Andrew Huberman | Club Random with Bill Maher

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And to me, that's what's great about it. I mean, this place was like a mess when I bought the house and I was like, "Everyone said tear it down." I was like, "No, there's something about this place. Just a crooked door." Yeah, yeah. How did you tear that down? Right, and I don't know. Are we allowed to say that there's a body in the bathtub? That is not a body, Mr. Hoberman. That is Whitney Cummings. That's right. I reckon that is her. She's got quite a body, but yeah, that's a very expensive. She gifted that to me. I'm very grateful. A couple hundred thousand dollars to make that a doll. You know, they can make. She did it for a special. Like, electronic, what's the word? A version of her. I remember going to the World's Fair and they had the pre. Back in the Daniel Lincoln. Hello. It was kind of like that, but this is much more realistic. Very realistic. I'm friends with Whitney. Wow. I've walked in and there was Whitney in the. This Whitney. The Whitney. Yeah, we put her in the bathtub. We had her sitting over there, but every time I walked in the room, I was like, "Oh, fuck." It's a person in here. It is all shocking because it's so accurate. It's minus her hair. There's no hair on it. Well, I mean, we're close to having sex robots, aren't we? I mean, I'm not making that. There's a movie. I just saw a pretty good called Companion. Okay. Have you seen it? No, I haven't seen it. It's interesting. It's, you know. And they make infoxed one about sex robots. This can be a lot of sex. Trust me, Cindy Sweeney. It's going to be playing a sex robot at some point. I just think that's inevitable. But, you know. And in the movies, this is, of course, a little bit in the future, at least. You know, the robot is indistinguishable, physically, from a real human. And it's just someone who is programmed to adore the person who bought her. I know she's at her. So, this assumes that no one will have a male sex robot. I think it's different in the woman's brain. I think that's why men want, you know, the male fragile ego and everything probably wants, you know, someone who adores them. Who doesn't really want to be a door? I'm sure they're going to be guys out there that are going to be paid for the robot that insults them in all sorts of things. But that seems like an entirely different door. Yeah, those are the guys who now are having pay someone to dig their high heel into them. Isn't that bizarre, House? Like, when those. What is this? This has been unearthed. I don't know. Something about ultra-powerful people. Maybe they have never been told no, and they crave that odd. Well, I don't know. We're speculating here. Well, on that score of the people who, men who like it, shall we say, the reverse, somebody once told me a story, probably was a stripper in a club, about this guy who had a really small dick. So, his way to deal with it was he wanted the women to humiliate him, and apparently that's like a thing sometimes. Well, it's like making a virtue out of it. At least it's getting attention. Yeah, the AI relationships thing, maybe not as edgy as what we're talking about now, but it does seem like it's already happening. People are having relationships with AI. Exactly, but it's not physically yet. As far as I know. So, camping, we don't have it yet. Right, I'm guessing if it's physical, it's unilaterally physical. Yeah, it seems that. You're in love with your phone. I mean, never doing this in Japan, and the movie "Her" was almost 15 years ago. It was like a crystal ball. Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, that's where it was going. But there was no. Remember, in the movie, he, like, hires a surrogate, like an actual woman while he's on the phone with the thing. And we can, like, feel like he's really having sex with the phone that he's in love with. It's like taking all the functions of the human brain and compartmentalizing them into different actions and trying to interleave them. It's so bizarre. I just asked this in my act. Doesn't anybody just fuck anymore? I mean, it's really. Are we that jaded that this. You know, it just seems like people do. Everybody has some crazy kink. I feel like I'm the last member of the land that time forgot. I don't do anything. I don't even fantasize about kinky shit. I don't, you know, it's not like, "Oh, I'm not fucking anybody in the ass, but I'm thinking about it. I'm not thinking about it." What used to be Vanilla is now, you know, is not even on the page where. It seems, you know, one thing, it seems like with these different generations, you know, we hear like, "I'm Gen X, right? I'm 50." So we hear like Gen X, Gen Z, Millennials, and this sort of thing. But it does seem that there was an entire generation that was raised so deeply in these short video, social media, landscapes, that they're almost like an experimental group. Right? Right. I mean, inadvertently, they're the experimental group, and nobody knows how this is going to work out. I did hear that there are data that, you know, people won't hire kids of certain generations, because their inability to have, you know, generate eye contact, have a conversation, because they're just so used to staring at a little box all the time to wild. And yeah, and I mean, we know how much this affects their sex life. They don't relate on a one-to-one basis. You know, you see a video of people. Or you could go to a bar, and they're all looking at their phone in the bar, even though the person is sitting right across from them. Even people out on dates. Yes, wild. That's common sense that that's. Now, could it in the future turn out? I mean, anything's possible that that isn't so deleterious? I don't think so, but what we do know is it's different. You can't deny that. That this is a difference not just in degree, but in kind of something that we never saw before, where we're not relating directly, where we're putting some filter between everything. Look at a concert, you know, I watched as much as I could if the Taylor Swift concert, because Niki Glazer made me. Was it Niki Glazer? Well, she's a giant Taylor Swift fan. And like everybody throughout the whole concert, anytime they cut to the crowd, they're all watching through their phones. Wow. I mean, everybody is like this. What is that about? Because I mean, that image can be, you know, they could get that image after the show. Exactly. I guess it's to project oneself into the onstage experience somehow, but it's very. What do you mean? You're here as the expert. What are you asking me for? Well, you know, this is what I want to know from you. Well, there are some interesting studies. I think the one that's probably most relevant to everyone is this study that looked at people's ability to focus when their phone is off and turned over in front of them. Versus in their bag turned off underneath or behind their chair. Right. Versus in another room, separate room. Right. And the interesting thing is that the ability to focus was the same essentially across those groups, but it took a lot of extra cognitive resource to work and to focus when the phone is on the table or even in a bag underneath or behind your chair. How do they measure that? To measure how much, essentially, how much energy people devote to focusing versus to generating news or creative thoughts into, you know, a flexible use of the information. And so it takes a lot more work to focus when your phone is in the room. That's just the simple takeaway. So when the phone's out of the room, you see what looks like a boosting cognitive performance. It's actually just getting people to baseline. And this is something it reminds me of, you know, David Goggins, the guy who's a former Navy CEO, he's always running around and shouting and this kind of thing and a super high performer in the physical domain, who's actually starting to become a paramedic. And he said it perfectly. He said it's never been easier nowadays to outperform your peers, but it's mostly a function now of what you don't do. Right. Just putting your phone away gives you what looks like a cognitive boost, but it just puts you on par with all the generations before you that didn't have phones in the room. Right. So to succeed now as a young person. It's much harder unless you're able to abstain from interactions with short-form video mostly and the phone, generally. So speaking of outperforming your peers, I'm always interested in, like, why something wins. I mean, and that's like, uh, take Mr. Jesus Christ. I mean, there was many religions that were, that were prevalent, both besides the old Greco-Roman religions, which were kind of dying out at his time in the Mediterranean. It wasn't just Christianity. Why did that one win? You know, why did my space go away? And, uh, you know, Facebook, you know, is my space at Heaven's Gate of, uh, well, now really dating myself. Heaven's Gate, I think it was a cult. I think they castrated themselves, shaved their heads in war. Oh, the Heaven's Gate cult. The Heaven's Gate cult. Right. Right. That was sort of the my space of cults. In the cult world, that's when you win, is when you kill yourself, I think. Yeah. That's what branched. I was going to say, in a, in a, in a field of like, you know, medical advice. So crowded. Well, what is your own assessment of why you became primer into Paris in this field? What, what, what is it? No, I, I think you're great. So I'm not going to prejudice the jury. I mean, I listen to you and I feel like it's great information delivered in a way I can understand. But what is your thing? Because this is a very, very crowded field. I mean, half this country is like too poor to be able to even worry about their health and what they eat. And the other half are like fucking paranoid. Maybe that's because I live in LA. No, I thought we're just like doing every fucking cold plunges. And they're, when they're 10 times and they're 10 in their ass hole. Remember that one? Tucker Carlson. Wasn't he tanning his ass? Well, yes. Oh my goodness. There was, there was taint tanning. Like he was saying that I think it was, I'm pretty sure it was Tucker Carlson. Who was like, yes, you got to, you got to get sunlight on your taint. You didn't remember, you didn't remember that. I remember that fat. Um, I didn't realize Tucker was associated with that. I think of him now as the, as the nicotine guy. He's like really bullish on nicotine, which we can also talk about. And hating Jews. It's, it's tanning your taint or hating Jews. This guy is a little all over the map. He's definitely taken a turn in. Oh, yes. Oh, yeah. He's taken a turn for sure. Um, so, but really why you? Yeah, so, well, thanks for the kind of words. I'll say, you know, some of it was a matter of circumstance. We launched the podcast during the pandemic. And there was a lot of discussion about vaccines, right? And that's obviously where the major debate was besides the lockdown issue. You know, and I decided at the time, in part, because Stanford had a very strict rule that we weren't supposed to talk about vaccines publicly. Because early in the pandemic, if you recall, there were like documents, like word documents circulating on the internet. People claiming to be affiliated with certain universities and having protocols for dealing with COVID. And, you know, universities, including Stanford said, listen, you know, we need virologists and public health experts to talk about this or no one else. The podcast I chose to talk about all the things that were universal, how to manage your sleep, how to keep your anxiety down during during the lockdowns as best you could, how to maintain some level of physical fitness. If you couldn't, you know, leave your house. What, um, and then I just started teaching. And I think in large part, it was because I wasn't selling a book. I didn't have a podcast. I was just giving away information. And I'd also say, also, if you look at a lot, not all, but a lot of the top podcasters, including yourself, including Rogan, Lex Friedman, and there are others, Ajaka Willink, for instance. Most of them did something else very well first. They, they were credentialed someplace else, right? Lex is, most people don't realize this. Lex is a, is a PhD, right? He's very versed in computer science and artificial intelligence. If things Joe obviously had a prior career, you had a prior career, very successful. In addition to the other things you're doing, I was running a lab at Stanford up until a few years ago. Now I still teach at Stanford, but I shut my lab down because of the podcast. So what you find is that often the most successful podcasts are from people that sure entered the field at a certain time. And there were fewer people in the podcast game then, but who also were very fluent in a particular subject. And we're ready to bring that to the world. So it wasn't like, I want to be a podcaster. It was, I love science, I love learning and teaching. I have an interest in health, I have a longstanding interest in health and fitness in addition to my neuroscience background. So I'm going to talk about all of that. And I think the connections that one has, like your colleagues, like the people that I bring on my podcast are, I'm honored to say. And so privileged to have the opportunity. These are the top, top neurosurgeon, chair of neurosurgery at UCSF, Eddie Chang, Robert Malenka, the expert in dopamine, on a lengthy, the expert in addiction medicine. You know, Sean Mackie, the expert in pain medicine and on and on. And you know, we include other people creatives, you know, David Cho, Rick Rubin, et cetera. But to be able to put those people in front of the world was not really happening before the only person who had really done it before was Charlie Rose. And he had taken a pretty swift exit in the previous years. I'd never met him, but that's where you saw the neuroscience. He was great at neuroscience, bad at coming out of the bedroom with a bath robot. I don't know what the circumstances are. Oh, that's what it was coming out of the bedroom with a bath robot. Well, so, so I think that was it. And then I think I like to think it's also because, you know, I do the things I talk about, right? I'm, I get morning sunlight. I've long been interested in resistance training. And I, and I believe, of course, in modern medicine. I also believe that lifestyle factors and the things we can control is fundamentally shape how healthy or unhealthy we are and how many medications we need or don't need. Look, about 2003, I switched from Western medicine, not that I abandoned it because, of course, Western medicine is wonderful in many ways. But to a much more holistic approach, meaning preventative. And I feel like I, you know, I got with a doctor, I respect very much, who I think knows a great deal. We don't agree on everything. And, of course, you also need an MD. But I feel like until that point in my life, I did not really understand how the body worked. I read different books. I, you know, I don't want to like go through the whole holistic Bible, but, you know, they more are of the notion that there is really only one disease, which is cellular destruction. And it has two main causes, one is deficiency of nutrients, and the other is toxicity getting into the cell. And we label things in million ways as a million names for many diseases, but it all comes down to not just all that because I think genetics is really important. Yeah, some people have Huntington's for instance, you know, they could be doing everything right and still be right to get eventually get seriously ill, although doing as many things as possible right in terms of lifestyle will greatly extend their lifespan and health span. Do you subscribe? Would you say that is your overarching theory also that it's just, it's all about the cells, winning the battle on the molecular level and, and our cells. I mean, there's so much in society that is, you know, fatigue, like chronic fatigue, these kind of things, an irritable bowel syndrome, and even allergies, maybe even asthma. But just this stuff that like says, it's because we're not treating ourselves right, they're getting too much toxicity, and they are deprived of nutrients, because what they're being given is processed food, you know, sugar, corn, fungus, love to get into fungus with you. I'm a big fungus person. We talk about psilocybin. No, not that kind of fungus too, a cry, and I used to do it. But no, just how harmful fungus is and how much we always go to germ theory, it's always the bacteria, and sometimes it's the fungus. I mean, fungus is everywhere. Sure. Yeah, I mean, so I absolutely subscribe to the idea that when cells get sick, organs get sick, when organs get sick, you get systemic breakdown eventually. I think that when you talk about toxicity, I think it's very clear that you can have, for instance, toxicity from too many calories. But that's right. So too many calories, but not enough micronutrients, perhaps, right? Or just too many calories, calories, energy, load, toxicity. And when you don't get the right nutrients, even though you're eating more food, your body is still asking for those nutrients. That's right. That's why you get fat because you're eating more food, but you're not getting what the body needs, so it wants more. I think the two thing, I mean, there are many things that are making Americans and others, including lack of physical exercise and so on, but I think two, at least two of the important ones that aren't discussed enough are being divorced from our natural circadian schedule. So you want bright days, we've talked about this before, but I'll just briefly reiterate bright days, meaning sunlight in the morning, bright days, as best you can, getting sunlight through a window. There's a recent study showing that if you work near a window, it actually can help with blood glucose management and dark nights. And, you know, for some people going to bed late and waking up later is best for them. For other people waking up early and going to bed earlier is best for them. People have to figure out what's ideal for them. Oh, I'm so glad to hear you say that. Oh, absolutely. Because there are some hardcore people who insist that the healing only happens between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. No, that's nonsense. Thank you. That's nonsense. Thank you, because I, you know, 2 a.m. at 2 a.m. is when I'm just getting just late. So you're a night owl and they're all what we call chronotypes and some people do best on a late-to-bed late waking-up schedule and nonetheless getting Bright light ideally from sunlight in your eyes in the first hour after waiting. I listen to you on that and the first thing I do is go over to the window and it's always like oh, I feel like a vampire, you know because But I force myself to be an overmised to that You know and also I'm very very aware that light in the eye at night, you know It's the worst thing for you. It wakes up the penal gland, right? Yeah, so your pineal gland makes melatonin which makes you sleepy and makes you fall asleep light and hide its melatonin Right reaching the eyes specifically. I should point out that it's clear that some people can tolerate screen light and Fall asleep with no problem, but The bright what bright light does in the morning is it increases cortisol which we know is a stress hormone, but in the morning you want your cortisol high This is the foundation of health to have your morning cortisol high Yes, hi and then to have it taper off into the afternoon and evening This is this is true for men for women perimenopausal menopausal pregnant women kids everybody This has been it's called the healthy cortisol curve and if that curve flattens meaning if it's not a big enough peak in them in your Your morning whatever time that happens to be and if you have too much cortisol in the evening You're going to have problems with sleep You're also going to have problems with blood sugar regulation because cortisol has been labeled a stress hormone But we need to think about cortisol as a glucose as an energy Mobilizing hormone. So it turns out that even if you can sleep just fine after being around a bunch of bright lights at night It will elevate your morning blood glucose. Now is that going to make you pre-diabetic or diabetic over time? It it actually might but kids nowadays We've done a beautiful experiment that where they had kids sleep in a room with a hundred luxe That's very dim a hundred luxe light overhead eyes closed and they saw significantly elevated morning blood glucose levels. So Dimming the lights at night is important now There's a lot's been said about blue light and for some people wearing blue blockers can be helpful Etc. But just dim dimming the lights this environment that we're in here is actually quite dim It's bright enough for us to see each other, but This environment is not nearly bright enough for the morning What we need in the morning to spike cortisol, which is what we want But it's but it's plenty bright to spark cortisol at say an hour before sleep So just in the first hour make the first hour of your day as bright as possible ideally from sunlight Make the last hour of your day as dimmer as dark as safer. I just start to lower the lights But you know there's only so much you can do sure but when I go to bed I cover up all these little things everything in fucking America now has to have a little fucking stupid light that you Don't need I cover them all like with with like wash clothes. I'll put thing all over the I really duct tape and I'll cover it. Exactly or get a my will get a great a soft. I'm asked is my best Invest in I don't like that because I feel it and it's onerous But I have blackout curtains. No when I go to sleep at night It is so it is as black as Stephen Miller's heart It is black in there. I'm telling you when I open my eyes or close them. I see the same thing great That's dark great. You know what's stupid and I don't mean to knock this product I'm wearing it right now the these rings that I'm sure you're buried. I wear a band where I measure my sleep with an eight sleep the cooling mattress Okay, well this is the same idea and I'm like I've just started it up and it blinks I had to you know what I did and by the way, I was that's why I don't wear one of those. That's why I measure my sleep I figured it out. I'm gonna I'm gonna give you beer. Here's a life hack Will you life fucking hackers? Okay, so yes, it blinks at night It's supposed to be about your health and it does the one thing you're not supposed to do Which is have light on in when you're sleeping Bright green light or yellow light. Okay, so what I did was I took a black surgical glove You know like this thin rubber gloves that we gave out a zillion of them during COVID and now they're polluting the entire country and world so great on that one But I just cut off a little piece of it and I put it on as a Fucking uro ring cozy at night and then it blocks it off So there's your life hack for all the people who were wrote wrote in like I did and so this is so silly We're trying to do our health here. No, so I think the the emergent theme in our conversation already today is Technologies that we use to improve convenience or improve our health Inevitably have some sort of side effects that we that we run up against everything does. Yeah, it's true So this is wild so the long wavelength light red light infrared light, etc That's the heat from the sun that you feel it's part of that That long wave length light is not the light that burns your skin. It's not the wavelength of light and it was present in Incandescent balls so incandescent are you know Even if you see a white incandescent ball. It's got short wavelengths. So it's got blue. It's green It's got yellows all the way out to red and in some cases even infrared that Infrared and red would just got long wavelengths believe it or not beautiful date on this from Glenn Jeffree's lab University College London it can go into and through your body and It actually helps this is a loose term as I'm using it charge your mitochondria the mitochondria There's water in that area and the water absorbs the red light if you've ever gone swimming You've gone down, you know snorkeling or something below a certain depth you lose the reds Okay, because the reds get absorbed. Oh, so your mitochondria function better You increase ATP production your metabolism increases in the presence of red-lit long wavelength light to the skin This study has been done shine right long wavelength light on somebody watch blood glucose levels in a blood glucose test And it's blunted now the LED lights that are commonly used now or most everywhere They are truncated so that it's all short wavelength and medium wavelength light and that short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light has been shown to damage the mitochondria. There's a kind of a niche group online different from the from the butthole Suners So that are very bullish about this idea that the switch from incandescence to LEDs and not just screens but General lighting is causing disruptions and mitochondrial function. This used to be considered crazy This was like chemtrail crazy, right? But now we're starting to see from animal studies and human studies from gun Jeffrey and others that people's vision gets better when they get in front of an incandescent bulb Once a day if they get sunlight which also has long wavelength light your vision improves because of improvements in mitochondria You can again better blood glucose regulation. This study just came out eating near a window or working near a window It improves blood glucose regulation. So you know, I'm not paranoid. I have LEDs in my home, right? But if you can get outside and get some long wavelength light from the Sun without getting a burn That's the that's the trick right? You don't every day. You don't watch too much UV. Yeah, and you look extremely healthy I'm not just saying that close So I'd be in a position to gauge, right? I can finish your thought. Well, it's it's absolutely true That I owe it all to clean living right so I don't want to say that short wavelength light is poison That's not quite right. It's short wavelength light in the absence of long wavelength light And if you would ask me about this, you know eight ten years ago I'd say my colleagues in the sleep lab at Stanford, you know, one of the preeminent sleep labs in the world They're really big on morning sunlight afternoon sunlight. That's actually where I learned it from from the sleep biologist at Stanford first But you start to look at our environment is becoming very short wavelength rich long wavelength diminished We're having darker mornings people straight onto the phone in the evening. It's too bright And then you you know, we can make it generational and say this younger generation that seems to really be struggling Let's set aside the content they're looking at, right? Just what's actually on those screens? It may be that we've made them sick and so while I am a fan of my What's that? It's the light itself is what you're saying. I'm saying it's the light itself in the tiny important message That it's not just the fact that it's a bunch of stupid tic-tocks. That are poisoning your mind It's the light itself even if it was transmitting the smartest wisest Messages throughout history the light itself the light itself. It's just not natural. That's right And incandescent bulbs and firelight and candlelight all these things were very healthy for us And I actually think it's hard now to get incandescence. There's some there's some might people think it's illegal They're just very hard to get they are less energy efficient than led. Yes, but when you talk about going to the hotel and everything is like this bright Intense blue right when was the last time someone had to change an led boar right? You never have to do that, right? So it's like idiot proof and it's you know power efficient, but there's always a cost on the back end There's always and and you mentioned tic-tock But you you know as much as I'm a fan of Instagram my teach on Instagram and youtube They've really migrated towards shorter content. They promote Three-minute or shorter reels on Instagram. They tell you if it's longer than that. It's not going to get shared as broadly I mean all of the platforms have shifted towards shorter video at the same time longer audio is still on the rise That's I've said this many times. I don't understand the American public Their attention span seems to be eight seconds or three hours If I if I do a podcast that's less than 90 minutes they feel very cheated And yet what you're talking about that seems also prevalent in our culture that people have No attention span at all and you've got to get it in there and in two minutes or less or just forget about it It's wild. How do what do you make of that? Is that a generational thing? I think it's a fundamental difference between the auditory system and the visual system Where the visual system can tolerate a lot of fast updating but if you had to hear something different every 90 seconds or every three minutes Even it would be chaotic. You just feel like this is crazy. That's interesting. This is crazy. I mean there's like shorter than or like it's how we're taking it in. - Exactly. - Exactly. - Exactly. - Visually because we're so used to movies for, I don't know how many decades now, quick cutting. And just, you know, we can, we can, they get subliminal advertising. Remember when that was a thing? - Oh, yeah. - They would, it would be, you wouldn't even notice. The controversy was they put a skull and crossbones into subliminally, into cigarette ads because the theory was people really want to die. - That was it? - That was it? - Yeah. - I am absolutely serious. - Whoa. - They, they subliminally put a skull and crossbones in there. - Whoa. - There was. - I would have thought they would have done the opposite. - Right. - No. - No. - And they'll put it like a beating heart. - There's like a real bustle. - No. - A beating heart or a war. - No. - That's how easy they are. - No, they are. - They would woman or something like that. - No, that's how fucked up we are. But, you know, when you said like a few years ago, it was like chemtrail level conspiracy theory. That's why I get a little nervous when people say, oh, the ultimate expert in. I'm sure they are. - Sure. - But, you know what? Science is no final answer. I mean, there are, you know, but it takes time, like evolution. When it first came out, people didn't just sign on, but it had to go through the testing period. - Okay, we're past that. And we're past that with global warming too. - I would say, I Tucker would argue. - Yes, okay. - We're past that. You know, we can argue about what to do about it. But we're past, you know, humans aren't causing it. Yes, they are. And, you know, maybe that's whatever, you know. But, you know, this idea. - Well, it's interesting. It seems like there's bipartisan support for the idea that we're contaminating water sources and food sources. You know, I guess more closely to what you just raised, it's beyond me why artificial lighting environments might be damaging us in some way. And certain medications like antibiotics can be beneficial. Like, we are living in the land, with respect to health. We do seem to be living in the land of whatever expert, certainly is not how I try and pitch things, but whatever expert is speaking to us seems to think that the things that are talking about are the only things that are important. Like, I'm not saying it's only light. I'm saying light is foundational. Circadian biology is foundational. Cortisol rhythms are foundational. Nutrients and food and not excess calories are getting enough micronutrients. But when you look online, what you find is that the people couch themselves as the, it's all sunlight. - Right. - Or it's all food. And I think this is what's really damaged the maha movement, frankly. Because I think most people across the board would say, okay, getting food additives out and reducing processed foods, surely that's a great thing. But then the vaccine debate, for instance. Actually, I have an update on the vaccine piece that I spoke to an IGE director today to get you an update 'cause last time when I was on your show, we talked about it. And it's about these mRNA vaccines. - You're here. - Because I said, and I still think that to cancel the research for mRNA vaccines for cancer would be utterly foolish. I think that's a three neuron decision. - Agreed. - Okay. So I talked to Jay, and he assured me. - Jay about it, Jay. - Jay about it, Jay. - And IGE and I actually currently also-- - Oh, let's give you some background. Who during COVID, and I was one of the people who took a lot of shit during COVID. I feel very vindicated, by the way. But I'm sure not nearly as much as the people who are in charge of health now. And Jay about it, Charlie, was one of those people who was thrown off Twitter or wherever because, you know, like he's a nut because he had an alternative view of how we were handling COVID. - He was largely opposed to lockdowns at certain phases. I know this 'cause he's my colleague at Stanford, and that's right. We didn't treat it overarchingly. We just didn't treat it the right way, which was to protect the most vulnerable population, but let society go on because it wasn't the bubonic plague. It killed mostly very old people and obese people. I know that's politically incorrect to say, it's just the truth. We didn't need to over-react the way we did. We didn't need to spend more money than we did on World War II. - Is that right? - Yes, it's right. - Wow. - On, you know, well, of course we told everybody to go to your room and hide under your bed. You know, and we'll make up your salary. Where do you think we got that money? Where we always get it out of thin air. That's gonna come home to roost, and that's gonna affect your health. - Yeah, well, the mental health in the lockdown, before I, because I make vaccines. - 'Cause I make you do this. - I have an update for you on all this as well. - I don't know what this is, but is it? - Oh yeah, what is it? - So, okay, so the mRNA vaccine update is Dr. Jay Bottichard, who now is also acting director of the CDC, by the way. He's juggling both roles. - And a smart guy. - And a very smart guy and a very, and somebody who listens, you know, I'm not formally associated with Maha, despite what you might read out there. I'm not formally associated with any political group. I'm either a double hater or a double lover when it comes to politics. I am, I am an issue by issue person. - That's me in politics. - Great, okay, appreciate you. Thank you. - Thank you, thank you. - So, he assured me that the, his words, that the NIH funding for mRNA vaccine research for oncology, for cancer, has not been cut. What was cut, he said, his words, it was the $500 million put towards mRNA vaccines for upper respiratory illnesses that was set aside from project warp speed, which people forget was a Trump initiative. I'm not trying to, you know, what do the kids say glaze or glow up or what? I'm not trying to, but we should remember that that was part of the Trump administration. - Absolutely. - And I think that the mRNA vaccines, the label has caused a lot of people to say, I don't want anything to do with those, but I just had an oncologist on my podcast, the potential to eradicate cancers, using technologies like those, or others like CRISPR is so exciting. And the way this is going to work is not by testing on humans. It's going to be by harvesting a T cell. - Let's stop on CRISPR, because I remember first seeing it on 60 minutes. Gene splicing, right? - It's gene editing. - Gene editing. - So you can actually go in and add genes and modify genes. A Nobel Prize was given. - Why is it called CRISPR? - The CRISPR cast system is an enzyme system that can get an insert and cut and repair DNA at specific locations. - Okay, so. - But yes, I've been hearing about CRISPR ever since that 60-minute report, but that was like seven or eight years ago. I feel like, hey, I'm 70 now. Where's CRISPR when I need it? - So CRISPR is being used? - I mean, I'm saying I need it, but I'm thinking I'd like it. - CRISPR has been used to successfully treat certain childhood cancers. - CRISPR, now, I should say, that's by taking cells modifying their genes and reinserting those cells, which works very well in the immune system. - But it's not a cure for cancer. - Well, it holds-- - Sometimes it is. - It holds the potential to cure many forms of cancer. So cancers are all-- - And it's done it sometimes, right? - It has. - Sure, yeah, I mean, it's not in widespread use, because there are a lot of ethical issues. I will tell you, there was a guy. He actually trained as a postdoc at the same time as I did in the United States. Then went to China. He did, he made CRISPR modified babies. Okay, this is a well-known, yes, he announced at a meeting that he had taken some kids from IVF. The report was that the father, that was HIV positive, he modified the receptor for HIV in these embryos. And two kids were born with modified genomes. Now, here's the twist. Here's what-- - Here's what? - They were inserted into the guy's wife, I believe. You know, so they took the eggs, her egg, his sperm, modified the embryos, once the embryos were in a dish, using CRISPR. - She carried. - So targeting a specific gene. And I should say, when people get really worried about genetic selection, when people partner select, their genetic select, right? When they go, "Oh, that person's attractive," or successful, or kind, or whatever. - But they put-- - She carried it to determine they had a baby shower, right? - Two babies, yeah, two babies. - I'm not asking about that. - Chinese baby shower. - I want to know about the shower. - Yeah, Chinese baby shower, I don't know what that's like. - Is it different? - I imagine it is, and these babies were born. Now here's why it's controversial. First of all, he didn't get any approval from the International Ethics Committee. There is no International Ethics Committee. There was no International Ethics Committee on this, at that time, and things. And there is rumor that this HIV receptor may actually not just confer some susceptibility or resistance to HIV, but that it also might be involved in brain circuits involved in memory. So the story became that he used CRISPR to generate these super babies or something like that. The Chinese government claims that he was punished. We don't know if he was punished by being put in jail or given a laboratory. We don't know, it's all very mysterious and cloaked. But when this happened, the international community paused. And it was very unclear. I was watching this very closely. It was very unclear for a few moments. Whether or not he would be given a Nobel Prize, or whether or not he would be thrown into a cell. The world didn't know how to deal with this because he was way ahead of the curve. I guarantee that there are countries now where people are using CRISPR on embryos. I'm certain it is, you know, has serious ethical concerns. It is not allowed in the United States. But it's coming. In fact, you can deep sequence embryos now from an IVF and you can isolate the embryos that you think have the fewest disease genes or that you think have the most genes that would confer whatever traits that you have. [BLANK_AUDIO] I think we're always late on getting to some of these things. I know from a friend who had cancer, that he had to go to Mexico to do the thing where they take the stem cells out and put it back in your body. And it worked, by the way. - Yeah, why do we have to go to Mexico to do that? - Our regulatory bodies here are much stricter on certain things than anywhere else. - But I mean, if you're dying, what do you have to lose? - Well, there's this weird inverse stringency. So when it comes to, like sunscreen, we'll talk about sunscreen, for instance, you know, or fruit additives. Europe bans certain things that we allow for-- - For readily here. - For Maldehyde. - Also, yeah, and certain pesticides. And in Europe, alcohol, no, this is classified as a-- - No, dude. - World Health Organization classifies as a class-free carcinogen. Do as you like, but know what you're doing. Here, we don't. Classified as a carcinogen, even though we know it increases. Cancer is, you're fine, you're healthy in other ways. - I was freaking out. - I was about to drink. - You're very calm. - But on the other side, when you think about which drugs we allow doctors to provide or what's allowed over the counter, here, there's a lot more stringency. For instance, right now there's a huge battle over peptides, which I'm happy to talk about, because the GLPs are so popular, which are peptides. - What are peptides? - Peptides are small chains of amino acids that have a biological function. Insulin's a peptide. GLP1 is a peptide. You make these things naturally, but these can be synthesized and put into the body, and they can have an effect, and typically when a drug, like a GLP1 drug, like ozempic, moongjaro, or the big one that's coming, this is going to be a trillion-dollar drug. And it has huge implications for the sorts of things you and I think about, the interaction between politics and health, is red a true tide. It's a GLP3, meaning it hits the GLP receptor, and the GLP1 and GLP1 can cause up to a third of loss in body weight, and some degree of muscle sparing, some. People should still exercise. Now, Eli Lilly holds the patent. It went through phase three, very successfully. Eli Lilly does not want compounding pharmacies, selling red a true tide, why? Because it's far cheaper. And we had this recent thing where Trump argued for lower drug prices, right? - Yeah. - Do you think the drug companies were like, oh yeah, sure, let's just lower drug prices. No, it was a deal, right? I won't say how I know this, but it was a deal whereby the administration kind of did a wink nod that drugs were going to pass more quickly through R&D to market. So they're going to make up the cost differential on the research and development end, right? Less money invested in research and development, less time to market, and happy to lower prices. This is my understanding. I, you know, someone will probably tell me I'm wrong, but that's my understanding. Now, Eli Lilly wants to protect the patent for red a true tide. But I'll tell you, in Los Angeles County right now, there are a lot of people, mostly people that get in front of cameras, taking red a true tide, because it works so spectacularly well at a fifth of the prescribed dose or the recommended dose from these trials, and at a tenth of the price, if you get it from a compounding pharmacy. Now, compounding pharmacies aren't supposed to make it, but this is another area where the FDA would like them to not do it, but it's pseudo-regulated. The grain market, as I'm referring to it, is the, when people can buy this stuff online for research purposes only, okay? And then the black market, people refer to as Chinese peptides, which are peptides that probably don't contain what you think they do, and there's very little stringency, and you have to really worry about contamination. It's a little unfair to China, I want to be clear. Like, these could be coming from Belarus for all I know. I mean, they could be coming from anywhere, but people refer to them as Chinese peptides, which is not fair. We should just call them black market peptides. So, the FDA would like to protect its relationship to pharma. Pharma wants to protect the patents for drugs, where there's a lot of money. Red or true tide stands to be a trillion dollar drug. So, here's the weird split. I want to make sure I close the hatch on the FDA piece. Right now, the key is to prevent harm, right? We don't want people taking black market or gray market peptides that could hurt them. At the same time, these compounding pharmacies have made many drugs, not just GLPs, but many drugs, much more affordable to people. In a landscape that I don't even have to justify, right? People are really struggling for health care or self-directed health care, are peptides the be all end all? Well, no, not necessarily lifestyle factors and drugs, in some cases, or lifestyle factors and other things. But the key here is that if a drug stands to make a company a lot of money, then there's an incentive to regulate this stuff. So, we're in this weird landscape where I really think you have two populations of slightly overlapping populations of people. You have people that their level of stringency is if it's not FDA approved from a traditional company, you know, from Pharma, multiple randomized control trials, I don't want to take it. I'm not putting it anywhere near my family or anyone I know. And then you have a separate category of people, which is quite large, who say the fact that something is from Pharma, the fact that it's associated with the FDA, is the major reason why they do want to take something. And this is where I think I'm so tired of looking at traditional media coverage of like peptides, where they throw it out like a dog's breakfast of all these different things, lump it and just say, peptides don't do anything. Really, insulin doesn't do anything for a diabetic. Really, the GLPs don't do anything. The root of all of this is control of the patent and financial pipeline, which is not to say that I don't under, you can't relate. I mean, Lily, I have no stock in Lily, kind of wish I did. I mean, it's over 1,000 bucks right now. It was a couple hundred bucks a few years ago. Lily invested hundreds of millions of dollars. They stand to make trillions of dollars. It makes every bit of sense why they would try and shut down the red and true tide compound. It's so funny that it's so similar to politics, which is you can't trust either half fully. You have, when the argument is like, their peptides are all bad, it's like, Trump is all evil, or, you know, the Democrats are all evil. And it's like, you have to read both sides because nobody tells you the full truth. They only want to forward their narrative, and it sounds like it's the same thing in medicine as it is in politics. It is. I mean, as a research scientist and friends with many, many position scientists and physicians, I do think, at least at Stanford, most all physicians and scientists I do believe want to solve problems correctly and provide good for the world. Stanford seems like it's a super woke place. No, Stanford? We have Hoover, we have the Hoover folks, right? I mean, that's like a libertarian think tank, basically. Oh, is that true? Connie Rice runs it, I believe. Is that it's Stanford? Yeah, it's it's him. The big tower. The tower, you know? I'm not sure. I'm not that familiar with it. No, I would say Stanford on balance is very, is very balanced. Because I've read somewhere like this is going back, you know, sort of peak woke time five years ago or something, that they had 10,000 administrators. It's a big place, it's got its own zip code, you know? Okay, but it just seems like that's all, we're not talking about professors. And we're not talking about students. We're talking about bureaucrats, kind of. You know, there is a hospital at children's hospital. I mean, it's one of the most modern and look. I mean, maybe, you know, I have this podcast. I don't trust anything until I get both sides of the story. I'm just saying I read that. And that I concede right away. That is forwarding somebody's narrative that elite colleges are out of control, which by the way, I do think there is absolute truth in that. What's the other side of it? Well, there's another side of it, too. Yeah. So I'm anxious to hear you tell me. Yeah. Maybe we need 10,000. Maybe they do need 10,000 administrators at Stanford. Well, with the caveat that I can already hear the voice is saying, oh, you know, he's just trying to protect his job. Look, I'm 10 years, you know, Jay kept his job during the past celebrity now, you can't be fine. Yeah, I mean, I have this other gig. So I'm called old, I can't be fine. You know, but I will tell you, I'll give you the positives. I'll give you the negatives. I'll be real direct with you. I've been many places in my academic career. And I will tell you that while there are other, many other excellent places, there are very, very few if any places in the world where you find people who are just absolutely focused on bringing their science, which often impacts health care to the next level with the most degree of rigor. My colleagues are amazing. I'm telling you, I mean, I've got colleagues like Carl Dicerat who developed ways to image a modify seller activity across the board, everything from humans, rat cap, monkey bat for research purposes, people who were blind are seeing again as a consequence of that, right? I've got colleagues building artificial retinas. I've got colleagues who are figuring out in the psychology department that are really parsing this notion of like alley chrome mindsets, like which is a setting for the mind, how to navigate stress, not just thinking that stress is going to dissolve you into a puddle of tears, but how to harness stress into performance. She's a D1 athlete, clinical psychologist, and runs a major research lab and mom and happily married. I mean, these people are like on a whole other level. Okay, it's also a place where people are very collegial. Now, are there a lot of administrators? Yes, are there a lot of beautiful lawns and palm trees? Also, yes, but I'll tell you the real strength of Stanford. You know this woman, this freestyle skier who ended up skiing for China in the-- Oh, I go. Yeah, okay, she's Stanford. Okay, I will tell you, the real prize at Stanford is the students, right? Everyone who works there knows that the intellect of the students and the ingenuity of the students is what sets it apart. And again, there are other places. Now. But the downside, doing research is very expensive, very expensive, and in the current NIH climate, one of the first things that happened when HHS got revised, and I was very bullish about pushing back on this, is they wanted to cut the indirect cost, the support of the university, not just the labs, to 15% across the country. That would devastate science across the country. Now you can say, "Oh, Stanford's got this massive endowment, it's as big as a country." You're saying, "With heart, we want they pull from there." Okay, let's just take that argument and say, 15% would take the University of Utah's, which is a fantastic place, a fantastic place for biomedical research, and many other things. The UT Austin's, the Wisconsin's, the WashUs, and it would demolish them. Fortunately, that cut didn't happen, and I'm very happy to say, and I take no credit for this, but I've been very vocal on the phone and elsewhere, getting in jazier and other people's ear. You cannot cut the federal budget for research in this country. It fuels companies. It fuels basically the healthcare exploration and development for the entire world, and they just put a 1% increase on the budget. Now I think that's too small, but the problem that I have with big institutions, rich institutions like Stanford, Harvard, MIT, Caltech, now here's the other piece of it, is that 30% of the indirect money, meaning the additional funds that come from NIH, go to a very small subset of universities across the country for big facilities, genomics facilities, proteomic facilities, which means that the laboratories there have what many people view as a bit of an unfair advantage. Okay? So if we really wanted to equally distribute intellectual growth, and we want to equally distribute scientific growth, we would distribute that money more equally across the country. Now my colleagues at Stanford are going to hate me for saying this, but it's kind of weird, right? I mean, if you're at the University of Colorado Boulder and you're a graduate student, shouldn't you have the opportunity to do the most cutting edge experiments there, and just because you're not at Stanford, that shouldn't, you shouldn't be hindered. So a lot of the country feels left out. Yeah, and I think the redistribution of some of these funds would be good. It would be helpful. It would be helpful. A lot of the country feels like all the cool jobs are in a few different places, and they kind of look down on us, and we're not all hicks out here, you know? I think something that is going a long way. Yes. I don't know what the University of Boulder is like, but, you know, I've been a Boulder. I played this city. It's not a bunch of fucking hicks. No, great place. Great place. Very liberal. Great place, great science. Yeah. I mean, they had some unfortunate incidents there. I think it was like a, like some sort of pseudo terrorist attack. No, no, no, no. It's like through a Molotov cocktail or something at some protestor. I mean, it's kind of crazy. I mean, Boulder seems like a nice little piece of a tax. I think it was the place where the Batman, he dressed as the Joker or Batman or something. This is like 2013. I remember. Because I played this city, like a couple of months after the, it was in the theater. It was a shooting. Oh, I know. It was a shooting. Yeah, great. That's right. I know what you're referring to. And, yeah, yeah. I think that was, yeah, that, I'm thinking of a separate incident, more recent incident and that was related to a public protestor. No, I remember because I donated the proceeds from the weekend in Colorado to that fund. I know. It was a, yeah, that was one of University of Virginia as well. Would it look bad not to? Or Virginia Tech. Yeah. It was, yeah. Redistribution of resources across the country would be great. And so I talked to Jay about this today and he said that one of the initiatives is to start creating national centers that get a large percentage of funding so that scientists and people running clinical studies from anywhere in the country can go there and use the state of the art tools to be able to do their experiments anywhere. I think that's a wonderful idea. I think that that's going to ruffle some feathers at some of the, let's say, wealthier institutions. But endowments are very, you know, are sick at certain places, right? There's a lot of money sitting in the endowments at these places. No. And as you say, I think it's important for people to know that some of this stuff that, and I agree with you that they shouldn't cut any of this money, it hasn't happened. You know, people come up to me all the time and I'm out and Bill, what are we going to do? Our world is coming to an end, which it's not. And I was just saying, the Supreme Court stopped the president from his tariff thing. You know, I'm sure you saw that. That was a kind of a big one that the Supreme Court, including two of his appointees, said, "No, I'm sorry, and you know, we'll give you a lot, but we're not going to give you this." Thousands of cases of local courts have pushed back on detaining immigrants and the budget that he asked for never got. It's basically the same down the line as it was the year before he took office. So for people who think the sky is falling, it's not quite falling. You know, there still is a system that we have that's, it's definitely taking a stress test we've never had before. But it's sort of holding in this way and this is part of it. Like that money is still there. Yeah, the money is still there. The money is still there. You know, are we, do you think we're the leading edge in scientific research? Holding in there with some other top places like in Germany, Switzerland, Scandinavia, and I will tell you, China is in terms of brain-machine interface, inserting chips into the brain of non-human primates and humans to do, you know, increasing memory, novel ways of using AI for cognition, they are miles ahead of us. I mean, non-human primates, right? McCackmonkeys is the typical model, very hard to do that work in the United States because it's very expensive. And it's dangerous. McCackmonkeys carry something called, it's a form of herpes that kills humans. They get a cold sore. People have died from this. It was a woman in Atlanta had some monkeys. Have you got a cult or from a monkey? Well, no, the monkey splash. You're in in her eye. And so it's, yeah, I mean, it's, it was deadly. She was dead within within a couple of weeks. Is that right? Yeah. Just not that it's going to really affect my personal life, but which monkey is this? The McCackmon. The McCackmon. Oh, McCackmon. And I'm totally surprised. The big ones with big teeth. No, no. Yeah. I fucked them, chimps. But this is not okay. Oh my goodness. Wow. So. That's it. Yeah. So China is making strides. You know, Switzerland shut down non-human primate research as far as I know. It's very expensive to do in the U.S. The National Primate Center is used to be a big piece of research in this country for everything. So a birth control was testing non-human primates. They're the closest model to us. Now, I have to say, you know, I'm not saying this to protect myself. I'm saying this because I truly feel I think the need for justification to do work on non-human primates has to be very high. They are very much like us. I've interacted with these animals a lot. Does it hurt? Don't when they do it? Yes. It does. They do what they can to minimize pain, but it absolutely does. I mean, having a, you know, a stereotax implanted in the head, injections into the eye, there's no way to do that completely painlessly. And you know, that's tough. That's it. It wears on the soul. I will tell you to do that. I'm Peter. I'm Peter. Yeah. So. So. So, right. So, I am, I personally couldn't do that work. You know, years ago, you know, I, I've worked on a bunch of different species and I'll tell you one of the reasons I'm so happy to be doing what I'm doing now, is I hated working on animal models. But in many cases, animal models are what we have. But again, non-human primates, we need a very, very high justification and threshold before one would want to invest in doing that kind of work as long as-- What are we going to get out of it? That's worth it. Yeah. So, I think, okay, well, you're asking me to justify something for which I'm a woman. No, no. I'm not asking you to justify it. I'm just saying, what in the best possible scenario would we get out of it? Where someone down the road could make the case and say, yes, I'm sorry, the monkey suffered. But now, you know, eight million, you know, children with Tourette syndrome are free of this curse. Yeah. I guess it depends on the extent to which you believe that going from mouse to human is a reasonable jump. It's been the intermediate species. It's either been mouse to pig, to human or mouse to non-human primate, to human for, you know, dose lethality, infectious disease, you know, I mean, they are very similar to us. You know, I'll tell you, I am very happy to not work on non-human primates. They are sentient as our dogs, in my belief, and it's a really tough problem. I think one of the challenges is that now there's a lot of excitement about AI, and I think you can do a lot with AI that you, you know, they couldn't do a few years ago. And cells, as you were pointing out earlier, are that, you know, the foundational building block of all the organs and health, and oftentimes to understand human health, you have to understand in a model system that's similar. Let me give you an example, as long as we're staying edgy, there's something new that's being done in Mexico and in Europe called three-party IVF, it's illegal here, it's actually being done in the UK. I think I had one here. We only one of them was Mexican, but we know that as a women age, the number of sort of eggs that can be successfully fertilized and create healthy humans goes down with age. We know this, right? So one of the things that makes it harder as women get older is the mitochondrial genes that control some of the splitting of the egg and the formation of more cells, et cetera. It's out that people figure this out first in mice, and then in nonhuman primates, that you can take the DNA from them. the woman who wants to be the mom, the sperm from the guy that wants to be the dad. And you can take those and put them into an egg from a younger donor, where the DNA's been taken out, but the spindle and the things that pull it across with the mitochondrial genes are intact. And you can end up with a healthy kid. How do we know this? Because there are women who have mitochondrial genetic diseases. This was done in the UK. And all your mitochondrial genes come from your mom. And so these people wanted to have kids. So someone said, hey, maybe you could do this. So they did it first and then in non-human primates. And now in Mexico and elsewhere around the world, people who are having trouble conceiving or by standard IVF are starting to do this three-party IVF. It's not yet legal in the United States. But this is a good example where it went from mouse to non-human primate to human. So you would say, gosh, would you want to go from mouse to human? That's a pretty big jump. So at the same time, we're not macaque monkeys. They're not identical to us, obviously. So it's the way the fields have progressed. And in terms of cognition and things like that, but again, I don't want to be-- I'm not arguing that more work should be done in non-human primates. I'm not making that argument. I think whenever possible, we should avoid the use of animal models. Always. Why injure or take a life when you potentially don't have to? But when you say whenever possible. Yeah, I mean, there are cancer treatments that I doubt humans, unless they're dying, and they're really at the end of life. No, it's just say-- I mean, this is where the rubber meets the road, is whenever possible. Of course, I think everyone would say whenever possible, or most people. And in this country, we don't tend to have cat and dog research anymore largely because of the advocacy groups. Because we like them, because they're our pets. And the other one-- The other one? Yeah. People tell me pigs are very sweet. I don't know. But we don't-- they're not our pets. And we throw them under the bus. They're bacon. And China's different. China treats-- I think they treat this whole landscape of animal research very differently. They have a lot of researchers in Europe keep their primates in China because of the lower costs and do the work there. I mean, we're sort of going into the future of bringing machine interface and kind of where that is. And yes, China is really a kind of a hot seat for that. But why do we have to use animals? Why can't we just use humans that nobody likes? Like, you know, clansmen, or guys who are on Epstein Island? Well, something like that. I mean, there's-- That's how they should settle the answer. Well, of course, because they're human. It's going to be better research anyway. Oh my goodness, those files. I couldn't help but go into those files. And I was able to find examples of people saying-- you can find this there saying, we should-- too bad we can't experiment on kids, or we should experiment on kids. It's in those files. It's experiment one on kids. But you just are talking about wanting to do experiments on children in the files. But who? Which people? Oh, OK. Bill Gates. You really want to go down this? Yeah, I do. I-- yeah, I'm fucking curious. All right, it's all on the DOJ site. OK, yeah, so what-- So here's what I think is-- Not Deepak. Deepak? I don't think so, no. Oh, I think that's the worst. Because he always was like, oh, I'm the spiritual man. I'm the healer. I will tell you, you are part of the universe-- yeah, part of the universe that went to Epstein Island. And I mean, his shit just-- I mean, I like him. He's been-- I know him. OK. I'm proud to say-- I'm proud to say I've never met him. He's a sweet guy. But it was always a Halloween costume. And I'm not that sorry that the mask got torn off. I mean, it's just, look, I'm not a person who's big on people who say they're spiritual leaders anyway. So his thing was always I was winking. And I always felt he was kind of winking back. Like, you and I both know I'm selling a book, OK? You know, like that kind of thing. And it's the same book. Like, 45 times. Yeah, that's weird when people publish the same book over and over. That's just because-- what is that? It's because people want to be reaffirmed of what-- a Sunk-and-Cost fallacy. You know what that is. You know, like you say you believe the gypsy who's been telling you to give all your money to this person. And you just-- you've already out a million bucks. You can't turn back on it now. Even though something in your mind is telling you, this is not right. But it's Sunk-and-Cost fallacy. You just keep going with it. I think that's what it is. You're saying that the customers or the people who write these things. I bought the customer. Yeah. I mean, for the people who write them, it's just a gravy train. But for the customers, yes. It's like, you know, the latest version of, yes, it's the same book over and over. But it's telling them it's comforting to hear what you already think you know and believe and is helping you, even though this probably a mountain of evidence that it's not. Or maybe it does, because the human mind is an amazing place. It can convince itself of anything. And a lot of success in life, somebody once said it a million years ago, if you think you're happy, you're happy. Are you happy? I am happy. Right now. Yeah. I'm happy. I quit being peaceful and being happy, very similar. Yeah. Well, I mean, why? If you're not happy, then you have been fucking problems. I mean, you're doing well. Well, light, you're popular, you're a huge success. You know, I mean, I have my entire life. Eternal storms like anyone else where, where, you know, I see things out in the world that frustrate me. And, but then I remind myself, my, you know, I'm striving and I'm, you know, if there's a lot of cognitive distance, I feel, between the top half of the country that is doing well. You know, not the people are working three jobs and paycheck to paycheck, but the people, the ones who come up to me and say, "Hey, Bill, what are we gonna do?" Well, because it's just a distance between like their world, which is fucking awesome. And I look, even if your world is awesome, you're, I'm not saying you're wrong to be worried about the state of the country. Absolutely. I'm in the boat with you there. I am, but I also don't lose sight of the fact that my own world, no, I'm not on the edge of madness every day and maybe we'll get there, but we're not. So let's not pretend we are. Let's not pretend what are we gonna do? Go finish your dinner. Well, I think you're gonna do. Yeah, well, I think that the numbing out and the rage that the internet offers are incredibly intoxicating for people. I think, you know, to go online is to either forget what you would otherwise be surrounded by. So what every algorithm is built on? It is built on. It's built on hate and rage and conflict. Yeah, I mean, I think the upsteam files to me are an interesting, I think people are gonna be talking about this a hundred years from now. I think it's gonna be really. I think it's, well, I'll say a couple things. First of all, I never met him, never interacted with him, never corresponded with him, you know, and thrilled about that. Thanks to all of us. Yeah, great, you know, nice. Thank you. Once again, thank you. I'll start our own. He had deep pause in the scientific community. Yes. And media. Every community. And every community. I'm very happy to know that, you know, knowing it's Stanford was taking money from him, that's great. Actually, I remember in 2017, when that case first broke, and I'm in touch with our development, our fundraising office all the time. And I said, please tell me that he's not funding labs. And they said, no, he approached us. We gave him the cold shoulder. You know, they vet very carefully, which is what MIT didn't do. It's what Harvard didn't do. It's what Columbia didn't do. I mean, I consider him a colleague only because he's in the field of neuroscience, right? But Richard Axle won the Nobel Prize for discovering the molecular basis of olfaction. He shared it with Linda Buck in 2004. And he had to step down as the director of the Columbia Neuroscience Institute today. You got yourself a YouTube? No, I got this off. Ever, yeah. So, you know, I don't take me so seriously. No, I'll try not to. But you learned to sit here. I mean, he was a killer of our field. And to learn that he was, you know, buddy, buddy with Epstein for so many years. Right. And, you know, I think that it's-- so here's one thing that's clear to me at the-- I'm not a psychologist. But I'm a human being with some degree of experience. And what I know is that if you're in touch with your gut sense, if you're around a guy like Epstein, you should want to get out of there. So the fact that people with-- now, I understand how some people were manipulated by him because they were too young or whatever to be able to navigate that. But why anyone, especially these supposed high IQ folks, would actively seek him out and try and, you know, embed themselves in his-- Oh, I can answer that question. I'm nipotent. But before I do. Who are you going to tell me about? Richard Axel. Is that who you were talking about? Oh, before. Yes. Yeah, no. That wasn't what I was going to tell you about. Well, tell me. OK, so I've looked at this thing very carefully now because you and I are in the business of media. So here's the question that I think has not been explored thoroughly enough. Why is it that, in 2008, Epstein was convicted, then comes back to New York. I mean, he's still traveling all over the place. And people continue to engage with the sky. Like, people see him out. People are taking funding from him. And yes, I got it. He wore the Harvard sweatshirt, which doesn't mean shit at all, by the way. Anyone can buy that anywhere. I can tell you why. Why? He's a pimp. I can't believe I've explained this to everybody. He's a pimp, OK? There are people in this world, a lot of them, who are very achievement-oriented, shall we say, unsuccessful in their field, which is either science or finance, who have zero clue how to get a female human into bed. So you think these guys were just too defeated to get laid? Correct. He's a guy, like any pimp, who and just get where, I don't know what it is. I don't possess it, I don't wanna possess it. It's horrible if you do it. But he could get all these women and they, you look at the emails. It's in the emails. I mean, some of them were saying that. - Or certifiably, do we be? - Well, they're saying things like Richard Branson. Hope I get to see you again, but, you know, only if you're gonna bring your harem. - So it's what he brought with him. - I accept your hypothesis, but the, but, may I do a yes and? - Yes, yes and. - Or you can disagree with me. - And I've talked about this before publicly, actually, a couple of years ago before any of this popped, I was on the Rogan and I, and we were talking about, you know, why scientists co-zied up to Epssy and he provided, either directly or by, you know, being the rabbi in certain introductions. Enormous amounts of funding to certain places. Like, you know, I mean, they're in the files, right? I mean, I'm not trying to dodge a lawsuit here. I mean, the Columbia Neuroscience Institute was not funded by Epstein, but there's a lot of record of sort of joint meetings around that and, you know, people in the leadership from Columbia meeting with Epstein and the people who eventually gave the money. So here's the part that, I don't know, maybe I'm just two West Coast to understand. But, you're still thinking, what's that? Well, it's just, you know, this is a very New York story when you really think about it. He had the biggest real estate footprint. He had all the internet island and all the shit. Like, honestly, like, I grew up in the South Bay. I'm impressed by people who have discovered things and done things and, you know, creatives and things like that. Like, I get it. I understand Manhattan, where your real estate is, how big the real estate is. But, for people to, in otherwise intelligent people, to blow past their understanding of his crimes, 'cause that's what they were against miners. Wait, hold on, this means something. I know, let's just take the example of the person who's not there for the women, who's there for the money. Because a lot of people made a lot of money for their pet projects, their research projects, their technology projects. I mean, the list of people that's in there, it doesn't look to me like they were all with him so they could, you know, get access to women. They wanted money. And I think what he offered people was a sense of omnipotence. He has an island that's separate. It was like a level above the level that he offered other people. That turned out to be the level below everything else. And we're somehow shocked now that this happened. But I do think, from 2010, this was emphasizing me for from 2010 or so until he was eventually arrested again and was standing trial before he was killed. It's so obvious he was killed and didn't kill himself. He was trying to be a member of the scientific community. I mean, there are interviews in there. He had a staff, he hired people. The guy who he hired, you want something interesting? The guy who he hired to redo his web presence to kind of bury his sex offender status was a guy named Al Seckle. I know because he came from the science community. He wasn't a neuroscientist, kind of a failed scientist. He ended up marrying Galein Maxwell's sister. Guess what happened to Al Seckle in 2015? Found at the bottom of a cliff in France. No one knows what happened. Wild, right? The woman that eventually came out against Prince Andrew, right, Virginia Gufrey, said at some point, if I die, it's not suicide. And then, quote unquote, killed herself. There are a lot of people that apparently off themselves or allegedly off themselves around this. And one of them was the guy who was in charge of his rebrand, OK? So I completely agree with you. There were people that were-- They said different issues. It's a different issue. Which I do not disagree with you. No, no, I think these are guess-and. These are guess-and. Yeah, it very well could be that these deaths are legitimately suspicious, because a lot of people have a lot to hide from. But to the essential question, it's that no matter how big the big head is, there's some-- you're right, some of the smartest people in the world, no matter how big the big head is, it's the little head that is going to live. This is the oldest, maximum-about men in history. You're thinking with the wrong hand, and they will always do that. But to the point of-- But to the point of-- Is there-- the part that makes no sense to me is overlooking whatever, but not to the point of overlooking the fact that he was a pedophile. It wasn't that he was caught with a prosthesis. It's morals. You think they fucking care about morals? I guess I-- first of all, they were able to justify it, because when he came out of that, what they said, what they put out there, was that she was like six months below the legal age. That's what was online. But that's not true. OK, but that's enough for them to believe. Which is exactly the enough for them to tell themselves, I'm not really engaging with a true pedophile. How could they tell themselves that? I would argue it was his web presence, which was very orchestrated, right? To make him seem like a rich guy who had gotten into some trouble came back to you. He had people actively working to build that persona. I've spent some time with files, and I'll tell you, if his representation online had been closer to the reality, maybe I'm naive. But I like to think it would have been harder for him to pull so many people around him as layers of confusion. I would agree with that. OK, so we're in agreement. Yeah, we're in agreement. But what about the other folks around him like that visited his island that clearly do not fall into the category that you're talking about? I can't wrap my head around that. Like cool. Why, you know what I mean? I mean, Clinton, supposedly spent time with him. I mean, he's supposedly spent time with him, right? Whatever, think of him as well. But he's not a dweeb, right? No, but we're, let's say-- OK, all right, as long as we're coming up with examples, I mean, I've got to be really careful here. I just think some of the folks that sat down to dinners with him, right? Like, you couldn't pay me enough money to have a dinner with a guy where I had knowledge of that. Listen, I'm far from perfect. I'm not arguing them perfect. I'm not trying to draw a distinction. And sure, I have-- That one says you're perfect. Right. I certainly have-- I'm replete with no one. Actually, for years, no one has been saying it. For years, I said I'm replete with flaws. I don't like you. But I'm saying you're perfect. No one's saying you're perfect. But I just don't see a world where people who are otherwise intelligent don't have this issue with not being able to get laid as you refer to it are sitting down with somebody who's a convicted criminal for something like that. I mean, pedophiles get killed in prison. I mean, Epstein killed himself. We know that. But it's-- I mean, other criminals kill pedophiles. Do it, I explain it to you. I mean, if you don't want to get it, you-- No, no, I get it. I guess-- I guess maybe-- I'm telling you that is exactly what it is. All right. That is exactly the-- I trust your judgment. I'm telling you the urge in men like that, these dirty guys, who are like, I created eight big companies. You know, I've made $200 million last week, and no girl care. Some of these guys seem pretty happy, man. Except for the mud. Beautiful women, like some of the big tech giants are very happy. Yes, some of them-- You know, Zux seems happily married. I mean, Bezos is now happily married. I mean, you know, I mean-- Bezos is newly married, and I agree. Elon does-- it seems to have-- You know, he's got a lot of baby moments. Elon is on the e-mails. First, he totally denied it. And he's caught being a huge liar. That's who Elon is in the e-mails. He's caught being a huge liar who's said to the world, oh, yeah, he tried to get me on his island, and I was not interested. And then the e-mail says, when can I get there? What night is the wildest party? You didn't see that one? I missed that one. I missed that one. I guess we read different e-mails. Yes, we read different e-mails. Well, I mean, that's-- I was spending time trying to understand the trajectory of this as it relates to the academic and scientific community and his media presence. But people like that who have access to do anything tend to do it. My friend has this theory about shark soup. You're not supposed to have it. It's endangered the sharks, but they make soup. And it's not supposed to be really good. But you know what? I can get it. And other people can't. I thought you're PETA. You're PETA. I am not supporting this. I'm just saying people. That's what people-- the point is that it's forbidden fruit. So I-- and I'm a special person. So I'll indulge in that. But that's-- I'm saying the essence of this-- they think of themselves and they are. So special in this many other ways, and yet in this fundamental human need. I mean, not to always be picking on Bill Gates. But obviously, it was a sexless, passionless marriage at some point, maybe not in the beginning. Most marriages become that. I know horrible thing to say, but it's true. And at that point, men are just living lives of quiet desperation, you know? But men who cheat-- and I'm not condoning cheating. Or women who cheat. Certainly not, condoning cheating in either direction. They don't have to cheat with minors. No. I mean, that's the part that makes no fucking sense. I don't think these guys were cheating with minors. I think Epstein had the minors. I think he introduced them to women who were masseuses or-- You think he was blackmailing them and keeping files? That too, probably. Yes. There's this thing about the tiger with the camera eyes. Even if he didn't have it documented, they knew he knew. All right. Can I-- can I-- before we listen, can we have to close on this? We're going to close on this. No, I just want to say, I know. There's a lot of-- everybody wants you, because you bring a lot of writing. So it meant a lot to me that you would come here and I really appreciate it. - Oh, I'm delighted, I'm always here. - There's a million things I was wanting to ask you about my own health and health, but, you know, I-- - Well, I always learn from you, and seriously, I really enjoy our conversations. - Oh. - And-- - We'll come back any time. - I would love to. I'll tell you one thing about cannabis before we wrap. It's likely being rescheduled, or has been rescheduled to schedule three, which means, let's told this today, which means that now it can be explored more thoroughly for potential therapeutic use. - I've been exploring it for 45 years, and I'm telling you, it's fantastic. It doesn't, I mean, it's-- - Unless someone has a predisposition to psychosis, in which case, it can be very dangerous. - Oh, for fuck's sake, yes, unless, unless, unless. I mean, do you think smoking, like, a joint every few days is gonna really hurt me? I mean-- - You? - No. - The kid with a predisposition to schizophrenia? - Yes. - Okay, well, okay, I'll keep it away from him. (laughing) (upbeat music) - Oh my, all right, well, thank you. - Yes, you, oh. - Man, I got an education there. - I'm gonna-- - Oh, boy. - I'm gonna loosen you up, Andrew. Over the years. (laughing)