Dr. Jud Brewer, a Brown University neuroscientist and Yale-trained addiction psychiatrist, joins Richard to lay out a habit-loop model of anxiety. From his own residency panic attacks to the smoking-cessation work that produced five times the standard quit rate, to a randomized trial of his anxiety program, the throughline is one mechanism: pay attention to what a behavior actually does, and the brain stops finding it rewarding. We close on a thirty-second practice for the next time anxiety shows up.

Guest: Dr. Jud Brewer, Director of Research and Innovation at the Brown University Mindfulness Center. Author of The Craving Mind (2017), Unwinding Anxiety (2021, NYT bestseller), and The Hunger Habit (2024). drjud.com

00:00 Opening, the epidemic of anxiety and depression

01:56 Jud's own anxiety story

06:46 Choosing mindfulness as a career in 2006

11:38 Coke Enders and the academic hazing pattern

15:10 Reinforcement learning, pay attention as you smoke

20:28 The anxiety habit loop

23:28 The default mode network and the posterior cingulate cortex

25:49 The mind is a tool, not the boss

29:46 Richard's Vipassana origin with Goldstein and Kornfield

31:07 Conscious breathing and five-finger breathing

32:42 Anxiety travels in clusters

34:40 If these tools work, why are we prescribing

36:42 Could this be taught in high schools

38:19 Going Beyond Anxiety, the AI-paired digital therapeutic

41:52 Mid-episode break

43:32 Curiosity will conquer fear, flip the NO to WHAT

45:27 Feelings are just feelings

47:15 Off-air closing