we've had mental illness. My grandmother was bipolar back in the day. They call it manic depressive, but it was actually lithium. And she went through this for 30 plus years of all these terrible episodes and terrible, you know, you talk about trauma to family, awful stuff until finally when she was in her 70s,

A local psychiatrist gave her some lithium and she lived normal the rest of her life until she was 90 something years old. And it really made me sad because I thought, man, for 30 plus years, you know, they were doing all these crazy, you know, things to her and taking her to the hospital.

to the, you know, the psych wards. And for a day, she wouldn't sleep and just all shock treatments and all these different things. It was really bad on our family. Of course, that was in the movie. You said you saw the movie and we dealt with that. But now five out of the seven siblings and dads out of the seven, his brothers and sisters have all either had dementia, including Zach's mom or, or,

or, um, Alzheimer's. Yeah. And the other member, one of those seven is, I mean, I would literally pay the, uh, whatever it costs to be treated. For his brain to be scanned. There's an uncle that we have, and I'm not going to say his name, but he, I would just pay money to have that brain scan. And you would need a lot of people with notebooks with pens ready to go. Um,

Because I would love to see what's under the hood. Well, my dad said he was born with dementia, and we just got used to it. So that was his line about my uncle that we're not naming. But in seriousness, one of the speeches I saw you give, you talked about a young boy that had these behavioral problems, and then you found out through what you do that he had a cyst there.

on his brain that was affecting him. And then once that cyst was removed, it totally changed his life. And it turns out it was your nephew. And you showed that picture and it was very emotional. It was very touching to me because when I hear a doctor tell me something, I always ask, well, would you do this with your family? Like if you're telling me this is what you would do, would you do this with your nephew, with your son, with your wife?

And my wife recently with the breast cancer and both of her doctors said what we're talking about doing for her, both of our wives, we did for them. And I was like, all right, then I'm in because I know then you're committed to what you're talking about. So just talk a little bit about that in terms of, I mean, from our perspective, we're thinking ahead, like how do we get our brains map? What do we need to do to look at to say we don't want to care if we can do something different, we'll do something different. Well, how exciting, right?

Yeah, the story about Andrew, my nephew, helped with the moral injury. So I've just been brutalized by my colleagues.

for what I do. And this is what I do. I take really good histories. I test your brain and then I scan it. And then I take all that information to come up with a treatment plan and help you want to have a better brain because with a better brain has a better life. But the level of vitriol and criticism I got was,

was terrible for me. And then I got this call late one night from my sister-in-law that said my nine-year-old nephew, Andrew, attacked a little girl on the baseball field that day. And I'm like, what? Because he's also my godson, and I'm very close to him. And she said, Danny, he's different. He's mean. He doesn't smile anymore. I went to his room today, and I found two pictures he had drawn. One of them, he was hanging from a tree in a suicide attempt.

The other one, he's shooting other children. And I'm like, I need to scan this kid. And like 999 child psychiatrists out of a thousand would have drugged him and put him in therapy. And I'm like, no, I need to look at his brain.

And what we found is he had a cyst the size of a golf ball occupying the space of his left temporal lobe, which is an area we had already associated with violence. And when the neurosurgeon drained the cyst, his behavior immediately went back to normal, to the normal loving kid. And now he's

Goodness, I don't know, almost 40, has two children, has a job, he's employed, he's married, he's normal. And so that moment I lost my anxiety about whether or not you didn't like me or you criticized me. And I went to war with my colleagues. When I met my second wife, the first naked part of her I wanted to see was her brain.

And if you date any of my children, I'm looking at your brain. I just brain health is so important. And if you love yourself.

And you're grateful for the life that you've been given. You want a better brain because your brain is involved in everything you do, how you think, how you feel, how you act, how you get along with other people. And when it works right, you tend to work right. The girl in the car, her brain wasn't right. And when your brain is troubled for whatever reason,

you have trouble in your life. And it's easy to call people bad. It's way harder to go, why are you this way? And so I just live my life thinking, how can I make my brain and your brain better?

And you've got, what, 11 clinics now across the country, is that correct? Yes. With multiple psychiatrists other than yourself that are treating patients with kind of this method, which I mean, I know why you've probably ruffled feathers. I mean, if you look at, I mean, you've got big ag, big food, big pharma, everything.

there's a lot of money that's being made off a lot of the things that you would probably say like sugar or, you know, get off the sugar, get off the alcohol, um, get off of the caffeine, nicotine. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot, uh, there's a lot of money up by here. Um, so I understand why you have, um,

probably been called the things you've been called. But what you're doing, I think is important, but not everybody has access to one of your clinics. A lot of people listening, they're not in an area where they could get access to what the type of psychiatric treatment that you give. What do you, and one of the things I know you're working on too, is how do we rethink mental illness as a whole? But until the industry is

Until medicine catches up. What what's your advice for for the guy that lives in middle America that doesn't have access to a brain scan? That's why I write, you know, my book, Change Your Brain, Change Your Life has been translated into 46 languages. And everywhere I go across North America, people recognize me and they go, your work changed my life.

And simply from checking out a book at a library or watching the videos I have on Instagram, it's the person in middle America, the message I have is your brain controls everything you do. And when it's healthy, your life is better. And when it's not, your life and everyone you love

your lives are worse. So I worked with BJ Fogg for six months. He's in charge of the persuasive tech lab at Stanford. And it's on how people change. And we develop dozens of what we call tiny habits. You know, it's the smallest thing I can do today that'll make the biggest difference. And ultimately, there's a mother tiny habit.

And whenever you go to make a decision today, just ask yourself, is this good for my brain or bad for it? And if you can answer that with information and love, love of yourself, love of your family, love of the reason God put you on earth, you just start making better decisions. And so I play the game with my daughter, Chloe, when she was little, we called it Chloe's game, but it's basically this question.

Chloe's game is this good for your brain or bad for it? So if I said avocados, she'd go two thumbs up. God's better. If I said hitting a soccer ball with your head, she'd roll her eyes at me and go, are you stupid? The brain is soft and the skull is hard and the skull has sharp bony ridges.

If I said blueberries, she would put her little hands on her hips and go, are they organic? Because non-organic blueberries hold more pesticides than almost any other fruit. And I'm like, of course, they're organic. She'd go, they're God's candy. And you just got to know. And when she was seven and I went to her second grade class and I wrote 20 things on the board, I go separate these for me. Good for your brain, bad for your brain.

They got 19 out of 20 right. So most seven-year-olds know the only thing they got wrong was orange juice, which they put in the good category when it belongs in the bad category because whenever you unwrap sugar from its fiber source, it turns toxic in your body. So I'm not a fan of juice. And this isn't hard.

Now, our society is against us, right? Watched a basketball game last night. There were 20 beer commercials. And if there's not a beer commercial, it's for Carl's or Jack in the Box. You know, it's just weapons of mass destruction. But ultimately, it's simple. Is this good for my brain or is it bad for my brain?

I like it simple. We're out of time, Doc. It's been a very intriguing conversation. I was looking up while you were talking, amonclinics.com. If you want to check in to see if there's one near you. Also, danielamonmd.com tells a lot about your work as well as talks about your book. So thank you for coming on. You have elevated the discussion of the Unashamed podcast today. We appreciate you.

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