The following is a conversation with Andrew huberman his fifth time on the podcast. He is the host of The huberman Lab podcast and is an amazing scientist teacher human being and someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend. Also. He has a book coming out next year that you should pre-order now called protocols an operating manual for the human body.
And now a quick you second mention of a sponsor check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We got a sleep for naps element for electrolytes a G1 for nutrition Shopify for e-commerce netsuite for business management software and better help for mental health. She's wise my friends. Also if you want to work with an amazing team or just want to get in touch with me go to Lex Freeman.com contact and now on to the full ad reads as always no as in the middle.
I try to make these interesting but if you must skip them, please do check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This episode is brought to you by a sleep and it's pod for Ultra. First of all pod for is an improvement over the Pod 3, which was already awesome 2x the cooling power. I always love it when stuff is just improving when smartphones are improving.
Hello Lambs, improving like jump to claw 35 just great and she bt5 might be coming out soon. It's just great. It's great to see Improvement. But also there's the Ultra part which is an extra layer that adds the base that goes between the mattress and the bed frame and the base can control the physical position of the actual mattress. So basically you can sleep in your bed and you can also read in your bed, which is a thing that I think
Think a lot of people like doing I have trouble reading too much my bed because I fall asleep in the bed is just too nice. Anyway, go to a sleep.com Lex and you scold likes to get 350 bucks off the pot for Altra. This episode is also brought to you by element the drink that Andrew and I consume a lot of during the episode. I drink a lot of element almost not almost on every single podcast episode. That's just what I drink I put element.
The water I take have one next to me right now A Padres 80 bottle with twenty eight fluid ounces fill it up with water for one packet of element in there. Usually watermelon, salt mix it all up put in the fridge and but 30 minutes later. There's cold refreshing deliciousness. But yeah in the Texas heat when I'm doing the long runs or hard training sessions, like I just did 10 Rounds the other day and grappling.
You know drinks. I usually don't like to drink during training. So afterwards, you're just your body is completely dehydrated and that's such a amazing feeling to replenish it with all the electrolytes you need. So especially when it's cold and delicious. I love it get a sample pack for free with any purchase tried a drink element to.com slash Flex. This episode is also brought to you by a G1 and all-in-one daily drink to support Better Health and Peak Performance.
It's kind of hilarious how when Andrew and I hang out all the supplementation and the diet and just our way of being is on point. There's a lot of age you want consumed there's a lot of element consumed and there's a lot of ground beef or steak consumed on a regular basis. We've been planning to run together more but we haven't quite done that it's mostly my fault because
Running has just been such a solo thing for me. I really don't remember the last time I've ever run with anybody I get so much into my head that I just feel like I'm even more introverted and I usually am like I lose myself inside my mind. It's become such a meditative process that to do running with another person. It just feels a little bit weird. I feel like I wouldn't be able to sort of contribute to the conversation if there's a conversation
and also like pacing wise there's a certain Pace where conversation is still possible, but it's a little uncomfortable. So and I can't really think at that pace that well and talked already struggle talking so I don't know well to figure it out but he's such a great person to work out with and great person to talk to that will have to figure it out. Anyway. Hey G 1 is always part of the picture and I drink it twice a day. It's the foundation of my nutrition. It's the thing when I consume it.
I feel like I've got all my bases covered no matter the crazy mental or the physical stuff that I'm going to do. They'll give you a one month supply of fish oil when you sign up a drink AG one.com Flex. This episode is also brought to you by Shopify a platform designed for anyone to sell stuff anywhere with a great looking online store. It took me a really short time to set everything up like Screamin.com / store as a few shirts on there.
Actually got a Lynyrd Skynyrd shirt via Shopify recently and I love it. I need to get more.
Rock music like classic rock shirts. They brought so much joy to me. They just want to celebrate it. I don't know why but that seems like a cool way to celebrate it. Especially if it's like a nice Lynyrd Skynyrd or Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd shirt, you know a shirt. I haven't quite found that the go tonight. Sure one exists is SRV Stevie Ray Vaughan. I just don't want a generic when I want to super cool one him and Jimi Hendrix have a certain way about them that requires.
Be cool shirt. Not just the generic one. Anyway, you can sign up for a one dollar per month trial period at Shopify.com Lex. That's all lowercase got a Shopify.com Lex to take your business to the next level today. This episode is also brought to you by net sweet and all-in-one Cloud business management system. It is the machine inside the machine where the company is the meta machine and societies The Meta Meta machine is it's a collection of groups and companies.
It's also a collection of Nations and a constant state of Anarchy against each other with no centralized control decentralized control comes from the government that does the regulation on the other machine of capitalism. But within capitalism, there's a certain degree of Freedom that allows you to build epic shit to build epic stuff. And that's where that sweet could be. The thing that helps you build the Epic stuff by taking
All the messy things like financials HR inventory Supply e-commerce, if that's the thing you do and much more business related stuff over 37,000 companies have upgraded to netsuite by Oracle. I wonder how many companies there are in the world. It's kind of cool to think that there's 37 thousand companies each one with a person who founded or collection of people founded the head of dream and that are working.
Hard to bring that dream into a reality trying to survive trying to thrive trying to make money trying to put food on the table of all the families involved all the responsibility of that. I don't know. Those are all little puzzles little battles sometimes big battles fought
It's cool. I love Youmans. This is one of the ways that humans are awesome take advantage of net sweets flexible financing plan at netsuite.com Flex. That's that's we.com Flex.
This episode is brought to you by better help spelled heelp help. They figure out when you need and match you with a licensed therapist and under 48 hours. It's kind of incredible the power of language the power spoken language to explore the human mind because in order to generate speech if you take an idea that's in your head as you compress that idea into something that could be represented.
incomprehensible sequence of words and you have to speak it then the full context of everything has been spoken previously and everything has been going on around and then there's another human being on the other side the here is it first of all, they have to hear it correctly, you know if it's noisy or whatever or maybe their whole mind is focused on some aspect of the scene that prevents them from being able to really hear what's being said, but once they do they have to then interpret it and
Decode decompress. The thing that was represented in language into an idea and visualize it integrated loaded in to the brain and make sense of that idea again in the full context of everything that's happened before in that way back and forth humans talk and make sense of the world together and make sense of their own mind together.
It's just cool. It's cool that that's even possible and it's cool that that's a actually a powerful way to understand yourself and to understand the world. So yeah, I'm a big fan of talking of rigorous deep conversation and certainly talk therapy is rigorous and deep when done well, so if that's something that you're interested in trying you should try better help because it's super easy check them out at better help.com Lex and save on your first
Let's better help.com / Lex. This is the last room in podcast to support it. Please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends. Here's Andrew hubermann.
You think there's ever going to be a day when you walk away from podcasting? Definitely. I mean I came up with in and then on the periphery of skateboard culture and for the record, I was not a great skateboarder. I would have to say that could skateboarders are Relentless. If you call something you didn't do or whatever. I mean I could do a few things and I loved the community and I still have a lot of friends in that Community Jim Thibault at Deluxe. You can look them up. He's kind of the man.
An behind the whole scene. I know Tony Hawk. Anyway, all these guys I got to see them come up and get big and stay big in many cases start huge companies like Danny and calling the kiss RDC.
Some people have a long life in something some don't but one thing I observed and learned a lot from him skateboarding.
At the level of observing the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies and then what I also observed in science and still observe is you do it for a while you do it at the highest possible level for you. And then at some point you pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in. In fact the greatest scientist people like Richard Axel Catherine do lock their many other labs in Neuroscience called eyes.
Stir off. They're not just known for doing great science. They're known for mentoring some of the best scientist that then go on to start their own labs. And I think in podcasting, I'm very fortunate. I got in a fairly early wave not the earliest wave but thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast fairly early wave and I'll continue to go as long as it feels right and I feel like I'm doing good in the world and providing good, but I'm already starting to scout Talent.
My company that I started with Rob more psycho media couple other guys in there to make playback our photographer Ian Mackey Chris Ray Martin
phobes. We are
company that produces podcast right now that Superman loud podcast, but we're launching a new podcast perform with dr. Andy Galpin nice and we want to do more of that kind of thing finding a really great talent highly qualified people credential people and I've got a new kind of obsession with scouring the
Annette looking for the young talent in science and health and related fields. And so will there be a final episode of the hlp?
Yeah, I mean bullet Buster
cancer aside, you know someday I'll know they'll be the very last and thank you for your interest in science and I'll clip out. Yeah, I love the idea of walking away and not be dramatic about it. Right when it feels right you can leave and you can come back whenever the fuck you want right John's.
We did this well with the Daily Show, I think that was during the 2016 election when everybody wanted him to stay on. He just walked away Dave Chappelle for
different reasons
walked away disappeared came back gave away so much
money didn't care and then came back and was doing like stand up in the park in the middle of nowhere genius. You have Habib who undefeated walks away at the very top of of a sport. Is he coming
back? No. Danis. We don't know.
No, yeah, right. You don't know. I don't know if there is everywhere word. Yeah, I think you know it's it's always a call, you know, you know, the last few years have been tremendous growth. We launched in January 2021. And even this last year 2024 has been huge growth, you know in all sorts of ways. It's been wild and we have some short form content planned 30 minute shorter episodes that really distill down the critical elements.
We're also.
Thinking about moving other venues besides podcasting. So there's always the thought in the discussion, but when it comes to like when you hang up your cleats, you know, it's like there just comes a natural time where you can do more to Mentor the Next Generation coming in then focusing on self. And so there will come a time for that and I think it's critical. I mean again, I saw this in skateboarding like Danny and Colin and Danny's brother Damon started DC with Ken Block the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago rally car driver.
Her and they eventually sold it. I think to Quicksilver something like that, but they're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas, but they brought in the next, you know, the next line of amazing Riders per the plan B thing, you know Paul Rodriguez for skateboarders. They know who this is now in science, there are scientists like Fineman for instance. I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor Offspring so there are scientists who are phenomenal.
Like Beyond world-class right multi-generational world-class who don't make good mentors. I'm not saying he wasn't good Mentor, but that's not what he's known for and then there are scientists who are known for being excellent scientists and great mentors and I think there's no higher celebration to be had at the end of one's career if you can look back and be like, hey, I put some really important knowledge into the world people made use of that knowledge and guess what you spawned all these other
Scientific Offspring or sport Offspring or podcast Offspring. I mean I in some ways we look to Rogen and to some of the other earlier podcast is like they you know, they paved the way Rhonda Patrick first science podcast out there. So, you know it eventually the baton passes but fortunately right now everybody's active and it feels really good.
Yeah. Well you're talking about the healthy way to do it, but there's also
A different kind of way where you have somebody like
Grisha Grigori perelman, the mathematician who refused to
accept the fields medal. So to season one of the greatest living mathematicians and he just
walked away from mathematics and rejected the fields model. What do you do after he left
mathematics life private
100% I respect
that. He's become essentially a recluse is these photos of him looking
very broke like he could use the money and he he turned away the
Money he turned away everything.
You know, there's there's
you just have to listen to the inner voice. You have to listen to yourself and make the decisions that don't make any sense for the rest of the world and make sense to you. I'm Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. That's Punk. Yeah. Yeah. He probably grew in notoriety for that. Maybe he just doesn't like going in Sweden but it seemed like it would be a fun trip. I think they do it in a nice time of years. But hey, that's his right. He earned that right? I think the best artist.
Aren't doing it for the prize. They aren't doing it for the fame or the money. They're doing it because they love the art. Yes, the Rick Rubin and you got a verb it through download your inner thing. I don't think we talked about this that this Obsession that I have about how Rick has this way of being very very still and its body but keeping his mind very active as a practice when spend some time with him in Italy last June.
And we were tread water and his pool in the morning and listen to history of rock and roll and 100 Songs amazing podcast, by the way, it is. Yeah and and then he would spend a fair amount of time during the day, you know in this kind of meditative state where his mind is very active body very still and then called ice Roth when he came on my podcast talked about how he forces himself to sit still and thinking complete sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep and you know, there's a state of mind.
Die movement sleep where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active and people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more elaborate emotion filled dreams and the source of many ideas and there are other examples on Stein.
People described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus then pausing and would ask him what was going on in the idea that his mind was continuing to turn forward at a high rate. So, you know, this is far from controlled studies, but it were talking about some incredible minds and
creatives who have a practice of
stealing the body while keeping the Mind deliberately very
active very similar to rapid eye movement sleep in then there are a lot of people
Who also report great ideas coming to them in the
shower while running so it can be the opposite as well where the body is very active in the and the mind is perhaps more on kind of like a default mode network. Not really focusing on any one specific thing, you know interesting as there's
a bunch of physicists and mathematicians of talk to they talk about sleep deprivation and
going crazy hours to the night obsessively pursuing a thing
and then the solution to the problem comes when they
They get rest, right? And and we know we just did this 6 episode Special series on sleep with Matt Walker. We know that when you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep you get a rebound in rapid eye movement sleep you get a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep and Matt talks about this in the podcast and we did an episode on sleep and creativity sleep in memory and rapid eye movement. Sleep comes up multiple times in that series.
There's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and rapid eye movement. Sleep people are coming off cannabis often will suffer from insomnia, but when they finally do start sleeping, they like dream like crazy cannabis is a very controversial topic right now. Oh, yeah. I saw that what happened is a bunch of drama around episode. You did on cannabis. Yeah. We did an episode about cannabis talked about the health benefits and the potential risks, right? It's neither here nor there.
Depends on the person depends on the age depends on genetic background a number of other things
we
published that episode well over a year ago and it had no issues online. So to speak and then a clip of it was put to X where you know the real action occurs, as you know, your favorite fun. Yeah, the the 4 ounce gloves as opposed to the 16-ounce gloves. That is X versus Instagram.
Umm, or YouTube there was kind of an immediate Dogpile from a few people in the Cannabis research field two phds and MDS. Yeah, there were people on our side there were people not on our side. I mean, you know the statement that got things riled up the most was this notion that for certain individuals. There's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high THC.
C containing cannabis for certain individuals not all that sparked some issues. There was really a split. You know, you see this in different fields it
There was one person in particular Who Came Out Swinging with language that in my opinion is not like of the sort that you would use that a university venue, especially among colleagues, but that's fine. You know, we're all grown-ups well for me from my perspective, it was strangely
rude and it had an air of like elitism that to me. Was it the source of the
problem during covid-19?
Add that led to the distressed of Science and the the popularization of disrespecting science because so many scientists spoke with an arrogance and douchebaggery that I wish we would have a little bit less of yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the university system are they don't they're not familiar with like the inner workings of Science and and the culture and so you have to be very careful. How you
Present when you're a university professor and when yeah, so, you know He Came Out Swinging and some you know, four letter words typed language and he was obviously upset about so I simply said what I would say anywhere, which was hey look you come on the podcast let's chat and when you give your tell me where I'm wrong and let's discuss and and fortunately he agreed and initially he said well, no, how can I be sure, you're not going to misrepresent me. And so I said we got on a deal.
Um, then an email then eventually phone call and just say Hey listen, like you're welcome to record the whole conversation. We've never done a gotcha on my podcast and just get to the heart of the matter. I think this this little controversy is perfect kindling for for really great discussion and and he had some other conditions that we worked out and I felt like cool like he's really interested other you get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say he's been very collegial and that conversation is on the schedule. I said it will fly you
You out will put you up. He said no he wants to fly himself. He really wants to make sure that there's like kind of a space between I think some of the perception of science and health podcast in the academic Community is that it's all designed to sell something. Now we run ads to it can be free to everyone else. Yeah, but I think look in the end he agreed and I'm excited for the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of that will exchange.
there's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in Men in many cultures as within the United States as when I say cultures, I mean demographics the United States as the as the drug of choice there been people highlighting the issues of potential psychosis in high THC containing and so it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of onboard certain elements that you know, I put forward and
I think there's some controversy as to whether or not the different strains the indicas and sativas. I've are biologically different etcetera. So we'll get down into the weeds unintended during that one and I'm excited. It's the first time that we've responded to a direct criticism online about scientific content in a way that really promoted like, oh here the idea of inviting a particular guests. And so it's great. Let's get a guest to his expert in cannabis. I believe I could be wrong about this but he's a behavioral
Just a slightly different training but look you seems highly credentialed to be fun. And we you know, we welcome that kind of exchange
i.d.
No, nothing diplomatic. I'm just saying like it's cool like he's coming on. Oh, you know and he was friendly on the phone. Right? Like he literally came out online was like basically like kind of like a few like after stand a few but you get someone on the phone and say hey, how's it going? And then I'm like, oh, yeah. Well, you know, I took there was an immediate apology of like Hey, listen, I came out. Normally I'm like not like that but online
You know, you got a different. Yeah. Okay. Listen, so it's a little bit like it's a little bit like Jiu-Jitsu right people say all sorts of things I guess but if they if you're like, all right. Well, let's go then it's probably different story. You know, it's not like Jessica's and you just have people don't talk shit because they know what the consequences are. Let me let me just say on Mike and off Mike you have been very respectful towards this person and I'm look up to you and respect you and admire the fact that you have been
that said to me that guy was being a
dick and when you graciously
Politely invite him on the podcast. He was still talking down to you the whole time.
So I really admire and look
forward to listening to you talk to him. But I hope
others don't do that. Like you
are a positive humble voice
exploring all the interesting aspects of science. Like you want to learn if their you've got anything
wrong you want to learn about it the way he was being a dick. I was just hurt a little bit.
Not because of him but because like
there's some people I really really admire
brilliant scientists that are not their best selves on Twitter on
X. Definitely don't understand what happens to their brain. Will they regress they regress and and they also are protected, you know, you know when you remove the I mean no scientific argument should ever come to physical blows, right? But when you remove the real world thing of being right in front of somebody and people
We'll throw all sorts of stones at a distance, you know and over a wall and they've got their their wife or their husband or their boyfriend or their dog or their cat to go cuddle with them afterwards, but you get in a room and it's like, you know confrontational people in real life are pretty rare, but hopefully if they do it they are like willing to back it up with knowledge in this case. We're not talking about physical altercation. Yeah. He kept coming and he kept putting on conditions. How do I know you won't this and I was like, well, you know
The Congress or how do I know you won't that lessen will pay for you to come out how do you know and eventually he just kind of relented and and it to his credit, you know, he's agreed to come on. He still has to show up. But once he does, you know, we'll treat him right like we would any other
guests. Yeah, you treat people really well and I just hope that people are a little bit nicer on the
internet. Yeah. Well, you know X is an interesting one because you it thickens your skin, you know to just to go on there. I mean you have to be ready to deal with sure, but I can still
As people for for being douchebags. Yeah, because like that's still not good inspiring Behavior like this, especially for scientist.
That should be sort of symbols of scientific thinking which requires intellectual humility humility is a big part of that and Twitter is a good place to illustrate that yeah
years ago. I used to I was a student in ta then instructor and then directed A Cold Spring Harbor course on visual.
Neuroscience, these are summer courses that explore different topics and at night we would host what we hoped were battles in front of the students where you'd get two people on a you know, would it be neural Prosthetics or molecular tools that would first, you know restore Vision to the blind kind of arguments, you know, kind of like it's kind of a silly argument can be a combination of both right but you get these great arguments, but the arguments were always couched in data and occasion you'd get somebody
Go like or would curse or something, but it was the rare very very well-placed, you know insult it wasn't you know Coming Out Swinging I think ultimately, you know Twitter is a record of people's behavior that the internet has a record of people's behavior and here I'm not talking about news reports about people's behavior. I'm talking about how people show up online
is really
important. You've always carried yourself with a ton of composure and respect and you know, you just you would hope that people would grow from that.
That example will tell you that the podcasters that I'm scouting it's their energy but it's also how they treat other people how they respond to comments and you know, we're blessed to have pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast like someone else's podcast. It goes far and wide so like a skateboard team like a laboratory where you're selecting people to be in your lab
your you want to pick people
that you would enjoy working with another
collegial.
Etiquette and etiquette is is lacking nowadays, but you're in the student. I bring it
back bring it back.
You said that your conversation with James Hollis a jungian psychoanalyst had a big impact on you. What do you mean
James Hollis is a 84 year old Union psychoanalyst who's written 17 books including under Saturn Shadow, which is on the healing and Trauma of men the eating Eden Project scuse me, which is about relationships and creating a life.
I discovered James Holliston and online lecture that was recorded. I think in San Diego. It's on YouTube at the audio is terrible called creating a life and this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span. I can't remember it was on my way to Europe and I call my girlfriend at the time. So I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard and he talks about the shadow. He talks about your developmental upbringing and how you either.
Either aligned with or go 180 degrees off your parents Tendencies and values and certain areas. He talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of Life to Live a full life. So it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast and he wasn't able to travel so our team went out to DC and sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays people come to our studio and he came in he had surgeries recently any kind of came in with some assistance.
From a you know a cane and then sat down and just just blew my mind it from start to finish. He didn't miss a syllable and every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence of with real potency and actionable items. I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response and we just force ourselves.
ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or well seated or well lying down doesn't have to be meditation, but it could be that we access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want and that if we do that practice repeatedly 10 minutes a day here 15 minutes a day there that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the
We need to take but that so often we just stay in stimulus-response we just do do do do do which is great. We have to be productive but we miss those important messages and interestingly. He also put forward this idea of what is is like get up shut up suit up. Yeah, something like that like get out of bed suit up and shut up and get to work. He also has that in him kind of a Goggins type mindset so be able to turn off.
If
all this self reflection and self
analysis and just get shit done get shit done, but then also take dedicate time and stop and just let stuff guys or to the surface from the unconscious mind and he quote Shakespeare and he quote young and he quotes everybody through history with with Incredible accuracy. And and in exactly the way I needed to drive home a point but that conversation to me was one that I really felt like okay, you know if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason
That one's in the can and I feel really great about it. It's to me. It's the most important guest recording we've ever done.
In particular because he has wisdom and while I hope he lives to be 204 chances are he's got another what 20 30 years with us, hopefully more but I really really wanted to capture that information and get it out there. So I'm very very proud of that one. And he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him young old male female whatever and you're going to get something of
value. What do you think about this?
idea
of the shadow that the good and the bad that we were press that hides from Plain Sight when we analyze ourselves that's there. I think there's like a ocean that we we don't have direct access to yes.
Yeah young said it we have all things inside of us and we do and some people are more in touch with those than others and some people it's repressed. I mean does that mean that we could all be, you know, horrible people or marvelous people
And Evelyn people perhaps I think that thankfully more often than not people lean away from the like violent and harmful parts of their Shadow, but I think spending time thinking about you know ones.
Shadow Shadows is super important. How how else are we going to grow? Otherwise, you know, we have these unconscious blind spots of denial or repression or whatever, you know, the psychiatrist tell us but yeah, it clearly exists within all of us. I mean, we have neural circuits for rage we all do we have neural circuits for altruism and no one's born without these things and some people they are atrophied and some people that are hypertrophied but
looking Inward and and recognizing what's there is key
or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what Rick rubin's accessing when he goes silent sound body active mind. That's interesting. What is it for you or what place do you go
to that generates ideas helps you generate ideas. I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean, I'm always always exploring for protocols. I have to it's like in my nature one.
I went and spent time with Rick. I tried to adopt his practice of staying very still and just letting stuff come to the surface or the dice sarathi and way of formulating complete sentences and while being still in the body what I have found works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music he writes music every day. He's a music producer. He's obviously singer guitar play for rancid and he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of
female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs and many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists. Tim helped them right Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting. So what he's done and Joni Mitchell talked about this to you find some creative outlet that like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet and
Do that thing. So for me that's drawing. I like doing anatomical drawings. There are science-based drawn drawn neurons that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while in my mind starts churning on the nervous system and biology and then I come up with areas. I'd like to explore for the podcast ways. I'd like to address certain topics right now. I'm very interested in autonomic control of beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes and without changing luminance through
a bio feedback mechanism and that gives them audit control over their so-called automatic autonomic nervous system and I've been looking at what the circuitry is and it's it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function and as I'm doing that I'm thinking oh, I like what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size. Then you go in and there's a paper published in nature, press one of the nature journals and there's a recent paper on this like, oh cool and then we talked about this and then how could this be put into a kind of a post or how could this
You know, so doing things that are about 15 degrees off center from your main thing is a great way to access. I believe that the circuits for in Tim's case painting goes to songwriting. I think for Joni Mitchell that was also the case right? I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting for Rick. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's listening to podcast. I don't know that that's his business. Do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work?
No, I'd really
like to focus on emptiness and silence. So I
picked the dragon have to slice one of the problem with the work on and then just sit there
and stare
at hell of how fucking linear you are and it just and if there's no if you're tired, I'll just sit. I believe in the in the power of just waiting and
usually I'll stop being tired
or their energy rises from somewhere or an idea Pops from somewhere, but
Needs to be a silence and emptiness. It's an empty room. Just me and the dragon
and we wait that's it. Like if it's a usually with programming you're thinking about a particular design. Like how do I design this thing to solve this problem
any cognitive enhancers? I've got a quite the gallery in front of me. Oh, that's right. Yeah, should we walk through this? Yeah. This is not does not as a sales thing is just I tend to do this bounce back and forth your refrigerator just happen to have a lot of different choices. So water.
All of my refrigerator, I know right? There's no food in there. There's water there's element which they now have canned. Yeah, and yes, they're a podcast sponsor for both of us, but that's not why I crack one of these open I like them provide their
cold and that's by the way my least favorite favorite flavors. I was saying that's that's the reason is still left in the
fridge. This Cherry one is really good
at the black cherry. There's a orange one.
Yeah. I pushed the slide this morning and pull the sled for my workout at the gym and it was hot today here in Austin. So some salt.
Good and then matina yerba mate zero sugar full confession. I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner. But I love yerba. Mate half Argentine been drinking mate, since I was a little kid. There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three sitting on my grandfather's lap sipping mate out the gourd and then this might find interesting. This is just a little bit of coffee with a scoop of Brian Johnson gave me Coco just like pure unsweetened cocoa. So I put that in chocolate and I like it it just for the taste. Well actually new.
Oops, my appetite and since I'm we're not going out to dinner tonight until later. I figure that's good. Yeah, Brian's interesting one, right? He's really pushing this thing the optimization of ever. Yeah, although he just hurt his ankle. He posted a photo he hurt his ankle. So now he's injecting BBC body protection compound 157, which many many people are taken. By the way. I did an episode on peptides. I should just say, you know bpc 1571 of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis like development of new vasculature, which can be great.
In some context, but also if you have a tumor you don't really want a vascular lies that tumor anymore. So I worry about people taking bpc 157 continually, but and there's very little human data. I think it's like one study as a lousy one. So a lot of animal data some of the peptides are interesting. However, there's one that I've experimented with a little bit called Pine Elin, which I find if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it times it seems
To do something to the Circadian time keeping mechanism because then on other days and I don't take it I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that all experiment with for a couple weeks and then typically stop maybe try something else but I stay out of things that really stimulate any of the major hormone Pathways when it comes to peptides. There's actually a really good question of how do you experiment like how long do you try think to figure out if it works for you? Well, I'm very sensitive to these things.
Right and I have been doing a lot of things for a long time. So if I add something in it's always one thing at a time and I noticed right away. If it does not make me feel good. Like there's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth hormone secreted dogs. I / Morel and customer Island sir Morel and I've experimented a little bit with those in the past and they've nuke to my rapid eye movement. Sleep the given me a lot of Deep Sleep, which doesn't feel good to me. But other people like them. I also just generally try and avoid
Lloyd taking peptides that tap into these hormone Pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues. But some people take them safely but usually after about 45 days, I know if I like something or I don't and then I move on but I'm not super adventurous with these things. I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things. They'll try anything. That's not me and I do blood work. But also I'm you know, I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting and I'm teaching a course the next
Stanford I'm going to do a big undergraduate course, so I'm trying to develop that course and things like that. So I don't need
to lift more weight
or run further than I already do which is not that much weight or or far as it is. All right, you're not going to the Olympics. You're not trying to truly maximize the best book to your performance know what I'm not and I'm not trying to get down below whatever, you know, 7% body fat or something. I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration electrolytes caffeine in the form of mate and then this
coffee day and then and then here's one that I think I brought out for discussion was is a piece of Nicorette. They're not a sponsor nicotine has an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure and it
Is probably not safe for everybody but you know, the nicotine is gaining in popularity like crazy mainly these pouches that people put in the lip not we're not talking about I'm smoking vaping dipping hearse. Nothing, you know my interest in nicotine started. This was in 2010. I was visiting Columbia Medical School and I was in the office of the Great neurobiologist Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize co-recipient with Linda back for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction.
Brilliant guy he's probably in his late 70s now probably. Yeah, and he kept popping Nicorette in his mouth. And I said, what's this about and he said oh, well, this was just an anecdote, right? But he said it but he said this he said, oh, well, you know it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's I said it does he goes? Yeah. I don't know if he was kidding or not. He's known for making jokes and then he said that when he used to smoke it really helped us focus and creativity, but then he quit smoking because he won't lung cancer and he found that he couldn't focus as well. So he would choose Nicorette so occasionally like right now,
Now we'll each I do a half a piece but I'm not Russian. So I'm a little bit. Yeah, you did you spot the whole thing in your mouth. So I'll do a couple milligrams every now and again and it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular but you fast all day. You're still doing one meal a day one meal a day.
Yeah. Yeah did a nicotine pouch with Rogan at dinner and I got
high. Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of is in
Take One A Day pretty soon. They're taking a canister day. So you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself to pieces of Nicorette total per week and you will notice that you know the day after you use it, you know, sometimes your throat will feel a little bit like like a little spasm me like you might want to cough once or twice and so, you know, if your singer your podcast or something you have to do long podcast you want to just be mindful of but yeah, you're supposed to kind of like keep it in your cheek. And here we go, but it did.
make
me intensely focused in a way that was a little bit scary because
the nucleus but Solace is in the you know, basal forebrain nucleus has cholinergic neurons that radiates out axons little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex and elsewhere and when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually, we know that there's a
elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine release there and it binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites there. So it's a kind of attentional modulation by acetylcholine. So you're getting in with nicotine you're getting a exoticness or artificial heightening of that circuitry and the time I had talked of Carlson on the podcast. He told me that apparently it helps them as he said publicly keep his
Love life
vibrant really it causes vasoconstriction. Like he literally said it makes his dick very hard
be said that publicly also. Okay.
Well as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's try some sex life, no disrespect the
Major effect of nicotine on the vasculature. My understanding is that it causes vasoconstriction not vasodilation drugs like Cialis. Tadalafil Viagra Etc vasodilators. They allow more blood flow nicotine. Does the opposite less blood flow to the periphery but provided dosages or kept low and I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all, and I don't recommend young people use it, you know, you know 25 and younger.
Our brain is very plastic at that time and and certainly smoking dipping vaping. It's nothing the aren't good because you're going to run into you run into trouble for other reasons. But in any case, I won't even their vaping is the controversial topic. It's probably safer than smoking but has its own issues and I said something like that and boy did I catch a lot of heat for that can't say anything as a health science educator not pissed somebody off just depends on where the center of mass is.
How far outside that you are for me the caffeine is the
main thing.
And actually it's a really big part of my life and one of the things you recommend that people wait a bit in the
morning. Oh, yeah to consume caffeine if they experience a crash in the afternoon. This is one of the misconceptions. I I regret maybe even discussing it for people that crash in the
afternoon.
Often times if the delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch this too big or you didn't sleep well the night before you're not going to avoid that afternoon crash, but I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration caffeine, especially if I'm going to work out the here's a weird one if I exercise before 8:30 a.m. Especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day if I wait until my peak of energy
Which is mid morning 10:00 a.m. 11 a.m. And I start exercising then I'm basically exhausted all afternoon, and I don't understand why it depends on the intensity of the workout. But do I like to be done showered and heading into work by 9:00 a.m. But I don't always meet that more. So you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start out with exercising. I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early and it and then that fuels you all day long, I think that if you wait until you're feeling
Our best to Train sometimes that's detrimental because then in the afternoon when you're doing like the work we get paid for like research podcasting Etc, then oftentimes, you know, your brain isn't firing as
well. That's interesting. I haven't really rigorously tried that wake up and just start running or
list of the Jocko thing and then there's this phenomenon called entrainment where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or view bright light.
At a certain time of day for three to seven days in a row pretty soon. There's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone in theory can become a morning person to some degree or another and this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off, you know people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't because it clicked it's because you have this incredible time keeping mechanism that exist in sleep. There's some papers have been published in the last couple of years Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere show.
That people can answer math problems in their sleep simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless. This does not mean that if you ask your partner question and sleep that they're going to answer
accurately like they might screw up the whole cumulative probability of 20% across multiple
months. All right. Listen what happened what happened? Here's the deal a few years back. I did a four and a half hour after editing foreign half-hour episode on male and female fertility.
The entire recording took 11 hours and at one point during the and by the way, I'm very proud of that episode. There's many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode. And my first question is what were you doing during the episode but in all seriousness, we should say that as four and a half hours. Yeah,
and for people than they should listen to the episode your it's extremely technical episode your Non-Stop.
Dropping
facts and and referencing huge number of papers. It's must be exhaust. I don't understand how you can pause talked about that term Health spermatogenesis to talks about the ovulatory cycle talks about things people can do that are that are considered absolutely supported by science to talk about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit better a little bit more experimental talks about IVF. It talks about XE. It talks about all of that. It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age.
Etc but there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability of a successful pregnancy as a function of age and so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing the cumulative probability then by the way, we've published cumulative probability histograms and many of my Laboratories papers including one that was a nature article in 2018. So we run these all the time and yes, I know the difference between independent and cumulative.
Ability. Yeah, that's just like I do the way the clip was cut and what I stated unfortunately combined to like a pretty great gaffe where I say you just adding person. I said you just adding percentages 20 20 20 to 120 percent and then I made a kind of unfortunately. My humor isn't always so good and I made a joke. I said 120 percent but that's a different thing altogether. What I should have said was
That's impossible, you know and here's how it actually works. But then the the it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram for successful pregnancy, but somewhere in the early portion, I misstated something right. I made a math error which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability which I do and it got picked up and run and people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense.
And so what I did in response to it was rather than just say everything. I just said now I said I just came out online and said hey folks in an episode dated this on fertility. I made a math error here is the formula for cumulative probability successful pregnancy at that age. Here's the graph. Here's the you know, an end. I offered it as a teaching moment in two ways one for people to understand cumulative probability. It was sort of interesting to a number of people that come out critiquing the gaff.
I also like Balaji and folks came out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. So there was a lot of posturing, you know, the dog pile often times people are quick to Dogpile. They didn't understand but a lot of people did understand these some smart people out there. Obviously, I called my dad and he was just laughing he goes. Oh, this is good. There's like the old-school way of hammering academic, but the point being is a teaching moment. Give me an opportunity to say. Hey, I made a mistake. I also made a mistake in another
Cast where I did a micron to mm conversion and at worst enemy or conversion, but and we always correct these in the show not captions. We correct them in the audio now, unfortunately on YouTube it's harder to correct. You can't go and edit and segments. We put in the captions, but that was the one teaching moment if you make a mistake, it's substantive and related to data you. Are you apologizing correct? The mistake used as a teaching moment. The other one was to say Hey, you know in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out. I'm sure I've made some small errors. I
Guy once said serotonin when I'm in dopamine and you know, you're going You're riffing and it's a reminder to be careful to edit double check, but the internet usually edits for us and then we go make corrections, but it didn't feel good at first, but ultimately, you know, I can laugh at myself about it long ago at Berkeley when I was teaching my first class. It was a biopsychology class. It's me, 1998 or 1999. I was drawing the pituitary.
gland it, which is, you know, it
has an anterior and a posterior lobe actually the medial lobe to add by five six hundred students in that lecture hall and I drew a chalk board and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary and I said my back was to the eye and I said, you know, and so they just sort of hang there and everyone just erupted in laughter because it looked like a scrotum with
two testicles and
I remember thinking like, oh my God, I don't think I can turn around like in faces, you know, and like all I got
Turn around sooner or later. So I turned around and we just all had a big laugh together. It was embarrassing. I'll tell you one thing though. They never forgot about the two lobes of the
pituitary. Yeah, and you haven't forgotten about that
either right? There's a high Heist aliens for these kinds of things and it also was kind of fun to see how excited people get to see people trip. It's like an elite Sprinter trips and does something stupid like, you know runs the opposite direction of the blocks or something like that and
Atora, you know I recall it won World Cup match years ago a guy scored against his own team. I think they killed the guy. Do you remember that? Hmm some South American or Central American team? Yeah, and they killed the guy. Yeah, let's let's look it up. I justed World Cup. Yeah, he was gunned down
Andres Escobar. Yeah scored against his own team and then T 94 World Cup in the United States just 27 years old playing for the
The Colombia national team.
Yeah, last name Escobar. It's a good name think it would protect you listen, you know, so there's some gaps that get people killed right? So, you know, how forgiving are we for online mistakes? You know, as I just the nature of the mistakes people were quite gracious about the Gap and some weren't and you know, it's interesting that
We as you know, Public Health Science Educators, you know will do long podcast sometimes and and you need to be really careful. What's great as
AI allows you to check these things
now more readily so that's cool. And there are ways that now going to be more self correcting. I mean, you know, I think there's there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them and school like
We are getting cleaned up.
Yeah, but mistakes nevertheless will happen. Are you do you feel the pressure of not making
mistakes? Sure. I mean, you know, I try and get things right to the best of you know to the best of my ability I check with experts. It's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was set in a podcast a lot of times I chuckle because I'm you know at Stanford. We have some amazing scientist, but there I talked to them else people elsewhere and
it's always interesting to me.
how
You know, I'll get Divergent information and then I'll find the overlap in the Venn diagram and I have this like question do I just stay with the overlap in the Venn diagram? Like I did an episode on oral health. I didn't know this until I researched that episode but oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health that there's a bacteria that causes cavities streptococcus, you know that can make its way into other parts of the body through the mouth that
Um can cause serious issues. There's the idea that some forms of dementia some forms of heart disease are starred in the mouth. Basically I talk to no fewer than four dentist Dental experts and there was a lot of convergence. I also learned that teeth can demineralize that's the formation of cavities. They can also remineralize as long as a cavity is in too deep. It can actually fill itself back in especially if you provide the right substrates for it that saliva is this incredible fluid that has all this
Capacity to remineralize teeth provided the milieu is right things like alcohol based mouthwashes killing off some of the critical things you need this fascinating and that put out that episode thing along not dentist. I'm not an oral health episode. I talked to a pediatric dentists. There's a terrific one doctor down score Stacy. Sta, CI on Instagram does great content talk to some others and like and then I just waited for the attack. I was here we go, and it didn't come and dentists were.
You know, that's a rare thing more often than not if I do an episode about say psilocybin or MDMA you get some people liking it or ADHD in the drugs for ADHD. We did a whole episode on the Ritalin Vyvanse Adderall stuff you get people saying thank you, you know, I prescribe this to my kid and it really helps and and this and but they're private about the fact that they do it because they kept so much attack from other people. So I like to find the center of mass report that
At try to make it as clear as possible. And then I know that there's some stuff where I'm going to catch shit. What frustrating for me is when like I see claims that I'm like against Florida zation of water, which I'm not right like we talked about the benefits of fluoride to build hyper strong bonds within the teeth and went looked at some of the the literally the crystals truck not excuse me, not the crystal structure structure, but the they
essentially the like
Micron and submicron structure.
Of teeth incredible and we're floor I can get in there and form these super strong bonds and you can also perform them with things like hydroxyapatite and why is there fluoride in water? Well, it's the best. Okay, you get you say some things that are interesting but then somehow it gets turned into like you're against Florida station, which I'm not or I've been accused of being against sunscreen. I wear mineral based sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer or I use a physical barrier. There is a cohort of people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad. I'm not one of them. I'm not what
Called a sunscreen truther, but then you get attacked for like if you so we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic. So what in Rhonda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this and so there are certain topics. It's interesting for which
You have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying but there's a lumper or lumping as opposed to splitting of what health Educators say and so it just seems like like with politics there's this like urgency to just put people into a camp of expert versus like Renegade or something and it's not like that. It's just not like that. So I the short answer is I really strive really strive to get things right, but I know that I'm going to piss certain people off and you've taught me.
And Joe has taught me and other podcasters have taught me that like if you worry too much about it, then you aren't going to get the newest information out there like peptides. There's very little human data unless you're talking about Riley C or the mallanna, you know stuff in the alpha melanocytes stimulating hormone stuff, which are prescribed for female libido to enhance female libido or sturmer Ellen, which is for certain growth hormone deficiencies with rare exception. There's very little human data.
But people are still super interested in a lot of people are taking and doing these things. So you want to get the information out. Do you try to not just look at the size but research what the communities are talking with the various communities of talking about like maybe research what the conspiracy theorists are talking
about. Just so you know all the
armies that are going to be attacking your Castle. Yes. So like for instance there is a community of people online that believe that like if you consume seed oils or something that like
you're setting up your skin for sunburn and if you don't, you know, like there's all these like theories, but I liked it. So I like to know what the theories are. I like to know what the extremes are. But I also like to know what the standard conversation is, but there's generally more agreement than disagreement. I think we're
You know, I've been kind of bullish actually is you know more like supplements like people go. Oh supplements. Well, there's food supplements like a protein powder just different than a vitamin and then they are compounds there are compounds that have real benefit, but people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated. But some of them are are vetted with for potency and for safety with with more rigor than others, you know, and it's interesting to see
How
people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into that are often attacked that's been interesting. Also, one of the most controversial topics nowadays is I was empik Manjaro. I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't understand why the court Health Wellness Community is so against these things. I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route for some people. They really help them lose weight. And yes, there can be some muscle loss and other lean lean body loss.
But that can be offset with resistance training. They've helped a lot of people and other people are like know this stuff is terrible. I think the most interesting thing about it was epic one djaro is that they are GOP one there in the glp-1 pathway glucagon-like peptide one and there was discovered in gila monsters, which is a lizard basically and someone was the now the now the entomologist will dive on me. It's a big big lizard looking thing that doesn't eat very often and they figured out that there's this peptide that allows
Is it to
curb its own appetite?
At the level of the brain and the gut and it has a lot of homology to sequence them ology to what we now call glp-1. So I love anytime. There's animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug. That's powerful that can help people with obesity and type 2 diabetes and there's evidence that can even curb some addictions. Those are newer data, but I don't see as either or in fact, I've been a little bit disappointed at the way that
the
whatever you want to call it health Wellness biohacking Community has like slammed on those.
Epic mongiardo it's like they're like just get out and run. And listen. There are people are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running could injure them they get on these drugs and they can improve and then hopefully they're also doing resistance training and eating better and then you know, you're bringing all the elements together. Well, why do you think the criticism is happening? Is it that was
impact became super popular. So people are misusing it or that kind of thing. No, I think
what it is is that people think if it's a pharmaceutical it's bad and then or if it's supplement its
Depending on which Camp there in end and one to be wonderful the kind of like fill in the gap between this divide that you know, what I would like to see in politics and in health is neither right nor left, but we can just call A League of reasonable people that looks at things on an issue-by-issue basis and fills in the center because I think most people are in our I don't want to say Center in a political way, but I think most people are reasonable they want to be reasonable but that's not what sells clicks that's not what that's not what drives.
Is interest but I'm a very like like I look at issue by issue person by person. I don't like in-group out-group stuff. I never have I've got friends from all walks of life. I said, there's another podcast and always sounds like it like a political statement but like the the push towards like, you know polarization is it's so frustrating if there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older each year. I'm like wow, are we ever going to get out of this like polarization?
Speaking of which how are you going to vote for the presidential election? I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it. Well, what do you think the role of podcast is going to be in this year's election? I would love long-form conversations to happen with the the candidates. I think it's going to be huge. I would love Trump to go on Rogan. I would I'm embarrassed to say this, but I would love to honestly would love to see Joe Biden going.
Rogue and also I would imagine that both would go on but separately separately I think is I think a debate Joe does the base but I think Joe is best as one-on-one conversation really intimate. I just wish the Joe Biden would actually
do long form
conversations. I thought he had done it. It wasn't me I think was on Jay Shetty. I can't judge a Shetty. He did a few but when I mean long-form, I
mean really long form like 23 hours and more.
More relaxed it was much more orchestrated because what happens when it's the interviews a little bit too short. It becomes into this generic political type of NBC CNN type of interview, you get a set of questions and you don't get to really feel the human expose the human to the light in it the full we talked about the Shadow The Good the Bad and the Ugly so I think there's something magical about two three four hours, but it doesn't have to be
Be that long, but it has to have that feeling to it where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous and you're going to be strictly sticking to the question answer type of feel but just shooting shit. Which Rogen is the best by far in the world that that he's I don't think people really appreciate.
How skilled he
is at what he does and the number I mean the three or four podcast per week, press plus the UFC announcing plus comedy tours in stadiums plus, you know doing comedy shows in the middle of the week plus a husband and a father and a friend in Japan Jiu-Jitsu. The guy's got like superhuman levels of output. I agree that long-form conversation is a whole other business.
- and I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are running for office that add in a different way and to really get to know them. Well, listen, you know, I I guess you mean is it clear that he's going to do jail time, or maybe he gets away on the final part is I was going to say I mean does that mean you're going to be podcasting for him present? Yeah, we're going to fact I'm going to
figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison with Aunt please don't well,
that's I'm sure.
They have visitors right that just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interview. But yeah, I understand you wouldn't be able to wear that suit you'd be wearing a different suit. That's true. Yeah, it's going to be interesting and you do I'm not just saying this because you're my friend, but you would do a marvelous job. I think you should sit down with all of them separately to keep it civil and and see what what happens.
here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape when I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these like they're not dinners but Gatherings where you know a local, you know, bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from the entertainment industry big agencies big Tech like big big Tech many the people have been on this podcast and they'll host a discussion or debate and what you find if you look around the room and you talk to people
oil is that about half the people in the room are very left-leaning and very outspoken about that and they'll tell you exactly who they want to see in the win the presidential race and the other half will tell you that there for the other side a lot of people that
People assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are in the exact opposite side. Now, some people are very open about who they're for but it's been very interesting to see how when you get people one-on-one don't like telling you they want X candidate to win her why candidate to win and sometimes like really I can't believe it like you like. Yep, and so it's what people think about.
People's political leanings does
often exactly wrong and and that's been eye-opening for me and I've see that University campuses to and and so it's going to be really really interesting to see what happens in November
in addition to that. As you said most people are close to the center despite what Twitter makes it seem like most people whether that's not a lot to center right Mechanicals the center.
Yeah. I mean here's this is to me the most interesting question who is going to be the next big
Edit in years to come like who's that going to be right now? I don't I don't see or know of that person. Who's it going to be the young promising candidates were not seeing them.
I'm not saying like who another way to ask that
question who would want to be? Well, that's the issue right? You know it who wants to live in this 12 hour news cycle where you're just trying to you know dunk on the other team so that nobody notices like the you're the shit that you fucked up, you know like that. That's
Like that's not only not fun or interesting. It also is just like the it's got to be psychosis inducing at some point. And I think that
You know God willing we're going
to you know, some young guy or woman is like on this and we refused his to to back down and was just like determined to be president and we'll make it happen. But like I don't even know who the viable candidates are. Maybe you Lex, you know, we should ask Sagar soccer would know. Yeah, maybe saw himself soccer's
show is awesome. Yeah it in Crystal do a great these incredible persistence. They have somewhat Divergent opinions on that. That's what makes it so
cool. He's great and looks great in a suit looks real says he's
taking real good care of himself. He I think he's getting married soon. Congratulations Ariane, forgive me for not remembering your wife, but future wife's name hee hee won my
heart by giving me a biography of Hitler as a present.
That's what he gave you. Yeah, I gave you a hatchet with a poem ins that just shows the fundamentally different way that we can the poor man's cry.
I'm in it, which was pretty damn good. I realized everything we bring up on the screen is like really depressing like the soccer player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy?
Sure. They're go to Nature is metal Instagram pretty intense.
We actually did a collaborative post on a shark thing. Really? Yeah, what kind of shark thing? So to generate the fear VR stimulus for my lab in 20
Was it yet 2016. We went down to Guadalupe island off the coast of Mexico me and a guy named Michael Mueller who's a very famous portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks and
we used
360 video to build VR of great white sharks brought it back to the lab. We published that study in current biology in 2017 went back down there.
And that was the year that I exited the cage. They you lower the cage with the crane and that year. I exited the cage. I had a whole mess with a are failure the day before I was breathing from a hookah line while in the cage. I Had No, SCUBA on divers were out the thing got boa constrictor it up and I had mayor failure and I had to actually share are and it was a whole mess of story for another time, but the next day because I didn't want to get PTSD and it was pretty scary the next day. I caged eggs. Did it with some other divers and and turns out with these great.
White sharks in Guadalupe, the the water is very clear and you can swim toward them and then they'll Veer off you if you swim toward them. Otherwise, they see you as prey well in the evening. You've brought all the cages up in your hopefully all alive and we were hanging out fishing for tuna. We had one of the crew on board had a line in the water was fishing for tuna for dinner and a shark took the tuna off the line.
And it's a it's a very dramatic take and you can see the the just absolute size of these great white sharks the waters. They're filled with them. That's the one but so this video just the neural Link Link was shot by Matt mcdougald who is the head neurosurgeon or only there? It is taste it now believe or not looks like it missed like it didn't get the fish. It actually just cut that thing like a band saw so I'm up on the deck with Matt. Yeah, and so when you look at it from the
Side you really get a sense of this of the girth of this freaking thing. So as it comes out
if you put eyes that thing and they
move arms of water with such speed just a couple three when you're in the cage in the cage is lowered down below the surface. There are going around you're not allowed to Chum the water there some people do it. But and then when you caged egg sit there like what are you doing out here and then you know, they you swim toward them they Veer off but what's interesting is that
If you look at how they move through the water all it takes for one of these great white sharks when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat is like two flicks of the tail and becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable economy of effort and ocean Ramsey who is in my opinion the greatest of all cage exit shark divers this woman who do with enormous great white sharks. She really understands their behavior when they're aggressive when they're not going to be aggressive. She and her husband Juan, I believe his name is
Do they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks? We were down there basically like not understanding any of this we never should have been there and actually the are failure of the day before plus kgh thing the next day. I told myself after coming up from the cage exit. That's it. I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want to live got back across the border couple days later. I was like, that's it. I don't take risks with my life any longer but yet MacDougall and MacDougall shot that video and then it went quote-unquote viral through
Nature is metal. We passed them that video. Actually
I saw a video where
an instructor was explaining how to behave of the shark
in the water and that you don't want to be swimming away because then you're acting like a pray. That's right. And then you want to be acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it right towards them and they'll Bank
off now. If you don't see them, they're Ambush Predators. They have, you know, you're swimming on the surface and apparently if they get close you should just like guide them away by like grabbing them and moving in with some people will actually roll them, but
If they're coming in full speed you're not going to roll the shark. But here we are back to dark stuff again. I like the shark attack map and the shark attack map shows that you know, Northern California. There were a couple actually guy's head got taken off. He was swimming North of San Francisco. There's been a couple of Northern California that was really tragic. But most of them are in Florida and Australia Florida state with the Surfrider Foundation shark attack map. There it is. They have a great map. There you go. So they look like we have all the rules.
Cars on them. So if you zoom in on this, if you go to the North America because skulls there's there's a yeah where they're where they're deadly attacked but in Northern California sadly, this is really tragic. If you zoom in on this one, I read about this this guy if you can click the link 50 year old male he was in chest high water. This is just tragic. I feel so sad for him and his family, you know, he's just dumb.
Three members of the party chose to go in he was 9 JH. I was in his chest high water 25 to 50 yards from Shore great breach the water seized his head and that was it, you know, so it does happen. It's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean, they're very very very low probability. But
but if it doesn't happen six times in a row
120 percent chance. Yeah, who do you think wins a saltwater crocodile?
Or a shark. Okay. I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me to no end Mueller Michael Miller who drove all over the world. He sent me a picture of him diving with Salty's saltwater crocs in Cuba was a smaller one. But goodness Chris. Have you seen the size of some of those hot water truck? Yeah. I'm thinking I'm thinking the sharks are so agile. They're amazing. They've had cammed one more body cam done-- moving through the kelp bed and you look and it's just there so a
Agile moving through the water and and it's looking up at the surface like the cameras don't hear the service and you just realized if you're out there you're not.
And you're swimming and you get hit by a shark your now it's going to talk shit and say that a salty has way more bite force. But according to the
internet recently data indicates that the shark has a stronger bite. So I was assuming that a crocodile would have a stronger bite force and therefore agility
doesn't matter but apparently a shark. Yeah and turning one of those big salt he's this is probably not that you know turning around like a battleship. I mean those sharks are I'm leaving they hit from all sorts of
Oh and they they do this thing. We saw this you're out of the cage or in the cage and and you look at one and you'll see it's I kind of like looking at you. They can't really fovea but they'll look at you and you're tracking it and then you'll look down and you'll realize that one's coming at you. They're they're they're Ambush Predators. They're working together that it's fascinating. Like I like how you know
that they can't full V8 writer you already
considering the Visions to see ya there. It's a very precise on the system very primitive eyes on the started had their vision is decent enough.
I mostly obviously sensing things with their Electro sensing in the water, but also a faction. Yeah, I spend far too much time thinking about and learning about the visual systems of different animals. If you get me going on this like we'll be here all night. See this is why I have this is from a shark.
Goodness, yet can't say I ever saw one with this big but imagine it's beautiful. Yeah, it's probably you know, you probably your blood pressure just goes and you don't feel I feel a thing. Yeah, it's not before we wind down for the cage exit a guy in our crew Pat Dawson has very experienced diver asked one of the South African divers that so what you know, like what's the contingency plan if like somebody catches a bite and they were like he was
Like every man for himself in the like basically saying like if somebody catches a bite like that's it. Yeah, you know, um, anyway, I thought we were going to bring up something happy. Well, that is Happy Well, we nature as we did it for ya what nature is beautiful we lived but you know that there are there are happy things you brought up nature as metal. This T. This is a difference between Russian. Yeah Americans and Americans is like maybe there's actually a good time to bring up your Ayahuasca Journey. I've never done ayahuasca.
But I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about ibogaine iboga, but you told me that you did Ayahuasca and that for you. It wasn't the dark scary ride that it is for everybody
else. Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me. I did twice actually
and have you done high-dose
psilocybin never know. I just did small dose of psilocybin a couple times.
So I was you know nervous about I was there. Yeah. I understand there are so I've done high-dose psilocybin. It's terrifying.
But I've always gotten something very useful out of it. So I mean I was nervous about like whatever demons might hide in the shadow and the jungian shadow.
Like I was I was nervous but I think it turns out I don't know what
the lesson is to draw from that but my experience b-boys Russian,
it must must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's also something to the
Jungle there it strips
away all the bullshit of
life and you're just there.
I forgot the outside civilization exists. I
Time because like
when you don't have your phone you don't have meetings or calls or whatever you lose the sense of time the sun comes up the sun comes down. That's the the
fundamental biological timer, you know, every mammalian species has a short wavelength. So you think like blue UV type. I like absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone and the and it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening because when the sun is low in the sky, you've got short wavelength and long wavelength.
Length light they could you look at a Sunrise. It's got blues and yellows orange and yellows, you look in the evening Reds orange and and blues and in the middle of the day. It's like full-spectrum light now, it's always full spectrum light but because of some atmospheric
elements and because of the low solar angle you like that difference between the the different wavelengths of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your I pay attention to and signal to your circadian time keeping mechanism. Like we are at the core of our brain and the suprachiasmatic nucleus. We are we are like wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun. Like that's the biological timer which makes perfect sense because you know, obviously as the planets as the planets spin and revolve
Some wondered like how that is affected by, you know in the rainforest the sun is not visible
often. So you're under the cover of my
trees. So maybe that
affects well their social rhythms. They're feeding rhythms. Sometimes in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species and but yet getting out from the canopy is critical, of course even Under The Canopy during the daytime there's far more photons than at night. You know, this is always what I'm telling
To get sunlight in their eyes in the morning. And in the evening people say there's no light. No sunlight this time here like it go outside on a really overcast day. It's far brighter than it is at night. So there's still lots of sunlight even if you can't see the Sun as an object, but I love time perception shifts and you mentioned that in the jungle it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun. You also mentioned that on Ayahuasca you zoomed out from from the earth. These are like to me the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another
And of course when we ever had a human brain, but which is that you can consciously set your time domain window. Like you can we can be focused here. We can be focused on all of Austin or we could be focused on the entire planet. You can make those choices consciously, but in the time domain it's hard like different activities bring us in to find slicing or more or more broad binning of time depending on what we're doing programming or exercising or researching or podcasting but
just how unbelievably fluid the human brain is in terms of its the aperture of the time-space window of our cognition and of our experience and I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable tools that we have access to that. We don't really leverage as much as we should which is when things are really hard you need to zoom out and see it as one element within your whole life span and that there's more to come, you know, I'm
people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in or they think it's going to go on forever when we're happy. We rarely think this is going to last forever, but which is interesting contrast in its own right, but I think that
Psychedelics while I have very little experience with them. I have some and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the different apertures.
Well how to surf that wave is probably a scale
one of the things I was prepared for anything is important is not to resist. Hmm.
I think
I understand what it means to resist the thing a powerful wave. It's not going to be good. So you have to be able to Surf it so I was ready for that to relax through it maybe because I'm quite good at that
from knowing how to relax and all kinds of disciplines
playing piano and guitar when I was super young and then through Jiu-Jitsu knowing the value of relaxation and through all kinds of sports should be able to relax the body foliage to accept whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it was a very
Very positive experience for me. Do you have any interest in iboga? I'm very interested in ibogaine iboga. There's a colleague of mine and researcher at Stanford Nolan Williams who's been doing some transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain Imaging on people who have taken the ibogaine ibogaine as I understand. It gives a 22-hour psychedelic Journey where no hallucinations with eyes open, but you close your eyes and you get a very high resolution image of actual events that happened in your life, but then you have
Within those movies, I think you have to be of healthy heart to be able to do it. I think have to be on a heart rate monitor. It's not trivial. It's not like these other psychedelics but there's a wonderful group called Veterans solutions that has used iboga combined with some other psychedelics in the veterans community
to to
great success for things like PTSD and it's a group. I've really tried to support in any way that I can.
Can mainly by being vocal about the great work they're doing but you hear incredible stories of people who are just like like near cratered in their life or zombied by PTSD and other things post-war get back a lightness or achieve a lightness and a Clarity that they didn't feel they had so I'm very curious about these compounds the state of Kentucky. We should check this but I believe it's taken money from the opioid crisis settlement for
Again research on this. So this is like no longer. Yes, if you look here. Let's see did they do it? Oh, no. No. No, they backed away Kentucky backs away from the plan to fund opiate treatment research was they were going to use the money to treat opioid it up now officials are backing off 50 billion. What is on its way over the coming years fifty billion dollars fifty billion dollars is on
its way to State and local government over the coming years. The pool of funding comes from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies that profit
and for manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers
Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opiate so they were going to do psychedelic research with ibogaine.
Supporting research on illegal illegal folks psychedelic drug called I began well, I guess they backed away from it. Well.
So earlier we get some happy news up on the internet. I'm talking
about this the shark and the crocodile fighting.
Yeah, that's true. That's true. And you survive the jungle? Well, that's the thing. I was I was I was writing to you on WhatsApp multiple times because I was going to put on the internet are you? Okay? And if you're like alive and then I was going to just like put it to Twitter just like he's alive, but then of course you're far too classy for that. So you just came back alive.
Well jungle or not. What?
Of the lessons is also you know when you hear the call for adventure.
Just fucking do it.
I was gonna ask you is kind of silly question. But like give me a small fraction of things on your bucket list
bucket list. Yeah. Go to
Mars. Yeah, what's the status of
that? I don't know. I'm being patient about the whole thing
red planet ran that cartoon of you guys. One of my thought was pretty funny instruction. That was pretty fun. Morgan's is already up there. Yeah, that's a great. That's a funny one.
Probably also true.
That would love I would love to die in Mars.
But I just love Humanity reaching on to the stars and doing this bold adventure and taking big risks and exploring a love exploration. What about seeing different animal species? I'm a huge fan of this guy Joel Sartori where he's this photo Arc project where he takes portraits of all these different animals if people aren't already falling him on Instagram. He's doing some really important work. This guy's Instagram is
Amazing portraits will look at it. Look at these portraits the amount of with a personality because we don't want to project anything onto them. But yeah, the the like the eyes and he occasionally put them moving on is how I Delight in things like this. I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes and now dogs or all kinds of all animals, and I'm very interested in kids.
Intent that that incorporates animals, we have some things Brewing there. Like I could look at this kind of stuff all day long with that bat, like bats people think about bats is kind of like well flickering a little annoying disease-carrying things, but look how beautiful that little sucker is.
How was your podcast with the Cookie Monster coming? Oh,
yeah, we've been discussions with cookie the it's can't say too much about that. But Cookie Monster embodies dopamine right Cookie Monster. Yeah cookie right want a cookie right now, you know like it was that was that was
And tweet Cookie Monster I bounced because cookies come from all directions. You know, it's like it's just embodying the the desire for for something and which is an incredible aspect of ourselves. The other one is you remember a little while ago Elmo put out a tweet. Hey, how's everyone doing out there and it went viral and you know, the Surgeon General of the United States have been talking about the loneliness crisis. He came on the podcast and a lot of people been talking about problems with loneliness mental health issues with loneliness Elmo puts out a tweet.
Tweet. Hey, how's everyone doing out there and everyone gravitates toward, you know, so that the different Sesame Street characters really embody the different kind of aspects of self through very like narrow neural circuit perspective Snuffleupagus too. Shy and Oscar the Grouch grouchy, right and the count 12 the archetypes of the yeah. The architect is very young in what again? Yeah, and I think that, you know, the creators of Sesame three clearly either understand that or it's an unconscious.
Genius to that. So yeah, there are some things Brewing on conversations with Sesame Street characters. It's not I know you'd like to talk to Vladimir Putin. I'd like to talk to Cookie Monster. It illustrates the differences in our like sophistication or something. Well that's illustrates a lot. Yeah, let's try this a lot. But yeah, I also I love animation. So I'm not anime. That's not my thing but animation so I'm very interested in the use of Animation to get science content across so they
they're a bunch of things Brewing. But but anyway, I Delight in start Tories work and and and it is there's a conservation aspect to it as well. But I think that mostly want to thank you for finally putting up something that like we're something is not being killed or like let some sad sad outcome.
He's all really
positive. They're really good. They're really cool and every once in a while look at look at that mountain lion, but I also like to look at these then and some of them remind me of certain people right? So let's just scroll through
Like for instance, I think when we don't try and process it too much so like like okay, look at this cat the Civic had amazing. Like I feel like that's somebody I feel like this is like a like someone I met once that's what does he appear easa tea and curiosity and a playfulness carnivore carnivore frontal eyes dies
found in dairy or sodariot action, right? So then you go down, you know, it's like this the beautiful fish neon pink right shows it reminds you of some of the people like that influence.
As you see on Instagram right except this one's natural. Just kidding. Let's see no filter there. Yeah. Let's see if you like. I feel like Bears. I'm a big fan of bears. Yeah bears are beautiful. This one kind of reminds me of you a little bit. There's like a stoic nature to it a curiosity. So you can kind of feel like the essence of animals. You don't even have to do psychedelic to get there. Look at that. He's like the behind-the-scenes of How It's actually yeah, and then there's some
Yeah, yeah, the In the Jungle the diversity of life was also Stark from a scientific perspective. Just the fact that most of those species are not identified was fascinating, right? It was like a little every little every little insect is the kind of Discovery, right? I mean one of the reasons I love New York city so much just by its problems at times is that everywhere you look there's life is like a tropical Reef if you've ever done scuba diving or snorkeling you look on a tropical.
It's like there's some little crab working on something and like everywhere you look there's life, you know the Bay Area if you go scuba diving or snorkeling, let's like a kelp bed. You know that there is like a kelp bed every once in a while some big fish goes by it's like a big IPO but like most of the time not a whole lot happens actually the Bay Area. It's interesting as I've been going back there more and more recently. There are really cool little subculture starting to pop up again. Nice. There's incredible skateboarding the GX 1,000 guys, but these guys did
The bomb down Hills there in nuts like they're just going like
that was just speed not tricks
Yost EG x 1000 these guys going down Hills in San Francisco. They are wild and occasionally, unfortunately occasionally someone get hit by a car, but he had just one thousand look into intersections. They have spotters. You can see still in there. I see there's a slight but into traps. Yeah into traffic. So in Saint Francis, yeah, there's this crazy like this is unbelievable and and
They're just
wild but in any case
what's on your bucket list the oven done? Well, I'm working on a book. So I'm actually going to head to a cabin for a couple weeks and right which I've never done people talk about doing this, but I'm going to do that. That's I'm excited for that just to mental space of really dropping into
writing like Jack Nicholson in The
Shining Catalan. Let's hope not. Okay. Let's hope not, you know before I mean, I only start doing public facing anything for posting on Instagram in 2019, but
But I used to head up to Wallah on the northern coast of California. Sometimes by myself to a little cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just read and write papers and things like that. I still do time I missed that so some of that I'm trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina relatives in the on the East Coast see my parents more they're in good health. Thankfully. I want to get married and have a family that's an important priority.
I'm putting a lot of how to work in there. Yeah, it's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah put a lot of work into the the runway on that whatever
advice for people
about that
or give advice to yourself about how to find love in this world how to find how to build a family
get there and then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the market yet, but well obviously pick the right partner, but also like do the work on yourself. No, no yourself.
At the Oracle know thyself and I think listen I have a friend. He's a new friend but he's a friend who I met for a meal. He's a very very well-known actor overseas and his stuff is made it over here and we become friends and we went to lunch and we were talking about work and being public facing and all this kind of thing. And and then I said you have kids writing says he has four kids. I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I see your post with the kids you
Really happen. He said he just looked at me leaned in and he said it's the best gift you'll ever give yourself and he also said and pick your partner though mother of your kids very carefully. So, you know, that's good advice coming from excellent advice coming from somebody who's, you know, very successful in work and family. So that's the only thing I can pass along we hear this from friends of ours as well. But kids are amazing and Family's amazing.
And you know, that's the different people all these people want to like be a mortal and live to be 200 or something. You know, there's also the the old-fashioned way of, you know, having children that live on and evolve a new Legacy, but they have you know, half your DNA so that's exciting. Yeah. I think you make an
amazing Dad. Thank you. It seems like a fun
thing. And you know, I've also gotten advice from friends who are super high performing and have a lot of kids.
They'll say just don't overthink it right start having
kids. Let's go. Right. Well, the chaos of kids is kind of the like you can either bury you or it can work in feet give you energy but I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing like wild and crazy things. And so that kind of energy is great. And and if it's not a big pack of wild boys, it's you know, you have daughters and they can be, you know different form of chaos. Sometimes same form of chaos. How many kids do you think you want?
Mmm?
You know, it's either two or five.
Yeah, very different Dynamic. You're one of two, right? Yeah, brother. Yeah. I'm very close to my sister. I couldn't imagine having another sibling because it there's so much richness there. We talk almost every day. All right, you know three four times a week, you know, sometimes just briefly but we're tight. You know, we're
really look out
for one another. She's amazing person like truly an amazing person and as like raised your daughter and amazing ways. She's like, you know,
Nieces like can I had to college in a year or two and like mice has shown an amazing job and her dad's done a great job to they both really put a lot into the family
aspect and it just has fun time with a really amazing person in the Peru in the Amazon jungle and he is one of 20 kids. Wow, she's got it's mostly guys. So it's just a lot of brothers and I think two sisters
I just said Jonathan haidt on the podcast the guy who's time.
I'm anxious generation calling in America mine. He's great. But he was saying that you know in order to keep kids healthy, they need to not be on social media or have smartphones until they're 16. I've actually been thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends on two neighboring properties and everyone talks about this not creating a commune or anything like that. But I think he I think Jonathan's right. We were more or less. Our brain wiring does best when we have raised in small village type environments where kids can forage the whole free range kids idea.
And I grew up skateboarding and building Forts and dirt clod Wars and all that stuff. It would be so strange to have a childhood without that.
Yeah, and I think more and more as we wake up to the negative
aspects of digital interaction will put more and more value to
in-person interaction. So
it's cool to see for instance kids in New York City. I'm just kind of moving around the city with so much sense of agency. It's a really really cool the suburbs like where I grew up like as soon as we
Could get out take the 7f bust up San Francisco and hang out with you know, Wild Ones like you know while there were dangers. I mean we couldn't wait to get out of the suburbs the moment that you know Forts and dirt clod Wars and stuff didn't cut it we just like wanted into the city so bucket list. I will probably move to a major city not Los Angeles or San Francisco in the next few years, New York City.
Potentially. There's all such different flavors of
experience.
Yeah, so I'd love to live in New York City for a while. I've always wanted to do that and I will do that. I've always wanted to also have a place in a very rural so area so Colorado Montana are high on my list right now and to be able to give it back and forth between the two would be great just for such different experiences. I and also I like a very physical life. So the idea of getting up in the sun with the sun in Montana or Colorado type environment, and I've been doing some putting some
Route towards finding a spot for that and New York City to me. I know it's got its issues and people say it wasn't what it was. I okay I get it. But listen, I've never lived there. So from you be entirely new and
you know,
she'll seems full of life.
There is an energy to that
City and he represents that I mean, there's yeah and and the full diversity of weird that
is represented in York
City's great a walk down the street. There's like a person I like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit and it's great. All right.
It's a disco used to be like that. The joke was like you have to be naked and on fire in San Francisco before someone sees it but now it's changed. But again it recently I've noticed it's an Francisco. It's not just about the skateboarders. It's there's some Community houses of people in Tech that are super interesting. There's some community housing of people not in Tech that I've learned about him and known people have lived there and it's it's cool. Like there's stuff happening in these cities. That's new and different.
I mean, that's what youth is for their supposed to evolve evolve things out.
So
amidst all that. You still have to get shit done. I've been
really obsessed with tracking time recently like making sure I have daily activities of habits that I'm maintaining
and very religious about making sure I get shit done do use a nap or something like that. No,
just Google Sheets. So basically a spreadsheet and I'm tracking daily and I write scripts that
That whenever I achieve a goal glows
green. Yeah, do you track your workouts and all that kind of stuff to know just the fact that I got
to work out done? Yeah. So I just it's a checkmark thing. So I am really really big on making sure I do a thing. It doesn't matter how long it is. So I have a rule for myself that I do a set of tasks for at least five minutes every day and it turns out that many of them I do.
Way longer, but just even just doing it.
I have to do it every
day and it's currently 11 of them. It's just a thing like one of them is playing guitar. For example, did you do that kind of stuff? Do you do like daily
habits? Yeah, I do my wake up if I don't feel I slept enough.
I do this non-slip depressed Yoga Nidra thing that talked about a bunch. We actually released a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify 10 minutes 20 minutes once puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested. Actually Matt Walker and I are going to run a study. He's just admitted the IRB to run a study on NST R. And what is actually doing to the brain? There's some evidence of increases in dopamine etcetera, but those are older studies still cool studies. But so I'll do that get up hydrate and if I got my act together
Punch some caffeine down like some attina some coffee, maybe another matina and resistant strain three days a week run three days a week and then take one day off and like to be done by 8:30 9:00, and then I want to get into some real work. I actually have a sticky note on my computer like just like reminding me how good it feels to accomplish some real work and then I go into it right now. It's the book writing researching a podcast and just fight tooth and nail to stay off.
Social media text message WhatsApp YouTube all that get something
done. How long can you go? Can you go like three
hours just deep focus if I hit a Groove. Yeah 90 minutes to 3 hours if I'm really in a Groove, but still that's the for me I start the day actually this way. I'm
afraid I'd really prized that those morning hours. So I start with the work and the it's a I'm trying to
hit the four hour mark of deep focus great. I love it and all film
camera. Yeah poor. I'm really really big bully. Yeah.
It's often torture. Actually. It's really really difficult. Oh, yeah the agitation but I've sat across the table from you you a couple years ago when I was out here in Austin doing some work and I was working on stuff you were going and I know she'll just like stare at your notebook. Sometimes just like pain at the
Same position and then you'll get back into it. Like they're those vultured building that hydraulic pressure and then go. Yeah, I try and get something done a value. Then it the communications start and talking to my podcast producer. My team is everything. I mean like the the magic potion in the podcast is Rob Moore right? Who's in the has been in the room with me every single solo Costello has to be in there with us because that's it people have asked journalists of asking they sit in friends of ass.
Nope, just robbed and for Guess interviews. He's there as well. And I talked to Rob all the time all the time. We talk multiple times per day and you know in life. I've made some errors in certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that and I certainly don't blame all of it on them, but you know played my role but but in terms of picking business partners and friends like, you know to work with I mean Rob just
It's been bull's-eyes and it's just Rob has been amazing my playback our photographer in the guys. I mentioned earlier
like we just
communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every decision like near neuroticism before we make we put anything out there and
so included like even created decisions of like topics to cover all
that. Ya like it like a photo for the book jacket the other day Mike shoots photos then and then we look at them. We pour over them together logo for the perform podcast with any Gallup and they were launching like it.
Is that the right Contour Mike's the real he's got the aesthetic thing because he was at DC so long as a portrait photographer and is cute with close friends with Ken Block to Gymkhana, like all the car jumping in the city stuff. Like I mean Mike is a mass Paisa. He's a true master of that stuff and and we just pour over every little decision. But even which sponsors you know, there are dozens and it adds now by the way that whole jahzzar Sizer thing of me saying, oh your guy went from A2 to A7. I never said that that's AI.
I would never call it number off. Somebody A2 to A7. Are you kidding me? It's crazy those AI if you bought the thing, I'm sorry, but like our sponsors. We list the sponsors that we have and why on our website and like the decision do we work with this person or not? Do we still like the product and we've got ways with sponsors because of like changes in the product or change, you know most time. It's amicable all good. But, you know, like just every detail and that just takes the ton of time and energy, but I try and work mostly on.
Tent and my team is constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions, but I because I obsessed but yeah, you have to you have to have a team of some sort someone that you can run things bought for sure. But one of the challenges the larger the team
is and I'd like to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stuff including engineer stuff robotics work research.
All of those interactions at least for me take away from the deep work the deep focus.
Unfortunately, I get drained by social interaction, even with the people I love and really respect and all that kind of stuff
your natural fur. Yeah,
like fundamental an introvert. So
to me, it's a trade-off getting shit done versus collaborating
and I have to choose wisely because without collaboration without a great team which I'm fortunate enough to be a part of like you wouldn't get anything really done. But as an
Visual contributor to get stuff done like to do the hard work of researching a programming all that kind
of stuff. You need the hours of deep work. I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's that's on my bucket list spend a bit more time dropped into work alone it I think social media like
causes our brain to go the other direction. I try and answer some comments and then and then get
back to work. I'm really after go to the Jungle. I appreciate not using the device.
I'll play with the idea of
Like spending certainly, maybe like one week a month not using social media at all.
I used it is so after that morning block. I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something and then a bit more work and that real work deep work and then around 2:30. I do it non-slip depressed. Take a short nap. Wake up. Umm, maybe a little more caffeine and then lean into it again. And then if you I find if you've really put in the Deep work two or three ballets per
By about 5 or 6 p.m. It's over. I was down at jacko's place not that long ago. And in the evening did a sauna session with him and some family members of his and some of their friends and it's really cool. Like they all work all day and train all day and then in the evening they get together and they thought and cold plunge. I'm really into this whole thing of gathering with other people at a specific time of day. I have a gym in my house and I you know, Tim will come over and train or you know that we've
Kind of slowed that down in recent months, but I think gathering in groups once a day being alone for part of the day. I'm like very fundamental stuff. We're not saying anything that hasn't been said millions of times before, but how often do people actually do that and and and call the party, you know, like be the person to like bring people together. If it's not happening that's something I've really had to learn even though. I'm an introvert like, hey like gather people together. You came through town the other day and a lot of people at the house. Yeah, Dad actually was funny because I was getting a massage when you
Walked into
I don't sit around getting massages very often, but I was getting one that day and then everyone came in and the dog came in like every child it was it was very
sweet again, no devices, but Choose Wisely the
people you gather with right, right and I was close.
Thank you for clarifying I wasn't which is very weird. Yeah. Yeah, the the
friends you surround
yourself with that. That's another thing like I
understood that form Ayahuasca in from just the experience in the jungle is like just select the people just be careful. How you allocate your time. I just saw on somewhere Conor McGregor has this good line. I wrote that down about loyalty.
He said don't eat with people you wouldn't starve
with that guy is my mean. He's big on loyalty all the shit talk all that set that aside to
me like loyalties really big
because then if you invest in certain people,
Life and they stick by you and you stick by them and
what the hell what else is life about? Yeah. Well hardship will show you who your real friends are that's for sure. And you know, we're fortunate to have a lot of them. It also show you who you know who really like as put in the time to try and understand you and and understand people like people are complicated. I love that so it can read the quote once more don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with
Yeah, so in that
way a hardship is a gift.
It shows you definitely and it makes you stronger. It definitely makes you stronger. Let's go get some food. Yeah, your one meal a day guy. Yeah. I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of biltong. I hope we're eating a steak.
So I hope so too on full of nicotine and
caffeine. Yeah. What do you think? How do you feel? I feel good? Yeah. I was I was thinking you'd probably like I only did a half a piece and I won't have more for a little while but a little too good.
Yeah,
thank you for talking once again, brother.
Yeah. Thanks so much luck. So been a great ride this podcast thing and you're the reason I started the podcast you inspired me to do it. You told me to do it did it and you also been an amazing friend you showed up in some some very challenging times and you've shown up for me publicly. You've shown up for me and my home and my life and you know, it's an honor to have you as a friend.
Q. I love you, brother.
Love you, too.
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew huberman support this podcast. Please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Carl Jung until you make the unconscious conscious. It will direct your life and you will call it fate.
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
