#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships

The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman, his fifth time on the podcast. He is the host of the Huberman lab podcast and is an amazing scientist, teacher, human being, and someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend. Also, he has a book coming out next year that you should pre-order now called Protocols, an operating manual for the human body. Now, a quick few second mention of the sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got A-Sleep for Naps, Element for Electrolytes, A-G1 for Nutrition, Shopify for Ecommerce, NetSweets for Business Management and Software, and BetterHelp for Mental Health. Choose what is my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or just want to get in touch with me, go to lexfreement.com/contact. And now, onto the full ladder reads, as always, no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by A-Sleep, and it's pod4altra. First of all, pod4 is an improvement over the pod3, which was already awesome. 2X the cooling power. I always love it when stuff is just improving. When smartphones are improving, when alarms are improving, like jump to a claw 3.5, it's just great. And a GPT-5 might be coming out soon. It's just great. It's great to see improvement. But also, there's the ultra part, which is an extra layer that adds the base that goes between the mattress and the bed frame, and the base can control the physical position of the actual mattress. So basically, you can not sleep in your bed, and you can also read in your bed, which is a thing that I think a lot of people like doing. I have trouble reading too much of my bed because I fall asleep. The bed is just too nice. Anyway, go to atsleep.com/lex and use code "lex2get" 350 bucks off the pod4altra. This episode is also brought to you by Element. The drink that Andrew and I consume a lot of during the episode. I drink a lot of Element almost on every single podcast episode. That's just what I drink. I put Element in the water. I take, I have one next to me right now. A power rate zero bottle with 28 fluid ounces. Fill it up with water. Put one packet of Element in there. Usually, watermelon assault. Mix it all up, put it in the fridge. About 30 minutes later, there's cold refreshing deliciousness. But yeah, in the Texas heat when I'm doing the long runs or heart training sessions, like I just did 10 rounds the other day. In grappling, no drinks. I usually don't like to drink during training. So afterwards, your body is completely dehydrated. That's such an amazing feeling to replenish it with all the electrolytes you need. So, especially when it's cold and delicious, I love it. Get a sample pack for free with any purchase. Try it at drinkelement.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by A.G.1, an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It's kind of hilarious how when Andrew and I hang out, how the supplementation and the diet and just our way of being is on point. There's a lot of A.G.1 consumed. There's a lot of Element consumed. And there's a lot of ground beef or steak consumed. On a regular basis. We've been planning to run together more but we haven't quite done that. It's mostly my fault because running has just been such a solo thing for me. I really don't remember the last time I've ever run with anybody. I get so much into my head that I just feel like I'm even more introverted than I usually am. Like I lose myself inside my mind. It's become such a meditative process that to do running with another person it just feels a little bit weird. I feel like I wouldn't be able to sort of contribute to the conversation if there's a conversation. And also like pacing wise there's a certain pace where conversation is still possible but it's a little uncomfortable. So and I can't really think at that pace that well and talk. I already started by talking so I don't know. Well it's a figured out but he's just such a great person to work out with and a great person to talk to that we'll have to figure it out. Anyway AG1 is always part of the picture and I drink it twice a day. It's the foundation of my nutrition. It's the thing when I consume it I feel like I've got on my basis covered no matter the crazy mental or the physical stuff that I'm going to do. They'll give you a one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify. A platform designed for anyone to sell stuff anywhere with a great looking online store. It took me a really short time to set everything up. Lexington.com/store. There's a few shirts on there. I actually got a linear skinned shirt via Shopify recently and I love it. I need to get more rock music like classic rock shirts. They brought so much joy to me they just want to celebrate it. I don't know why but that seems like a cool way to celebrate it. Especially if it's like a nice linear skinned or a Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd shirt. You know a shirt I haven't quite found that's a good one and I'm sure one exists is SRV Steve Reibon. I just don't want a generic one I want a super cool one. Hey man Jimmy Hendrix have a certain way about them that requires a super cool shirt. Not just a generic one. Anyway you can sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at Shopify.com/lex. That's all lowercase got a Shopify.com/lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by NetSuite and all in one cloud business management system. It is the machine inside the machine where the company is the meta machine and societies the meta meta machine is it's a collection of groups and companies and it's also a collection of nations in a constant state of energy against each other with no centralized control. The centralized control comes from the government that does the regulation on the on the machine of capitalism but within capitalism there's a certain degree of freedom that allows you to build epic shit to build epic stuff and that's where NetSuite can be the thing that helps you build the epic stuff by taking care of all the messy things like financials, HR, inventory supply, e-commerce if that's the thing you do and much more business related stuff. Over 37,000 companies have upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle. I wonder how many companies there are in the world. It's kind of cool to think that there's 37,000 companies. Each one with a person who founded or a collection of people founded the head of dream and that are working hard to bring that dream into a reality, trying to survive, trying to thrive, trying to make money, trying to put food on the table of all the families involved, all the responsibility of that. I don't know. Those are all little puzzles, little battles, sometimes big battles fought. It's cool. I love humans. This is one of the ways that humans are awesome. Take advantage of NetSuite's flexible financing plan at NetSuite.com/Lux. That's NetSuite.com/Lux. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P. Help. They figure out what you need and match it with a licensed therapist in under 48 hours. It's kind of incredible the power of language. The power spoken language to explore the human mind. Because in order to generate speech, if you take an idea that's in your head, if you compress that idea into something that could be represented in comprehensible sequence of words, and you have to speak it, within the full context of everything that's been spoken previously and everything that's been going on around. And then there's another human being on the other side that hears it. First of all, they have to hear it correctly. If it's noisy or whatever, or maybe their whole mind is focusing some aspect of the scene that prevents them from being able to really hear what's being said. But once they do, they have to then interpret it and decode, decompress the thing that was represented in language into an idea and visualize it, integrate it, load it in to the brain. And make sense of that idea, again, in the full context of everything that's happened before. And in that way, back and forth, humans talk and make sense of the world together and make sense of their own mind together. It's just cool. It's cool that that's even possible and it's cool that that's actually a powerful way to understand yourself and to understand the world. So yeah, I'm a big fan of talking of rigorous deep conversation and certainly talk therapy is rigorous and deep when done well. So if that's something that you're interested in trying, you should try better help because it's super easy. Check them out at betterhelp.com/lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex. This is the lesson. We've been in the podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description and now to your friends. Here's Andrew Huberman You think there's ever going to be a day when you walk away from podcasting definitely I Mean I Came up within and then on the periphery of skateboard culture and for the record. I was not a great skateboarder I was have to say that because skateboarders are relentless if you call something you didn't do or whatever I mean I could do a few things and I loved the community and I still have a lot of friends in that community Jim Thiebo at Deluxe you can look him up. He's kind of the man behind the whole scene. I know Tony Hawk Danny whale these guys. I got to see them come up and get big and stay big in many cases start huge companies like Danny and calling the case are DC Some people have a long life and something Some don't but one thing I observed and learned a lot from in skateboarding At the level of observing the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies and then what I also Observed in science and still observe is you do it for a while You do it at the highest possible level for you and then at some point you pivot and you start Supporting the young talent coming in in fact the greatest scientists people like Richard Axel Catherine Doolock there are many other labs in neuroscience called Diceroth They're not just known for doing great science. They're known for Mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on to start their own labs and I think in podcasting I Am very fortunate. I got in in a fairly early wave not the earliest wave But thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast fairly early wave and I'll continue to go as long as it feels right And I feel like I'm doing good in the world and providing good, but I'm already starting to scout talent My company that I started with Rob Moore psychomedia There's a couple other guys in there too Mike playback our photographer Ian Mackie Chris Ray Martin fobs We are a company that produces podcasts right now that's human lab podcasts, but we're launching a new podcast perform with Dr. Andy Galpin nice And we want to do more of that kind of thing finding a really great talent highly qualified people credential people and I've got a new kind of obsession with scouring the internet Looking for the young talent in science in health and related fields and so will there be a final episode of the Shopee. Yeah, I mean bulletbuster cancer Aside, you know someday they'll be the very last and thank you for your interest in science and I'll clip out Yeah, I love the idea of walking away and not be dramatic about it right when it feels right You can leave and you can come back whenever the fuck you want right John Stewart did this well with the daily show I think that was during the 2016 election where everybody wanted him to stay on and he just walked away De Chappelle for different Reasons walked away disappeared came back gave away so much money didn't care I then came back and was doing like stand up in the park in the middle of nowhere Genius you have Habib Who undefeated walks away at the very top of all the sport is he coming back? No Stop these we don't know. Yeah, right. You don't know. I don't know bears everywhere or word Yeah, I think you know, it's it's always a call, you know, you know, the last Few years have been tremendous growth we launched in January 2021 and even this last year 2024 has been huge growth You know in all sorts of ways. It's been wild and we have some short form content planned 30-minute shorter episodes that really distilled down the critical elements were also Thinking about moving to other venues besides podcasting so there's always the thought in the discussion But when it comes to like when to hang up your cleats, you know, it's like There just comes a natural time where you can do more to mentor the next generation coming in Then focusing on self and so there will come a time for that and I think it's critical I mean again, I saw this in skateboarding like Danny and Colin and Danny's brother Damon started DC with Ken block the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago rally car driver And they eventually sold it I think to Quicksilver or something like that, but They're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas, but they brought in the next You know in the next line of amazing writers for the plan B thing, you know Paul Rodriguez for skateboarders They know who this is now in science There are scientists like Feynman for instance. I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor offspring So there are scientists who are phenomenal like beyond world class right multi-generational world class Who don't make good mentors? I'm not saying he wasn't good mentor, but that's not what he's known for and then there are scientists who are known for being excellent scientists and great mentors and I think there's no higher Celebration to be had at the end of one's career if you can look back and like hey, I put some really important knowledge into the world People made use of that knowledge and guess what you spawned all these other Scientific offspring or sport offspring or Podcast offspring. I mean I mean in some ways we look to Rogan and to some of the other earlier podcasts is like they You know, they paved the way run the Patrick first science podcast out there So you know it eventually The baton passes, but fortunately right now everybody's active and it and it feels really good Yeah, well you're talking about the healthy way to do it, but there's also Uh A different kind of way where you have something like uh Grisha Gagori Pearlman the mathematician who refused to accept the field's model So he's one of the greatest living mathematicians and he just walked away from mathematics and rejected the field's model What did you do after you left mathematics? life Private 100% I respect that he's become essentially a recluse is these photos of him Looking very broke like he could use the money. He he turned away the money. He turned away everything You know there's there's You just have to listen to the inner voice you have to listen to yourself and make the decisions that don't make any sense for the rest of the world and Makes sense to you. I mean Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. That's punk. Yeah, yeah He probably grew in notoriety for that Yeah, maybe just doesn't like going in Sweden, but it seemed like a big fun trip I think they do it in a nice time of years, but hey, that's his right. He earned that right I think the best artists aren't doing it for the prize. They aren't doing it for the fame or the money They're doing it because they love the art. Yeah, it's the the Rick Rubin thing. He got a verb it through Download your inner thing. I don't think we've talked about this that this obsession that I have about how Rick has this way of being very very still in his body What keeping his mind very active as a practice When he spent some time with him in Italy last June and we would tread water and his pool in the morning and listen to History rock and roll and 100 songs Um amazing podcast by the way. It is. Yeah, and um, and then he would spend a fair amount of time during the day You know in this kind of meditative state where his mind is very active body very still And then Carl Diceroth when he came on my podcast talked about how he forces himself to sit still and think in complete sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep and You know, there's a state of mind rapid eye movement sleep Where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active and people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more elaborate emotion filled dreams and the source of many ideas And there are other examples Einstein People described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus then pausing and would ask him what was going on and the idea that his mind was continuing to churn forward at a high rate um So you know, this is far from controlled studies, but it we're talking about some incredible minds and creatives who have a practice of Stilling the body while keeping the mind deliberately very active Very similar to rapid eye movement sleep and then there are a lot of people who also report, you know, great ideas coming to them in the shower while running So it can be the opposite as well where the body is very active and the and the mind is perhaps more on Kind of like a default mode network Not really focusing on anyone specific thing. You know interesting as a there's a bunch of physicists and mathematicians have talked to they talk about sleep deprivation And going crazy hours to the night obsessively pursuing a thing and then the solution to the problem comes when they finally get Rest right and then and we know we just did this sixth episode special series on sleep with matt walker we know that When you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep you get a rebound in rapid eye movement sleep You get a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep and matt talks about this in the podcast and he did an episode on sleep and Creativity sleep in memory and rapid eye movement sleep comes up multiple times in that series There's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and rapid eye movement move and sleep people are coming off cannabis off and will suffer from insomnia, but when they finally do start sleeping, they like dream like crazy, cannabis is a very controversial topic right now. Yeah. I saw that. What happened? There's a bunch of drama around episode you did on cannabis. Yeah. We did an episode about cannabis, talked about the health benefits and the potential risks. Right? It's neither here nor there. Depends on the person. Depends on the age. Depends on genetic background. A number of other things. We published that episode well over a year ago and it had no issues online, so to speak. And then a clip of it was put to X where, you know, the real action occurs as you know, your favorite. Bob. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The four ounce gloves as opposed to the 16 ounce gloves. That is X versus Instagram or YouTube. There was kind of an immediate dog pile from a few people in the cannabis research field. So PhDs and MDs, yeah. There were people on our side, there were people on our side, I mean, you know, the statement that got things riled up the most was this notion that for certain individuals, there's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high-teach see-containing cannabis. For certain individuals, not all, that sparked some issues. There was really a split, you know, you see this in different fields. There was 1% in particular who came out swaying with language that in my opinion is not like of the sort that you would use at a university venue, especially among colleagues, but that's fine. You know, we're all grownups. Many from my perspective, it was a strangely rude and it had an era of like elitism that to me was at the source of the problem during COVID that led to the distrust of science and the popularization of disrespecting science because so many scientists spoke with an arrogance in a douche baggery that I wish we would have a little bit less of. Yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the university system are, they're not familiar with like the inner working of science and the culture. And so, it's to be very careful how you present when you're a university professor. And when, yeah, so, you know, he came out swinging at some, you know, a four-letter word type language and you obviously upset about, so I simply said what I would say anywhere, which was, hey, look, come on the podcast, let's chat. And one, you give your, tell me where I'm wrong and let's discuss and, and fortunately, he agreed. And initially, he said, well, no, how can I be sure you're not going to misrepresent me? And so, I said, we got on a DM, then an email, then eventually phone call and just said, hey, listen, like you're working to record the whole conversation. We've never done a gacha on my podcast and let's just get to the heart of the matter. I think this little controversy is perfect, kindling for a really great discussion. And he had some other conditions that we worked out and I felt like, cool, like he's really interested. You get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say he's been very collegial and that conversation is on the schedule. I said, we'll fly you out. We'll put you up. He said, no, he wants to fly himself. He really wants to make sure that there's like kind of a space between, I think some of the perception of science and health podcasts and the academic community is that it's all designed to sell something. No, we run ads so it can be freed everyone else. But I think, look, in the end, he agreed and I'm excited for the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of that little exchange, there's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis is now surpassed alcohol in many cultures as within the United States as, when I say cultures, I mean demographics, the United States as the drug of choice. There have been people highlighting the issues of potential psychosis and high THC containing. And so it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of on board certain elements that, you know, I put forward and I think there's some controversy as to whether not the different strains, the indicas and sativas are biologically different, et cetera. So we'll get down into the weeds, pun intended, during that one. And I'm excited. It's the first time that we've responded to a direct criticism online about scientific content in a way that really promoted, like, oh, here, the idea of inviting a particular guest. And so it's great. Let's get a guest to his expert in cannabis. I believe I could be wrong about this. He's a behavioral neuroscientist, a slightly different training. Look, he seems highly credentialed to be fun and we, you know, we welcome that kind of exchange. I don't know. I'm being diplomatic. I'm just saying, like, it's cool. Like he's coming on. Oh, you know, and he was friendly on the phone, right? Like, he literally came out online and was like, basically, like, kind of like, FU, like F this and FU. But you get someone on the phone and it's like, hey, how's it going? And they're like, oh, yeah, well, you know, I, there was an immediate apology of like, hey, listen, I came out normally. I'm like, not like that, but online, you know, you got a different, okay. Listen. So it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like Jiu-Jitsu, right? People say all sorts of things, I guess. But if they, if you're like, all right, well, let's go. Then it's probably a different story, you know, it's not like Jiu-Jitsu because it's Jiu-Jitsu people don't talk shit because they know what the consequences are. Let me, let me just say on my, an off mic, you have been very respectful towards this person. And I'm look up to you and respect you and admire the fact that you have been. That said, to me, that guy was being a dick. And when you graciously, politely invite him on the podcast, he was still talking down to you the whole time. So I really admire and look forward to listening to you talk to him. But I hope others don't do that. Like you are a positive humble voice, exploring all the interesting aspects of science. Like you want to learn, if there you've got anything wrong, you want to learn about it. The way he was being a dick, I was just hurt a little bit, not because of him, but because like there's some people I really, really admire, brilliant scientists that are not their best selves on Twitter, on X. Definitely. I don't understand what happens to their brain when they regress. They regress and they also are protected, you know, you know, when you remove the, I mean, no scientific argument should ever come to physical blows, right? But when you remove the real world thing of being right in front of somebody, people will throw all sorts of stones at a distance, you know, an overall wall. And they've got their, their wife or their husband or their boyfriend or their dog or their cat to go cuddle with them afterwards. But you get in a room and it's like, you know, confrontational people in real life are pretty rare. But hopefully if they do it, they're like willing to back it up with knowledge in this case, right? We're not talking about physical altercation. Yeah. He kept coming and he kept putting on conditions. How do I know you won't this? And I was like, well, you can record the conversation. How do I know you want that? Listen, we'll pay for you to come out. How do you know? And eventually he just kind of relented and, and it to his credit, you know, he's agreed to come on. I mean, he's still has to show up, but once he does, you know, we'll treat him right like we would any other guest. Yeah, you treat people really well and I just hope that people are a little bit nicer on the internet. Well, you know, X is an interesting one because you, it thickens your skin, you know, to just go on there. I mean, you have to be ready to deal with sure, but I can still criticize people for, for being douchebags because like that's still not good inspiring behavior, like, especially for scientists that should be sort of symbols of scientific thinking, which requires intellectual humility. Humility is a big part of that. Twitter is a good place to illustrate that. Yeah. Years ago, I used to, I was a student in TA then instructor and then directed a cold spring harbor course on visual neuroscience. These are summer courses that explore different topics and at night, we would host what we hoped were battles in front of the students, where you'd get to people on it, you know, would it be neural prosthetics or molecular tools that would first, you know, restore vision to the blind kind of arguments, you know, kind of like it's kind of a silly argument because it's going to be a combination of both, right? But you get these great arguments, but the arguments were always couched in data. And occasionally you'd get somebody would go like, or would curse or something, but it was the rare, very, very well placed, you know, insult. It wasn't, you know, coming out swinging. I think ultimately, you know, Twitter is a record of people's behavior that the internet is a record of people's behavior. And here I'm not talking about news reports about people's behavior. I'm talking about how people show up online up is really important. You've always carried yourself with a ton of composure and respect. And, you know, you just, you would hope that people would grow from that example. Well, I'll tell you that the podcasters that I'm scouting, it's their energy, but it's also how they treat other people, how they respond to comments. And, you know, we're blessed to have pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast like someone else's podcast. It goes far and wide. So like a skateboard team, like a laboratory where you're selecting people to be in your lab, you're, you want to pick people that you would enjoy working with and they're collegial. etiquette and etiquette is lacking nowadays, but you're in the suit and tie, you're bringing it back. Bringing it back, you said that your conversation with James Hollis, a young age psychoanalyst had a big impact on you, what do you mean? James Hollis is a 84 year old union psychoanalyst, he's written 17 books, including Under Saturn Shadow, which is on the healing and trauma of men that eating Eden projects, excuse me, which is about relationships and creating a life. I discovered James Hollis in an online lecture that was recorded, I think in San Diego, it's on YouTube, the audio is terrible, called Creating a Life. And this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span. I can't remember. It was on my way to Europe, and I called my girlfriend at the time, I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard. And he talks about the shadow, he talks about your developmental upbringing and how you either align with or go 180 degrees off your parents' tendencies and values in certain areas. He talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of life, to live a full life. So it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast. And he wasn't able to travel, so our team went out to DC and sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays, people come to our studio. And he came in, he had some surgeries recently and he kind of came in with some assistance from a, you know, a cane and then sat down and just blew my mind. From start to finish, he didn't miss a syllable. And every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence of with real potency and actionable items. I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response and we just force ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while seated or while lying down, doesn't have to be meditation but it could be that we access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want. And that if we do that practice repeatedly, 10 minutes a day here, 15 minutes a day there, that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the directions we need to take. But that so often we just stay in stimulus response. We just do, do, do, do, do, do, which is great, we have to be productive. But we miss those important messages. And interestingly, he also put forward this idea of what is this like get up, shut up, suit up, yeah, something like that, like get out of bed, suit up and shut up and get to work. He also has that in him, kind of a Goggins type mindset. So be able to turn off all this self-reflection and self-analysis and just get shit done, get shit done. And also take dedicate time and stop and just let stuff geyser to the surface from the unconscious mind. And he quotes Shakespeare and he quotes young and he quotes everybody through history with incredible accuracy and exactly the way needed to drive home a point. But that conversation to me was one that I really felt like, okay, you know, if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason, that one's in the can and I feel really great about it. And to me, it's the most important guest recording we've ever done in particular because he has wisdom. And while I hope he lives to be 204, chances are he's got another what 20, 30 years with us, hopefully more. But I really, really wanted to capture that information and get it out there. I'm very, very proud of that one and he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him, young, old, male, female, whatever, and you're going to get something of value. What do you think about this idea of the shadow that the good and the bad that we repress that tides from plain sight when we analyze ourselves that's there? I think there's like an ocean that we don't have direct access to. Yes. We, young, said it, we have all things inside of us and we do and some people are more in touch with those than others and some people it's repressed. I mean, does that mean that we could all be, you know, horrible people or marvelous people, benevolent people perhaps? I think that thankfully more often than not, people lean away from the like violent and harmful parts of their shadow, but I think spending time thinking about, you know, one's shadow, shadows is super important. How, how also are we going to grow? Otherwise, you know, we have these unconscious blind spots of denial or repression or whatever, you know, the psychiatrists tell us, but it clearly exists within all of us. I mean, we have neural circuits for rage. We all do. Neuro-circuits for altruism and known to born without these things and some people they're atrophied and some people they're hypertrophied, but I've looking inward and recognizing what's there is key or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what Rick Rubin is accessing when you go silent, silent body, active mind. That's interesting. What is it for you or what place do you go to that generates ideas that helps you generate ideas? I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean, I'm always exploring for protocols. I have to. That's like in my nature. When I went and spent time with Rick, I tried to adopt his practice of staying very still and just letting stuff, you know, come to the surface or the dichirothian way of formulating complete sentences and well being still in the body. What I found works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music. He writes music every day. He's a music producer. He's obviously a singer guitar player for Rancid and he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs. And many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists, Tim helped them write. Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni Mitchell talks about this too, you find some creative outlet that's like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet and you do that thing. So for me, that's drawing. I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience based drawing drawn neurons, that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while, my mind starts churning on the nervous system and biology and then I come up with areas I'd like to explore for the podcast, ways I'd like to address certain topics. Right now I'm very interested in autonomic control, a beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes and without changing luminance through a biofeedback mechanism. And that gives them control over their so-called automatic autonomic nervous system. And I've been looking at what the circuitry is and it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function. And as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, oh, like what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size? Then you go in and there's a paper published in Nature Press, one of the nature journals and there's a recent paper on this. It's like, oh, cool. And then we talk about this. And then how could this be put into a kind of a post or how could this, you know, so doing things that are about 15 degrees off center from your main thing is a great way to access I believe the circuits for in Tim's case painting goes to songwriting. I think for Joni Mitchell, that was also the case, right? I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting. For Rick, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's listening to podcasts. I don't know. That's his business. Do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work? No, I'd really like to focus on emptiness and silence. So I picked the dragon, I have to slay, so one of the problems I have to work on and I just sit there and stare at it and I love how fucking linear you are. And if there's no, if you're tired, I'll just sit. I believe in the power of just waiting and usually I'll stop being tired or their energy rises from somewhere or an idea pops from somewhere but there needs to be a silence and emptiness. It's an empty room just me and the dragon and we wait. That's it. Like if it's usually with programming, you're thinking about a particular design, like how do I design this thing to solve this problem? Any cognitive enhancers? I've got quite the gallery in front of me. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Should we walk through this? Yeah. This is not a sales thing. I tend to do this bounce back and forth, your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices. So water, all my refrigerator, I know right, there's no food in there. There's water, there's element, which they now have canned. And yes, they're a podcast sponsor for both of us but that's not why I cracked one of these open. I like them provide their cold. And that's by the way, my least favorite flavors I was saying, that's the reason it's still left in the fridge. The cherry one is really good. The black cherry. Good. There's an orange one. I pushed the sled this morning and pulled the sled from my workout at the gym and it was hot today here in Austin. So some stuff. Salt is good. And then Matina Yerbomate, zero sugar full confession. I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love Yerbomate. Half-arge in teen. Been drinking Mati since I was a little kid. There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three sitting on my grandfather's lap sipping Mati out the gourd. And then this, my fun interesting, this is just a little bit of coffee with a scoop of Brian Johnson gave me cocoa, just like pure unsweetened cocoa. So I put that in chocolate and I like it. It's just for the taste. Well, actually nukes my appetite and since we're not going out to dinner tonight until later I figure that's good. Yeah, Brian's an interesting one, right? He's really pushing this thing. The optimization of everything. Yeah, although he just hurt his ankle. He posted a photo of the hurt his ankle. So now he's injecting BPC body protection compound 157, which many, many people are taking by the way. I didn't episode on peptides. I should just say, you know, BPC 157, one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis, like development of new vasculature, which can be great in some context, but also if you have a tumor, you don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore. So I worry about people taking BPC 157 continually, but and there's very little human data. I think there's like one study and it's a lousy one. So a lot of animal data. Some of the peptides are interesting, however. There's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pinealin, which I find, even if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it times, it seems to do something to the circadian timekeeping mechanism because then on other days, when I don't take it, I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple weeks and then typically stop, maybe try something else, but I stay out of things that really stimulate any of like a major hormone pathways when it comes to peptides. That's actually a really good question of how do you experiment? Like how long do you try to think to figure out if it worked for you? Well, I'm very sensitive to these things, so I've been doing a lot of things for a long time, so if I add something in, it's always one thing at a time, and I notice right away if it does not make me feel good. Like there's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth hormones, the creedigogs, hypermuralin, testemuralin, sermuralin. I've experimented a little bit with those in the past and they've nuked to my rap and eye movement sleep, but given me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good to me, but other people like them. I also just generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these hormone pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues, but some people take them safely. But usually after about four or five days, I know if I like something or I don't, and then I move on, but I am not super adventurous with these things. I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things, they'll try anything, that's not me, and I do blood work. But also I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting, and I'm teaching a course in the next spring. Stanford, I'm gonna do a big undergraduate course. So I'm trying to develop that course and things like that. So I don't need to lift more weight or run further than I already do, which is not that much weight or far as it is. - All right, you're not going to the Olympics, you're not trying to truly maximize the aspect of your performance. - No, and I'm not trying to get down below whatever, seven percent body fat or something. I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes, caffeine in the form of mante, and then this coffee thing, and then here's the one that I think I brought out for discussion, this is a piece of Nicarat, they're not a sponsor. Nicotine is an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure, and it is probably not safe for everybody, but you know, Nicotine is gaining in popularity, like crazy, mainly these pouches that people put in the lip, not, we're not talking about smoking, vaping, dipping or snuffing. You know, my interest in Nicotine started, this was in 2010, I was visiting Columbia Medical School, and I was in the office of the great neurobiologist, Richard Axel, one of the Nobel Prize, co-recipient with Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction. Brilliant guy, he's probably in his late 70s now. - Probably. - Yeah, and he kept popping Nicarat in his mouth, and I was like, "What's this about?" And he said, "Oh, well, this was just anecdot, right?" But he said this, he said, "Oh, well, you know, it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." I said, "It does," and he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I don't know if he was kidding or not, he's known for making jokes. And then he said that when he used to smoke, it really helped his focus in creativity, but then he quit smoking 'cause he went lung cancer, and he found that he couldn't focus as well, so he would choose Nicarat. So occasionally, like right now, well, I do a half a piece, but I'm not Russian, so I'm a little, you know, you just pop the whole thing in your mouth. So I'll do a couple of milligrams every now and again, and it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular, but you fast all day. You're still doing one meal a day. - One meal a day? - Yeah. - Yeah, I did a nicotine pouch with Rogen at dinner. - And I got high. - Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of Zen, take one a day, pretty soon they're taking a canister a day. So you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself two pieces of Nicarat total per week. And you will notice that in the day after you use it, you know, sometimes your throat will feel a little bit like, like a little spasomy, like you might want to cough once or twice. And so, you know, if you're a singer or your podcast or something, you have to do long podcasts. You want to just be mindful of it. But yeah, you're supposed to keep it in your cheek and you know, here we go. But it did make me intensely focused. In a way that was a little bit scary 'cause, yeah. The nucleus basalus is in the, you know, basal forebrain. Nucleus has colonergic neurons that radiate out axons, little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex N elsewhere. And when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually, we know that there's an elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there. And it binds to nicotine acetylcholine receptor sites there. So it's kind of an intentional modulation by acetylcholine. So you're getting it with nicotine, you're getting an exogenous or artificial heightening of that circuitry. And the time I had talk of Carlson on the podcast, he told me that apparently it helps him, as he said publicly, keep his love life vibrant. Really, it caused the basalus constrictions. Like he literally said, it makes it take very hard. He said that publicly also. Okay, well, as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's trust on sex life, no disrespect. The major effect of nicotine on the vascular, my understanding is that it causes basal constriction, not basal dilation. Drugs like cialis, cedyalophyll, viagra, et cetera of vasodilators. They allow more blood flow. nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow to the periphery, but provided dosages are kept low. And I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all. And I don't recommend young people use it, 25 and younger, brain's very plastic at that time. And certainly smoking, dipping, vaping, it's nothing, that aren't good because you're gonna run into, we were running into trouble for other reasons. But in any case, even there, vaping is a controversial topic. It's probably safer than smoking, but has its own issues. And I said something like that. And boy, did I catch a lot of heat for that? I can't say anything as a health science educator and not piss somebody off. Just depends on where the center of mass is and how far outside that you are. - For me, the caffeine is the main thing. And actually, it's a really big part of my life. And one of the things you recommend that people wait a bit in the morning to consume caffeine if they experience a crash in the afternoon. This is one of the misconceptions I regret, maybe even discussing it for people that crash in the afternoon. Oftentimes, if they delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before, you're not gonna avoid that afternoon crash. But I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration caffeine, especially if I'm gonna work out. Here's a weird one. If I exercise before 8.30 AM, especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy, which is mid-morning, 10 AM, 11 AM, and I start exercising then, I'm basically exhausted all afternoon. And I don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the intensity of the workout. But so I like to be done, showered, and heading into work by 9 AM, but I don't always meet that more. So you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start with exercising. I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early, and then that fuels you all day long. I think that if you wait until you're feeling at your best to train, sometimes that's detrimental, because then in the afternoon, when you're doing like the work we get paid for, like research, podcasting, et cetera, then oftentimes your brain isn't firing as well. - Yes, interesting. I haven't really rigorously tried that, wake up and just start running or listen to the Jaco thing. And then there's this phenomenon called entrainment, where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or if you bright light at a certain time of day for three to seven days, in days in a row, pretty soon there's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone in theory can become a morning person to some degree or another. And this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off. You know, people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't because it clicked because you have this incredible time keeping mechanism that exists in sleep. And there's some papers that have been published in the last couple of years, Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere showing that people can answer math problems in their sleep. Simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless. This does not mean that if you ask your partner a question and sleep that they're going to answer accurately, like they might screw up the whole cumulative probability of 20 percent across multiple months. All right. Listen, what happened? What happened? Here's a deal. A few years back I did a four and a half hour after editing, four and a half hour episode on male and female fertility. The entire recording took 11 hours. And at one point during the, and by the way, I'm very proud of that episode. There's many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode. And my first question is, what were you doing during the episode? But in all seriousness, we should say that it's four and a half hours. And for people, then they should listen to the episode, you're, it's extremely technical episode. You're not stopping facts and, and referencing huge number of papers. It's must be exhaust. I don't understand how you can post that. It's about sperm hell, sperm agences, it talks about the ovulatory cycle, it talks about things people can do that are, that are considered absolutely supported by science, it talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit, that are a little bit more experimental. It talks about IVF, it talks about XC, it talks about all of that. It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age, et cetera. But there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability of a successful pregnancy as a function of age. And so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing cumulative probability. And by the way, we've published cumulative probability historians in many of my laboratories, including one that was a nature article in 2018. So we run these all the time. And yes, I know the difference between independent and cumulative probability. Yeah, that's just like, I do. The way the clip was cut and what I stated, unfortunately, combined to like a pretty great gaff where I say, you're just adding, I said, you're just adding percentages 20 to 120 to 120 percent. And then I made this kind of, unfortunately, my humor isn't always so good. And I made a joke. I said 120 percent, but that's a different thing altogether. What I should have said was that's impossible, you know, and here's how it actually works. But then it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram for successful pregnancy. But somewhere in the early portion, I mistated something, right? I made a math error, which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability, which I do. And it got picked up and run and people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense. And so what I did in response to it was rather than just say everything I just said now, I said, I just came out online and said, hey, folks, in an episode dated this on fertility, I made a math error. Here is the formula for cumulative probability successful pregnancy at that age. Here's the graph. It's the, you know, and I offered it as a teaching moment in two ways, one for people to understand cumulative probability. It was sort of interesting to a number of people that had come out critiquing the gap. Also, like, biology and folks came out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. So there was a lot of posturing, you know, the dog pile often times people are quick to dog pile. They didn't understand. But a lot of people did understand it. Some smart people out there, obviously. I call my dad. And he was just laughing. He goes, oh, this is good. This is like the old school way of hammering academics. But the point being, there was a teaching moment, giving an opportunity to say, hey, I made a mistake. I also made a mistake in another podcast where I did a micron to millimeter conversion or centimeter conversion. And we always correct these in the show not captions. We correct them in the audio now. Unfortunately, on YouTube, it's harder to correct. You can't go and edit in segments. We put in the captions. But that was the one teaching moment. If you make a mistake, it's substantive and related data. You apologize and correct the mistake, use a teaching moment. The other one was to say, hey, you know, in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out, I'm sure I've made some small errors. I think I once said serotonin when I'm in dopamine and you know, you're going, you're riffing. And it's a reminder to be careful to edit double check, but the internet usually edits for us. And then we go make corrections, but it didn't feel good at first. But ultimately, you know, I can laugh at myself about it. Long ago at Berkeley when I was teeing my first class, it was a biopsychology class, I mean, 1998 or 1999, I was drawing the pituitary gland, which is, you know, has an anterior and a posterior lobe actually is a medial lobe too. I have five, six hundred students in that lecture hall. And I drew a chalkboard and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary and I said, my back was to the eye and I said, you know. And so they just sort of hang there and everyone just erupted and laughed because it looked like a scrotum with two testicles. And I remember thinking like, oh my god, I don't think I can turn around like in face this, you know. And I like got to turn around sooner or later. So I turned around and we just all had to be laughed together. It was embarrassing. I'll tell you one thing though, they never forgot about the two lobes of the pituitary. Yeah. And you haven't forgotten about that either. Like there's a high salience for these kinds of things. And it also was kind of fun to see how excited people get to see people trip. It's like an elite sprinter trips and does something stupid, like, you know, runs the opposite direction out of the blocks or something like that. And or, you know, I recall at one world cup match years ago, a guy scored against his own team. I think they killed the guy. Do you remember that? Mm-hmm. Some South American or Central American team. Yeah. And they killed the guy. Yeah. Let's look it up. I just said World Cup. Yeah. He was gunned down. Hodgers Escobar scored against his own team in 1994 World Cup in the United States. Just 27 years old, playing for the Columbia national team. Yeah. Last name, Escobar. It's a good name. I think it would protect you. And, you know, so there are some gaps that get people killed, right? So, you know, how forgiving are we for online mistakes? You know, it's the nature of the mistakes. People were quite gracious about the gap and some weren't. And, you know, it's interesting that we, as, you know, public health science educators, you know, we'll do long podcasts sometimes and you need to be really careful what's great as AI allows you to check these things now, more readily. So that's cool. And there are ways that it's now going to be more self-correcting. I mean, you know, I think there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them. It's cool. Like things are getting cleaned up. Yeah. But mistakes, nevertheless, will happen. Are you, do you feel the pressure of not making mistakes? Sure. I mean, you know, I try and get things right to the best, you know, to the best of my ability. I check with experts. It's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was said in a podcast. A lot of times I chuckle because I'm, you know, at Stanford, we have some amazing scientists, but I talk to them elsewhere. And it's always interesting to me how, you know, I'll get divergent information. And then I'll find the overlap in the Venn diagram. And I have this like question, do I just stay with the overlap in the Venn diagram? I didn't episode on oral health. I didn't know this until I researched that episode. But oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health. There's a bacteria that causes cavity streptococcus, you know, that can make its way into other parts of the body through the mouth that can cause serious issues. There's the idea that some forms of dementia, some forms of heart disease are starting the mouth, basically. I talk to no fewer than four dentists, dental experts. And there was a lot of convergence. I also learned that teeth can de-mineralize, that's the formation of cavities, they can also remineralize. As long as the cavity is into deep, it can actually fill itself back in, especially if you provide the right substrates for it. That saliva is this incredible fluid that has all this capacity to remineralize teeth, provided the milieu is right. Things like alcohol-based mouth washes, killing off some of the critical things you need. That's fascinating. And I put out that episode thing, well, I'm not a dentist, I'm not an oral health episode, but I talked to a pediatric dentist. There's a terrific one, Dr. Downscore Stacy, S-T-A-C-I, on Instagram, does great content. Talk to some others. And then I just waited for the attack, I was like, "Here we go, and it didn't come." And dentists. were thanking me. I was like, "Whoa." You know? That's a rare thing. More often than not, if I do an episode about, say, psilocybin or MDMA, you get some people liking it, or ADHD, and the drugs for ADHD. We did a whole episode on the Ritalin Vivants, Adderall stuff. You get people saying, "Thank you. You know, I prescribed this to my kid, and it really helps." But they're private about the fact that they do it because they get so much attack from other people. So I like to find the center of mass, report that, try and make it as clear as possible, and then I know that there's some stuff where I'm going to catch shit. What's frustrating for me is when I see claims that I'm against fluoridization of water, which I'm not. We talked about the benefits of fluoride. It builds hyperstrong bonds within the teeth. I went and looked at some of the crystal structure, but essentially the micron and sub-micron structure of teeth is incredible, and where fluoride can get in there and form these super strong bonds, and you can also form them with things like hydroxyapatite, and why is there fluoride in water? Well, it's the best. Okay, you say some things that are interesting, but then somehow it gets turned into, like, you're against fluoridization, which I'm not. Or I've been accused of being against sunscreen. I wear mineral-based sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer, or I use a physical barrier. There is a cohort of people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad. I'm not one of them. I'm not what's called a sunscreen truther, but then you get attacked for. So we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic. And Rhonda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this. And so there are certain topics that are interesting for which you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying, but there's a lumping, or lumping as opposed to splitting, of what health educators say. And so it just seems like, like with politics, there's this urgency to just put people into a camp of experts versus, like, renegade or something, and it's not like that. It's just not like that. So the short answer is I really strive. I really strive to get things right, but I know that I'm going to piss certain people off, and you've taught me, and Joe's taught me, and other podcasters have taught me that, like, if you worry too much about it, then you aren't going to get the newest information out there. Like peptides, there's very little human data. Unless you're talking about Viley C or the Melana stuff in the alpha-melana states, stimulating hormone stuff, which are prescribed for female libido to enhance female libido, or sermarellin, which is for certain growth hormone deficiencies. With rare exception, there's very little human data. But people are still super interested, and a lot of people are taking and doing these things, so you want to get the information out. Do you try to not just look at the science, but research what the communities are talking about, like maybe research what the conspiracy theorists are talking about, just so you know all the armies that are going to be attacking your castle. Yes. For instance, there's a community of people online that believe that if you consume seed oils or something that you're setting up your skin for sunburn, and if you don't, there's all these theories. I like to know what the theories are. I like to know what the extremes are, but I also like to know what the standard conversation is. But there's generally more agreement than disagreement. I think where, you know, I've been kind of bullish actually is, you know, like supplements like people go, oh, supplements, well, there's food supplements like a protein powder, just different than a vitamin. And then they are compounds. There are compounds that have real benefit, but people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated. But some of them are vetted with for potency and for safety with with more rigor than others, you know, and it's interesting to see how people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into that are often attacked. That's been interesting. Also one of the most controversial topics nowadays is ozempic muncharo. I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't understand why the quote-unquote health wellness community is so against these things. I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route. For some people, they really help them lose weight. And yes, there can be some muscle loss and other lean, lean body loss. But that can be offset with resistance training. They've helped a lot of people. And other people are like, no, this stuff is terrible. I think the most interesting thing about ozempic muncharo is that they are GLP1, they're in the GLP1 pathway, gucagon-like peptide one. And they was discovered in heel monsters, which is a lizard basically. Now the, now the entomologist will dive on me. It's a big, big lizard-looking thing that doesn't eat very often. And they figured out that there's this peptide that allows it to curb its own appetite at the level of the brain and the gut. And it has a lot of homology to sequence homology to what we now call GLP1. So I love anytime there's animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can help people with obesity and type two diabetes. And there's evidence that can even curb some addictions. Those are newer data. But I don't see as either or. In fact, I've been a little bit disappointed at the way that the, whatever you want to call it, health wellness biohacking community has like slammed on ozempic muncharo. It's like they're like, just get out and run and do listen. There are people are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running could injure them. They get on these drugs and they can improve. And then hopefully they're also doing resistance training and eating better. And then, you know, you're bringing all the elements together. Well, why do you think the criticism is happening? Is it that ozempic became super popular? So people are misusing it or that kind of thing? No, I think what it is is that people think if it's a pharmaceutical, it's bad. And then, or if it's a supplement, it's bad, depending on which camp they're in. And it wouldn't be wonderful to kind of like fill in the gap between this divide that, you know, what I would like to see in politics and in health is neither right nor left, but what we can just call a league of reasonable people that looks at things on an issue by issue basis and fills in the center. Because I think most people are in or I don't want to stay center in a political way. But I think most people are reasonable. They want to be reasonable. But that's not what sells clicks. That's not what that's not what drives interest. But I'm a very like like I look at issue by issue person by person. I don't like in group out group stuff. I never have. I've got friends from all walks of life. I said there's another podcast and always sounds like it like a political statement. But like the push towards like, you know, polarization is it's so frustrating. If there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older each year, I'm like, wow, are we ever going to get out of this like polarization? Speaking of which, how are you going to vote for the presidential election? I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it. Well, what do you think the role of podcasts is going to be in this year's election? I would love long form conversations to happen with the candidates. I think it's going to be huge. I would love Trump to go on Rogan. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I would love to honestly would love to see Joe Biden go on. Joe Rogan also. I would imagine that both would go on but separately separately. I think it debate. Joe does debates, but I think Joe is best is one-on-one conversation really intimate. I just wish that Joe Biden would actually do long form conversations. I thought he had done it. I think it was on Jay Shetty. He did Jay Shetty, he did it a few, but what I mean long form, I mean really long form like two, three hours and more relaxed. It was much more orchestrated because what happens when it's the interview is a little bit too short. It becomes into this generic political type of NBC, CNN type of interview. You get a set of questions and you don't get to really feel the human. Expose the human to the light and at the full, we talked about the shadow, the good, the bad and the ugly. So I think there's something magical, about two, three, four hours, but it doesn't have to be that long, but it has to have that feeling to it where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous and you're going to be strictly sticking to the question and answer type of feel, but just shoot and shit, which Rogan is the best by far in the world at that. I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does and the number, I mean the three or four podcasts per week plus the UFC announcing plus comedy tours and stadiums plus, you know, doing comedy shows in the middle of the week plus husband and father and a friend and just do the guys got like superhuman levels of output. I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business and I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are running for office in a different way and to really get to know them. Well, listen, you know, I guess you, I mean, is it clear that he's going to do jail time or maybe he gets away online because I was going to say, I mean, does that mean you're going to be podcasting from in prison? Yeah, we're going to, in fact, I'm going to figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison. Please don't. Please don't. Well, that's, I'm sure they have visitors. That just doesn't feel enough, let it go to get the interview. Yeah, I understand. You wouldn't be able to wear that suit. You'd be wearing a different suit. - That's true. - Yeah. It's gonna be interesting and you do, I'm not just saying this 'cause you're my friend, but you would do a marvelous job. I think you should sit down with all of them separately to keep it civil and see what happens. Here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these, like they're not dinners, but gatherings where, you know, a local bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from the entertainment industry, big agencies, big tech, like big, big tech, many of the people have been on this podcast. And they'll host a discussion or a debate. And what you find, if you look around the room and you talk to people, is that about half the people in the room are very left leaning and very outspoken about that. And they'll tell you exactly who they wanna see and when the presidential race. And the other half will tell you that they're for the other side. A lot of people that people assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are in the exact opposite side. Now, some people are very open about who they're for, but it's been very interesting to see how, when you get people one-on-one, they're like telling you, they want ex-candidate to win or why candidate to win. And sometimes I'm like, "Really?" I can't believe it, like, you, like, yep. And so it's what people think about people's political lean is there's often exactly wrong. And that's been eye-opening for me. And I've seen that in university campuses too. And so it's gonna be really, really interesting to see what happens in November. In addition to that, as you said, most people are close to the center, despite what Twitter makes it seem like. Most people, whether they're sent a lot to the center right, and a kind of close to the center. - Yeah, I mean, here's to me the most interesting question, who is gonna be the next big candidate in years to come? Like, who's that going to be? Right now, I don't, I don't see or know of that person. Who's it gonna be? You know, the young promising candidates, we're not seeing them. We're not seeing like, another way to ask that question, who would want to be? Well, that's the issue, right? You know, who wants to live in this 12 hour new cycle where you're just trying to dunk on the other team so that nobody notices like the shit that you fucked up. You know, that's not only not fun or interesting, it also is just like, it's gotta be psychosis-inducing at some point. And I think that, you know, God willing, we're gonna, you know, some young guy or woman is like on this and refuses to, to back down and was just like determined to be president and will make it happen. But like, I don't even know who the Bible candidate is are. Maybe you look, you know? We should ask Sagar. Sagar wouldn't know. Yeah, yeah. Maybe Sagar himself. Sagar's show is awesome. Yeah, it is. Even Crystal's do a great thing, he's incredible. Especially since they have somewhat divergent opinions on this. That's what makes it so cool. He's great and looks great in the suit. Looks real sexy. He's taking real good care of himself. I think he's getting married soon. Congratulations, Sagar. Forgive me for not remembering your future wife's name. He won my heart by giving me a biography of Hitler as a president. That's what he gave you? Yeah. I gave you a hatchet with a poem in the-- That just shows the fundamental difference between the two. With a poem inscribed in it, which was pretty damn good. I realize everything we bring up on the screen is just like really depressing. Like the soccer player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy? Sure, let's go to Nature's Metal Instagram. Those are pretty intense. We actually did a collaborative post on a shark thing. Really? Yeah. What kind of shark thing? So to generate the fear VR stimulus from my lab, in 2016, we went down to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico. Me and a guy named Michael Muller, who's a very famous portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks. And we used 360 video to build a VR of Great White Sharks. Right back to the lab, we published that studying current biology. In 2017, went back down there. And that was the year that I exited the cage-- you lowered the cage or the crane, and that year I exited the cage. I had a whole mess with the air failure of the day before I was breathing from a hookle line while in the cage. I had no scuba on. Divers were out. The thing got both constricted up. And I had an air failure. And I had to actually share air. And it was a whole mess, story for another time. But the next day, because I didn't want to get PTSD, and it was pretty scary. The next day, I cage exited with some other divers. And it turns out with these Great White Sharks, in Guadalupe, the water's very clear. And you can swim toward them. And then they'll veer off you if you swim toward them. Otherwise, they see you as prey. Well, in the evening, you've brought all the cages up and you're hopefully all alive. And we were hanging out fishing for tuna. We had one of the crew on board had a line in the water. It was fishing for tuna for dinner. And a shark took the tuna off the line. And it's a very dramatic take. And you can see the just absolute size of these Great White Sharks. The waters there are filled with them. That's the one. So this video, just the Neural Link link, was shot by Matt McDougall, who is the head neurosurgeon Neural Link, there it is, takes it. Now, believe it or not, it looks like it missed. Like it didn't get the fish. It actually just cut that thing like a bandsaw. So I'm up on the deck with Matt. Yeah. And so when you look at it from the side, you really get a sense of the girth of this freaking thing. So as it comes out, you pop the size of that thing. And they move through the water with such speed. Just a couple, so when you're in the cage and the cage is lowered down below the surface, they're going around. You're not allowed to tum the water there. Some people do it. But, and then when you cage eggs sit, they're like, what are you doing out here? And then, you know, they swim toward them, they veer off. But what's interesting is that if you look at how they move through the water, all it takes for one of these great white sharks, when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat, is like two flicks of the tail and becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable economy of effort. And Ocean Ramsey, who is, in my opinion, the greatest of all cage eggs at Shark Divers, this woman who goes with enormous great white sharks, she really understands their behavior when they're aggressive, when they're not going to be aggressive. She and her husband, Juan, I believe his name is, do they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks. We were down there basically, like not understanding any of this. We never should have been there. And actually, the air failure of the day before, plus cage eggs thing the next day, I told myself after coming up from the cage eggs, that that's it. I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want to live, got back across the border, a couple days later, and I was like, that's it. I don't take risks with my life any longer. But yeah, McDougall, not McDougall shot that video, and then it went, quote, unquote, viral through nature's metal. We passed them that video. I actually, I saw a video where an instructor was explaining how to behave with a shark in the water, and that you don't want to be swimming away, because then you're acting like a prey. And then you want to be acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it. Right towards them and they'll bank off. Now, if you don't see them, they're ambush predators. You know, you're swimming in the surface. And apparently if they get close, you should just like guide them away by like grabbing them and moving them away. Some people will actually roll them. But if they're coming in full speed, you're not going to roll the shark. But here we are back to dark stuff again. I like the shark attack map. And the shark attack map shows that, you know, Northern California, there were a couple actually, guys head got taken off. He was swimming north of San Francisco. There's been a couple in Northern California. That was really tragic. But most of them are in Florida and Australia. Florida. So the surfrider foundation shark attack map. There it is. They have a great map. There you go. So they look like they have all their little scars on them. So if you zoom in on, I mean, look at this. If you go to the North America. - Look at the skulls. - Yeah, where they're deadly attacks. But in Northern California, sadly, this is really tragic. If you zoom in on this one, I read about this. This guy, if you click the link, 50 year old male, he was in chest high water. This is just tragic. I feel so sad for him and his family. You know, he's just three members of the party chose to go in. He was, you know, nine. Jai was in his chest high water. 25 to 50 yards from shore. Great. Breach the water sees this head and that was it. You know, so it does happen. It's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean, there's a very, very, very low probability. But, but if it doesn't happen six times in a row, 120 percent chance. - Yeah. - Who do you think wins a saltwater crocodile or a shark? - Okay. I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me to no end. Muller, Michael Muller, who drove all over the world. He sent me a picture of him diving with salty, saltwater crocodiles in Cuba. It was a smaller one, but goodness gracious. Have you seen the size of some of those saltwater crocodiles? - I have. I'm thinking the sharks are so agile. They're amazing. They've head cammed one, or body cammed one, moving through the kelp bed. And you look and it's just, they're so agile moving through the water. And it's looking up at the surface, like the cameras don't hit the surface. And you just realize if you're out there, you're not, and you're swimming, and you get hit by a shark. You're now just gonna talk shit and say that a salty has way more bite force, but according to the internet, recently data indicates that the shark has a strong bite. So I was assuming that a crocodile would have a strong bite force, and therefore agility doesn't matter, but apparently a shark. Yeah, and turning one of those big salty's is probably not that, you know, turning around is like a battleship. I mean, those sharks are unbelievable. They hit from all sorts. Oh, and they, they do this thing. We saw this, you're out of the cage, or in the cage, and you look at one, and you'll see it's eye kind of like looking at you. They can't really fove you, but they'll look at you. And you're tracking it. And then you'll look down, and you'll realize that one's coming at you. They're ambush prayers, they're working together. They're fascinating. I like how you know that they can't fove you. You're already considering the vision system there. It's a very primitive system. Very primitive, eyes on the side of the head. The vision is decent enough. They're mostly obviously sensing things with their electro sensing in the water, but also, oh, faction. Yeah, I spend far too much time thinking about and learning about the visual systems of different animals. If you get me going on this, like, we'll be here all night. See, this is what I have the smuggler on it too. I saw this in the store, and I got it. 'Cause this is from a shark. Goodness. Yeah, I can't say I ever saw one with teeth this big, but it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. Yeah, it's probably, you know, probably your blood pressure just goes, and you don't feel, I feel the thing. Yeah. It's not bad. Before we went down for the cage exit, a guy in our crew, Pat Dossus, very experienced diver, asked one of the South African divers. So, you know, like, what's the contingency plan if, like, somebody catches a bite, and they were like, he was like every man for himself, and they're like, basically saying, like, if somebody catches a bite, like that's it, you know. Anyway, I thought we were gonna bring up something happy. Well, that is happy. Well, we live. We live. Yeah, well, nature is beautiful. We live, but, you know, they're happy things. You brought up nature as metal. This, see, this is the difference between Russian, Americans and Americans. It's like, maybe this is actually a good time to bring up your ayahuasca journey. I've never done ayahuasca, but I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about Ibogaine, Iboga. But you told me that you did ayahuasca, and that for you, it wasn't the dark scary ride that it is for everybody else. Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me. I did it twice, actually. And have you done high-dose psilocybin? Never, no. I just did small-dose psilocybin a couple of times. So I was, you know, nervous about it. I was very, yeah, I understand nervous though. I've done high-dose psilocybin, it's terrifying, but I've always gotten something very useful out of it. So I mean, I was nervous about, like, whatever demons might hide in the shadow, in the Jungian shadow. Like, I was nervous, but I think it turns out, I don't know what the lesson is to draw from that, but my experience, be boy, Russian. It must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's also something to the jungle. There, it strips away all the bullshit of life, and you're just there. I forgot the outside civilization exists. I forgot time, because like, when you don't have your phone, you don't have meetings or calls or whatever, you lose the sense of time. The sun comes up, the sun comes down. That's the fundamental biological timer. You know, every mammalian species has a short wavelength, so you think like blue, UV type, but like, absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone, and it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening, because when the sun is low in the sky, you've got short wavelength and long wavelength light. Like, when you look at a sunrise, it's got blues in yellows, orange in yellows, you look in the evening, reds, orange, and blues, and in the middle of the day, it's like full spectrum light. Now, it's always full spectrum light, but because of some atmospheric elements, and because of the low solar angle, that difference between the different wavelengths of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your eye pay attention to, and signal that you're circadian timekeeping mechanism. Like, we are, that the core of our brain and the super chiasmatic nucleus, we are wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun. Like, that's the biological timer, which makes perfect sense, because obviously, as the planet's, as the planet's spin and revolve, I also wonder like how that is affected by, you know, in the rainforest, the sun is not visible often, so you're under the cover of the trees. So maybe that affects, well, there are social rhythms, there are feeding rhythms, sometimes in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species, and, but yet getting out from the canopy is critical. Of course, even under the canopy during the daytime, there's far more photons than at night. You know, there's always what I'm telling people to get sunlight in their eyes in the morning, and in the evening, people say there's no light, no sunlight this time here. I'm like, go outside on a really overcast day, it's far brighter than it is at night, right? So there's still lots of sunlight, even if you can't see the sun as an object, but I love time perception shifts, and you mentioned that in the jungle, it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun. You also mentioned on Ayahuasca, you zoomed out from the earth. These are like, to me, the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another brain, of course, from only ever had a human brain, but which is that you can consciously set your time-domain window. Like, we can be focused here, we can be focused on all of Austin, or we can be focused on the entire planet. You can make those choices consciously, but in the time domain, it's hard. Like, different activities bring us in to find slicing or more broad-bending of time, depending on what we're doing, programming, or exercising, or researching, or podcasting, but just how unbelievably fluid the human brain is in terms of the aperture of the time-space window, of our cognition and of our experience. And I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable tools that we have access to, that we don't really leverage as much as we should, which is when things are really hard, you need to zoom out and see it as one element within your whole lifespan, and that there's more to come. You know, I mean, people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in, or they think it's gonna go on forever. When we're happy, we rarely think this is gonna last forever, but which is interesting contrast and so on and right. But I think that psychedelics, while I have very little experience with them, I have some, and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the different apertures. - Well, how to surf that wave is probably a skill. One of the things I was prepared for, and I think it's important, is not to resist. I think I understand what it means to resist the thing a powerful wave, and it's not going to be good, so you have to be able to surf it. So I was ready for that to relax through it, maybe because I'm quite good at that, from knowing how to relax, and all kinds of disciplines, playing piano and guitar, when I was super young, and then through Jiu Jitsu, knowing the value of relaxation, and through all kinds of sports, you should be able to relax the body fully, just to accept whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it was a very positive experience for me. Do you have any interest in E-Boga? I'm very interested in, I began E-Boga. There's a colleague of mine and researcher at Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's been doing some transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain imaging on people who have taken the eye-begin. I began, as I understand it, gives a 22-hour psychedelic journey where no hallucinations with eyes open, but you close your eyes and you get a very high resolution image of actual events that happened in your life, but then you have agency within those movies. I think you have to be of healthy heart to be able to do it. I think you have to be on a heart rate monitor. It's not trivial. It's not like these other psychedelics, but there's a wonderful group called Veteran Solutions that has used E-Boga combined with some other psychedelics in the Veterans community to great success for things like PTSD. And it's a group I've really tried to support in any way that I can, mainly by being vocal about the great work they're doing, but you hear incredible stories of people who are just like near cratered in their life or zombieed by PTSD and other things post-war. Get back a lightness or achieve a lightness and a clarity that they didn't feel they had. So I'm very curious about these compounds. The state of Kentucky, we should check this, but I believe it's taken money from the opioid crisis settlement for eye-begin research. I mean, so this is like no longer. Yes, if you look here, let's see. Did they do it? Oh no. Oh no, they backed away. Can I talk you back to away from the plant to fund opioid treatment research for several months? They were going to use the money to treat opioid. Now officials are backing off. 50 billion, what is on its way over the coming years? 50 billion dollars. 50 billion dollars is on its way to state and local government over the coming years. The pool of funding comes from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies the profit for manufacturing or selling opioid. painkillers Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opiate so they were going to do psychedelic research with iBegin Supporting research on illegal illegal folks Psychedelic drug called iBegin. Well, I guess they backed away from it. Well So we're later we'll get some happy news up on the internet during this episode Talk about this the shark and the crocodile fighting. Yeah, yeah, that's true And you survived the jungle. Well, that's the the thing. I was I was writing to you on what's that multiple times Because I was gonna put on the internet. Are you okay? And if you're like alive And then I was gonna just like put it to Twitter just like he's alive But then of course you're far too classy for that. So you just came back alive Well jungle or not One of the lessons is also, you know when you hear the call for adventure Just fucking do it. I was gonna ask you. It's kind of silly question, but like Give me a small fraction of the things on your bucket list Bucket list. Yeah Go to Mars Yeah, what's what's the status of that? I don't know. I'm being patient about the whole thing red planet ran that cartoon of you guys So I know that was pretty funny. This is true. Actually. That was pretty fun Where Goggins is already up there. Yeah, that's a funny one probably also true I would love I would love to die in Mars I just love humanity reaching onto the stars and doing this bold adventure and taking big risks and exploring a love exploration What about seeing different animal species? I'm a huge fan of this guy Joel Sartori Where he he has this photo arc project where he takes portraits of all these different animals If people aren't already following him on Instagram. He's doing some really important work um This guy's Instagram is Amazing I purchase well look at it look at these portraits the amount of um I must say personality because we don't want to project anything on to them But yeah the the like the eyes And he'll occasionally put him moving on his little owl. I delight in things like this I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes And dogs or all kinds of all animals um, and i'm very interested in Kids content that that incorporates animals. We have some things brewing there like I could look at this kind of stuff all day long Look at that bat like bats people thinking about bats is kind of like well flickering a little annoying disease carrying things But look how beautiful that little sucker is. How's your podcast with the cookie monster coming? Oh, yeah We've been in discussions with cookie the um It's uh can't say too much about that but um cookie monster embodies dopamine right cookie monster Yes, cookie right once cookie right now, you know like it was that it was that one tweet cookie monster I bounced because cookies come from all directions You know, it's like it's just a embodying that the desire for for something and which is an incredible aspect of ourselves The other one is you remember a little while ago Elmo put out a tweet. Hey, how's everyone doing out there and it went viral And you know the surgeon general of the United States have been talking about the loneliness crisis He came on the podcast and you know a lot of people who been talking about the problems with loneliness mental health issues with loneliness Elmo puts out a tweet. Hey, how's everyone doing out there and Everyone gravitates toward it, you know, so that the different Sesame Street characters really embody the different That kind of aspects of self through very like narrow neural circuit perspective Um, you know snuffle off against the shy and Oscar the grouches grouchy right and the count one or two The archetypes of yeah, the architect is very young in what's right again. Yeah, and I think that um You know the creators of Sesame Street clearly either understand that or it's an unconscious genius to that So yeah, there are some things brewing on on conversations with Sesame Street characters It's not I know you'd like to talk to Vladimir Putin. I'd like to talk to cookie monster It illustrates the differences in our like sophistication or something. Well, that illustrates a lot Yeah, but it's a lot um But yeah, I also I love animation so I'm not anime that's not my thing but animation so I'm very interested in the use of animation to get Science content across so there are a bunch of things brewing, but um, but anyway, I delight in Star Tories work and and and it's he is there's a conservation aspect to it as well, but I think that um Mostly want to thank you for finally putting up something that like where something's not being killed or like let some sad sad outcome Uh, these are all really positive. They're really cool. They're really cool. And every once in a while look at look at that uh mountain line um But I also like to look at these and and some of them remind me of certain people Right, so let let's just scroll through like for instance I think when we don't try and process it too much so like like Okay, so look at this cat. This is amazing. Like I feel like that somebody I feel like this is like a like someone I met once As a curiosity curiosity and a playfulness um carnivore Carnivore frontalized eyes found in very important the area section right so then you go down, you know, it's like This beautiful fish neon pink right sure reminds you of some of the like the influencers you see on Instagram, right except this one's natural just kidding Um, uh, let's see no filter um filter. Yeah um Let's see like I feel like Bears I'm a big fan of bears. Yeah bears are beautiful. This one kind of reminds me of you a little bit There's like a stoic nature to it a curiosity So you can kind of feel like the essence of animals. You don't even have to do psychedelics to get there Look at that. He's like the behind the scenes of how it's actually yeah, and then there's um Wow, yeah Yeah, the in the jungle the diversity of life was also stark Yeah, from a scientific perspective just the the fact that most of those species are not identified was fascinating right It was like a little every little every little insect is a kind of discovery Right, I mean one of the reasons I love New York City so much Despite its problems at times is that um everywhere you look there's life. It's like a tropical reef If you've ever done scuba diving or snorkeling you look on a tropical reef and it's like There's some little crab working on something and like everywhere you look there's life You know the Bay Area if you go scuba diving or snorkeling. It's like a kelp bed You know the Bay Area is like a kelp bed every once in a while some big fish goes by it's like a big IPO But like most of the time not a whole lot happens Actually, the Bay Area it's interesting is I've been going back there more and more recently um There Are really cool little subculture starting to pop up again nice um There's incredible skateboarding the gx-1000 guys where these guys that like bomb down hills They're in knots like they're just going like they should just speed not tricks You got to see gx-1000 these guys going down hills in San Francisco They are wild and occasionally unfortunately occasionally someone will get hit by car, but you get gx-1000 Look into intersections. They have spotters. You can see someone there Um, oh, I see there's a Like the into traffic. Yeah into traffic. So in San Francisco. Yeah, this is crazy like this is unbelievable and um, and they're They're just wild But in any case What's on your book elicity? I haven't done one working on a book. So I'm actually going to Head to a cabin for a couple weeks and right which I've never done People talk about doing this, but I'm gonna do that That's I'm excited for that just the mental space of really dropping into writing Like Jack Nicholson the shining cat. Let's hope not. Okay. Let's hope not you know before I mean only start doing public-facing anything for posting on instagram in 2019 But I used to head up to wallala on the northern coast of California sometimes by myself To a little cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just Read and write papers and things like that. I used to tell the time. I I missed that so some of that um Trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina. Relatives in the on the east coast See my parents more. They're in good health. Thankfully. I want to get married and have a family That's an important priority and put a lot of not a work in there. Yeah, it's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah put a lot of work Into the the runway on that um what are advice For people about that or give advice to yourself about how to find love in this world how to find how to build a family Get there and then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the marks Um Yep, well obviously pick the right partner, but also like do the work on yourself. No know yourself That the Oracle know that I self and I think um Listen I have a friend. He's a new friend, but he's a friend uh who I met For a meal. He's a very very well-known actor overseas and his stuff has made it over here and um We become friends and we went to lunch and we were talking about work and Being public facing and all this kind of thing and And then I said you have kids writing. He says he has four kids. I was like oh, yeah, you know I see your post with the kids you seem really happy and he said he just looked at me leaned in and he said It's the best gift You'll ever give yourself and he also said and pick your partner the mother of your kids Very carefully. So, you know, that's good advice coming from excellent advice coming from somebody who's you know Very successful in work and family. So that's the only thing I can pass along We hear this from friends as well, but um kids are amazing and families amazing and um You know, that's the different people all these people want to like be immortal and then live to be 200 or something, you know There's also the the old-fashioned way of you know having children that Live on and involve a new legacy But they have you know half your DNA. So that's exciting. Yeah, I think you make an amazing dad Thank you. It seems like a fun thing and you know, I've also gotten advice from friends who are Super high-performing and have a lot of kids and they'll say just don't over think it Start having kids. Let's go. Right. Well, the chaos of kids is kind of the like you can either bury you or it can or it can Give you energy But I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing like wild and crazy things and so that kind of energy is great And and if it's not a big pack of wild boys, it's you know You have daughters and they can be you know different form of chaos sometimes same form of chaos How many kids do you think you want? You know, it's either two or five Yeah, very different dynamics. You're one of two right your mother. Yeah I mean, I'm very close with my sister. I couldn't imagine having another sibling because it there's so much richness there We we talk almost every day Sorry, yeah, three four times a week, you know sometimes just briefly, but we're tight, you know, we're really look out for one another She's an amazing person like truly an amazing person and it's like raised her daughter in an amazing way. She's like You know my niece is like gonna head to college in the year or two and like my sister is an amazing job and her dad's done a great job too, they both really put a lot into The family aspect and I just a spend time with a really amazing person in the Peru in the Amazon jungle and he is one of 20 kids wow, so he's got Most it's mostly guys. It's just a lot of brothers and I think two sisters Wow, I just had Jonathan Height on the podcast the guy who's talking about anxious generation causing an American might He's great, but he was saying that you know in order to keep kids healthy They need to not be on social media or have smartphones until they're 16 I've actually been thinking a lot about Getting a bunch of friends on to neighboring properties. You know everyone talks about this Not creating a commune or anything like that, but I think he I think Jonathan's right We were more or less our brain wiring does best when we raised in Small village type environments where kids can forage the whole free-range kids idea and I grew up skateboarding and Building forts and dirt-clawed wars and all that stuff It would be so strange to have a childhood without that Yeah, and I think more and more as we wake up to the negative aspects of the digital interact And we'll put more and more value to in-person interaction. So I mean it's cool to see for instance kids in New York City Just kind of moving around the city with so much sense of agency. It's a really really cool the suburbs like where I grew up Like as soon as we could get out take the seven F bus of San Francisco and hang out with you know wild ones like that You know while there were dangers I mean we couldn't wait to get out of the suburbs the moment that you know forts and dirt-clawed wars and stuff didn't cut it We just like wanted into the city. So I bucket list. I will probably move to a major city not Los Angeles or San Francisco in the next few years New York City Potentially those are all such different flavors of experiences. Yeah, so I'd love to live in New York City for a while I've always wanted to do that and I and I will do that I've always wanted to also have a place in a very rural so area so Colorado Montana or high on my list right now and to be able to Pivot back and forth between the two would be great just for such different experiences I and also I like it a very physical life so the idea of getting up on the Sun with the Sun in the Montana or Colorado type environment And I've been doing some putting some effort towards finding a spot For that and New York City to me. I know it's got its issues and people say it wasn't what it was Okay, I get it, but listen. I've never lived there. So for me would be entirely new and um You know Sholes seems full of life. There's an energy to that city and he represents that I mean There's yeah, and and the full diversity of weird that is Represented in New York City's great. Hey walk down the street There's like a person with like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit. Yeah, that's great San Francisco used to be like that the joke was like You have to be naked and on fire and San Francisco before someone takes it but now it's changed But again, it recently I've noticed that San Francisco it's not just about the skateboarders It's there's some community houses of people in tech that are super interesting. There's some community housing of people not in tech that I've learned about him and Known people have lived there and and it's it's cool like there's stuff happening In these cities that's new and different. I mean, that's what youth is for they're supposed to evolve evolve things out So amidst all that you still have to get shit done. I've been really Obsessed with tracking time recently like making sure I have daily activities of habits that I'm maintaining and very Religious about making sure I get shit done Jews and app or something like that. No, just Google sheets So basically a spreadsheet and I'm tracking daily and our right scripts that that whenever I achieve a goal it glows green Yeah, do you track your workouts and all that kind of stuff too? No Just the fact that I got the workout done. Yeah, so I just it's a checkmark thing. So I I'm really really big I'm making sure I do a thing. It doesn't matter how long it is. I've a rule for myself that I do a set of tasks for at least five minutes every day And it turns out the many of them I do way longer, but just even just doing it. I Have to do it every day and it's currently Eleven of them. It's just a thing like one of them is playing guitar for example. So do you do that kind of stuff? Do you do Like daily habits. Yeah, I do my I wake up if I don't feel I slept enough I Do this non-sleep deep rest yoga need your thing that I've talked about a bunch We actually released a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify 10-minute 20-minute ones puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested actually Matt Walker and I are gonna run a study He's just submitted the IRB to run a study on NSDR and what is actually doing to the brain There's some evidence of increases and dopamine et cetera, but those are older studies still cool studies But so I'll do that get up hydrate and if I've Got my act together. I punched some caffeine down like some Matina some coffee maybe another Matina and Resistance train three days a week run three days a week and then take one day off And like to be done by eight thirty nine and then I want to get into some real work I actually have a sticky note on my computer like just like reminding me how good it feels to accomplish some real work And then I go into it right now. It's the book writing Researching a podcast and just fight tooth and nail to stay off Social media text message. What's that YouTube all that get something done? How long can you go can you go like Three hours. Just deep focus if I hit a groove. Yeah, 90 minutes to three hours if I'm really in a groove That's for me. I start the day actually this way. I'm afraid. I'd really prize that those morning hours I start with the work. Yeah, and the it's it's a I'm trying to hit the four-hour mark of deep focus straight. I love it. Then they all can't work. Yeah, I'm really basically. Yeah, it's often torture actually. It's really really difficult. Oh, yeah, the agitation But I've sat across the table from you a couple years ago when I was out here in Austin doing some work And I was working on stuff you were and I noticed you're just like stare at your notebook sometimes just like pen at the Same position and then you'll get back into it like they're those Building that hydraulic pressure and then go Yeah, I try and get something done a value then it the communication start and Talking to my podcast producer my team is everything. I mean it like that the magic potion in the podcast is Rob Moore right Who's in the has been in the room with me every single solo Costilles to be in there with us because that's it people of ass journalists of ask and they sit in friends of ass nope just Rob and For guests interviews. He's there as well, and I talked to Rob all the time all the time we talked multiple times per day and You know in life. I've made some errors in certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that and Certainly don't blame all of that on them, but you know played my role But but in terms of picking business partners and friends like you know to work with I mean Rob's just it's been bulls eyes and it's just Rob It's been amazing my playback our photographer and the guys I mentioned earlier like We just Communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every decision like near neuroticism before we make we put anything out there and So it's like even created decisions of like topics to cover all that yeah Like a photo for the book jacket the other day Mike shoots photos, then and then we look at them. We pour over them together Logo for the perform podcast with Annie Gallup and then we're launching like is that the right contour Mike's the real he's got the aesthetic thing because he was at DC So long as a portrait photographer And it's cute with close friends with Ken block did Jim Connor like all the car jumping in the city stuff like I mean and Mike is a master, he's a true master of that stuff. And we just pour over every little decision, but even with sponsors, you know, there are dozens of ads now. By the way, the old geoserciser thing, some of me saying, "Oh, you guy went from a two to a seven." I never said that, that's AI. Like I would never call it number off somebody, a two to a seven, are you kidding me? It's crazy, so as AI, if you bought the thing, I'm sorry. But like our sponsors, we list the sponsors that we have and why on our website. Like the decision, do we work with this person or not? Do we still like the product? I mean, we've got ways with sponsors 'cause of like changes in the product or change. You know, most time it's amicable, all good. But you know, like just every detail and that just takes a ton of time and energy. But I try and work mostly on content. And my team's constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions. But I, 'cause I obsess, but yeah, you have to. You have to have a team of some sort, some one that you can run things bot. For sure, but one of the challenges, the larger the team is, and I'd like to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stuff, including engineering, stuff, robotics, work, research. All of those interactions, at least for me, take away from the deep work, the deep focus. Unfortunately, I get drained by social interaction, even with the people I love and really respect and all that kind of stuff. You're an introvert. Yeah, like fundamental introvert. So to me, it's a trade off, getting shit done versus collaborating. And I have to choose wisely because without collaboration, without a great team, which I'm fortunate enough to be a part of, like you wouldn't get anything really done. But as an individual contributor to get stuff done, like to do the hard work of researching, or programming, all that kind of stuff, you need the hours of deep work. I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's how my bucket list spent a bit more time dropped into work alone. I think social media, like, causes our brain to go the other direction. I try and answer some comments and then get back to work. I'm really, after I go to the jungle, I appreciate not using the device. I've played with the idea of, like spending, maybe like one week a month, not using social media at all. I used it as though after that morning block, I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something. And then a bit more work and that real work, deep work. And then around 230, I do a non-sleep deep rest, take a short nap, wake up, boom, maybe a little more caffeine and then lean into it again. And then if you, I find if you really put in the deep work, two or three bouts per day by about five or six PM, it's over. I was down at Jocco's place, not that long ago. And in the evening did a sauna session with him and some family members of his and some of their friends. And it's really cool, like they all work all day and train all day. And then in the evening they get together and they sauna and cold plunge. I'm really into this whole thing of gathering with other people at a specific time of day. I have a gym at my house and I, you know, Tim will come over and train or, you know, that we've kind of slowed that down in recent months. But I think gathering in groups once a day, being alone for part of the day. And it's like very fundamental stuff. We're not saying anything that hasn't been said for millions of times before, but how often do people actually do that? And call the party, you know, like be the person to like bring people together if it's not happening. That's something I've really had to learn, even though I'm an introvert, like, right? I'm like gather people together. You came through town the other day and it's a lot of people at the house. It was rad. Actually it was funny because I was getting a massage when you walked in. I don't sit around getting massages very often but I was getting one that day. And then everyone came in and the dog came in and like everyone was piled in and it was very sweet. Again, no devices. But choose wisely the people you gather with. Right, right. And I was clothed. Thank you for clarifying. I wasn't, which was very weird. Yeah, yeah, the friends you surround yourself with. That's another thing. It's like, I understood that. From Ayahuasca and from just the experience and the jungle was like, just select the people. Just be careful how you allocate your time. I just saw somewhere. Conor McGregor has this good line. I wrote it down about loyalty. He said, don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. Oh, that guy is, I mean, he's being on loyalty. All the shit talk all of that, set that aside. To me, like loyalty is really big. Because then if you invest in certain people in your life and they stick by you and you stick by them and what else is life about? Yeah, well, hardship will show you who your real friends are. That's for sure. And we're fortunate to have a lot of them. It'll also show you who really has put in the time to try and understand you and understand the people like people are complicated. I love that, so can you read the quote once more? Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. Yeah, so in that way, a hardship was a gift. It shows you, definitely. And it makes you stronger. It definitely makes you stronger. Let's go get some food. Yeah, you're one meal a day guy. Yeah, I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of bill tongue. I hope we're eating a steak. So I hope so too. I'm full of nicotine and caffeine. Yeah, what do you think? How do you feel? I feel good. Yeah, I was, I was thinking you'd probably, like I only did a half a piece and I won't have more for a while. But, a little too good. Yeah. Thank you for talking once again, brother. Yeah, thanks so much, Lexum. It's been a great ride, this podcast thing, and you're the reason I started the podcast. You inspired me to do it. You told me to do it, did it, and you've also been an amazing friend. You showed up in some very challenging times and you've shown up for me publicly. You've shown up for me in my home and my life. And, you know, it's an honor to have you as a friend. Thank you. I love you, brother. I love you too. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Huberman. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Carl Jung. Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. (gentle music)