Dr. Ethan Kross: Professor of psychology at the University of Michigan and director of the Emotion and Self-Control Laboratory. Author of the bestselling 'Chatter' and the forthcoming 'Shift,' he is a leading researcher on the inner voice and emotion regulation.
What this episode covers
Andrew Huberman and Ethan Kross explore the science of the inner voice, what it is for, and how its dark side, 'chatter,' loops over problems without progress. They cover concrete, science-based tools for regulating emotions, including distanced self-talk, mental time travel (temporal distancing), expressive writing, green spaces, awe, sensory shifters like music and touch, and structuring one's physical environment. The conversation digs into intrusive and dark thoughts, why they are normal, the role of attention and flexible focus, and how social media and AI are reshaping how we process emotion. It closes with practical frameworks: the WOOP method, if-then plans borrowed from Special Forces, emotional contagion, and a working definition of wisdom.
The guest's own work
Chatter: The Voice in Our Head and How to Harness It
Ethan Kross
“he is also the author of the bestselling book chatter the voice in our head and how to harness it”— Andrew Huberman
Shift: Managing Your Emotions So They Don't Manage You
Ethan Kross
“it's called shift managing your emotions so they don't manage you”— Ethan Kross
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
The Big Chill
Lawrence Kasdan
“I remember from the movie The Big Chill they like actually go play for that was I think they were all Alum of University of Michigan”— Andrew Huberman
Roka red lens glasses
Roka
“I'm wearing these red lens wind down Roa glasses because we are recording this late at night which is unusual”— Andrew Huberman
Big reveals from this episode
- Roughly 95-96% of people say music is for feeling good, but only 10-30% actually use it to regulate their emotions when upset.
- Venting alone leads to 'co-rumination' and doesn't fix the problem; Kross keeps a vetted 'chatter advisory board' who validate THEN help problem-solve.
- Kross refuses to trust any thought he has between 2am and 5am, using 'mental time travel' to ask how he'll feel about it in the morning.
- Kross admits to a recurring dark intrusive thought of dropping a heavy dumbbell on someone's face at the gym, using it to normalize dark thoughts.
- He shares intrusive thoughts of dropping his newborn daughter over a second-floor opening, reframing them as the brain flagging what matters most.
- His grandmother, who survived the Holocaust after her family was massacred, modeled flexible attention by 'dosing' her exposure to painful memories one day a year.
- Both trepanation (boring holes in the skull, 8-10,000 years ago) and the frontal lobotomy (Nobel Prize awarded) were once cutting-edge emotion-regulation tools.
- Kross teaches the WOOP framework (Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan) and uses pre-set if-then plans to make emotion regulation automatic.
Worth remembering
- The inner voice is part of verbal working memory, the same system used to remember a phone number by repeating it silently.
- All emotions are functional when experienced in the right proportions; sadness slows physiology to enable introspection and signals others to check on us.
- Unsolicited help can backfire by signaling someone is incapable; 'invisible support' helps without spotlighting it.
- Sensory shifters (music, touch, images, taste) can regulate emotions relatively effortlessly compared to effortful tools like writing.
- The Pennebaker expressive-writing effect (15-20 min/day for 1-3 days) has hundreds of studies supporting it as a near-free intervention.
- At night, sleep shifts from deep slow-wave to more emotionally-laden REM after about 3-4 hours, which is why people wake at 2-3am with racing thoughts.
- A famous study, 'A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind,' found people spend between one-third and one-half of waking hours not focused on the present.
- Walks in nature are restorative both by gently capturing attention and by eliciting awe, which shrinks the self and makes problems feel smaller.
- Even a face-down phone on the table acts as a cognitive cue that fragments attention; removing it is a blunt but effective regulation tool.
- Wisdom is defined in Kross's lab by humility, perspective-taking, dialecticism (awareness of flux), and orientation toward the social good.