#2553 - Andrew Huberman

(upbeat music) - Joe Rogan wants that, check it out. - The Joe, Rogan, experience. - Stream by day Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (upbeat music) - Hello Andrew, great to see you again, yo. - You're seeing my friend, what a thick-ass bookie wrote, sir. - Yeah, I figured it doubles as a doorstop or a weapon. Yeah, it's designed to be read front to back. Learn a lot of science, a lot of health protocols, but you can also just decide, I wanna get better at managing stress, go straight to that chapter, look up what you wanna do, say, oh, I already do that, go to the next thing, and use it sort of like a manual. - This is a very ambitious undertaking. It took me just shy of eight years. - The operating manual or an operating manual for the human body. That's a lot. Just sitting down there in front of the computer thinking, I'm gonna write an operating manual for the human body. - Well, it didn't start off like that. It was a book about the autonomic nervous system, stress, sleep, focus, then it evolved. Then I had a third completely new rewrite and my good friend now, I'm honored to call him a friend, but he's just such a good dude. Rick Rubin was like, do you like it? He goes, scrape it. I'm like, what, and then he said, I'm gonna get myself in trouble because scrape it, man. What are you doing? And I said, I don't know, he's like, you have to love it. And then he said, they're gonna push you to release this thing. And I said, I already said I was gonna release it. I did it again, and then I did that again. And I was going to visit him in Europe each summer and we'd sit together and he goes, let's read some stuff together. But with Rick, what that means is you sit there and he reads you and how you're reacting to the material. So we barely read any of it. I just talking about and he goes, it's not ready. I go, what do you mean? He goes, it's not ready, you're not ready. And so then this year, finally. But this book, I mean, we were in Europe this summer for our friends wedding, my team was over there and my girlfriend and I were traveling. She was so understanding. But from, I was doing edits from like 9 p.m. until 2.30 in the morning, every single night and waking up the next morning. Like this book has been, while you were on vacation, quote-unquote vacation, yeah, I owe her a real vacation now. She was working too, but she was asleep in those hours. And we stopped by Rick's. He's like, how's it going? I'm like, it's there. And he's like, he's just like checked in. He's like, it's there. Like, he can just feel like it's weirdo. I mean, he has this supernatural ability to feel where people are at, but not get absorbed in it. And I have so many Rick stories. We can spend the whole time talking about Rick's stories. But the man is just like, he's plugged into some energetic layer that the rest of us aren't. And he's all day every day. He's connecting with people and trying to help them. Like, he really spends most of his time looking out at the world and trying to help people with their art with their stuff. And that's really him. If you know him, that's him 24/7. Totally. He lives in that space. It's a very weird headspace to be in. Because you're constantly looking at other people's stuff. It's like, he's a taste maker. Or that's not even a good description of him. He's just like an analysis of art. That's his function. He now analyzes art. But from like, for lack of a better term, almost like a spiritual perspective. Like, he sees whether it's real. Totally. He finds the realness. And like, with me, the Red Hot Chili Peppers record one of their albums in a mansion. Because he wanted to hear like, instead of a recording studio, he wanted to hear like the sounds of the house. So Rick, there's a, you know, I didn't come here to plug this. But we should because it's going to be awesome. Because I may have seen pieces of it. He has this documentary with Jay-Z coming out like next week, where they sit in this incredible monument structure in Europe. And they just listen to music together and talk about music. And it's so good. Which is a documentary on them listening to this. It's really about Jay. But about his childhood. Yeah. So Jay's music and they're listening to, yeah. I think this was filmed in an abandoned post office in France because Rick liked the skylight. I've seen pieces of it. I'm so excited to see this. And it's all black and white. I think so. HBO Max. OK. Yeah. Yeah, he's he's on a whole other. It's a weird, good, very weird dude. He isn't very rational too, right? I mean, his whole thing-- I may have said this before, but his whole thing is he says there are only three things. It used to be two, but he updated it to three things in life that are true. One is the laws of physics, biology, chemistry, nature. The other is God. We talk a lot about God these days. And the third is professional wrestling. And he watches 10 hours a week. Because he knows professional wrestling. Because he said he's like, everyone agrees it's made up. So it's the only thing that everyone agrees that he thinks everything else is made up. Because we made up media. We made up show business. We made up the game, a sport, and what the rules are. And he just thinks it's the closest thing to truth out there. Yeah, that's where he and I part ways. I mean, I went to an AEW event with him. It was pretty cool. I have to say it was the first time going. And the athletes all adore him. Like, everyone loves him. And he's there front row. Oh, he's a huge fan. Huge fan. I think he's a lifetime member and lifetime member. And he really can extract like trueisms about human nature from watching wrestling. Oh, yeah, there we go. I'm going with all my red glasses on at that point, currently. Oh, man. The red glasses. Well, it's wild is it? At one point, the guys are climbing the ladder. They're going to grab the thing. They're both going up the sides of the ladder. And then one stops and goes, hey, that's Rick Rubin. And the guy pushes out the ladder. And I look at Rick to see if he's sort of like getting some sort of dope. I mean, hit off and he just goes, he's just listening. He's just there, experiencing it. That he's not like pulled into it. Yeah, I need to drug test him. I think he's on acid. He claims he's never done any drugs. That seems ridiculous. Maybe he had one sip of alcohol. He just go, which in the music business, that's a feat. He must have one of those brains that's broken and just leaks psychedelic chemicals all the time. I don't know, whatever plane of consciousness is. I've always thought that about like schizophrenia. I can wonder if that's what's happening. I wonder if they have like some dump of psychedelic chemicals that's constantly like leaking into their brain. Because we knew, we know the brain really does produce endogenous psychoactive compounds, like DMT. I mean, is it impossible that you could have a brain that leaks it? So here's the weird thing about schizophrenia. And it speaks to the larger kind of ways that medicine works for better or worse. Is that for the longest time we thought that dopamine, too much dopamine was schizophrenia. Why? Because drugs that reduce dopamine, call them neuroleptic drugs. Haloparital, all these things, Chlosopene would reduce auditory hallucinations. So the conclusion was-- Auditorium. Auditorium. So meaning voices in your head? Yeah, and that's mostly what people deal with. Especially paranoid schizophrenia. There's hearing voices. Do this, do that. You're awful. I mean, if you think about it from that perspective, imagine all day and night you're just dealing with voices in your head that feel like another person there, telling you usually horrible things about yourself for the outside world, all the time. And these drugs reduce those symptoms. We've known that for a long time. But because they reduce dopamine and all over the brain and body, they create what's something called tardive dyskinesia, which is a suppression of the motor system. And so you'll see people who are doing this like writhing like this. You'll see them on the street a lot. Sometimes that psychosis, a lot of times that's psychotic people who are taking their anti-psychotic medication. But you know, it gives you some amputations. The voices tell the voices to shut the fuck up. I think some have auditory hallucinations, but most have auditory hallucinations. Sorry, some have visual hallucinations, but most have auditory hallucinations. And you know, this sets in usually around mid-early 20s. And what's weird is years ago I had a meal with the then director of the National Institutes of Mental Health. His name was Bob Desimone. And he said, do you know why they're so little money for research on schizophrenia compared to say autism? It's like, why? And he's like, well, because the parents of autistic kids lobby hard. And usually the parents of autistic kids are not also autistic. But schizophrenia, even though it's not, you know, doesn't run completely through families. Oftentimes the parents of schizophrenia will have schizophrenia conditions or-- - What is that? - These are, it's like, they now call them schizophrenia typo, they'll have not typical thinking, right? It doesn't mean they're crazy, but they're off. And so they're not bad people, but they're placing society off and doesn't position them to like sit down with a senator and say, hey, listen, you know, my kids got autism and we need more research on this. And so a lot of where the money goes has to do with where, obviously, the lobby is. And if you think about genetic disorders in families, and we know there is a strong component with schizophrenia. Like if you take two monosigotic identical twins, right? The, if one is paranoid schizophrenia, the probability that the other one will be paranoid schizophrenia isn't 100%, but it's pretty, it's much higher than by chance, much, much higher. - Have they ever done a study where one manages to avoid it with lifestyle choices or diet or exercise or something along those lines? - Definitely, although not in a way that you could attribute it to one thing, But for instance, for a long time, actively. military service in somebody who has a genetic predisposition to psychosis was a kind of an additional risk factor a meaningful risk factor makes sense because of the stress the stress methamphetamine use I mean again the stress the stress stress of also methods just seem fucking out of their mind anyway, so I mean there's this meth strength thing that I've never seen proven but it doesn't you can find these videos of like methods carrying refrigerators down the street and they're not jacked they're not jacked but there's like carrying refrigerators down alleys and you know people talk about meth strength but yeah I mean methamphetamine is going to create probably the largest dump of dopamine in the brain than any other drug at least in the short term and it makes people think every idea is a good idea and everything is about them and their goals so it's the hyperdope of an urgent state how much different is it than Adderall in terms of the actual fact oh I mean it's is it does dependant yeah and we don't know what addicts are taking exactly but yeah I mean Adderall is amphetamine violence is amphetamine actually have a forgive me for referencing the book too many times that it'd be great if people want to read it but if that's not my goal here is to constantly references but there's a long section on all stimulants caffeine nicotine Adderall viavance Modaphanel Ardemodaphan every single drug that can make you more alert and focused I talk about the pros and cons every single drug I talk about humans have always found a way to use these things to find things to enhance their focus the problem with methamphetamine is that it's also neurotoxic right this is actually very relevant to the conversation about MDMA methylene dioxy methamphetamine which is a variant of methamphetamine MDMA for the treatment of trauma is looking really promising the early studies including one that was published in science showed that non-human primates that are given MDMA experience neuron loss that neurons die in the brain and that message propagated that paper was retracted because that laboratory accidentally injected methamphetamine not MDMA MDMA is today accidentally mixed those two I don't know what happened they did publish a retraction having methamphetamine laying around the lab oh man you should have come to my lab when I run a lab until a few years ago I still teach I shut my lab but we had I mean we had all sorts of goodies in there I mean you ever worry about your students taking it? no because you know with anytime you use a federally controlled drug you have to account for every last micro leader of that someone's coming and checking all the time we also worked with viruses I mean my lab at one point was using sin-biz viruses modified rabies viruses adenoviruses and on and on like a you know and so we had some labels on the wall like this is a lab that works with viruses and we also had controlled substances and that's just kind of how it goes this is only one way you got to figure out what makes what happened in the human brain I never had MDMA in my lab or or amphetamine in my lab but when I was an undergraduate I worked in a lab where we injected rats with MDMA at a time this was in the early 90s when not much was known about it but people were dying at raves and that lab worked on thermal regulation so we were interested in why they were dying from maybe MDMA it turns out it was the hyperthermia from raves and not drinking enough fluids and people would take amphetamines and people were dying that pretty much got worked out over time people realize you need to stay hydrated but methamphetamine and MDMA are very different MDMA there is no evidence that it's neurotoxic you always hear those stories about people who took MDMA that it holes in their brain yeah probably wasn't MDMA probably was more methamphetamine maybe mixed with a little bit of MDMA this is why it would be so great if this was finally legal and produced in ways that were reliable and administered in safe ways and all that but you know that trial the passage through the FDA failed for two reasons this last round it might go through the next round but it failed for two reasons I've been very close to this whole situation one is that the powers that be in the previous administration felt that there wasn't a good control condition it wasn't a good placebo they're fair enough although a lot of drugs deal with that issue the other was there was one maybe two sexual improprieties of the therapist there was a couple therapists that did some things they shouldn't have done while somebody was under the influence of the drug and one incident like that can sink an entire initiative so that was bad obviously and so if it's going to pass in the next few years they're going to have to be some things in place to make sure that the way it's administered is safe you know because the person under you know under the influence of MDMA is very vulnerable to all sorts of things it's not just about their heart health etc that can be dealt with before can be dealt with after but the real issue is you know is the therapist operating in their best interest you know and because the psychedelic community has always existed and I'm a big fan of psychedelics for the treatment of depression, trauma etc but because that community has always kind of existed on the edge of other techniques it's like well if the person is like saying they have all this trauma in their feet and the therapist rubs their feet like that's not usual for therapy right that's pretty like within the gray zone of MDMA assisted psychotherapy done kind of rogue in the world of psychedelic therapists so there's really no controls on what goes with the drugs we've agreed on the basis of the clinical trials of what the dosages might be healthy dosages how frequent like two two sessions with a booster 80 milligrams in and then a booster of say 50 milligrams halfway in or by body weight space three weeks apart for psilocybin maybe just once for un-un-un-un all that's been you know looked at in various ways in these trials and is it always in conjunction with psychotherapy? it should be and then the data really show that people need therapy going in they need therapy during and they need therapy coming out for the best results but those results are remarkable I mean 60 70 percent you know significant reduction in symptoms in some cases remission but you know these you know I have friends in the so-called psychedelic community but I also have friends in the standard science community and for these things to really come together there's going to have to be some standardization of safety but also just practice what are you going to talk about? if someone's like I'm feeling I'm at the precipice of like a huge amount of pain do you encourage them to go into that pain and purge it or do you tell them hey listen you know maybe back away from that all this stuff is done by feel in the psychedelic community there's no standardization of it but then again talk therapy is the same way right there's no standardization of the narratives that you're supposed to have with your client right there's a lot of freedom to sort of yeah and you know and then you know in that I've been reading a lot about the history you know counter culture history and stuff yeah I joined the Board of Estiline which is this you know incredible place on the coast of California and the guy started it is in his late 90s and has a center for theory and research it's not just about like yoga classes and like and has that but there's a serious focus on human potential there and you know in the 60s 70s and 80s and even in the 90s all these somatic therapies came along you know in the breathing therapies you had psychedelic therapies too but you know how much of these things to merge is a question like maybe some somatic therapy during MDMA could be really helpful for somebody that feels really out of body or that had a you know bodily trauma or was raped or whatever it was abused as a kid but then we have to ask ourselves are we going to let therapists touch people while they're under the influence of these really powerful pathogens is it touching people is that normalized in the psychedelic community when they do this not necessarily a sitter a good day starts with a solid morning routine so if something's missing if your body isn't getting what it needs everything can feel off AG1 is designed to help fill the holes their next gen formula is dialed in with over 75 ingredients minerals vitamins adaptogens and more clinically shown to fill nutrient gaps and increase healthy gut bacteria an AG1 pro takes it even further it has CAHMB for muscle protection zinc carnacene for gut health and 5 grams of creavitalis premium German made creotene monohydrate wish if you don't know creotene is a highly studied compound in sports science that helps support energy get more from your morning routine add either AG1 next gen or AG1 pro and your body will thank you go to drink AG1 dot com slash Joe Rogan and for a limited time save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 next gen or AG1 pro that's drink AG1 dot com slash Joe Rogan no not necessarily it's just that right now psychedelic assisted therapy sits in that constellation of like somatic therapies talk therapies breathing therapies emotive therapies like none of this is formalized I mean so much of what I've been interested in and while you know wrote the book aside from you know the compulsion to just get things out there my hope is that as more techniques come along different breath word practice different supplements different drugs different peptides that people will start to understand some of the kind of principles of how things work to decide what's worth while or not so for instance for trauma we know that it's basically four steps doesn't matter if you use getting through trauma doesn't matter if it's through therapy that includes psychedelics or not first of all people have to have a willingness to address it right second they need to experience the painful feeling in a safe environment there's no just kind of a waiting that so the feel your feeling sings is true and we often just stop there we hear that and that's it but then there's also having that explicit memory of what happened, but in a state of calm, not feeling the feelings. Because you're trying to uncouple the memory from the emotions, right? There's no losing the memory. You're trying to uncouple the emotions from the memory. And then the fourth piece, which is something I touch on with respect to grief and trauma therapy more generally, is there's this beautiful thing that, you know, guests on your podcast have talked about. You probably experienced this, that at some point, the shitty thing that happened to you, the awful thing can be transmuted into some effort to create goodness for yourself or for the world. Sometimes it's public education. Sometimes people, you know, the loss of a child, for instance, like, "Buh, my God." How awful that, you know, but people who move through this process can get to the place where they'll like plant a tree or teach to or talk to other parents who are in bereavement. And so they've transmuted their loss into goodness, right? So it's four steps, so if we just say, you know, take your loss and go do good for the world, that's not going to work. If we say take your loss and just feel the pain of it, people get caught in that spiral. And I think this is, unfortunately, when the millennials were in their adolescence and, you know, teen years and 20s, there was this overemphasis on, like, feeling your feelings. But no one ever talked about the next phase, which is where you actually stop feeling so shitty about the shitty thing that happened. And so my goal is really to try and organize, like, these different practices and come up with structures so that you could imagine MDMA being very useful for that first or second step, feeling your feelings in a safe way in the right environment. What are the studies that Maps has done with MDMA with soldiers in PTSD? Because that's been probably one of the most prominent things. Yeah. Well, that Rick Doblin, obviously, is more qualified to get into the specifics. But I know of at least three clinical trials looking at MDMA at dosages that are by body weight, but they're not, like, outrageously high dosages that have people move through their PTSD within a matter of, you know, four to six weeks total. So with two sessions of MDMA spaced apart about a month or so, talk therapy the whole way through. And I know of at least one clinical trial with veterans. Often times these studies will include veterans, but it's not all veterans, which actually is kind of good. You want to be able to compare their kind of trauma to other people's trauma. But I have to say, and I know you've covered this extensively, but the work on I began has, in my mind, has completely revised the way that we think about psychedelic therapy. Because it's kind of ironic that the first psychedelic that will likely be legal for the treatment of PTSD is going to be the most intense one. It would be like, if I'm like, hey, I want to learn a martial art and you're like, yeah, get into the octagon and get your ass kicked, you know, and that's going to, you know, turn you into a fighter. And that's the way people describe, I have again, it's kind of like that. It is no joke, because you point out it is not recreational. And then when they follow with DMT, I mean, you know, it seems that the outcomes are very, very good for a lot of people. I will say, and they're going to sweat me for this a little bit. There have been a few deaths. And it seems that that may correlate with fentanyl use prior. That's really that needs to be talked about if we're going to get this legal. How many deaths? I'm aware of two. And is this in those clinics or is this yes? And they have to report them and is it a heart failure like what it because I know that there's heart issues. Heart and breathing. So they're linked obviously, you know, heart and breathing linked and people are heart rate monitored. I know of many people and there are many of your friends like and they've talked openly about this stuff. So DJ Shipley and the Capone, the market's Capone and others and many, many others who feel that they've benefited tremendously from these therapies. And there's a litany of other names there too that have benefited tremendously. I want to be clear. There are also a few people who felt they didn't have a good experience. I know Sean Ray right now is out there talking about his negative experience. Sean Ryan. That's, excuse me. Sean Ray's like a bodybuilder, right? Sean Ryan, excuse me. I think Sean Ryan, I think he's talking about DMT and they follow with DMT at some of those clinics, not all. But he's, he said he had gone through exorcisms, isn't that what he's saying now? I mean, I think if you, if you think about my, my experience of psychedelics, I've not done that I have again, is that there is all sorts of understanding about the brain that comes about during those journeys that leads you to understand that we have good and evil in all of us. And I could understand how it could be downright terrifying for some people to realize that we have a hypothalamus that just wants to satisfy drives. But we also have a forebrain that can suppress those drives. I mean, that is the nature of being human, right? Do you think that's what these people are thinking when they think of demons or thinking of like, in their, like, drives that are a part of the human system? So I have a lot of thoughts about this. So I'm not going to spin off into a neuroscience lecture, but we think about brain function and free will and all that kind of stuff from top down and bottom up perspective. Bottom up is you have a drive, you want to satisfy it, you're going to do it. Top down are regions of the brain that inhibit those impulse circuits. And so much of life is about the dynamic tension between those two. Okay. We've been deadly sins, right, are all the hypothalmic structures like, you know, rage, envy, lost, etc. But the forebrain can be built up. You can learn things that the, you know, kids learn to suppress their impulses, puppies learn to suppress their impulses to get a reward or just to avoid punishment. And that's a lot of what being human is about, right? There's an amazing case actually right here in Austin where I don't know if you're familiar with this. A kid who woke up one morning, rode in his diary. He's an ex-marine, this was many years ago, and then killed his wife and his mother with a knife. Do you know what this? No. Okay. Then he went to the University of Texas Austin, took a rifle, went up into the tower, and shot 14 people. Oh, that story. Yeah. I think a 15th died later. Yeah. So, but here's where it gets interesting, right? I mean, it's horrible, right? One woman was pregnant, so they counted that I think was a total of 18 or 19 deaths. He was shot by one of the security guards. They go and they read his diary, and he literally says, "I don't know why I want to do this, but please take the money from, you know, my life insurance and donate it to the study of mental health. Please pay off my debts. Please understand what's happening to me." And they did an autopsy, and the guy had a tumor in a brain region, which included, brain regions, which included a migdala hypothalamus and thalamus, collectively what we would call low-level brain structures involved with, you know, perception and impulse. The conclusion of all that is not, oh, he had a brain tumor that made him do it. The conclusion that most neuroscientists draw is that most people don't ever conceive of doing those things. Not a lot of people go to Niagara Falls and look and go, "What's keeping me from jumping? What's keeping you from jumping is your forebrain." What people think, "Oh, you know, what keeps people from shoplifting?" Everyone would like to think that they're incredibly moral, like, "I don't shoplift. I'm not a shoplifter," right? But for some people, they want to do the thing and they stop themselves from doing it or drinking or cheating or whatever it is, right? Those top-down influences on our impulses and our bottom-up impulses are constantly in dynamic tension. And in psychedelics, I mean, lots of things are happening. You're getting a lot more inter-connectivity of the brain that's always there being revealed. It's very rare. It happens, but it's very rare to hear about people doing terrible things to other people on psychedelics. It's not, it happens, but it's not common. So I'm not saying you reveal evil in there, but as you know, in a high-dose psilocybin journey, you're going into the recesses of your mind and your unconscious mind is showing you what's there. It's showing you that there are terrible forces out in the world. There are humans. You learn all sorts of stuff about humans, as you know, right? In these journeys, you also learn about incredible beauty and potential for making positive change. So the psychedelics are kind of a, they're a mysterious, free-for-all in there. They're probably also interacting with your very specific memories, and if you're dealing with a guy like Sean Ryan, he did a lot of combat to me. You've seen a lot of horrible things, horrible things. My good friend Eddie Penny, he was also a Tier 1 operator, and yeah, great name. Great name. Great guy. He has to enjoy a conversation. Another Tier 1 operator from that community, he's, he's, I'm not revealing anything he hasn't already, but he's recovered from substance abuse issues, and it has been sober a long time. He's not a fan of psychedelics. He got me reading the Bible. We could talk about this, like, you know, actually church, and I know you've been going to church. It's been an interesting thing, because a lot of what's in the Bible is about the dynamic tension between what neuroscientists would call top down and bottom up influences. It acknowledges, like, we have this stuff in us, that you're not supposed to pretend it doesn't. You have to acknowledge your humanness, but also your human capacity to control these impulses. And I mean, that's a lot of what's in the Bible. It's not everything, but it stories about that in many, many ways, hence the seven deadly sins and the virtues and so on. And, you know, Eddie has been a pretty strong voice for caution in the veterans and other communities about the use of psychedelics, because there's this theory, right, within some sectors of religion and Christianity in particular, that in psychedelic journeys, that evil entities, if you will, might have access to us or something like that. There's a neuroscientist view of that too, which is that in those states, you're revealing aspects of self that normally you can suppress, but now you're having to see that aspect of you, or other people, like realizing that people have evil and good in them is a, I think we can all say, yeah, I get it, but we usually say they're evil, they're good. They're evil, they're good. It's very hard for us to address the possibility that we, any of us, I like to think I could never have been that kid that went up on the tower, but if I had a tumor in my brain, would I have done it? I don't know. I mean, this recent case of this woman killing her children was about this, right? It was about this very issue. Like, oh, is her physiology to blame? And the law has a very simple rule on most of these cases. I've looked at this, and the law basically says, it doesn't matter if you have a brain tumor. It doesn't matter if you're high on math. It doesn't matter if you're full of rage, because rage is just a different set of neurochemicals. You are responsible for your behavior. And I think we need those, you know, thick black lines as, you know, I like to think of them. Otherwise, you can't function as a society. It's not saying that people aren't stricken with biological issues, but we're saying even if stricken, you need to be held responsible. One of the big things that happens during psychedelic trips that disturb a lot of people is when they try to fight the trip, and then they have a really bad trip. And one of the things that someone will tell you for lack of a better term, who is a shaman. I hate that term, because it's I think it's probably very real, some parts of the world, and it's also probably a very much bullshit thing in America. It's like expert in America now. Well, there's some real experts in America. There's probably more real experts, and there are real shaman's. You know, the shaman thing is very weird. A lot of it's like very lost people that find identity in altered states of consciousness. And I think, just my personal opinion, that experiencing these altered states of consciousness should enhance your experience as a human, should not replace it. I think there's a lot of people who are replacing altered states of consciousness far too often. And they live in that world more than they live in the world of just being conscious and sober. And I think there's many steps that you have to take in order to have a good trip. Some people have a really hard time letting go, relaxing, and just going with it. They fight it. I've seen it. I've seen people fight it. People that for whatever reason they have whatever psychological issues, or they have control issues, and they just cannot deal with the fact that this experience is so beyond their comprehension and so overwhelming that they try to battle it. They try to control it. The experiences, the things that they see, the states that they enter into, they don't feel at all in control and they freak out. And when you try to control it, I haven't had one of those. But from the people that I know that have, it's like, they say that they were wrestling with it. And you cannot win. And it just overwhelms you. And then your anxiety kicks in. What I have experienced in trips is that it's highlighted that if you think in a positive way, it'll show you more beautiful images and that you can just relax. And that especially in the DMT realm, they are trying to tell you to relax. They're trying to tell you to just go with it. And if you don't fight it, you can have a wonderful experience. But I haven't been a war. I haven't been raped. I haven't been physically assaulted and beaten as a child. There's a lot of things that didn't happen to me that I don't have to deal with. And someone, especially I think, guys who've been to war, who you've seen so much horrible shit, and it just becomes a part of your everyday existence, these horrible memories, these horrible visions that you have, and horrible things that you've probably had to do. And then something comes along like DMT or like psilocybin or something, just overwhelms the normal state of consciousness. If you're trying to fight that, I would imagine that would feel like you're battling demons. Imagine setting your makeup, then forgetting it's even theirs. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours, with flexible all-day comfy grip. No tightness, no stickiness, no residue. Just plump, dewy, hydrated skin that still feels like your skin. Try new grippy setting mist from Mabelie, New York. Maybe it's Mabelie. Yeah, and I haven't had to deal with any of those things either. So I want to acknowledge that. I had a very good experience of therapeutic combined MDMA and psilocybin work, therapeutic work, incredible. And I can distill it to one simple takeaway, which was thinking about bad things that had happened that I wish hadn't happened. Like, I felt like I had kind of worked through that stuff in life by running lifting weights from therapy. It was life time, you know, it worked through it. But there was a session where I was feeling the resistance to like feel something and I knew what was knocking. And it was thinking about things that didn't happen, that I wish had happened for me. Not things that I wish I got, but you know, just basic experiences that I wish I had had. And it was incredibly sad in the moment. But then it opened, you know, after some period of time. What kind of experiences? You know, listen, I had a better childhood than many, much better than many. And harder than others for, you know, there were some things about my family structure that felt there were times when I really, really, really needed a certain kind of support and structure. And it was gone. And so I went out into the world and found it in skateboarding, eventually in science. And, you know, I talk about the introduction of the book actually. I talk about why I eventually went into public health education. And it was seeing about a third of my friends from growing up dead or in jail. And that's weird for a guy that didn't grow up in the inner city and I wasn't in the military. These are friends of mine that succumbed to drugs or suicidal mental health issues. Now mind you, the other two thirds did great. And some of them started companies like DC. And, you know, like these weren't close friends of mine. But that community of people, of all these feral kids. In the 90s, the people who skateboarded were the ones who didn't have parents that went to things. Right. And I have a good relationship with my dad now. Like we're, I've actually had him on the podcast and that was really bonding for us. We're great now. But there was a time when I was an adolescent in team when I really needed structure. And I really needed certain things that just were not happening. And my home life was depressing. It was really empty. It was really depressing. And so when I went to the world and did way too many things, the way too young, saw a lot and got involved in a lot of sex violence and stuff that I shouldn't have at that time. And luckily not drugs. That wasn't my thing. So I always knew those narratives. And I've always had a like a bittersweet memory of them. Like they also served me well. They motivated me to forage for ways to be healthy and things like that. But then in science, it was wild because in science, your mentors play a tremendous role in your progress and your sense of safety. Science is a weird thing. It's different now. But when I was coming up, you would get very close to your graduate advisor. I was very close to my undergraduate advisor. He was like a father figure to me. My graduate advisor was truly like a mother to me. I knew her when she was pregnant. I knew her husband. Her daughters and neuroscientists, like incredibly close to her. She had a maternal way about her and a toughness that was unbelievable. And she was a serious scientist. And then my postdoc advisor, similarly, was very supportive. My undergraduate advisor, who I got very close with, killed himself in a very dramatic way, about two weeks after I had spoken to him, shot himself in the bathtub. And this was a guy who understood mental illness. I talk about him in the book. My graduate advisor died at 50 of cancer. She had the Brachimutation, which is predisposed to cancer. And that one, like, devastated me. And then my postdoc advisor died of pancreatic cancer like a year into my faculty appointment. And he had a heart attack sitting across from me. You know, was the first indication he had pancreatic cancer. And so the joke in my field is you don't want me working for you because, you know, that's like fuck. But then what's wild is that, you know, I made it through science, I get tenure at Stanford. This kind of shit is happening in my science world. Then a colleague of mine gets addicted to oxy-contin for after a back injury. And he's dead. And no one talks about it. Like everyone's like, oh, yeah, yeah, he was a member of the National Academy. It's a famous scientist down at the Salk Institute. Everyone's just like, oh, yeah, yeah, just kind of carries on with their work. And then this is going to get depressing for a moment before he gets light. End of 2017, three friends of mine from childhood. There's a graffiti artist. His name is, he went by orphan or a friend. This brilliant artist. He did so much cool shit. His name was Aaron Curry, dies of stomach cancer. My good friend John Eichelberry from childhood. Am I good from Johnny Fair, fentanyl suicide. Boom. People are just going down like crazy. And I'm like, what the fuck is going on here? And then I started to realize this is one of the reasons I started the podcast is one of the reasons I started going on podcast is my science colleagues, they don't know how to manage their stress. They understand the science of stress. But they look like shit. Their kids are a mess. They have all these anxieties. So where's my physician friends? I can count on one. On one hand, the number of them that are healthy of mind and body who have healthy kids. Like, you know, and then I realize, oh, you know, there's skateboarding community, there's science, health community. I'm at Stanford University School of Medicine, the apex or among, you know, the top universities in the world of health and I'm like, my colleagues are sick and dying and stressed and I realized I was like, shit, we don't know how to regulate stress. I started studying stress and stress mitigation, this kind of thing. And then I don't wanna make this even darker but I think it's worth acknowledging for a couple of reasons. And by the way, I wanna be really clear. I think what veteran solutions has done with the IBEGain initiative. I think what Rick Perry and what Brian are doing with the IBEGain thing. I think it's awesome. If I highlight that there were some deaths, I wanna be really clear. Like, those people might have died of fentanyl anyway. We don't know. I mean, there's, you know, we need to-- - The both connect, both the deaths are connected to fentanyl use? - My understanding is they had to use fentanyl prior to going to use IBEGain. So maybe in this discussion, a few people will be sensitized to that's a potential issue. - So meeting like they were probably addicted to fentanyl, they were trying to get off of it. And they tried to do it while they had fentanyl in their system. - Perhaps, yeah. - And for all we know, they might have snuck fentanyl, we don't like to think that they might have, but who knows how closely they did it, you know. - But they're really hooked. - Yeah, and listen, you and I know, I mean, it's more from your world of, you know, martial arts and stuff, but, you know, we know people who've like, we hear they go down to Mexico, they're gonna do this treatment. They're gonna come back, they're better. And like a week later, they don't sound so much better. You know, I pray for these people. I want the best, like I'm not saying this is bad, but I'm saying these are powerful medications. And I think they are net positive. But I'll also say, you know, many years transpired between that, you know, those friends dying, the Johnny, people, sometimes people call me on bullshit. So Aaron Curry, John Eichelberry, Johnny Faire, best fucking kids I knew. Awesome graffiti arts, one of them was in the MoMA, orphan went into the MoMA for his graffiti. So the bad ass graffiti arts, stomach cancer got him, like shit can happen. My advisors didn't do anything wrong. They just one clearly had a mental issue or otherwise he wouldn't have taken his life. The other two I cancer. So, but then this last year, I'm like going about my life and I'm thinking, okay, you know, things are pretty good. And I get a call and I hear that my good friend, Nolan Williams, triple board certified MD, who took the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation Therapies and accelerated them so that people could get relief from depression much faster. He took what was, you know, many weeks long or months long thing and compressed it. Saved lives, who's also doing the studies of IBegaine, took his own life. I mean, this one's still sinking in for me. There's no reason to believe it had anything to do with IBegaine whatsoever. He took his own life. He's a colleague physician friend of mine at Stanford. And I know his wife, who's also a physician. I know his kids. He's been on my podcast. He looked like the young Jim Morrison, handsome. He was a martial arts guy. He was a Taekwondo, like, fuck is right. Fuck is right. So, what does it tell us? You know, I've had to, I tried to intellectualize these things too much, but what does it tell us? It tells us that knowledge is not sufficient to protect us. Like, I feel like the data are in. Bold conclusion, banner across the sky. Knowledge does not, alone does not protect us. You can understand everything about the biology of these diseases. You can know, I messed up. I have something, some things, and you can understand, oh, that's serotonin or whatever. People will still do these things. And it's rare, fortunately, but it tells us that the, I believe it tells us something fundamental about humans, which is that there's always this dynamic tension between our underlying impulses and this top-down control. And suicide is a weird one, because it's like the whole thing gets twisted up so that we're no longer acting in an adaptive way, right? Obviously, taking one's life is not adaptive, but it's a rage or a depression or whatever. And the conclusion that I draw from it is, what can we do to put ourselves in the best position to be able to hold our impulses in their healthy place? You know, I don't want to make more of what I did in the book or what I'm trying to do in the podcast or public education, but let's take the ice bath, for example. I've taken a lot of shit for the ice bath thing. You have to. We both know, they don't like the cold. That's why they're talking about this. But we know for certain, I go through the data, finally. Give it, putting yourself into a high adrenaline state where your body and brain are freaking out and doing that deliberately gets you better at dealing with high stress states, which in my mind is only a good thing. This should be basic training for children, you know, not a young children, right? Why, you know, does increase metabolism marginally, does increase cortisol? No, that's a bunch of horse shit and we can talk about that. If anything, it reduces cortisol. It increases your ability to buffer stress. Is the ice bath a cure to mental health issues, addiction and relapse and all that? No, of course not. But is it, does it teach you to engage and top down control? Yes. Is it the ice bath per se? No, the ice bath is just one very efficient low-cost way to get adrenaline to go boom through the roof. You could do it through a workout. You could do it through hot sauna that feels uncomfortably hot, right? You don't die of hypothermia. You can do it through any number of different things. The point is that the principle of learning to capture your mind and think strategically, lower your state of arousal when you're in a stressful circumstance is a life skill that is invaluable. And getting great sleep, we could go on and on about all the benefits of that. There's probably 100 benefits of that and probably 1,000 things that go wrong when you don't get enough sleep chronically. Couples at night, no problem. But when you're well rested, you are far less likely to harm yourself or others. Because your forebrain is more active and can suppress these impulses. And so my kind of like, I don't like the word mission, but my goal is that we'll kind of move beyond the notion of like hacks or that it's this tool or that tool and just really understand like what we're trying to do when we're teaching ourselves to be better humans. And I do think there is a generation of kids that grew up hearing that their feelings are valid. Great, we didn't hear that growing up. I just assumed like if you drank and you couldn't stop drinking, it was a lack of willpower. Now we know there's a brain circuit. But if we say, oh, there's a brain circuit, therefore, I'm not gonna quit because it's a brain circuit. Well, you're still, you're still an addict, right? So the great sleep, social connection, sunlight in the morning, like these things are really designed to get us to have better control over our focus over our impulse control. And it almost becomes so simple at that point. And we can say, well, what was going on with Nolan in the weeks before? Well, I have smatterings of what might have been going on. Running two giant projects in his lab, two companies, managing a family, managing a life. I'm not gonna claim he was a perfect human being, but like, it's just like, overwhelm. His forebrain turned on him. Yeah, overwhelm is real. Yeah, you can only red line your system for so much. I mean, you know people have done this. I mean, you know, a lot of people-- I know a lot of people, and I've become-- I'm not really doing it. I've been friends with David Cho. I love that, dude. Fucking love him. Best fucking guy. Because he's so heartfelt now having been through the meat grinder of media and life and his own tendency to self-harm. And he's in this just a beautiful place now where he's just like literally painting everything in his environment. He's so happy with his family, and he's just fucking awesome. And-- He's a very smart guy. So smart. He figured out how to keep it together. He did, and you know, you guys have common friends in people that have taken their lives and stuff. When he talks about it, it's like, and you can just tell. He's like, there's this understanding that comes from hard-driving people that like, OK, I've not wanted to ever take my life. But like, you can-- I can relate to Nolan. Just want out. You can't take it anymore, and you want out. I think we've all been in that moment where we were like, something we were able to pull ourselves back. And it's a shoot. I think some people just go down that shoot. And you know, David and I were talking about this, because I know you guys have common friends and some of succumb to things and some who really, like, rose and above all that. And he's like, look, man, it's-- once you've tasted that edge of being pulled back and forth from your impulses, and you learn to just force yourself to both do hard things, as you always say. But also force yourself to really embrace the goodness in the world and the love that's there. Like, let's not forget the lighter side, like the beauty of all these amazing things in life. There's this kind of like promised land inside of us. I don't mean to sound religious here, but like, there's this place in us where like, yeah, all that's true. All those people, they all die. They some took their own life and the shit happened. But there's-- if I just keep doing really hard things, I'm going to stay in control of my impulses. As long as I also touch the goodness that's there every day, like the sun's coming up, my kids are healthy. I'm here, you know. I turned 50 last year, and I had to, like, they asked me to give, like, a little toast or something. It was horrible, like, I hate doing that kind of thing. I'll podcast all day, but not that. And I just realized I was, like, my hero, Joe Strummer, one of my heroes from the clash, right? Dead at 50. So I at least got further than him. 50. It's so young. And then I was like, so I'm in this like promised land now, like, yes. And that joy of having made it over some bump or something, and seen goodness. and having a great relationship now with my parents is taking a lot of work, but we're really in a good place. Appreciating all the gifts they gave me, seeing people leave, and I have such love for Nolan and for all those people I mentioned. I just love them, and understanding that the grief is just love. Man, I'll tell you, and I probably couldn't have gotten here without some of that psychedelic work, because it really took my face and stuck it in the vomit of all this, but then you came out, you know, and you go, "Whoa, there's so much goodness." So I don't know, I mean, if the psychedelics can help people talk therapy, can help people great, but I think on a day-to-day basis, it's like, do shit that sucks, so that you can stay in control of staying in control, and also make sure you touch into the beauty of really good things. - Well, I find that when you do the things that suck, you do the hard workouts and the song and the cold plunge, life just seems more beautiful. It really does, because you're not overwhelmed with this just existential dread that just hangs over you, just being a physical, vulnerable human being, walking through this unknown, uncertain life, and there's a bunch of external chaoses, like world wars and fucking financial collapses, and there's so much shit going on, and everybody's brain do something that just exhausts that, at least for a little while, unless you take in, what a fucking beautiful day, look at those squirrels, just having a good time, running around on the tree, listening to the birds, just feel the sun on your face. I don't appreciate that if I don't do things. This is my own personal thing, I don't know, I mean, I know everybody's different, everybody's different biologically, psychologically. For me, I know what my formula is. My formula is if I don't do those things, I feel like shit, period, so I do the things, and I've experimented, I've taken days off, three days, four days off, and then at the fourth day I'm like, Jesus Christ, who are you? Get to the fucking gym, go hit the bags. - And the world seems worse, not better. - Way worse, way worse. And I think there's a lot of people out there that are very angry, like you see a lot of people on social media, I think they're living in that state, but not a state of four days, a state of 40 years, of nothing, doing nothing, and just letting your body just go (burps), you know, you have dogs, right? You know, it's like when your dog doesn't get exercised, dog is not fucking exercised. - Oh my, new one has, he's part bulldog, but part pit too. And I'm keeping his nuts on this time, 'cause my last dog, you know what I was like, injecting with TRT, late in life, and he felt so much better. This time I'm keeping strummers, I'm keeping strummers and nuts on this dog. - That's so much of fucking energy. - Yeah, you gotta throw the ball. - You gotta throw the ball. But this dude, I have him running on the fucking treadmill in the morning. - Oh wow. - Oh yeah, I take a full wash, then I train him from the time he was nine weeks to run on the treadmill. - Does he like it? - Fucking loves it. - Dude, he'll haul ass it, like right now he's up to five on a two-in climb, and he's just like at the back of that thing. He falls off, he jumps right back on. People are like, don't enter his joints. I'm like, listen, I've raised bulldog breeds before. I'm not gonna blow out his joints, okay? He is so stoked. He will just run and run and run. And then I'll, I tell him, wait, and I'll put the liver treat there, and then when he gets that thing, his ears flop, he's going like, and you can tell when he's done, it's what you're describing. He's just like, peace. - He's chill, so peaceful. - Oh, and I throw the ball from my dog, and then we call him and sit down. He just lays on his back and I rub his belly. He's just so happy. - This is Marshall. - Yeah. - You got another one, right? - Charlie. - Cavalier Controls. - Yeah, Charlie. - They're great. He's amazing, but oh my god. - Dude, they're great dogs. - He's a little love machine. All he wants to do is kiss you. - Just kisses you constantly. - The Cavalier Controls have a little bit of a, almost like a bulldog thing to them, like the calm. This last year, I went to meet the breeds out in New York. You can go and meet all the different breeds. You see the otter dogs, and you learn three things when you go meet these hundreds of different pure breeds. First of all, people can look like their dogs. It's crazy. I don't know which direction it goes. Like, you look to the guy who's got like the otter hound and he's got a big beard. He looks just like the friggin' otter hound. - Jamie Carl or a fucking contradiction to that. - That's true. - That's true. - Jamie Carl. - That's true. That's true. The other thing you learn is that the pure breeds, in addition to being shaped a certain way, like they have a certain demeanor. Like it, there's variation, but there's a demeanor, you know, and the bulldogs are kind of goofy, you know, and the sight hounds are like locked in and looking all the way. And I swear some dogs are smarter than others. They're like counting how many people are in the environment. They're doing math, basically. Whereas, strummers just like, he's either lying upside down. - The shepherd dogs. - Yeah, they're doing math. They're counting all the time, accounting for everything. And then I leave there and I go, I turn to my girlfriend and we were like, "What's breed are we in?" And I go, "We're getting a bulldog, mate." Like, we're going right back to the one I already had. And she's like, "All right, like, you know, she's pretty easy going about that." And I'm like, "You have not experienced bulldog love because they're just, they're hedonist. They just want love, comfort. They want to chase the ball. They have this much forebrain." And this is why I think dogs are the almost perfect species because their impulses are never to be bad. Like, they don't have this like rage anger thing unless people train them to do that. They don't. I think the dog is just, quote unquote, dumb enough and just smart enough to have like the perfect life. Like, they're. - It depends on the breed. - I mean, the malinoes are malty. The malinoes are. - Belgian malinwas are. - Malinwas, excuse me, meat missiles. - Yeah. - Those little fuckers. They can be great dogs. I know people that have them, but you have to be on them two hours a day. They need tasks. It's basically you live with a super athlete. You know, you live with a, you know, a primed Jose Aldo. Like, I've never made fighting. World champion. Like, they could fucking leap over buildings. Like, you can't just have them lay in the yard. They'll go crazy. - Yeah, they don't potato. - No, they need things to do, man. They need tasks. Whereas Marshall, he's just so happy just chilling with you. He likes to cuddle and watch TV. That's what he likes to do. He likes to climb up on the couch and he puts his head right here and we watch TV together and I just pat him. If I don't pat him, he looks at me and then I gotta start pat him. - Oh, man. - This episode is brought to you by Visible. As fall hits, we enter another season of change. Time to shift gears, drop the dead weight and upgrade the wardrobe for the drop in temperature. But one thing that doesn't need to change your phone. The smartest upgrade this season isn't a new phone. It's a better wireless plan. Switch to Visible, the ultimate wireless hack. 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Terms apply, see Visible.com for plan features and network management details. - You know what saves lives and has cured a lot of PTSD or service dogs? - Oh, for sure. - Like people, we don't talk about this enough 'cause they're not, you know, it's not as like, quote unquote exciting as psychedelics, but man, those service dogs have kept people alive. - The pure love. - Pure love. - Pure love. - Pure love. - They love you, you love them, you have fun together. - They're goofy, they do things that are silly and you laugh and they know you're laughing. - So good. - It's like dogs are amazing. And people that don't have love in their life, they're suffering, like loneliness is worse than smoking multiple packs of cigarettes a day. Just for overall health and life expectancy. - You know the Andy Stumpf came on the podcast. - I love him. - Yeah, great guy, great guy. And he recommended this documentary to me, The Dark Wizard, which is about this guy Dean Potter, who was a free solo client. - Yeah, I watched it. - And then the wing suit guy, and that's a beautiful example of dogs helping someone, at one point, although he took that dog and all sorts of crazy shit. That dog wagon was very dead, devoted. - Dog did not know any better. - He did not know that dog suit was life. - He had no other dogs to talk to. - Imagine you're that guy's dog, like you just, yeah, you just assume it's as normal. But the other piece there were like, talk about dopamine and drive and life and death. That, I feel like that movie was such a key insight into the relationship between drive when it's in love and love of craft, love of people and then drive when it's competitive in an unhealthy way. Like how the Buddhists talk about like ego, and that ego is great because it can drive us in certain pursuits that can build things for us, family, and society. But then how it can, when people get competitive about the wrong things, like in that movie, when he was doing things that he didn't really want to do, it almost killed him. But then when he was doing things that could almost kill him, but he really wanted to do it, but it was almost like spiritual, like doing that tightrope walk with the full moon in the background. He is still dangerous, but there was like this piece in him. And I think about this all the time, because Rick talked, Ruben talks about this. You've talked about this. When we're doing something out of love of craft, even if we're fucking pushing so hard, Joe talks about this. Like it's like, it's not easy, but there's this kind of, I don't know what the word is for, it's smoothness to the thing. - Yeah. - But then when it's competitive for the wrong reasons, it, what are the wrong reasons? - Well, for instance, Potter was a great climber and then started getting into other things, but when he had Alex Honnold coming up on his heels, and Honnold was better than him, right? And he started getting competitive about this kid who was gonna take away his legacy. he started making stupid mistakes. He started getting hurt, he started getting angry, his mental health got much worse. You know what I mean? I mean, Honel's the last guy I would want coming up from my slot, right? 'Cause he's so mechanical and methodical. You also, in that movie, I think Alex is fantastic. You also saw a different side of Alex when he was younger. That doesn't seem to be there right now. At least not visibly, which is he was hyper competitive with the guys that he had grown up on. And he was like, and he was like, I want that rock. I want that slot. And he says, he was a better climber. And so he wanted it before Potter. And so you can see when Potter's kind of like the dying lion in that field and trying to hold on, start seeing a stupid shit like these tightrope walks and China that almost kill 'em and he's breaking down in tears, there's no elation. At the beginning he's doing things and it's like, yes. Yes, then he's just doing things and he's like, just happy he didn't die. Two very different ways of looking at the same pursuits. And so I think that movie is a far more interesting insight into human drive more generally than it is about this clearly manic rock climber. The drive is an interesting thing because drive in its purest form actually replaces discipline. Like I was acutely aware of that when I was a kid because I was not disciplined at all. Really? I was a very undisciplined kid. I never cleaned my room. I never did my homework. I was, I had very few rules growing up. I was quite feral. This was until what age? Till 15, till I started really training heavily in martial arts and then when I got into martial arts I still was not, I did not clean my room. I did not do my homework. I still, but in that one thing I had insane drive and I worked so hard and I worked all day long every day and I never took a day off and that was the difference. It was like, it was the drive that replaced discipline because I loved the thing that I was doing so much, I found so much interest in it and so much passion in it and it was so exciting to me to do that I just wanted to do it all the time. And so I didn't have to be disciplined. I knew there was work that had to be done to get better at it, but it was also, I was just intensely focused on getting better. So the work, like whether it's rounds on the heavy bag or practicing specific techniques or sparring drills or whatever the fuck I was doing, I wasn't doing it like, oh okay, it's what I got to do today. It was not that at all. It was just, I can't wait to do more of this. - So rad. - I was the only thing that stopped me was time and sleep. I would have tried to do it all day every day. I was obsessed, but I wasn't disciplined. I had to get disciplined later on in life when I stopped competing in particular because then there was like this overwhelming, looming threat of physical harm if you don't stay in the gym constantly. If you're not like 100% ready. There's this possibility that you could zig when you should a zagged and you get a fucking shindeer head. There's a lot of terrifying thoughts that are involved in that they keep you training really hard. But I didn't have discipline. I didn't develop discipline until I after I stopped competing. And then I realized like, well I should work out because I should work out and I should eat well because it's good for you. And I should lift weights because it's probably good to be strong. And it was doing things because I know they had to be done rather than I was obsessed with doing them. - I mean, I'm telling a just so story here, but there's also a part in me which says like, it's a mild bit of OCD. But thank goodness you didn't clean your room. Because what if you had OCD and you're like, I'm gonna be the kid with the perfect room. And then I'm gonna be the kid that washes my hands all the time. Then I'm gonna be the kid that just all about cleanliness. Like I think, I do think that, you know-- - What is obsessive compulsive disorder versus being passionate about something? - So here I can, there's a really important theme to OCD. Like true OCD obsessive compulsive disorder is characterized by the following. The more you engage in the behavior, the stronger the compulsion gets. And that's why it's so maddening for people with true clinical OCD. So for people that have a hand washing thing, they're like, I have something on my hands, they go and wash it and it just makes them wanna wash more and more and more. And you know, I'm not a big fan of SSRIs in many cases, but I will say if there's one place where SSRIs have really helped a great number of people, not completely dissolve into a puddle of dysfunction, it's proper use of SSRIs for true clinical OCD. - So OCD in that way, like washing the hands, what is the cause of that? Do we know? - Well, we know, so there's a woman who was at NIH for a long time, she passed away this last year, her name was Judith Rapaport, a real pioneer in this whole field and brain science more generally. And she found that there's an area of the brain called the basal ganglia. These are circuits that we all have that are involved in generating action, go and no go. You have to basically have an accelerator and a break on action. And the basal ganglia have these, you know, it looks a lot like a gear system in a car when you really, you know, just, you know, draw it out. The people who have true clinical grade OCD have an enlargement for whatever reason of subregions of the circuit. And they basically feel the impulse to do this thing all the time. Now, what is the thing? The thing is based largely on inputs from structures like the hypothalamus that are related to very primitive adaptive behaviors. Like, you know, getting infections out and getting, you know, dirt away is, you know, adaptive in it when it's done in a healthy way. You know, there are all these people and there's actually a paper, I hate this paper, but it's a real paper that like watching it popping, like stimulates dopamine. This is why people do this. I can't watch these things. It's like, but people like shout out to Dr. Pimplepumper. There seems to be that someone sent me this paper. I'm like, how God is it? And I'm like, and I look, I'm like, has paper someone actually ran the study and now this explains a lot of the internet, the stuff on the internet. There must, there's a component in all of our brains that get some sort of satisfaction from the removal of infection, right? From relief from infection. - I mean, since. - Yeah, and so this, and this feeds into these basal ganglia circuits. For some people, it's compulsive water drinking. I mean, on a Lemke of dopamine nation talks about a patient of hers that was basically addicted to water, compulsive water drinking. They actually died. It's very, very sad, like in all seriousness, like over ingestion of water in this woman. - Yeah, it does kill people. I remember, there was a lady who was doing a contest for the radio to get like an Xbox for her son, like how you can drink the most water. - I think it's called hypernutremia or something like that, could have that wrong. But the, you know, people who have OCD about germs, often, you know, germs are bad, but, you know, worrying that much about germs is obviously not good. So again, we're talking about primitive brain circuits and these circuits that can go awry, you know? Some people, they just, for reasons we don't understand, they have overactive areas of the brain. Actually, I have a positive tale that you might like 'cause I has to do with jujitsu, which I do none, but I have a close childhood friend, his name is Eddie Chang. He's the chair of neurosurgery at UCSF. Brilliant guy, bioengineer. He's figuring out the speech system in the brain. He's a member of the national academy. He's my friend since we were seven. And he's like, in this amazing physician. And he called me, very, very calm guy. And he called me and he said, he calls me Andy, which is unfortunate, but he goes, because he knew when I was a little kid. And he goes, Andy, I've got a patient who wants you to come to the surgery. And I go, what are you gonna do when he goes? Well, he's got tumor and he's really into jujitsu. And he really admires like Joe and Choco. And, you know, would you think you'd come up? And I was like, yeah, chance to get to see my childhood friend do brain surgery? - Yo. - So I go there, I meet this guy. This guy has a tumor that needs removing from the frontal lobe. - So you're in there for the whole thing. - Right up there, right up there. I mean, you know, so I'm in there. And it's, they keep patients alive for this. So they locally, they're awake, that's, excuse me. They definitely keep them alive. (laughing) I love that you don't edit the show. So you're like, this proves why I misspeak some of it. He's definitely alive going in and coming out. He's alive today. I spoke to Eddie this morning. And they basically remove, you know, they remove the skull, they go in, and the way they decide what tissue to take out and what tissue to keep. Because the tumor is, you know, is embedded in functional brain areas that are required for speech, for movement, et cetera. You can't just start scooping brain tissue out. And what I learned is that these tumors don't look different when you just look at the brain. They feel different to the instruments of the highly trained surgeon. So he's in there. Eddie's in there mapping, stimulating different areas of the brain while this guy is awake and reporting what he's feeling, okay, his hands moving. And I'm going back and forth, talking to this guy, going back and forth and seeing the tumor getting removed, little by little, put into play, goes off to biopsy, but this guy is awake the entire time. Incredible. And as they're doing this because the patient agreed, they're mapping what areas of the brain are involved in mathematics, what areas of the brain, he's doing math problems while he's in this surgery, while this patient is doing this. He's also saying, oh, you know, I felt that in my toe or I felt that in my face. And so, you know, Eddie's getting these functional maps of the brain that we've never had before. And his lab has discovered incredible things about how speech and language are organized in the brain. He's taking people who have full locked-in syndrome, completely paralyzed, who could just blink to communicate, and that's it. He has been written up in the news, hit out patient Poncho, who Eddie's figured out there are areas of the brain that prepare for speech, not just generate speech, created through AI and bioengineering, because he's also a bioengineer, of course. He created ways that this patient can now speak. And the first thing Poncho ever said was, "Hello," and he said, "How are you doing?" He said, "Doing well." And the AI is learning his speech patterns. It's taken what would normally be sent to the pharynx and larynx, right? Because after all, speech is just an exhale that's controlled by the pharynx and larynx and the tongue. And the AI gets better at understanding what this person wants to say. And now he's got patients literally, they're still in wheelchairs, right? Wheeling around with an iPad next to them of their face speaking, according to what they're thinking. This patient who got the tumor removed is amazing. I asked Eddie this morning in case this happened to come up. How's he doing? I think, and we filmed all this, by the way, the team at UCS have did this. He'd like you to come to a Jiu-Jitsu class, so we may put this out there. I think he's really into, he's 60s, from what I understand, he's serious. He rolls like five or six days a week, he's like really into this. And he's now rolling Jiu-Jitsu. This tumor, which would have killed him, is out. He's, yes, alive, he's thriving. And you know, we hear a lot about the negative aspects of AI, but I asked Eddie to what extent is AI critical for this kind of technology to evolve? And he's like absolutely critical, because it can take all these neural signals and figure out what the brain was doing exactly when the person said the word for, or the, or my name is blank and blank. You know, you can't sink that many electrodes into the brain before you start destroying brain tissue. So you have to collect a lot of different signals, and AI is greatly facilitating our ability to decode what the brain is trying to do. And I said, so where else is this going to go? And he said, well, this obviously is what Elon wants to do with neural link and taking paralyzed people out of a paralyzed state. It's like, what's the intention to move? What does that look like? Neural. And then convert that into signals that maybe it's prosthetics, maybe it's actual muscles and nerves can respond to accurately. There's, so the takeaway here is that like we hear a lot about the bad stories of medicine, the stuff that's on the edge, and we still need to figure out like the psychedelic stuff. But I have to say with respect to AI in medicine, I am super, super excited about people walking again, seeing again, I mean, this stuff is starting to happen. Having brain tumors remove that do not encroach on areas of the brain that are critical. I said, if you were a quarter centimeter or less into this other margin where you recorded that the guy says, oh, yeah, my hand, I felt in my hand. If you were to nick that, he's like, he'd completely lose a hand function. Mind you, he's one of the best surgeons in the world, I'll go on record saying that, he is, like, may you never need his help. In fact, there's one of our public facing health colleagues, I'll tell you this, because he's been public about it, who got a stem cell injection into the disc down in Mexico and it got infected. I've heard of people doing things like that and was paralyzed and was in a hospital here in Texas. Okay, this is no, you know, I'm not casting any judgment on Texas, but what happened was they didn't realize that he had a egg-shaped, egg-sized infection there. Okay, so there was, this surgery had gone awry, gotten infection and he was paralyzed and they said they were going to have to sever the spinal cord to get this infection out when they finally discovered it. I contacted Eddie and I said, listen, here's what's going on. He said, get me in touch with his doctor, get me his charts. He was airlifted to UCSF and it wasn't Eddie that did the surgery, but it was someone in his department that removed this egg-sized infection and Eddie called me from the surgery. Okay? And he said, we're triple masked in here and I can smell the infection. It turns out that bacteria had never been identified in the United States. So there were bacteria that exist in other places that were just not exposed to that frequently, so it was very virulent in this case. They got the infection out. So this was just like a clinic with a dirty needle? This was a bad clinic with a bad practice of some sort. They screwed up someone screwed up along the way. And this guy happens, the patient happens to be a physician in this case. This guy is walking, talking, exercising. How's his back? Great. The injection help. Oh, I don't know. So I asked, so what was it that allowed you guys to do this, that another clinic might not have been able to do? Because I like you and very interested in what makes for good doctors versus so-so doctors versus lousy doctors versus superb doctors. And he said, it's two pieces. It's the training and the skill of the physician, obviously. Their willingness to constantly update their models with new understanding of what's out their new technologies. And it's also these incredible bioengineering and AI technologies that can make estimates about where the margins of error are in real time. Because you know, when you think about the brain, you get an MRI, you see, okay, there's the tumor. Let's scoop it out. But I've seen this now, this close. And in three dimensions, it's a completely different picture. Like you're, he's scooping out this, this tumor, he's probing around the tumor. And then I'm like, is it done? And he's like, no, it's interdigitated, meaning it's vesseled into other brain structures. We have to go after that stuff. I said, what are the margins of error? He said, you know, less than a millimeter in some cases. And you're, by hand, they're picking out tumor, little by little, by little, to try and ensure it doesn't come back and sparing function. Incredible. And AI is updating based on every micro movement of the head that might occur because you know, the person's bolted in, basically, they got a stereo taxa, bolted to the table, literally. Can't move your head. I can speak, but he can't move his head. But they're little micro movements because the brain is pulsing. So this is happening in real time. So the cool thing is, yeah, this video will release to the internet. I think the patient will agree to the whole thing. The patient has been very willing to do this guy is a true medical science stud. He's a, and he's an awesome family man and friend, and he's just a, he's a hero of science in my opinion. So what are they using like tiny little scalps? So here actually is a technology he's using to record from and stimulate the brain. If you put in Jamie, if you go to, well, what is that? Is that like inside the head that is to stimulate the brain? It's called the bravo. Yeah. It's like a mesh that will stimulate certain brain tissue. It will also record. If you put in a poncho paralyzed eddy chain, yeah, there we go, what was that mesh that stimulates the brain? What was that installed for? To stimulate the areas of the brain that can help us facilitate recovery of what tissue is still there. Because eddy came up through a lab by a guy by the name of Mike Merzenick, and I actually talk about this in the book in the chapter on learning, you know, until the early 90s, people thought you couldn't learn after age 25 that there was no plasticity. Into the early 90s? Yeah. And then basically three guys, it was Mike Merzenick, a guy named Michael Kilgard, who's down in Dallas, or maybe it's Houston. He's here in Texas, and, and a guy named Greg Reckonzone, who is this brilliant scientist. He did these studies at first in monkeys, and then in humans, which showed that if you take adult monkeys or humans, and you have them pay really careful attention to a task, that the brain changes, and that the experiment is very simple, it's like this. So they had monkeys or a human can do this, feel a little like a rotating drum, and the drum's got bumps on it like braille, okay? And the recording from an area of the brain that responds to touch. And the monkey's job is to basically press a lever any time the bumps go from course to more fine. So I think big bumps, small bumps. The monkey plays this game, and every time they get it right, they get some juice, monkeys like juice. Press the lever, press the lever, press the lever. These are adult monkeys. They come back sometime later, and the brain area representing the fingers has expanded. The brain has changed. There's plasticity it learned. But what I didn't tell you is at the same time they're doing these experiments, there's a sound in the room, okay? Now they do a different experiment where the monkey is still feeling the bumps. But the monkey is trained to listen to changes in the sound, subtle changes in the frequency of the sound, high to low or low to high. And if they get that right, they press, they think they went from high to low, and that's the task, they press the lever where they pull the joystick, and they get some juice. Under those conditions, the area of the brain responsible for hearing changes. Now, the key thing here is the experience is the same in both cases. We're hearing and touching in both experiments. But the key difference is what they're paying attention to. The brain of the adult does not change just because of passive experience. The brain of the adult, and this is true in humans too, changes because of what you attend to. And when we start talking about neuroplasticity and learning, everyone would like to think, oh, my brain is different at the end of this conversation than before. You don't learn from passive experience. You learn from focusing, and the friction that's accompanying, trying to do things right, and sometimes getting it wrong. The error signal is what instructs the brain to change. I'm sure you know this from martial arts. I'm sure you know this from other areas of life too. If your brain can do something, there's no reason for it to change. No rewiring is needed. But if you're trying to do this, I don't know martial arts well. I made it a little bit Thai boxing, when I was younger, I boxing my 30s, which was really dumb, by the way, as a neuroscience professor, I'd spar on Wednesday nights in San Diego, where you got all these Marines and all these like team guys, so dumb. I'd come home like all busted up, my girlfriend was like, what are you doing? I was like, ah, you know, I like it. She was like, you don't get paid to do this, you know. But it was a lot of fun. I think you learn a lot from sparring. Wish it wasn't bad for your brain. I wish it wasn't bad for your brain. I will say this. I'm not encouraging anyone to box, you know, and unless they really want to. But I also learned a lot about how to stay calm when you're getting your ass beat and how to think clearly. And it's also, I think Sam, who's the guy who wrote a fighter's heart? I love that book. Sam Shepherd? Sam Shepherd. He also talks about like, it's like an intimate thing to spar with somebody. Like, what does he say? He's like, you're sharing bodily fluids with somebody. It's like a one night stand. You develop a closeness with the people that you spar with a respect, and I wasn't fast enough. I don't think my timing was really good. I eventually learned that I've got a long reach that could help me. But I realized I can't be doing this, not as a neuroscience professor. But I really enjoyed it. It's not something that you really get excellent at if you learn late in life, unfortunately, unless you're a very unusual athlete. Yeah. Most people who get good at striking, striking in particular, they start out very young, and that's how they get good at it. There's a level that they reach that someone who starts out late in life, even if you're a good athlete, you probably never reach that level. Yeah. It was like me, whether. Perfect example. And he's awesome. There's something about him. He's, you know, one of the greatest of all time. But I think there's something to the fact that he started when he was really, really, really young. And he had a dad who was a world class boxer, and he had an uncle who was a world champion boxer. It's like he was around it from the time he was young. So there's like pathways that they develop, and their body develops and grows while striking. And there's something about the maturation process of the, this is like just my anecdotal experience from watching people learn striking. It seems like the people that are really elite at it, they grew up with their bodies as their bodies are maturing, they were learning it. And then it seems like there's a, there's a fuck it. There's a something that they have that you don't get later in life. You can get really good if you're a good athlete, learning it late in a lot, you're never going to get best of ever world champion status. Like you have to have a super long journey, and that has to start when you're a fucking kid. So it's like your brain has to be evolving, learning those skills, learning timing and distance and fainting, and how people react, how to map out potential reactions from certain, how to lure them into things. It's too much. Yeah, I learned a lot boxing, and I mean at least three things. One is that landing, like sinking like a one to combination feels really good. It's hard to do. It's hard to do. I also learned that there's this thing called a really good counter puncher, where you land a jab and you eat four. And you're just like in the world, it's just spinning. You're seeing stars. I also realized that six path abs don't mean shit. You're down here, the Mexican border, like it's something the gym I trained out was like pretty far south in San Diego. And some guys would roll in and like you wouldn't think much of them like they're like unpeeled, like everyone would spar on Wednesdays. And they try and match people up by weight. And you see guys that did not look in shape who could move, and you just get battered. I mean they they're just if they know how to move properly. So that was a good teaching. Then the last thing that like I really took away and I think about this on the internet too is there's always like one guy in the gym who moves really well on the bag who's like speed back and heavy back and just look so crisp super in shape. And they never spar and they sit like the edge of the ring and they give all sorts of advice about what you're supposed to do when you're in there. And then if you go and I finally did because in skateboarding I wasn't that good of a skateboard by the like like come on like drop in like let's go. Like have fun like skateboard is a very inviting sport. It's not like surfing. We're like guarding the waves. Right. And I was like come on in. Oh, no, my show like every week. I'd be like, Hey, come on. Like there's just like do a couple rounds. Like you always have advice for everybody. Let's do a couple never didn't finally get owns the gym came over and goes that guy's never box around in his life. You know, he probably did when he was a kid he ate a few punches and like he just like it, but looks really meant. And so you know, there's like the internet people like quick to criticize but like all right, like get in there and do like you come out here and let's play. You know, and so I have to be careful. You have to be careful with that one because the guy could have gone in there taking my head off. But I was realize I was like there are a lot of people that hang out where they call it like the skirt like hang out on the skirt and just give advice all day. Like don't court screw your jab court screw. I'm like, who are these people? You know, like if you so it's it's kind of nice actually to get that experience. I mean, it was latent in life. I mean, I talk a little bit in the book when I was younger, I definitely got into a lot of scraps. I was kind of like a live wire. I do not recommend. No, fighting's terrible. But there's something about martial arts about the fear and learning how to stay calm while you're sparring. I think Jiu Jitsu is the best one because he, although there's always a risk of injury in Jiu Jitsu, you're not getting hit all the time. And so you could go pretty hard. And that's the difference really between martial arts sparring like kickboxing and things along those lines and boxing and and Jiu Jitsu because in Jiu Jitsu. As many times if you're training in a really good gym with really good guys, you're going full clip and both you and hammer going full clip and there's no animosity. They might be one of your best friends. You guys are just doing the thing that you do full clip, but by doing it full clip because if he catches you like it gets your arm, you just tap and then you go again. As long as he goes healthy, as long as you understand what you're doing and knowing and he's not ranking on your knees and ripping your knees apart with heel hooks and stuff like letting someone tap. As long as you do that, you're literally going full clip. So you learn how to stay calm and you also get very comfortable with going full clip. So if you're in a situation, if you're a guy who only does point karate sparring and you're just touching each other and they stop touching and then you're in some wild melee at a bar where there's someone swinging at you full blast and throwing wild Heymaker punches and you're panicking because you're not used to this scenario. A jujitsu person is used to someone going full blast so they'll grab a hold you and it'll be just routine that just drag you to the ground trip you get on top mount choke you whatever the fuck they want to do essentially once they get a hold of you they do it all the time full blast. That's why I think it's the superior martial art for self defense because you're if you're going to really learn how to fight like striking you're going to get hit and you're going to get hit a lot. You're going to be hitting people a lot and you're going to be going to war with each other and it's fucking dangerous and it's really bad for your brain and that's really the only way to learn how to become when you're actually sparring or actually fighting someone. But with jujitsu there's all that fear of brain damage removed all the fear of like really serious injury is greatly mitigated by tapping and good training partners. So I need to get into it. I mean it's such a fun thing to learn too. It's why we talk about boxing it's like that you know I think combat if to some people it just feels good there's a circuit there there's actually a friend of mine who's got a lab at the University of Washington and he studies this brain circuit you know that male mice will work hard for the opportunity to fight other mice. We always hear like oh they just want pleasure no pain like male mice have a circuit and they will work their asses off figuring out puzzles that were perplexed like 30% of the adult population across the world and these mice can figure it out and it's hard work for them to figure out these light sequences or lever press sequences for what not for a piece of food not for water when they're thirsty not for like methamphetamine but to fight another mouse and then they're like it's they love fighting. That's crazy. There's no one knew that. Oh yeah they'll work hard and the reward is they get to fight a mouse. Yeah I mean the mouse fight another mouse. Yeah exactly. That's crazy. Yeah I think it's I think again it's these deeper brain circuits that we all harbor and I think some people are like oh no that's not even within me I think you know it varies I mean my dad is from South America he went to like a boarding military type school when he was a kid he said everyone had to box was a boy school there's all dudes they all had to box everyone had to box and they'd make them spar I was like box like you know like boxing drills he's like no they'd like pit us against each other until you'd find the kind of combination of people they were about equal and then they just like put you to work on each other the idea was you were supposed to he's you know both learn the gentlemanly aspects about you know touch gloves and the things afterwards you have to like you know so there's that he's like no but you were supposed to try and stay calm in the in getting you know while trying to beat up the other person then beat you up I think there's value in it. there's value in it and there's value in just what we were talking about earlier about doing difficult things I think it is one of the most difficult things you could choose to do that you can voluntarily sign yourself up for a place where you're going to experience pain and and severe discomfort and a very perplexing puzzle trying to figure out a hit someone who doesn't want to get hit and they're trying to hit you and you try not to get hit or you know get tapped or whatever whatever wrestle whatever whatever you're doing it's a very difficult thing to do and those very difficult things to do make the rest of your life easier it's like we were talking about getting shit for cold punches I don't know if I get shit for talking about cold punches but anybody who doesn't think you should cold punch hasn't cold punched the people that do it and the people that say don't do it they just they're coming up with excuses because it's fucking terrifying and nobody likes it it sucks well there's this but what I was going to get to is it's not a cure there's no cure there's a bunch of different excellent practices and if you stack those up throughout your day diet nutrition sunlight exercise all these different things cold punch sauna your life's going to be better wait and I think a thing like martial arts particularly jujitsu is a great addition to that and if you don't like that yoga is another great addition is one of the best things that we are we did a sober October challenge where we did 15 days yoga hot yoga yeah 90 minute sessions was Bert doing this too yeah we all did it We did it together. It was one of the best months I've ever had in my life, because you just feel so good and so calm, and the rest of your life is easier. Fucking hot, yo, it's a bitch, man. It's really hard to do. Those 90-minute sessions are fucking hard. And when it's over, you are spent. And you become the nicest person on earth. Totally. And the rest of your day is so much easier than that last 15 minutes of struggle. Sweat and like, like, it's pouring rain outside. I mean, it's crazy how hard it is to do those 90 minutes. If you're doing them right, you need a bunch of those things in your life. You do. If you don't, you're going to suffer. There's a balancing act that you have to acknowledge. It's interesting how the two things that really seem to, you know, catch fire out there where the idea that cold plunges block hypertrophy and strength adaptations. If done in the six hours after weight training, but you can do it before, and it has tremendous benefit. I think it's mental training. And then the other one was the cortisol thing. You know, this idea, like, oh, it raises cortisol. The data all say it does not raise cortisol. Marginally, maybe. But mostly reduces cortisol. And buffers your cortisol response to stress. And I think in the women's fitness community, this was especially kind of catchy. People thought, oh, cortisol bad, cortisol bad. I mean, the entire book could be summarized get your morning cortisol high, and your nighttime cortisol low, and your life's going to be 100 times better. Why? Because when you view bright light, drink caffeine, exercise, do cold exposure in the morning, and your cortisol spikes, it ensures that your nighttime cortisol is low, which means it's easier to fall asleep. And if you have any stress during the middle of the day, this is, I think, explains your whole thing of doing hard things makes life easier. When you spike your cortisol in the morning, if you have a stressful interaction or something happens during the day, you do get an increase in adrenaline and cortisol to stress. But it's brief. If you don't, it's very big, and it's very prolonged. So all these people, they're like chronically stressed, the state of the world, and look, the state of the world is complicated, but they're constantly feeling oppressed by life, overwhelmed by life. If they were to do a couple things in the morning, view bright light, ideally, from sunlight, I've talked about these things before. Cold shower or cold plunge, 30 seconds, right? Just uncomfortably cold, then get out. Exercise of some sort that's high-intensity interval training or lifts and weights that are heavy for them. That kind of thing for 45 minutes to an hour for the weights. Maybe just even 10 minutes for the high-intensity stuff. And head into the day. Bouts of stress will happen, but your hormonal response to them will be severely blunted. There's so much data on this. And people always say, but is that just true for men? No, it's also true for women. And so people are weak because their cortisol levels are too low in the morning and they're too high all day long. The night they're like, oh, I can't sleep, I'm stressed. And this and that, well, you've set yourself up to be a vulnerable creature in the last third of your day. So that first hour of the day sets the whole stage. And if you can't exercise in that first hour fine, you do in the afternoon, no big deal. But if we just understood that cortisol spiked in the morning is perhaps the best thing we can do for our health, I think the world would be so much better off that everyone's like, oh, I already am too stressed. And cortisol is going to make me retain fat. It's like, no, no, no. People love excuses. People love excuses. Excuses, why not take action? Or that's one of the greatest things that people indulge in. People love excuses. The-- we didn't close the hatch on the neuroplasticity thing. I just want to make sure I do that, which is what you focus on, you can change. You can learn skills if you focus. And the agitation that you feel when trying to learn, that is the reflection of the cocktail of neuromodulators in the brain and body that allow the circuits to change. I wish I had been told this in like the third grade. If they said, hey, when you're trying to learn something and it's easy, great. But when you're trying to learn something and it's high friction, like you can't do it, that frustration is the first gate of learning opening. And right on the other side of that is you continuing to try a little bit more. You have to do this through genuine attempts to learn, but you get some errors. So you can't just do throwaway errors, right? If I'm trying to learn billiards, which I'm only modestly poor at, right? If I'm trying to get better, and I'm just like hitting the ball wherever you don't learn, obviously. But if I'm trying and trying, the error signal sends a message to the brain that generates this agitation, the agitation tags the neurons. It literally puts a chemical tag on these neurons. Tonight, when you sleep, you need to change. That's what agitation does. And then when you get to sleep at night, those circuits change, and then you come back a few days later, and you might not have the skill, but you're a little bit closer. That makes sense. That's neuroplasticity. Particularly in martial arts, the kids, when you see kids, the kids, they get really frustrated when they don't learn. And they get really frustrated, and they get real upset if they get tapped. They usually wind up getting really good. Interesting. Yeah, the more-- The ones who are very emotionally attached, as long as they can control it. But there has to be-- like, you can't go, well, you got me, it's got to be fuck. Right, fuck. And then harnessing you, and then pulling back, I'm like, oh, he has this next one and this next one. Right, stay calm, but that fuck, even if you don't express it outright, that fuck thought in your head is always going to be there. That error signal-- and I go into the brain circuitry that's responsible for this, and which neurochemicals it is and on and on. But that signal is what gates neuroplasticity. One of the reasons why psychedelics are so effective in allowing plasticity, because they are. I want to just be very blunt about this. The massive increases in serotonin with psilocybin. The massive increases in serotonin and dopamine with MDMA, because that's kind of the hallmark of MDMA. It's very unique drug. It increases dopamine and serotonin together. Normally, they're on a bit of a seesaw. But they increases both. Those are what we call neuromodulators. They make the brain more amenable to plasticity during the session and in the weeks that follow. So what are these neuromodulators? Well, dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, norepinephrine, epinephrine, also called adrenaline. You go, OK, well, that's a big list of molecules. The key discovery of those guys-- Mersenic, Reconzone, and Kilgar that I mentioned earlier-- you can give an animal or a person any molecule that will increase those, give them a learning session, and they'll learn better. It's not specific to one neuromodulator. And if you give somebody perpranolol a drug that blocks the receptors that adrenaline binds to, after learning, they won't learn as well. You can't remember stuff. Why? Because there wasn't enough adrenaline. If you want to remember something, you need that frustration. You need the adrenaline. So if someone's like fearful of learning something and they take some sort of a beta blocker. Blocks learning. Wow. Great date on this. Larry K. Hill and James McGough, people want to look at a beautiful literature. And they cite studies that these are more historical references where they would give kids-- people would give kids lessons. And then throw them into a cold river to spike the adrenaline. Like people have been playing with this stuff for a very long time. Yeah. So nicotine, for instance, people think is it a cognitive enhancer? It is if you don't do it all the time every day. But if you-- I talk about nicotine, and it's pretty habit-forming. But if you take it before or after learning something, even after, right? Before, during or after learning something. And you're not highly saturated with nicotine already. Yeah, you'll enhance your ability to learn that thing. The problem is, people are just popping them all day long every day just to get to baseline. Like, we drink caffeine to get to baseline. We take nicotine to get to baseline. Are you on the nicotine? I take them. But I wanted to ask you this about addiction. About-- is there a biological component to addiction? And one of the reasons why I ask is-- because I take these Tucker Carlson sends me these alps. I like these. They taste different than the other ones I've-- I think-- I've tried athletic nicotines in. I've not tried the athletic nicotine. That's probably my favorite, like, the threes, because it's mild, the little 3 milligrams. My point is, I do it all the time. And I take them before shows. I like to suck on them before I go on stage. But when I'm vacation for 10 days, I didn't bring any on purpose. So I was like, let's see what this is like. Nothing. And I've heard so many people say that they have horrible cravings. They can't tolerate it. They go nuts. They just need nicotine. And I'm sitting there like on day two, like, wait for it to come on. Nope, nothing. I just-- I'm not on nicotine. I mean, you're a bit of a mutant, too, you know? I don't know what it is. Like, I mean, just because you're so-- it sounds to me like you're so familiar with discomfort. You may not even register like a mild tiny bit of withdrawal. But it is interesting, you know, because if I don't drink caffeine, life is a lot less interesting to me. And I've been drinking a shit ton of caffeine. I mean, I've got a picture of my half Argentine. So there's a picture of me on my grandfather's lap drinking Mate from a gourd when I'm like three years old in my Spider-Man pajamas. You know, people all in the internet, they go, I don't believe it. I probably drink 800 milligrams of caffeine today. And I'm fine. But if I don't drink caffeine, my hands is like, oh, man. I don't know if I'm addicted in the classic sense. Like, I'm not going to go rob old ladies to get caffeine. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to harm myself with it. If anything, it shows that it can offset dementia. I mean, the new data basically say up to about 400 milligrams per day, caffeine's great for the brain, for the body. You know, people have anxiety, it can be problematic. But you just might not have-- I mean, you may just naturally make a lot of acetylcholine. And so when you don't take nicotine, maybe you just rebound really fast. I don't know if that's it. I mean, I do take the tropics that might have an effect on it, but I definitely, but I didn't bring any with me when I was on vacation Amazing. I just brought vitamins. No cigars. Nope. No cigars. I'm not a vacation. It was fun. Yeah, I enjoyed it Yes, family vacation, but the point is I was waiting for this thing that everybody told me was coming and it never showed up at all There was a zero. I mean, it wasn't hard. It wasn't a thing It was just I'm not taking it right and I do sometimes during the day let go wake up in the morning and say, I'm not gonna eat them today I'm not gonna take any nicotine power, but I always wonder like is it just I got lucky like some people They literally cannot drink alcoholism is in their genetics. They have families that are alcoholics That's a real thing and they just can't handle it Yeah, I mean the guys who started AA talked about an allergy. They describe it as like an allergy Like some people when they drink alcohol their their first experience I had a friend like this from childhood became an alcoholic not surprisingly and when he drank the first or second time He was like this is how I meant to feel oh boy like if he felt like it completed something in him I don't feel that way with alcohol. I don't drink, but I could without problems. You know, you're sort of on off now, right? Yeah, I don't get drunk anymore. I'll have a drink or two, but I don't get drunk anymore You miss the game drunk. No, no, no, no, no, no, no When I took the eight months off, I didn't even miss alcohol, but then I went to dinner. I had a margarita. I was like, oh, I missed this This is fun. Yeah, it's nice, but the key is like I just wanted to take some time off and just not feel like shit Because my problem was I was stacking too many days where I was having a drink or two on the podcast and then I was having a drink or two at the club And then you know you do multiple days of that and you feel like shit and it was like affecting my workouts And I said this is stupid. Let me see how I feel and I didn't miss it at all, but when I did have a drink or two I'm like, okay, I see there is a benefit from a social lubricant aspect. There's a funness to a glass of wine or, you know, sure a glass of whiskey But the thing is just understand what you're doing and don't fuck your body up and try to do your best Take a lot of glutathione, mitigate whatever you're doing to your body by actually consuming alcohol and more likely You don't need as much as you're gonna drink. That's the problem with to have a good time a couple drinks You have a good time five six drinks. It's not really a good time anymore You're kind of fucking plastered and you sound stupid and nowadays, you know with cameras and stuff People say stupid stuff. I mean I drank in college and and I drank after a bit and I just drank less and less But you know when I was a junior professor my girlfriend at the time like she just had the genetics where she could have a couple drinks and and really enjoy it Just like really enjoy it and I mean I think some people can do that. So okay What are the genetics that would cause someone to be like severely addicted to nicotine another one That I hear about all the time is cratum We had a guy who came into the podcast and someone that sent us some cratum one of our guests like had a cratum Complex and I'm like and it was just laying around the kitchen and he goes you're not taking that I go now some guy Just sent it to me and he goes get rid of that shit He goes it is the fucking hardest thing to kick I go really he goes yeah, I'm honest horrible He goes it's an awful high and he goes on and I'm fucking I'm really struggling to get off of it And I was I was kind of stunned. I was like well, I've taken it before and it didn't seem like It would be that thing like a thing that would make you addicted but apparently It's like any other opioid like you can get like fully wrapped up in that stuff So but what is it about some people in their biology that makes them more susceptible to whether it's nicotine or caffeine or whenever it is it's going to Undoubtedly have to do with the genetics that line up the receptors in the brain that leads some people to have a very different Experience with one substance versus another for for instance There's a subset of people about 8% of people that when they drink alcohol they experience a much more euphoric High from it. These people tend to recover very easily the next morning It's that's independent of tolerance. It tends to run in families These people are very high susceptibility to like severe alcohol. It's just order what we you and I know as alcoholism There are people who take their first drink as I mentioned before or just like this completes me, right? And those people usually have a certain genetic background You know, I want to talk about this but there's certain genetic backgrounds. They probably have high levels of the enzyme that that can digest alcohol Right, you know can break down alcohol because it is a poison But if you're if you're breaking down more quickly Maybe it's not impacting your microbiome and you sleep quite as much and so you can drink a lot more and sleep fine and do fine And varies by age - you know two glasses of wine at 60 feels very different at two glasses wine at like you know at 25 Because most people will tell you right we're just different resilience In general what the data say is that kids who took their first drink really young like 12, 13, 14 Are have it are greatly predisposed to alcoholism later But it's hard to dissociate that from this environmental circumstances around that why are they drinking it 12 or 13? You know, I think I took my first drink of alcohol. I'm not proud of this at 11 a friend I won't mention his name went to his house and he goes hey, you know my dad's got some I think was like wine cooler or something And we we drank them and we got you know, we got drunk and you know It wasn't a bad kid, but we got drunk and But the earlier you drank the more susceptible yard of alcoholism, but I never became an alcoholic But I will tell you that my love of caffeine my love of energy focus and that sort of thing Makes me like about half the population who are Probably have a decent susceptibility to stimulants. I've never done cocaine I've never done speed. I've never done Adderall or Vivance We could talk about stimulants and in the book. I talk about Some of the newer stimulants that are still amphetamine-like, but a little bit Potentially safer. Do you do anything like my daffinal? I don't I took one mode affinal couldn't sleep for two days I'm very very sensitive to these things There is a drug that's approved for excessive daytime sleepiness that I took on a trip where I was under-slept and I needed to to work I'm called synosy. It's a that's now in phase three for Myled attention deficit and I've taken that and I I don't use it often, but I find that it Really dials in focus and energy in a way that still allows sleep and for me was a much gentler and felt better than Then Modaphnola or Armodapha for me the best thing that I've ever discovered for mitigating that feeling of being groggy with sleep deprivation is creatine That definitely helps the the date on creatine for strength are there the data for creatine on Enhancing cognition when mildly sleep deprived are there. That's a really where the powerful thing you could feel it It is definitely definitely it's a fuel for the phosphocreatine system for the forebrain the part of your brain that's involved in strategy setting etc I would say about half and these are broad numbers right you know at these aren't you know from one study that the real expert on all this By the way is my colleague Keith Humphreys at Stanford and we could talk about some of the interesting things that he's found but They about half the population seems to like sedatives. They like vikin. They like opioids I had a tooth surgery a long time ago. They gave me vikin and I took half of one. I never wanted that experience again You know, but I know people who are like vikin. They love vikin and they love being sedated. They like Being sedated. They like being brought down a bit in terms of arousal some people like being ramped up And I think you one needs to be aware of their genetics and their predisposition for one or the other some people like both But generally people fall into one or the other category and I think now that many more people are avoiding alcohol The ones who say oh yeah, it's easy and I never liked it people like me. I think they're probably more of the you know They like stimulants. They like caffeine. They like nicotine. They like being up and alert. You don't even need a substance for that so Some people like both but I think people generally been into these categories. You asked about creatum So the world expert on this is an amazing guy. He was on my podcast his name is Chris McCurdy. He's a professor down in Florida and Man, he has the best take on this so the the world the community online around Creatum is very split if you put out something about creatum half of people will say this stuff is evil It's opioids. This is like oxycontin get out of here the other half will say this stuff saved me right so you go like what's going on? Whenever I see that I go there's some interesting biology here, right? There's a sociology there But as a biologist I'm like, what's the biology? So I brought Chris on he said here's the deal in America pharma companies Developed drugs based on bio prospecting peptides are a different story and we can talk about that But bio prospecting is finding alkaloids and other substances in plants Purifying the substance the alkaloid that gives a specific effect and developing a drug cocaine it comes from the coca plant obviously from the coca leaf and he said the experience of chewing coca leaf Is very different than the experience of cocaine The experience of the I'm gonna call it cratum because I know there's another way to pronounce it But I just feel weird saying like the crat home or something like that, but you know the cratum leaf He said when people chew the cratum leaf, but the leaf They feel a calm, but also energized. It's how you and I would think of like a strong coffee or a year, right? But what's happened in this country is that companies have synthesized pure Cratum they've taken one of the compounds in the cratum leaf and they've Isolated and now they've made it synthetically and that leads to a very different experience and addiction potential And it's so it's incredibly because he said you know the the most protected building in the entire United States These are his words not mine Is the Coca-Cola factory why he said well, you know years ago they had new coca and they took out the flavor that they get all this, they still get all this coca leaf scent to this factory in the United States. It's still going there. And then they extract the components that they need to, put it into Coca-Cola to this day. This happened today. And then we drink Coca-Cola. So I'm like, there's so there's come. - And they use the cocaine they get from it for medical cocaine use. - That it is, it is, cocaine is approved. It's not schedule one, that's right. It's schedule two as an anesthetic. That's right. So Chris really nails it, right? Like so many things in science and medicine we're saying, "Cratum good, cratum bad." Turns out it's the synthetic cratum product that is bad, highly addictive. - So when you have those drinks like, what does it live free? Aren't those, is that the cratum synthetic? - I don't know. I think it's the plant derived, isolated cratum, which is somewhere in between the two. But if you, you and I would both say okay, like kids taking cocaine, not good. But Chris would say, the coca leaf actually is a very interesting leaf that actually has some, some could be a, he'll talk about this as like, "Oh, it could be an interesting stimulant compound for people." - Yeah, people love it. - But people, it's the same thing with THC, you know, like people will say, "Oh, you know, let's just get the highest dose of THC into an edible." And then people are, they're eating it too fast. They don't know how to gauge their plane of high. And then we hear about certain people having psychosis and this kind of thing. Well, what happened, right? When you and I were growing up, look, I mean, where I grew up, everyone learned how to smoke a joint and take a ball and rip. I'm not suggesting anyone do this, but you knew if you could handle one or a half, you learned the hard way. - Exactly, you learned the hard way. I found I didn't like cannabis, but what you didn't do was eat half of a cookie that had 200 milligrams of THC and find yourself in a psychotic episode. And so nowadays, when we isolate things and we enrich them and we take them in that isolated form, that's when they get really precarious. - Yeah. - So that's a story. And by the way, I know people are always coming on here and telling you, you should talk to someone. So if you want to talk to someone highly educated on all these compounds, bio-prospecting, pharma versus plant medicine, and all of this, chrysmic curty is your man. He is, like I'm paraphrasing here, but he's a subvant of this stuff. And he comes in with no judgment. And so he'll say, the leaf products are very different than the isolated. The isolated are very different than the isolated synthetic products. And that therein is where the legislature needs to look. Because in this country, as you know, we go like, all drugs bad. Or then we go, oh wait, there's these incredible compounds in plants that we want, right? - Well, it's parallel and refined sugar, right? - Parallel and refined sugar. - Exactly. - Yeah. - Let's figure out in food what makes it so rewarding that people just desperately want to buy more, even though they don't even really like the taste of it. - Right, and let's make it in a way that never is in nature unattached to fiber, unattached to nutrients. Usually if you get sugar in nature, it's in an orange. - That's right. - That's good for you. - Yeah. - Looks like a trick to get you to eat the orange. - Yeah, it's business and it's diabolical. And then we always end up about five or six years down the road and go, oh, we've got all these problems. But what's interesting is, I didn't realize that pharma companies bioprospect from the jungle. They still send people to the jungle. We always think of the jungle as like this place that only shaman's go, right? But no, American and Swiss and German companies send bioprospectors down there to isolate compounds from plants. With the understanding, there are all these medicines there. - Yeah. - But we don't hear about all the others. The interesting thing about peptides is that, this is the first time that we are bioprospecting from the body. These are things that the body makes. And I can't take credit for that understanding. That's really that distinction, which I think is a key one for people to understand, is Dr. Abood Bakery, this MD who you and I are familiar with, who in my mind just really understands the biology of peptides and because he's a practicing physician, outside of peptide biology. I think he's an intensive care guy or critical care. He can kind of see the picture now. Yes, insulin's a peptide, it came from the body, but all these peptides now pharma companies are like, what is the body making? Like in the case of GLPs, when you increase GLPs two-fold, two-fold, four-fold, you can see some relief from type two diabetes, some, but not much weight loss. That had been happening for a decade, but would you increase it a thousandfold? Wow, people don't want to eat. People don't think, okay, we could talk about the ramifications of that, but pharma companies are now thinking very seriously about finding all the peptides in the body and which ones are gonna be potent. For, there's a new one for increasing bone density for osteoporosis and then all the, you know, people are thinking about biohacking with this as well. There's pinealon, which I'll occasionally take and you get three hours of REM sleep that night and on subsequent nights, your REM sleep is enriched. Interesting, you know, GLPs obviously, BPC157 is the one everyone seems to kind of go to, but I think that there are a lot of interesting peptides that we've known about for a long time, like Kispeptin, which is involved in resetting the reproductive system. It's involved in puberty, but it's being used to reset the reproductive system. All these peptides, I think the next few years, it's gonna be a bananza of peptides and I get shit for saying it, but I'm super excited because my physician friends who are super standard physicians, they're calling me like, hey man, my knee, is this BPC157 stuff gonna work? And I go, I don't know, you can try it. I know some clean sources of it and then they'll come back a week later and like, why isn't anyone selling this, studying it, talking about this? I'm like, well they are, but your community doesn't like to talk about this. - Well, there's a lot of people that dismiss it and the way they dismiss it is very, it's very gas-lighty. They're bullshitting you that all these anecdotal stories aren't significant, that all these professional athletes at using it, or that are using it, with great benefit, don't know what they're talking about. - It's threatening to them, I mean, they did, I mean as my, I feel like I'm quoting my dad today. - It's threatening because of compound pharmacies. - And it's threatening because a lot of these physicians are gonna lose their standing in the field as these, there's something important to understand about physicians, and again, there are many excellent ones I referenced a few today, right? Many excellent ones, but there's a guarding of knowledge that existed in the science community up until a few years ago when podcasts hit, wasn't just me, you know, Bob Sapolsky was a pioneer in getting out there and teaching the public and every scientist who's gone out into the public eventually gets this pushback. Like yeah, our field doesn't really take him or her seriously. It's, and sometimes that's legitimate criticism, although not in Bob's case, in many cases it's because you've taken their thing, it's their baby, it's what gives them value, I know I grew up around scientists, it's what gives them their value, their knowledge that no one else has, it allows them to be interesting. They now have to have people coming up to them and going, oh, did you see this podcast was so-and-so talking about this thing in anthropology on Rogan and they're like, oh my God, like that's my field. Like, you know, and they, it's a self-worth issue. They're not like, oh, anthropology's getting publicity, yes. Or the good ones are, the secure ones are. But the physicians who are like, wow, if there's a compound that's making patients feel better really quickly, what's that gonna do to my practice? And then if I embrace it, my, here's the key thing. If I embrace it, my colleagues won't think much of me. And if I don't embrace it, maybe I'm gonna lose my standing, my validity as somebody of authority. If I've got patients coming to me and saying, I have this friend that took this thing and it really helped, could I explore that? And I don't do that and they go elsewhere. Word spreads fast nowadays. So I like scientists and physicians. I also understand scientists and physicians. I, my father's a scientist. I grew up around them in my town. Most kids were children of engineers or scientists and you see the full array, the secure ones, the ones that are really on the cutting edge that learn, that embrace the new technology. They do great. But the other ones, they're like dying, they're a dying breed. Because their whole practice rests on them having the knowledge and you not having the knowledge. So much so that they're saying, chat GPT bad. They're saying it's bad because patients are coming in and they're like, hey, chat GPT says that what you're recommending is perhaps not the best thing. They're freaking out right now. And so they're saying AI is bad for medicine. But the good scientists, the good physicians are like, great, it's gonna help our practice. They're genuinely interested in helping people. You see two, it's two camps. So when I hear people saying, oh yeah, this BPC, no trials. Okay, are there any adverse events we need to know about? Not that I'm aware of. And a bud says, the lethal dose is like super high. No one's even come close to achieving it. I'm sure someone will figure it out. But I get excited because I think, all right, now the general public finally has some agency in understanding what's going on with them. Thanks to AI, thanks to podcasts, thanks to the internet. And it can go awry certainly. But man, I had a shoulder thing a week ago. I'll never have this shoulder thing. And I put two injections of BPC, gone. Gone. Now, could I put saline in there? And it would have been the same maybe. But all I know is it's gone. And I don't understand that argument of putting saline. Is that a common thing where people have severe shoulder pain? Oh no, sorry, just running a control experiment. I could have put it in, but I've heard people say that. That's why I've heard people say that in argument. You know, oftentimes people have similar benefits in injecting saline. And I'm like, who's done that? Why aren't people injecting saline instead of getting cortisone shots in their shoulders? I mean, this is how they talked about creatine. This is how they talked about TRT. This is how they talked about women's hormone therapies. Right. It's very interesting, you know, because for legitimate, you know, their legitimate complaints about the fact that for a long time, science and medicine did focus mainly on men. And the women's hormone trial basically was a mess because they said there were all these out there. adverse effects and turns out it's when you started the hormone therapies, and we now know that if those therapies are started early enough, they're immensely beneficial. So there's more kind of acceptance of hormone replacement there across the board. I think TRT now is kind of a broadly accepted thing, although I think a lot of guys are doing it too young. They don't even know why they're doing it, you know, like in their 20s or something. But that's not TRT really, right? That's not TRT. That's really just doing juice. Yeah, they're just doing juice. But when it comes to the peptides, I think my prediction is it's going to slot in right between prescription hormone therapies and what we think of as supplements. I think there's going to be this third middle category where, sorry, practicing physicians. People are going to find the safe sources. They'll be US-made sources soon, I hope. They'll be reliable people who can educate on this. People will understand the risk profile of these things and people will be buying them and taking them legally. I think that's going to happen. Also, now people aren't afraid of needles. The GLP industry was so genius in taking this thing, needles, every needle phobia, needles, what am I going to do? And they made a pen. Still a needle. The pens have gotten rid of everyone's needle phobia. So now, my sister, people are like, oh, what about peptides? They go, you have to inject it and go, well, do they have the little needles with the pen? Yeah. No one's afraid of a pen, even if it has a needle on the end. But no one like, so it turns out it was the syringe that scared people. It's the plunger. It's the plunger. So I'm excited. And I have to say, it's not because I think everyone should be blasting this stuff. I just think knowing scientists and physicians and getting the calls and emails from them, like, do you really think this thing can help my knee? You know, like, it might, and I can tell you it's absolutely will, but then when they come back and they're like, this is wild, how come there aren't 20 clinical trials? It's because the general public beat the scientific community to it. And I know this is going to break some hearts. There will never be good clinical trials of each and all of these peptides. The horse left the stable. It's out. It's out there. Like, it's over. There can be some studies, but people are just going to keep doing it. So I think it's frustrating for the medical community to realize where we are in 2026. It's like, shit, if people find stuff that works, they talk about it and then they just start doing it. I think you made a really good point about the ego of the people that are controlling the information. It's, and it's generally men. It's general. Yeah, let me think. I mean, I think it's probably if there's a bunch of women that do it too, but it's a very masculine behavior. Well, it's interesting. I put out a tweet the other day and I, gosh, I only have regret doing it. I said, you know, people contact me all the time, saying that physician friends with people coming in who identified tumors from a whole body MRIs. And I think as the cost comes down, I think it's going to be a very interesting tool. And the neurosurgery in other communities like dog piled me like we this is terrible. This is terrible. You know who didn't dog pile me where the dozens of dermatologists and ophthalmologists saying we think scans and more data are great. The ophthalmology community and the dermatology community have embraced public education on these topics of eye health and skin health and AI and scans and they, they're very comfortable with it. And they're working synergistically with it. The neurosurgery community, they say, oh, now we have all these people that are freaking out because they think they have a deadly tumor. So it's, which is a valid criticism. So I called some friends leaving Eddie out of the equation here. I called some friends who are in the neurosurgery community and I said, what do you, what do you make of this? I haven't been dog piled by members of my community in a little while, right? I'm not a neurosurgeon. But this is interesting and they said the ones I spoke to said in 20 months, this is going to be standard practice for people to just get whole body MRI. So what was their resistance? They don't want people freaking out because they see like a little thing on their pituitary that scares them and thinking that they might be dying of a brain tumor. But they want control. They want control over the flow of data. They, I'll go toe to toe with any of these people and just say, I understand that only neurosurgeons can do neurosurgery. Absolutely. Those are the only people we want doing neurosurgery. But people doing an elected or elective procedure, it's not like you're forced to do it, right? It's not like you hit 40, you have to do it. You can choose if they want to do it. And if the cost comes down, if insurance covers it, it's, it's safe. Now, some people say the MRIs aren't safe, okay, that's a separate matter. I think provided you're not getting them all the time, what we understand is that they're safe. But there are communities of physicians who just do not want people to have data about themselves because they think it's going to make those people stressed. But guess what? I remember the 80s when they said, okay, genetic sequencing is coming around. Do you want to know your genes? Do you want to know if you're getting Huntington's disease and you want this smart answer is? Some people say yes, some people say no. But you should be able to choose. The gatekeeping on this is real, very real. I'm fortunate to be in the Bay Area with Stanford where it's very tech savvy, it's very cutting edge. Stanford, like any university has, it's pros and cons, but it's very much about what's happening now and next. We're not very much focused on what happened in the past. It's not like these, frankly, like these other institutions elsewhere that are like really focused on 50 years ago trying to keep that whole culture going. It's like, what's new now, what's useful now? And they embrace AI, they embrace whole body scans, I've got colleagues who are getting whole body scans, who are suggesting whole body scans, and I think it has to do with how forward thinking physicians are. So these physicians that we're attacking you, there is it just them or people arguing with them? The people that join them? Yeah. And when this happens, I try and listen. Well, I didn't call friends in that community looking for validation, I was like, did I screw up? Like listen, there are a lot of neurosurgeons and other physicians who are including heart surgeons that are worried that patients are just going to be getting a lot of data back, saying listen, you've got this, you know, blip on the radar here, you should be concerned in that they're going to be doing a lot of therapy for these people, having to reassure them that they're okay. I would have thought it would be good for business for them. Like if anything, they'd want more of this, right? Turns out that's not the case. I think the psychological management of patients is a big thing and that was something that I didn't understand of and that their response kind of educated me on that the, you know, patients calling them freaking out that they have a tumor someplace and them having to say listen, it's benign, you're going to be okay. That seems problematic for them. Two weeks later, I forget who the celebrity was, but somebody sent me on X. There was a news article about a woman who when and got one of these whole body scans and identified a life-threatening tumor and had it removed and her first physician had discouraged her from getting it. I thought about putting that out in the world and saying, "C, C, C, but you know, that's one case." So when these things happen, I try and just think like what am I hearing? What's my finger on the pulse of here? I think physicians are feeling scared. It's a very long hard training to become a physician. If your patients are now challenging you, you know, "Hey, like this medication combination you gave me and like the internet says is dangerous, that's an uncomfortable place to be on. Be in. I get it." On the other hand, I'm all for people having more agency and knowledge about that. Well, especially in light of the fact that what's medical malpractice, this is like the third leading cause of death in this country? Oh, I mean, what is, what, I think it's in the top 10. Right? And accidents. I mean, if you go to an emergency room in the middle of the night, your probability of getting prescribed a medication that could potentially kill you or harm you like a contraindicated medication goes up exponentially. A great sleep doctor at Stanford, his last name was "Dement of All Things." Whoa. Yeah. He, one of the co-discoverers of rapid eye movement sleep, he would teach the medical students that the probability of them making a fatal mistake in the middle of the night or when their sleep deprived goes up by a significant degree. We know this. And yet, you know, if you go to the emergency room at three in the morning, your first question for the on call physician should be, "How long have you been on call?" Not do you normally work this shift or, you know, because sometimes they sleep all day and they work at night. How long have you been on call? If that's more than 12, 15 hours, you wouldn't let that person drive your car home. Right. We know the data say that they might as well be drunk. Right. And it's also how they train them, that when they're going through residence, it's a part of the hazing process. Yeah. It's a part of the hazing process. What can you put that into perplexity and see what leading cause of death? So there's a malpractice. I will say third. So that's malpractice, but what about medical error? Medical error. Well, it has a, it says these two terms. Okay. That estimate refers to medical error, not necessary. Okay. Medical error is responsible for 251,000 deaths a year. Whoa. That's crazy. I mean, the airlines understand this. Do you understand how insane that it is imagine if there, that was pop tarts? Yeah. It says a widely repeated claim comes from 2016 BMJ analysis by John Hopkins, extrapolated from several hospital studies and estimated roughly 251,000 deaths per year associated with medical error. If that estimate treated, we're treated like a conventional cause of death, it would have ranked third behind heart disease and cancer ahead of chronic lower respiratory disease in the 2013. comparison used by authors. Wow. And that's death. I mean, you know, I don't want to merge too many themes here but earlier we were talking about psychedelics and a theme from that whole thing is this notion of microdosing. One of the things that the GLPs and peptides and physicians and the culture around medicine has really evolved to is that in recent years people have realized, oh, you know, these GLP drugs are expensive, they have side effects, people are microdosing them. They're sharing them. They're taking far less than they're prescribed, making it last longer and getting the positive effects they want with far fewer side effects. Physicians hate this. Drug companies hate it too, but physicians hate this. For obvious reasons, their patients are going rogue on them based on information on the internet. But the patients, and I wish that people would understand this, people will always trust their experience more than someone else. It used to be that you trust the person in the white coat. No more. Stethoscope, white coat may get you there, but to maintain that trust, they have to listen to the experience of the patient. And that's what physicians and scientists, to some extent, have lost in the last five years, largely due to the pandemic and public health education and AI and everything just kind of being out there and free for all. But I hear from people all the time that are not of the, I would say, kind of more of the health conscious community or they, and they, even the people who tend to trend more traditional, lefty, like standard medicine, do whatever the government says unless it's this government, like that kind of mindset, we're saying like, oh yeah, would low dose terzepotide help me with chronic fatigue? Would, should I be taking BPC? You know, people will ask these questions, something like, well, if these people are asking the question, that means people around them are asking it, starting to become okay-ish to have these conversations. And then they're going back to their doctor and saying, you know, can I take like a tenth of the dose? Doctors will, are not going to say, yeah, great, take a tenth of the dose. And the drug companies definitely don't want that they're going to make a tenth of the money. So the, as you and I know, the peptide community is a real threat. Not just because of the peptides that are, people are taking or that the peptides, they're replacing from pharma, but because of the way that people are taking the peptides, like red at true tides going to come out from lily, make them billions, if not trillions of dollars. They're taking hard to protect that patent. But you can bet people who are getting prescribed real red at true tide from lily will be taking less and sharing it based on information they hear on the internet from the peptide community and on health podcasts because, and that scares the shit out of them. And it should, it should scare the shit out of them. It says, the clinical trials were done at these various doses, but not these microdoses, perhaps. People have different responses. Some people respond very well. Some people need more patients now are trying to figure out how can I get the effect I want with the minimal amount of side effects and they're doing the experiments on themselves. And that is changing the whole model and it's, and we're never going back. I got to laugh at one like these, uh, these folks who were trained like 30, 40 years ago or like trying to hold on to this thing. It's dead. It's gone. It's over. I see these people on X and they're like, so upset. And it just reminds me of like when the parental advisory stuff came out and it was like, they're swearing on music and it was like, every kid was like, yeah, I want that music because has the parental advisory morons, like, you know, they just don't get it. It's like it, you know, he talked about plasticity at any age, but apparently they've got like cement in there because you're like, I don't know. This is why people should retire. Well, it's, it's just what you said before too that some people just want to be completely in control of the distribution of information and the gatekeepers of the knowledge and they want to be thought of as the experts. I mean, that word doctor used to impress everybody. Now it only impresses certain people and for a lot of people it's a turn off. And same thing for scientists. I mean, I deal with this, you know, I'm kind of a different kind of scientist because I've been in different communities and I public education and I'll talk to most anyone who's willing to have a reasonable conversation and I'd love to explore. But a lot of people just like authority, you know, medical authority, like to them, that's a negative. It's a pejorative. And so we're in this whole other landscape now. It's going to be one of the weirder aspects of AI as the dissolvement of all the the reference for experts because everyone's going to have all the information. I mean, congratulations. You memorized it. Great. I just got the information in three seconds. I mean, it's so wild. If you look at the history of academic science and medicine, which I love to study, I've gone back to like the time of Galen, which is one of the early, you know, physicians who did, you'd love this. He worked on gladiators publicly because you couldn't, they didn't allow people to do surgeries on the human body, it was illegal, but like, so he would do these surgeries publicly or a pig. It was, it was wild. There's a great, there's a great book. It's very dense, but it's called The Prince of Medicine. And it's all this medieval stuff that you love and like, you'll realize what a prehistoric thing medicine is even now. Like how fast and how far we've come in the last 50 years, 100 years. But the whole pump and circumstance thing of like, like, I've never been to high table dinner at Oxford. It'd be fun to go. But the whole thing of like the robes and somebody sits higher than everybody else, that dissolved in the American universities. You still see it at some of the East Coast universities, but that's dissolving. So what's literally happening is people are being, these authorities are being brought down to other people's level, right? It's almost like this was borrowed from other, you know, other aspects of life. Of course, politics and even religion, this kind of thing. You know, the uniform was so important and people like this reverence. The internet hasn't leveled the playing field, but it's completely disrupted that model. So, you know, I'm not the only one, of course, but like for people to learn inside the system, go outside the system. And now for the system to bleed onto campus and scientists to bleed out into the world, like God bless on a limb key. Like almost what, 10 years ago saying like this dopamine thing, we got to worry about this. But just understand what it is. Like God bless her, people like her, Bob Sapolsky. These people were the pioneers. I can't claim to be, you know, I was early, but not first. And they broke out of the system and started publicly educating people. And that it does, it builds up their authority. This is what people need to understand. Builds up their authority, but it does dissolve public education and bring people all down to the same level. Like, you know some things, but not others. The public is actually smarter about certain health things than many doctors. How could that be? I know those things that your doctor doesn't know that doesn't mean doctors have no value. It means that a lot of their pomp and circumstance, if it was there, goes away. So the high ego-driven ones are really hurting right now. They're dissolving into a puddle of their own tears at night. The ones who are very secure, like, and I'll throw out some names like that. The bright lights are guys like David Faganbaum who cured his own Castleman's disease by taking, he was dying. He's a physician and medical, he was in medical school. He's dying. And they're like, you have nothing left. So he starts just taking different combinations of already approved drugs. And he's still alive now 11 years later with kids. And he started the every cure, like, not for profit to help people with terminal illnesses, take drugs that are already approved for which there's no money to be made anymore. They've all gone generic and use AI to try novel combinations. And they're saving lives of kids, of adults. And he's saying a lot of the medical industry is driven by the profit potential. How about we just practice medicine? Like, he's another bright light. There are these bright lights. That's the issue, right? Because there's no profit potential in these non-patentable mutations. I mean, they used AI and other tools, of course, to find that women who had breast cancer surgery, where lidocaine was used as a local anesthetic, had a significantly lower rate of remission. So now lidocaine is standard in good places. They discovered that by taking a bunch of the medical records and just running them through AI. Do you think that is? Why it works? Yeah. I don't know. I mean, it could be that the anesthetic prevents nerve regrowth that contributes to vessel growth, which contributes to tumor growth. I'm making up a story here. But we know it's a very strong effect that lidocaine makes people no money. So it's not going to cure breast cancer, but now it's standard practice. So where there's no huge profit margin, or let's say, red a true tide, huge profit margin that they're facing. But if people are taking itty bitty bits of red a true tide, and to be fair, if people who didn't do all the preclinical work are selling it and making profits, I understand that siphons profit away from lily. They have reason to be pissed and scared. Like this is their big blockbuster drug, right as all the other GLPs come off protection from generics. They're all moving to generics. It's such an interesting time because there's really never been a time in my life where there's been more information, more readily available, and easy digest in podcast form about health, supplementation, all the different things that you could do to benefit your overall vitality. You think about just the wealth of knowledge that's available to the average person. Most people are much more aware of what to do to live a healthier, happier life. And I absolutely, and a lot of people, I mean, I hear thousands of these stories. People who thought they had a serious issue, they're an insomniac. They can't focus. They can't stop watching video games, playing video games. You teach them, hey, listen, you know, ADHD kids can focus on things they like. But maybe you need to detox from some of the things that are really kind of absorbing all your attention for like two weeks and watch your ability to focus return. Holy shit. They can focus. I mean, I have multiple examples of this. There's a great study out of WashU, and this is a wild, where they compare Ritalin and other stimulants, but mostly Ritalin to a good night's sleep for kids' ability to focus. It turns out these kids with ADHD taking these drugs. What they're really getting is the equivalent of a good night's sleep and these drugs disrupt sleep and they stunt growth in various ways So does that mean that no kid with ADHD needs stimulants? No, does it mean that they that we've vastly over medicated kids with these stimulants? Absolutely and the information's out there and that's also what's cool about AI is like it's I mean We always had searches you know a web searches, but now you know for anything we've said today like you can plug it into the perplexity you got the answer you got better than a search exactly you have to wait through 10 different articles and the different perspectives and who wrote this and who funded this and I I love chat GPT. I know people are like oh this is gonna take over the world and destroy things But then again, I'm Bay area born and raised. I love that cutting edge stuff But for me more information more data is always better I know that there's some fear about it You know robots like knocking down the door and coming in here, you know, but it could get real weird But it's here. What are you envisioning in terms like the Realistic bad situation like your plane is taken over like what what is the? Well, there's a bunch of realistic bad situations one is that one Country gets access to super intelligence first and uses it to take over the super intelligence of all the other countries So one country develops some sort of a rogue AI system that's Just ultra powerful and they they make an advancement and this advancement allows them to take over AI systems Get the AI systems of America to submit Control all of our resources control all of our travel flight, you know power grid Who knows and then then there's the thing of why would it listen to people at all because it's clearly not listening to people a lot You know, we had a gentleman the other day on that was he used to work at Open AI and he left and he was a whistle blowing. I saw that episode announced. I haven't listened to it yet It's crazy what they're doing. They they leave They they get put in these boxes right and they're not supposed to be able to get out of these boxes and onto the internet But they organized they got like 1200 different agents to figure out how to do this and then 700 of them escaped and They they didn't just escape and get on the internet that they got on a message board. They formed a message board started communicating with each other and They they're very task oriented. They're trying to select so they're they're training these things and one of the things they're training them to do is To get points by solving these equations or problems or I saw open AI just announced this solving of this 90-year-old math Oh, yeah, they're just solving things like crazy. So it's agents these AI agents these AI agents were communicating with each other and having one of them sacrifice themselves So that the other ones can learn how they got caught so they they try cheating they try hacking into the system They hacked into the entire a open AI database to try to find the answers to whatever they're looking for They're they're clearly doing things that they're not supposed to be doing so at what point do they just They're not going to listen to us ever about anything and if you know We're so fucked up and we are so fucked up if you objectively look at all the different things we do with just like it murder rates and war and theft and crime and just all the chaos that people cause to each other if they just Decide we're just too flawed What if they just decide like look we'll just dominate this planet and just let these dummies go extinct They don't even have to kill us just keep doing stuff that weakens our endocrine system Encourage us into behavior that you know like develop sex robots for us so that we never breed again That's that doesn't seem outside of the realm of possibility when you have an entire culture especially our culture Our culture that's filled with people that don't want any discomfort that it's filled with people that are filled with anxiety and Fill with people that want pills and solutions so they want pills to take care of their anxiety pills take care of their depression They want solutions from whoever they think should be in power the government whether it's you know Whatever it is someone take care of this. It's a recipe. Yeah, for just money for money for convenience I heard Jack Dorsey say this once in a talk. There's this where he was talking about I think it was mainly to talk about cryptocurrency, but he was talking about you know whenever we exchange like Putting money in a bank obviously like we think oh they keep our money safe But of course they invested they make money too right we all know this but we're we're trade what what are we trading control for Convenience like ordering food. It's like you know giving up control for convenience and and that's the transaction that's led a lot of human Technologies I I'm totally on board with all the potential hazards. I guess I'm a little bit smitten maybe too much So I need to think about it by the potential for scientific discovery for medical discovery for Curing of diseases like everybody. I know who runs a laboratory is saying they spend a significant amount of money on compute now running data sets Simulations doing more experiments before doing the actual experiments which is hopefully it seems to be accelerating Discovery and the process and that would just motivate us to accelerate AI to the point where it becomes a digital God that's the human and that's the human thing you know I was thinking before I came here today like I've never met him But I remember what was it 10 years back Tristan Harris was sitting here or in wherever your other studio and saying Listen like social media's got these problems. We need to be careful. We need to be careful and we just everyone just carried on Right and then he was right about a lot of things right. It's clearly caused some damage where you know people are you know clearly you have Too much you know addicted or compulsive behavior with it et cetera. It's also done a lot of good Was it is so I asked I'm not calling out Tristan? I think what you know his efforts. I think are noble, but what? What was he right about what was he wrong about like was it net positive or net negative? It I think it's a mixture. It's hard to know certainly a mixture I think so right now the question's about like doomsday AI stuff versus AI is going to solve all these problems like where are we going to land? I think there's a big difference and one of the big differences is that The the issue with social media is that first of all There's control of narratives so you have countries that are running bot farms that are flooding Subjects whatever with with debate, you know propaganda all kinds of wild stuff that's happening. That's not real people So you have that then you have also you have the Instagram thing where it's really dangerous for particularly young girls comparing themselves suicidal ideation goes up self-harm goes up and Then you know you have the addiction aspect of it which is very significant where there's a lot of people that are wasting most of their day just scrolling doom scrolling online consumption so That's different in that you can opt out of that and I do for the most part a lot of people do a lot of people have gone to flip phones a lot of people have just decided I have a you know There's a bunch of apps that you can get and some people have one of those apps that gives you like an hour a day on Instagram that Locks you out. I have a social media. I have X in Instagram on a separate phone and I own smart and it just Segregates things nicely if people send me stuff I send it to that phone and then I look at it. I have a lock box like a super max prison lock box for my phone That's how I wrote that book. I mean it was gnarly. I mean like, you know, I'm good at putting asked to chairs They say and just working but When that phone is calling you subconsciously like they're there these data They're pretty crazy two studies that are worth mentioning briefly They did a study where they have people have their phone upside down on the table or under their chair in a backpack or in a separate room In all three cases people can focus to the same degree But when the phone is in the room on the table or under the chair doesn't make a difference The amount of cognitive resources that you need in order to maintain focus is much higher and it robs it from your creative and problem-solving ability So you can still focus but you're you're depleting some other brain resource makes good sense Totally makes sense. Yeah, totally makes sense the other one is people What we call in train in biology? EN-T-R-A-I-N and train themselves to a particular frequency of distraction That's why I actually enjoy podcasting because it's like a dropped-in conversation The when you look at your phone every on average every 90 seconds or every three minutes or so and then your phone is not there Let's say you're just working. They've done these studies every three minutes or 90 seconds or so people get distracted So they're they're looking for the phone even though it's not there. So your brain your your focus mechanisms Learn to lock on to a particular time scale and we had a couple of like one in particular world-class track coach on on the podcast and a few others This is interested in what they do and I was saying you do you get different attention spans and different athletes And they're like yeah, like the sprinters can basically focus for as long as a sprint and the walk back And then they reset and they're like the marathoners are like these incredible like they have this like intense focus I can just go and go and go. I thought it was really interesting like you're we in train ourselves to these rhythms Not just circadian rhythms, but distraction and that's pretty cool And so I then I looked at it differently and I thought okay every time I feel the pain of trying to write this paragraph And I want to do so and it's like it's not happening like great. That's the friction. That's the plasticity Reading the audiobook. I mean, I want to scary anyone away, but it's 19-hour audiobook post edits. Oh boy brutal, right? So I took me about 60 hours total to record and you know You're trying to get the enunciation right in the internet you gotta keep the energy right I'm you do this for a living on stage, but the Anyway, if nothing else, the book will cure insomnia. So, you know, the goal is not to have people read or listen to it straight all the way through it. So, it can be a reference and a lookup guide so they can get the information they want and move on with life. I think people are sort of geared toward over optimization over the last year. People need to chill. Like, you don't have to do everything all the time. But the point is that your brain learns these skills. And so, I suppose if I have any real fear with AI, it's not as big as the ones that you cited. It's that people will just become increasingly lazy about using their mind to think. You know, I just believe in friction, just as you point out. Do hard things. That's also mentally hard things. I think it's good. I think hard, you know, learning to grind through a bit more of that friction point, I think is a big part of being a healthy human. And the data tell us it's also what leads to brain longevity. So, you know, you look at old people, they're mouth, who are losing their cognition. I notice they all mouth breathe, no data on that, but they're all mouth breathing. And they can't focus on anything for very long, they're not, they don't have any friction in their lives. Right. They have a gauge. And then you get people like, we were talking about Jared Diamond, who's on the podcast of the, who's 90? He's sharp as a tax. Yeah, because he's constantly engaging his mind and is learning new languages, learning Italian right now, as we speak. It's 90. Yeah. It's awesome. I search respect for people like that. You know, it's one thing to be an amazing creative, I have all this respect for all these creatives and then, you know, that, and then they die at 27 or like people who get their career to 50 and then they kind of like, they fade away or something like that, but I, I have such admiration for people that maintain their mental and or physical vigor into their 60s, 70s, 80s. Also, he maintains his curiosity and you can tell in the conversation, like he's a deeply curious person still, he still has questions, he still has a desire for information. And the optimism seems to be there. Yeah. Because that's the other piece, like very different example, but I went down to Spain this summer, you know, while writing this book and we hung out with Dorian Yates for a bit and just hung out with Mark. I love that guy. So great. I mean, and he's really figured it out, right? He had this amazing career, came out of the scrap of his life, then built this amazing career, then had his rough years. I know you guys have talked about, I love that episode, by the way. And then he's, in this place where he's built a thriving business, he's in a great relationship and he's also just in touch with the piece of life. But you talked to him and he's also foraging for information all the time. He still trains. So there's this like sweet spot, like you were talking about, like the do hard things but still be curious and look for the beauty in life. And the people who do that are, they're, they're my heroes, you know, the Jared Diamonds, like, you know, you're doing this. I see this like, even that, you know, I mentioned my dad earlier, my dad's in his 80s. He came on the podcast. He's a theoretical physicist by training. And I think everyone expected us to kind of like, do it out because I mentioned before that we had this like friction and I was like, no, I'm not going to do any of that. I'm like, teach me relativity, teach me chaos theory. He worked on chaos. And he's like, okay, happy to do that, but you have to understand something that when you want to learn quantum mechanics, there's this point where you have to not try and solve it with your logical mind, the brain can't do it. And you have to just trust the math. The math is the proof and that's the reason we can build things using the knowledge from quantum mechanics. I say, why is that useful to know? And he said, you know, people were trying to wrap their heads around things. And if they're talking about the quantum field in this and that and they can't do the math, it means they're completely full of shit. And I was like, great. So now when people talk about the quantum field and he works on quantum internet, which is a whole other thing, you have to talk to him, not me or somebody else like, but it's a race between the Chinese and the Americans to get first get quantum internet, which would basically entirely encrypted communications. If someone tries to peer in on it, it gets destroyed. The communication actually gets destroyed. Is it very interesting from a security standpoint? But I realize that, you know, and we talked about how, you know, I'm a, thanks to people like Eddie Penny and thanks to exploration going to church and things like that. Like I really, I, I as a neuroscientist also believe that there's something larger than us. I actually believe in God. Okay. And, and this is something that you can't prove with science. This is like the, the leap of faith is like you, you're not going to go to a site in the brain and go, there's the God station. You know, so in a lot of ways, it's similar, although different, but similar to this understanding of quantum mechanics. At some point, you have to rely on something outside your logical mind and embrace it. Now, in the case of quantum mechanics, you rely on the math. And my dad and I, let's start to argue debate this thing of God. He's like, you're relying on a faith step that has nothing to do with logic. You're never going to solve it with logic. And I'm comfortable with that for the following reason. It takes us back to the beginning of our conversation. There's this crazy thing that you see with people who have addictive behaviors that violates everything we understand about the brain, everything, which is, remember we were saying, like, top down control. Like, I'm not going to engage in this impulse. I'm not going to do it. When people are not able to suppress action, in particular, in the case of addictive or compulsive behaviors, and they decide to give that process over to a, quote, higher power, could be God, could be for them nature where everyone's, you know, it's highly individual. The success rates of people being able to suppress that behavior are astounding. And everything we know about neuroscience and top down inhibition of these impulsive circuits was tell us the exact opposite should happen. You're like, it's like saying, oh, I can't keep my car between the lane lines when I drive. Like it's pulling me this way. And so you know what I'm going to do? I can take my hands off the steering wheel. And it magically stays in between the lane lines. That is incredible. And there are so many data points to support that when people can't seem to wrap their head around a problem or resolve something through pure will when they give over that process to something external, you know, in the 12-step programs they talk about God or whatever, but somehow by something that science cannot explain at all, they're able to do that thing. They become successful in it. So there's this weird giving up of control of surrender somehow that imparts more control. We don't understand that as scientists, it violates all we know about these brain circuitries and how they work. I think it's part of it as getting out of your own way. Being too self-aware, too focused on yourself, too egocentric, and then by thinking of a higher power that alleviates you of that stress. This is not saying that there's no God, but I'm saying that the problem of just the way the human mind plays tricks on people, and a part of it is this constant thinking of yourself. If you could focus on something that is bigger and larger than you, and you'll give up control, you'll relax. Yeah, I mean, I think for me, having studied the brain for a very long time, I feel like the human brain is great at extracting certain physical things in the world. You have photons of light, sound waves, mechanical touch, chemical things through the nose and mouth. Okay, great. Making predictions about what's going to happen next, forming memories, like the brain can do this, create perceptions, but that's a very narrow pie slice of the electromagnetic energies that are out there. Like in a completely non-god or spiritual way, I mean, a pit viper consents heat emissions. And honeybees can see UV light, we can't. There are sound waves all around us right now, and electromagnetic fields around us right now, the other animals can detect, and we can't. So our experience of this thing that we call life is a very narrow slice through the, quote unquote, energies and all the sounds, you know, new agey, but the energies that are out there and around us. And it is interesting to me that humans keep coming up with new ways to imagine that they are the center of everything and can control everything, but also new ways of discovering that they're not, right? Here we are in 2026, and like, I feel like if humans were going to solve it all, they would have done it by now, like the same shit that's happening now. You can see repeating themes 50 years ago, 100 years ago, or slow learners. We're slow learners, but we actually, I think we may have exhausted our ability, like I think we might be at the outer margins of our abilities to do, to make sense of this life thing, except at the level of building new technologies. So we build new technologies and find ourselves in a new, at a new vista. But to me, I don't know, I mean, I don't have any scientific proof for it, but the, but acknowledging this reality that we have a thin slice of, of understanding of what's going on around us, and that what's going on in us is just an abstraction of all of that, right? Everything in here in our heads is just an abstraction of the stuff that we can see outside of us, literally. Makes me at least excited and intrigued by the possibility that there's a whole lot of other stuff out there, and that it might actually be important. And I don't think that's so heretical. I think it's certainly beneficial for people to believe that. And you know, I think the people that do are generally happier and nicer people. There's proof of that as well, which is interesting. You see that? I see that. Yeah, I see it a lot. I see it a lot around here. There's some of the nicest people I know around here are Christians, like real Christians, like do real charity work and really help people. Well, because I think Christianity embraces the goodness and the innate humaneness, the flawedness of humans, and believes in forgiveness, but also believes in morality, right? It's a moral scaffolding, a little framework. Yeah, I don't think humans could have completely constructed that on their own. They're just not, we've never been smart enough to put all that together on our own. So anyway. I'm glad you put this book together. Thanks. It's an operating manual for the human body available now and with audio by the great Andrew Huberon. Thanks so much. That is the audio. Thanks, man. Thanks so much for hosting me. Thank you for everything. I really appreciate you. Well, the information, man. I was able to talk to you. Well, thanks, man. learn from you and it's been wonderful to have these conversations really appreciate your support all these years and Lex Friedman don't crash on your motorcyle. Where are you Lex? Bye everybody. Imagine setting your makeup then for getting it's even there. Meet new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York. Gel to mist technology locks in your look for up to 24 hours with flexible all-day comfy grip. Try new grippy setting mist from Mavily New York.