Welcome to the huberman Lab podcast, where we discuss science and science based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at Stanford school of medicine. Today, my guest is Tim Ferriss. Tim Ferriss is an author, a podcaster, an investor and is known for having a near Supernatural ability to predict the future, which has allowed him to obtain success in a huge number of different Endeavors. For instance,
he is a five-time number one, New York Times bestselling author. But perhaps equally or more important to that. He's also exceptionally good at teaching, people how to write the entire process of writing and marketing. A book, his books, the 4-Hour chef, and the 4-Hour Body, and the 4-Hour workweek. Not only explain his own exploration of how to optimize and prioritize his time and learn particular skills. But he teaches you those skills as well. This is really what sets him apart. He is an exceptional learner.
And an exceptional teacher and today you learn why? That is and in a characteristic. Tim Ferriss way he explains the process in a way that you can apply it. He lists out for instance, the specific questions that you should ask When approaching any Endeavor in order to get the information that you want and to make the process of learning and getting better at something and achieving great success. In something that much more likely, that ability that Tim has to identify the specific questions that one needs to ask and answer.
Sir and the specific action steps to take in order to achieve. Success is really what I believe sets him apart from everyone else on the Internet or on the bookshelf. That's giving advice as to how to become good at something. Tim Ferriss is also dedicated to various philanthropic efforts the most recent of which is the donation of several millions of his own dollars to research on psychedelics for the treatment of otherwise intractable psychiatric challenges, such as major depression suicidal depression.
Eating disorders and addiction. And he's also brought together other philanthropist, which is really galvanized the whole field of psychedelic research for the treatment of mental health. Transforming it from what was recently, kind of a fringe area of science to a Mainstay that's actually funded not only by philanthropy but by the National Institutes of Health. So he's really transform this entire scientific field into one that now is transforming the laws around psychedelics and is providing mental health treatment for people that would otherwise suffer too.
Day's discussion was a particularly meaningful one because not only is Tim a Pioneer in the world of podcasting, but it also marked the nine-year anniversary of his podcast. The Tim Ferriss show. Now, as I mentioned earlier, Tim is known for being able to see around corners or predict the future. He really does seem to be about five if not 10 years ahead of everybody else in thinking about tools for optimization in particular, domains of life. And so we were very fortunate that during today's discussion, he
With us his current creative Endeavors and how he's thinking about an approaching those and he also breaks down for us, the process of how to think about. And prioritize, one scheduled, not just on the order of the day not just on the order of the week but really thinking about one's life as a journey and how to organize and go about that Journey. So today's discussion will provide with you tremendous insight into who Tim Ferriss is and how that incredible mind of his Works, in order to do, all the amazing things that he's done.
Done. And of course, he teaches you how to do it. He will tell you the exact questions that you should ask. And that you should answer and how to step back and think about those questions and then prioritize, so that you can decide how to best invest your time. I'm sure many of you familiar with the Tim Ferriss show, however, if you're not already subscribing to the Tim Ferriss show, I highly recommend you. Do I still go back and listen to early episodes of the temporary show and I'm a weekly listener to the new episode. We provide a link to the Tim Ferry show in the show.
Captions also in the show no captions. You'll find links to Tim's many New York Times bestselling books and a link to its excellent weekly blog. Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero cost to Consumer information about science and science related tools to the general public in keeping with that theme. I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is Maui, Nui, venison Maui Nui. Venison is the most nutrient dense and delicious.
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Is referred to with levels. You can see how the specific foods you eat, when you eat and exercise, as well as any other activities impact, your blood glucose, and how those affect things like your energy level, or your quality of sleep, or your level of clarity and focus for mental work, or your physical output for physical Endeavors.
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Levels and trying a CGM. Yourself. Go to levels dot link / huberman right now they're offering an additional two free month of membership again, that's levels dot, link / hubermann. And now for my discussion with Tim Ferriss, Tim Ferriss, I am nothing short of thrilled to have you here. I've been reading your books reading, your blog's, listen to your podcast for a very long time. And in preparing for today,
Thinking, you know, who does Tim remind me of, because I knew you reminded me of somebody, but I didn't know who. And then I realized it. You remind me of the neurobiologist, Ramona, qahal. You don't look anything like him. He doesn't look anything like you. He was a brilliant scientist. He won. The Nobel Prize in 1906 for essentially, describing the structure of the nervous system was the first along with another guy to Define synapses, like its fundamental connection, the nervous system but the
Reason that you remind me of call is that it's a well-known or not-so-secret Secret in Neuroscience that. If you want to pick a really excellent project to work on, you simply go and look at what qahal
talked about or hypothesized
and then you work on that. He had this
almost
Supernatural ability to look at fixed stained tissue of the nervous system. Much of it is incredibly beautiful.
Oh, by the way and think about how it worked when it was alive and he's considered the greatest neurobiologist of all time without question and it's really this feature of being able to like see around corners or into the future that establishes that link for me. It's it's absolute truth that if you look back to what you were doing 10 years ago, 15 years ago, the kinds of things you were doing the kinds of questions you were asking.
That translates to much of what people like myself and people in the fitness space Tech space, investors space mindfulness, space psychedelic space, all these different Arenas, what they're doing now? So it's not hyperbole to say that you are the Ramona qahal of all those different spaces and podcasting of course, is one of those. So I owe you a great debt of gratitude and many others do as well. So my first question.
Question for you is what was your mindset around the time that you wrote for our body 4-Hour Work week? But in particular for our body because the protocols in that book are so very useful, they were at the time it was published, they still are now and so many of the things like ice baths, the discussion around Brown fat thermogenesis resistance training in, it's, you know, kind of basic form of just providing enough Progressive
Load to get an adaptation, not excessively long workouts, weight loss, low carb diet and on and on and on what were you thinking at that time? Like if you can think back to them like what were you foraging for? Were you thinking about when you woke up in the morning thinking I'm gonna go find all this stuff that at the time was really esoteric because it is all played out very well. What I'm basically saying is, if you want to know what's going to be happening hot and useful in 5 years, 10 years.
Ears and onwards, just look at what Tim is doing at any moment. So,
there it is. Well, thank you for the very generous comparison and intro. I'm thrilled to be here. So, thanks for having me and the for our body represented an opportunity for me to do a few things. The first was to diversify, my identity from outside of the realm of the say, business category. So it was a deliberate move since the success of the first book, but bought me permission to do something else that
Publishers would still want to gamble on. I wanted to see if I could maybe like a Michael Lewis, take my audience with me to other topics. So that was a lateral move. That was very deliberate from a career optionality standpoint and then I was doing, I think what I've done for a very long time and what I enjoy doing, which is looking at the most prevalent, beliefs, and may be dogmatic assumptions in a given field.
Could be anything if anyone says always never should? I pay attention and take note of that they may very well be right? But if anything is set in absolutes, I like to stress test. And in the case of say, physical performance or physical manipulation, tracking 2008-2009 was a very interesting time because the number of different Technologies were coming online. Meaning being adopted by.
By small groups had very early stages of say, accelerometers as wearables, you had a number of different Innovations and means of tracking that had never been available before you had for instance. And this took a bit of ferreting on my side. It wasn't immediately on the road map for our body but continuous glucose monitors. At the time that was I want to say exclusively limited to type 1 diabetics or maybe type 2.
Largely type 1 diabetics and what captured my interest and I can't recall how I came across it, but it was probably through the very earliest iterations of what later became the Quantified Self movement and I remember attending the very first gathering at Kevin Kelly's house in Pacifica, California. This is this was around 2009, 12 people, 13 people to discuss quantifying Health but the the example of a professional race
Car driver. I can't remember the form factor whether it's F1 or NASCAR other, who was using this continuous glucose monitor for
paying attention to glucose levels while driving. And I thought to myself would that not be useful for healthy normals? Would that not have other applications as if this, if this is being used by a high performer in this type of context, might it have other types of applications which then led me to use the very early versions of Dexcom which were really painful to implant no longer the case. Of course, that's changed a lot and I wanted to see how I might be
Be able to find a handful of different categories of things. There's the new like the genuinely new like CGM. At that point was genuinely new. The very old.
That might have some room for scientific investigation. And I would say when I say scientific, I don't necessarily mean randomized control trials at a university. I do think as an end of one, if you think about study design and you can even blind, you could even Placebo control and I knew people in the small subculture of Quantified Self. You did this, you can I think approach things in a methodical way where you can make a lot of progress in trying to
to determine causality or lack thereof, looking at very old things looking at orphaned things. So for instance, there are many examples in the world of doping where you have say Balco back in the day, where famously, Barry Bonds and others purportedly use things, like the cream and the clear and these were based on anabolics that were sourced from Soviet literature or older literature from the 50s and 60s.
That might not be on the radar of say, the anti-doping groups that would administer the testing. So all of these different buckets were of interest to me and I began where I usually do just interviewing folks. So I would interview one or two people in a given field and I might ask them any number of questions. So one is, what are the Nerds doing on the weekends or at night? This is also really good for investing. It's like, all right. What are the really technical nerds doing at
At night or on the weekends after they've put in a really long work day or work week. Let's take a really close. Look at that. Another one is and I'll create a flow for this. But what are rich people doing now that everyone or tens or hundreds of millions of people might be doing 10 years from now? And an example of that would be, let's just say, full-time assistant virtual assistant aii, right? So we've seen the
Needs and wants being addressed by different technology but it's an iteration of the same thing on some level. In the case of say using chat, GPT tied into zapier for various functions and then where people cobbling together awkward Solutions. So, we're a people piecing, together awkward Solutions and is there room for some type of innovation there. These are a few of the questions that I would not only ask myself, but ask experts in different areas. So, if I end up spending time say,
This was a few years prior to writing the 4-Hour Body, spent time at NASA Ames, and was interacting with a number of scientists, some people who are working on all sorts of biological tests and looking at genomics and had a very Frank discussion about where they thought if they had to push, right? So, I'll ask questions, like,
Push a little bit into the realm of Science Fiction and speculation because I'm sure you can't support any type of projection like that with the literature or the scientific literature. But what do you think some of the risks are of say publishing your genome because at the time a number of high-profile folks it just made their full genomes available, right? Well I think in the near future be possible to reconstruct someone's face based on their genetic data.
And they're, like, high degree of confidence, like 0 to 100% how confident I am 80. 90 percent. I'm like, okay, I should pay attention to that, because if you're making your data available, let's just say and it's anonymised per se, you still might be identifiable SEC. Okay. That raises some interesting questions, like, okay. Well then how might you get around that how might you put in safeguards so that you are the one and only keeper of your data. So to speak, brought up all sorts of targeted Weaponry by sort of Bio weapons.
At ease that I was interested in and then I would ask that person who's clearly like willing to step outside of the box of whatever he's working on day-to-day who are two of your closest friends or two thinkers, you really pay a lot of attention to our kind of at the bleeding edge of something and unorthodox. And then I would just continue to have these conversations over and over again and the the the stream of development that I paid a lot of attention to something along the lines of the following. So, the
Very Beginnings are usually in some type of extreme case and I think the Extremes in this goes for product design as well. But the extremes inform the mean but not vice versa. So you can actually learn a lot by stunning, the edge cases. So racehorses for instance, you'll often see things start with say race horses or people with wasting diseases, for instance, or any type of chronic or terminal illness. Who are willing to try some more experimental intervention.
Inventions then. Let's just take one step further bodybuilding. See a lot of interesting behavior and bodybuilding and high-level athletes. Then billionaires, then rich people than the rest of us, right? So, my assumption is, and was for the 4-Hour Body that along the lines of William Gibson's quote, you know, the future is already here, it's just not evenly distributed, so I'm never predicting the future. I'm just finding the seeds that are germinating. That I think are going to bloom and end up spreading, really, really widely.
So that's that's that's generally where I start. And I seen the practitioners are going to be ahead of the papers. So studying say the coaches whose jobs are on the line who are getting paid based on Athlete Performance and assuming that a lot of that will eventually if it holds up make its way into say, the peer-reviewed exercise science papers, but it's going to have a lag time of three to five years, at least, at least at least takes a long time.
Yeah. Science is often very slow to catch up.
Now, um, you mentioned, many things I have questions about, you mentioned paying attention to the new, the very old where the orphaned, so interesting. And I just thought I'd tell you that when you sit down with a graduate student or a postdoc and they're trying to come up with a project rarely, do you say you know like what do you want to work on and they fire back? Like a really interesting question, sometimes they do but that's the rare person more often than not.
You'll send them to the literature and they'll come back with. Like, okay there's this new technique that we can use to answer a set of questions better than ever before. Or there's a very old Theory I want to revisit or there's this theory that no one pays attention to. In fact, we had one guest on hero dead, rishabh e who is studying at essentially inheritance of traits transgenerational inheritance of traits. It's a little bit, although different from lamarckian Evolution but it's a lot like that in some ways and
You know, these orphan theories that everyone assumed were wrong and that there is a basis for them. So, I think there's Real Genius in that analysis. It also struck me as you were listing off, some of your process, Circa the writing of the 4-Hour Body, that, I, and many other people are probably curious about what the operations around all that looked like, so, are you, or were you at the time? Like, waking up in the morning going? Okay, I'm going to take a walk and think about the new, the old and the
Or I'm gonna take a walk or sit in a chair and think about like what are the Nerds doing right now? What a rich people doing right now or cobbling together awkward Solutions was, was that exploration? A structured practice for you or is this just something that was the consequence of being Tim Ferriss waking up in the morning and just like leaning into that because I've experienced both right, you know, but I think a lot of us are curious. I mean that there's a lot of Mystique around you.
Whether you like us to dispel any weather, whether you like it or not, it it's there and we're not trying to pry, but pry away. Is the, is the establishment of structure for you something? That's the consequence of structure in the first place. It's like, okay, now it's time to think or do you just allow things to guys are up to the surface?
I do both and I would say that in the case of the 4-Hour Body, it's it's a bit of an anomaly.
Compared to my later books because I had recorded effectively every workout I done since age 16 as competitive athlete. I just, I had a lot of records and I kept copious notes on supplement use and everything imaginable. So I have what you might call hypergraphia. I just capture it almost everything in writing and that was very useful because at various points in time let's just say I looked at a photograph of myself from making this up but 2004 and I
I think I would like to look and feel like that again, okay, let me revisit my workout logs. Let me just replicate the preceding three to six months of workouts and look at my intake in my diet at the time and lo and behold more or less. I could replicate the same type of look and feel and performance. So I had a lot already logged that I thought was worth examining and putting under scrutiny trying to replicate with other people. I do think replication is really important. And then when I came
Time to commit to writing the book. I thought about what types of many books would be of great interest to me personally, and that book, like many of my other books was written in such a fashion. That it could be a Choose, Your Own Adventure. Book did not need to be read. In fact, in many ways, it shouldn't be read linearly from page. 1 to the end. You get to pick and choose, which chapters are of Interest based on breath-hold vertical, jump endurance, hypertrophy, cold, exposure,
GE for fat loss, whatever it might be. And then I began talking to people and at the at the very outer bounds of self-experimentation, at least in the Bay Area. It's a pretty small community. So you're one or two lily pads from just about everyone and it's not accidental that I put myself in that environment in San Francisco specifically and more generally in the Bay Area, Silicon Valley because there's just a high surface area for luck.
Look to stick to, because you have so many, serendipitous encounters. You have so many people focusing on different disciplines that I think was the fertilizer. And the fertile ground for everything else, was actually the choosing the where of writing, physically being located in San Francisco. And then when I'm structuring things,
Maybe I'll get into some of the nitty-gritty, but I was using at the time and I still like to use a program called scrivener, which is actually designed predominantly for screenwriting. It's used for many things now novels. And so, on its expanded, its reach quite a bit, but it allows you to gather research and all of your documents and drafts, so that you can move them around in very novel ways. So that you can view say a split pane of your research and what you're working on simultaneously without
having toggle between a lot of different windows. And I was very promiscuous in my gathering of data. So I would gather from say, the web, using a Web Clipper from Evernote, which I was involved with as a company and basically without bias capture as much as possible. But three asterisks next to anything that I thought I really might want to revisit after I had read something a second time, which I would always do then, I could control F to find just three asterisks because they don't occur.
Her much in normal writing, just like people authors writers, will you T? Use TK, meaning find such and such a date. Data needs to be inserted later, but I don't interrupt the flow of writing only put in TK, because it doesn't really appear in natural English much in terms of structured. Thinking the way I approached it was during that period of time in my life, it was interviews, tracking people down conversations, emails reading,
So ingestion, let's just say for the workday, then a break for training and, and actually using myself as the human guinea pig, for various things that had surfaced, that might be on the
docket. Where were you training? At that time? I was just goes, not famous for amazing Jim's. It's
not famous for amazing gyms. At the time, I was training mostly at a Climbing Gym called Mission Cliffs. They don't have much, but they had barbells and, and they had and they had kettlebells. Yeah, I also had in the
In the walkway, leading from the front door of the apartment. I was renting is more of a house, the front door all the way to the first set of stairs. There were 30 Kettle, kettle bell. So various types. And I was training for certification. So I wanted to put myself on some type of deadline with accountability for that type of training to get a better understanding of it. So train for a few hours. I also had developed a friendship with Kelly Starrett, so San Francisco CrossFit who I have tremendous amount of respect for likewise multiple-level.
Terrific.
And his new book. Yeah. To move his great book. He's so good.
Yeah, he really not only talks the talk but walks the walk and exemplifies many of the capabilities that he teaches which I take seriously. I like practitioners not just the people with pretty theories, although the theories are important. I prefer to see someone who can actually put them into practice. So Kelly serve that function certainly and we're still very close friends.
And then after that, all right, shake off the cobwebs, get the body moving, get the brain moving also eat. And then I would actually focus on synthesis. So I would write generally from, let's call it 9:00 p.m. or 10 p.m. through 24 5 a.m. and I would ride the wave. If I happen to be in the zone, if I weren't in the zone, I would enforce it and I would try to get more sleep, but I have always
Warm best with my writing in those witching hours of. Let's call it 10 p.m. to 4 a.m. and my experience is that
The writers, I've interviewed the writer friends, I've become close with if you look at when they made themselves not necessarily what they do now right. But what they did that eventually got them to escape velocity. They're almost always doing most of their writing very late at night or very early in the morning when the rest of the world or their social group is
inactive. Wow. And I say, wow because of course, all of this was prior to the
Publication of Matt Walkers? Yeah, seminal book. Right. Why we sleep? Which I really see is the book that shifted, a lot of people. Fortunately, from the I'll sleep, when I'm dead mindset to, I'll, you know, to really pay attention to it. And, you know, I don't think Matt gets enough credit. I mean there there's been a revision of a few points within that book but the majority of it is just spot-on and Hyper landed so good and and yet what you're describing is a schedule that you know, starting to write it.
9:00 p.m. and finishing up around 4 a.m. but you talk about research earlier that day and training and eating so we're their
naps in there. I would sleep from say 42, maybe 11 or 12, so I would be getting up later and I've had conversations with Matt about this and there are night owls and morning Larks. And there are certainly differences in the code. Meaning the genetics, but that worked very very well for me for a very long time.
I'm it is however, a very challenging social schedule. So once you have a significant other and every girlfriend I've ever had is a morning person. If you want to spend time together, that schedule just does not work. So I made compromises later for the social side of things but if you put a gun to my head and said you need to write the best book humanly possible, that is your only priority outside of some exercise and fuel. I would follow the same
schedule. I know several.
Very successful podcasters, Lex Friedman, in particular, who I think he's trying to follow a more normal schedule now. But he's pseudo nocturnal least by my, my read, and there are a couple of other online content creators. Derek, from more plates, more dates, who's hyper productive in his domain and is mostly nocturnal. And then, as you're describing your writing routine in your overall routine, I was thinking that, you know, the great skateboarder everyone knows Tony Hawk, who is
Is obviously a great skateboarder, no doubt about that but Rodney Mullen who invented the Allianz treat the kickflip theology like Ronnie's basically nocturnal and has been for a long time and would, you know, skateboard up and down the boardwalk in Santa Monica in the middle of the night because lack of distraction. Yes, it really was. And he's been doing that since his teens. Don't know what he's doing these days but I think a lot of creators just need space. And and I always wonder if that's because when they, at least the ones that are not socially.
Functional like yourself who when they are around people. There's this almost hopefully a desire to interact, so you almost have to remove the stimulus
completely. Yeah, it removes the plausible deniability, which might not be the perfect use of that phrase, but in the sense that you it's harder to fool yourself into thinking you're doing something important when you're checking your messages or social media at 2:00 in the morning, who are we kidding folks, you should be writing in this case, right? And
And writers will do anything to avoid writing. I remember Ian, Rand wrote a book about writing which is actually fantastic. I can't remember the exact title might just be on non-fiction writing, something like that. And she talked about polishing the sneakers or the shoes before writing. Like I really just need to do this one thing which is to just clean up that shoe because somebody should really clean it up. And at some point I should clean it up and therefore, why don't I just do there's no time like the present. I'll just do that and it's all to avoid writing, which is the harder thing and in my conversation with Matt also, I should say that.
At.
As someone who has self described as a person who struggles with onset insomnia, Matt made the point and sometimes we need to relearn things, maybe you should just go to bed later. Sure. And that might address some of this onset insomnia and I don't know the causes for that but I do get a second wind very late could be related to some cortisol release abnormality or just different scripting in my system. Who knows
I'd like to take a quick break.
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I'll mention one other one other. Maybe sure. Ristic that I use for trying to peek around corners. Which is, if I find an example of an outlier trying to find two or three, right? Because one is an exception to it.
Interesting three is worth investigating, that's sort of how I think about it and I recognized for all of anecdote does not equal data. However, a lot of interesting discoveries begin as case studies or case histories, and so there are some things we can talk about that that I've paid attention to over the last few years. That are not in the 4-Hour Body, that I think are quite interesting and raised very, very exciting questions, but
I'd love to hear about those. Yeah. And a long line.
Of what I call anak data. I mean most of what we know about human memory stems from one patient. Hm. Who had his hippocampi that removed for epilepsy? And of course, I've been on Millions, probably be close to millions of studies in animals and humans focusing on the hippocampi. But most of what we know about human memory, is from one guy. Yeah, exactly. So there's there's, there's a lot to be examined. Not all of it. Will get funding for rcts. Let's be realistic. This
Especially true, if you're hoping for any type of directive data. Notice, I'm not saying conclusive, but if you are human, who's going to be making decisions about diet Health exercise, if you want any consensus, you're doomed, you'll be you're not going to get any answers before you die.
You say that twice so that the internet can hear it extra loud and clear for those of you that are arguing about nutrition on Twitter, like it might actually be life wasted. Yeah, I mean, I'm not being judgmental. I mean I think that there's
Validity and lots of those Pockets. There's stuff that's wrong and lots of those Pockets. Yeah, their diets that work extremely well like, you know, for our diet. All right, let's slow carb. I was called the for our diet but the Slow Carb Diet, it works extremely well, anytime I followed it, I get much leaner and stronger and all that stuff. That it's purported to do it works. But yeah. Maybe you could just explain what you mean by that because I think there are some argument / friction space
Is that are truly an energy sink.
Yeah I would just say focus on what works for you and your family or your team and if you're arguing on the internet recognize that you're just doing it because you like arguing on the internet, you're not going to convince anyone of anything and you're just going to make yourself more frustrated if you plan on changing any opinions. So, for me, it's Live and Let Live and
the more people who engage in that type of behavior, the more competitive Advantage, do you have if you don't? So for me, I'm like, okay, if you want to spend this vital non-renewable resource of yours called time on that. If I ever compete against you, I'm going to win so great. I'll just, I'll also not even try to convince you to stop doing that unless you see the logic in it, which I have, which is why I also don't have. At least 42 years have mostly had no social apps installed on my phone.
We could talk about that because I think recognizing that these things have been engineered to overcome any type of self-discipline with billions of dollars at stake, should lead you to believe that you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. So I just don't have the apps on my phone to begin with and I find it much more gratifying to see. Disproportionate change from small inputs. So that's what I'm looking for. And
And I'm also looking for changes that are easy to make that can have high adherence, that have very limited downside, which is very different from proving something, for instance, in the 4-Hour Body, took a look at the potential effect of cell phones or the proximity of cell phones to say ganado function, and reproductive health. And the literature that was available at the time was very limited had
Some animal studies mice, rats cetera. I recognize humans are not just large mice so they don't always translate. But I looked at it, I said, okay, looking at this simplistically is a plausible that there could be similar effects on humans, seems to be the case. Also based on conversations with people who are Specialists, but would never go on record. Therefore, if your phone is in your pocket, just have it on airplane mode, I mean, it does not have a high cost.
And and then, pending any revision, we can see, but while the jury's still out, I'm going to risk mitigate by taking this step.
Well and I just want to say thank you there, too. I read recommendation, I followed the recommendation of not keeping the phone on in my front pocket, or back pocket, and that Sanic data. My sperm analysis isn't relevant to this conversation but worked out well.
You could say, well, that's not necessarily because you had the phone off, but I did a very long detailed episode on male and female fertility. There is now a, what I view as a really quality meta-analysis, and it's pretty clear that there are effects of the smartphone on proximity of the smartphone. When it's turned on, that are not good for sperm isn't necessarily going to render somebody sterile, but on sperm, that can be separated out from the heat effects.
And so essentially this is another instance in which you were you were right? And I think more data will come out and am IA. EMF conspiracy theorists. No. Do I wear a tinfoil underwear? No but I think it's interesting. I know it's important and thanks to. You could my attention to it. In fact I teach about that in a course on neural circuits and biology and health and disease amazing and
I don't expect to get everything right at all. That would be crazy. And like to think I'm not totally crazy and it's very important if you are going to do some experimentation or experimentation in small groups, which the Quantified Self community did quite well, and I think still does quite well, you should really make every effort to not fool yourself, which is hard. It's challenging at times but read books like bad.
Add science, read books like How to lie with Statistics ensure that you are able to read studies? Well, you don't have to be the best in the world but that you can on some level identify the strengths and weaknesses of studies. This doesn't take a long time, certainly our friend, Peter Tia dr. Peter Tia has studying the studies, which is a multiple part blog series dedicated to this, there are other ways to approach it. I took one of his podcast, republished it on the Tim Ferriss show because it talked about how to
Examine studies. What powering refers to things like this in the span of one or two weeks, you could really become literate with the building blocks of scientific literacy with respect to reading studies and that gives you such an enormous life Advantage. It's hard to overstate.
I agree. And I also think that there are a lot of things that just simply will not ever be explored in a randomized control trial. One of the things that Peter and I have talked about before is
Is he texts me? You know, what are your thoughts on bpc 157? This is a gastric peptide. That's now been synthesized. So people will inject it into a tissue that they're trying to heal or improve. Lots and lots of anak data on bpc 157, making injuries, heal faster, Etc. Again, anak data, I've used it, I took an injection of it yesterday. In fact,
Peter basically is not a Believer because there is a lack of published data on this, which is perfectly fine, or I should say he's skeptical. And so there's always that possibility of a placebo effect, but I don't think there will ever be a really nice controlled trial on bpc 157 because the financial incentives aren't there and no smart graduate student is going to go do a thesis on this that. So that's the reality. I mean, maybe one will do it. Now that we're having this conversation but it's just doesn't
That pay out, isn't there? And that
last one you mentioned is one that people miss a lot people doing these studies are people with careers who are planning their careers and so they choose what they're going to invest time and very carefully. So that's another limiter on what we'll end up in our CT or not. Right. So I think that's good for people to hear and as you get more involved with science and in my case through a foundation, this is a foundation funding. A lot of
Early stage sites, you realize how expensive it is and how long it takes. It is a long-term investment. And if you are looking to make behavioral changes or modify aspects of yourself cognitive, physical psycho-emotional, or otherwise identifying interventions right options, that seem to have some plausible upside like there is a mechanism that might make sense in humans.
If you feel fairly certain there's very limited downside which should include talking to people who are presenting their results as anak data, then maybe you consider using X if you can cap your downside and I recall for instance looking at trans-resveratrol specifically not for longevity but in potentially increasing endurance for for our body and I ended up
Testing it, and there's a funny story associated with that didn't quite work out as planned and I don't use it any longer. But what I experienced prior to actually finding this on forums was joint, pain elbow pain, the one most consistent side effect was what felt like tendinosis in the elbows and then I went online and I'd already done this but I hadn't come across. I think it was the 500 group of people have been using 500 mg of transfers Resveratrol daily for long periods of time.
And one of the most common reported side effects is driving and I was like, okay I'm not willing to make that trade-off. Yeah. And sense to me. Yeah,
I think it would be fun if ever. You were willing that we could do a hybrid podcast on supplement fails. I
have some spectacular
failures, as do I and I'm digging I'm thinking about a few of them. I mean some that were really like took me off.
It's like there's one supplement called Ball by nettle ensis. This is not another one of these shrubs
sounds like an infection.
I mean, this thing will really spike your testosterone and free testosterone. I'm talking back acne like huge strength gains aggression, it's really wild and then after about seven to ten days, it all crashes. And you go below Baseline with OnStar. Yeah, even testicular pain. So it was unclear. So you if you're a smart person you halt use, right? So I can
Understand why people are skeptical of certain things. And then, of course, there are supplements that I'm a big fan of and that your big fan of, we talked about those things elsewhere, but it might be fun to do a supplement fails podcast. If you've ever, you were willing though, I
could do and just experimental fails. Oh yeah. And of one experimental fails, which include things that people might not think about. For instance, for our body, had quite a bit of real estate dedicated to looking at things like PRP. So platelet-rich plasma, I think there's a role for it. It's not
Useful for everything, but for certain types of injury repair.
I think it's very interesting but every time you get injected, this is where you have to be careful because they're very few free lunches out there. There's, there's usually some type of feedback loop system is very smart at Auto regulating things. This is, this is outside of that, a consideration that I hadn't made which is every time you have an injection, there's a chance of an infection. Particularly if the site in my case was the elbow and the
Section was made for the PRP, not quite where it should have been slightly to the rear of the elbow where the skin is very thick. And so it pushed staph bacteria from a mid layer of the skin into the joint capsule. Not good. And that really could have ended very poorly. I ended up having to go to the ER, and get it, get it all removed and so on. But that could have ended up in a much much more severe
Asian. So you do have to be careful with this stuff. I've become a little more conservative with some what I do including injections I'm like, all right. Like, let me think twice about the injections. If I'm going to swallow something, let me make sure I'm really looking at the implications for the liver.
Yeah, smart very smart. I'm curious about some of the things that you talked about, in the 4-Hour Body and that you've mentioned today, things like accelerometers continuous glucose monitors deliberate,
Cold exposure. How many of those things are? You still doing on a regular basis? And how many do you, you know, use a couple times a week or a couple times a month or go through phases of using and not using
cold exposure? I use as consistently as is practical. So if I'm traveling it's a little harder, but we're in l.a. right now. One of the first things I did was find a few options for contrast therapy. One of the first things I did and cut by contrast, I do not mean
Infrared sauna and cold plunge. I'd much rather have hot and cold water. Just in terms of sort of, speed of heating, the Japanese approach, right? For just speed of vasodilation, particularly for injury recovery. I think it's incredibly helpful for mood regulation, certainly knots case, and cold water for mood regulation, or the treatment of say depression, or as a pre-emptive intervention to avoid, or mitigate depression is
Old used to be prescribed for melancholy and people like the van Gogh's of the world, would be prescribed, cold baths. So that was something I was like, well, let's take a look at some of the old history read about that and then look into PubMed and so on to see what might be supported. So the cold I'm still using I become increasingly interested, this was not in the 4-Hour Body, but whole body hyperthermia often excluding the head for depression, which
Which I know there's some, some
research. Yeah. UCSF. Yeah, it's right now that really interesting studies too early to report, I'm not involved in these, but I think these are really important studies. Because for all the people saying, oh well, you know, it's ice bath stuff, you know, metabolism this metabolism that what one thing that's very clear, is long-lasting, very significant increase in the catecholamines. Dopamine epinephrine norepinephrine, not a replacement, perhaps for antidepressant medication, but as you said to move the needle toward
Present States. That's the cocktail and heat as well. Yeah, yeah. And the hyperthermia
especially the way it is for matter, right now with some of the research is very early stages, there's going to be less dead here instead. It's not as readily available say culture our cold bath. So I do think about the Practical applications that but right now it's very interesting. Slow carb diet, still use it all the time. It is not my default 24/7 as it used to be. So maybe I'm just getting older and more self indulgent, but if I find
I myself going off the rails a bit and I'm like, okay I'm getting closer to my muffin top here, let's stage an intervention, then I will go immediately back. Slow carb diet. Within within a matter of weeks, it's pretty easily corrected, and
it's just a cue for people. I know that, you know, it's low carb diet achieved. Great prominence, in fact, it wasn't it featured on or mentioned in an episode of Orange. Is the New Black. I think it might have been. It's made it
made appearances on a handful of shows.
Great. I
I've been referring to the Slow Carb Diet, several times throughout the discussion. So for those that aren't familiar with the Slow Carb Diet, I know they can go look up what that is but so that we can keep them here for the rest of this discussion and not have to send them out and back just yet. Can you give us just a brief top Contour of what the slow carb diet is?
Sure. This is low carb. Diet is intended to be a simple easy to adhere to diet. For people who have perhaps failed other diets that allows you to
to recompose your body. So improve muscle, mass decrease body fat percentage and the rules are really simple and that's part of what makes it work. It's not ideal for every sport in every circumstance. But broadly speaking, it works for a lot of people who've had trouble with dieting in the past. So rule number one, don't drink calories.
That's it, very simple. So, black coffee unsweetened tea, great juice out, anything with calories out. You could add a little bit of heavy cream to your coffee, let's say. But that's that's also bending the rules in a way that I don't like. So, in the beginning, it's like follow the rules so you can break them later. So, in the beginning, let's just say, you can't drink calories. Number two, don't eat anything, white, sounds pretty basic, right? Just don't eat anything that is the color of white or it could be white basically, that means you're going to be avoiding starches.
And things that are similar to starch. Has
then includes things like oatmeal. Then there's things
like so roughly speaking, just avoiding things that are white or that could be white. We'll get you pretty far. And yes, there are exceptions like cauliflower fine. You can have cauliflower, but again don't get fancy, right? It's very easy to outsmart yourself when it comes to behavioral change, keep it simple. So for at least two weeks, forget about the exceptions, right?
Drink calories, don't eat anything white and then eat 30 grams of protein within 30 minutes of waking up. Okay, got that. And then there are few buckets. You can choose from Ryan, see you have vegetables, beans, and lentils, and then some type of protein. So you're going to come up with meals, that you can follow.
Without deviating for a period of one or two weeks just come up with the same meals and that's going to sound boring. Yes. But guess what? You do it already. You just might not realize it and the the lentils in the be and specifically as a prereq we can get into some of the reasons but add a lot of fiber and also inhibit appetite, right? So that's actually a very important component of these meals. There may be a handful of other rules but those are the basics and then the
Option is take one day off per week and just go fucking crazy, that's cheat day. There are some epic cheat days out there. Some I've captured for myself, and anything goes when I say anything, I do mean anything. So if you want to consume multiple pizzas, pints of ice cream whatever, indulge I left, one out, no fruit during the week. So avoid fruit, avoid fructose. So agave nectar anything that is sort of
Hidden sugar, avoid all that. It's a no added sweeteners, obviously, but avoid avoid fruit and fructose. And again it's not going to kill you, guess what? If you're from European ancestry your ancestor to did not have like blueberries in the middle of winter generally speaking, right? You'll you'll be fine for a few weeks and then there's that cheat day and cheat day. Anything goes the amount of damage you can do on cheat. Day is pretty limited and there are ways you can mitigate that. There's
All chapter called damage control in the 4-Hour Body, but focusing, just on that diet and having one day off where, you know, you can do anything means when you are controlling yourself for those six days of the week, you're not giving up your favorite foods forever. You can even keep a list of all the things you want to eat on cheat day and then you have free license to eat on shoot day and that provides you with a release valve so that you can build in the cheating as opposed to having it.
Whereas, a failure point, there are a handful of other things there. If you have Domino Foods in the house, for instance, if you eat a lot of almonds or mixed nuts, and you're just going to sit there, compulsively, eating them, while you're sitting at your laptop. Don't have what I call dominoed Foods in the house which are going to really create some portion control issues. But broadly speaking, don't drink calories, donate things that are white, take from three categories and build your meals out and those are the meals that you follow. Do not eat fruit.
Or fructose. And then cheat one day a week. And Saturday is a nice day, Richie there for most folks and just to answer some questions be looking to have. No that doesn't mean 24 hours. You can spread out over two days that will actually say you back but the amount of fat that you can store in a handful of sittings over 24 hours which legitimately is more like 12 to 18 hours pretty limited so that's low carb diet.
Great, thank you for that. I also want to ask, is it ok to take the day after cheat day and fast or do one meal that day? When I followed the Slow Carb Diet? I benefited from it tremendously loss fat, gain muscle, tons of energy sleeping, great required, less caffeine all sorts of wonderful things, stable blood sugar, I felt so, so, good, really enjoyed the cheek days. I really, really enjoyed the TV is so much fun at some point. There's some gastric distress.
Is that comes from, you know, not regulating intake, which led me to not want to eat the next day. So I tended to do the chi days on Sunday, in my case. And then I would fast most of Monday, just water black coffee tea, and then I might have a small meal in the evening and then by Tuesday, I was back on the slow carb diet is is that seemed like a and sort of a detrimental deviation from the from the plan. I think that if
that is, what works,
For you, then that is what works for you. So this is the, this low carb diet template for me as a starting point. And generally, I'll say, I think this is from Picasso, right? It's like learn the rules as an amateur so you can break them as professional. But it's like, I recommend most people kind of stick with the format for a handful of weeks and measure the results right there. So there are guidelines for how to measure the scale is a bit of a blunt instrument, so there are other ways.
But if you're extremely overweight, you can just use the scale and fasting I think is fine or just ratcheting back your caloric consumption significantly and what happens over time for most people also is for the first say, four weeks, on cheat day, you're going to go completely insane. And I remember, I was doing something much stricter called the cyclical ketogenic diet, which is a whole separate thing. It's much more limiting in terms.
You can eat but I was training for ultimately the Nationals in Chinese kickboxing. This is happening in 99 so training super hard as following a cyclical ketogenic diet which meant I could eat very few things but I did have this one cheat day and I would do a glycogen depletion work out beforehand, which is one of the things you can do to limit the damage on Tuesday. Do a glycogen depletion work out beforehand and then I would just go crazy. I mean, I would drive to Krispy Kreme by 12 donuts and they would be gone by
The time I got home and it wasn't an hour away, was like a 10-minute Drive Donuts. Be gone, right? I would go to Safeway and I would buy a bag of those Fun Size Snickers. And that would be just a tiny portion
of my calories out for you.
It. A lot of sweet stuff. I also did the Savory stuff. I mean, I had my favorites, nothing was safe, so nothing was safe. Nothing was safe, my Paws got into everything and then over time because the next day, you're going to feel like you got hit by a diabetic dump truck.
You start ratcheting back and you're like, okay maybe I don't need to do that, maybe cheetah will just be two meals or maybe cheat day. I'll just be like the pastries in the morning with the coffee and you start to regulate a bit generally, you don't have to but over time you generally will. And I think after you followed it to the T, just follow the Commandments for say 48 weeks, then you can certainly deviate. And I'm not saying if you're not hungry, don't eat however in
in many cases, people have
they have acclimated to not eating in the morning and then they end up overeating later in the day if you have that habit, right? If you're consuming fifty percent of your calories or more dinner,
and you want to lose body fat, I would say
get some cottage cheese or something that will give you 30 grams easily in the morning. Worst case scenario, use a protein of sometime, just don't make it high perchloric. Powdered protein, like, could be powdered way powdered whey protein. Whole food is going to do a lot more
and no calorie counting correct. No Gallery in
there. Tends to be self-limiting when you're eating this much fiber in this much protein.
It tends to be very self limiting what? You'll want to consume and what you can consume
once again, I had great experiences with slow carb diet, and now I'm going to go back on. Yeah, nobody and
nobody needs to buy anything to figure it out. If you just search on, Tim dot blog, slow carb diet there, you'll get everything that you need to get started. No purchase
necessary. Well it works very, very well. I'll say that and it's very straightforward to follow and it does include the notorious
Cheat day Infamous cheat day and it can be done on a very reasonable budget and so if people want to learn more about that they should go to Tim's blog on for our for our body and slow carb diet will provide a link but it's you know, I think it's worth highlighting again. Just how effective that is you know as you pointed out thousands and thousands of people using it to great success, some of whom were quite obese and yeah, whatever
Updates on those folks. Are they still keeping the weight off? I
would like to do a follow-up. It's I think with diets in general there's a lot of reversion to the mean you know regression to the mean. So I would expect that that some have kept it off and some have not that would be true of I think every possible diet especially for people who are overcoming behavioral inertia of having gained hundreds of pounds. But I'd like to do some follow-up. What was fun about the post? I put together called how to lose 100 pounds on the slow car.
Diet, we had we profiled say, four or five people but there were dozens and dozens and dozens and dozens and this was a very long time ago. So I would say that,
A long-term follow-up would be super interesting and we did at one point track several thousand people through platform at the time, when he was coached me, as they follow the sort of carb diet. For the first of four to twelve weeks. And that was fascinating because I want the data, and I'm happy to be proven incorrect with any of my assumptions. I mean, I don't view that as a failure of, and I view that as a huge net gain and it has a very high adherence rate. So, I
I pay attention to not just is something effective. Does it get you? The outcome you want? Not only is it efficient from a time and resource perspective but how high is the adherence rate, right? So if you take a random sampling of 1000 people from the US across, socio-economic classes, Etc. How many people practically speaking will be able to or willing to follow this for say, an eight week period of time, or four week period of time and I try to optimize for the widest.
Rinse because I know the Slow Carb Diet, people Klondike. But what about intermittent fasting? What about this? And what about endurance athletes? Like this is not for everybody, in all cases, it just happens to be a good default diet, with a high adherence rate. And like you said, it's very inexpensive. It can be followed very, very
inexpensively, could sorry to interrupt you. One thing that I really like about it is that many variants on caloric restriction which is because laws of thermodynamics, definitely apply. Yes, we're not we're not trying to say they don't
But one of the issues with a lot of things including intermittent fasting, which I sort of do some variant of because I'm not really hungry to eat until about 11. I like to train in the morning if I can etcetera is that they can sometimes prevent best performance in terms of, especially resistance training, high intensity, resistance training, so very low carb diets. I've tried them, even if you're paying attention to other ways to restock glycogen it performance drops off. Whereas the Slow Carb Diet. I feel like I can think I can
An work. I can exercise, I can sleep. Like everything just works well, but there's one thing in it that I wanted to raise it. When I heard this. I thought there's no way this is true, which was making sure that you get 30 or so grams of protein, within 30 minutes of waking. Yeah, I thought, how can that be, but, how can adding protein early in the day, actually make a difference and it really did work out. I still track my numbers. So, in terms of dropping body fat percentage, increasing muscle, it really does work. Now, whether or not that simply because it's offsetting food intake that I would have.
Food that I would have taken in later in the day? I don't know. And I don't, I'm not gonna make myself my own control experiment to the point that I drive myself, crazy, but it really does work quite well to get past sticking points to just get that 30 grams of protein early. So sir, violate the end. The time restricted feeding component deliberately with some protein in the morning. Yep. Then still train and do all the other things and, you know, carry on as usual. And it's just so, it seems so peculiar like eating more and, and losing body fat,
but it works.
Yeah, it's counterintuitive and a lot of approaches can work for a lot of different people. Right to State the obvious, but this particular aspect of this low carb diet is helpful for. Let's just say the majority of the people in that thousand-person sample, I was talking about the hypothetical pull from different parts of say the us or anywhere because it it seems to help with a few things first. There's just the thermic effect of food and for
There's a greater thermic effect, you also have. And I think there's there's decent at the time. There was decent literature to support this. So, I don't know if it's changed that the protein intake along those lines, has an appetite suppressing effect so that the Net Daily calories consumed tends to be less when someone has a higher protein meal earlier in the day. And last but not least, I would say one of the risks and there are many people who execute well,
On this. But you have to be very meticulous which is true of the ketogenic diet as well. So you can get yourself into a lot of trouble. If you do it, 60%, right, or 70%, right? You
really young in there, you can get yourself in their massive psoriasis. I mean, my scalp, you know, sloughing off from that. Like when I'm in ketosis only going like, what the hell is going on here? Going back on some complex carbohydrates and it going away? Yeah, exactly. So I don't need I don't need a randomized control trials. No I simply don't want to run that experiment against your
scalp. Yeah. Soon, the case of say,
Time restricted feeding some people who do intermittent fasting lose a lot of muscle mass. And there are multiple reasons for this, I think people should make use of relatively widely available tools like dexa and so on to ensure that your composition is actually moving the way. You think it's moving, make sure you standardize your hydration for that as well as time of day. Just protips. That's true for blood tests as well, but it seems,
Has to get net-net better effects than trying to teach people how to fast effectively, which you can do. And we can talk about fasting, that's something that was not included in the 4-Hour Body that were I to rewrite it today, I would include a section. And there was a bit in tools of Titans to address that on more extended fasts, let's just call it 3270. Fasts, so that's an area that's of great interest to me as is ketosis and metabolic Psychiatry. I'll Chris Palmer who we both know.
Incredible. I mean what he's what the Awakening that he's created through his book and going on your podcast, my podcast, and others and you know, letting people be aware that changes in diet can impact mental health. So I think in 23 years, it's going to be a duh and we're not just talking about the difference between you know, slamming back horrible Foods, horrible for US Foods versus eating really clean. I mean really specific diet protocols to treatment
I'll Health. Yeah, incredible. Yes, super
excited. So that's that's one of the things that I'm paying a lot of attention to right now. They're Handful in that realm within the just say, the the interplay of Mind and Body since the khari Cartesian Duality and separation in this to makes no sense from a biological standpoint. So that's, that's something it certainly captured. My attention. I paid a lot of attention to even as far back as early 2000s, for mental health and just cognitive performance.
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/ hubermann again that's inside tracker.com hubermann. Thanks for revisiting. Some of the 4-Hour Body and slow carb diet and elaborating on some of the process that went into that. And I think creators of all kinds thinkers of all kinds and people who are interested in the contents of the 4-Hour Body are going to be a very grateful for that information. I certainly am fascinated by your process. One of the things that you mentioned along the lines of process was, you know,
the power of places and where one happens to live. I think there's a essay by Paul Graham that talks about this. It's a little outdated, you know, and it talks about the messages that you the tacit messages of being in certain cities. I think it was the only Boston, you're not smart enough. What was it was New York. You're not powerful enough. And not, you always assume I just thinking and or you should be more powerful as the message, like the tacit message.
Los Angeles. What you're what you're doing? People aren't paying attention. Paying enough attention to it. Something like that. Like don't asset messages. These are stereotypes about City, certainly cities change. The role of places is an interesting one. Like, you know, you mentioned, you know, small gathering, Kevin, Kelly's, house, Quantified, Self. And I think for people who don't know, people like that, right? Maybe we could get your thoughts on how would one think about where to live and, and maybe
even curating their own, Gatherings, useful, Gatherings, because it's not that I have to imagine. It's not that you guys sat back and you're like, I'm Tim Ferriss things. Like I'm Kevin Kelly, let's have a gathering so we can talk about it in a few years on a podcast, this stuff happens that word, you know, it's dangerous, organically when people who have common interests aside to get together and talk and listen and brainstorm. And I'm yet to do that in a, you know, with good people and not.
Not have something really incredible come out of it. Not necessarily that day. Yeah. But looking five years looking back, five years later and he's got that was really worthwhile totally. Yeah,
these thoughts and no particular order I would say. The first is, it depends on my recommendations depend a lot on where you are in the Arc of your career in life. If you are in full growth, hyper drive mode, and you are trying to
Build both yourself and your capabilities in a very concentrated way where you're not necessarily focused on family. You maybe have fewer obligations then if you're serious, I think many people should consider moving to an area of high density, for period of time. It could be three months, it could be six months, could be longer, but putting yourself in a New York or in LA or San Francisco.
Or Chicago or as new places. Develop, I'll give you one, you might not expect, same Ottawa Canada where shopify's based and the presence and growth of Shopify has spawned an entire ecosystem of startups. So there may be options outside of the usual cast of characters, Pittsburgh, and Duolingo similar effect. So there are more options in people might recognize but taking a journey.
Any and placing yourself.
In a place where you can be in a very active pinball machine where you may interact, serendipitously with many different people. From many different worlds, I think it is, it is hard to overstate the value of and my drive and my filtering function. Let's just say because when I first got to the Bay Area, nobody cared about me. I was nobody, I was driving. My mom's used minivan. Hand-me-down that had the seats stolen out of the back and we literally were you in the South Bay I was
Was I was working in San Jose.
Yeah, I mean no disrespect to San Jose. I'm from the South Bay yeah but there's a there's a bleakness to the South there is there is a little bit of bleakness and then I lived across the
street in this tiny apartment lived across the street from the Jack-in-the-Box in Mountain View. So it's not like I was strolling onto the big stage and just blowing people away. Oh I
grew up right near Mountain View. I'm very familiar with by skated the curves of that Jack all the way. Did you traded the Gold's Gym in offering started actually
amazing? That was it?
Jim as a great show, as a great, um, I don't think it's still
there. They're super late before my writing sessions, and had the benefit of being open really, really late and I rang start. Haven't thought about that in a long time, so that the point is, I also started where a lot of people are starting and what did I do? I put myself in a high-density environment. Next, what did I do? Knowing no one. I started to volunteer at events where they had interesting speakers.
Hers and interesting people coming to hear those speakers. So I put myself in Silicon Valley and then I began volunteering for groups like essays. I don't know if it exists anymore of the Silicon Valley Association of startup entrepreneurs. I think it was high, the Indus entrepreneur, which is a very sort of Indian or indian-american focused organization that does a lot in the realm of startups and I would carry water out, take out garbage, I would check name badges, I would check people in
Nothing was too low for me and I'll give you guys a tip that will be obvious to some but not obvious to many when you are volunteering a lot of folks who volunteer do the absolute bare minimum because they are not getting paid. This is not going to get you noticed but it sets a very low bar. So that if you volunteer at these events and someone's dropping the ball or there's something happening that needs fixing and you just proactively, do it? The producers of these events will
Will notice you and this is what happened over time over a few months and then I got invited to join in on meetings that were planning future events. And I eventually got to the point where I was recruiting speakers and able to set the agenda for an entire main event. And then that's how I got to know, say, Jack Canfield, who is the co-creator of Chicken Soup for the Soul and many others who introduced me to my book. Agent, many, many, many, many years later, Jack Canfield,
But I was a nobody, then you have to play the long game, but you can be methodical and how you play that and that is one approach. Just as an example for how to build your network, which snowballs overtime don't. Hump every VIPs leg within 10 minutes of meeting them. Play it, cool, you know,
and a lot of the Gatherings where that person is has a lot of Demands on them is the last place you want to do that better. The way you're going to make your
sale and see to that. The way you're going.
To make yourself memorable with people. Like that is to be very professional. Always on time, predict what they're going to need or problems will run into beforehand and address them before they even think of them and be easy to deal with.
And people like that high performers, notice these things, they will make note of it. The
being easy to work with is something that I used to tell my graduate students. Postdocs. I mean, because the opposite of that nobody wants. Yeah, right. Nobody wants. Yeah, especially in the beginning like later. Okay. Great. You're Steve Jobs. You want to be difficult here in there or a lot. No problem. Right? But in the beginning, that can be a real liability. You can make up for that.
If you're the best in the world but in the very beginning you probably won't be. So try to stack the deck in your favor of volunteering is a shortcut and that would be one way of doing it another now, especially given the virtual communities that exist. So you have subreddits, you have online communities. You have Twitter groups, you have Clubhouse, you've got a million different options, which can be overwhelming Clubhouse. Still going maybe not, I've no idea. Oh
no, I don't know. I'm not saying it's gone. I just, I remember during the pandemic, there were some Clubhouse. Gatherings and hopped on there. And
But I've sort of forgotten to get a beneath the
platform. Affinity is really fickle, which is why I think to the extent possible. If you want to build a world-class and I use that term, very deliberately Network in record time, just to give you a nice headline. I would say, focus on the uncrowded channel, which is in person, it's out of fashion. It's out of Vogue, going to a conference, and actually interacting with humans in the hallway approaching panelists. This is
There's thing that I did, I'll give it a give another tip. So very early on I would go to conferences. Nobody cared who I was. Nobody knew it was fine. And I would study the panel's. Let's say I'm going to a big event like South by Southwest and I would this is what I did in 2007, which was just prior to the first book coming out and I would go to these various in-person events. I was focused mostly on events that had the Thematic focus of blogs.
We could come back that but blogs were what podcasts were a few years ago that they drove incredible traffic. But they were undervalued by mainstream media undervalued by mainstream Publishers Etc, which meant there was an Arbitrage opportunity in a way. And I would pick say a handful of panels with topics, I thought were super interesting and then the panel would end and what would happen, the panelists would get rushed.
By various folks, because many of them were well known who was not getting rushed. The moderator, I would go straight to the moderator and I would talk to the moderator. Have to thank them for the panel. I would be very genuine none of those made up and talk to them for a bit. They would generally ask why I was there, when I was interested and I would mention whatever that happened to be. In this case, it was, I'm finishing my first book where I had my first book coming out soon and I'm here to hopefully meet people who are involved with a b or c and then if we hit it off, which is
Sure every time, but if it seemed to be going, well, I would say is I don't know anyone here.
I'm really sort of orphaned here making my way through this entire event. Is there anyone else here? You think I would get along with food? Maybe I could buy a drink her coffee and vast majority of the time. They'd be like, oh yeah, you should be. So and so and then I get the introduction and then I would meet that person. I would have a genuine interaction with that person and if it made sense, if things are going well, I do the same thing. Is there anybody else here? You think I should just say hi to and I get along with
not who I can ask for something.
And that wasn't deception. I was being honest. Like someone, I could actually
Vibe with. And if so would you mind making the intro? Oh yeah, sure, no problem. Many of those people are still my friends and by being surgical in that way, not trying to gather business cards to use a really Antiquated metaphor because will hand them out. Yeah, people still had about, I guess depends where you are, especially like Boston, but if it rather then trying to collect people as Pokemon cards,
Developing say 5325 deeper relationships through longer conversations at an event. That is what directly LED ultimately to the hockey. Stick for the 4-Hour workweek with in Tech within specifically San Francisco. So those would be a few approaches for, for building your network. When you don't have the ability to just walk up to say Kevin Kelley and have a conversation that came over time
whether or not, it's
It's Health practices or nutritional practices or at meetings. Seems your oriented toward the uncrowded but very interesting people and spaces, but the key word there, I think is uncrowded. And of course the other key word is interesting, right. I mean it's not like you're standing in the parking lot talking to whoever happens to be there. Although that can be interesting. There's a Serendipity there and there's always things to learn from people but in terms of
Career advancement and and building new ideas and foraging for information. I'm just struck how you've done that over and over and again, thank you for giving us some insight into the process. Please. Here's
another one. So, I think there's a tendency among people who want to develop their networks, or their relationships to be star-fuckers. Not to get too technical,
but technical term.
Yeah. And they want to tell other
Well, they are friends with someone more than they want to develop skills or learn from someone. This puts you in a very disadvantaged position because then that means. Alright, you want to become friends with Elon Musk, good luck or you want to become friends with this. A-lister celebrity who everyone else wants to meet good luck, it's going to be a crowded bloody path to get there. And by the way, they've also certainly developed really attuned defenses against people like you.
you know, it's going to be hard on the other
have staff to prevent
from have a Phalanx protectors to prevent you from Ever Getting that person on the other hand, if you're approaching it from the standpoint of developing skills learning and actually becoming potential friends with someone give you an example, you could go after you want to become better at
Boxing. Let's just make that up. All right, maybe not the greatest example, skiing would be another one, but let's stick with boxing, just because of the way. I'll explain it. If you wanted to say get personalized lessons from Floyd Mayweather and can have it. Okay, let's go then maybe a step down out of the pro ranks to gold medalist. Okay, if it's brand-new gold medalist. Let's just say, like Oscar De La Hoya when he was really The Golden Boy and a just thrashed, everyone still going to be hard.
What about the silver medalist? Who just had a bad day?
When he had that last bout against Oscar De La Hoya potentially rent. From a technical perspective from a personal connection perspective, you may have more in common with that person or bronze medalist and they can get you 70 80, 90 percent of the way there. And by the way, you probably don't have the physical attributes to make do 100% anyway, if you're coming to it, this late and you could get in many cases, one-on-one lessons, whether in person or virtually,
It's someone who is of that caliber, they're in the same front of the pack as the names. I just mentioned, maybe not as famous hundred bucks, 20 bucks per hour for a lot of people that is Within Reach.
And I'm not sure what the value of saying. One knows somebody very famous is, it's just, never been something I've oriented to, it's a
common orientation. Yeah. And I think that's true for a lot of things, like many people use say,
Oh psychedelics because they want to tell other people the story that they have of doing psychedelics, right? They're not doing it intrinsically for what they hope to get out of that experience. Maybe there's part of them but it's more, the social signaling and validation. They get when they project that out at a group dinner into a story that they can tell and that's true for many things. So, one of the questions I asked myself with all sorts of things, if I could never talk about this, what I do it. What a, what a great.
Great, right thing to think about, right? Like if I could, if I could have let's just say we didn't know each other and I was like, okay I'm earlier in my career. Let's apply some constraints. So I'm not where I am, I still want to do a b and c in the public eye. Maybe I want to build a podcast whoever
If I could meet with you, but I could never tell a soul. Would I do it?
I don't know. What do I would? Thank you. I went, but I would too, but for a lot of folks, if they meaning I'd meet with you, I'm not saying I did with me, by the way, I'd be with me. Oh no, the believe me, I meet with me all the time and sometimes it's pretty
unpleasant. Yeah. And, and that can be applied to all sorts of things, right? It's saying and it's a useful question cuz I ask myself this for examining your motivations and I'm not saying one motivation is
Is better than another, but it's you should at least be aware of your driving motivations, because you can end up playing games, you're not even aware you're playing. And that's how you end up. I think getting into a lot of trouble in life, one of the ways. So that would be a question. I might apply. I apply other questions. Like there's a great question that Seth Godin applies, who really? I admire tremendously and has built an incredibly
Unorthodox unique, life for himself and his family. He's a zigged when everyone would expect him to zag and I and he always has a defensible logic behind it and much like, Derek zippers, but most people have probably heard the hypothetical question. Like, what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail right? Or what would you do if you couldn't fail and Seth turns out around? I think that's a good question, but he turns around, he said, what would you do if you knew you were going to fail?
In terms of identifying, what you would do for the process, what would you do if you knew it was going to fail? Okay, you're considering these five different projects. Let's say they're all going to fail, but you still have to choose one of the five, which would you choose?
That's a great question,
much harder to
answer. Yeah. And you know, at the same time, I'm called back to when I was a graduate student and still now, with the podcast, I have this litmus test
Test which is you know, is the experiment that I'm working on. The one that I want to be working on most is the podcast that I'm working on the one that I want to be working on most I mean there's truly, no other podcast I'd rather be having today than this one, right? And the moment I'm starting to think, oh, I wish I was doing that thing over there. I realize I'm off Target, I'm off Target and I think that asking really good questions and something clearly that you're very good at and getting a little bit deeper into your process around that. Do you write
Things down. But is there a Notebook? Some place in the Kingdom of Tim Ferriss in Austin or elsewhere? That says, you know, those questions that essentially those questions are written, are
they? Yeah, I collect, I literally have a document with questions that I've gathered from Seth printed out and at the Airbnb where I'm staying here, sometimes I
brought it with you,
I think it out here. And then I went through and I read it last night, I was highlighting questions from past interviews, I've had with him on my podcast.
To revisit his questions. So I was literally doing that last night over dinner and I collect questions. I collect questions. If I am reading a magazine and I come across a good question. I take take photo or I capture it somehow in notes or in Evernote which I know is kind of old-fashioned these days, but he used it for everything. So the critical masses and Beyond enormous and I do collect and revisit these things. I captured them in journals as well, but I absolutely capture.
Good questions when I find them
questions are so powerful for the brain to want to go into this in too much detail because I have a lot more questions for you but we just wrapped a series on Mental Health, that will come out later this year with Paul Conte and he is brilliant. As we both know and does truly important work and and he pointed to the value of asking really good questions about oneself and the because of the way that questions that are really directed.
Acted at self-inquiry cue up the subconscious. So you ask the question and unlike a statement or a meme, the brain works with that the days and hours. After asking the question in ways that simple, declarative statements probably don't ping the system. The same way, which is probably why we can see so many points of wisdom and Truth everywhere. And it doesn't necessarily transform us. But asking really good questions, really does seem to transform us. Yeah, there's
I think judging people by their questions is, it's also a shortcut to assessing and learning a lot about how someone functions and what makes them tick. There's will tear, who said, you know, judge a man by his questions by his answers. Something along those lines, but when in doubt, which would be to Volterra, it sounds good does sound good? And I think about this a lot, I do think about the questions, and I refine the questions that I ask myself, especially while journaling, because it's easier to cross.
Cross-examine and stress test your own certainty and beliefs, when they're captured on paper or digitally on a laptop for instance. So I do routinely revisit certain questions that I found helpful over time. I mean one that people can play with is with whatever is really causing you consternation or stress at the moment, some kind of decision a relationship.
Business could be anything. Just what might this look like, if it were easy. What might this look like? If it were easy, if it had to be easy if that were possible, what might it look like?
And that could apply to
anything. I can't plan anything, you know, could apply that could apply Fitness. It's like, like if you do really intense, kettlebell swings twice a week with proper weight and load and time under tension. And you do pushups a few times, a week and handle a couple of other elements
You can get in pretty good shape, it's so simple but it's a lot mean hits your entire posterior chain, okay? Fine. Do some push-ups and some core work, but if you're not exercising at all, because you have made the assumption that it's
Four hours five hours a week rather than completely remove that objective and call it just impractical. Can you ratchet down the scale? How far can you ratchet down the scale until you have no excuses? All right, I'll just be one. One example, language, learning Tech investing, plus everything making life easier is something that definitely gets my vote. Yea, making it easier and making it more.
Elegant, the more pieces in your life. You have floating around the more contacts, the more extraneous loose connections, the heart of your life is going to be the cognitive overload or overhead is really high. So I'm always looking for maybe like Japanese flower arranging. It's like, okay, how many pieces can I remove while still maintaining the essence of what I'm trying to achieve
Hugh and Rick Rubin and I'm telling you, you know, two people I am fortunate enough to know personally and that I've
Respect for and you know, the work and self-evident, you know, it's really remarkable. So rewind that and listen to that segment, right there folks, I'm telling you, I've worked hard to apply it because it's not my default and boy, does it make a significant Improvement to simplify simplify simplify take some thought and question asking is like, you just can't delete things at random so you get down to some fixed number. But I'd like to ask you about another area where
Really of seem to see around corners. And this is one that actually carried with it. Significant risk, not necessarily risk to health, and to life, but risk in terms of outside perceptions, and that's psychedelics as, you know, I've substantially changed my view on this. We don't need to go into my former stance on. I talked about that when you were gracious enough to host me on your podcast for a second time. Done some psychedelics recreationally as a kid. It was core.
Elated with not-so-great times in my life, stay away from them. Then eventually Revisited, MDMA in particular from a therapeutic standpoint found tremendous benefit again. Therapeutically with a medical doctor. Again, these drugs are illegal soon to change perhaps, hopefully, and we'll talk about that, but it's becoming clear from the controlled Studies by Robin Carter Harris there, many others, okay, no one Williams others. That these drugs
Have enormous potential to help relieve depression, trauma, help. People explore their psyche, their mind for sake of feeling better, doing better in the world for leaning into life. Not tune in, drop out but you know, to really lean into life with more purpose and more satisfaction. In some cases, they've really have saved lives. I think what was your mindset around psychedelics? When you first started, exploring them? What
What led you to overcome? The inevitable, you know, fear Gap there because you do seem like somebody who takes value and your health you're not Reckless. You may have been more adventurous in the past with things like hate the word but biohacking and self-experimentation than you are now, but but you obviously have some self-preservation mechanism intact. We learn, we learn, we learn what was your mindset around at the time. And then I want to get to what you've learned from it and
Frankly that tremendous efforts that you've put that are now translating to tremendous value for, really millions of people. And ultimately, I think it's going to be billions of people by establishing funding for the pioneering research in this area helping to promote the movement of these compounds from illegal to legal in the therapeutic setting, so on and so on. So take us back to your first thoughtful exploration of psychedelics.
Ex would that look like you, like mushrooms? All eat them. It was at it or was it or what was it? A dedicated research process and who'd you talk to what was it all
about?
Let's go way back to my undergrad experience. And there are many reasons that I end up going to Princeton. I think I was very lucky to get in my SAT scores because I can never finish the damn test. I've so much of a perfectionist, I'll get stuck and ended up, not doing terribly well, but through essays and other things ultimately was able to go
part of the girl, let me interrupt you and just say I think at this point we can say they were lucky to have you. Well, thank you for telling us. Yeah. Thank you for saying yeah. Great
Shame done
great and you're a great poster on the wall for them. Yeah. Really hope. So really, really yeah, II just want to say it because you're not going to and I think it's important that these are great institutions of great minds. Go through there. And, you know, Einstein went through there. Yeah. And and their success rests not just on the Einsteins but also on the student body and what they go out into the world and do and not just in the realm of science. So really, they're like, they're lucky to have had you. Yeah. Thank you,
Andrew. I
He Chinese in a room where Einstein used to teach. It's pretty cool test set foot and spend time weekly in a space of shared by some of these people mazing it. Really, it really gets the imagination firing. If we go back to that chapter in my life, I was initially a Psychology major with focus on Neuroscience. So, I want to be a neuroscientist and there are many reasons for that I have neurodegenerative disease on both sides of my family so Parkinson's and
Alzheimer's. So that was certainly a personal driving interest in terms of looking at mechanisms understanding what Therapeutics existed or did not exist. How things were developing and the research. And while I was there,
Which later I ended up Switching gears and transferring to focus on language, acquisition and East Asian studies. Hence, the Chinese that I mentioned earlier and Japanese and Korean, but on the Neuroscience side, her a lot of cool breakthroughs. Also that came out of Princeton around that time. Looking at the amazing discovery of say neuronal. I went on to say Regenesis, but neurogenesis in the hippocampus Amarillo Gold's. What?
Zach. Yeah, exactly. So there was quite a bit happening at that time. I was a subject. I loved volunteering for studies just to try to get an inside. Look at how things were done and in some of Daniel kahneman's experiments. So it was a cool time to be there. And within the first two years, I want to say I had my first experience recreationally with mushrooms and looking back. Now I'm horrified by the lack of control.
And meaning not control, but lack of supervision, right? They mean the setting, the setting setting ended up being fine. Nothing terrible happened but there are a lot of ways it could've gone sideways. But that first experience and I must have consumed in retrospect, just a dizzying amount of mushrooms. I mean,
it might be in excess of
5 G i-- little bit more. Yeah, just knowing what I know. Now it would have been kids.
Don't do this at all, don't do that. And I'm not gonna say, don't do it at home. Don't do it at all. Yeah. Yeah. Please. I don't think. I actually don't think.
The young developing brain should be exposed to psychedelics. We could talk. We can talk about that. Yeah, wide awake. I'm going to take my stance. I'm going to walk and I more now. Yeah, I mean in
the world in which we live in the u.s. I would, I would totally agree with you. There are some interesting cultural exceptions and other places where there things are more set up to provide for that type of use. But I certainly would not recommend it. But, but coming back to my, my Recreation,
Experience. My subjective experience was so bizarre.
And my experience of time. So nonlinear my experience of self.
So different from anything. I had experienced up to that point.
And therefore my construction of reality being so completely. Unlike anything I had experienced, was enough to make me want to learn about these compounds and very early on. I still have a scan of it somewhere, I think it was 1998 or 99, I actually wrote a paper. One of my junior papers was focused on examining potential similarities, between REM, sleep and LSD LSD.
25 and looking at some of the patterns of neural activity, of course we can do a lot more. Now with with the tools we have available, but from a scientific perspective, I was very curious about how much we knew and how much we didn't know and I would say that latter category gets me more excited. No way. I'm like, okay, how how much room is there for growth here because if we're just putting
The finishing touches with marginal incremental improvements on something, that we feel like we've largely figured out that's less interesting to me than something that baffles most people examining them on some level and there is a professor named Barry Jacobs. Who is doing some very interesting work. He did a lot of work looking at the serotonergic systems and did a lot of work with cats ultimately. I could not do personally, the animal work required of the sort of indentured
Servitude that I would
say Road someplace. Once, you know, you said, you know, when confronted with the prospect of installing a computer printer into the head of the attack on the dash, a cat head, and the back of the cat had. They simply had those like, those little VGA
ports on the back of these cats heads, because cats sleep a lot and so they're interesting study. Yeah, a lot of
that cat very few Laboratories work on cats. Any longer it's mostly a mouse. Still, some non-human primate work. My laboratory
Essentially shut down our or is in the process of shutting down. Even our Mouse work. I much prefer to work on humans, they can give consent and they house themselves and they animal research. Thing is tough for any, for any sentient being? It's tough. The
cat for what it's worth. The cat seemed pretty happy, like they were just sleeping and the port's were for tracking. So the cats are pretty. I mean, they were just normal cats, the cats are fine, but I would have been, we would have been injecting retroviruses into rats and then perfusing them, which means bleeding them to death.
To avoid bruising of the tissue because then if you're going to take thin slices and scans, you didn't want to have bruising and I just couldn't, I just couldn't do it. I think it's important. I do think
I do think there's a place for it, but I couldn't do it, so that's why I transferred out. But the point I was trying to make is that I had the experience and then I had that drive, the scientific interest and then I had probably one experience per year for a few years after that. And what I noticed for myself personally because I suffered from major depressive disorder and extended to profit depressive episodes, let's just say on average three,
Or year and by extended
even before you had started even before you come from a young age. Yeah, from breeding
age and I would say. So let's just call it three to four on average year. Those could last each a few weeks or a few months. I mean, this is this is a very high percentage of my total year and when I had these higher dose experiences with with mushrooms, so we're talking about sloths, be mushrooms and then if we're looking at the molecule that's being examined, scientifically psilocybin.
I noticed this after glow effect, that was really durable. And that was an antidepressant effects or a mood elevating effect that lasted far longer than the half-life could explain, right? Because it's four to six hours, you're kind of on the other side. And I would experience this this after glow effect for three to six months and that raised all sorts of interesting questions. What the hell is going on here? Is that the content is it?
Structural change. There were a lot of unanswered questions for me and then I had a very, very scary experience that led me to completely stop. Use of psychedelics where again, uncontrolled environment ended up in rural in rural, New York, coming out of my trip standing in the middle of the road, in the middle of the night with headlights coming at me. Goodness gracious. So you do want to do that and I was like, okay
you dangerous? Do you take in the Malone? Is that how that
signal with two friends and my two friends without
Telling you just went for a walk left me alone
so don't get points to the, you know, I mean, they're these are powerful
compounds. Yeah, your phone. You're playing with nuclear power like these. These are the this is the nuclear power of like psychological or psycho-emotional surgery is the way I'd encourage people to think about them and I stopped using any second Alex completely. I was still very interested in them.
But I basically hit pause and I didn't revisit that until let's call it 2012-2013 where I was still struggling with major depressive disorder and I saw my girlfriend at the time completely transformed by supervised facilitated use of, in this case Ayahuasca which was not quite as common as it is in conversation at the time and she did that in South America. But
She not only explained her experience but I was able to see the transformation in her that seem to have some durability over time. And that is when I started stepping back into researching psychedelics, looking at what had been published in the last, let's just call it 10 years as of that point in time and
Thinking about how I would approach it systematically with safeguards with proper supervision and basically approaching it the way I would have approached any of the topics in the 4-Hour Body. And that is what led me back into along with a number of other interventions, I should say. So, I wasn't betting the farm on psychedelics. I also started TM at that point I was, I was huge stuff. Some people might Trent Transcendental Meditation is there are like four to ten day.
Tation Retreats. This was actually much shorter was a two or three-day training
and you're visiting the instructor I want to say it's once or twice a day probably once a day and getting up to speed and I did this because I was going through a period of acute stress. This is finishing the 4-Hour, Chef, this is actually probably in the Years preceding that and I had one friend who I'd seen really change from let's just call hyperkinetic.
High anxiety to low anxiety and he said, you have the time you have the money pay for the course, just take it. Yes, they're all these criticisms of TM. Yes, there are all these weird historical anecdotes people trying to levitate and all this weirdness. Just ignore
that and trying to levitate nothing against that if you actually levitate, then we got to have a discussion but try to levitate, seems I get one. You know, every kid every kid tries all sorts of the give
it a go he's like just put that aside because I kept coming up with push back.
He's like look, all I'm saying is it's like a warm bath for your mind that you take twice a day and it will show you the fuck out. So try it. I was like, okay, fine. So get indoors. I was like, I was like at this point I was I had been burning the candle at both ends so intensely like okay. So there's TM and then I began examining how I might approach. Notice I didn't just jump into using them, I was like, how could I approach taking psychedelics in a sequence in a logical sequence with proper protections with safety? Assurance is
Is and that took me probably a month or two and I was right in the middle of things in Northern California have access to a lot and only then did I start looking at having my own experiences and lo and behold. I mean I'll cut to the chase but the the personal outcome and there are many different benefits and risks. I should make very clear. These things can be extremely dangerous in certain ways.
Lee, not physiologically, but they can be dangerous.
I would say instead of three to four times per year on average, I probably have one depressive episode every two years. So significant Improvement, that bright. I mean, from a quality of life perspective, those are two different people and that then led me to. And I as I did with all my workouts right, I took
Copious notes over the span. I mean now we're looking at ten plus years. So if I were to ever write another book, it would probably be related to all of the really
Fine details of the experiments and my learnings, including some of the more bizarre bizarre things over the last 10 years, but it would be a be just a beast to create. So
with with psychedelics experiences with psychedelics. So I do not
like sensitive psychedelic, adjacent, non-ordinary experiences of Consciousness which I think often are touching at edges of the same thing, which which is
The controversial for some folks, but to come back to the story line, just to put a bow on that. When I saw the personal outcomes for me, the anak data, from friends who are facilitators, who have worked with thousands of people, right? Which is pretty good sample size, still anecdote. But these are people who are very smart who keep records. And I believe that these people have spotted patterns that are only going to be possible.
Possible to test and verify over the next five to ten years. So I at least as a is a means of generating hypotheses. I take these people very seriously and then I started to connect with Scientists whose work I had read like Roland Griffiths at Johns. Hopkins began. Looking at the most compelling data related to say mdma-assisted Psychotherapy and complex PTSD.
I made the commitment to myself that as soon as I had enough money to move the dial because I really felt like these tools were so outside of the normal Paradigm of Psychiatry and pharmacology and that made me very excited because it was uncrowded, there's very little funding coming to the space. It was high leverage and I looked at it just as I've looked at my many startup Investments, limited downside risk really high upside potential.
I should say before that, I'd already been funding in a very small way science. So the first check I ever wrote, was personally to Adam gazelle, he's Lab at UCSF. Yeah, great lamp. Which at the time was looking at software, he's not going to like this description that I'm going to simplify it software. That might attenuate or reverse. Age-related, cognitive impairment specific specifically related to various aspects of of it.
Attention. And
That was my first foray into funding early stage science which was very analogous to me of to funding early stage startups. And then later on to touch on the reputational thing, I know this is a TED talk so thank you for listening. No, this
is great. Please please, you're always so gracious on your podcast, this is what people want. This is certainly what I want to hear.
So so on the reputational side, you're right. That at the time especially let's just call it 2013 to 2015. This was not a
Not a comfortable National conversation of any
type. I wouldn't have had this conversation back then. No way I'd lose it. I don't know that I would have lost my job at just would've raised a lot of eyebrows and now that such studies are
happening at stake for the perception. Yeah. The perception was that these are a professional third rail at the very least, right? Also illegal, therefore, if I talk about them, am I giving someone probable cause am I going to get myself in some type of, really tricky legal situation, Etc. There are a lot of considerations
but I tested that just like I was saying, I like to capture my assumptions on paper so I can stretch this and I was like, okay, I think that might be true. Most people I know think that is true but is it true? How could we test to see if that is true or not? And I decided to crowdfund for a Hopkins, pilot study looking at psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. And I thought to myself, okay, we have we
Couple of couple of things falling in our favor here. Number one, depression does not discriminate. So across socio-economic classes across gender across race. This is a problem. Almost everyone knows someone who takes antidepressants who was still depressed. Okay, treatment-resistant depression. Therefore is the indication psilocybin is the intervention? Let me crowdfund and I did that throughout the time crowdrise.
Which was co-founded by Edward Norton, who had become a friend, and was the actor. And the actor is very smart, very, very, very smart. Also, one of the best investors I've ever met that which a lot of people don't know, very bright guy and so crowdfunded. And I also like to put my money where my mouth is, I said, okay guys, I'm going to see this. Like, I'm putting in X, the goal is to raise. I think it was 80,000 something like that for the following study and then I was like, let's see, let's see what happens.
And there was basically zero - blowback and not only once was there no discernible - blowback a number of people and this was deliberate I wanted to see this a number of people came out of the woodwork to support in a bigger way and I was like oh okay I see you bunch of a handful of folks I knew and I was like oh interesting. Okay, there are at least a half a dozen folks who are studying the same thing or paying attention to the same thing. And then I just got bolder
I was like, okay if I tested that, let me push and then let's see what happens. And I'll wait and lo and behold. I realized that the perception did not match the reality. The reality was if you're talking about indications that cause an incredible amount of suffering for a very large number of people
Even those who are anti drug per se, just say no to drugs, want Solutions, and the current treatments for many of these things, do not work very well. And in the best of cases are often masking symptoms and not addressing root causes, I would say. So at that point, I just went whole hog and I said, okay look, I like to think that I am exactly what you see is what you get, right? The person you talk to off camera person you talk to on camera same and
If I start feeling like I have too much to protect, I want to do something to counteract that in other words. If if I feel like I need to censor my true feelings and beliefs, maybe not share my hardships, perhaps not promote certain things because I have a reputation to lose. That's a fragile position. I want to be as anti fragile as possible. And so by talking about this, I viewed it as a way of inoculating myself, against fear of reputation losses, okay?
We push this, like I'll ride this horse other people, might not, but I wanted to remove the stigma for funding purposes. Hopefully open up federal funding. That's starting to happen now from different agencies, and then to focus on access and reduction of cost and insurance reimbursement and so on. So, I set a game plan, let's call it. Maybe five years ago and I've just been slowly methodically executing on that since and
The reason I chose this to focus on and I funded other things, but I've really focused on this mental health Therapeutics which is not limited to psychedelics. We can talk about some other things that I find interesting. But psychedelics are, like I said, what makes it attractive very uncrowded. You can do a lot with a small amount of money. Unlike saying cancer research can be very hard, like, okay or deck, a billionaire. Great. Maybe you can do something interesting and I'm sure other people could. But if you have 20,000 50,000 dollar,
it's going to be hard to make a dent there and psychedelics. You can actually still make a difference and very high leverage in part because these compounds seem to challenge much of what we assume to be true about treating mental health. And so that's that makes for an attractive bet. So that's where I've been been going.
Yeah, I'm so glad to you shared that with us and that you did that exploration and that you've been spearheading the funding efforts, you know.
This podcast has a premium channel that's for raising funds for scientific studies. We are in the process now, making our first for contributions. One of those includes working, no one Williams laboratory at Stanford to combining transcranial. Magnetic stimulation with studies of ibogaine and 5, m e0 DMT, maybe a few other things. But basically the he's free to do what he wants with the funds. We trust him to do great work, but that again was inspired by you, right?
Podcast with a scientific slant. Certainly this podcast obviously has a scientific slant but the idea of doing philanthropy for the sorts of work that really deserves funding and exploration. And by the way and thinking about other hybrid things that would be fun to do. I mean, I would love to contribute and join those efforts because the work to continue to raise funding for psychedelic studies and all these great Laboratories continues, right? It can't, yeah.
You've rallied a collection of some pretty powerful people to contribute to this and I know you've joined arms with Michael Pollan in many ways. Do you want to talk about the fellowship? You guys put together? I find that really cool. You've got fellowships in the works or maybe already happening at UC. Berkeley is
RI U c---berkeley. So the, what I try to do and for people want to check it out, it's the name of the foundation. This is a foundation and let me explain that for a second. So it's essay is e. I so size is a foundation that
Org. I speak Japanese. I want. There's an exchange student and speak, read and write it still to this day pretty well, sighs say can mean a lot of things. It means rebirth in Japanese and I've seen what can only be described or can certainly be described as rebirth. And so many clinical outcomes that I thought it was appropriate to use. And what I've tried to do with the foundation is I think do what I'm pretty good at which is trying to peek around
Corners and find something to prototype, right? So, just like the CGM and like, all right, how can I just getting hold of a Dexcom back then when it was just for type 1 diabetics, was was hard. It was
this thing that you have to actually go under the skin so it's like
taking a barbecue prong and putting it under your abdominal skin. It was not
comfortable. Can you describe your cortisol level and subjective terms? When you're at home? You got this thing and you're about to implant and you don't have any precedent. It's not like this is
You know, like levels or one of these other see GM's that are out there, you know, there's no stamp the thing in. You can look on Instagram and see someone else do it. There's nothing like that. So you're at home, wondering if you're going to skewer
your living, I'm at home. Doing myself and I'm sweating like a stuck pig. I'm sitting there like, oh my God, I don't even know if I can. Who's
your girlfriend. They're like to support you. In case you get sea
diving at the time, she wasn't because she was squeamish and you want to see it. And I'm so I'm sitting at my kitchen table. I remember this God, I'm sweating just thinking about it.
And no videos to watch and wasn't really supposed to have it in the first place and the device for read out, by the way, I know iPhone. Right. Right. So it's like this janky pager looking thing. That had a readout that made. You think you were playing pong or something. I mean is
very green. The green tint screen. We got a green tents. Great font
is so primitive and put this thing under my skin would
What tape I would cut a Ziploc bag and put it on top and and masking tape it to my skin to take showers because otherwise it wouldn't work. And it was, it was great. And I'll just say that I don't use, ASL is
GR8, you realize, you said it was great. I did I did say it was great because gay wedding and it was I was afraid but it gave me a lot of insight, okay, and then once I had the Insight over a course of a handful of weeks and I felt like I didn't really need anymore and that was also just
Heavy tax to pay. You have to wear that thing around. Look like you have a cleaner. What does it call a colostomy bag or something? It just like it was big. It was bulky. So just like I did that, I wanted to do a proof of concept, right? The goal was, can I use this for healthy normal applications will the insights be actionable and they were low and behold. Similarly, with the foundation since I'm dealing with smaller amounts of money, and I'm not
The billionaire club by any stretch of the imagination and science can be expensive. I'm looking for small bets. Where can I pilot something that if successful will be emulated or can be scaled and so on the see the crowd funding for for the Hopkins? Treatment-resistant depression, pilot study, we ended up exceeding. The goal, they were able to recruit more subjects in the case of UC Berkeley. Michael Pollan and I partnered on this and my Foundation funded it
The ferris UC Berkeley journalism Fellowship. Psychedelic journalism Fellowship is providing funding to up-and-coming journalists who want to focus on psychedelics as their beat which to this date has not been financially feasible. You just don't have the space to do really long-form investigative and investigative work.
And the Hope being that these journalists can apply their skills and their dedication to examining different facets of the Psychedelic ecosystem therapeutic. Potential regulatory issues ETC in a way that can shape and inform National and international discourse in a in a very critical way because these things are not a Panacea. There's a lot of claims that are made about these that are
Lee on backed by any type of Science and they're a lot of charlatans. And so I want wanted to also invite really competent, really good journalists to the table who might want to watch for Bad actors. I think that's really important. And so this Fellowship has been been has been awarding fellows with these grants and I think it's relatively small amount of my is like ten thousand dollars per something like that. But the outcomes have been amazing. We had
A huge. I want to say a seven thousand word piece. That was one of the main features in Rolling Stone magazine. Huge piece of National Geographic focused on I Boga and fair trade and some of the implications for local harvesting and or over harvesting all the Dynamics present in that, which I think has some incredible promise for particular forms of opioid. Use opioid use disorder particular
That has been a huge success. So the hope is that other journalism schools will say, that's a great idea. And I will have D. Risked it for some other philanthropist or Foundation or government say director and agencies. Say okay. Well green like that, right? Because I've done it and it's been received very well and it's had a real impact on how things are moving along. Another one would be say at Harvard Poplar. This is at Harvard Law School. That was the first is the first dedicated.
Team focused on law policy and regulation related psychedelics from a legal perspective. Super important a important super super important. Also, another pilot, let's just call it proof of concept. That's I say foundation-funded was helping to develop curricula for. I think it was Yale Johns Hopkins, and NYU effectively and an accreditation or module that they could put into their existing
Gayatri MD programs such that people could develop the skills necessary and the understanding necessary to administer, psychedelic assisted therapies. If and when they become legal prescribed
bubble, which it, if I understand correctly, it sounds like within the next 12 to 24 months, mdma-assisted Psychotherapy for the treatment of trauma, is likely to become legal in the
Hands of psychiatrists, at least it may be certain clinical psychologists as well as in the u.s. Is that, right? The that this through the map through the efforts of the
maps group? Yeah, through the efforts of maps dot-org and Rick doblin. Many others that is the tip of the spear. So I think, anyone who's interested in psychedelics should have a vested interest in supporting those efforts. Not because we know everything works. I want to be clear, not because we know a priori that all these
things do all the things. No, but if MDMA fails, it's going to be very hard to draft. Will be impossible to draft on that with commands that are more difficult to administer like psilocybin, which would be next in line for alcohol. Use disorder, also major depressive disorder. So I really feel that just like everything. I've talked about whether it's networking,
Putting together for our body or trying to change National policy and say reclassification of these compounds, getting them out of schedule, 1 to some extent, you want to break it down into its constituent pieces. You want to do an 80/20 analysis, figure out what the critical few are, and then put them in a logical sequence and execute the plan. One of the greatest weaknesses in the Psychedelic ecosystem, is there a lot of people who just want to do all the things?
And save all the people and all the animals and all the places all at once and that just doesn't work very well. There are also some really good people are executing and we could talk about the for-profit side and so on. But I've been very, very, very pleased with the outcomes that saisei Foundation has been able to achieve with very limited money. I'm prouder of those outcomes than I am of the startup record in the startup records, pretty good. And it's the same lens using the same.
The same filters in the same approach which is kind of what I'm always looking for looking for stuff that I'll translate across Fields if possible. And then you mentioned one like TMS, I think TMS very interesting.
Transcranial, magnetic stimulation. Yeah. Which at one point was more commonly used to inhibit specific brain areas. This is a non-invasive technique, I've had it done where he is over my motor cortex and you're tapping your finger and I'll send you can't tap your fingers, it's pretty eerie. But now it can be used to stimulate it particular, frequency is enhanced neural.
To city, and in combination with psychedelics, is the kind of burning question. Now, can you get a synergistic effect of TMS? And, and psychedelics maybe not just during this, the psilocybin, or iboga Journey. But in the days and weeks, after when we know for sure, a lot of plasticity is still occurring. So keep the plasticity on board or
accelerate it. Yeah. So TMS also as monotherapy, very interesting to me for depression anxiety.
Xiety even substance use disorders. Super interesting and there are many different protocols, all sorts of different technology I would say low intensity or low power ultrasound also super interesting for various various applications potentially to addiction. So I'm not to be clear a
Card-carrying evangelist for psychedelics. I am a proponent of looking for high leverage, uncrowded Bets with limited downside and testing them out and very optimistic about psychedelics. If anyone listening has a family history of say, schizophrenia borderline personality disorder, which we might, which this is being very simplistic, but
Categorize your described, as more chaotic conditions compared to hyper rigid conditions like an OCD or anorexia nervosa, chronic depression, Etc. Then we can talk about why some of these psychedelics least, some of the classical psychedelic seem to have cross efficacy with multiple conditions but psychedelic seemed very helpful for certain types of hyper rigidity when you get into
It in schizophrenia borderline personality disorder they can be really heavily contraindicated not to say that they cause those can those conditions, but they can precipitate the onset of those symptoms. And for that reason can be very destabilizing and dangerous for certain people. However, that's where something like metabolic Psychiatry comes in and the use of ketosis and ketogenic diet, which appears to be very effective in some patients for
That grouping of say more chaotic conditions which is very exciting. So I'm interested in in in any tools that are off the beaten path, that seemed to raise interesting questions that have not been answered in a satisfying way yet in medicine and I think we're still largely in the Dark Ages with respect to Psychiatry
oh I think the best psychiatrist would agree with
you. Yeah and the best psychiatrist.
It's and the best scientists and the best film. The Black are acutely aware of the limitations of our current methods and limitations of our current knowledge. So I think the mark of a good thinker, the mark of a good scientist, the mark of a good film of blank. Anything is someone who says, I have no idea or we have no idea a lot.
And hopefully they also say, let's go figure it out or vagina, try some things. And I really want to thank you for sharing that narrative.
Especially because it makes clear that you brought the same systematic process of using and asking excellent questions to arrive at solutions, to arrive at more questions to fund areas of inquiry and to do it all in this really structured, way, as you said from policy all the way down to like how many grams or, you know, X of some substance. Somebody might take, I mean, I think Matthew Johnson's laboratory at Hopkins wrong.
Myths, Robin card, art Harris at. UCSF Nolan Williams, the maps group Rick, doblin. Eternity
Rick's University of Alabama, looking under cocaine addiction and other
things. Yeah, you Michael Pollan. You know, I'm leaving some names out here and I don't want to take anything away from the classic as they're called explorers of psychedelics and writers about psychedelics but we are in the moment of a Renaissance now and it's important that this have a lot of fuel. So we'll put a link to
Your philanthropy efforts and and the journalism fellowships as well. Because I think there's going to be a lot of interest there and I'm a huge supporter of what you're doing is as you know, and I just think it's the way great science and clinical progress is made so yeah, thanks Andrew. Yeah, it's which brings me to another parallel topic, you know, it used to be that meditation and psychedelics where you have nested in the same territory, this would be in the late 60s, early 70s, the birth of places like esalen etcetera, or the consequence of
The Dual exploration of those things meditation, sort of escaped from the psychedelics umbrella and vice versa. Starting sometime in the mid 2000's when neuroimaging became a little bit more accessible and you know I think nowadays have you told anybody okay? You know meditation is good for you can help ratchet down near anxiety. Give more self-awareness, you know, improve sleep and on and on maybe even give some insight into Consciousness, no one's going to ball.
There's a lot of studies or thousands of studies. My laboratory is done a few of them there. Other Laboratories who have done far more other book. Altered traits is the one that comes to mind in the group out of Wisconsin was early too early to the game on this. In any of that you talked about TM. I'm curious from a practical standpoint. Do you still meditate daily? Do you do meditation Retreats what sorts of meditative practices do you have? Because I realized this can be done.
One walking writing is some form of meditation, what sorts of formal practices? Do you still engage in now?
Yeah, I do 10 to 20 minutes in the morning so I am not currently doing the TM twice daily, 20 minutes. I think that would be better for me. Probably do you
set a clock and you
yeah I'll set a clock which would be more of the concentration practice of Sati em where you're repeating a mantra. Honestly it could be any in my opinion, some TM purists will balk at this but it could be really
Nonsense syllable could be a word, although I think something, without any attach meaning is probably more beneficial for a host of reasons. So, it causes could be a concentration practice with 20 minutes of sitting. It might also be a guided meditation and I have no vested interest in this app, but I think the waking up app by Sam. Harris is fantastic. I have as do. I, I have used the introductory course, which is Sam leading you through my catnip, which is a logical progression of skill development from day.
One, two, three. And, and forward, I have gone through that course multiple times. When I'm getting back on the horse for meditation as a bit of a reboot, once you develop, I think, a certain degree of awareness and mindfulness. I do think there are other activities that probably
Allow you the parallel experience of doing one thing while experiencing some of the benefits of meditation. And so for me, I wonder at times are the benefits of meditation. The concentration practice itself, is it just sitting still, with my eyes closed down, regulating my system, a little bit activating my parasympathetic and not rushing, or doing anything for 20 minutes. Is that it maybe is it simply
Correcting my posture for 20 minutes.
How do I wait these different inputs? And the, the short answer is, you probably don't need to know, but I have found that spending time in silence in nature without anything to do disallowing myself from doing things. No note-taking, no reading etcetera. And spending I have spent a number of extended fasts in nature water. Only by myself, no talking, no reading, no writing. What's extended?
Seven days generally. Wow,
so you're camping in nature with just water.
Yep, it's a by myself and there are risks associated with that, right? You got to be careful, not stupid about it, but that does a lot for me with some persistent benefits.
There's some favorite places that you've gone into nature, doesn't have to be too fast. Like, for instance, I'm a big fan of some of the national parks up in the Pacific Northwest because it's like being transported to a different planet. Yes.
Dammit. He's obviously amazing. But any favorite spots? Where we won't people won't go looking for you there. Don't worry. Yeah, I would you live in Austin all the time so that's right.
Yeah. So I would say, Colorado Utah, New Mexico, spending time in mountains, around rivers, lakes. I find very therapeutic, just gorgeous II. Do think we suffer from
Ah, deficiency disorder. Yeah, bit of add, when we're trapped in the Monday and for to along with too much distraction with too many to dues with too many relationships and there's no space for other, there isn't the room necessary. All isn't from my perspective. Generally a quick hit that you get in the 30 seconds between using two apps. There's there's more Breathing Room required for genuine, Transcendent experience of awesome. So I try to
Two on a yearly basis. As one of my top priorities block out these weeks of time in nature. Last
year, was the first year I did that? I went out to Colorado in August and just took daily hikes. I stayed in a hotel. I'm not as BC as you do. We need water fast. I was eating every day but it was spectacular. One thing I noticed and I'd like to know your process on. How do you handle going back into life? Great question, you know, because
Those days were in our amazing, right detached and you know maybe one text message here or there or in between hikes or something and then you just really clued in. Even the the process of watching a show at night like one felt so rich and like enough. So I wasn't as aesthetic issue or and like really cleaned all the Clutter but once you return to life it's almost like yet it being a wash and demands and and I can see from a place of more Equanimity, how one could make better choices. But how do you handle those transition there?
Re-entry. Yeah
it's a before getting to the re-entry. I think it might make sense for me to talk about what comes before. So let's say it's like pre during post part of the reason. I do these one week or longer periods Off the Grid is because it forces me to put better systems in place. So there's the benefit that you derive from say that week and I have three weeks coming up right after this interview where I'm going,
Off the Grid to set myself up for three weeks off the grid. I have a team, I have the podcast, I have a lot of things that are in motion at any given point in time.
If you disappear for say, two to four week period, generally you cannot let the whole house catches on fire and then come back and put it out effectively which means you need to put some policies and rules and so on in place in advance and there's a carryover effect that has a host of benefits and makes things smoother for the re-entry. So they're related, like, the more you set up the pre the easier the post is going to be. And then you have this beautiful expansive experience. In nature, whatever it might be
Be, whether you're making it a sufferfest like I do or at a hotel at night. Either way, these things can work and nature in and of itself is super helpful. I do think that a lot of the time we like to imagine because we're driven smart accomplished people, that our problems are very complex and at the end of the day it's like you just need some time in nature and a cold shower and some fucking macadamia nuts and you'll be fine. You don't need to solve like all the existential dilemmas of humankind.
Or fancy pharmaceutical. So you have this experience over this week and what I will do then is set at least a let's call it integration period of two to three days where I will slowly Edge back in to my previous routine. I will not within 12 hours of getting back to so-called civilization. Have a day full of calls or meetings. I will not do that too much.
Of a shock to the system. And I think it robs you of a tail end of benefits which would also be the case with a faster, ketogenic diet or any number of interventions. You can squeeze out a long tail of benefits. If you make a handful of changes for instance after an extended fast, what if you started with a sub caloric ketogenic diet for a few days you get to extend some of the benefits as opposed to going straight back to say a diet that includes a lot of carbohydrates.
Similarly, when you create more of a vacuum more space for all Insight reflection recovery, I think you're doing yourself a disservice if you jump from Park in the sixth gear then. So I plan for that and it's a function of scheduling. I also have a predictable weekly schedule, so I tend to schedule podcast recordings on Mondays and Fridays in preparation for an extended trip. I will batch a lot of similar activities.
Tivities that we have say a bunch of episodes in the bank that are pre-scheduled, everything is figured out in advance. And over time, the more you take these breaks, the better, your system has become and the more liberated you are from the day-to-day which means when you get back, you also don't need to rush as much into hyperactivity and if you do you know that that is more from a compulsivity. Then, from a necessity, while you are on, these nature Retreats are
You writing on a daily basis. Were you just thinking and allowing thoughts to enter and leave your system.
Depends on the retreat. So sometimes I'm writing but writing, I think can underscore for me, a desire to be compulsively productive and I think that is inversely correlated to my happiness or sense of well-being. A lot of the time, so there are many areas in my life now so if you were to ask me, what has changed significantly
Nificantly. Since the time that you wrote the for our body I would say that rather than looking for areas to optimize, I am looking where I can very deliberately D, optimize certain areas to increase sense of well-being. We're going to D optimize we're going to stop measuring. Where can I stop reading books which areas can I ignore completely? What types of information can I just excise from my life all together for a period of time?
Delete Twitter, stop reading about books and X related to say, AI or whatever it might be like where can I d-- optimize selectively to sort of optimize the whole doesn't make
sense makes good sense. Yeah.
And before we started recording, I gave you a book which is a short collection of poetry by Halal Isaac before E which is called gold. Its collection of Rumi poetry reading poetry is an activity almost by definition which is
Is is the antithesis of optimization. So I've tried to also integrate more of those activities into my life. And this relates to your question because there are times when I was forced myself to sit on my goddamn hands and not right, not read just do the thing. That is so uncomfortable, sometimes which is just sitting there with yourself,
so it can be incredibly uncomfortable, I am in part because of the fear that it could become comfortable. Yeah.
Especially for proactive people with a strong to use Paul Conti's words, generative drive, you know, you're going to it's a, you know, the which is a good thing. Yeah, I think leave it's a good
thing and it can be a good thing. It can indicate really incredible adaptations. It can also, sometimes I think indicate Mal adaptations, right? And so I think it's helpful.
Hopeful to take a break from that generative drive, or at least. Just put it in park position to see if that generative Drive is, is perhaps indicative of you leaning towards something in a healthy proactive, way versus running from something in a long-term destructive way.
Yeah, well nothing Paul would say that part of the generative Drive processes piece, you know, not
Is it necessarily even as a still state but as a being able to experience peace even in the Transitions and there's a lot more to say about that and he would say, it far better than I ever would. So I'll leave it at
that. And I mean for people who have the option of getting a nature doesn't have to be all day every day out of water fast. I just take certain things to an extreme because that's who I am. But
sorry, when you say water fast, that means fasting with water right, just asking, but yes, drinking water. It
just means you're allowed to have water and nothing else.
Else
for for a long time. I thought it meant that you're not drinking water. Oh yeah, no, don't do that. Some people do that, right? They do these crazy food, water fast as a way, I think, they believe it clears senescent cells or something, but probably clears. A lot more than just senescent cells. Yeah, I
there might be something to it. I mean, like, there are people who recycle by draining their own urine, not my jam, but I would say, it's like three hours without shelter, three days, without water, three weeks without food general, rule of thumb. So,
So, be careful with dehydration. You can go a long time without food. If you have I don't care how ripped your you get a percent body fat man, you got plenty of time. You can go a couple weeks, no problem. I got Cal Night Out in calories per pound stored body fat, you got plenty, don't worry. So for people who have the option to be in nature and just exercise several hours a day to exhaustion,
See how many of your problems seem to just go away sister? That
it will. My Sunday routine is to try and get outside and move as much as possible. I don't always succeed but I'm going to try a longer retreat into nature. I think Olympic National Forest is calling me again. It seems like once a year. I just want to get back up there. It's
calling to show you should get back out there and
spectacular. I have a question about
Mentors. And I'm a big believer in mentors, either mentors that know us and we know them, or people that we assign as mentors without them realizing it, this sort of thing, do you have mentors at this stage of life for particular areas of life? Where you, you mentoring yourself? Are you flying with a few voices in your head that serve you? Well, who are your mentors?
I definitely have people, I consider mentors. It's I think at this point rarely one way in the sense that they tend to be friends. I spend time with, they get something from it, I get something from it, not in a transactional way, but they find it fun or beneficial or amusing in some way, redeeming to spend time with me, that's the hope. But how is that different from traditional friendship, you know, juicer standard friendship?
You folk it. Are you spending time with some orientation toward like, they're embodying areas of life that you would like to emulate?
Totally. I mean, I spend, I spend time around people. I hope to be more, like, in some way, because guess what, you're going to average in to say that the just the, the, some holistic whole of the five, or six people, you spend the most time with. So, you should choose that very carefully that includes.
It's virtual parasocial relationships, trying okay, if you're listening to fill in the blank person for four hours a week, 5 hours a week, two hours a week, whoever that group is comprised of is going to influence who you become and for me, then I think carefully about my friendships and they could be older like Kevin Kelly has become a good friend.
Who has I have wealth of life experience that I don't have and so I might just call him and say Kevin, I have a question for you, but I do that with my younger friends too and they could be younger than I am. And I might still be them as a mentor in X Y or Z. I think Mentor has a heavy weight to it. It has a connotation of maybe never-ending time-consuming obligation. So, I would never for instance, and I know a lot of people try this ass.
Someone to be my mentor. It's like, would you like to be my free life coach forever? You know, I was like that's kind of how it sounds to the recipient so it sounds very formal. Yeah. It sounds very formal. It's so for me, I would say there have certainly been mentors. I've had wrestling coaches. I've had teachers I've had resident advisors who are reverence, who had a huge impact on my life and follow it up with me and paid attention to me and cared for me. In more of a one directional.
Sense, right? I view myself as the beneficiary, of course they they certainly got something out of it. If they had that job and they probably found it to be very gratifying its own way. And teachers, like Professor Ed Show at Princeton I feel in incredibly indebted to
These days.
And for a long time, I've believed that you can learn something powerful from almost anyone. Probably anyone you interact with could be an Uber driver, could be someone taking garbage out of a restaurant. If you really take the time to dig, you can find something and
Before you can I think as an adult effectively, think about who you would like to learn from if I put it that way.
It's helpful to have a baseline of self-awareness that you know what you might want to work on to either amplify strengths, develop skills, address weaknesses. And so for instance, one of my close friends, Matt mullenweg is younger than I am. He's the, he's the founder of automatic which runs wordpress.com. He was the lead developer of Wordpress. All that was an open source project. Of course with many many contributors, he was one of the lead developers Now power, something like 32 percent of
The internet and he exemplifies a cool and calm temperament even in the most chaotic periods imaginable during the most chaotic events imaginable. And when I find myself getting dysregulated, these are fancy term losing my shit or getting carried away by emotion, getting righteously angry, or whatever it might be. And I recognized at some point that it's really not.
Me that I am being owned by the emotion, right? Like, I'm the dog on the leash, not the other way around. Then I think about, I'm like, what would Matt do? What advice would Matt give me right now? How would Matt act in these circumstances? And I do that with with, with many friends. I also think a lot about and this is borrowing from someone named Kathy Sierra.
A long time ago, focusing more on just-in-time information as opposed to just in case information. So just in case information is like I'm going to read these 20 bucks because in two years, I might be interested in XY & Z that I think is often a waste of time because if it ever becomes relevant, you're just gonna have to reread those books. People do the same thing with humans. They're like, I want to meet someone so and have them as my mentor, because maybe five years from now, I'll do XY and z and then they'll
Be useful for ABC, that's too speculative. And I think it ends up in a lot of wasted energy. So the podcast for me, writing the books and doing the interviews, even prior to the podcast, becoming involved with startups.
Delving into the world of science. And scientists all helps me to develop a confidence that almost any question. I could ask, I can find some semblance of an answer for why just reaching out to a few people and saying, who do you know, who might be able to answer this? And that's very reassuring and it relieves some of the anxiety or pressure that people might feel to assemble some
Personal board of directors of, like, X-Men and women who can help them with everything. And then there are people. I hire to be accountable to write. So I might work with coaches therapists and so on, who I would view as mentors, they just have to get getting paid for it.
Yeah, the reason I asked the question is because we were talking about the meditative process going into nature. And even when psychedelics does, you know, they can be viewed, a lot of different ways, but I think of them largely, as going inward to
Floor. I mean you're out in nature and learning from nature. There's such a court, truth to Nature and all that sounds a little bit, you know, wishy-washy but it's it's true. Like if it's there, it's concrete, it's really something. It was there long before any of us. And I'll be there a lot longer than any of us will ever be. We hope certainly if it goes, we go but the process of learning
Um, others and paying attention to others is really an outward-looking thing. I mean, we have to bring that in but I was just curious how you balance those and as a way to really understand, not just your time allocation, right. I think we could talk about that. You know, what's how's your morning structured etcetera? Which I think there's Great Value and in knowing but more, what what's your mind? Allocation. But I think about this, you know, like where's my brain? Is it my focus on what's going on in here and you know, is that, is there a need to excavate their sure.
Sure, you know, about how much time am I out of my head and bringing things in from the outside world and back and forth. So do you have some sense of across the year across the day, how you mind allocate? I don't know if that's the best phrase, but I can't think of any better one. If you can think of a better one, please. Please, table it because I'm happy to do.
So, how do I think about mind allocation or attention allocation?
I try to.
And most frequently think of my mind share across a year and across week, weekly timeframe. And I find that to be manageable in the sense that on a yearly basis on New, Year's Eve or roughly around New Year's. Every year, I'll do a past year review.
You p/yr past year review where I'll go back. Now, look at my tire last year, a piece of paper in front of me, line down the center plus - and I will go through every week in my calendar for the previous year and I will write down the people places activities, commitments, cetera that produced Peak positive emotional experiences. So alright, we're doing an 80/20.
This is here. Like what are the big rocks that really move the needle in a meaningful way. And conversely, who are the people? What are the things? What are the places that just made me go and we're draining, produced Peak negative experiences. Why the hell did I commit to this type experiences? And that presents me with a do more of do less of list, then I look forward to the next year and I did this, I suppose just a handful of months ago around New Year's
With the Positive. I'm like, okay, here's my list of do, more of. It's not real, until it's in the calendar. Let's get these things in the count, and then I will start talking to people looking things, having people help with organizing, if that is required, and getting things blocked out. So, I have already this year and we're in the reasonable beginning stages of the year. I have things blocked out until November of this year and those provide the
breaks in the action, not just the breaks in the action, but the fun stuff. Because by the way guys, I thought for a long time like, yeah, I take care of a b and c in the good stuff, just takes care of itself. I have I do not any longer believe that to be true unless you schedule these things that you claim are important. They're gonna get crowded out by bullshit and maybe not bullshit, but just less important things. The Urgent will crush the important. So I get these things on the calendar and then I back.
Up and I look at optimal weekly, mind allocation, right attentional allocation and there's a there's there's an Incredible cost to cognitive switching if you're just task-switching all day. So I will try my best to format a weekly Rhythm and weekly sequence that allows me to focus on certain types of tasks. So Monday is very
only admin of some type, just bits and ends Flotsam Jetsam all the miscellaneous pieces that are part of life. You got to deal with them. Yeah, that tends to be Monday whenever possible and especially if I'm focused on physical activity, let's just say him in a place like Colorado. I will try to schedule most of that for after lunch, to ensure that I get in a lot of exercise and movement. In the first portion of
Not everybody has that ability, but I will say more of you have that capacity than you might think. Because most of what we all do is just not important
time on social media. First thing in the morning, is probably the most poisonous activity that I could take part in. I don't want to point fingers at anyone else, but oh, yeah, I think if people ask, you know, what is the, you know, amount of time, it takes to get in a really good workout.
It's going to be about an hour, you know, but a lot can be done in 45 and for even 30 minutes, we think about how quickly that time goes by. Yeah. Especially
like the I'm sure I'm not the only one that was part of the reason I deleted a lot of these apps for my phone it's like I would be, I'd go into the bathroom to take a quick bit of business and then 45 minutes later I'm like how have I been looking at Instagram? 45
minutes. Yeah lines and for restrooms have gotten very long in the last ten. Ten years has anyone noticed that the
The wait for the restrooms as you got here.
So yeah, you have time for the important stuff. Yeah, thank and just look at some of the extreme over. Cheers out there. They have the same amount of time that you
have you. I was going to ask this later, I'll just we'll just quickly interject this now. Have I saw perhaps it was on Twitter or maybe I overheard this that you're back on Instagram. It's, I mean, you've always had an account. Yeah, that posts. But are you back in there? Are you out of there?
I mean, look, my the Dirty Little Secret.
Single again and that's a great way to connect with with eligible, ladies, who might be of interest, got it is
Instagram. So you're on, Sear on
Instagram, willing to pay the tax of dealing with the brain damage of using
Instagram as a result and look finding a great life partner.
Is what exactly is exist. Great. Exactly. So that's that is the reason for that, but otherwise, it would not be on my phone, it's
to wouldn't even be on your phone.
Absolutely not. It's too well designed.
All these companies are very smart. They have very good data scientists. They are very good UI Specialists. If anyone out there thinks that they can like, maybe maybe Jocko and can discipline his way through and I'm sure he can because he's, he is jogo. But in my case and the case of most people like you're bringing a knife to a gunfight. If you think you can use your self-control to keep your use of Instagram to say, 10 minutes at a club, good luck. And even if you can people say, oh, but I do that anyway.
All right. How much time do you spend sending means and links from Instagram or fill in the blank platform to your friends and group chat. How much time does that
consume? I spend a fair amount of time on Instagram and Twitter, posting things related to the podcast but I don't have someone to do that for me and I actually enjoy doing it and it challenges me in certain ways but I completely agree with everything you're saying. I also want to note that you didn't say that you're on Twitter possibly to meet somebody which is more a statement about
Twitter. Yeah yeah it's not that. It's
But not the friendliest neighborhood I found. And I would say Twitter has its use cases, I find it useful. In some respects, it has become much less useful and much less practical and the last year with a lot of the product changes but it has its place. It's not on my phone. It was on my phone for a very brief period of time. I do not want. I find that my ability to be still and calm.
Is eroded if I am.
Too easily able to escape boredom, if you cease to have the ability to be bored for 5 to 10 minutes, I think that makes you very fragile and makes you very easy to manipulate also. And there are a lot of forces at play online that want to manipulate or shape your behavior in different ways. So I feel like it is imperative for me to cultivate the ability to just sit still
and not consume the five minutes in line.
Waiting to get into a restaurant by hopping on Twitter or Instagram. So that's part of the reason they're not on my phone. Could you tell us about cock punch?
Yeah, I can tell you about cock much so cock bunch is a creative project intended once again to make me less precious about protecting whatever brand. I think I might have. And this is an investment, my long-term mental health. Also and I think in my career flexibility my willingness to experiment. Cock punch could be a long story but the gist of it is
Wanted to experiment with fiction writing. I've been saying this for years and I've never done it. That's the backdrop on top of that, I have wanted to get back into illustration and work in the visual arts, which I did for a long time when I was younger, and I've not done that consistent, why not? Because I haven't had accountability, I haven't had deadlines. It hasn't been in the counter. This should sound somewhat familiar by now and at the same time I was becoming very interested in web.
Of three and what was happening in the world of n of T? Is this is probably 20 20? And I know they've had they've developed a fairly negative connotation for a lot of good reasons, but I started to think about fundraising for early-stage Science. And if I could do, if I could conduct an experiment, as a proof of concept with different novel, approaches to fundraising. So, rather than just calling the rich friends who might sort of,
And to the pressure or be willing to fund. I wanted to look at say crowdfunding back in the day, then I wanted to look at different options for perhaps art auctions and I was going to do this with with Contemporary Art. This is many years ago before and in the process of wanting to fund the the Hopkins Center focused on psychedelic and Consciousness research, which the was the first of its kind in the United States.
And the technology gave me the opportunity to learn about a new. Let's just call it set of Technologies. So to develop skills and knowledge it would give me the opportunity to reconnect and deepen friendships with a number of my very very smart friends were playing in that area.
Also test fundraising also get back into fiction and art and all that combined into this thing that I end up calling cock punch because it made me laugh. And you know what?
Man, if you take your work too seriously you're going to burn out before you get the really serious work done and I think it was Bertrand. Russell is said it's a sure sign of an impending nervous breakdown. If you start taking your work too seriously or believing your work to be very, very serious and
For that reason.
I wanted to give it an absurd name that would also have some word-of-mouth benefit and that to see what would happen. Honestly. Just see what happened was I was like, all right, like what is honestly the worst thing that happens that people write a bunch of pieces rather like shaking their fist at the sky. How dare Tim Ferriss cockroach create a project milk but you can turn it
around on them and just say that what they were doing is a cock punch, you know. Well yeah, attempting to that. Well, that
was kind of the thing.
That was kind of part of the thinking that it would just be entertaining to watch people, seriously trying to critique something called God punch. And the upshot of that is raised almost two million dollars sold out in something like 30 minutes or 40 minutes for the foundation, all that money went to size him, Foundation. All that money has already been distributed in the form of Grants. Wonderful and along the way I got to work with artists with programmers, learn
Technologies reconnect, with old friends. And now we're back in touch. And it's it's extremely fun to be back in touch with these folks and I've written the equivalent of a short book in fiction in the form of short stories that are this Fantasy World building exercise, for me and I'm having a blast. So I'm exercising, new creative muscles. That has led me back into the world of comic books. You haven't created yet. Let me back into the world of Gaming.
Let me back into my fascination of tabletop gaming. So I played D&D forever. When I was a kid that was my refuge as a runt who got the crap kicked out of him left and right and I'm having just a blast and the
the takeaway I think on some level is that you should do things should as shit as it is, a loaded term.
It's helpful for me to consider doing things that give me energy, right? Because if we say r at time management is fine, but time doesn't really have any practical value. Unless you have attention, right? So then there's tension will management, but that attention is limited. Also, physically and sort of metaphorically by energy, right? Let's see it. Like substrates diets, neurotransmitters and so on. If you do not have the basic batteries required the
Of the things that are higher up on that pyramid, can't really be executed properly. So for me it's like, okay, let's say, cock punch doesn't do anything. It's total failure. Right coming back
to like we don't worry raise two million dollars for science. It didn't that science could be breakthrough science so it could though but hot Punch. Yeah. So cock punch is at least thus far
a success. It is it coming back to Seth godin's question. I ask myself. Would I do this? Even if it turns
Out to be a complete failure financially. I was like, yes. Because I think the relationships and the skills. Even if this quote-unquote fails from the outside, looking in, those will transcend this project and be life-affirming and helpful and fun in other areas and that's proven to be true. Even though the project is ongoing and
I have more energy now, because of this ridiculous project, I'm very proud of the fiction. Actually, this ridiculous project called cock punch. People can find the legend of cock punch on any fine, provider of podcasts and hired voice actors. Did the scripting the production is hit number one fiction worldwide on Apple podcast for a while. The whole thing's hilarious. And and if you could, could you explain a little bit about the characters and cock Punch. Yeah, I guess who's, who's punching whose cock? Yeah.
Or which cocks are punching it. Yeah. Which cocks are punching.
Which how does this work? So, here we go. All right. So cut. The legend of cock punch takes place in this realm called vallata and vallata is being described through the narrator who we know as the seventh scribe. We don't know much about the seven scribe, but seven scribe makes an appearance in episode 1 as the reliable, but possibly sometimes unreliable narrator of this space. And there is a
There's a mind-bending Time component where there's something called restarts something like the edge of tomorrow. If people have ever seen this movie where time restarts. Maybe like Groundhog Day time, restarts and moons unclear as of yet in the story. Why? That is the case. But people basically snap into being they know who they are and what they do, but they have no real memories to speak of. So the world is constantly being reconstructed and piece together by these. Scribes the seventh of which is the
Narrator. So you can you you might read into this that I am a fan of fantasy Tolkien, you name it, Ursula K, Le Guin. The wizard of Earthsea et cetera. Then there are eight primary houses. These are the greater houses, some might call them Clans and they have different characteristics, just prior to the seventh, scribe beginning, his piecing together, which turns into the story and the podcast. There was a Warring States period. This much, he's been able to establish
And the peacekeeping mechanism that was devised is something called the great games, and the great games is a combat competition, and the eighth grader houses. Send their best fighters, who have been vetted through preliminary, competitions to the great games, which is in the free trade zone, which is this one place where all of the races mingle and trade and so on.
And all these characters happen to be anthropomorphised roosters. So they have generally each one Gauntlet of some type and clearly they punch each other with this gone in there, many other types of weapons. So the colloquial nickname for this Olympics of combat is cock punch, and that is the, that is the etymology. So the scholars say of cock Punch, The Legend Of Cock punch.
And there's a lot more to it, and there are many wrinkles a lot of Easter eggs in this entire story. The idea came to me and it started off as a bit of a farce, right? It was just going to be something funny, see if it works, maybe it raises some money, very light lift, but once I got into the fiction, I started taking it super seriously. So it's become very, very elaborate. It's become really, really elaborate and I'm loving it. It's great. So who knows where it'll go? I have no idea. That's part of the reason why I called it an emergent long.
Fiction project, I didn't call it and then ft project. I was like, this is an emergent long fiction project where I'm taking inputs from the audience. I'm watching very closely, what, people understand, or don't understand or find, interesting. I'm looking at, for instance, what is generated when I host an AI assisted art competition which I did with the fans and a lot of these bits and pieces, get integrated in some fashion into this thing that chapter by chapter is coalescing. So that's Scott lunch.
Amazing. And I had to buy cock much.com and the Adcock punch Twitter.
Really? You have to buy it from somebody? Oh, yeah.
Oh yeah. Oh yeah, the whole process. I don't want to
ask what it was being used for prior to your
purchase. It was not being used for Fantasy World building, I'll put it that way,
got it amazing. And for, so many reasons, I have so much to say about, first of all, your excitement about it is tangible. Yeah, the energy you have around, it is infectious.
And while I don't want to go into the total depth and Contour of what Paul Conti has been telling me over the last week of preparing. This mental health series about what's really great in life that we all should cultivate. It has a lot to do with this generative drive has a lot to do with positive energy, not just positive thinking, but positive energy. But these this Triad of Peace, contentment and delight. And as you were explaining it, it's clear that it brings you
Eight, peace, contentment and Delight as action terms not like sit there and just hover in the Basking in. It is just so clear that this was a great idea and I love that you started it as a way to kind of, I don't know, just like knock the fear out of yourself a little bit by knocking a little fear into the whole thing. Yeah. Like what would happen if you let your mind go and allowed yourself? Yeah, to explore this and what
permission would it by you? If it's
Not a total disaster. This is true for the 4-Hour Body to. I'm like, what if this partially works? It's not even a home run, but let's say I get on base. What permission does this then? Buy me what other Impossibles in quotation marks and I willing to challenge and I was able to make the Hop from one category in the bookstore to, in a completely different category. And then the skies limit, I was like, I can do anything, I can do whatever I want. I've given myself permission and the market is giving me permission, but the most important first step is you giving yourself
elf permission and with say cock punches Ludacris's, it is
Now that I've done that my career has intended hasn't had any negative impact on my career whatsoever. I'm like, okay that's actually kind of
surprising not to the contrary. It seems like it gives you energy and raise money for science. Is it still raising money if they're not if they're still an opportunity to for people to know, it's until
it's sold out. If people want to contribute to say the early stage science and let's just say specifically psychedelics, I would say it's very
be hard to get a very solid understanding of the field and the shifting Sands, and the projects and so on. It's very rapidly changing. So I would say just provide money to a foundation that's already doing good work. It could be River. Styx Foundation. It could be Beckley Foundation, my foundation. So I say Foundation. I think those pretty good
work and so I say is not just the journey, the journalism fellowships there. Also the sides funding for psychedelic.
Alex, so users
there's tons of stuff. There's a project page on saisei foundation.org. You can see the projects, they're probably 15 to 20 of them and they can see the basic science all the way from really basic science, looking at possible mechanisms of action for something like d ipt, which is a very strange compound that the ipt. And yet most people are going to know it. That that produces
Profound auditory distortions and hallucinations in humans. Very hard to animal model and from that all the way up to really sophisticated Imaging studies from that to say, at least a year or two ago supporting phase 3 trials for mdma-assisted Psychotherapy, then the journalism then the, this than that, but a lot of a lot of different scientific studies, that are, that are being supported. So that's that's very exciting to me. And
But the the cockpit side of things is all done, Money's been distributed and maybe I'll do more of this kind of thing. But I might take a different approach. I feel like, okay, I learned what I feel, I wanted to learn from that and maybe I'll try something new next time.
One thing's clear. Nobody tells you what to do except you and. But that's vetted through many important filters, like structured filters and very
A thoughtful filters. Are the words that come to mind when I think about. Yeah, your process as you're sharing a leather, one
more thing, which is
One of the sources of Joy Of Cock punch is that it is not over planned. I set some initial conditions and now it's emergent. And as someone who has hyper analyzed and meticulously planned, most of my life for decades, I think it's helpful to have an improv component. So, if you are a hyper planner,
You're a hyper measurer if you like that degree of control, maybe you should try something that's a little less controlled take an improv class, try fiction, writing do something that isn't totally scripted where you don't know the outcome. I think it's really good medicine for people. Just like if you spend all your time at a yoga class, maybe you should spend one day a week lifting weights, see what that's like. And if you spend all your time in the gym and you can barely touch your toes, maybe you should do some more downward dog. Try some yoga similar. I think the spectrum of
Of hyper planned to completely free flowing and improv provides ample opportunity to enrich themselves and maybe address some weaknesses at the same time. So for me, cock punch has been incredibly therapeutic. Probably the first time that anyone has ever uttered. That sentence. But yeah, probably, yeah, but that's a part of what makes it? So cool. Yeah, totally. I love it.
I'm wondering if you'd be willing to share with us a little bit about your mindset, maybe even your motivation but certainly your mindset around sharing, some of the hard personal tribulations that you shared in preparation for this discussion. Today, I went back to some of those posts that you did and the podcast that you did around this and I'd listen to them at the time and you know they deal with
Quite serious violations of childhood and of self and they're hard. I mean, they're they're hard to listen to and I can only imagine they must be even far far harder to experience and was curious what led to your willingness to do that. And yeah, I mean I have my own ideas about what might have motivated it, but I'd like to hear it from you sure? Happy.
To talk about it. And I think there are two particular examples that come to mind. So, one is my near suicide in college. And if people search some practical thoughts on suicide and my name, it'll pop right up. I mean, if you just search,
My name is suicidal, probably pop, right up pretty well indexed at this point, which is very deliberate. People can look at the URL structure for a little wink and hat tip to tell you something about optimizing for Google, if you look at it, I'll just tell you the URL is spells out how to commit suicide, but clearly I'm not teaching people how to commit suicide, but I wanted that to be a Honeypot for some of that traffic because it's a lot easier.
Now, to find that type of practical implementation advice, it's a bit harder to find, I think compelling intervention. So first of all, if you feeling suicide obviously call Suicide Hotline, please, right? That's sometimes the last thing that people want to hear, when they are in a place of suicidal ideation. And the reason I ended up writing a long post about this, which was terrifying to write, because I had never told me
My parents I had never told my closest friends, this was a secret. It was a dark, dark secret and
I wrote about it because I went to an event in San Francisco. I was interviewed on stage by Jason calacanis, who's a friend, and a very good interviewer.
At an event and after I got off stage a bunch of people approached me and I was saying hi and taking photos and signing things and so on.
And there was one young man, they're very well-dressed which isn't really relevant. I just it was striking because in San Francisco, sometimes people are very underdressed and he was he dressed up for it, like it taken seriously, and he was in a suit and tie and he asked me if I could sign a book for his brother and I said, sure no problem and I asked him what would you like me to write to your brother? And he kind of blanked, he didn't kind of blank, you totally blank but the look behind his eyes.
Those who was unusual. It wasn't just, I don't know what to say blank. There's something else behind it and I could tell that he felt under pressure and I said, no problem take your time. I'll tell you what. I'll just chat with a couple of other people and I'll sign the book. No problem. I'm not going anywhere and chatted with the other folks, and then he asked if he could just walk me to the elevator. And then I could sign the book. I was like, sure.
And he explained to me.
As I walk to the elevator, how his brother had been a huge fan of mine. And that I'd really kept his brother a float for a long time. And eventually his brother killed himself and that they kept his room, exactly how it was. And he wanted me to sign the book so that he could put the book in his brother's room.
and,
He asked me if I'd ever considered talking about mental health, and mental health challenges publicly, because he thought it would really help a lot of people. And that just having a like feeling myself to Europe right now. I mean it's, it was so crushing to hear this story and totally unbeknownst to him. I had a lot of history with depressive episodes and when I say near suicide, I had it on the calendar. I had a plan I was going
Kill myself. I knew exactly how I was going to do it. I knew where I was going to do. I knew all of the variables that I needed to account for it, to get it done. And the only reason that didn't happen for people who don't have the contacts, which most people want is, I had tried to reserve a book at Firestone Library this is at Princeton, which had something to do with suicide. It was like assisted suicide like the the clinicians guide to euthanasia something like that and it wasn't in
And I have forgotten to change my address of the registrar's office. I was taking a year away from school and that was to focus on finishing. My thesis was to try a few jobs but I'd ended up in a very bad place and was feeling very isolated and my friends were graduating a year ahead of me and I was stuck on this thesis and there's a lot of back story that I won't bore people with, but it got to the point where I decided not that objective me objectively. My life is bad. I
This is where people who haven't experienced depression, get a little confused or that it's hard for them to identify when they give advice to a depressed person because you might say to a depressed person. Like but look, your life is so great. Like there's this, there's that, there's this and for a lot of depressed people to say, yeah, I know, I look at that and I can't fix my state because I am broken and if this is how I'm going to have to live forever with being this broken and dysfunctional and to have this internal hell that I live,
Day by day.
I just want to escape it's like someone jumping out of a burning building so they don't want to kill themselves but they're jumping out of a burning building and
So I had on the calendar and thank God, this is back when they would still send you a physical reminder. In the mail, a little postcard that says your book is in and that card went to my parents house and my mom saw it and panicked and called me and I lied, I said it was for a friend who went to Rutgers who is doing a project on a, b and c, but it's, it was just enough to kind of snap me out of the trance and realized that it killing yourself is like putting on a suicide vest.
With explosives and walking into a room of all the people you care the most about and and blowing stuff up. So, that's not me out of it. But no wonder this this guy certainly didn't know them.
And that is when I went home and thought about it and just decided, okay, there's a chance. If I write this, it's not certain but there's a chance that this might help someone. It might prevent someone from doing what I was almost about to do.
and so I spent months getting this post written and put it out and I know for a fact it is saved minimum dozens of lies and there are other things including a very extensive list of resources and so that gave me
I suppose not a toe in the water but sort of jumping feet, first into the deep end and experience of being that vulnerable. And this was a long time ago in this is one say at least eight ten years ago when I put that post out and
then I want to say it was just before covid lockdown. I was in Costa Rica visiting a friend as with my girlfriend at the time and she knew a secret of mine and she was one of maybe two or three people who knew that I'd been sexually abused when I was a kid by babysitter's son from two to four roughly. And
Routinely all the time kind of thing and yeah, like what you're envisioning is is what happened. So it was not good and that had been compartmentalize and locked away for my whole life.
I was like that's in the past. We're focused on moving forward.
And nothing to be fixed, nothing to fix. And that was my, my perspective on things.
It turned out, wasn't quite that simple and so I had done a lot of work, a lot of therapy use psychedelics just therapies as well.
Which once again or not all upside potential, there are some significant risks.
but I'd come a long way and my plan had always been to wait until my parents passed because I didn't want them to blame themselves for this and then to write a book and
There was something though, at the time when I was having dinner with my girlfriend, there was dissatisfying about that plan. If there's something about the bother me, and I couldn't quite put a finger on it, and I was talking to her about it and she said that's going to take a long time. She was like, have you ever thought about how many people
Are going to pass away or die or suffer between now. And when you publish that book,
and,
I thought about it and it was at that dinner that I decided to, at least record a podcast covering this terrain. I was not at all convinced that I wanted to publish it. I've I was terrified of publishing it also because it meant opening myself up to a lot of conversations.
Or maybe just hurtful commentary online. Who knows like people are there a lot of idiots out there. And a lot of otherwise find people who are idiots on the internet. So it's very hesitant ultimately decided I didn't want to do it as a one-man show. I didn't want to make it a monologue. So I asked my friend, Debbie Millman who had been on my podcast. She's an amazing graphic designer and teacher
But she had unexpectedly on my podcast based on some of my questions for the first time publicly told her story about being sexually abused. And so, I had leaned on her in years after that in private, and I asked her, if she would be willing to have a conversation with me about our respective Journeys and what it felt like, what it looked like, what helped didn't help, what worked, what didn't to provide at the very least.
glimmer of hope for people who,
We're keeping some of these dark secrets or contending with them, not knowing what to do with them and we had that conversation and I sat on it, I sat on it, I sat on it and then I put it out and decided in advance that I would not. Look at any social media for, at least several weeks afterwards, if my team saw anything on social media, I got emails, I didn't want to see anything other than positive feedback, which is not my de facto. I'm usually
Ali.
eager to solicit constructive feedback but in this case I knew that my own position was too vulnerable II didn't want to open up the possibility of of destabilizing myself
and I put it out and I think it's the most important podcast ever put up. So I kind of felt like my job was done from a podcasting perspective after that and it's been incredibly gratifying. I think it is certainly helped a fair number of people and it was also really hard because what I didn't anticipate was I would say of my really
Super high performing close male friends.
Maybe half reached out to me to tell someone for the first time about they're extremely awful, graphic, first-hand, experience of being sexually abused. The percentages were mind-blowing like the actual percentages were super, super, super high. Which is part of the reason I mentioned earlier, I think it's good to spend a little bit of time in those empty spaces to see. Am I
In a positive energetic, sense. Pursuing, something good? Or am I running away from demons? Whipping, my back. And for a lot of those guys, I'm sure it's true for a lot of women to, like, they, they find medication.
Through intense focus and achievement, which is super adaptive in a lot of ways. But it doesn't always have
Lifetime, reliability. And
That's the story
when it's impossible to hear those stories. Your story without feeling some substantial emotion. I'm not trying to intellectualize it.
Both both of those aspects of your history that you shared are huge and they really are, they're obviously huge for you and they're huge in terms of the positive impact in the world. I know this because I have read the comments, right? And I, and I'll talk to people who have listened to those podcasts and read those blogs and, and have similar or maybe different stories of trauma, but I think as
With your work in the Psychedelic space that was with your work in the physical augmentation space whatever you want to call it. It's a parent that you're willing to be first man in on a lot of things and really you're sitting alone there in those moments and these categories of revealing trauma are in my mind. Anyway, so much more substantial in terms of their impact positive impact in the other.
Aspects for our body and psychedelic work. Etc, is also tremendously impactful, so that's saying a lot. So so I say thank you for your bravery, and thanks Andrew. Yeah. It's it's crazy because I think that a lot of people can imagine telling a story or to a close friend or something, but, you know, to put it out into the world, you know, it's like it's huge, like you don't know how that's going to Ripple and you've been a real Pioneer and example for
For me for four lakhs rather people in revealing things. Not like that but different Peter T has recently been opening up about some serious challenges that he's had in his in his book he does that on podcast. He's been doing it. So you know, yet another category arguably the most important category for exploration and sharing and you know thoughtful bravery, right because you didn't just put it out there in any form. So one thing I do know by experience is
There's nothing weirder than being told thank you for the painful thing that you did. So I don't want to push that too far, but I'd be remiss if I didn't because it really has its impact and for doing it again here today. Because so yeah. That huge thanks for doing that. Yeah, my pleasure and I'll also say, you know, I got advice from
very, very experienced psychedelic, facilitator, one point who said
take the pain and make it part of your medicine. And the way I think that applies here is
We all experience pain, we all experience suffering. Many of us have experienced, trauma of one type or another, and that can consume you. I mean, it can consume you but it's like fire, but it can consume you, but you can also harness it and use it for different things. And I know for I think it's I'm not going to hedge. I'll say I know for a fact that there are people I've spoken to who are suicidal and
By the way, I'm not inviting it, everyone who's listening, if you are suicidal to reach out to makes it won't work, I've had to disengage from that because it gets too heavy, right? Just to engage one-on-one with people who are suicidal. But there are resources in that post. I mentioned the Practical thoughts on suicide.
But, let's just talk about closer, friends, people, you would never suspect in a million years. Who were this? Close to Blind the rims out.
People folks would recognize in some cases.
The fact that I was also there once is why they listen to me because I have unfortunately I'm a subject matter expert and I have credibility. And that actually is very redeeming. It provides some meaning to the suffering that I experienced. It's like, okay here I am for whatever host of reasons. I am put in this place and time with this person and they don't trust the input of these other people. They're talking to because
Those people don't know what it's like, but I can look at this person, the eye I'm going like, oh I know and that's just a different thing so you can you can find a way to transmute that pain into something meaningful into a gift that hopefully you can share in some way.
Not necessarily with the whole wide world just one person that's a big deal. One person to big deal. There's a lot out there that is intended for Mass consumption. That gets in front of millions of people doesn't really impact a single person very much. So even if you don't have podcasts, do not a books. If you have the ability to sit down from one person and really make an impact, that's actually more meaningful than most of the crap that gets put out there, so take heart.
Amen to that.
I'd like to spend a little bit of time, talking about the roles, you see yourself in, you know, I had this list coming in here of get, you've done the exploration of the health, sphere you self-experimentation, you hear? You've been an investor, you are an investor, your podcaster, your, you know, I think these are more than titles. I think.
Titles are great. But titles are what we get from other people telling us what we do or deciding what we do.
I'm more interested in how you think about yourself like your own role identity and have to assume. You've spent a little bit of time on this. Like if one were to go through the, the check list of possible roles. Yeah. Okay. I confess I do this. I think like, okay, like I think I call I think I checked the box of animal because we're animals after all or you know, humans don't hold anything. I think I just called answer. Absolutely not, are you still Tango dancing? I'm
Plan on getting back into it. Great. That is that does have some
background. I have Argentine lineage. And I'm embarrassed to say, I don't take no tengo. But you got the man. You got the mate in the in the green room and you're set my grandparents Tango into their 80s. I think late 80s. Yeah, good idea is yeah, it's taken smoke cigarettes and we're lived until their 90's, but at times, I had a champion. Exactly. But I'm curious about the roles that you see yourself in like, you know,
Roll identity to me is so important in terms of where we see ourselves now and where we see ourselves going forward and who knows, maybe you don't have any role identity plan, but what are some boxes that you see yourself in now that you really strongly identify with and then what are some boxes that you'd like to check off going forward?
So current boxes, I would say the two that I probably identify with most
Maybe three, but I'll focus on two experimental list, which can take a lot of forms that can that can apply to a whole lot of different spheres. So, experimental list. And then teacher and for the longest time, long, long time, I thought eventually I would go back and actually be a ninth grade teacher, because I feel like that is such a critical window for so many kids where they can
Either hit an inflection point and go on a really good direction or they can go on a really bad Direction. And I certainly saw that online Long Island with a lot of my friends, a lot of overdoses, bunch of friends who have died of opiate addiction and various things. And I had some intervention with mentors early on that.
That sort of flip the switch on the railroad track and sent me in a different direction. So I thought for a long time, I would go back and be a 9th grade teacher, and my impulse to experiment, leads to enthusiasm for teaching if that makes any sense because I feel like
As good as I might be or decent at taking a complex subject, deconstructing it applying 80/20 putting things in order and learning things very quickly, which includes stress, testing, assumptions in that sort of assumed progression for scale like language learning. There's so many myths and language learning as an example,
If it takes me say, six months to become reasonably competent in field X, I can usually get other people to that same point of competence in a third of that time. So for me, it's very gratifying to teach and I view all the books as teaching tools, I'm no Tolstoy. I recognize I'm not the world's greatest writer, I take the writing seriously. I don't have asset. I do many, many, many revisions even for cock punch. It's like 27 revisions for
A short story called cock. So I take it seriously but I recognize that I'm not the world's greatest.
Wordsmith, but I am looking for outcomes.
In readers or listeners and I view my job is that of teacher so I'd say experimentalists and teacher of the two and those both go a long way and applies to say, dog training, you know, lots of rain, lots of experiments
and for those listening to him, just looked under the table. One thing I should have said the beginning and I did not is that this is the first hearing loud podcast to feature a guest.
Who brought their dog? So we have Molly as here as well. And we're absolutely delighted. There has not been a dog at on the huberman, a podcast since Costello passed away and I'm you know practically floating in in Delight that Molly's here today. She's a she's amazing. And you've done an amazing job training her to. Thank you. Yeah.
She's laying right next to my feet. Liking my hand as I speak, so good. And I'd say, if I were to expand that by 10 probably say,
Explorer, but the exploring goes hand in hand with the experimentation. So I can be Geographic exploration, it could be spending time with people who are excellent at anything.
In any field and seeing where that? Gingerbread Trail leads me and I think the exploration and the experimentation are for me. Bedfellows, they go together.
What about roles that you would like to explore potentially, see yourself in. I mean, I don't have a magic wand, but if I did as a fellow podcaster and I consider you a friend, I would say, okay? Like if I could wand you to the success in given role at that wouldn't be the way it would work and that wouldn't be as gratifying as having to figure it all out because that's part of your your Machinery as you just told us. So yeah. What are some role life roles that you're interested in expanding and or
Tapping into that you haven't
explored same or more artists, more Artistry, especially in the visual sense because I want to be a comic book penciler for a really long time. Got paid as an illustrator but towards the end of high school and during college, so Illustrated books and magazines and so on, then I just draw that I dropped it when I graduated, because I was kid stuff, and it's time to get serious and be an adult. And I just cold, turkey, stop all of it. And so the skills have atrophied a lot, but there's still, there's still a bit
It in there. I've
seen some posts on Instagram that were
yeah, quite good. So I'm still messing around. I'm still messing around and especially when I have some structure, I do well. So I'd like to pursue that I would like to experiment with animation. So I don't know if animator would be the right label because I most likely would not be doing the animation myself but playing a role in visual art would be one. Father will be another one.
eventually and try not to be attached to it, but
We all play games are various types and if we get really good at certain games that are socially rewarded, then you make money doing a podcast, or investing or whatever might be, but when my when when the sort of ramp of my learning starts to flatten out a bit, I tend to get bored of those games. And I think that certainly, one of the biggest adventures
Must be Parenthood. So, at some point I think, father would be on there, and I should say, this is very judgmental me to say, but I think there's a big difference between wanting to wanting to be a parent and wanting to have kids. I'm very cautious about saying I want to have kids because it doesn't automatically imply. You want to be a good parent, which is also why I thought it was very important for me to spend a lot of time training Molly.
And a lot of learning there, right? Yeah, this seems they are. Am I going to do the heavy lifting in the hard work? Recognizing that kids are not deferred dogs, but I do think they're actually a lot of similarities. In terms of just predictive ability, if you see someone who has dogs, that are terribly trained. Look at their kids might see some simple are my good friend. My good friend all out him here. Who's a mdps? You sir.
Share of Ophthalmology at Stanford, Jeff Goldberg. Once asked him, if he has any pets and he said that he, and his wife had three children as preparation for having a dog.
There's a quote also from a book called Don't Shoot the dog, which is terrible title. But excellent book written by Karen Pryor who was a aquatic mammal trainer. So, choose training, dolphins and whales, and so on, which don't respond to negative reinforcement, you can't really hit them with a rolled-up newspaper.
They don't do what you want and there's a quote in that book.
We just something along the lines of a camera or the attributions, another trainer and it was people should not be allowed to have children, until they've successfully trained to chicken because also chickens, like they just don't have the brain power to respond too much negative reinforcement so you have to coax them to do what you want them to do with positive reinforcement. And I mean Opera and classical conditioning its kind of samsam across the board whether you're like the CIA
A trend train cockroaches to flip. Light switch is not making that one up. By the way, or training will or training a cat or training, a human training, sounds bad cultivating. A wonderful human. Yeah. Then I think there's a lot to be learned across the board. So I've successfully proven to myself that I can keep a dog alive and happy
and train up another happy nervous system. Yeah, you know, curate, another nervous system. That's a big
deal. Oh yeah. Well, she's also like my external.
Nervous system. So we sort of work in tandem, I pay a lot of attention to how she relates to different people.
As our earlier today, I met someone who is the owner of a Bulldog Mastiff who knew one command which was weight which is which is that by default the easiest thing to train a bulldog because it when you by the way folks if you stop a bulldog on the street to scratch them, they look delighted. They might like you but chances are, they're just really relieved that they get to stop. So
And Costello, he had a forebrain and he was smart about what he need to be smart about. But Molly is exceptional. Like she knows where she needs to be and she's super connected to you and she knows a ton of commands. It was ridiculous. Our staff was like, delighting in the number of things that Tim could get her to do, just by looking at
her. Yeah, yeah. She's, she's also quite calm out of the box, which helps, although it makes it harder in some respects to train because she doesn't have much food drive.
If you like those Maui Nui sticks. We were jumping on
his. Yeah, she loves the Maui News, venison sticks. But she, well, I'll get I'll give, I'll say two things. So, first is if your dog is a spaz about food, that's actually great news. It will make your dog, very easy to train in some respects. Re don't shoot the dog. It's excellent. There's some others I could recommend. I had a woman named Susan Garrett on my podcast because I wanted to be an objective measure of successful.
Training and competitors have objective measures. So she was an adult, dog agility Champion for many years which has a lot of metrics. So, anyway, I had her on to be able or interested, but the, the, the tip that I got from one dog trainer early on because I was trying to train Molly, and I was using just some of her kibble, I'd like, put some kibble in a bag and carry it around. And she was like, what are you doing? And I said, what do you mean? What am I doing? She's like Zach kibble. I'm like, yeah, it's kibble. And she goes, she's like, hey pal, she's like,
At a crowded bar you got a typic 20s. Nice to get your dog's attention. You take your lovely to the dog park. It's like squirrels other dogs grass. Piss on the pavement, whatever happens to be you have to have good treats. So if your dog isn't responding, chances are maybe you're trying to tip with
singles. I love it. I love it. Well, thank you for sharing the roles. You see yourself in in the ones that you'd like to step into more. I certainly feel I have the jurisdiction to say that. You are an exceptional experimentalists and
A phenomenal teacher. We've seen this across so many, you're welcome and and I'm not just speaking for myself. I'm sleeping speaking for so many other people as well, we've seen this across so many domains like blogging podcasting book writing stage, lecturing being a guest on a podcast, you know, and on and on. And in terms of the roles that you want to expand into more. I can't wait to see the illustrations that that emerge. Yeah, please do gotta grow that flame.
Because I'm excited for what comes out. Cock punch being just the first of them leading the charge. Yeah. And you know I can say because I know because I have one and because I have observed many kids and friends who are fathers, are going to be an exceptional. Father, I'm absolutely confident
that I can. Yeah, I appreciate that.
And I want to say, thanks for taking the time to talk with me today. I've been looking forward to this so much. My team knows this weight. We were sort of buzzing like, yeah. We've had some Heavy Hitters on this podcast, you know, we only look to the top one percent in field and they're, you know, incredibly credentialed by whatever standards, we happen to be exploring. And they have to be filled people that I really want to talk to. So I have so much respect for what you do and the way you do it, you
And we inspired me this podcast would not exist. I don't think the genre of podcasting would exist and look the way that it does have you not made the decision to start podcasting and in anticipation of this episode, I did put out a ping on Twitter for questions and there were many. Many of them that maybe we'll do a Q&A sometime, maybe not, who knows. But, you know, one of the questions that really stood out to me, was, you know, how it is. Tim feel about all these other people coming into, all the spaces that he's worked and doing.
I'll work that builds off so much of what he's done and I'll let you answer. But for me, I can say that I've been positively inspired and built so much of what we've been doing here. And, and what I think about based on the ways that you've podcasted and communicate with the public and maintain your stance and integrity in the way that you interact with people, it's really inspiring and you've always been so gracious to me and so humble and so giving and, and at the same time, I know there's a fierce guy in there who likes
To get it done. So once again, thanks for being first man, in thanks for taking on all the roles that you have and that you are, and that you will and thanks for being a giver. We all benefit. Thanks Andrew. I really appreciate you saying all that and
I want people to just get after it, take things, seriously, have fun and be really, really good. So, watching for instance, what you've done, which has been so spectacular. So well executed makes me super happy and I don't view anyone as competition in the podcasting world, for instance, in the book world, I don't view it that way either, and
I just hope that people keep experimenting pushing the envelope, and if people aren't say getting better over time, if people aren't following who are substantially better than me, and all of these ways than I would be super disappointed. So every time I see someone doing something really impressive or doing something, I never would have thought of, I get so extremely excited. I find it really fun to watch. So appreciate you also.
Getting out there and hard-charging and taking your podcast as seriously as you do. I mean, I've seen the notes. I've seen the setup. I met the team. It's it's very inspiring for me. Also makes me want to dust off my cleats and get back on the field and you never left the field, and you've had a hand in it. Also, thank you so much and I hope you'll come back and visit us again here. Yeah, I hope so. It's been a real pleasure. I've been looking forward to this for a long time as well. And
Appreciate you inviting me on till next time. Till next time man.
Thank you for joining me for today's discussion with Tim Ferriss. I hope you found it to be as informative and as actionable as I did for links to Tim's books, as well as for a link to his weekly blog, please see the show note captions. You'll also find a link to Tim's podcast, the Tim Ferriss podcast and I highly recommend that you subscribe and listen to the Tim Ferriss podcast. If you're learning from Endor enjoying this podcast, please subscribe to our YouTube channel. That's a
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