Andrew Huberman, Ph.D. (Part 2)

[music] Tetragramatine. [music] So I've talked a little bit in the past, although not much. I was part of a clinical trial for MDMA, so-called ecstasy. A lot of people don't realize this, but it's methylene dioxy-methymphetamine. It's a weird drug, because first of all, it's completely synthetic. It doesn't exist in-- When was it created, do you know? For the first time, I think it was created in like 1913 by Mercury or something like that. I'm probably at the date in the company wrong, but sometimes-- It's an old drug. Then it wasn't touched again, and then a guy named Sasha Shulgen and his wife, living in Berkeley, California, made it. Sasha and his wife would make compounds and give it to their friends all these therapists in the Bay Area. At a time when the Bay Area was still hit, there is cool, but it's not as adventurous as it used to be. Maybe there's a new generation, but-- So Shulgen would make these drugs, give them to his therapist friends. They would take them, and then they'd take notes. He actually wrote a book as the worst name of any book. It's called Peacall, P-I-K-H-A-L. "Fenal Ethel Amines I Have Known and Loved." "Dunnest Name Ever" for a book if you want people to read the book. In any case, MDMA, XC, is not a plant medicine. It's also not a psychedelic, but it's what's called an pathogen. And it has a very interesting property. What's an "empathogen"? An "empathogen" is a molecule that makes you feel more empathic for yourself or others, basically anything you focus on. This is the one-- well, there's several, but this is the one danger of MDMA, which is that unless you have someone to guide you, you can fall in love with water on MDMA. Is that bad? No, but it's the waste of some potentially more useful therapeutic time. You can really start to develop a relationship to anything you place your sensory focus on. So I think in general, used as a tool for PTSD, where you're developing empathy for yourself, or maybe even for your oppressor, that happens too, where people forgive themselves and others. It's a weird drug because it increases serotonin dramatically. And dopamine dramatically. Normally, when dopamine goes up, serotonin goes down. That actually was shown beautifully in a study this last year. Dopamine tends to make people very plans focused and focused on what they're going to do in access to why drugs that increase dopamine like methamphetamine and cocaine make people very-- like every idea is a good idea in their mind anyway. And serotonin tends to make people very happy with what they have right in that space. So it raises both simultaneous and very unusual. And I had good results from MDMA as a tool for PTSD. That was the first psychedelic you ever took. Well, no. It's not a psychedelic. In full disclosure, when I was in high school, I took and I don't recommend this. When I was in high school, I experimented with psychedelics and I did not have a good time and I stopped. It was really not a good experience. And for years, I was just almost disparaging. I was like, "Wow, we're going near this." But then a clinician and a clinical trial convinced me different. So I can summarize my experience with it by saying that it allowed me to forget people that I felt had wronged me. And it allowed me to understand and have more compassion for myself and to feel more completely like as a bodily experience off the compound. This is a compound that no one has bad experiences on. Is that true? You can have a bad-- well, people with heart conditions have to be careful because it raises blood pressure and heart rate pretty dramatically. You can't be taking it. It's not like a bad trip drug. It's hard to have a bad trip on ecstasy. And it's one of the reasons why it's a party drug. There have been some interesting things to clear up. Actually, it was a good opportunity to clear some things up. It was thought that it was neurotoxic that killed serotonin neurons. That was published in the journal Science, one of the premier journals. The same laboratory published that they had accidentally injected pure methamphetamine, not MDMA in those studies. And the study was retracted, but most people don't know that. So it does-- Very little evidence if any for neurotoxicity. Any? Very little evidence. Maybe not any except in rodents, and that evidence is weak. Okay. The real issue is, are people getting pure MDMA because a lot of times it's cut with methamphetamine, which is neurotoxin. And in addition to that, it does leave you feeling in a bit of a trough two or three days later, you feel a little low, and then you bounce back out of that. The interesting thing too, you'll find this is amusing crafts. Most people do, is that there have been studies of people that take either MDMA once, dozens of times or hundreds of times, and explore the effects. And it turns out, you find very few negative effects. The population study is super interesting. There are very few populations that you can study who've never done any drug besides MDMA. And the population that's done that, and not all of them, but the population that was used in this study, were Mormons. Wow. So the Mormons were open to doing-- It's not on the no-fly list, apparently. That's wild. It's wild. I learned that from Dr. Nolan Williams. He's a psychiatrist and neurologist from Stanford on my podcast. I looked up the papers, and indeed, these are people from the Church of Latter-day Saints. Never drink, never take drugs. Never drink, don't take drugs. They don't use caffeine because there are things that used in combination with MDMA that can make it neurotoxic. So alcohol and MDMA together. If people take-- sometimes people will take MDMA and go out dancing or something, and then they'll take another drug like ketamine and the combination can be very toxic or even deadly. So, you know, now there's fentanyl contamination, which is very deadly. So, it's interesting. For me, it really helped. It really helped. I'm so glad I participated in that trial. Things that were emotionally heavy just lifted. Or I can still feel something about it, but it doesn't feel like it sticks around as long. So it changed you? 100%. For the better. Yeah, I won't say it changed 100% of me, but-- No, no, no, but you're a different person than you were before, and it has benefited you. Absolutely. That's great. I wouldn't recommend kids do it, but in the right clinical hands, it's up for FDA approval soon. We'll see if it happens. It was up last year. It did not pass for two reasons. One, they didn't have a good control group. Like, there's not a good control drug. And the other is some people did some not ethical things during the guidance of patients. And, you know, you need to have a guide that knows what they're doing and where they're really benevolent. Because you're-- What does the guide do? The guide usually will sit there with you. In the best case, you're in an I-mask, and you're talking about what's coming up for you and what you're feeling. Why within I-mask? Because if you're not in the I-mask, you can fall in love with anything you look at. I don't mean you're fall-- like, romantically fall in love, but you would-- Let's say you were listening to-- Well, I'm now listening lately. You're the grateful dead a little bit. So let's say you're listening a grateful dead. I love that song, "Ripple." I could listen to that on repeat and just kind of enter into the song. Go into the song and you lose the opportunity to work through something. I see. Good therapeutic sessions with psychedelics or empathogens involved working through something hard. I see. Every single time it's been hard, but you feel enough support from the guide and from the medicine and the safety that you're in. You feel very safe on it. Do you tell them in advance what you hope to work through? Yeah. So all these trials are a range where you do at least two discussion sessions prior. Then you do the actual medicine with a guide, sometimes two guides present, while in the I'm ask. Sometimes you'll come out of the I'm ask, you use the restroom or something, they'll write something down, you go back in. And then afterwards, the integration piece is really good. When you walk around, when you take the I'm ask often, go to the bathroom. Do you feel high? Do you feel different? So at the peak of it, which is about 90 minutes in, they give you a booster. And then your pupils are as big as quarters and you are-- Like you can still function, you can still go to the bathroom and use the bathroom, but you could not drive a car. You wouldn't let someone get near your texts or your email. I mean, your ball asked it. You're in a very altered state. You're whole- All-Gride, the feeling of it. Your whole body feels like a tuning fork. That's reverberating. Is that a positive feeling or a negative feeling? Yeah. It's almost like waves of-- that's no doubt the serotonin. You can feel kind of waves of warmth and not too hot, not too cold, going through your body. If you have a thought, like let's say you were to think about someone you love, and you place some focus on it, that thought and the feeling would expand. And eventually, they would collide, kind of like in a lava lamp. And then the feeling would get even bigger than before. And then at some point, you would reach the natural endpoint of that thought. And emotion does reach its own natural endpoint. Yes. And so the guide is there to say, what are you thinking about? And you'd say, you know, it's crazy. I've lost so many-- it doesn't make any sense. Like why? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, all these kids-- like, we weren't in the military. We weren't in the air to the city. I mean, some of these kids-- and you'd start to feel empathic about how a lot of life is just luck, good and bad luck. You would-- start to feel into what an amazing thing it was to know these people. And you could understand life energy in a way like we're here, kind of like Steve Jobs said, right? You're like a rainbow and you have a chance to shine. And some people that arc is shorter. And you come to terms with things in that way. But here's the key thing. In a talk therapy session, you're describing something. And emotions might come up. But in an impatagen therapy session, you're feeling those feelings times 100. And you have the opportunity to work through the feelings in real time. Let me give you an example. At one point during the session, the clinician said, I'm going to go use the bathroom and get something to eat. And I'll bring back something to eat if you want. It tends to kill your appetite. You go in hungry. You're not eating for like a day and a half. Food's the last thing on your mind. And he stood up and left. And I remember that moment I felt the most profound sense of loneliness I've ever felt in my entire life. But like time's a thousand. Do you think it's because you feel like you're depending on this coach? I don't know. I think I just felt so alone. And then I remember thinking, this is a great opportunity. And I sat there and I thought, like loneliness, comes and it goes. And then I watched it grow and then move through. And I could feel the process of it moving through. And so the next time in real life-- it's still real life. But not on the impathogen, I would feel lonely. I think I could do this forever. I don't want to, but I could. Do you remember everything from the experience? Yes, although there are moments where it's important to write things down or for the other person, the right things down. There tends to be something to emerge thematically. I would say-- I'm not alone in this-- that there's always one major takeaway and maybe some micro takeaway. We have to remember that whether or not it's a data present or it's MDMA or it's psilocybin, the goal is plasticity. It's not necessarily the experience you have. And all of these compounds increase these neuromodulators. Neuromodulators are dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and epinephrine. Plasticity does that mean getting to feel the feeling? Yes. So inside of the session is like the flick of the first domino. But the plasticity actually occurs for weeks afterwards. So a very common experience-- I've had this experience-- is you have the session. You feel like you really get to some core conclusion. Like you really are able to feel differently. You're able to embrace grief. You're able to come to clarity about hard things and you're at peace with it. And then inevitably, two or three days or a week later, something happens and you get upset. And the first thought is always like, dammit. I thought I was better. But then you realize, wait, this is the opportunity. And you go back and you activate the same process without having to take the compound again. And you go, oh, so I would say it's like getting 1,000 repetitions of talk therapy in one session. Now, there are issues with it in the sense that you can't try and tackle too much in there. You're not going to tackle in the entire lifetime. And you also can't take it too often because it's depleting. I mean, that day is written off. The next day is written off. And there's also this big question, is the experience that you have on these drugs? Because that's what they are. Is that really the thing? Or is it what comes after? Now, there are a lot of people now trying to design psychedelics that don't create any of these odd experiences. So that's MDMA. Ketamine is also not a psychedelic. I've never done ketamine. How are they different? Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It makes you feel out of body. People who've talked to me about it say that it says, if you lift out of your body, you're looking down at yourself and you can see things, a good and bad. PCP and ketamine are very similar in structure and have a very similar function. Pencechelidine is, they both block the same receptor. We used to hear about PCP being this wild drug like in the '70s and '80s. Every other chips episode was like they were going after PCP dealers or something. Angel dust. Angel dust. Angel dust. And then the classic psychedelics are LSD and psilocybin. And I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a psilocybin trial. And I will say-- and this is high-dose psilocybin. So just to tell you what the research says, I've never microdosed. But the data on microdosing for depression are very unimpressive. The scientific data. People will counter that from their own experience. But that's what the data is. Not a whole lot of effect. psilocybin, chemically, looks a lot like serotonin. High-dose psilocybin. So we're talking two grams to four grams. Four grams is like, quote unquote, five is like heroic dose, this kind of level. Two grams is typically 2.5 is typically what's given clinically. Typically two sessions spaced by three weeks or so. Also therapy before therapy during therapy after. Do you take it orally? Yeah, it's usually ground up and you drink it. It tastes so awful to me. It's a very different experience than MDMA. The way that it was described by a psychiatrist friend of mine is that it recedes the water line on your unconscious mind so that you're down in your unconscious mind. And everything becomes symbols. You see things in symbols and feeling. So you might see an octopus. And its tentacles will reflect different forms of seduction, for instance. You can interact with it. And you know it's happening in your head, but there's a way in which it feels kind of movie-like. Sometimes people will have hallucinations with their eyes, or but typically it's with the eye and ask. I will say psilocybin for me personally terrifying. From start to finish, tearful demons, octopuses that want to eat me really, really challenging, scary, sad. Have you did it the first time? And you knew you were going to do it again in two weeks later where you're not looking forward to the second one? OK, so no, I was looking forward to it. And the reason is coming out of it. And then the day is following. You feel like you have much better understanding of things that are hard, and you feel light and clear. At least that was my experience. So in the moment of doing the drug, it was harrowing. And ask kicking. But after it, you felt like you got something from it. And it sticks. Wow. Even though it involves doing several sessions, I would say it was among the scarier experiences of my life. And I've done some things. I'm not the most-- I'm not Alex Honnold. But I did KJX that died with great white sharks. I left the cage. I did that with scary. psilocybin was way scarier, probably less dangerous, but way scarier. You need a guide with psilocybin. When I hear about people taking a couple of grams of mushrooms and taking a walk in the woods, I could never do that. In fact, the last time I said to the therapist, I said, I thought this was-- we were going to hang out and listen to the grateful dead. And she was like, no, no, not when you work with me. But it was really good work. And on the second time, I purged. I ended up feeling sick. And I thought it was perhaps from the psilocybin. And they encouraged me to vomit. And I was like, to get it out. And like, no, you're having a very strong bodily reaction to whatever you're thinking about. I'm like, I think it's the psilocybin. They're like, no. And it was interesting. I ended up purging. And I never threw up. I'm like, I hate throwing up. I've done it on a boat. I've done it like a couple times when I was a kid. I mean, I hate throwing up. And afterwards, twice, I have to say I was like, felt something came out of my body. So I will say I felt very good coming out of it. No, I do want to emphasize again, these are clinical trials that where they're recruiting people either with major depression, not major depression. And you can end up in the control group, right? I wasn't. And I have to say after this last time, I don't want to do it again. And that's not because it was so terrible. It was because I don't feel like-- I don't know what it is. I don't feel like there's any new lessons there. After the first one, I felt like in my mind, I was telling myself there's 15% more work to do. I don't know why 15%. The second time I went in, and I felt that kind of the heaviness coming in at the beginning. And I thought, I don't want to do this. And then I heard it sort of is like you want to do this today. You want to do this another time. I was going to get this over with. And I think people need to understand that the reason these compounds, if they work, work, is because they dramatically increase the levels of these neuromodulators. That opens up plastic-- What kind of modularity? --in particular serotonin. I see. --and that allows for plasticity. Remember, all recovery from depression or PTSD is about plasticity. And so the question is a very fundamental question in mental health, really. And in the psychedelic world and in being human, which is, is the psychedelic experience necessary to get the plasticity? I think there's so much learning that occurs in those states because they're so heightened. But I will say-- and I'm not saying this is like a public disclaimer, but it's true, people with a pre-disposition of psychosis, schizophrenia or with bipolar issues, should not be taking psilocybin, LSD, MD. And I don't know about ketamine, but probably not that either. I don't know what the deal is there, because there have been instances where people have taken these compounds, and it has triggered psychotic episodes that don't resolve or don't resolve quickly. And I could never imagine being in that state for longer than the four to six hours that it occurs. But I will say super powerful, and I feel grateful that I was able to participate. Is there any reason to ever combine any of these drugs? Paulie pharmacology, as they say, always exists. Well, interesting point before I answer that. So Robin Cardard Harris at UCSF is really like one of the world's experts on all this psychedelic research stuff. And I asked him, why are there so few studies of LSD, modern studies, and the answer is really funny. He said, well, they study it a bit in Switzerland. But in the United States, no one wants to stay that long with the person, because it takes like 13 hours, and that's a long day in the lab. Silicide, but it's like four to eight hours. In Switzerland, they're willing to work over time. They get paid really well for over time. So this shows the practicalities of science. Yeah, so the combination of the two is kind of interesting. I mean, this obviously has to be done in a medically safe way, because of the increase in blood pressure that comes from both compounds. So that's serious. But the MDMA psilocybin combination is being looked at because the MDMA is thought to take away some of the scariness of the psilocybin, literally to create a sense of safety and comfort. And MDMA, because it's not a classic psychedelic, because it's an empathogen, may not have as potent effect on brain plasticity as psilocybin. I mean, the studies on psilocybin and major depression are super impressive in my mind. I mean, some people go into complete remission from major depression. Wow. Likewise, for the studies of MDMA and PTSD, something like roughly 60% of people get significant relief and many go into complete remission. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. Those are incredible numbers. Incredible numbers. And we're talking multiple clinical trials. And then, of course, a clinical trial will come along, which says, well, there wasn't a significant effect compared to SSRIs. Keep in mind, SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptaken nibbriers are designed to increase serotonin to get you plasticity. No one ever thought that depression was because of too little serotonin. The idea was always to create plasticity. The problem is if people just take a compound and they don't do the intense work to have the plasticity be in a certain direction. Because of the endemic thing. You can't expect anything that happened. It could make it worse. Because too much serotonin without a directed plasticity can lead to a sort of apathetic state, which is what a lot of people report on high doses of SSRIs. They lose their libido. They lose their appetite. They lose their drive. And then the other compounds that increase dopamine, very dramatically, and noripinephrine, like cocaine and amphetamine. Those are highly addictive. And yet drugs like Adderol, which is basically amphetamine, it is amphetamine. And a generation of kids that was raised on them. Not that it doesn't have its place, but anyway. The MDMA is a lab-made thing and the psilocybin is a natural material. Is there any difference in that way between natural and chemical? I personally can feel the difference. I mean, they're different compounds. It's a little tricky to answer in a straightforward way. But this gets to this larger thing about plants and plant medicine. I had a guest on the podcast, Chris McCurdy, who's an expert in plant alkaloids. And he studies Cratum, the leaf. And he said, "You know, the Cratum leaf in Indonesia is used and creates a pretty balanced stimulation and relaxation. In the US, they create Cratum products, which they take the Cratum leaf, isolate it, or create synthetic Cratum, and it doesn't have any of the other plant alkaloids that balance it out." And as a consequence, it's almost as addictive as a lot of opioids. And this is why it's so controversial because people will use Cratum to get off traditional opioids. But then people also go Cratum, isn't it? Yeah, it's in that feel-free little blue bottle, that little energy drink. People are also getting addicted to that. So now the new administration is trying to limit the use of Cratum products and Cratum synthetics. And the new administration is trying to limit the use of Cratum, which is a very, very interesting thing. And so, I think it's a very interesting thing. And I think it's a very interesting thing. The idea is that the balance between the alkaloids and the stimulation of the serotonin release, I mean, it is serotonin, very closely structured to serotonin, the psilocybin itself, is different than like synthetic psilocybin. You do get the subjective experience that it's kind of earthy, like you hallucinate for sure, inside of the eye mask, especially when your eyes are closed. The things that you see tend to be often they're geometric and things like that, but they tend to have a kind of organic quality, whereas MDMA, because it's not a hallucinogen, nor is it a psychedelic, it's more of an impathogen, is more of a feeling of kind of warmth and electricity in the body. And yeah, it feels a little synthetic. It feels like you're a little bit plugged into a lava lamp. I mean, no one complains about the feeling, but it does not feel like a plant medicine. And I should say, for thoroughness, I've never tried ayahuasca. I know a lot of people have that one. Ayahuasca kind of frightens me for reasons I don't quite understand. Nor have I tried IBegaine, which is the one that's gaining a lot of favor now, and will probably be leading the label. What is IBegaine? IBegaine is Iboga. It's a 22-hour-long psychedelic experience, where with your eyes open, you see normally. Eyes closed, you get, I'm told. Everyone who's taken this that I know tells me the same thing. You get high-definition movie-like images of past experiences. Wow. But you have agency inside of those movies, and then they switch like a cube from one slide to the next. That's why. Former Governor Rick Perry down in Texas, staunch Republican, has been a big proponent of IBegaine therapy. He's done it. Really? Yeah. For people who have challenges giving up alcohol or opioids, who do IBegaine, and you need to be heart rate monitored because it has some heart issues, etc. They, number of people that never touch alcohol or opioids again after using IBegaine is really striking. Really? Yeah, and it's super impressive. Wow. And the studies are being done by Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford. He's been imaging these veterans. It's illegal. You have to go out of country to do it. All these things are illegal, by the way. I should say, MDMA is still schedule one. Still, still, still schedule one. IBegaine is still schedule one. But it's very likely that all three of those will be moved to schedule two soon, which means has some potential medical application. Based on all the testing and the positive results. Yeah. Yeah. I think the only reason MDMA didn't make the cut last year with the FDA is that there was this impropriety at one of the, you know, it's very important at the beginning of a session. That the person working with you say the words, there will be nothing sexual. There will be no violence. Those two things cannot exist in the session. I mean, it shouldn't exist in any therapy, but it's, you know, especially under conditions where somebody's like, couldn't even run out of the room. Right? So unfortunately, there were some things that happened in one of the trials that shouldn't have happened. And now it looks like it will be looked at again and chances are it will pass. [Music] LMNT. Element electrolytes. Have you ever felt dehydrated after an intense workout or a long day in the sun? You want to maximize your endurance and feel your best? Add element electrolytes to your daily routine. Perform better and sleep deeper. Improve your cognitive function. Experience an increase in steady energy with fewer headaches and fewer muscle cramps. Drink it in the sauna. Refreshing flavors include grapefruit, citrus, watermelon and chocolate salt. 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So a line on the mat, breathing, body scan, some intentions, etc. And I found it to be remarkable because it seemed to recover the sleep that I wasn't getting the night before because it was jet lag and it was a stressful time and it was hard to sleep and it was humid down there in Florida and I did not participate and I would have said if I did, Ryan runs a drug and alcohol recovery center down there with very high success rates where other people can't seem to get sober. They can get sober there. And they would do Nidra with them. Had you ever done guided meditation before that? A little bit. I read when I was 16, I was 14, excuse me, I was given the book, wherever you go there you are. So I'd done some of the junk about Zin stuff, not formally guided. No spirit rock experiences or anything. I love that book. Yeah, I love beautiful book. What a great book. Beautifully written, beautiful paper, beautiful. Yeah. I still think about the mountain meditation a lot. So when I left, I thought, this Nidra thing is really amazing. And I asked Ryan about it. And he said, "Yeah, you could do it for 30 minutes." And he put me in touch with some of these apps and recordings from comedy to sigh, who has a beautiful voice. I really liked her voice. And I would do Nidra for like 30 minutes a day. And then about a year into doing the podcast, I realized that I wanted people to understand and appreciate Nidra. But I was challenged by the language people think it involves movement. And because I was in tensions in some mystical language, that's kind of a separator. So I took the risk of creating some Yoganager scripts that don't have intentions or mystical language that are 10 minutes, 20 minutes, or 30 minutes. And I called it non-sleep deep rest. Which is what it is. Which is what it is. And those got many millions of views and lessons and have done very well. Again, there's zero cost. I did catch some heat from the Yoganager community about cultural appropriation of thousands of years old things. And I always come back saying the same thing, which is I have tremendous respect for Nidra. I do think that the mystical language and the intentions serve as a separator. And my goal is just for people to use these incredible tools. So Nidra to me can be summarized the following way. It replenishes mental and physical vigor. Unlike a nap, it doesn't create sleep inertia. So you don't emerge from it. Groggy, you emerge energized. And unlike a nap, it helps you get better at sleeping as opposed to disrupting your sleep. Naps really mess up sleep, especially if they're too late in the day or too long. Nidra does the opposite. So I've been doing Nidra, did it this morning. I do, yeah, basically 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, usually first thing in the day, or in the afternoon. And in the hardest, most stressful times of my life, I can confidently say that Nidra saved me. Wow. Because if you're going through a stressful time, that cortisol spike is going to come in the middle of the night, you're going to wake up and you're going to have a hard time falling back asleep. And the sleep deprivation makes everything worse. And Nidra, while not the same as sleep, really lets you deeply relax. And it's a beautiful skill. To me, it's as important as physical exercise. I love Nidra. I love NSDR. You know, I sound like people usually say this about psychedelics, but I'll say it about Yoganidra NSDR. I think that if everyone did Yoganidra NSDR, the world will be a much better place. Yeah. Because people would be so much more peaceful with themselves. Yeah. It's a guided meditation. It's meditating without needing to learn to meditate. Yeah. It provides just enough to listen to that you don't have to work hard to focus. And also deliberately trying to fall asleep is really tough. But trying to stay awake while relaxed is perfect for somebody who's a little stressed out or just wants to relax. Tell me about caffeine. Love caffeine. I have a very high caffeine tolerance. I drink so much caffeine, man. But then again, I can show you a picture of me at three years old in my Spider-Man pajamas on my grandfather's lap, drinking your bimata, which is a lot of caffeine. Caffeine increases the number of dopamine receptors you have. So, your dopamine goes further. That's good. Caffeine doesn't raise cortisol, but it extends the duration of it. It increases mental clarity and physical vigor. It sharpens your focus. As long as you don't drink it too late in the day, doesn't mess up your sleep. It is a little bit of an appetite suppressant, especially if it's maté, but even coffee. You can think of very few reasons not to drink caffeine if you're an adult, and you don't drink too much of it. I mean, I love caffeine. I think caffeine is one of the best interventions. And again, it's plant medicine. I mean, if you're taking synthetic caffeine pills, which I don't do, it's one thing. If you're getting it from maté or getting it from coffee, I mean, you're getting it from some chocolate. Green tea. Or green tea. Like, it's a plant medicine. 90% of the adult population of the world consumes caffeine every day. In fact, I think Michael Paulin did a book about caffeine where he came off caffeine. I would say, "The experiment I never intended to try." And he said, "Caffeine is one of the few drugs that we take just to feel normal." But I'll never forget my first cup of black coffee. I think I was probably like 13, 14. My friend Jim Thibault, he ran the meal skateboard. This guy's Steve Rue, he was a team manager for Spitfire. They gave me a cup of black coffee and a styrofoam cup. I drank it. And I was like, "Ooh." I love this. It was like this element to feel. You know, some people drink alcohol and say that. I don't feel that way when I drink alcohol. I don't drink alcohol anymore. It's easy to quit for me. I don't know, it's like Benagius. I'm just done like it, but caffeine. Oh, man. Like, "Hey, dad's the gear is turning." I love it. Oh, and it helps with bowel motility, which provided it's not too much as good. You want things moving through. Tell me about nicotine. Nicotine doesn't cause cancer. Smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing causes cancer. But the nicotine compounds, very interesting compound. Technically, it's a stimulant. But it also relaxes you at the same time. That's an interesting combination. Very interesting combination. Unlike any other stimulant. Well, it works by increasing acetylcholine, another neuromodulator, increases. So it increases focus. Probably can help with plasticity, too. Because acetylcholine do anything in particular that others don't. Increases focus. And what it does. And it provides a window into neuroplasticity. You know, nicotine is known to be neuroprotective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The problem is most people smoked to get it, and that is worse than not smoking. Yeah, so the delivery method of the nicotine, if it's smoking, the smoking is the part that's toxic. That's right. Or vaping. Yeah. The nicotine is the part that's good. That's right. So the one thing about nicotine, people need to be aware of two things. One, it increases blood pressure. So if you have eye blood pressure, that's an issue. The other is that it is very habit for me. In a way that caffeine is also habit for me. Most people who start continue. Some people who start soon are taking a lot. I know people that instead of taking one or two pouches of nicotine, they start with one or two, and pretty soon they're taking a canister day. Which for me would be unheard of. The other thing is it will make your voice a little bit more raspy, even if you're not smoking. Because it will stimulate what's called the musk-renic receptors and that there are a bunch of muscles in your throat that have receptors for the nicotine. And when you're not using it, sometimes you'll feel like your voice is a little bit horse. And then you take it more nicotine and it tends to smooth it out. These drugs are very diabolical. There've been cool studies. Get this. You'll find this interesting with done with caffeine and with nicotine, where they give bees the option to go to different types of flowers, where they also get caffeine or nicotine. And basically all animals will work to get a caffeine or nicotine sensation. I want to say buzz, but that's like a wee bad pun. So these things are very reinforcing in nature, in lots of species. We're not the only species that likes these things. What have you learned about peptides? Oh man, peptides are super cool. Peptides are a little short chains of amino acids, so insulin is a peptide. There are a lot of peptides that you make naturally. When we talk about peptides, we're generally talking about things that you take. I mean, the one that's super popular right now is all the genes. GLP1s, the Monjarro and those M-Pick and stuff. And people are now starting to microdose those because microdosing those seems to allow people to avoid some of the gastric distress inside effects. And it's a lot cheaper to microdose them than to take the full dose. That said, some of those compounds have helped people who really struggled with their weight lose a lot of weight, but they lose muscle too, so they need to exercise. I've never tried Monjarro or any GLP1 peptides. The peptides that I've experimented with, I'll tell you one that I tried that did not work well for me, which is Sir Morellin, which is a growth hormone secretedog you take it before sleep, it increases your deep sleep, and it makes you release more growth hormone. It spiked my prostate specific antigen really dramatically, so I stopped after a very short while. But there's another one called Tessamorellin that seems to work very well, that doesn't do that. - What does that one do? - It also increases growth hormone. One thing I've noticed though, and the reason I don't use any of these things regularly, is that Tessamorellin increases my slow-wave deep sleep dramatically, but it tends to nuke my REM sleep at the end of the night. There's a great peptide that I'm a huge fan of, called pinealin, which is thought to replenish the pinealocytes that make melatonin, which tended to pleat as we age. That will dramatically increase REM sleep, and sometimes I'm getting up to two and a half hours of REM sleep. I don't use it every night. Many people think you need to use every night. I think you can pulse with it every once in a while for a couple of nights, and you still see the effect. So that's pretty cool. And then the other peptides I think you're interested in is BPC-157 does seem to anecdotally increase wound healing time and recovery from exercise is a pretty powerful anti-inflammatory. Still, there are mostly animal studies, very few human studies, but it's a peptide normally made by the gut that's involved in healing. Years ago, like in World War I, if somebody had fingers cut off or blown off, or they would put it in somebody's gut to keep the tissue alive. Yeah, I know, right? It's warm and you know, wow. Yeah, wild, right? Yeah, talk to surgeons sometimes about some of the crazy stuff that used to be done, and you find it underlying mechanistic logic. So maybe BPC is involved there. Well, I think some of the more interesting peptides coming out are things like SS31 to improve mitochondrial function. There's something called SLU, which I haven't tried, which is a fat loss peptide. Fymus and alpha, people will take to improve immune system function. And then there's one, which also I've never tried, which is GKU copper, which is in the longevity space, epithelan to repair the DNA and cells. So stuff's getting pretty sophisticated. You're not going to find a lot of really good clinical trials on these, so a lot of it is just kind of anecdotal. But I think BPC157 provided you're willing to be experimental and you know that there aren't great clinical trials. And you can get real BPC is very interesting for people recovering from an injury. I think that for people that want growth hormone enhancement, I think Tesla Morellin, as long as you're willing to cycle it for about eight weeks on a month off, I think Tesla Morellin taken before sleep on an, you know, not having eaten for a couple hours, is probably a safer way to increase growth hormone as compared to taking growth hormone. And a lot less expensive growth hormones, like $1,500 a month. And these other things are a little little bit more subtle and certainly more affordable. But none of them are really like steroids or they're not hyper performance enhancers. They're stronger than most supplements, but they're not like a full press on the gas pedal. They're more of a nudge. - If you ever take any of their branch chain amino acids or natural amino acids. - Yeah, despite the literature saying that branch chain amino acids are not useful after exercise, I find that I recover more quickly. So I'll take essential amino acids or branch chain amino acids. - What's the difference between them, do you know? - It's just the ratios of things like losing that the different ones. I think what you really want is losing after you train. So I'll take a scoop of branch chain amino acid or essential amino acid with like some water in an element packet after I train. But then I also, after resistance training is when I'll typically have some rice or some oatmeal or some bread replenish like a gin, some fruit, usually a lot of fruit. And then I'll have like a protein shake and then some protein. Like after a resistance train, I'm pretty darn hungry. I might not eat right away, but the next meal tends to last a while and it's got, I'm just trying to get as much stuff in there as possible to replenish and recover. In general, I eat meat, fish, eggs, cheese, fruits and vegetables and not a lot of starches. But especially in the U.S., where the starches seem like filled with crap. But if I have starches, it's like rice, good sourdough bread or rye bread, good, not out of a plastic bag, usually from a bakery. Definitely from a bakery. Maybe some oatmeal. And that tends to come after training when you're replenishing your glycogen. The branch chain amino acids are also great. Like if you're going to sleep in an hour and you don't want to eat something, but you worked out hard that day, maybe take some before sleep, just to have a few more circulating while you sleep. But I'm not super strict about this stuff anymore. I eat so clean and I have for so long, like I don't tend to eat breakfast. You know, sometimes at 9 a.m., or usually around 11 a.m., I'm like, have my first meal or protein shake or something like that. I think that over time, you learn that as long as you're getting enough protein, enough fruits and vegetables to get that fiber, because I do think fiber is important. And I think the low sugar fermented foods, like the sourcrout, the kimchi, the key for the nahto, the kombucha, that stuff. As long as it's low sugar and it needs to be refrigerated, that stuff is awesome. Like the more you can support, you get microbiome, the better you feel. I've just see that and every time. And people sometimes tease me about it, but I've been taking legitimately, been taking AG1 once or twice a day since 2012. That's why people come at me all day, but I love that stuff. And when I travel, I'll do three or four packets a day. And I feel great and feel great. - In a world of artificial highs and harsh stimulants, there is something different. Something clean, something precise. Athletic nicotine, not the primitive products found behind convenience store counters, not the aggressive buzz that leaves you jittery, but a careful calibration of clean energy and focused clarity. Athletic nicotine, the lowest dose to back-o-free nicotine available, made entirely in the USA. No artificial sweetness, just pure, purposeful elevation. Athletic nicotine is a performance new topic. Athletic nicotine is a tool for shifting mindsets. Athletic nicotine is a partner in pursuit of excellence. Slow release, low dose, gradual lift, sustained energy, soft landing, inspired results. Athletic nicotine, more focus, less static. Athletic nicotine, more clarity, less noise. Athletic nicotine, more accuracy, less anxiety. Athletic nicotine, from top athletes pushing their limits to artists pursuing their vision. 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I think that engineers are really good at building tools. They're not so good at asking the best questions. You know, but that's why they have friends that are neuroscientists and psychologists. They're really good at asking questions. And then all the viral technologies, I'm not talking about to treat humans, I'm talking about, I mean, that's a separate issue that the viral technology is to like introduce genes into experiments, like gene therapies, incredible. - Do the engineers come up with the idea and then the neurologist figure out how to use it or do the neurologists ask the engineers for what they need? - Typically it's the latter. I get Stanford, which is a very, very strong engineering school. The engineers are made aware that like in Parkinson's, there's this brain area and these neurons tend to deplete. And if you could just stimulate these three brain areas at this level non-invasively and updated according to how the activity patterns change, they tend to collaborate in that way. I mean, Eddie Chang is also a bioengineer. Me get these polymass that are good at that. But in general, the engineers are really good at building stuff for which someone else knows the specific goal. Like neural link is also taking on the challenge of neural augmentation, but they're also mostly clinical right now, trying to cure blindness, paralysis, et cetera. - What do you thoughts on spiritual? practice. It's hard to emphasize how important that is for my life now. I mean, I always secretly prayed secretly because it wasn't cool or no. I think secretly because as a scientist, we were taught that stuff in spirituality is incompatible. I think over time, I just allowed myself to lean into prayer more and more. I grew up in a split religion home. People had divergent feelings about religion and which religions and it was a whole thing. Was it friction? Not outright, but I think that they were. I could clearly detect a divergence in the value system. One person felt religion and belief in God was so fundamental and the other did not feel that way. And feelings about the value systems for different religions and how those didn't were incompatible. And because my parents divorced and remarried and we now have a really extensive family with adopt kids and all this stuff that not mine, but what ended up happening was we ended up with a very international, very multi-racial, very multi-religious family, which is cool because more of a fey. And then I have a security guy that works with me. His former tier one operator. He's also a friend named Eddie Penny, who's a really incredible human. He was on Sean Ryan's podcast and he's somewhat public-facing as talked about his experiences with faith in Jesus and getting sober and getting over some of the challenging things he experienced in his work and life. And he was the only guy that got me reading the Bible. And he didn't enforce me due to it. He just wasn't even nudging me. He just kind of inspired me. And the more I learn, this also raised some people's cortisol, but I kind of don't think about it because for me, the more I learn about Christianity and Judaism. And the more Muslim people I get to know and the more that I pray and the more that I read the Bible, I'm reading both New Testament and Old Testament. The more that I'm just amazed that I made it this far without it, to the point where I'm like, I don't know who or what was looking out for me. I think I have a feeling, but I just can't believe I made this far because I think that inside the human brain, we have the capacity to go so many different directions. I don't care how good somebody is. There's this, it's not about the battle between good and evil in our heads. It's that life is so confusing. And then there are these road maps that come from science or that come from parenting or that come from how to be fit, how to eat, how to vote, how to, you know, like all this stuff. And as you've said before, Rick, you know, it's like so much of it is man made. Humans made this stuff up. And humans are fallible. And humans have blind spots. It's part of being fallible. And humans are out of touch with their unconscious mind. That's why we call it an unconscious mind. And no matter how striving somebody is, you can't keep all that in clarity. And I feel like the Bible explains this. It one arrives to those readings with all of that understood. And so what comes back to you are just things that you can really trust, at least to explore. And I'll just say that the practice of prayer has completely transformed my life in in ways that yes, yoga, needra, yes, exercise and eating right. Yes, amazing friendship. Yes, getting a PhD in neuroscience. Yes, the pop. But they're not even on the same scale. I pray every night before I go to sleep. If I fall asleep first, I get up out of bed at some point to use the bathroom. And after I use the bathroom, I get on my knees and I pray every single night. And it's become an act of discipline for me. Just sure there are nights when I don't want to do it. I'm telling you that every single night without fail. And I'll tell you, I pray for others, I pray for clarity. I rarely pray for things for me, but for clarity and for others. And I'm always positively amazed at what comes out of those prayer practices. I'm just grateful to Eddie. And I'm just going to keep doing it. Yeah, it's amazing that such a great resource is so totally discounted. Well, I think people assume that if you pray, it somehow means that you don't believe in reality, which just like makes no sense. And if you understand a little, just a smidge about the human brain or even just a visual system, like we can't see tons of what's out there that other animals literally can see. We can't hear tons of what's out there. If people go, "Well, okay, that's your eyes. That's your ears." What I'm saying is that our nervous system, which govern, that's our filter. Of course, there are things that we can't see. It makes perfect sense. Even my father, who you know, we talked about this a little bit on the podcast when he came on, I said, "You know, I believe in God. I really do." And he said, "Well, as a theoretical physicist, I can tell you that quantum mechanics is very hard for the human brain to comprehend, but I do, I know it's real." And he said, "And I know that there are things in the universe that we can't comprehend with our logical mind, but that have to be real. We know this." And we started talking about the various scientists who were brilliant, who believed in God. And I just don't see how it doesn't work. I'm just grateful that I came to the clarity that forming a relationship with God was important and makes sense. And I think that it sucks when you see people using religion to divide. That sucks. Like, it sucks. It's not what it's about. I also feel very loved and comforted by God. I feel encouraged. Congratulations to good discovery. Yeah. I'm glad you have that. Yeah. Yeah, that's the big one. More than any of the other stuff we talked about. That's amazing. Yeah. Because life is a lot to bear, even with the best people and the best circumstances. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to try and encourage anyone to do anything or believe anything I never would. But I will say that if people have a kind of that little voice in their head, like, yeah, like I want to believe or I think there's something there. Like, you know, don't be afraid to pull on that thread a little bit. Sometimes it's just like pulling on that thread and listening to what comes back. He's got you, you know. How have the people that you know from your old academic life seared, newfound mainstream connection to the world? Oh, man. Well, God bless Eddie Chang, our friend, the chair of neurosurgery. I can't believe I've known him since I was seven. So a little Eddie is now he's taller than I am. He's like, probably like six, two. God bless Eddie Chang, chair of neurosurgery. And now, number of the national Academy of Sciences of USA, one of only three neurosurgeons in the history of neurosurgery to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This is no small feat. God bless him because he's as good a scientist as a physician as there is. He's legendary among neurosurgeons, legendary. And he's been a great person to touch base with. And me asked, Hey, like, what do you think of the messaging here? His wife wrote to me recently and said, just want to thank you 80% of his daily practices besides brain surgery are from the podcast. And I said, we have to understand that for me, Eddie represents, he's like the Michael Jordan of our field. So I'm just, I feel lucky to know him much less than he's my friend. He's been great. Others have been great. Many have been great. Many have been on my podcast. Mike Eisenberg, Stanford, Jeff Goldberg, like so many people have been amazing. And then of course, there are those that I think don't like the podcast either because they wish that they were talking about this stuff. Or I think for many people in academia, not all, but I think for many people in academia, the ability to keep it shrouded by language. And with awards and things, it was a way of maintaining prestige that falls away when someone is like talking about it out there. When when people can really understand what you do, it either makes what you do seem really, really cool. Or kind of like, oh, cool. Demystifies it. Demystifies it. Mistake, you know, my friends who, I have a number of friends who were in what they call tier one special operation. So these are like, the guys have to be ready on 24 hours notice they do super dangerous, super complicated stuff. And they'll tell you that, you know, a lot of the movies about special operations, seals and green braze and stuff that happened in the 2000s, one of the reasons that was complicated is it eroded some of the mystique. You know, prior to that, these were people who showed up in the middle of the night, did stuff and disappeared. And we didn't even really know they existed. That's right. Until that image of Obama and the other officials, I think it was Obama and Hillary and a few other people in that room on the night where they got bin Laden. Until then, the whole thing about seal team six was very cloaked. Some people knew about it. There's a book about it, Rogue Warrior and stuff, but people didn't really talk about it. After that, there was just a rash of these movies and those guys still doing incredible things, obviously. But what I've been told is that those movies actually made their job harder. Because before that, the mystique carries so much from the perspective of their enemies, from the perspective of the American public. We're not really supposed to know about that stuff. And so for scientists, a lot of it is supposed to be like this magic that no one can understand. And I think that the pandemic was really when the reputations of scientists as valuable. Like they're not perfect. They make mistakes. That really became public knowledge. That these are people making decisions. And that's the scientific process, well-- It became public knowledge, but I don't think it was admitted. No. No, no, no, no, no. To this day-- and this is a big part of Jay Barcharya's charter with the NIH-- to this day, I have close friends who are strong believers in science. These are people that, without question, took the vaccine. These are people that, without question, are huge believers in science and the scientific process. They tell me that until NIH apologizes for some of the messaging during the pandemic, that they don't want to see another dime spent on science, these are people who use the practices. These are not anti-vaxxers. So I'm sure there are some of those, too. But these are people who are like science tech junkies and they're angry. At first, I thought, wait, how can this be? And they're like, it's because ultimately, it's about honesty. It's about disclosure. They feel like they're being made fools of. Right. They either feel like they were tricked. And listen, to be totally fair. Many of them feel that they made the right decision in following what the CDC or whatever said. But they don't like the way that it was implemented. And I feel like the scientific community doesn't understand this yet because it always gets couched as you either believed in masks, lock downs, and vaccines are you didn't. But that's the more important crowd right now to really convince are the people who just don't trust science and government as institutions. That's where the real chasm is. And no one's talking about this. It always gets couched around the issue of masks or vaccines or lock downs. And that's stuff super important to discuss. But the scientific community still hasn't realized why people are angry. It's not because they don't believe in science. It's because Americans don't like to be told what to do. We do not like it when the government interferes with our plans. Americans hate that. They hate it. And you had this community of people who just wouldn't message things in a way that made sense to a huge number of people, even the people who are super into vaccines. So it's interesting. And I think Jay understands this. And so he's very sensitive to this. I don't because he used on my podcast and we talk from time to time. And I think he really does want to unify people around this because we need science. But we also need the discourse around science to be grounded in what it really is, what we really know, and what we don't know. And I actually think if you tell people what we know and what we don't know, they're still going to make the same choices or similar choices. But people can feel authenticity. And people can feel lack of authenticity. So much of today's life happens on the wind. Squarespace is your home base for building your dream presence in an online world. Designing a website is easy, using one of Squarespace's best in-class templates. 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A great teacher is somebody that obviously has mastery of the material and can explain it clearly, but who also delights in the material as if they were a novice learning it for the first time while they're teaching it. So enthusiasm. It's enthusiasm, but I saw this. There was a course that I directed at Stanford for the medical students for a number of years called NBO206, which is neurobiology for medical students. And it was team taught. So I would do neural development. And I would talk about the biophysics of the neuron and someone else would talk about some aspects of biophysics of the neuron, vision, and hearing, and all the stuff. And these were the best people for these subjects. And yet I would say about half of them would give lectures that were truly transformative. Like Annelemki came in, this is how I got to know Anna, the author of dopamine nation. And she started talking about addiction and explaining it. And it was like, she obviously has tremendous command of the material, this is her career. But then there were these moments where it's almost like, she's realizing that the dopamine pathway involves pain and pleasure. So you're feeling her love of it while she's teaching it to you clearly. The best teachers are both teachers and students right alongside you. Best teacher you've ever had. Okay, best lecture of research materials, a guy named Eric Nidson, who studied brain plasticity. For reasons I still don't understand, he's my colleague at Stanford, he's retired now. For reasons I don't understand, still the best lecture he takes you someplace else. He's this really tall, kind of Swedish, Paul Newman looking surfer guy. Went to UC Santa Barbara, super mellow, plays volleyball, each volleyball, kind of strides around. And then when he lectures, everything is so precise, no extra words, no extra language. And you walk out of those lectures and you're like, brain plasticity is the coolest thing ever and that's the coolest lecture I ever heard. And I've heard him lecture 50 times and every single time I'm blown away. Best teacher, Harry Carlisle, UC Santa Barbara, teaching me the physiology of the neuron, neurotransmitters, mental disease, what it is. He was the first person to tell me a whole class of us. Like, schizophrenia is probably a disruption in these neural circuits. It's not from bad parenting, you know? Or depression is probably a combination of things we don't quite understand and relate to, or transmitters. And but he used to do this thing where he would, if he was explaining Parkinson's, he would shuffle. He would kind of act out the things where if he was explaining a seizure, he would shake. So he would physically embody the things he was teaching. And if he was just made it more clear. Yeah, made it more clear, and it provided this like, this visceral sense of what it was. If he was teaching like biophysics of the neuron, which frankly is pretty dry, unless you think about biophysics of neurons and that's really, really cool about sodium ions, rushing in and stuff, and he would use sound effects. But he didn't do it to be theatrical. Sound effects he made with his mouth? Yeah, he'd go, (imitates sound) where he'd say, "Geez!" You know, and so, unlike so many online lectures, he wasn't trying to impress us. He was not trying to impress us. And he was like I said, he was this kind of a mellow, quaker guy who had been in the Navy. He was punk. I worked in his lab. He would drink coffee, and he would smoke cigarettes in the lab, and he would light the cigarettes in the Bunsen burner. In the fume hood, and they'd come down the hall, and they'd yell at him, and they'd be like, "Harry, you can't smoke here." And he would just, "Mm-hmm." And then he would go right back to doing it. He would go right back to doing it. He was super cool. But he was not trying to impress us when he taught. Yeah. He was purely focused on us understanding how awesome the biology was. And when it came to the mental health stuff, for some reason I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues. We had this guy in our town, they called him the sheep man. He had like a sheep'skin vest, and he was schizophrenic, clearly, and he always covered his ears and stuff. And my mom, who's a very compassionate person, who needs to pull over and give him stuff. I found out years later, by the way, just give you a sense of who my mom is, that she'd been housing a number of the different, almost people in Palo Alto in hotels for years, without telling anyone, without telling any of us. So I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues, and Harry had that sensitivity too. This is why, you know, when he killed himself, it was like, This guy lectured about depression. Like, it's going on here. But yeah, he was a phenomenal teacher. And my dad to this day will say, you're so lucky you had a teacher like that. - Yeah. - Because I was not that turned on to school. I was kind of, you know, I had my challenges in year one and then I was kind of like thinking maybe I'd go to Whitman, up in Walla Walla, maybe become a journal and maybe I write, I don't know. I was kind of like floundering and I take this guy's class and I'm like, there wasn't even neuroscience back then. There was psychology and biology and they had a biopsychology degree and I was like, I want to be that guy. I want to be that guy. And then when I went to work in his lab and he was top-of-the-hunting inject rats with ecstasy and then we were like doing experiments. And back then, don't do this kids, but I smoked a cigarette or two and then we drink coffee together. I was like, this is the best. And it felt a little bit the same way that skateboarding had to me, even though that was now in the rear view. It felt I was like, this is punk. Like we just kind of do what we want and we're figuring things out and I knew it was cool. I knew neuroscience was cool. In the same way that the first time I saw someone like, I don't know, do some sloppy front side grind or something on a curve, I was like, that is so cool. I just knew it. I didn't care if people liked it 'cause no one liked skateboarding back then. It was like a niche thing. Yeah, he was spectacular. Do you think that for the teachers who were great? Do you think everyone who was in that class would say that was my favorite teacher? He was very beloved. Yeah. I will say in fairness, the hardest class I ever took which was neural development from a guy named Ben Ries who had gone to UC Santa Barbara, but then he trained at Oxford and apparently he came back from Oxford like super proper and probably even had a British accent. Sorry, I had been. He was brutally difficult and he had no sense of humor. I'm sure he has one at home and he taught me neuroanademy and I really learned neuroanademy. Like he kicked our asses with neuroanademy and neural development, which was the field I initially went into as a graduate student because of him, that course was hard. In his case, it's not that it was fun or cool. He just was a great teacher. It was the standard that he held us to. I mean, I didn't think I could do neuroanademy the way he taught it in a lab. And with, I mean, to this day, like I teach neuroanademy to medical students and my command of neuroanademy and my ability to understand the nervous system in three dimensions stems from that course. And my ability to understand neural development into marvel in what it takes to go from sperm and means egg to a human comes from that course. And it's because I got to work with specimens and I got to understand it at a conceptual level and a practical level. And because Benarise was and probably still is one tough son of a bitch, he was completely unforgiving. I think I'm one of my answers to a test. He wrote not a brilliant response. And I was like, shit. So I went back to him and I said, what's it missing? And we parsed it. - Yeah. - And as he taught me to raise myself to a higher standard. And I think because he had gone to use, remember UC Santa Barbara in the 80s and 90s was considered a party school. And it had some good departments and it had some really strong majors. Our friend Jack Johnson was there as in my class. He was a film major there. It was really good teachers there. But it had this reputation of being kind of Lucy Goosey. And I think Ben because he went there, then he went to Oxford and he got a really formal training. He understood what being held to that really high standard could do for someone. And he applied that to everyone. He applied that to everyone. So he kicked my ass and by the time I got to graduate school, I mean, I can honestly say like I know a lot more neuroanatomy than a lot of like people that teach neuroanatomy. - Because of him. - Because of him. - Yeah. - And even years later when I was in graduate school, I worked with one of the best neuroanatists in the world, Ted Jones, he wrote the book, The Falcons Like His Tome of neuroanatomy where I talked to Eddie Chang who's a neurosurgeon. And yeah, like I think it's not that I can name every structure, although I can name a lot of structures. It's that when you get that deep into the material, kind of like a musician or a producer or creative, I can rotate it in my mind. And I can see the pieces it's connected to in my mind's eye. And so I'm not looking at things in isolation. Going, oh, that's the central media nucleus. - It's not what you memorize. - You can see it. - That's right. - You can see the system. - That's right. I'm seeing processes. And so when people talk about dopamine, I'm thinking about circuitry. And I'm thinking about the way that circuitry works. And I can see it in my head. And that's not because I'm special. It's because I spend a hell of a lot of time on it. I used to study for neuroanatomy by looking at a textbook page, looking down the microscope, snapping an image of it with my mind, drawing a picture of it after class. And then I would lie on my bed in my studio apartment and I would fly through the circuit. And the moment I'd get to a structure, I couldn't name. I'd look it up and I'd go back. And so I have an atlas in my head. And so it's not that I'm special because I put hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work into it and then teaching it later. And it's because Ben Ries forced me to do that. He forced it down our throats and he was unrelenting. He did not give a shit if you thought your answer should have one more point. I was like, I'm knowing Betty, you'd probably doc you a point just for asking. It was tough. It's tough. - How is it different learning something from a teacher versus learning it from a book? - I think learning from books requires that you teach yourself. I did this solo episode on How Best to Study and Learn and the entire literature on How Best to Study and Learn can be summarized by two sentences. The best way to study and learn is to self-test on the knowledge when you're not near the material. When you're away from the textbook, when you're away from the microscope, when you're away from the music, when you're away from the language class, just ask yourself, do I know how to say that? And if you don't, note what you don't know because it turns out that all of learning is anti-fergetting. All of learning is anti-fergetting. They've done these beautiful experiments where they have people read the same passage one time, two times, three times, or four times. They have people either highlight, take notes, teach someone else a blah, blah, blah, every iteration you can possibly imagine and included in these experiments is a condition where people self-test. If people self-test on material, a week after they learn the material, even if they realize they don't know some of the material, their maintenance of what they do know last many years, otherwise the forgetting happens very quickly. It's kind of a duh, but when you think about most of learning is anti-fergetting, is just countering the forgetting process, you're like 99% of the way there. Talk to me about education versus entertainment. Good education is always going to require a bit of kind of teacher, student friction. Like if you make things too easy for people, it becomes passive listening. They don't learn. The conditions for rewiring stuff for plasticity is you need alertness, you need attention, you need a little bit of friction. And then you need that reflection, ideally self-testing. You need people thinking about it later, and one of the best ways to get people to think about it later is to have a bit of confusion or friction in there. You never artificially introduce contradictions, but it's got to have a texture. I imagine a good song is the same. It can't just be easy listening. Like nothing is worse than easy listening. You say easy listening, like I'm afraid it'll come up in YouTube, right? Like there's no texture to that. So good education involves inflection, and I don't do any of this consciously, but you know, you've got to sometimes raise your voice a little bit, and you sometimes have to repeat yourself three times. And-- Can you just intuitively know when to do that? Yeah, because when I'm teaching, I'm teaching myself. I'm like, you're listening to what you're saying, and you repeat it because you need to hear it again. I don't know if I'm hearing it, like from the outside hearing it. If something's really important, I'm going to say it three times, because it would feel wrong to move forward any faster. And it's funny, because when never-- Because I do it every once in a while-- I or somebody else will, like, do an inflection or change something when it's designed to have narrative or character in a way that it never works. It never works. I had a teacher in graduate school who could write with both hands. And he loved to impress us that he could write with both hands, and he was teaching Neuronatomist. This was Ted Jones, brilliant Neuronatomist. But he would do this, and he could tell he was trying to impress us. And I loved Ted, God bless him, you know, God of natural causes. But there was this-- He had some issues around wanting to be seen as this scholar by everybody. He was from New Zealand, but he wanted people to think he was British. He had been a-- he used to call it a pugilist. He was a boxer when he was younger. He liked to fight. I'll never forget the day he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. He came into class and he said, "All my enemies must be dead." Because I'm now in the National Academy of Sciences. Who announces that they're in the National Academy? Come on, let your so stupid. It was so silly. This guy's brilliant. He didn't need to do it. So he would teach in a way that that was so fluid that I think that for us, we were like, "Oh, like this is not being a novice right alongside with us." So sometimes like if I'm teaching neural development-- - It was almost like standoffish. - Yeah, I mean, I think when we go see a performance, we wanna see virtuosity. But I think we also love seeing the energy being put into it. - The humanity. - The humanity, right. The humanity. And I think that if it's just so easy, it's like, I might as well read a textbook. And I think this is what we oftentimes will just-- our response as a student is, "Oh, they're really smart." And that's over my head. Whereas if you can get into the friction of it, then they're right there alongside you. The other thing is, there are these little tricks. There are some benevolent tricks that you play. If you're about to say something complicated or that requires a lot of attention, I'm about to give myself away here. You say, "Okay, so what I'm about to say next, "might seem complicated, but it's super simple. "Anyone can understand it." If you say anyone can understand it, it cues the brain to, "Oh, shit, if I can't understand it, "this must be something wrong with me." - That's great. - And then you've got people's attention, but you can't play with that too often. - Yeah, yeah. - So if it's complicated, you say, "Listen, this might seem calm, "but anyone can understand it." And then people go, "Oh, I better be able to understand it." You give it to them. And then you see, see, it's actually work what? It's tricky, but if you just, and so then you get people to kind of lock that into book end in their mind. So those are kind of the tricks that you can play. - How do you learn that? - I don't know. - Yeah. - I don't know. I'm sure I picked it up from someone. In the same way that when I do live shows, like we do these live shows, and I-- - What's that like? - Oh man, that's so wild. 'Cause I forget where I am for like two hours. I just start telling stories about science and teaching science. It was like 7,000 people and you're in Australia. It's like, I'm not thinking like, I'm up on stage. I'm just in a total warp. - Yeah. - You know, but I realized going back and watching a few of those, see what I can do better and worse. That I've lifted things from a number of people in terms of stylistically. And a lot of it comes from punk rock. And a little bit of it comes from wrestling because some of the social distortion fan. And I don't forget going to see Mike Nass play, I think it was at the Fillmore or something. And he does this thing where he does a line up. And there he goes. Say you wanna hear from Orange County. And then people cheer, right? And then he goes, "Ain't wanna hear of Cal State Fullerton?" People cheer and he goes, "Well, I didn't go there." But down the street from there is a little porno shop. And when I was 15, you know, so he does a line up. So when I'm doing public speaking things sometimes, like if I wanna teach something and we're pretty far into it. And I think I might be losing people a bit. And I wanna engage more with the audience. I'll say something like, you know, have any of you ever experienced when you wake up first thing in the morning and you're still paralyzed from REM sleep, but you're wide awake? I'll say, it's okay, it's here just, you know, like raise your hand. I just kinda wanna get a sense. And I'll say, okay, those are all the pot smokers in the room. Like, and then I'll talk about how cannabis can exacerbate this thing when did it. So it's a wind up. So like I borrow things from Mike Nass, right? You know, 'cause I wanna do crowd work, but I want people to understand. And so there's that one. And then the wrestling thing is, I don't do this. Sorry, I don't do this, but I noticed a rancid fan. There's no secret. And Lars Fredrickson, rhythm guitar player for rancid, vocals also. He's a huge wrestling fan. And he does this thing where he'll stand up and he'll put his hand to his ear and he'll lean to the crowd and he'll get them like working in. And it's so clearly from wrestling, right? It's called Cogin. It's right, right? It's so clearly from wrestling. And it works so well. And Lars is such an awesome from any, and he was wearing a lot of the same style clothing that Strummer was wearing, like those big, like, almost like jumpsuits that would say like, "Revel truth," or something like spray painted on it. I don't do that. But when I'm there, I think about how can I engage with the crowd? And so I try and lean toward them and do things, but it's not the atrix. I'm really kind of trying to go through a rhythm because there's nothing more boring than just watching someone on stage talking and you have to follow every word without them bringing you in. And I don't have instruments 'cause I'm not a musician and I don't have visuals. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, I love the live stuff. I think we'll probably do a live tour again when the book comes out next year. The book was supposed to come out this month. Tell me about writing the book. Man, I'm a teacher. I talk, I draw. A lot of people don't know this, but I'm pretty serious about neuroanatomy drawing and I used to post these on Instagram and I'm doing a lot of art with Tim and I also been doing illustrations for my book. But I mean, my voice and those pens are my instruments. And I can write pretty well. If it's a scientific paper, I can write a letter, I can write an email. But when I shifted back from podcasting to trying to write significant number of hours each day, and my nervous system just, it was so tough. So then I tried to voice dictate. And then what I found is as I would write more, I'd get more proficient at it and my podcasting would kind of suffer because I was two in my head. And so a lot of the reason why this book is taking so long is because, "A, I want to include illustrations "because I don't have another opportunity "to put illustrations." I think there's certain things people need to see. I can talk about the cortisol curve all day, but you see it once and I draw a little rainbow where the sun part is and you'll never forget it. At least that's my belief. It's coming along now because I know how to get myself into a free space and let it go. And I'm adding stuff and there's a lot more literature out there, but the process has been tough. And you've been tremendously helpful and encouraging me to take the time that I need. But it's hard to do a full time podcast where you release one long episode every Monday. We have our essentials, our shorter episodes every Thursday, which are just 30 minute cut down ones. Those don't take much work from me now, but a little bit and also write the book. And I'm also pretty active on social media. I mean, on Instagram I'm doing original content usually. And- - All of them be posted on Instagram. - I try and post once a day and sometimes those are clips. Sometimes those are exposed that I then convert to those. But I pay attention at every aspect of the caption. And I'll draw diagrams and talk to the camera. And I really want it to be clear. I want people to learn. My criteria for putting something on the internet is 90% of it has to be at least in my mind going to be of real value to people. So everyone's in a while put something in just entertaining myself a little bit. But- - That's the exception. It's not the way. - Yeah. I mean, I found there was a strawberry that was shaped like a heart and I put it in my Instagram stories. And of course, it got the most views of any (laughing) - Priggin' thing I'd put up ever. I was like, what the hell is wrong here? No, I really, I want to be the signal in the noise. I want to be the thing that people go, and that's a little tricky, but like there's something there. Yeah, so I found it hard to write. But the book is done. It's just now I'm going back through and I'm adding stuff and I'm eliminating stuff. Like real Rick Rubin style. - Getting to the essence. And I'm adding the drawings and now I'm having fun with it. And I had to give myself permission to extend it that year. And I just, if it can be better, why wouldn't I make it better? - Once it's out, it's out forever. It might as well do whatever it takes for it to be the best it can be. - Yeah, but yeah, writing is a bear, man. It's intense. You're like in a conversation with the audience, but in your head, what do you think is the hardest part about writing? - I guess fighting the best words to explain the thing that you're imagining. - Language doesn't seem up to the task of really explaining these very amorphous things. It's like describing smoke. - Totally. - It's really hard. - Totally, especially since you live in the land of energetics and rhythm and, yeah, it's tough. - What subjects are your listeners most interested in? - So on YouTube, it's always gonna be muscle and fitness and fat loss. Those episodes, it's like, that's like, we could put out one of those like, be jack now or whatever. It's just muscle fitness and fat loss seem to be the thing. And of course, the algorithms are always changing. Last year, without any plan, we ended up bringing on a number of people who focused on menopause and women's health and kind of like women's specific biology for fitness seems to be really big. Even though my audience is, I think we probably about 55% male, 45% across platforms, that seems really big. The ones that surprised me were I was like, whoa, I had no idea. We had Ethan Cross on, he's a psychologist at University of Michigan, talking about how to shut down chatter in one's head. He's done some beautiful experiments on this and teaching about how to quiet the noise. That's been interesting to see how people are curious about that. And I'm very interested these days in lymphatic system and herbs and adaptogens. I'm really into this now. I know it's gonna offer me up as a target and I say bring it 'cause-- - It's what you're interested in. - I'm not trying to be at all aggressive. I'm just interested in it. And if people are gonna come at me, they gotta be healthier than me. And a lot of my colleagues that are like, what is this? And you need some sunshine and a good, and a good steak and some strawberries, and let's put you in a red light bed for a day. And, you know, like I wanna hug 'em, because my colleagues like Eddie Chang, Eddie Chang, he's like a 5am runner and an neurosurgeon, all that stuff, but he also, he has this understanding about Chinese medicine, and he thinks about this stuff. He thinks about energy and energy, because his whole world is about keeping his hands as these magical instruments, to be able to do the hardest surgeries that no one else will do. He told me the other day about a surgery they did, that no one else would touch, and he did it successfully, and I said, "What's the hardest thing?" He said, "Well, sometimes it's a tenth of a millimeter, either has you giving them a massive brain bleed or getting this thing out, and you get it out." And he still got a family and kids, and a world of good things and challenging things, and so he really understands about the channeling of energy. I mean, we talk about Qi. I'm learning about Qi from Eddie Chang. - Amazing. - And he's not gonna bring that to his scientific discussions, but he understands these cords of energy that run through us, and maybe that's why he's better than everybody else. - I do think that's why he's better than everyone else. He was funny, he was like that when we were seven. We had our bird club, oh no, he's gonna kill me if I say that, all right, it's out. We had a bird club. There were two of us in the bird club. There was a third guy that we let in also, because even though he was a bird club. - So you had to know about really cool tropical birds to get considered to be in the bird club. And it's kind of interesting. He went on to study speech and language in the brain, and epilepsy and a bunch of other things, and we were obsessed with talking birds, and this is what he's devoted his profession to. And even back then, we would go look at these like African-Grey parrots or something, or these two cans, two cans aren't particularly good talkers, but the miners and the African-Grey's are. And Eddie, even at that age, he was like, that bird's looking at the other bird and thinking, and he would tell me, like he could really tap into things, other people couldn't tap into. It's wild, you know, and I think he has a gift, and he works with the gift. So when he's running, I'm like, are you running to slough off energy for your day? Or are you running to kind of build energy? And he's like, well, I do it because it's healthy, and it relieves stress, but I do it in a way that focuses my energy. So then he like scrubs up, goes in, and amazing. Amazing. What's some of the real world impact the pods had on listeners? Well, humbly, I mean, I hear many people have quit drinking alcohol because of the alcohol episode, which I think to this day, again, humility aside, was the most popular podcast episode across all podcasts, all platforms in 2022 and 2023. What's interesting about that is this is a podcast speaking against something that people love. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I would say about half of the people that come to me and say, hey, your alcohol podcast changed my life. Yeah. We'll say they stopped drinking, and they didn't like drinking, but they didn't give them self permission to stop drinking because they either thought wine was good for them or because they felt they had to do it. Social obligation. Right. I would say a good number of people that say they stopped drinking because of that episode did so because they don't want cancer, they want to live longer, better sleep, better microbiome, and they just feel so much better. Is there cancer, alcohol relationship? Big time. Wow. Five percent of cancers are probably alcohol related. Wow. Five percent. Wow. Hard to attach the exact numbers, but that's. And then a study just came out recently that Stanford medicine covered, I didn't cover it 'cause I haven't touched the topic in a while, saying that even moderate drinking is detrimental. Especially for women, breast cancers. And so I would say that episode, I think the morning sunlight piece has been big, the physiological side, the double inhale, long exhale. I think breath work had been around, and yet people like whim and other people talking about it, but giving people a tool that they could use right away to calm down. And then I think the dopamine discussion was really big in terms of understanding, like, oh, it makes sense that I kind of burnt out on stuff and feel kind of this on me. I think I need to reset. And then a lot of it is just. Most people have never had someone speak to them like an intelligent person in a way that was designed to help them learn so they can do better and not charge them at the end. You're never condescending to the audience. Max Delbrook said it, "Asoom zero knowledge and infinite intelligence." That's the way you teach. And that was actually written on the whiteboard of the room across the hall for me when I started my lab. I had a big class at UC San Diego before I was at Stanford as at UC San Diego and class one from 40 people, the next year was 100, then at 200, 450 people. And I remember teaching those courses in the evening and it was such a pleasure in large part because I could interact with the students. You know, evening courses people interact very differently. And I'd bring my dog and it was fun. But every once in a while, say there these episodes, like the grief episode or the episode I did in eating disorders. You know, for a guy who doesn't have a eating disorder to give a tutorial on eating disorders and the literature and the treatments, I think for a lot of people was like a little bit like a lot of women especially, like this guy's gonna talk to me about anorexia. And even though there are men with anorexia, it's mostly women. And I received only positive feedback on that. People saying thank you, you approached this with a lot of sensitivity. And you know, I have, I don't have an eating disorder by the known people that had. And so I purposely approached that one with silk gloves because it's a weird topic because it's a real disease. You know, the most deadly psychiatric condition is anorexia. - Wow. - The most deadly of all of them. And so, and it's also, it's a myth that it's because of social media or marketing. The frequency of anorexia andorevosa. True anorexia andorevosa is the same now as it was in the 1600s. - Wow. What are some of the outer bounds of where you've gone on the podcast? Maybe further out than you would have thought you would have when you were starting. - You know, looking back, I'm surprised. I talked about Tonga Ali and Sheila G and Maka Rout. And you know, it just goes to show how when you're starting and you're not paying any attention 'cause you shouldn't to how people are gonna perceive it. And you just want people to learn and you think something's really cool and you've received benefit from it. And you want them to receive benefit from it too. And you don't have a financial stake in it. You just tell them. - Yeah. - But looking back, I realized I was not because of the heat that it brought looking back. I was just like, oh my god. Like that was crazy. Like what were we thinking? If you asked me now, like if someone came to me and said, hey listen, I want to start like a serious science health podcast. And I want to talk about neural circuits and endocrinology and you know, the immune system and I want people to get practices from it. I would tell them to take that stuff out because I'd be in my strategic mind. But you know what's really interesting is, you could probably explain this better than I can. The things that I loved that I put into the podcast, even some of the outrageous things that I said, which I'm still glad I said, outrageous because they were like kind of unconventional. No one attacked those. Or if they did, it bounced right off. It's kind of interesting. I do think that when we really believe in something because we know it worked for us. The criticism doesn't last. It like ricochets off. But when it's not like that, it can get in. Martha Beck has this great visual. She said, all of your life, you're like a lighthouse. And you have to just think about your like sweeping (whooshing) around and she said, when you're public facing, especially if there's any kind of stain on the lighthouse, the stain being like something that you're conflicted by or that like you haven't resolved, that provides like a wedge of shadow. That's where critique enters. That's where you're vulnerable. And she said, you can never stop critique. But if your lighthouse is clean and she's not talking about your behavior, maybe that too, but she's not talking about morals, but she's talking about if there's something that you're like conflicted by, you haven't really resolved. You're not clear on for yourself, one way or the other. That's your work because that's where the attack vectors are. But if you're comfortable with where you are, kind of like I'm like, I love supplements. You don't have to take them. I don't care. I also take some prescription drugs. I also do a lot of behaviors and guess what? I'll probably do more of some of those and less of them going forward. Like you can't get to me with it 'cause it's just like there's no issue, right? In some ways it doesn't impede anything about the creative process or the teaching process and it just moves forward. And I think that she's really onto something and that's where personal work comes in. That's where deep dive personal work comes in of asking oneself what's unresolved inside. Because that's where I think we express cynicism when we shouldn't or we overly confident where we shouldn't be. I mean, that's, and I think that's like ongoing work. No one's perfect. Certainly not me. I think that's where the work is. (upbeat music) (upbeat music) (music) Tetragramatin is a podcast. Tetragramatin is a website. Tetragramatin is a whole world of knowledge. (music) What may fall within the sphere of tetragramatin? 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