Transcript
00:00:00 If you get into the sauna the way I just described,
00:00:02 not the two hours a day, but 30 minutes,
00:00:05 twice a week or three times per week,
00:00:07 you reduce the likelihood of dying
00:00:09 of a cardiovascular event by 27%.
00:00:12 If you do it four or more times per week,
00:00:14 you reduce the probability of dying by 50%.
00:00:17 Is there any scientific evidence
00:00:19 that being naked is beneficial in the sauna?
00:00:22 Well, in certain contexts, it leads to childbirth.
00:00:25 Okay, well, I’ll have to read up on that.
00:00:27 I think Dorothy Parker said,
00:00:30 the cure for boredom is curiosity.
00:00:32 There is no cure for curiosity.
00:00:36 The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman,
00:00:39 his third time on this podcast.
00:00:41 He’s a brilliant neuroscientist at Stanford University
00:00:45 and the host of one of the best,
00:00:49 the best, if you ask me,
00:00:51 health and science podcasts in the world
00:00:53 called Huberman Lab Podcast.
00:00:55 Check him out on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
00:00:58 Most importantly, Andrew is a great human being
00:01:01 and has quickly become a great friend.
00:01:05 This is the Lex Riebman Podcast.
00:01:07 To support it, please check out our sponsors
00:01:09 in the description.
00:01:10 And now, dear friends, here’s Andrew Huberman.
00:01:15 We meet again, my friend.
00:01:17 We should talk on each other’s podcast once a year.
00:01:19 I think we should make a deal.
00:01:21 I was just talking to the guys,
00:01:23 this is a show called Louie, I don’t know if you know it.
00:01:25 And yeah, with Louie CK.
00:01:27 And there’s this thing called Bang Bang,
00:01:30 which people that are probably watching
00:01:31 know exactly what I’m talking about.
00:01:33 It’s this worst possible thing you can do
00:01:35 in terms of meals, which is you go to a restaurant,
00:01:39 do a full meal, and then you go to another restaurant
00:01:42 and do a full meal and you pet me.
00:01:44 You, exactly.
00:01:46 So they go Mexican, Italian, sushi, pizza, barbecue,
00:01:51 IHOP, that one is disgusting.
00:01:52 This kind of thing reminds me of the joy of food.
00:01:57 Last time we were hanging out,
00:01:59 we went to see Joe Do Comedy
00:02:01 and then we went to eat Russian food.
00:02:04 And it was a particularly fun experience
00:02:08 to go to a Russian restaurant.
00:02:10 I was the only person there that didn’t speak Russian
00:02:14 and eat Russian food with you.
00:02:16 And because I felt walking in, they trusted you.
00:02:20 They didn’t trust me.
00:02:21 Yeah, the funny thing about the people there,
00:02:24 they were talking to you in Russian
00:02:26 and then they refused to sort of switch to English,
00:02:29 even though they understood you speak no Russian.
00:02:31 This is Russian House in Austin, by the way.
00:02:34 Anyway, by way of question, what’s the worst or the best,
00:02:38 depending on your perspective, cheap meal?
00:02:40 Let’s call it a pigging out meal,
00:02:41 but it could be a cheap meal that you’ve ever had
00:02:45 or you want to have that’s like on the bucket list
00:02:48 or something that’s in the past,
00:02:50 where you did something like a Bang Bang,
00:02:52 which is like, you’re talking about
00:02:54 multiple thousands of calories
00:02:56 that you just feel horrible about yourself
00:02:59 but you still keep eating because it’s delicious,
00:03:01 but also great company.
00:03:04 Something about the atmosphere is just right.
00:03:07 Screw the diet, screw all the things,
00:03:11 like you should be doing,
00:03:12 but just throw it all out the window.
00:03:14 I’ve done that several times.
00:03:16 Yeah, I don’t do this anymore,
00:03:18 but the entire time I was a postdoc, so five years,
00:03:21 and the entire time I was a pretenured professor,
00:03:23 so five years, so I basically followed
00:03:27 the Tim Ferriss slow carb diet,
00:03:29 which is, people can look it up, but it worked really well.
00:03:32 It was basically some good animal proteins,
00:03:37 fish and meat and things like that.
00:03:38 Why slow carb?
00:03:39 Because slow carb is like low glycemic stuff,
00:03:41 it’s mostly lentils and beans and things and vegetables,
00:03:44 no dairy, no, anyway, but then one day.
00:03:48 Is pasta in there?
00:03:49 Sorry to interrupt.
00:03:50 No, no pasta.
00:03:51 So it wasn’t low carb, but it was low glycemic carb.
00:03:53 And I did that and it worked terrifically well
00:03:55 just for energy levels,
00:03:56 cause I want to be able to train and work.
00:03:57 And then one day a week,
00:03:58 you’re supposed to go full cheat day.
00:04:02 And so I would do what used to be 12 hours,
00:04:05 but then it became 24,
00:04:07 you can start to redefine what the day is.
00:04:09 And I would, and that was when Costello was pretty young
00:04:13 and we would do it together.
00:04:14 So I would get pizzas and croissants and donuts,
00:04:18 and I would just do the full thing.
00:04:20 And by the end of the day,
00:04:21 you don’t want to look at an item of food.
00:04:24 You’re just repulsed by food.
00:04:25 The only modification I made was the next day,
00:04:27 I would fast completely,
00:04:29 just to avoid the gastric distress of eating anything.
00:04:32 And so I would do them on Sundays
00:04:34 and then Mondays I’d fast all day.
00:04:35 And then by Tuesday, I felt pretty good again,
00:04:37 but Sunday and Monday,
00:04:38 or you just feel like you’re sliding down the slope
00:04:42 of just blood sugar disaster.
00:04:44 Terrible idea or a good idea?
00:04:46 You know, at the time I enjoyed it.
00:04:48 I love donuts, croissants, all that kind of stuff.
00:04:50 What’s interesting is after stopping that whole protocol,
00:04:53 now I just try and eat well each day.
00:04:54 Protocol.
00:04:55 It’s really a protocol.
00:04:56 Now I basically, I do a pseudo intermittent fasting.
00:04:59 I’m not really strict, but I’ll start at eating around 11,
00:05:02 eat my first meal around 11,
00:05:03 I usually train in the morning,
00:05:04 eat my last bite of food somewhere around eight or nine,
00:05:06 and I’m not super strict.
00:05:07 I might have some berries or something late at night.
00:05:09 Three meals, two meals?
00:05:11 Two meals.
00:05:12 And then maybe a little bit of snacking on some nuts
00:05:15 or something in the middle.
00:05:16 Ever fast, 24 hour?
00:05:17 Never done a long fast,
00:05:18 except when I was doing the cheat days.
00:05:20 And then, and actually there are a couple different ways
00:05:24 to do cheat days that were fun.
00:05:25 Like if you were in a new city,
00:05:26 you could try all the restaurants that you wanted.
00:05:30 Yeah, and I think Tim and our mutual friend,
00:05:33 John Romanello did a,
00:05:34 I think it was like a cheat day marathon where they did,
00:05:36 you know, marathon’s 26.3 miles.
00:05:38 They went to 26.3 different locations in New York.
00:05:41 They put it on a map and I never took it to that extreme,
00:05:44 but.
00:05:45 Wait, wait, wait.
00:05:46 Over how many days?
00:05:47 One day.
00:05:48 That was their cheat day.
00:05:49 Why?
00:05:50 Just cause they were, you know.
00:05:50 Just a little bit of something at each place.
00:05:53 Yeah, exactly.
00:05:54 I mean, there are things that guys do in their thirties
00:05:56 that you just shouldn’t do in your forties.
00:05:58 I can say that cause I’m in my forties.
00:05:59 And now I just try and eat well most days.
00:06:01 And what’s interesting is about 12 to 14 months ago,
00:06:05 I completely lost all appetite for sweets.
00:06:08 I don’t know what happened.
00:06:08 I still love savory food.
00:06:10 So meat and butter and cheese,
00:06:12 and I love vegetables too.
00:06:14 I love fruit also, but lost all appetite.
00:06:16 So if you put a donut in front of me or ice cream
00:06:18 or something like that, I just,
00:06:20 it’s almost aversive to me and I don’t know what happened.
00:06:23 I don’t know what changed.
00:06:24 It’s probably a scientific explanation.
00:06:25 Sure.
00:06:26 It has to do maybe with habit.
00:06:27 Neuron loss, dementia.
00:06:28 Yeah.
00:06:29 The sugar, the desire for that rush maybe is gone
00:06:35 from your soul.
00:06:37 So what was the most delicious things, croissant donuts?
00:06:40 Is there a thing that?
00:06:42 There’s a place in Portland.
00:06:44 I don’t know if it’s still open called Little T’s Bakery.
00:06:47 And they have croissants that easily rival
00:06:50 the croissants in Paris.
00:06:52 People make a lot of the pastry in Paris,
00:06:54 but it’s really the bread in Paris that’s amazing.
00:06:57 We lived there when I was a kid and we did a sabbatical
00:06:59 there and you know, there they do the baguette,
00:07:01 morning bake and afternoon bake.
00:07:02 And there’s nothing like the bread in Paris or the people,
00:07:07 you know, and, but if you’re in the Pacific Northwest,
00:07:10 you know, you can find amazing croissants there.
00:07:13 What do you do with the croissant?
00:07:14 What do you do with the bread?
00:07:15 Butter or is it just?
00:07:16 I actually used to, I don’t eat them anymore.
00:07:18 I don’t have much of an appetite for them,
00:07:19 even though they’re not a sweet food,
00:07:20 but I’m always putting butter on the croissant.
00:07:24 Butter on the butter croissant.
00:07:25 No jam.
00:07:26 I would never adulterate my croissant.
00:07:28 I have to actually be honest about this
00:07:30 because people talk about steak and they talk about bread
00:07:33 with the butter.
00:07:34 I feel like butter is cheating.
00:07:35 I feel like you’re disrespecting the fundamental food
00:07:40 by adding butter.
00:07:41 Cause butter, it’s like, it’s like,
00:07:43 it’s like a elite version of ketchup.
00:07:47 You’re.
00:07:48 Well there we diverge because for me,
00:07:49 bread is just a vehicle for butter.
00:07:52 A cracker is just a vehicle for cheese.
00:07:56 Oh, so that’s just the,
00:07:57 the cracker and the bread is just texture.
00:07:59 It’s just that people look at you funny
00:08:01 if you, if you just eat the butter straight,
00:08:03 which occasionally I do.
00:08:04 I got it.
00:08:05 So I put a little piece of bread underneath it,
00:08:07 not because I’m low carb, strictly low carb,
00:08:10 but just because otherwise you get some funny looks.
00:08:13 That’s like pasta is a vehicle for pasta sauce.
00:08:17 It’s interesting, but like Indian non bread,
00:08:20 you have, you have the bread.
00:08:23 I’ve had a lot of soul searching
00:08:25 on which part of Indian is, brings me so much joy.
00:08:28 Is it the bread or is it all the sauces
00:08:30 that come with the bread?
00:08:31 Well, there we diverge again,
00:08:32 because for whatever reason, no disrespect to anyone,
00:08:36 but Indian food doesn’t appeal to me.
00:08:39 Well, you’re a lucky man
00:08:40 because the number of calories in that food,
00:08:43 it sneaks like non bread.
00:08:44 I don’t know how non bread is made,
00:08:46 but I think it’s just soaked in oil
00:08:49 and it just very intensely,
00:08:51 like the density of calories is very, very high.
00:08:56 For me, barbecue, I would say is probably the,
00:08:58 that’s good.
00:08:59 Anytime I’m in Austin, I start thinking about barbecue.
00:09:02 I do love, you know, I do love meat.
00:09:04 My dad’s Argentine.
00:09:05 I mean, I love steak.
00:09:06 I love meat.
00:09:07 I mean, Argentina chorizo sausage
00:09:09 is an appetizer before you have steak.
00:09:12 It’s meat on top of meat.
00:09:13 And it’s not just, you know, it’s not just the men, right?
00:09:16 You see women, sometimes very petite women
00:09:18 eating steaks that are bigger than their skull size.
00:09:22 You know, slowly, they eat very slowly there.
00:09:24 And they all eat dessert too, which is interesting.
00:09:26 And they generally do the sort of one meal per day
00:09:28 and do that kind of real flexibly.
00:09:30 That’s how I think about it.
00:09:31 Cause I often eat one meal a day,
00:09:32 especially when I’m traveling.
00:09:34 It feels like a cheap meal because it allows,
00:09:36 it gives you a bit of more freedom
00:09:38 to just lose yourself in the quantity of the food.
00:09:42 I did the three day fast and I ate chicken breast,
00:09:46 like literally chicken breast with nothing else,
00:09:47 just grilled.
00:09:48 And it was the most delicious piece of meat I’ve ever eaten.
00:09:51 And that, and that gives you,
00:09:53 the problem is when you fast the three days,
00:09:55 you really can’t pig out.
00:09:56 You really shouldn’t.
00:09:57 Your stomach will shrink in size already.
00:09:59 Your gut microbiome is almost completely
00:10:01 depleted by fasting.
00:10:02 A lot of people think, oh,
00:10:03 cleanses and fasts are great for the microbiome.
00:10:05 They quash your microbiome.
00:10:07 However, when you start eating again,
00:10:09 the microbiome comes back better
00:10:11 than it was before your fast.
00:10:13 For people who don’t know, Sergey and Todd are on the call.
00:10:15 They’re kind of pulling stuff up.
00:10:16 They just pulled up Phelps with the,
00:10:19 I forget how many calories he was eating, 10,000.
00:10:21 You know what’s interesting?
00:10:22 There’s some, some cool physiology around this.
00:10:24 The reason he needed to eat so much
00:10:26 is not that he was burning that many calories
00:10:30 in pure movement.
00:10:31 It’s that when you do exercise in water,
00:10:33 even if it’s warm water,
00:10:34 the heat transfer in water is greater.
00:10:36 So you burn far more calories.
00:10:38 And again, here, I’m admittedly lifting that
00:10:40 from knowledge that was passed on to me by Tim Ferriss.
00:10:43 I didn’t, so, but I checked it out
00:10:45 and it’s absolutely true.
00:10:46 So if you exercise in water,
00:10:47 even if it’s not really cold water,
00:10:49 your caloric needs go way up,
00:10:50 which is why you get out of the pool
00:10:52 and you’re often really hungry.
00:10:53 And for fans of the Human Lab podcast,
00:10:56 and if you’re not a fan,
00:10:57 what are you doing with your life?
00:11:00 You would probably chuckle at the fact
00:11:02 that Andrew just cited his sources,
00:11:04 even on that statement,
00:11:05 because you’re so good at,
00:11:08 I don’t know how your memory works,
00:11:09 but the only person whose memory
00:11:12 is better than Joe Rogan is yours.
00:11:14 But my colleagues joke,
00:11:16 you know, PubMed sort of scrolls through my mind.
00:11:20 Also in science, as you know,
00:11:22 attribution is so baked into what we do.
00:11:25 And I think that it’s interesting
00:11:27 because now spending a lot of time on social media,
00:11:29 attribution is not as common.
00:11:31 And, but in academia, you learn really early on
00:11:34 that if you give a talk about your data
00:11:37 and you cite all these amazing sources,
00:11:39 all it does is make you look better, right?
00:11:42 Whereas in social media and elsewhere
00:11:44 in the business sector,
00:11:45 it’s almost like citing other people,
00:11:47 people feel as if it’s going to take away
00:11:48 some of the credit.
00:11:49 All it does is place you in the company
00:11:50 of people that do really nice work.
00:11:52 So I have tremendous,
00:11:53 and I have genuine and tremendous respect for Tim.
00:11:55 He’s been about 10 years ahead
00:11:56 on a huge number of health related things
00:11:59 and other things and extremely kind person,
00:12:01 very thoughtful person.
00:12:02 So it’s also just a pleasure to shine light
00:12:05 on other people.
00:12:05 Yeah, well, I actually, to push back,
00:12:07 I know there’s a culture of if you write a paper,
00:12:11 standing on the shoulders of giants is a powerful thing,
00:12:15 but there’s also a culture of not giving credit
00:12:19 to the strongest idea in your paper.
00:12:21 And instead say it’s kind of, or imply that it’s original.
00:12:24 There is a culture of kind of not celebrating others.
00:12:28 I think people get most competitive in all walks of life,
00:12:33 but especially in science when they’re,
00:12:35 the closer they get in the exact thing they work on.
00:12:39 And so there’s this dance,
00:12:41 you know, there’s a few researchers
00:12:43 in each of the individual little things that you work on.
00:12:46 If you’re studying a particular kind of ant,
00:12:48 you know that other asshole
00:12:50 that also is studying that particular ant,
00:12:52 and then you’re not going to often give credit
00:12:56 for the brilliant ideas that that other researcher is doing.
00:12:59 And I think one of the things you’ve discovered
00:13:01 and just as part of your nature,
00:13:04 which is why it’s really great that you have an audience
00:13:08 and you inspire others to do the same,
00:13:09 is you celebrate that other ant studier.
00:13:12 It’s great and everybody wins, it raises all boats.
00:13:16 But that initial instinct to be like,
00:13:19 what is it in Borat?
00:13:21 Like my neighbor gets a toaster, I get a bigger toaster.
00:13:27 Yeah, that mindset to, you know,
00:13:28 it’s not that I’m not competitive in certain domains,
00:13:31 but yeah, I get great pleasure
00:13:33 from sharing things that I find.
00:13:37 And I think that, you know, at the end of the day,
00:13:40 you’re as strong as your community
00:13:43 and you can build a wonderful community
00:13:45 just by pointing out things that you love.
00:13:48 Like these are all just loves.
00:13:49 I see a paper and I love it.
00:13:51 Only rarely do I think, oh, I wish we had done that.
00:13:54 I usually think, fantastic,
00:13:55 now I can just focus on something else
00:13:56 because they checked off that box.
00:13:59 And by the way, you mentioned PubMed and barbecue.
00:14:02 I should mention that I got a chance to hang out
00:14:04 with Rick Rubin, thanks to you.
00:14:06 He’s a friend of yours and you made the connection.
00:14:07 That was a huge gift to my spirit, I guess.
00:14:11 He’s a truly, truly special human being.
00:14:13 And there’s a lot I could say
00:14:15 about why he’s a special human being.
00:14:17 I’d love to learn how you met him,
00:14:19 but I should also just mention on the PubMed thing,
00:14:23 it was so interesting talking to him about music
00:14:27 and both on the podcast and privately
00:14:31 and just listening to music together.
00:14:32 Because when you mention a song,
00:14:36 he does this thing where he like closes his eyes
00:14:39 and he finds that song in the album that we’re talking about
00:14:44 and he steps through the album.
00:14:45 You could see the brain like stepping
00:14:47 through individual songs to find that song in the album.
00:14:51 And there’s that kind of lookup process.
00:14:53 And then he puts himself mentally in that space
00:14:55 of like, okay, this is, you know, whatever the album is.
00:14:59 And not just the ones he produced,
00:15:01 but all of these in the encyclopedia of music.
00:15:04 And it’s so interesting.
00:15:06 It also, the thing I really love about him
00:15:10 is something like a calmness that radiates from him.
00:15:13 That it’s okay to close your eyes and place yourself
00:15:16 in the place where that album was recorded,
00:15:20 in the feeling of that album and like that silence.
00:15:24 Let’s go there, let’s go there together.
00:15:26 It’s like Alice in Wonderland and we’ll go there together.
00:15:28 You do a good Rick Rubin, minus the beard.
00:15:31 Minus the beard.
00:15:32 His beard is epic, right?
00:15:33 You can’t fake a beard like that, you know.
00:15:35 How’d you guys meet?
00:15:37 Yeah, well, Rick, I’m very blessed to consider a close friend.
00:15:42 Rick and I got introduced through a common friend
00:15:45 during the pandemic.
00:15:47 And we started doing some FaceTime together
00:15:49 and just talking about things related to science and health.
00:15:52 And I’m not a musician, I have no musical ability or talent.
00:15:56 I have a good ability to memorize lyrics
00:15:58 and I love lyrics and I love poetry.
00:16:00 So I asked him a lot of questions about musicians
00:16:02 that I happen to love that he’s worked with and knows.
00:16:05 And so he would give me stories about musicians
00:16:07 and I would talk to him about health.
00:16:10 And then eventually we formed a friendship
00:16:12 where we would talk about any number
00:16:13 of different topics in life.
00:16:15 And then we started spending time together in person
00:16:18 when he was in town or nearby.
00:16:21 And as you now know, you know, Rick,
00:16:26 in addition to all his incredible accomplishments,
00:16:28 has an incredible understanding
00:16:31 of how to get the brain and body into state, right?
00:16:36 And as you pointed out, he’s willing to do the things
00:16:40 that allow him to help these incredible artists
00:16:43 get into the best state to do their craft.
00:16:46 And so if he needs to sit there and be quiet
00:16:49 with his eyes closed for a minute or two or more,
00:16:53 he’ll do that.
00:16:54 He has routines to allow himself to get into state.
00:16:57 And it’s really inspired me to think about states of mind
00:17:01 as something that, you know, we’d all love
00:17:02 to just flip the switch and say,
00:17:04 we’re focused or we’re creative,
00:17:05 but to actually ratchet through the challenging steps
00:17:09 in order to do that and to figure out
00:17:11 what one needs to do on a regular basis
00:17:14 to get into a proper state.
00:17:16 It’s not just gonna come from a cup of coffee,
00:17:19 you know, a lamp of a particular wavelength or something.
00:17:22 It’s gonna be those things,
00:17:23 but it’s also going to be really teaching oneself
00:17:26 how to get into proper state.
00:17:28 Yeah, you did an episode on hypnosis.
00:17:30 Do you think it’s a kind of self hypnosis?
00:17:32 Yes, I do.
00:17:33 Because hypnosis is a, you limit the context,
00:17:38 you’re very alert and you’re very calm.
00:17:41 And he has a number of these different practices.
00:17:44 And so we would talk about those.
00:17:45 And then we also have enjoyed a lot of discussions
00:17:48 about deep neuroscience.
00:17:50 In fact, I introduced Rick to a friend of mine
00:17:52 who’s a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist
00:17:54 and they’ve become friendly.
00:17:56 You know, Rick is one of these people
00:17:57 that he sort of defies definition, incredibly kind,
00:18:00 incredibly private person too.
00:18:02 So, you know, I’m being respectful of that.
00:18:04 But, and then of course he’s a fan of your podcast.
00:18:07 And so when I learned that,
00:18:09 I just made natural sense to introduce you.
00:18:11 And I know he really enjoyed meeting you.
00:18:13 And we talk about you a lot.
00:18:15 And of course, in a positive light, you know,
00:18:17 I think his dedication to getting into these states of mind
00:18:21 and his willingness to do that
00:18:22 has completely transformed my routines around life.
00:18:26 Like for instance,
00:18:27 before doing a very long podcast recording,
00:18:29 the solo ones, which often take me several hours or more,
00:18:32 six hours to record, sometimes more, sometimes less.
00:18:35 I realized that there’s a certain brain state
00:18:37 associated with that.
00:18:38 So I have to really limit the kind of interactions I have
00:18:41 for the two hours before.
00:18:42 I actually walk and talk out loud through my neighborhood.
00:18:45 People think I’m crazy,
00:18:46 but I live in a neighborhood
00:18:47 where there are a lot of crazy creatives anyway.
00:18:50 So.
00:18:51 Are you saying you’re not crazy?
00:18:52 Well, at least not institutionally defined as crazy yet.
00:18:57 But, you know, getting into state of mind
00:19:00 is something that we’d all just imagine we flip the switch,
00:19:02 but Rick really convinced me,
00:19:04 you have to do the work to do the work.
00:19:06 Can you maybe linger on that,
00:19:09 elucidate a little bit more of your process
00:19:11 of how you get in that space?
00:19:12 That’s really interesting.
00:19:14 Cause I have to admit,
00:19:16 I do everything last minute before a podcast.
00:19:19 I don’t know.
00:19:21 Like there’s a lot of anxiety because like whatever,
00:19:24 if I have to pack, if I have to set up stuff,
00:19:27 you were luckily a few minutes,
00:19:29 you showed up a few minutes later.
00:19:30 Which for an academic is right on time.
00:19:32 Right on time.
00:19:33 But the stress is immense.
00:19:36 And on top of that,
00:19:38 you look at like a situation with Rick Rubin,
00:19:41 is I had to set up microphones in front of him
00:19:44 and just that stress, the anxiety.
00:19:47 He knows a lot about microphones.
00:19:48 What did he say?
00:19:49 Which I really loved.
00:19:50 He’s like, how close do you like the microphone to be?
00:19:56 It’s like.
00:19:56 That’s a very Rick Rubin kind of thing, right?
00:19:59 That the details really matter.
00:20:01 The details really matter,
00:20:03 right down to your relationship to the microphone, right?
00:20:07 Distance and whether or not it brings out the timbre
00:20:09 in your voice.
00:20:10 But of course that’s what he does.
00:20:11 He produces music.
00:20:12 But he also said like, you know, he is the professional.
00:20:15 He said, how close do you like it to be?
00:20:20 And he said it with a gentleness
00:20:22 where I had like an existential crisis.
00:20:24 Where I don’t, I don’t know.
00:20:27 He gave me so much like, wow.
00:20:30 Like he made me feel like an artist.
00:20:31 Like that the microphone distance
00:20:35 is a decision you’re supposed to make.
00:20:37 Well, I have to say, and this has actually come up
00:20:39 in some of our conversations about you.
00:20:41 I mean, you are, you are an artist.
00:20:42 And actually Joe Rogan,
00:20:44 once I heard him talking about podcasting
00:20:46 and the fact that he’s always trying to get better at it,
00:20:48 you know, and he described podcasting at one moment
00:20:50 as an art, right?
00:20:52 And it is, it’s a certain medium of communication
00:20:55 and there’s a cadence and a rhythm that when it’s working,
00:20:59 it really can facilitate the transfer of information.
00:21:01 When it’s not, it doesn’t.
00:21:03 I mean, obviously Joe just being himself
00:21:05 has tapped into that cadence that allows
00:21:08 and it’s made so many people excited to hear him talk.
00:21:11 Well, in his case and in general,
00:21:13 I think part of the art is refusing the world
00:21:17 as you get a bigger audience, change who you are.
00:21:21 There’s one quote that I’ve seen out there where he says,
00:21:23 you know, I’m like the, talking about himself, he says,
00:21:25 you know, I’m like the fish that got through the net.
00:21:27 There’s no stage version of me, right?
00:21:29 How he is in person is how he is, you know,
00:21:33 out in the world.
00:21:34 And of course there’s nuance to his life, right?
00:21:36 And his different relationships, of course, but it’s true.
00:21:40 I mean, we’ve had the, you know,
00:21:41 the great fortune of spending time with him
00:21:43 out away from the microphones, so to speak.
00:21:46 Joe is Joe.
00:21:48 So can you speak to your, that process you mentioned,
00:21:51 the walking and the talking to yourself?
00:21:52 Cause that’s fascinating.
00:21:53 Yeah, I try and do a couple of things.
00:21:57 First of all, when I was a kid,
00:21:59 I had a little bit of a grunting tick.
00:22:01 When I was five or six,
00:22:03 I would feel this buildup of tension in my throat
00:22:06 and I would do this grunting tick.
00:22:07 If I get very tired, I start to do it still.
00:22:10 We actually know that this is related
00:22:11 to these basal ganglia circuits for go, no go.
00:22:14 You’ve got an accelerator and a brake basically
00:22:16 in your neural circuitry and kids with Tourette’s and OCD,
00:22:21 the brake doesn’t work quite as well.
00:22:23 And so one thing that happens is if I wake up
00:22:25 in the morning and especially if I’m well rested,
00:22:27 well, if I’m not well rested, I do a hypnosis
00:22:30 or yoga nidra in order to recover my sleep.
00:22:32 That works really well.
00:22:33 But then once I’m into the process of preparing the podcast,
00:22:36 I’ve already gone through my notes.
00:22:37 I know what I want to say more or less
00:22:39 in a kind of general contour.
00:22:40 And then I take a walk and I try to, so no phone with me.
00:22:45 And I try to assess whether or not my energy is too high
00:22:49 or too low for podcasting.
00:22:52 Because when you podcast, as you know,
00:22:54 you have to punch out a lot of material,
00:22:55 but then there’s times when you really need to slow down
00:22:57 and emphasize and articulate.
00:22:59 And so what I do, I’ve never revealed this.
00:23:04 What I do actually is I will recite the lyrics of songs
00:23:08 for about 10 minutes, songs I love while I walk out loud.
00:23:12 It calms you and focuses you, what does it do for you?
00:23:14 I think it gets my vocal cords warmed up and it also.
00:23:19 Do you sing or speak them?
00:23:21 I often sing them and fortunately nobody hears.
00:23:25 And as I do this, I start to evaluate
00:23:28 whether or not I’m straining to get the words out
00:23:30 or whether or not I’m straining to make them slow enough
00:23:34 so that I can articulate them.
00:23:37 So there are days when I have so much energy
00:23:39 that I’m trying to speak faster than I should
00:23:44 in order to articulate properly.
00:23:46 There are other days when I’m tired
00:23:47 and I can’t sort of keep up with my thoughts.
00:23:49 And so what I try and do is assess that
00:23:51 and then adjust the transmission, the RPM, so to speak.
00:23:55 For instance, I can speak very quickly
00:23:56 and then I can slow down.
00:23:57 So I can change the cadence of my voice.
00:23:59 And when you teach in the classroom,
00:24:01 you learn as you know,
00:24:02 cause you’re an excellent teacher,
00:24:03 I’ve watched your lectures in the classroom.
00:24:05 As you teach in the classroom, when you want to slow down,
00:24:09 every teacher knows you turn to the whiteboard or chalkboard
00:24:11 and you start writing, right?
00:24:13 It gives you a break.
00:24:14 And then you turn around and you fire back
00:24:16 the kind of machine gun fire of information.
00:24:19 And then you slow down or you underline something.
00:24:20 When you podcast, you don’t have that opportunity, right?
00:24:24 There are no visuals in my podcast.
00:24:26 So what I try and do is always get my voice warmed up
00:24:31 and make sure that I’m thinking and speaking
00:24:33 at approximately the same rate.
00:24:36 And then I also do this thing of as I put my vision
00:24:38 into panoramic vision when I walk, which is very calming.
00:24:42 And then I actually start to remind myself
00:24:46 of the purpose of podcasting.
00:24:47 This sounds very mission statementy,
00:24:49 but you asked what I do.
00:24:51 I remind myself first and foremost
00:24:54 that what I want to communicate,
00:24:56 what I want to come through is the beauty
00:24:57 and utility of biology.
00:25:00 And I only feel comfortable saying the word beauty
00:25:02 publicly now about science things thanks to you,
00:25:06 because I think.
00:25:07 Love and beauty.
00:25:09 Yeah, love and beauty.
00:25:10 Dr. Andrew Huberman.
00:25:11 Love and beauty, but also darkness and hatred.
00:25:14 And if you’re talking about the Lex Friedman podcast,
00:25:17 you have to adjust,
00:25:18 you have to address the shadow also, the shadow side.
00:25:21 But I think about the,
00:25:22 I want to communicate the beauty and utility of biology.
00:25:26 And then I check my emotional state.
00:25:29 I want to make sure that I’m not angry about anything.
00:25:33 And certainly if I am that I’m going to set it aside
00:25:35 for the podcast,
00:25:36 because that’s not a place for my,
00:25:38 whatever I might be dealing with.
00:25:40 I also really start to feel into the parts of the research
00:25:43 and the papers I found that I really love,
00:25:45 because that’s the part of me that I like the most frankly.
00:25:52 And on the podcast, if there’s a paper,
00:25:54 like for instance, we have a paper, excuse me,
00:25:56 a podcast coming out soon about heat as a tool,
00:26:01 sauna, but some other things.
00:26:02 And in researching this,
00:26:03 I learned so much about these heat shock proteins
00:26:07 and the use of sauna in Finland
00:26:09 for increasing growth hormone,
00:26:11 but also for the treatment of mental illness.
00:26:12 And I realized I fell in love with this literature.
00:26:15 It’s just a beautiful literature.
00:26:17 These people are true pioneers for doing this work.
00:26:19 Now everyone’s in the sauna, but this was 20 years ago.
00:26:21 The way the experiments were done were amazing
00:26:23 with all these Finnish people with thermocouples up there,
00:26:26 rectum to measure temperature, swimming in pools.
00:26:29 It’s hilarious and great.
00:26:30 And so I start to think about, and I think,
00:26:33 I just start to really access my love of the work.
00:26:36 And then when we finally sit down,
00:26:39 meaning my producer Rob and I and record,
00:26:42 I just sort of want to just bask in sharing it.
00:26:46 Just like the little version of me when I was six or seven,
00:26:48 I used to spend all weekend reading the encyclopedia,
00:26:51 Guinness Book of World Records,
00:26:53 making my mother drive me places to introduce me to,
00:26:55 I had this obsession with trapping animals
00:26:57 when I was a kid, meet these people.
00:26:58 And then on Monday, I would insist on giving a lecture
00:27:02 in class, which as a little kid.
00:27:03 So that’s basically what it is.
00:27:04 I just try and access that childlike energy.
00:27:07 And so I want to be clear.
00:27:09 The goal is always to make the information interesting,
00:27:13 clear and actionable.
00:27:15 And if it’s also surprising, then that’s a bonus.
00:27:18 But that’s basically the process.
00:27:19 But yeah, I’m singing and talking and getting into state.
00:27:24 And I used to feel very sheepish about sharing any of this.
00:27:27 This is the first time I’ve ever shared it out loud,
00:27:29 but Rick was the one who encouraged me
00:27:32 to find a process that works
00:27:34 and continue to develop that process
00:27:36 and not let anything get near that process.
00:27:39 People in my personal life know this.
00:27:41 And when it’s time, it’s like,
00:27:43 I don’t care what else is going on,
00:27:44 I’m moving into that brain state.
00:27:47 And there’s probably a process like that
00:27:48 for anything that you do in life that you take seriously.
00:27:51 So the people that have perfected this is athletes.
00:27:55 Like if Olympic level athletes,
00:27:56 they have to have a process like this.
00:27:58 You know what, I think Tiger Woods actually
00:27:59 was taught self hypnosis quite young
00:28:03 and use self hypnosis often during his tournaments,
00:28:07 sometimes to great success and other times less so.
00:28:11 Is there other places in life that you use
00:28:16 kind of a protocol, like a mental protocol to get ready?
00:28:20 Many of the best areas of life
00:28:22 are their own form of hypnosis, right?
00:28:25 True.
00:28:26 You know that you’re in hypnosis,
00:28:27 if for instance, you’re in a movie and something happens
00:28:29 and you feel the emotional lift
00:28:30 without being self conscious about it.
00:28:32 Yes, I think that one thing that we’ve tried to do
00:28:38 in our house is around meal times to try and set a state
00:28:42 that food isn’t just something
00:28:44 that we just throw down our throats.
00:28:46 And I’m fortunate that my partner cooks really well.
00:28:49 And so I try and give her the space to do that.
00:28:52 And that’s the whole thing of her getting into state.
00:28:55 And then.
00:28:56 For the cooking.
00:28:56 For the cooking.
00:28:57 The preparation of all the.
00:28:58 I can just see it.
00:28:59 I just see the way she approaches the whole thing
00:29:01 and the pleasure in serving it.
00:29:03 And I’m an eater, not a cooker.
00:29:05 But.
00:29:06 Both are important roles.
00:29:08 You could be a very good eater.
00:29:09 Like there’s something about,
00:29:11 is there anything better in this world than that feeling?
00:29:14 Especially if it’s a family, getting around a table.
00:29:18 Just the warmth of that.
00:29:20 I don’t know.
00:29:21 It’s like the cold outside of the cruel world
00:29:27 cannot touch you in this place that you’ve returned to.
00:29:29 And if.
00:29:31 I mean.
00:29:32 Did you grow up eating meals as a family?
00:29:34 Yeah, yeah.
00:29:35 I mean.
00:29:36 No television?
00:29:37 No.
00:29:38 I didn’t really have television period outside of meals.
00:29:44 So most of my time was spent, you know,
00:29:48 like a stray cat outdoors, just running around,
00:29:53 playing soccer.
00:29:53 I imagine you in this like dirt or concrete lot
00:29:56 between two very high rise buildings playing soccer
00:30:00 in like athletic gear that you only see in Eastern Europe.
00:30:04 You know how like you come to the States
00:30:05 and people wear their athletic gear.
00:30:07 You go to Europe and you see, maybe it’s the soccer culture,
00:30:10 but you see athletic gear
00:30:12 that you just don’t see anywhere else.
00:30:14 That’s interesting.
00:30:15 I mean, I grew up pretty poor.
00:30:17 So first of all, I was always wearing my brother’s,
00:30:20 who’s an older brother, brother’s clothes.
00:30:23 And they were like old, like my favorite things
00:30:29 were American things that I didn’t understand.
00:30:31 It would be like a Pepsi shirt or something.
00:30:34 And it was just, that was the gear.
00:30:36 And it was like too large for me,
00:30:38 but I thought I was the coolest person ever
00:30:40 just wearing this fancy like Kanye like type of fashion.
00:30:44 Yeah, there’s something about,
00:30:45 I feel like in Eastern Europe,
00:30:47 they wear athletic gear where like the guys like zip up.
00:30:50 Yeah, no, that’s like fancy stuff.
00:30:52 That’s if you like, those are the cool kids.
00:30:54 I see, I see.
00:30:55 Like the cool soccer players, football players
00:30:58 that like they were in a league of some kind.
00:31:02 So they would get uniforms or like, or they somehow,
00:31:06 I always thought anyone who had anything nice
00:31:10 had to do something really bad to get it.
00:31:13 That was my way, view of the world.
00:31:15 Because like, I guess I didn’t understand
00:31:20 how it’s possible to be rich.
00:31:22 Cause most of us were surrounded by people who are poor
00:31:25 and that life is beautiful and simple.
00:31:26 And it’s like, why do you escape that life?
00:31:28 But you still admire the cool,
00:31:30 like when we got McDonald’s, it was like,
00:31:35 what kind of world does this place come from?
00:31:39 Like who invented this?
00:31:42 This is a fascinating view from a child’s perspective
00:31:45 of like, of capitalism essentially.
00:31:47 Yeah, but the fact that you ate dinner together
00:31:49 is really interesting.
00:31:51 My parents divorced when I was an adolescent.
00:31:53 So then there was a total fracture of any family structure.
00:31:56 But prior to that, we ate dinner together every night.
00:31:58 I was expected to know how to use my knife and fork.
00:32:00 And it was like a very structured thing.
00:32:05 I don’t know if kids do that now.
00:32:09 If I ever have kids, they’re gonna do that.
00:32:11 And certainly, actually on the way over here,
00:32:13 I was thinking, I was like, I really want a lot of kids.
00:32:16 I want like a whole litter.
00:32:18 And I was thinking, if Lex has kids and I have kids,
00:32:21 then we can like pit them against each other with jujitsu.
00:32:25 This is my chance at redemption.
00:32:28 It’s the law game.
00:32:30 They’ll all wanna be engineers or physicists.
00:32:33 They won’t wanna be biologists.
00:32:35 But in all seriousness, I look forward to the day
00:32:38 that our kids play together.
00:32:41 Yeah, I think there’s something,
00:32:43 so the family dinner, the ritual of the family dinner,
00:32:47 but also the special occasion dinners,
00:32:49 like where there’s a little bit more preparation,
00:32:51 a little bit more cooking,
00:32:53 whether it’s on the weekend or for some holiday.
00:32:57 In Russia, it was a thing that actually
00:32:59 I find completely missing for the most part.
00:33:02 In America is there was neighbors.
00:33:04 There was a, you broke the walls
00:33:08 between families much more commonly.
00:33:11 Like there would be kinda regular characters,
00:33:13 like a sitcom almost.
00:33:15 If you watch the sitcom, it’s never just the family.
00:33:17 There’s always like other characters that.
00:33:19 Just bursting in the door.
00:33:20 Bursting in the door.
00:33:20 I’m gonna start doing that here,
00:33:22 just to make you feel at home.
00:33:22 Just start showing up at your studio.
00:33:24 I know where you live.
00:33:25 I think people wanna respect,
00:33:27 like Michael Malice lives next door to me.
00:33:30 And I think people wanna respect each other’s privacy
00:33:33 or something like that.
00:33:34 And I think we all get super busy.
00:33:37 And it’s kind of work
00:33:42 to do this dinner together.
00:33:46 Or if you see it as a thing that needs to be scheduled,
00:33:49 it’s work.
00:33:50 We get busy.
00:33:51 There’s a lot of stuff going on.
00:33:52 But if it’s part of a ritual, a part of the culture,
00:33:55 all of those walls get broken down.
00:33:58 And then you realize like that’s,
00:34:00 like later looking back, those are the things you miss.
00:34:03 Like that’s what life is about.
00:34:04 Like all the stupid stuff you’re doing
00:34:06 in terms of career or whatever,
00:34:08 all the busy things, those don’t matter.
00:34:10 What matters is the people.
00:34:12 In academia, this changed in the last few years, of course.
00:34:17 But one of the great joys was professors will stop by
00:34:20 your office or your lab.
00:34:21 Nobody set up an appointment.
00:34:23 There was a guy when I was a professor in San Diego,
00:34:25 a guy named Harvey Cartney,
00:34:26 he’s a member of the National Academies,
00:34:28 truly the world’s expert in the evolution of vision
00:34:31 and evolution of brains generally.
00:34:33 And he would show up in my lab
00:34:35 and he would just start talking to the students in postdocs.
00:34:37 And I mean, a pure encyclopedia.
00:34:42 And then at some point you’d say,
00:34:43 hey, Harvey, I gotta go.
00:34:45 And you’d have, you’d kick him out, right?
00:34:46 Or this guy, he’s a physicist, David Klinefield,
00:34:49 who’s, same way.
00:34:50 Actually, David Klinefield is an interesting one.
00:34:53 A student of his went on to create
00:34:55 the Beavis and Butthead cartoon.
00:34:57 And one of them is David, he’s a physics professor.
00:34:59 Now people can look him up.
00:35:01 And David’s one of those guys who just walk into your office
00:35:03 and you just sit down and you just start talking to you.
00:35:05 And so there’s a kind of a family field.
00:35:07 It’s like Cheers or Seinfeld or one of those shows
00:35:09 where somebody just walks in.
00:35:10 And yeah, I think you and I both share a love
00:35:13 of the community around things.
00:35:14 And podcasting is a little bit more isolated.
00:35:17 I should say for the guest episodes,
00:35:19 the preparation is completely different
00:35:21 because it’s more conversational.
00:35:22 And so there, I don’t do any of this business
00:35:24 of putting myself into state.
00:35:26 I just try and make sure that the guest is taken care of.
00:35:30 And I do list out the questions I’m gonna ask before,
00:35:32 but those actually really like the interview episodes
00:35:35 far more than I like doing the solo ones.
00:35:37 Just psychologically I mean.
00:35:39 I just like learning from someone directly
00:35:41 because you asking an expert about something,
00:35:44 like sitting here with you when we recorded the podcast
00:35:46 where you were a guest on the Huberman Lab podcast.
00:35:48 And for the first time, and finally,
00:35:51 someone was explaining to me the difference
00:35:53 between machine learning, artificial intelligence
00:35:55 and all these other things.
00:35:56 You know, and I’ve finally forgiven you
00:35:58 for making me cry about Costello on camera,
00:36:02 because it helped me move through it.
00:36:03 But in all seriousness, the interview ones
00:36:06 are a sheer pleasure.
00:36:08 The solo ones I really enjoy, but they’re work.
00:36:12 Sometimes I think like I’m gonna sweat
00:36:14 a little blood prepping for them.
00:36:16 Well, it’s interesting because I do think prepping
00:36:18 for interviews, having a similar process
00:36:21 might be also very valuable.
00:36:23 Like I have to think about that
00:36:26 because I think when you do a conversation
00:36:31 for several hours, especially when it’s a high stakes one.
00:36:35 So it’s not like you and I know,
00:36:36 it’s more like it’s just chatting and so on.
00:36:38 The world order isn’t gonna shift according to it.
00:36:40 Although you never know, knowing you will probably
00:36:43 be into some pretty controversial topics in a few minutes.
00:36:46 You like to ride the edge more than I do.
00:36:48 There are a number of topics that I just completely avoid.
00:36:50 And my response to those is always that
00:36:52 I have a lot of opinions about that,
00:36:54 but not a lot to say, you know.
00:36:55 But whereas you’ve become far braver
00:37:00 in terms of the topics you’ll encounter
00:37:02 and some of your guests have been a bit controversial.
00:37:06 Some of them are people that a lot of people don’t like.
00:37:11 And you’ve been willing to just sit down
00:37:13 and maybe it’s the jujitsu thing.
00:37:16 I don’t know, it is tricky.
00:37:18 One of my goals for this year is to talk to people
00:37:20 that a lot of people really don’t like.
00:37:24 Are you gonna share with us?
00:37:26 And here I am.
00:37:27 People that are in prison, major political leaders
00:37:34 have been thinking a lot about how to talk
00:37:37 to really difficult, controversial figures,
00:37:41 but find together something with them
00:37:45 that’s deeply honest about their nature,
00:37:47 about the ideas they have about the world.
00:37:54 Reveal something real.
00:37:56 And some people, you have to be very careful,
00:37:59 some people are very good at hiding the real inside them,
00:38:03 even from themselves.
00:38:05 That’s something I think about a lot.
00:38:06 I think about dictators of the past
00:38:08 and I put myself in the mindset,
00:38:09 well, how do you reveal something real
00:38:12 about this person to themselves?
00:38:14 I think that to me, and you kind of spoke to that,
00:38:17 but a great conversation is one where
00:38:22 both of you discover something new.
00:38:28 So I love that too, that’s my favorite thing
00:38:31 what you mentioned, which is allowing your curiosity
00:38:33 and ask all kinds of questions and get excited
00:38:35 and to learn from an expert.
00:38:37 But also to push them to discover something
00:38:40 about themselves, about their ideas together.
00:38:44 And then that discovery, and sometimes it’s like,
00:38:48 we don’t see it in the moment, but the audience hears it.
00:38:55 It’s weird to say, I would compare it to
00:38:58 when you’re a musician and you’re playing
00:38:59 with other musicians, you lose yourself in the moment.
00:39:02 Yeah, it’s all, it’s like, it’s working right.
00:39:04 It’s working, but you don’t really see the big picture
00:39:09 impact of what it’s working right actually feels like.
00:39:13 And that’s where the audience could see that.
00:39:17 If you talk to somebody evil,
00:39:22 for me as an interviewer, I have to empathize
00:39:26 with that person.
00:39:27 If I want to understand, I have to put myself
00:39:29 in that mind space, and to put yourself in that mindset,
00:39:32 you really have to understand the evil inside of you.
00:39:38 Like you can’t just think if somebody’s in power
00:39:41 and has used that power to abuse others,
00:39:45 you can’t just be a, I personally,
00:39:48 a person who seeks to understand.
00:39:49 You can’t just be a journalist asking generic questions.
00:39:52 You have to put yourself in a place
00:39:55 where you’re somebody who’s given a lot of power
00:39:58 and slowly you start to abuse that power.
00:40:01 And what does that person become?
00:40:03 Who are you?
00:40:04 I have to plug myself into those moments in my life
00:40:07 in the past where I’ve been angry at something
00:40:11 and where I’ve been cruel because I was angry.
00:40:14 In little ways, but then you magnify them at scale
00:40:17 and I have to go there and that’s very human.
00:40:21 And then I have to look at another person
00:40:23 from across the table for me and understand,
00:40:25 well, you’re there too.
00:40:26 And then you had more opportunity to do truly cruel things.
00:40:31 And then where, like I have to plug myself
00:40:36 into places where I’ve been, I can imagine I can go,
00:40:39 where I was cruel to others and was unaware of it.
00:40:43 So I was in a mind space where I was thinking
00:40:45 that I’m doing good and I was doing not good.
00:40:48 Again, I’ve never gotten the opportunity
00:40:50 to do any of those things at large scale,
00:40:52 but all of us have done it at a small scale.
00:40:54 And I plug myself into that and then we’re here,
00:40:58 we’re to, if it’s somebody who’s in prison,
00:41:01 if it’s somebody who’s a dictator,
00:41:03 we’re in that space where evil is,
00:41:07 all of us have the capacity to do that evil
00:41:09 and I have to imagine myself being able to do that evil.
00:41:13 And then we’re here together in that dark, dark place.
00:41:17 And then if it’s just right,
00:41:20 something real can actually come,
00:41:21 something from that person’s childhood,
00:41:23 maybe awakening to a realization
00:41:27 that I thought it was a good person and I’m not.
00:41:30 And that only happens when you truly empathize.
00:41:34 Those moments of discovery are beautiful,
00:41:36 but they also happen in science.
00:41:38 When you just have a conversation and you realize,
00:41:42 I feel like talking to Stephen Wolfram,
00:41:44 I feel like we constantly realize
00:41:46 beautiful things together.
00:41:48 On this element of evil and sociopathy,
00:41:52 that Jung had this notion that we have all things inside us
00:41:57 and that we all have the capacity to be good or evil,
00:42:00 et cetera, but I have the good fortune
00:42:05 of working with somebody who has deep understanding
00:42:08 of psychiatry, but also psychoanalysis
00:42:10 and Jungian theory.
00:42:11 And he said to me recently, he said,
00:42:15 whether or not all people have all things inside them
00:42:17 is still debated in the psychology community
00:42:20 and in the neuroscience community.
00:42:22 And as a matter of philosophy,
00:42:24 but there are certain people, not many,
00:42:28 but there are certain people
00:42:29 for whom they’ve actually lived out many versions
00:42:33 of their possible selves in the first person.
00:42:37 And so those are unique individuals.
00:42:38 Then even if they tapped into these things,
00:42:41 as you mentioned, at a more minor level,
00:42:44 as opposed to impacting people negatively at scale.
00:42:49 So being able to access those different parts of oneself
00:42:51 is key and you’ve been willing to step into that.
00:42:54 My podcast is not one in which we get down to those matters.
00:42:57 Yet, yet.
00:42:59 You never know, we might do an episode
00:43:00 on narcissism and sociopathy.
00:43:02 The other thing that I took away from a conversation
00:43:04 with a friend, he was a lot of years in special operations
00:43:08 in the intelligence community.
00:43:09 He said, if you look at somebody’s past,
00:43:13 at some point you will come to understand
00:43:16 some pretty good reasons as to why they became who they are,
00:43:19 but you have to draw the, his words,
00:43:21 the red line someplace.
00:43:23 And what he was referring to was the fact
00:43:25 that certain people, at least in the eyes
00:43:26 of certain communities deserve to be eliminated
00:43:30 as a consequence of their actions, right?
00:43:33 Regardless of what drove them to those actions.
00:43:35 So it gets right down to the line
00:43:36 between nature, nurture, neuroscience,
00:43:40 and the law and justice.
00:43:43 Complicated, complicated themes.
00:43:45 I can think of a number of people
00:43:47 that I would love to hear you interview.
00:43:49 And here I’m not revealing the reasons why,
00:43:51 but except for the fact that I think
00:43:53 you would be uniquely suited to bring out
00:43:56 the important components of the conversation
00:43:58 that other people have not been able to do,
00:44:02 which for instance, Liz Holmes,
00:44:04 this is one of the most mysterious
00:44:08 and yet disliked people on the planet.
00:44:13 She’s sort of synonymous with deception.
00:44:17 I don’t know if there’ve been any real interviews
00:44:20 of her since the whole thing.
00:44:22 I haven’t followed that case.
00:44:23 I listened to the book and I followed it a little bit
00:44:27 because it was happening in my hometown, right?
00:44:29 Theranos was right up the road.
00:44:31 The building’s still there.
00:44:32 It’s interesting.
00:44:33 It’s some of the most premier real estate
00:44:34 in Silicon Valley, but nobody wants it.
00:44:36 It’s sort of like, it’s very hard to sell a home
00:44:38 where somebody committed suicide or committed a murder,
00:44:41 even if it’s a beautiful home.
00:44:42 It sort of feel like the Theranos building is that building.
00:44:46 So that would be a really interesting interview.
00:44:48 I would love to hear that interview.
00:44:50 One of the most interesting dark human beings in science.
00:44:55 Yeah, and then there’ll even be people that say,
00:44:58 was it even science, right?
00:44:59 It might’ve all been deception.
00:45:01 It might’ve been one part deception,
00:45:02 one part goal setting mixed in with,
00:45:05 clearly that there were so many factors
00:45:08 impacting what happened.
00:45:10 I think the big difference between Theranos and that story
00:45:15 and some of the other stories about Silicon Valley
00:45:17 where people promised a lot more than they could deliver
00:45:19 is they were promising things that were directly related
00:45:22 to health and healthcare.
00:45:23 People were taking blood tests with the understanding
00:45:26 that the data they were getting was important,
00:45:29 information about sexually transmitted diseases
00:45:31 and other diseases and making real world decisions
00:45:33 on the basis of that.
00:45:34 Whereas if you remember when the iPhone first came out
00:45:37 and Steve Jobs was still alive
00:45:38 and the phones were dropping calls
00:45:40 if you held it in a particular way.
00:45:41 And his response was a little flip.
00:45:43 He said, hey folks, it’s a phone
00:45:45 as if like don’t get so worked up.
00:45:47 But people held them understandably to a very high standard.
00:45:51 She sort of, it seemed, and I don’t know,
00:45:54 cause I certainly wasn’t there,
00:45:55 seemed like she sort of adopted this idea
00:45:57 that you could get it wrong a bunch of times
00:45:59 before you get it right.
00:46:00 Except if the allegations are true.
00:46:02 And I think she was found guilty, I believe,
00:46:05 on a number of counts.
00:46:07 That a number of the things that they were doing
00:46:09 were impacting real world decision making.
00:46:11 So Steve’s point about the phone, it’s just a phone.
00:46:14 Well, it depends on the call.
00:46:15 If you’re calling 911, then it’s not just a phone, right?
00:46:19 But in the case of blood tests and disease,
00:46:22 that’s serious.
00:46:23 I think that the Theranos case was super interesting to me
00:46:24 because of the number of people from major universities
00:46:27 and from government that both trusted her
00:46:31 and the number of people who did not trust her
00:46:34 and yet either didn’t speak up or no one listened to them.
00:46:37 It was only in the forensic version of it
00:46:39 that everyone said, oh yeah, I knew that she was lying,
00:46:42 et cetera, et cetera.
00:46:43 They were lying to multiple people involved
00:46:45 in those lies apparently.
00:46:46 But I have a deep interest in the neuroscience
00:46:49 of narcissism, sociopathy,
00:46:51 and some of the darker aspects of the mind.
00:46:54 So yeah, maybe someday.
00:46:55 Maybe we’ll do a podcast together.
00:46:57 I mean, like in the kind of early 90s version of talk shows
00:47:00 where we darken the lights and we do it together,
00:47:02 you can use your voice
00:47:03 because your voice is much more sinister sounding than mine.
00:47:06 Good cop, bad cop.
00:47:08 Well, it’d be interesting from a scientific perspective
00:47:11 of somebody who is a sociopath or a psychopath,
00:47:16 how to reveal something real about them.
00:47:20 I think that requires not just,
00:47:24 well, I don’t know what that requires.
00:47:26 That requires the same skill
00:47:27 that it takes to be a good therapist.
00:47:31 Right, and some therapists won’t work with sociopaths
00:47:35 because they don’t feel any progress can be made.
00:47:38 Some therapists will work with sociopaths
00:47:40 because for the wealthy ones,
00:47:41 they often, they want their money.
00:47:44 I think most therapists are good and benevolent,
00:47:47 but there’s some that will do it
00:47:48 just the same way lawyers will work with criminals
00:47:50 knowing they’re criminals, right?
00:47:53 Oftentimes because they’re criminals.
00:47:55 There are certain domains of psychiatry
00:47:57 that are more tractable than others, right?
00:47:59 Borderlines are interesting.
00:48:00 I should just mention
00:48:01 because they have this phenomenon of splitting.
00:48:03 So in the world of psychology,
00:48:05 the idea is that being neurotic is actually the goal.
00:48:09 The idea that you could be, you know,
00:48:12 feel something and then work a lot to overcome it
00:48:15 or have some sort of defense mechanism in place,
00:48:18 but that’s not destructive.
00:48:20 That’s actually a pretty healthy state to be in.
00:48:22 It’s provided it’s not destructive.
00:48:25 Psychotic is truly delusional thinking about reality.
00:48:29 And the idea is that borderlines split,
00:48:33 intermittently split between psychotic and neurotic.
00:48:37 That’s why it was called,
00:48:38 there’s beautiful work by Melanie Klein that describes this,
00:48:41 which I’m just now kind of delving into.
00:48:42 But, you know, so the borderline is the person who is like,
00:48:46 I love you, I love you, I love you,
00:48:47 and then truly feels as if they hate you
00:48:49 and you become the bad object.
00:48:51 So borderlines are challenging for psychologists
00:48:54 because of the splitting, right?
00:48:57 Schizophrenics are challenging
00:48:58 because of the detachment from reality.
00:49:02 And narcissists are challenging
00:49:05 because they’re often so charming
00:49:07 that even the therapists are charmed.
00:49:10 I believe you mentioned Karl Deisseroth.
00:49:12 We’ll talk about him.
00:49:13 He was definitely not a narcissist.
00:49:14 He’s one of the more humble people, but he is brilliant.
00:49:16 Thanks again to you.
00:49:17 You’ve connected us.
00:49:19 I had the pleasure of having a conversation with him.
00:49:22 You had a conversation with him.
00:49:23 I really enjoyed it on the podcast.
00:49:25 You guys come from the same science, from the same place,
00:49:29 maybe different journeys, fascinating.
00:49:31 And levels.
00:49:32 We were postdocs together.
00:49:33 Karl is truly the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky,
00:49:37 five children, amazing marriage to it.
00:49:40 Also an amazing scientist.
00:49:41 His wife, Michelle Monge,
00:49:42 is in our neurology department at Stanford.
00:49:44 An incredible thinker, writer, very kind person, humble.
00:49:51 Speaking of getting into state,
00:49:52 sorry, Karl, I’m gonna out you on this,
00:49:54 but Karl, despite being at the highest levels
00:49:58 of science and engineering and a practicing psychiatrist,
00:50:02 his office is literally a coat closet
00:50:06 with a small table lamp.
00:50:07 When you meet with Karl, if you manage to meet with him,
00:50:10 because he’s very hard to get to,
00:50:12 you walk in, you sit down
00:50:13 as if you’re going through some interrogation
00:50:15 and some spy novel.
00:50:18 And he’ll ask you, what are you most excited about lately?
00:50:22 And I’ve got 11 minutes or something.
00:50:23 And that’s a meeting with Karl, because he’s that busy.
00:50:27 But he doesn’t have the office with the pictures of the kids
00:50:29 and the thing and all that.
00:50:30 All that is kept elsewhere.
00:50:32 So in order to get, I asked him
00:50:34 why he work in this office, right?
00:50:36 You work on light and channels of light,
00:50:38 things related to light of all things.
00:50:39 Here you are in this dark room.
00:50:40 And he said, well, this is what gets me
00:50:41 into the state of mind to be able to do what I want to do.
00:50:44 Very Rick Rubin ish, not at all the same person,
00:50:48 but very similar in that he’s figured out
00:50:50 the physical space he needs in order to get
00:50:52 into the optimal state to do the work he needs to do
00:50:54 in this lifetime.
00:50:55 And it’s very unusual, right?
00:50:57 If I don’t have a window, I kind of freak out.
00:50:59 I can do it here for a while.
00:51:00 We’re in this black cube here, floating in space, of course.
00:51:05 But I find that amazing that these people
00:51:08 that are operating in this super high level
00:51:10 are willing to actually deprive themselves
00:51:12 of a lot of conditions.
00:51:14 They’re not sitting there with the secretary coming in
00:51:16 offering them espresso every five minutes and things that,
00:51:19 no, no, no, that’s New York Neuroscience.
00:51:21 The New York Neuroscience Mafia is kind of famous
00:51:23 for having all the tickets to the opera and this and that.
00:51:28 And they enjoy lifestyle a lot.
00:51:30 The New York Neuroscience Mafia.
00:51:31 Oh, there is one, there definitely is one.
00:51:32 They know who they are.
00:51:34 They know who they are.
00:51:35 People don’t know, Andrew Huberman is from the West Coast
00:51:38 and now he’s just starting wars with the Neuroscience Mafia.
00:51:41 Well, they do amazing science.
00:51:42 They think, they love their lifestyle and that’s wonderful,
00:51:45 but the culture is very different.
00:51:48 Carl and I think Silicon Valley in general
00:51:50 kind of prides itself on this kind of monk like assesism,
00:51:55 right?
00:51:56 But at the individual scale,
00:51:57 be deliberate about controlling the environment.
00:51:59 I think about that with the conversations too.
00:52:01 I haven’t been deliberate about that either
00:52:04 in terms of controlling the space you’re in.
00:52:07 Visually, yes, black curtains, all those kinds of things.
00:52:10 There is nothing like the Lex Friedman podcast studio.
00:52:14 First of all, when you do them remotely,
00:52:17 I always feel like I’m in a witness relocation program.
00:52:20 You only get the coordinates at the last moment
00:52:23 and you always get the sense that there are people
00:52:26 behind the walls that are recording things.
00:52:30 Well, there’s something about creating a feeling.
00:52:32 I have a sense that there’s a robot over there.
00:52:34 There’s several throughout this place.
00:52:36 And I think part of that,
00:52:42 part of creating a feeling would be having the robots
00:52:46 constantly moving around and having a mind of their own
00:52:49 because that would most closely put guests
00:52:54 and other humans that I interact with into a place
00:52:58 that’s closest to my mind
00:53:01 because it’s such an engineering mind
00:53:03 and one where when things come to life,
00:53:06 it’s a beautiful place to be.
00:53:08 And whatever that is, that could be like art,
00:53:10 but to me, robots are art.
00:53:12 And so I’m thinking about that both for me and for guests.
00:53:17 And I’m also thinking about the difficult guests
00:53:19 just to return to, you said, Elizabeth Holmes.
00:53:22 One person, maybe a couple of things I want to say.
00:53:26 One person I think I would like to talk to is
00:53:32 Ghislaine Maxwell.
00:53:34 I always get afraid right before you reveal
00:53:36 these kinds of things.
00:53:37 And now I know why I get afraid.
00:53:39 Yeah, I mean, again, assuming that she did the things
00:53:42 that people claim she did, they’re despicable, right?
00:53:45 I mean, these were underage children, right?
00:53:48 There’s just no version of the story
00:53:50 where she did the things she was accused of doing
00:53:54 and is still a quote unquote good person.
00:53:56 There’s just, in my mind, right?
00:53:59 And yet I think there is tremendous interest
00:54:01 in understanding like what led her to do all that.
00:54:05 So at least for some people.
00:54:07 Let me say a couple of things.
00:54:08 So one is at a high level, let me say that she believes
00:54:14 or her current story is that she’s the victim.
00:54:18 Of who?
00:54:20 Jeffrey Epstein.
00:54:21 Oh my.
00:54:23 I think I’ll just leave that there as is.
00:54:26 So these are ideas that you’re facing.
00:54:31 The nature of truth and the nature of the human mind
00:54:34 is what it is and this is, imagine folks,
00:54:38 if you went into a room with a person that says that,
00:54:43 what do you do next?
00:54:45 Let me also say that I never or rarely,
00:54:51 let me say not say never, I rarely mention names
00:54:54 that I’m interested in talking to
00:54:57 without having made significant progress
00:55:00 in already securing that interview.
00:55:03 So people sometimes ask me about Vladimir Zelensky
00:55:07 and Vladimir Putin.
00:55:09 I do not bring them up lightly in terms of their being
00:55:15 a path to an actual conversation.
00:55:17 That said, something I regret but I’m not sure
00:55:20 I know what to do with it.
00:55:23 But in the case of all the people I just mentioned,
00:55:27 I haven’t been preparing for those conversations.
00:55:30 I only start really preparing seriously
00:55:35 when it’s confirmed because it’s such a heavy burden.
00:55:40 And one of the things I regret in having mentioned
00:55:44 a conversation with Vladimir Putin
00:55:47 before the war in Ukraine broke out in the past few years
00:55:51 is that I would mention it very loosely, very casually.
00:55:55 And without having really deeply put myself into a place
00:56:01 that I’m ready to talk to him.
00:56:02 And that’s a tricky thing because then the internet,
00:56:08 the audience in general, and just me,
00:56:11 when I listen back to my dumb self,
00:56:14 think, well, why are you speaking so lightly
00:56:16 about these topics?
00:56:17 Well, I know you’ve had a longstanding interest
00:56:19 in talking to him.
00:56:21 I think now, well, I don’t understand
00:56:27 how I would sit down and have a conversation
00:56:31 with somebody like that,
00:56:32 but that’s not in the range of my skill sets.
00:56:36 Or like maybe not in the range of things
00:56:39 that you’re drawn to somehow.
00:56:41 Not so much.
00:56:42 I mean, I would watch that episode with great interest.
00:56:47 Well, you did an episode recently with this guy
00:56:49 who was a former cyber criminal turned state side, right?
00:56:53 I think he works for the government now.
00:56:55 And there was a segment in there.
00:56:57 Remind me his name?
00:56:58 Brett Johnson.
00:56:59 Brett Johnson.
00:56:59 There was a segment in there where he talked about
00:57:02 stealing a lifetime’s worth of collected coins
00:57:06 from some elderly woman.
00:57:08 And this was everything she had.
00:57:10 And then he openly admitted that he felt no remorse,
00:57:15 which is the way he described is purely sociopathic.
00:57:18 And then of course we learned that he grew up in a family
00:57:20 where criminal behavior was very common.
00:57:23 It was kind of embedded into his notions
00:57:25 of what typical behaviors were.
00:57:27 And I found myself somewhat conflicted,
00:57:30 but also hung up on this idea that,
00:57:33 I mean, he had behaved as a sociopath
00:57:38 or in a sociopathic way.
00:57:39 And it created an internal conflict
00:57:42 because he’s quite charming guest
00:57:44 and his stories are terrific.
00:57:45 Especially I really enjoyed his discussions
00:57:49 about how he would go out and do all these things
00:57:52 out of a desire to please his girlfriend.
00:57:56 So he was in service to other people,
00:57:58 despite being sociopathic,
00:57:59 he could say he was in service to them as a way to extract.
00:58:01 Gets very complicated.
00:58:03 I think is the reason I went into science
00:58:05 is that at some level,
00:58:07 it’s more about facts than it is opinions and judgments.
00:58:10 And I don’t know that I have the ability
00:58:12 to suspend judgment away from the kind of
00:58:16 top level contours of my initial reaction to like,
00:58:20 if it’s true, like the Ghislaine Maxwell’s
00:58:22 and the Liz Holmes and the other sociopaths
00:58:25 is one of just kind of revulsion and repulsion.
00:58:28 But that could also reflect the fact
00:58:29 that I’m not as neurologically sophisticated
00:58:33 as somebody that can spin all the plates of empathy,
00:58:38 forgiveness, but also holding people accountable
00:58:44 at the same time.
00:58:44 That’s work.
00:58:45 That takes, if you think about it,
00:58:46 that’s three four brain circuits having to work in parallel.
00:58:50 That’s the difference between chess or a game of go
00:58:52 and a game of checkers.
00:58:53 I guess I’m playing checkers and you’re playing chess.
00:58:56 No, so one is actually holding in your mind
00:58:58 and two is the raw skill of conversation.
00:59:01 You’re very, just having listened to your interviews,
00:59:04 you’re very good at conversation,
00:59:05 but the skill of conversation is really tricky.
00:59:08 I’m not being self deprecating.
00:59:10 I’m being just objective.
00:59:12 I’m not good at conversation.
00:59:15 I’m working very hard, getting better at it.
00:59:18 I’m speaking not about just podcasting.
00:59:22 I’m speaking just normal life.
00:59:25 I have anxiety from social interaction.
00:59:30 I…
00:59:31 Do you really?
00:59:31 A huge amount, yeah, yeah.
00:59:33 So this is interesting because I never detect that in you.
00:59:37 Ever.
00:59:38 And I think there are people that we both know
00:59:40 that have said to me that they too feel anxious
00:59:45 and yet your voice is steady.
00:59:49 I don’t see any perspiration.
00:59:51 Oh yeah.
00:59:52 You appear incredibly calm.
00:59:54 I’m scared shitless.
00:59:55 I was scared shitless with Rick Rubin.
00:59:57 Rick Rubin is, when you first meet him,
01:00:00 is intimidatingly calm.
01:00:03 But as you get to know him a bit,
01:00:04 you realize that the kindness
01:00:07 and the generosity that you sense is real.
01:00:11 But yeah, I would never in a million years
01:00:14 have guessed that you get anxious in conversation.
01:00:16 Can I just make another quick comment?
01:00:19 This may come off entertaining to you, Andrew.
01:00:22 Maybe you’ve already gotten the same.
01:00:24 But having mentioned Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Zelensky,
01:00:31 Ghislaine Maxwell, there is a natural question.
01:00:37 How does Lex have access to these people?
01:00:43 Who does he work for?
01:00:45 Like how does he…
01:00:48 Or who works for him.
01:00:49 Who works for him.
01:00:50 Right.
01:00:51 What does he have on others?
01:00:52 This, I’m actually, I ask myself,
01:00:55 when I look in the mirror,
01:00:57 just somebody who kind of enjoys conspiracy theories,
01:01:01 I want to ask the same question.
01:01:03 Like, well, I usually ask in the following way,
01:01:05 like, how the fuck am I so lucky?
01:01:07 Like, who am I being, am I a robot
01:01:11 being controlled by somebody else?
01:01:12 Or like, how is this my life right now?
01:01:16 What is happening?
01:01:17 It really does feel like a simulation.
01:01:18 So let me just speak to several things.
01:01:22 First of all, I have no boss.
01:01:25 I know of nor am I controlled
01:01:29 by any intelligence agencies of any nation.
01:01:32 We’re going to get you a dog, Lex.
01:01:34 So that I could talk to.
01:01:37 I’m scared of getting a dog
01:01:38 because I would fall in love so deeply, I think.
01:01:41 Next time I’m bringing a puppy.
01:01:43 I’m just going to bring a puppy
01:01:44 and I’m going to leave it here.
01:01:46 And then you’ll never see me again.
01:01:48 I mean, I love dogs so much.
01:01:50 But I was also surprised and maybe,
01:01:55 I have never talked to an intelligence agency,
01:02:00 which is very interesting to me.
01:02:02 Like, I haven’t.
01:02:03 That you’re aware of.
01:02:05 Cause they’re very good at communicating.
01:02:07 Right.
01:02:08 But I’ve been very suspicious on this exact point.
01:02:10 That’s the downside of kind of being an introvert,
01:02:15 having anxiety about social interaction,
01:02:17 but then having so much love thrown your way
01:02:20 because we connect over podcasts.
01:02:21 Podcasts have a powerful way of connecting people.
01:02:24 So people come with you with love that I really love.
01:02:28 I appreciate, but I wonder like exactly this question,
01:02:32 like why is this person with a Russian accent talking to me
01:02:37 and showing me so much love?
01:02:39 Well, because, sorry to interrupt you again,
01:02:41 but it’s what we do.
01:02:44 And it’s a sign of interest, by the way, too.
01:02:46 Sometimes. Sometimes.
01:02:47 Yeah, I have a colleague at Stanford
01:02:49 and she said, you know, interruption 75% of the time
01:02:53 is a sign of real interest in what the person is saying,
01:02:55 if nothing else.
01:02:57 Well, you’re very lovable.
01:03:00 Well, that, that, but,
01:03:01 I mean, I learned about a hedgehog in the fog from you.
01:03:04 Yeah.
01:03:05 You know, when I learned, you know, you’re very lovable.
01:03:07 People love you because you’re lovable.
01:03:09 I love, love.
01:03:10 Okay. So 100%.
01:03:12 And it’s, I mean, especially here in Austin, Texas,
01:03:14 people are so, so amazing.
01:03:17 I go just hugs and just, ah, I love people.
01:03:19 Do you want a family?
01:03:20 Or are you eventually?
01:03:21 100%.
01:03:22 I mean, you’re, I take what you said as a challenge
01:03:26 in terms of having a family with kids
01:03:28 and they do jiu jitsu and obviously defeat you
01:03:32 and make you miserable for your failures as a father
01:03:37 because you couldn’t.
01:03:39 But you’re gonna be a great dad.
01:03:40 Build up an army of good jiu jitsu people.
01:03:43 But yes, I would love a family.
01:03:44 I would love to have children.
01:03:47 But I just want to finish that point
01:03:49 because I’m nervous about it.
01:03:50 I’m nervous about the way people perceive.
01:03:52 What you’re seeing is a Forrest Gump type character.
01:03:54 Like what, who I am, I seem to be,
01:03:58 and this is how like the world seems to work,
01:04:00 is you just try, you try to be yourself.
01:04:03 Like you try to find yourself.
01:04:05 That’s maybe the better way to say it.
01:04:07 And just be that.
01:04:10 Be kind to people.
01:04:12 Work your ass off.
01:04:14 And say F you to anybody that wants to control you
01:04:19 or to tell you what to do.
01:04:21 Just be free.
01:04:22 And then put love out there in the world.
01:04:24 And doors open.
01:04:25 This karma thing seems to work.
01:04:28 Like how the hell, my friends as you know,
01:04:32 how the hell did I get a chance to eat barbecue
01:04:35 with Rick Rubin, right?
01:04:37 Like doors.
01:04:38 You guys had a barbecue?
01:04:39 Yeah, I had barbecue.
01:04:40 He, right, of course I did.
01:04:42 He’s from New York.
01:04:43 Any New Yorker that I know has very high standards for food
01:04:46 because bad restaurants don’t last long in New York.
01:04:49 And barbecue counts as?
01:04:50 Oh yeah.
01:04:51 Oh yeah, Texas barbecue.
01:04:52 Well, you know, I would also add that you,
01:04:56 whether or not you realize it or not,
01:04:57 you took tremendous risk.
01:04:59 I mean, we come from the same original community,
01:05:01 which is academic science, right?
01:05:03 And to be at MIT and to start posting lectures online
01:05:07 is risky, right?
01:05:09 To, you know, I was third or fourth man in
01:05:12 in terms of podcasting as an academic.
01:05:14 Cause you had gone on Rogan many times,
01:05:16 David Sinclair had gone on there.
01:05:18 You know, especially before the pandemic,
01:05:22 you just didn’t see many academics and scientists
01:05:24 talking in a public facing way.
01:05:26 So you took tremendous risk, right?
01:05:29 You took tremendous risk
01:05:30 always wearing that jacket and tie, right?
01:05:33 The only time I haven’t seen you in that truly
01:05:35 is when we rolled jujitsu, which is,
01:05:36 and I hear I’m being generous to myself saying
01:05:38 I rolled jujitsu when basically you choked me out
01:05:40 in front of hundreds of people.
01:05:41 Thank you for doing that.
01:05:41 It was, it was great fun.
01:05:44 And I…
01:05:45 Thank you for doing that.
01:05:46 To have a beginner’s mind is a beautiful thing.
01:05:48 I have admittedly, I have not been taking the classes,
01:05:51 but I’m going to, I truly am.
01:05:54 Especially there’s a small chance I might find myself
01:05:56 in Austin a bit more often in the near future.
01:05:59 But the…
01:06:00 Well, if you’re out in San Francisco,
01:06:01 you should train with Mark Zuckerberg.
01:06:02 He just started, so there you go.
01:06:04 Oh yeah?
01:06:05 You guys can…
01:06:05 Interesting.
01:06:07 Sure.
01:06:09 I mean, he’s actually,
01:06:10 I mean, people listen to an episode,
01:06:12 perhaps he’s a fascinating human being too.
01:06:14 I listened to it, it was great.
01:06:15 You took tremendous risk as an academic to do what you did.
01:06:19 So I do believe that when one takes intelligent risk,
01:06:24 because you can die or can crash your career,
01:06:26 you can do all sorts of self destructive
01:06:28 or destructive things when taking risks.
01:06:31 You took risks and they paid off, right?
01:06:33 And you take different risks at different stages,
01:06:35 but I don’t throw around the word admiration lightly.
01:06:38 I mean, I admire that you were in this classroom at MIT.
01:06:41 You’re like, I’m gonna film this and put it online.
01:06:44 One of your early interviews is with Ido Portal,
01:06:47 who’s very hard to get to.
01:06:49 I’ve communicated with Ido a few times.
01:06:50 You should definitely talk to him.
01:06:51 I can’t wait to talk to him.
01:06:53 I’m dying to talk to him.
01:06:54 I was supposed to do some course teaching with him
01:06:57 right before the pandemic hit,
01:06:58 and then it got canceled because he couldn’t travel,
01:07:00 but getting to him is exceedingly challenging.
01:07:02 So you do have this incredible ability to get to people
01:07:06 and for them to trust you and know you.
01:07:09 And I think it’s through your authenticity.
01:07:12 And I think it’s the fact that you’re willing to go places
01:07:15 where people haven’t been before.
01:07:16 You know, this is, what’s the saying about pioneers?
01:07:19 How do you spot the pioneers?
01:07:20 They’re the people with the arrows in their backs.
01:07:23 You know, so that’s the, you know, yeah.
01:07:26 And that’s actually a quote that I lifted
01:07:28 from Terry Siknowski, who’s a, you know.
01:07:30 You should talk to Terry.
01:07:34 He’s a computational neuroscientist
01:07:37 down at the Salk Institute,
01:07:39 Howard Hughes investigator, et cetera.
01:07:40 But so, you know, taking risks
01:07:43 that other people have not taken is, that’s a real thing.
01:07:48 And to do it with integrity and rigor, that’s a real thing.
01:07:53 And so, yeah, I’m complimenting you
01:07:55 and I hope it lands and lands deeply.
01:07:57 But I also hope that people will hear that
01:07:59 and understand that it’s one thing
01:08:01 to do what other people are already doing boldly.
01:08:06 It’s a whole other thing to launch an entire art form
01:08:10 or venue and you did that.
01:08:12 And you didn’t write a book, hopefully you will someday,
01:08:15 but you didn’t go write a book.
01:08:16 A lot of academics have written books.
01:08:18 You went online.
01:08:19 Jordan Peterson, another controversial character.
01:08:22 He did it too, all those lectures that he filmed.
01:08:24 And then it’s led to this other thing.
01:08:26 So, you know, there’s karma.
01:08:30 And then there’s also having the spine
01:08:32 to just put it all on the line
01:08:34 and do something for which there is no prior example
01:08:38 to hold onto while you go through those headwinds.
01:08:43 The really fascinating thing,
01:08:44 and actually a lot of people tell me about you,
01:08:46 Andrew Huberman, like the reach of a podcast
01:08:51 is really fascinating.
01:08:53 It’s not the numbers of people listen.
01:08:56 I don’t know if that’s important at all.
01:08:59 Is what’s important is like the depth of connection
01:09:02 you have with certain people.
01:09:04 It really moves them.
01:09:05 Like a great, and like they really get you.
01:09:08 So there’s a lot of big Andrew Huberman fans
01:09:11 that really get you.
01:09:12 It’s not just the science.
01:09:13 It’s the stuff between the lines.
01:09:15 It’s Costello.
01:09:16 It’s the whole picture of a scientist
01:09:18 that finds beauty in biology and reveals it.
01:09:22 And they love you for it.
01:09:23 You know, because it was on television at the time,
01:09:28 I followed that Amanda Knox story pretty carefully.
01:09:31 And I don’t watch television,
01:09:33 but whenever I would travel,
01:09:34 if there was a TV on the airplane,
01:09:37 I would find myself getting wrapped into things
01:09:39 like locked up abroad, you know, like,
01:09:42 and these things where they would make you terrified
01:09:44 to travel anywhere, let alone commit a crime overseas.
01:09:47 You know, the scenes of some of these prisons
01:09:49 are so dramatic.
01:09:50 And, you know, I mean, her case got a ton of interest.
01:09:52 And then I, you know, she went and then was a student
01:09:55 at the University of Washington
01:09:57 and has talked quite openly about, you know,
01:09:59 how she was treated and how people assume guilt
01:10:02 and, you know, and eventually, you know,
01:10:04 she was exonerated and, you know,
01:10:05 we can only go by what we know what the law determined,
01:10:08 but, you know, these are people that
01:10:11 the world is fascinated by.
01:10:13 I would, I’m guessing about a third of people
01:10:15 have already decided this person is despicable.
01:10:18 Why would you ever give them an audience?
01:10:20 About a third of people I think are open to,
01:10:24 or at least interested in learning more about them.
01:10:27 And then I think the remaining third,
01:10:29 kind of the third that the category that I put myself in,
01:10:32 which is what can I learn about people and myself,
01:10:37 even in my revulsion, right?
01:10:41 What can I learn?
01:10:42 Yeah, what can I learn about myself
01:10:44 from listening to this conversation
01:10:45 with somebody that I like to think,
01:10:48 I’m not talking about Amanda here,
01:10:49 I’m talking about the other people that you’re talking about
01:10:50 that I don’t, I can’t relate to, right?
01:10:54 Hearing conversations with and about people
01:10:57 that you cannot relate to is informative.
01:10:59 Otherwise, your whole mind literally becomes insular.
01:11:03 Well, there’s an interesting thing I also had to,
01:11:07 ever since the war in Ukraine broke out,
01:11:09 one of the questions I was asking myself,
01:11:13 and this is not to be dramatic,
01:11:15 it’s just a very simple, honest question
01:11:17 that I think a lot of journalists
01:11:19 that operate in the war zone,
01:11:21 or documentary filmmakers
01:11:22 that ever since they got a chance to meet,
01:11:24 have to be honest with themselves,
01:11:27 are you willing to put at risk your life for things you do?
01:11:34 What are you willing to die for?
01:11:36 Yeah, what are you willing to die for?
01:11:37 It sounds very dramatic, but whenever risk goes up,
01:11:44 I mean, I don’t know, you asked that
01:11:46 if you wanna take a trip out to space
01:11:48 on a commercial space flight,
01:11:51 you have to, are you willing to die for this journey?
01:11:56 Now, the odds, they’re really small.
01:11:58 I just watched Apollo 13 again.
01:12:00 Great movie.
01:12:01 I’m not going to space.
01:12:02 I’m not going to space.
01:12:05 Afraid of heights?
01:12:06 No, I’m not afraid of heights.
01:12:08 I just, it feels like a terrible place to die.
01:12:13 Well, first of all, death anywhere is not great.
01:12:17 Yeah, although, I have a song teed up in my phone.
01:12:21 If the plane starts to go down,
01:12:24 I’m gonna spend the last few.
01:12:25 It’s a rare song.
01:12:26 Nobody knows it.
01:12:27 It’s a song off a B track of my favorite band,
01:12:29 which is Rancid.
01:12:30 It’s a song called The Sentence.
01:12:32 And nobody, and I love it.
01:12:34 And I listen to it almost every day.
01:12:36 Rancid, The Sentence, it’s called The Sentence?
01:12:38 The band is called Rancid, famous band, relatively.
01:12:41 Love those guys, love their music.
01:12:43 And the song is The Sentence.
01:12:44 You can only find it on like a B side or outtake.
01:12:46 And it’s, if you don’t know how to decipher
01:12:49 Tim Armstrong’s voice,
01:12:50 then you probably won’t understand the lyrics.
01:12:52 But because it’s sung very, very fast.
01:12:55 But if the plane ever goes,
01:12:56 anytime there’s turbulence,
01:12:57 I put that thing in, I put the headphones in.
01:12:59 I’m like, well, you know, if it’s time, it’s time.
01:13:01 I’m gonna go out like this.
01:13:02 I don’t wanna drift off into the galaxy,
01:13:04 just slowly asphyxiating and freezing to death.
01:13:06 That sounds horrible.
01:13:08 Just like I wouldn’t wanna drown or burn.
01:13:09 But on a plane is okay?
01:13:10 Well, on a plane, I mean, like,
01:13:11 if the thing starts going down
01:13:13 and there’s truly nothing you can do,
01:13:15 you might as well at least listen to your favorite song.
01:13:17 Yeah, true, true.
01:13:18 I’ll probably go with The Pixies,
01:13:19 Where’s My Mind, like from Fight Club.
01:13:21 And just the calmness, just sit back,
01:13:23 like the musicians playing at the Titanic.
01:13:26 I didn’t know you were a Pixies fan.
01:13:27 I’m gonna have to.
01:13:28 Not so much a Pixies fan.
01:13:29 Actually, I should say that I just,
01:13:32 that was the, Where’s My Mind was the chosen song
01:13:35 for Fight Club at the end when the buildings
01:13:39 are coming down or something like that.
01:13:41 So that there’s certain songs that just fit just right
01:13:46 for the collapse of human civilization
01:13:49 and you’re calmly appreciating, like,
01:13:54 that that’s just it.
01:13:55 This is how absurd this life is at any moment it can end.
01:13:58 And this is it.
01:14:01 I love how we both have death and demise soundtracks.
01:14:05 It’s just a question when you’re an academic,
01:14:08 doesn’t come up often.
01:14:10 Right, well.
01:14:11 Yeah, there are some academics that are bold and brave.
01:14:15 It’s not a phenotype.
01:14:17 Being bold and brave in the physical world
01:14:19 is not a common phenotype of academics.
01:14:22 I mean, the great neurologist, one of my,
01:14:24 I don’t have many heroes, but Oliver Sacks is a true hero.
01:14:27 I mean, people think of him as a writer,
01:14:30 but he was foremost a neurologist
01:14:32 and he took tremendous pushback from the neurology community
01:14:36 for doing his books and his articles.
01:14:39 He has a great biography called On the Move.
01:14:40 There’s a wonderful documentary
01:14:42 that just came out about him.
01:14:42 He died in 2015.
01:14:44 I’m actually kind of a collector of his things,
01:14:50 but he, tremendous, but he was accused of horrible things
01:14:53 until the movie Awakenings came out
01:14:56 with De Niro and Robin Williams.
01:14:58 Amazing movie, by the way, people don’t,
01:15:00 they seem to not say great things about the movie.
01:15:02 I love that movie.
01:15:03 It was amazing.
01:15:04 And it was only once he became famous from that movie
01:15:08 that his more academic work started
01:15:11 to receive any kind of attention
01:15:12 and he was invited back to Columbia and NYU.
01:15:15 You know, the New York Neuroscience Mafia is a real thing.
01:15:18 And yes, you know who you are.
01:15:20 And some of them are actually coming on the broadcast.
01:15:22 They are…
01:15:25 I think we talked offline about this.
01:15:26 We should start a mafia to fight off
01:15:30 whatever’s going on in the East Coast.
01:15:31 Although I’m still at MIT, so I don’t know how that works,
01:15:33 but Boston is different than New York.
01:15:36 Yeah, so I have tremendous respect
01:15:37 for science done in New York.
01:15:38 Don’t get me wrong.
01:15:39 They are excellent scientists.
01:15:41 It’s just a very different culture than on the West Coast.
01:15:44 And the personalities, the personalities…
01:15:46 Tremendous respect for the mob.
01:15:48 Well, and the personalities are a bit more grandiose.
01:15:53 However, because of some of the shift
01:15:56 in science culture in the last few years,
01:15:59 things around scandals and things of that sort,
01:16:03 they’ve been forced to tamp down some of their personality
01:16:07 or at least their outspoken personality.
01:16:09 And I actually think it’s revealed something
01:16:11 really important and useful in science,
01:16:12 which is it used to be the case
01:16:15 you could really inject your personality into what you do.
01:16:19 Richard Feynman is a good example.
01:16:21 If he did today what he did then,
01:16:25 bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech naked,
01:16:28 working out theorems in strip clubs and things of that,
01:16:31 he would have lost his job in moments.
01:16:35 So that kind of behavior isn’t celebrated anymore.
01:16:37 It’s actually punished.
01:16:39 And I’m only half kidding
01:16:40 about this New York neuroscience mafia,
01:16:42 but because I now exist in multiple realms,
01:16:44 I can say these sorts of things.
01:16:45 And I, again, admiration and respect,
01:16:47 but I will say that I think it’s important
01:16:50 that people in science and kids that are curious
01:16:53 about science understand that you can have any personality
01:16:58 provided that you’re ethical and respectful in science
01:17:01 and do well, right?
01:17:03 There are true bench scientists
01:17:05 that just want to be at the bench.
01:17:07 There are people that just want to be in their office.
01:17:08 There are people that really enjoy public speaking.
01:17:11 And there are people that love meetings
01:17:12 and there are people that hate crowds.
01:17:14 And so there’s a place for everybody,
01:17:16 truly a place for everybody in science.
01:17:19 I would like to be able to shine light
01:17:21 on the fact that there are,
01:17:23 you can have a shy personality, an outgoing personality,
01:17:27 and you can, all of those can be,
01:17:30 have excellent careers in science,
01:17:32 but you have to find the community in place
01:17:34 that’s right for you.
01:17:34 One reason I like Stanford
01:17:36 is that Stanford is very much about the future.
01:17:39 We have Nobel prize winners,
01:17:40 we have field medal winners and all that stuff,
01:17:43 and their names are on walls
01:17:44 and we acknowledge their great works.
01:17:46 But most of what you hear about in the halls of Stanford
01:17:49 is about what’s happening now and what could happen next.
01:17:52 It’s really about the future.
01:17:53 Whereas when I’ve spent time at other institutions
01:17:55 not to be named, you hear that,
01:17:58 but there’s a lot of kind of recycling and regurgitation
01:18:02 of how wonderful people are
01:18:03 based on things they did previously.
01:18:05 And the students at Stanford, because of Silicon Valley,
01:18:09 sure, they have respect for Nobel prizes,
01:18:10 they’re delighted to be learning from
01:18:12 and surrounded by all these great minds,
01:18:14 but they’re mostly interested
01:18:15 in what they are gonna create.
01:18:17 And so I kind of, not kind of,
01:18:19 I really like the shift toward possibility
01:18:23 as opposed to things that are steeped in tradition.
01:18:26 You know, I’ve never been to high table dinner at Oxford,
01:18:28 I’m sure it’s a wonderful experience.
01:18:30 I’m also not sure what purpose it serves for the world,
01:18:35 but I’ve never been,
01:18:36 and so I don’t know what the conversations are,
01:18:37 and so maybe I’m, you know, speaking out of line here.
01:18:40 And then now I’m definitely not getting invited.
01:18:43 No, you’re definitely getting invited.
01:18:44 But yeah, I’m with you,
01:18:45 the culture’s picked the right ones for you.
01:18:48 That’s why I like MIT, the spirit of it.
01:18:51 To me, it’s not about the past or the future,
01:18:55 it’s about just tinkering and having fun,
01:18:58 building cool stuff.
01:18:59 Like the big ambitious projects, it’s there.
01:19:03 I mean, it may be more in the biology and the health side,
01:19:06 but like the engineering side,
01:19:08 it doesn’t matter if this has any impact,
01:19:10 let us build the coolest thing the world has ever built.
01:19:13 Well, whenever I’m in Kendall Square,
01:19:16 I’ve seen, they have those buildings there
01:19:18 that actually tilt toward the ground.
01:19:20 These are these, the architecture of MIT
01:19:22 is also really impressive.
01:19:24 Yeah, this, he pulled up,
01:19:25 Sergei just pulled up Yilmaz tweet.
01:19:27 I’m inspired by curiosity.
01:19:28 That is what drives me.
01:19:30 So let us expand the scope and scale of consciousness
01:19:32 so that we may aspire to understand the universe.
01:19:35 Those are like three tweets in one,
01:19:37 but curiosity, yeah, yeah, curiosity for its own sake.
01:19:41 What’s that saying?
01:19:43 I think Dorothy Parker said,
01:19:46 the cure for boredom is curiosity.
01:19:48 There is no cure for curiosity.
01:19:51 And you need to celebrate.
01:19:52 So let me just briefly mention
01:19:54 to my lovely friends at MIT
01:20:00 to celebrate different weirdness,
01:20:03 to celebrate the weird characters.
01:20:06 I’ve, I sometimes get loving pressure
01:20:10 from my lovely friends at MIT
01:20:15 to tone down the weirdness a bit.
01:20:18 Really?
01:20:19 Even from MIT?
01:20:20 I’m very fortunate to have a lot of leverage
01:20:24 to where I have completely resist the pressure,
01:20:29 but I’m very sure that there’s young faculty
01:20:32 that with that subtle pressure would…
01:20:37 Dissolve them into a puddle of tears.
01:20:39 Not, no, no.
01:20:40 Oh, they’re from Boston, excuse me.
01:20:41 From Boston, that’s right.
01:20:42 They’re tougher than that.
01:20:43 That’s right, but it’s a slight nudging
01:20:45 towards conformity that I think ultimately destroys,
01:20:51 or at least lessens the power of the kind of science
01:20:56 that you can do when you encourage diversity.
01:21:00 Diversity in all of its forms,
01:21:02 including the weirdness of ideas,
01:21:04 the out of the box thinkers,
01:21:05 including the flamboyant behavior online,
01:21:10 how you choose to educate, how you choose to inspire.
01:21:13 People talk about freedom of speech,
01:21:15 but it’s not just freedom of speech
01:21:17 to say controversial things.
01:21:20 It’s also freedom of speech to be weird.
01:21:23 If you’re, for some reason, fascinated in…
01:21:27 You look at Elon Musk.
01:21:28 He talks about sex a lot.
01:21:29 Let the guy put sex memes up.
01:21:31 Who cares?
01:21:33 I mean, I feel like Elon can do basically whatever he wants.
01:21:36 Right, there’s no pressure,
01:21:37 but there’s a bunch of Elons in the academic world.
01:21:40 There’s a bunch of Elons.
01:21:42 No, actually, sorry.
01:21:43 Let me backtrack, because the man deserves props.
01:21:47 Right, he’s unparalleled.
01:21:48 He’s a CEO of major companies.
01:21:50 You better believe there’s pressure
01:21:53 to behave more like a CEO,
01:21:55 as opposed to a giggling schoolboy
01:21:57 who’s posting memes throughout the night.
01:22:00 But that is him.
01:22:02 And that freedom, that’s what freedom looks like.
01:22:06 I talk to a lot of CEOs,
01:22:08 and a lot of them feel like caged birds
01:22:13 who have long ago forgotten how to sing, quite honestly.
01:22:17 Like, there’s like shareholders,
01:22:20 and they come up with excuses for themselves.
01:22:22 Here’s why I have to be this way, you have to understand.
01:22:25 So on, there’s PR, there’s marketing people,
01:22:27 there’s lawyers, there’s all that kind of stuff.
01:22:30 But the final result is the authenticity is suffocated.
01:22:35 The beautiful weirdness of a CEO,
01:22:38 of a leader, of a creator, of a scientist, all that,
01:22:41 that’s all gone.
01:22:45 Well, Steve Jobs wouldn’t have kept his job
01:22:49 in acting the way he did in his 20s and 30s
01:22:52 in today’s climate.
01:22:53 But he probably would have updated his protocols,
01:22:57 so to speak. A little bit,
01:22:58 but maybe.
01:22:59 You know, you’re screaming at employees.
01:23:01 I mean, these are anecdotes, right?
01:23:02 I call them anecdata,
01:23:04 because people treat them as data,
01:23:05 but they’re really just anecdotes.
01:23:07 We don’t know, I wasn’t there.
01:23:09 But, you know, I like the idea of authenticity
01:23:14 without oversharing, right?
01:23:16 You’re very authentic, but there are aspects to your life
01:23:19 that I’m aware of that your audiences will never be aware of,
01:23:22 and there are aspects of your life
01:23:23 that I’ll never be aware of.
01:23:24 And so you’re still authentic, but.
01:23:26 Yeah, wait, which ones are you aware of?
01:23:29 People are gonna wonder, like,
01:23:30 what is, is he up in sex dungeon?
01:23:32 What is this?
01:23:33 No, no, no, no.
01:23:35 But interesting choice of examples.
01:23:39 No, but I think that, you know,
01:23:42 people lose the careers on the basis
01:23:44 of the movement of their thumbs, right?
01:23:47 I mean, the chair of psychiatry at Columbia
01:23:50 recently lost his position based on a response to a tweet.
01:23:55 People can look that up.
01:23:56 This is one of the most famous psychiatry departments
01:23:58 in the world.
01:23:59 And he put something out there
01:24:01 that was very insensitive, frankly.
01:24:03 And everyone that I talked to about it was like,
01:24:06 gosh, that was very, very insensitive,
01:24:09 not thoughtful at all.
01:24:10 And he lost his job, right?
01:24:11 Or at least had to step down.
01:24:12 I don’t know the specifics.
01:24:14 So, you know, I think I read someplace
01:24:18 that more than half of the job loss due to online behavior
01:24:22 is because people were trying to be funny, right?
01:24:25 I mean, not everyone can pull off what Tim Dillon.
01:24:29 Oh, and by the way, congratulations.
01:24:30 I heard that you and Tim just got married.
01:24:32 Yeah, I saw that too.
01:24:33 No, no, we didn’t just get married.
01:24:34 Engaged.
01:24:35 He proposed.
01:24:35 Yeah, got it, got it, got it.
01:24:36 And I said, yes.
01:24:37 Right.
01:24:38 So some people can get away.
01:24:40 Oh, yeah.
01:24:41 Thank you.
01:24:42 Thank you, Sergey.
01:24:42 Has that ready to go.
01:24:43 See those 13.3 thousand likes?
01:24:46 One of those is mine.
01:24:48 So for people who are not aware,
01:24:49 one of the days in April tweeted that Tim Dillon
01:24:52 asked me to get married and I said, yes.
01:24:55 I think Tim said, the wedding will be on 6th Street
01:24:59 in Austin, bring all of your weapons,
01:25:01 which of course is totally inappropriate.
01:25:03 This is, I was like PG funny,
01:25:08 and he’s goes rated R funny right away.
01:25:12 But that said, I mean, if there’s anyone
01:25:17 I would like to get married with,
01:25:19 it’s that guy and we would do it in Austin
01:25:21 and it would be epic.
01:25:24 It would be like the wedding from November rain, one of the,
01:25:31 Mr. and Mrs.
01:25:32 Oh, wow.
01:25:33 Oh, Mr. and Mr., I apologize.
01:25:34 Wow, yeah, and you broke tradition with the jacket color.
01:25:38 So it sounds to me that you are a free speech absolutist.
01:25:42 I think freedom is really important
01:25:44 and that includes letting people who are hateful,
01:25:48 letting people who are controversial
01:25:51 have a voice on platforms.
01:25:53 But it becomes, I’m not sure what exactly to think
01:25:57 because I also treasure the quiet voices
01:26:03 in the back of the room.
01:26:05 And sometimes the assholes silence those voices,
01:26:10 meaning by being loud and obnoxious and so on,
01:26:14 it pushes away the thoughtful people.
01:26:16 So I’m also a fan of creating communities.
01:26:19 Like you should be able to let people kind of
01:26:23 build a community that’s positive, that’s loving,
01:26:27 or that’s constantly trolling, or that’s super hateful.
01:26:33 All those communities should have a place in the world.
01:26:37 But like the thing I’ve noticed is that
01:26:41 hate can destroy, a community full of hate
01:26:44 can destroy a community full of love
01:26:46 easier than a community full of love
01:26:49 can overtake one with hate.
01:26:51 And so you have to kind of, I don’t know exactly how,
01:26:54 but create digital mechanisms that discourage
01:26:58 the collision of these communities.
01:27:00 They should all have a platform and ability to speak
01:27:03 to a large audience, but you have to be careful
01:27:06 to protect that like little flame of connection
01:27:11 that people have.
01:27:12 Yeah, that’s good, the goodness, it sounds like, I mean,
01:27:17 yeah, I think in any great city like New York,
01:27:20 which I love, by the way, you wanna have a symphony
01:27:24 in an opera house and you want some punk rock shows
01:27:26 happening on the Lower East Side, you want all of that.
01:27:29 You just don’t necessarily want them to overlap.
01:27:32 In terms of social media and then podcasts and engagement,
01:27:36 one thing that I decided very early on
01:27:38 is was to encourage comments and feedback, et cetera.
01:27:41 But I have in my mind what I call classroom rules.
01:27:44 You’ve taught in the university
01:27:46 and then you teach in the university
01:27:48 and you establish a certain etiquette within the classroom
01:27:51 of the kinds of questions that you’ll tolerate, right?
01:27:54 So there’s always the student that’s gonna ask a question,
01:27:56 which is basically a 10 minute monologue
01:27:58 about their experience that really isn’t a question
01:28:00 that pertains to a lot of people.
01:28:01 So you politely discourage that kind of question
01:28:04 and you encourage the kinds of questions
01:28:05 that are likely to be in the minds of many other students.
01:28:08 It’s just more efficient that way.
01:28:09 Or not politely, which is more, you know,
01:28:12 I try and respond to comments and I try and respond,
01:28:15 but also, you know, there’s this,
01:28:16 also this really interesting question.
01:28:17 Now, if you block people or restrict people,
01:28:20 people think that you’re somehow afraid
01:28:22 of the information that they’re posting,
01:28:23 but that’s often not the case.
01:28:25 I’m not in the habit of blocking
01:28:26 or restricting too many people.
01:28:27 Occasionally we’ve had to do it
01:28:29 only because of how other people are being treated
01:28:31 in the comment section.
01:28:32 What I can take and what I think other people deserve to take
01:28:35 are two completely different things.
01:28:37 David Goggins, right, who we both know well,
01:28:40 I don’t know if he still does this,
01:28:40 but a few years ago, he posted something like,
01:28:42 if people ask him, when do you sleep?
01:28:45 He would just block them.
01:28:48 Because it wasn’t consistent with what he was trying to say.
01:28:49 Of course he sleeps, but it’s, you know,
01:28:51 he’s trying to get a particular message out.
01:28:53 I think people should just understand
01:28:54 that everybody’s page is their own to moderate, right?
01:28:59 Just like in a classroom, there are certain rules,
01:29:02 of course, of institution,
01:29:03 but then you establish the etiquette
01:29:05 within the context of the kind of class.
01:29:06 You know, a class about personality psychology
01:29:09 or the psychology of love,
01:29:11 you’re gonna have a very different range of conversations
01:29:14 than, you know, a class on, you know,
01:29:17 memory and physiology.
01:29:20 So I think social media is a great place for conversation,
01:29:25 but it’s not necessarily a great place
01:29:26 for every kind of conversation.
01:29:28 Yeah, and I also just say that people that do get blocked,
01:29:31 I never, this is something I do very deliberately,
01:29:35 blocked or ignored.
01:29:37 I never think poorly of them.
01:29:38 I actually explicitly think,
01:29:41 if there’s somebody that’s like saying
01:29:44 hateful things about me or whatever,
01:29:45 I always think positive thoughts.
01:29:47 It’s not some kind of weird guru thing,
01:29:49 but just actually found that as a hack.
01:29:52 I think well of them,
01:29:53 and that allows me to never think of them again.
01:29:56 Like I send them my love,
01:29:58 and like I think this is a like fascinating human being
01:30:01 with a fascinating story.
01:30:02 I would love to have time to actually learn
01:30:04 about their story, but there’s not enough time in the world.
01:30:07 And I just think well of them and then I move on
01:30:09 and enjoy a delicious meal with people that are close to me
01:30:13 and I love and so on and just, and move on.
01:30:16 And then never adding to the negativity of like,
01:30:19 just even in the privacy of my own mind,
01:30:21 thinking a hateful thought towards them,
01:30:23 it serves no purpose whatsoever.
01:30:25 Yeah, I love that about you.
01:30:27 And I know that what you just said to be true,
01:30:29 one of the, I think more toxic things in life
01:30:33 is what’s called, you know, a vacuative projection.
01:30:37 When people feel something and they try and evacuate it
01:30:40 and project it onto somebody else.
01:30:41 Projection is fascinating, right?
01:30:43 What you essentially just said is that
01:30:44 you don’t accept projections.
01:30:46 And in fact, you transmute them
01:30:49 to put it in the language of the Buddhist, you know,
01:30:51 you transmute it into positivity.
01:30:53 And in that way, you truly neutralize it and transmute it.
01:30:58 I think that if people were better understood
01:31:02 when they were experiencing
01:31:04 or observing a vacuative projection,
01:31:08 the world would be a much healthier and happier place.
01:31:11 But it requires a certain stable internal rudder.
01:31:14 And, you know, when we’re tired or sick or angry,
01:31:18 you know, we’re hungry, excessively hungry.
01:31:21 All of us are less good at it.
01:31:23 I’ve been positively struck by the nature
01:31:25 of most of the interactions, not just feedback,
01:31:28 but my favorite thing as an educator in the classroom,
01:31:32 but also on social media.
01:31:33 My absolute favorite thing is when the comments
01:31:36 about other people’s comments are positively reinforcing.
01:31:39 So you see people having conversations within the comments
01:31:42 and you realize this is like, if you, as an educator,
01:31:45 again, you know, it’s fun to teach
01:31:47 and it’s fun to talk to the students,
01:31:48 but the real pleasure is in walking by a small group
01:31:51 of students on campus and hearing them talking
01:31:54 about the material, that just fills me with joy.
01:31:58 And because what it means is that the ideas are reverberating
01:32:02 in their nervous systems and will eventually wick out
01:32:05 to others.
01:32:06 So it’s not just about feedback,
01:32:07 it’s about a venue for parsing information.
01:32:11 So you actually posted that we’re gonna talk on Instagram
01:32:13 and I collected a bunch of the questions,
01:32:15 which reminds me of, I have to mention Mike Jones
01:32:21 and a question he asked, but also a gift he gave
01:32:24 quite a while ago, if it’s okay.
01:32:26 But first, a quick bathroom break.
01:32:29 Yes.
01:32:30 We’re looking at an Instagram page of Mike Jones,
01:32:33 Knife and Tool, you should check it out.
01:32:35 He, Andrew gave me a gift from him,
01:32:39 that is a badass butcher knife.
01:32:44 Yours is the earth, da, da, da,
01:32:46 is from If by Richard Kipling.
01:32:48 Yeah, the story of this knife is kind of interesting,
01:32:52 perhaps, to people where it was,
01:32:53 I was coming out here to Austin to meet with Lex
01:32:56 and it was his birthday.
01:32:57 I wanna get him a gift, but I didn’t know what to get him.
01:33:00 And I contacted this guy, Mike Jones,
01:33:02 that I learned about through Joe Rogan.
01:33:04 Cause the first, remember in the old days of Joe Rogan,
01:33:08 when you go on the episode afterwards,
01:33:09 you take a picture with an object.
01:33:11 So it was like Elon with a flamethrower
01:33:13 or people would have the ax.
01:33:14 I picked up this Bushwhacker hatchet thing.
01:33:18 And I was like, I love this thing.
01:33:21 And Joe said, oh yeah, you should check out
01:33:22 Mike Jones’s work, he does these beautiful knives.
01:33:25 And so then I heard your episode with Joe
01:33:29 and you recited a poem at the end.
01:33:31 It was right after your grandmother died.
01:33:33 And there’s a line in that poem from If
01:33:36 that Mike engraved on that knife for you.
01:33:39 So he makes these by hand.
01:33:41 I love, the old days, before the podcast and all that.
01:33:47 That’s the first appearance.
01:33:48 That was the first time on there.
01:33:50 And it was a lot of fun in the old studio in Los Angeles.
01:33:55 And yeah, Mike makes these beautiful knives.
01:33:59 And I have this, I just have a great admiration
01:34:02 for crafts people.
01:34:04 So, do you use it?
01:34:06 Do you cut your one meal a day steaks with it?
01:34:08 I feel.
01:34:10 Are you taking it with you on your travels?
01:34:11 Exactly.
01:34:12 I actually used to keep it on the table,
01:34:15 but I thought it really intimidates guests.
01:34:18 A little bit.
01:34:19 But like.
01:34:20 You can put it on their side.
01:34:20 Yeah, right.
01:34:21 It’s like, oops.
01:34:22 It’s trust, right?
01:34:24 What’s the story?
01:34:26 I mean, yeah.
01:34:27 But it’s, cause it’s not,
01:34:30 it’s quite bad ass if I may say.
01:34:33 So the craftsmanship is obvious, but also it is a knife.
01:34:37 It’s got some like Dexter like qualities to it.
01:34:40 Yeah.
01:34:40 It looks like it’s designed to cleave through a limb.
01:34:43 If I had like a family or something where people,
01:34:46 there’s nothing about this place that softens your kind
01:34:49 of sense that this person might not murder me.
01:34:54 Let’s put it differently.
01:34:56 This place could use a woman’s touch.
01:34:58 That’s one way to put it.
01:35:00 If it’s okay, let me,
01:35:01 because it is a poem I go to often actually.
01:35:09 You mentioned reciting some lyrics
01:35:10 and I’m actually gonna go back to that at some point
01:35:13 to get a few songs that touch you.
01:35:17 But this is one of the things I go to often.
01:35:21 I’ll read it to remind myself.
01:35:23 It’s advice from a father to son.
01:35:27 And it’s a kind of mantra that it’s just nice to live by.
01:35:31 So if it’s okay with me,
01:35:31 just use this opportunity one more time.
01:35:34 Read If by Roger Kipling.
01:35:36 If you can keep your head when all about you
01:35:38 are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
01:35:41 if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
01:35:44 but make allowance for their doubting too,
01:35:47 if you can wait to not be tired by waiting
01:35:49 or being lied about don’t deal in lies
01:35:53 or being hated don’t give way to hating
01:35:55 and yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise.
01:35:59 If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
01:36:02 if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
01:36:05 if you can meet with triumph and disaster
01:36:08 and treat those two imposters just the same,
01:36:11 if you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
01:36:14 twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
01:36:17 or watch the things you gave your life to broken
01:36:20 and stoop and build them up with worn out tools,
01:36:24 if you can make one heap of all your winnings
01:36:26 and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
01:36:30 and lose and start again at your beginnings
01:36:34 and never breathe a word about your loss,
01:36:37 if you can force your heart to nerve and sinew
01:36:40 to serve your turn long after they’re gone
01:36:42 and so hold on when there’s nothing in you
01:36:46 except the will which says to them, hold on.
01:36:49 If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
01:36:53 I like this one, and walk with kings
01:36:55 nor lose the common touch, if neither foes
01:36:58 nor loving friends can hurt you,
01:37:00 if all men count with you but none too much,
01:37:05 if you can fill the unforgiving minute
01:37:07 with 60 seconds worth of distance run,
01:37:12 yours is the earth and everything that’s in it
01:37:15 and which is more, you’ll be a man, my son.
01:37:19 Thank you, Andrew, thank you, thank you, Mike,
01:37:20 for the knife, it’s a, I don’t know.
01:37:23 It’s an important poem.
01:37:24 And engraved in it, yeah, it’s yours.
01:37:28 Yours is the earth and everything that’s in it.
01:37:31 We toiled over what to engrave,
01:37:34 and then finally I just said, Mike,
01:37:36 just pick something that speaks to you,
01:37:38 you’re the craftsman, and so he selected that.
01:37:41 There’s certain ways to pull yourself in that book.
01:37:42 Actually, Karl Deisseroth, he wrote the book Projections.
01:37:47 One of my favorite, first of all,
01:37:50 just as you said, incredible writer.
01:37:53 Just, I mean, if you wrote fiction,
01:37:57 if you wrote those kinds of things,
01:37:59 I’m curious to see where he goes with his writing.
01:38:01 It’s very interesting.
01:38:02 I think that book took him 10 years to write,
01:38:04 which is vindication for me and for you
01:38:06 because we’re both supposed to write books
01:38:07 and we haven’t done it.
01:38:10 Yeah, I mean, in some sense,
01:38:13 your first book will have decades in it, right?
01:38:20 Even if you just take a half a year to write it.
01:38:24 It’s like the first book, like the first album for a musician,
01:38:27 I mean, it’s a journey.
01:38:30 But he uses poems and quotes in there really well.
01:38:35 It’s a beautiful book.
01:38:36 It’s a dreamy book.
01:38:36 I think when people hear that it’s a book about neuroscience,
01:38:39 they think they’re gonna get a textbook
01:38:41 or a protocols book or something, it’s nothing like that.
01:38:44 But it really is a deep dive into the mind
01:38:46 of the psychiatrist and the researcher
01:38:48 and so much feeling and compassion.
01:38:50 I love that you love poetry.
01:38:51 I mean, I didn’t know that until I saw you
01:38:53 on Rogan Read If and I’m not a very rabid consumer of poetry
01:39:00 but I’m a big Wendell Berry fan.
01:39:05 And I try and read a poem once every few days.
01:39:10 Also, I think if is a tough act to follow.
01:39:13 Oh yeah, oh yeah.
01:39:14 I mean, that’s the richness and the, I mean,
01:39:18 you said every third line in there is something
01:39:21 that you would consider your life well lived
01:39:25 if you said that, right?
01:39:27 What about the preparation for the solo podcast?
01:39:31 You said you listen to certain songs,
01:39:34 you sing or recite the lyrics to certain songs.
01:39:37 Is there ones that kind of come to mind
01:39:39 that are interesting?
01:39:40 Um, yeah, I’ve always been very lyrics driven
01:39:43 and I don’t understand music.
01:39:45 I’ve talked to Rick about this.
01:39:46 I think I’ve talked to you about this a little bit.
01:39:47 I don’t really understand, I mean,
01:39:50 I can hear music and like it,
01:39:53 but I don’t really understand the structure of it.
01:39:56 But lyrics make a lot of sense to me.
01:39:57 But does it touch your soul, music, or is it the lyrics?
01:40:00 It’s the lyrics, it’s not the instrumentals.
01:40:02 So I’m a huge Joe Strummer fan
01:40:04 and I’m gonna lose punk points for saying this
01:40:05 but I’m not a Clash fan.
01:40:07 Oh, okay.
01:40:08 So he obviously is best known for the Clash.
01:40:10 Most Clash songs start off great
01:40:12 and then after about 30 seconds, at least in my mind,
01:40:15 just kind of disintegrate into a bunch of mush.
01:40:17 Whereas Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros,
01:40:21 which is what he did as an adult,
01:40:23 as a later and some of his solo work,
01:40:25 he actually, Rick produced some work
01:40:28 that he did with Johnny Cash.
01:40:30 Rick pulled Johnny Cash out of,
01:40:31 essentially out of retirement
01:40:33 and had him do his albums before he died.
01:40:35 And so anything that Strummer did,
01:40:38 there’s a favorite song of mine by Strummer,
01:40:40 it’s called Burning Lights.
01:40:43 You can find it, there is an album now
01:40:44 where you can find it or Tennessee Rain
01:40:46 or some of these things that he did,
01:40:47 which are a little bit more folky, so not really punk.
01:40:49 So I love that song.
01:40:52 Bunch of songs by Rancid that I love.
01:40:54 Yeah, Rancid is great.
01:40:55 And then if I listen to instrumentals,
01:40:57 I do, I’ll listen to classical piano.
01:41:01 Some dreams are made for children.
01:41:04 But it’s not gonna sound good as a poem.
01:41:06 They can play the, people can play the song.
01:41:07 Play the song, okay.
01:41:08 Yeah, so I’ll, I mean, cause it has to be something,
01:41:12 Joe’s voice is what makes the song.
01:41:14 Got it.
01:41:15 Joe’s voice is what makes the song.
01:41:17 But yeah, that song Burning Lights
01:41:18 from I Hired a Contract Killer.
01:41:21 I don’t know, the licks are pretty good.
01:41:23 They’re pretty good.
01:41:23 I mean, Joe is an amazing writer, right?
01:41:25 I’m also a big Bob Dylan fan.
01:41:27 Glenn Gould for classical piano.
01:41:30 He was at Asperger’s, and actually I think
01:41:33 you can hear him grunting, he had a Tourette’s like tick.
01:41:36 And I learned about Glenn Gould from Oliver Sacks.
01:41:40 So I’ll listen to any number of things.
01:41:42 It depends on my mood.
01:41:43 If I’m feeling a little more tired
01:41:44 and I need to be amped up,
01:41:45 I’ll listen to something that’s a little louder and faster.
01:41:48 If I’m feeling kind of keyed up
01:41:49 and I need to bring the cadence down a little bit,
01:41:53 then I’ll listen to something a little mellower, poppier.
01:41:55 I love bands like, yeah, I’m a big fan
01:42:00 of this British pop band called James.
01:42:02 There’s like 20 bands named James.
01:42:04 But this one, you know, and again,
01:42:06 I lose punk points for saying that, but they’re amazing.
01:42:09 And best luck.
01:42:10 I think you’ve accumulated enough points
01:42:11 where you can afford to lose a few.
01:42:13 Yeah.
01:42:15 But in any case, yeah, music and poetry are,
01:42:18 they’re the subconscious, right?
01:42:21 I mean, if you think about a Bob Dylan song
01:42:23 or a really good Strummer song or a poem
01:42:25 that the words don’t mean anything when read linearly,
01:42:29 but they make you feel something,
01:42:30 they’re tapping into the subconscious.
01:42:32 That’s really what they’re doing.
01:42:34 They’re pulling on neural threads of emotion
01:42:38 based on either timbre or cadence
01:42:41 or something that’s independent of the word structure.
01:42:45 And that to me is the beauty of music and poetry.
01:42:48 I often say Johnny Cash’s version, Hurt,
01:42:51 that I say would be my favorite song ever.
01:42:55 Well, he did a Nine Inch Nails song.
01:42:56 He did, he covered.
01:42:57 I think Rick produced that.
01:42:58 Pretty sure he produced that.
01:42:59 He produced it.
01:43:01 I mean, he did, like Rick produced the,
01:43:04 he pulled Johnny Cash out from a dark place
01:43:08 to produce something that, I mean,
01:43:11 when you look back as one of the great things ever in music,
01:43:15 which are these like haunting covers
01:43:19 of certain songs and originals.
01:43:21 Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer did a version
01:43:25 of Redemption song together that Rick produced,
01:43:30 which is on loop in my house sometimes,
01:43:33 for hours and hours.
01:43:35 That song is fascinating.
01:43:37 Bob Marley’s song.
01:43:38 Song by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer.
01:43:41 You know, sometimes I think what it would be
01:43:43 to be a fly on the wall when these guys were doing this.
01:43:46 These songs of freedom.
01:43:48 There’s certain songs where you’re like,
01:43:51 it elicits an emotion that’s unlike anything else.
01:43:58 I mean, I was trying to figure that out with Rick, too.
01:44:01 Like, there’s certain songs that make you wanna pull out
01:44:04 over to the side of the road and just weep
01:44:07 or just get inspired to just get shit done
01:44:11 or all of those kinds of things.
01:44:13 Remember your family, the people you’ve lost,
01:44:16 all that kind of stuff.
01:44:17 When you hurt, I hurt myself today
01:44:20 to see if I still feel.
01:44:22 There’s certain songs that I’ve loved so much
01:44:26 that I actually won’t play them during a relationship
01:44:29 until the relationship passes a certain duration
01:44:32 because if you start sharing in those experiences
01:44:35 with somebody and it starts to become associated
01:44:38 with the relationship, you braiding it in
01:44:40 with the dopamine of love and that relationship ends,
01:44:43 the song is forever tainted.
01:44:45 There are certain songs that I will never play
01:44:47 in the company of anybody else.
01:44:49 They’re mine.
01:44:50 I just, it’s too risky to give those up.
01:44:54 And you know, and I think that.
01:44:58 And there’s like levels.
01:45:00 There are levels, right, exactly.
01:45:04 We’ll leave it at that.
01:45:05 Yeah, and the interesting thing about this kind
01:45:10 of preparing for the solo episode,
01:45:14 just interacting with Rick about that process
01:45:17 of preparation and because you mentioned with interviews.
01:45:23 By the way, are you do solo, solo?
01:45:25 Are you the only one in the room or?
01:45:26 No, well, it used to be Rob, my producer,
01:45:30 who I should say, you know, he’s really the person
01:45:33 behind the podcast.
01:45:35 I mean, first of all, we’re equal partners.
01:45:37 You’re just a pretty face.
01:45:40 We’re just, and I’m aging, man.
01:45:41 Not to say I love him.
01:45:43 I actually really, I like aging.
01:45:45 It’s weird.
01:45:46 I’m like friends with David Sinclair
01:45:47 and it’s all about not aging.
01:45:49 I don’t wanna live past 90, 95.
01:45:52 I’m just trying to get as much done as I can
01:45:54 in this short life and do it right
01:45:56 and with integrity and heart and accuracy, you know.
01:46:00 And you like the stages.
01:46:02 Oh yeah, if you read Erickson’s stages of development,
01:46:05 you realize that every stage of life
01:46:08 is a set of neural circuits trying to resolve a problem.
01:46:12 And if you’re gonna try and avoid that progression
01:46:16 sure, you might live longer, but you know,
01:46:19 it’s sort of like saying like,
01:46:21 do you wanna go win the high school jujitsu championship?
01:46:25 No, you graduated high school a long time ago, right?
01:46:28 So I actually look forward to the future,
01:46:32 even if it means that I’m starting to shift.
01:46:34 I think that my biology will shift.
01:46:37 Oh, you know, I’ll fight that.
01:46:37 I try and take good care of myself,
01:46:39 but I don’t wanna get sick.
01:46:41 I don’t wanna suffer, who does?
01:46:43 But I’m embracing this whole developmental arc.
01:46:46 I mean, we’re not children and then adults.
01:46:49 Our entire life is one long developmental arc.
01:46:52 And if you fail to embrace that,
01:46:54 you fail to extract the richness
01:46:56 of what it is to be a human being.
01:46:58 So in any event, I record Rob is in the room.
01:47:05 I’ll sometimes stop and ask him for feedback
01:47:08 if I feel like something’s not landing right.
01:47:09 So he gives, if it’s clear, he’ll let me know.
01:47:11 If it’s not clear, he’ll let me know.
01:47:12 Excuse me.
01:47:13 And then, you know, Costello used to be in the room.
01:47:15 The early days of the podcast, which weren’t that long ago,
01:47:19 he’s snoring at my feet and farting
01:47:22 and smelling up the room.
01:47:23 And we’re all just kind of like gasping for air.
01:47:24 He’s a bulldog.
01:47:25 That’s what they do.
01:47:26 With him gone, it changed.
01:47:28 You know, the whole thing changed.
01:47:30 There will be another dog soon.
01:47:32 And as you know, I’ve been moving
01:47:35 through that grief process,
01:47:36 but having him there gave me a levity that I miss.
01:47:41 But in my mind, he’s still there.
01:47:43 Yeah, he’s still there.
01:47:43 Yeah, he’s still there.
01:47:44 So, and you know, in time there’ll be another dog
01:47:47 and who knows, you know, maybe there’ll be a dog
01:47:49 and a couple of infants running around,
01:47:51 but that would be more distracting.
01:47:52 So, but it’s, there’s no podcast that exists
01:47:58 just because of the podcaster.
01:47:59 This is true for Joe, this is true for your podcast,
01:48:01 for me, that there’s, it’s not just a staff
01:48:03 of people to post stuff.
01:48:05 That’s just the top level contour.
01:48:07 There’s the constant feedback and iteration
01:48:09 of what you want it to become
01:48:11 and trying to hold on to something
01:48:14 that’s essential along the way.
01:48:16 Cause everything has to evolve,
01:48:17 but you can’t lose the essence of something.
01:48:20 Anytime a company or brand or a course
01:48:24 or a scientist has done that, it just ends up terrible.
01:48:27 It just is a, you know, it becomes
01:48:29 like a Senator version of itself.
01:48:31 So to Rick is very, the power of the people in the room
01:48:35 is great to inspire and to destroy.
01:48:39 So you have to be extremely careful
01:48:42 with the selection of people that are in the room.
01:48:44 To me, I never really thought of it that way.
01:48:46 I thought only positive things can happen.
01:48:50 Oh, by adding people in the room?
01:48:51 By adding people in the room.
01:48:52 Oh, I think if there were an audience in the room for,
01:48:55 well, you know what, someday I’d love
01:48:56 to do a live podcast with you.
01:48:59 I saw you doing like a couple of live things,
01:49:01 which is great that you’re paving the way there to try.
01:49:04 Well, we did one, I went up to University
01:49:06 of British Columbia and did a lecture on a college campus.
01:49:11 And one of the more gratifying things that happened
01:49:13 is this kid, he’s in his early twenties, I think,
01:49:16 stood up and said, you know,
01:49:17 I’ve never been on a college campus.
01:49:19 I didn’t think I could go onto a college campus.
01:49:22 And that still rings in my mind.
01:49:23 Whoever you are out there, that meant so much to me.
01:49:25 Cause I was like, yes, there was something about that to me.
01:49:27 I was like, okay, this, it made sense to come all the way
01:49:30 up here and do this in person.
01:49:31 Cause you can get out to a lot more people online.
01:49:34 Public speaking events,
01:49:35 it’s not like it’s that lucrative or anything.
01:49:37 I mean, unless you’re whatever,
01:49:39 you’re a famous celebrity or politician or something,
01:49:41 I’m sure there are people that do well with it,
01:49:43 but that’s not what it’s about for us.
01:49:44 It’s really about being able to connect with people
01:49:47 in a different venue and for interactions like that.
01:49:50 I don’t know how many of them we will do,
01:49:53 but I’m curious to see how it goes,
01:49:55 but I’d love to do a podcast with you.
01:49:57 Is it energizing? My fear is the fear of the introvert
01:50:03 is that I don’t know if I can handle so much love
01:50:08 and fascinating people all around.
01:50:11 It’s like, I don’t know.
01:50:14 Well, we’ll invite a few haters too.
01:50:16 Well, yes, but I love the haters too, but I don’t know.
01:50:19 It makes me nervous.
01:50:20 Cause Jordan Peterson is currently on tour.
01:50:23 I got a chance to hang out with him.
01:50:24 Oh right, he does a lot of live speaking.
01:50:28 Yeah, he’s now on tour where he does like every other day.
01:50:33 But he doesn’t have any small kids at home anymore.
01:50:35 So you can’t do that.
01:50:36 So yeah, you should do it before you have a fan.
01:50:38 It’s also exhausting.
01:50:39 I mean, I’m just speaking from an athlete perspective,
01:50:42 like if you’re Mick Jagger with the Rolling Stones,
01:50:45 it’s just physically, I mean, you have to speak potentially
01:50:50 for two hours, then off stage, like hanging out with people.
01:50:56 It’s a lot of hours.
01:50:58 It’s a lot of hours to stay focused,
01:51:00 to keep finding your place of like calmness and excitement.
01:51:04 Well, and you’re staying in hotels,
01:51:05 your circadian rhythm is disrupted.
01:51:07 You’re not getting your like cold and sauna
01:51:09 and your workout every day.
01:51:10 Your food isn’t optimal.
01:51:12 I think done in patches, I could enjoy it
01:51:15 because it’s fun to meet people from different places.
01:51:17 I’m doing a public lecture in Copenhagen
01:51:19 for the Lundbeck Foundation in June, June 3rd.
01:51:22 And that one is particularly gratifying for me
01:51:25 because the Lundbeck Foundation is an academic foundation.
01:51:27 So the fact that, and then so when they invited,
01:51:29 I asked, do you want me to talk about what my lab does
01:51:31 or do you want me to talk about the stuff on the podcast?
01:51:33 They’re like, no, no, not your lab.
01:51:35 We want to hear about this, like health stuff
01:51:37 and the stuff that we cover on the podcast.
01:51:39 So that was amusing to me and tells me that things
01:51:43 are changing now.
01:51:44 I think 2020 and 2021 revealed a lot of things
01:51:47 about people to ourselves.
01:51:50 But one thing that it made very clear
01:51:52 is that there’s an enormous appetite for tools
01:51:55 for mental and physical health,
01:51:56 but also understanding about science
01:51:58 and how science is done.
01:51:59 So thanks to you, again, I’m not saying this to flatter you.
01:52:02 It’s true gratitude.
01:52:03 There’s now a runway for scientists to talk to people.
01:52:07 I mean, you had the, I always forget this guy’s name,
01:52:09 the virus guy from Columbia.
01:52:10 It’s a wrecking yellow.
01:52:12 Yeah, amazing, right?
01:52:13 I mean, forgetting the controversy around all the stuff
01:52:16 of 2020, 21.
01:52:17 I mean, he is an encyclopedia of all things virology.
01:52:21 Yeah, people should listen to his podcast
01:52:24 this week in virology.
01:52:25 He’s also an incredible lecturer and educator.
01:52:28 It’s fascinating.
01:52:30 It’s fascinating when people take again that leap
01:52:33 of putting all that education online.
01:52:36 That’s non controversial at all.
01:52:39 It’s like everybody there, people should go listen to him
01:52:43 for the most part in terms of, at his best, at least.
01:52:47 There’s no politics in it.
01:52:48 There’s none of that.
01:52:50 No, he’s a virus jockey.
01:52:51 He likes playing around with bacteria and viruses and.
01:52:55 But that said, molecular biology.
01:52:57 We all say stuff carelessly all the time.
01:53:00 So he gets in a bit of trouble on some of the things
01:53:02 you’ve said about like dismissing lab leak theory.
01:53:06 Like, there’s no way.
01:53:07 He dismisses that.
01:53:08 Yeah, but not, he’s not making,
01:53:10 like folks, there’s a difference when you say stuff
01:53:16 like off the cuff and when you say stuff
01:53:20 that’s like courts your principles
01:53:22 and you’ve thought about it for a very long time.
01:53:25 You talking for hours, for hundreds of hours
01:53:28 and you can just say stuff.
01:53:29 You could just say your opinions.
01:53:32 Will Smith slapped.
01:53:34 I was wondering, okay, wait,
01:53:36 how long have we been recording?
01:53:37 I was wondering how long it was gonna take us
01:53:38 before someone talked about Ukraine.
01:53:40 No, no, Will Smith.
01:53:41 I was wondering whether or not we’d make it the end.
01:53:43 I had it planned.
01:53:45 I was literally in the back of my mind.
01:53:46 I had it planned that at the end,
01:53:48 if we didn’t talk about the Will Smith, Chris Rock thing,
01:53:50 that I was gonna say, it’s amazing.
01:53:52 This is the first conversation to happen
01:53:54 in a long time where it wasn’t mentioned.
01:53:58 Oh, no.
01:53:59 No, do not pull it up.
01:54:01 We don’t need to see it.
01:54:01 We don’t need to see it.
01:54:02 Here we go.
01:54:03 It revealed some interesting things
01:54:04 about human beings, impulse control and lack thereof.
01:54:08 But, you know, oh my goodness.
01:54:11 Chris Rock has a material for the rest of his career.
01:54:13 Yeah, I think he’s not short on material.
01:54:16 But I do, see, if I knew what I wanted to tweet,
01:54:21 if I knew you a lot to just slap comedians,
01:54:23 my conversation with Tim Dillon
01:54:25 would have gone very differently.
01:54:27 People just being humans.
01:54:29 There’s so much fascinating human nature on display there.
01:54:33 It’s also, in terms of it becoming a topic
01:54:37 that a lot of people are talking about
01:54:39 versus the war in Ukraine, for example,
01:54:41 is also fascinating to watch,
01:54:42 like just these kind of news cycles moving through.
01:54:46 I think, if I may, I’m sorry to interrupt,
01:54:48 but, you know, anytime we observe something very limbic,
01:54:53 very emotional, you know,
01:54:55 we generally can empathize somewhat, right?
01:54:59 We all know what it’s like to feel angry.
01:55:00 We all know what it’s like to feel ashamed.
01:55:02 We all know what it’s like to feel shocked.
01:55:04 Images of war are, for most people, very hard to relate to.
01:55:09 We see it, it’s, you know, there are these images
01:55:12 and they’re very traumatic and challenging
01:55:15 to look at at times,
01:55:16 and yet most people have no idea
01:55:17 what it feels like to be shot at
01:55:19 or what it feels like to have your home destroyed
01:55:21 or what it feels like to be an aggressor in that way.
01:55:26 So it’s very, so I think that people naturally orient
01:55:29 towards things that feel familiar to them,
01:55:31 even though the circumstances are different.
01:55:33 And people also forget, they look at these celebrities,
01:55:37 that’s just like looking at criticism of Will Smith,
01:55:39 you forget that they’re human too.
01:55:43 That’s one of the most surprising things for me,
01:55:45 having done this podcast and met celebrities
01:55:48 and stuff like that.
01:55:50 They’re human, they’re all human.
01:55:52 And that’s inspiring to me,
01:55:53 like some of these great folks that have won Nobel Prizes
01:55:55 and built some cool things,
01:55:57 they’re just human, like the rest of us.
01:55:59 Well, and if you look at actors and actresses,
01:56:01 I mean, there’s some amazing ones, right?
01:56:03 And who also do well in the outside life,
01:56:05 but their careers were built on the business
01:56:09 of pretending to be other people.
01:56:12 And that’s got to distort maybe positively,
01:56:16 but also just let’s be honest,
01:56:19 what it is that the neuroplasticity there,
01:56:21 the changes in the areas of the brain
01:56:22 that represent personality have to be quite different
01:56:25 for somebody who pretends to be
01:56:26 lots of different personalities and gets paid for it.
01:56:28 You’re working the reward system
01:56:30 into the system of self identity.
01:56:33 And you have to imagine that that can really
01:56:38 contort somebody’s neurology
01:56:41 in ways that maybe they are not as,
01:56:43 maybe they are not in touch with reality
01:56:45 in the same way that we are.
01:56:47 Remember earlier we were talking about
01:56:47 neurotic versus psychotic.
01:56:50 They may be more borderline
01:56:53 in their kind of ground state than we think.
01:56:56 And so I’m actually impressed anytime there’s a celebrity
01:56:58 who doesn’t have a messed up life.
01:57:00 I’m like, oh wow, finally somebody who’s managed
01:57:02 to maintain some semblance,
01:57:05 at least from the outside, of normalcy.
01:57:08 So first of all, I can empathize
01:57:11 with the actions that Will Smith did, right?
01:57:14 They’re not, I think they’re kind of,
01:57:16 not kind of, they’re just shitty.
01:57:18 You should probably talk privately, man to man,
01:57:21 not, because otherwise it’s like a dramatic display.
01:57:24 It’s almost like you are a fake, you’re acting.
01:57:27 Well, there are all these questions, right?
01:57:29 I mean, obviously it was aggressive at some level.
01:57:33 There’s this question of whether or not it was impulsive.
01:57:36 I think most people feel yes.
01:57:37 There’s a question, there was the protective nature of it
01:57:39 because he was doing it to, you know,
01:57:42 apparently in defense.
01:57:43 But then there’s also the context,
01:57:47 he lost touch with the context, right?
01:57:50 Whereas Chris Rock basically gets,
01:57:53 there’s the possible critique that he went too far.
01:57:56 That’s gonna be in the eye of the beholder.
01:57:59 But then, and depending on how you view comedy and jokes,
01:58:01 but then there’s also the fact that he took that slap
01:58:04 and then just snapped right back,
01:58:05 so much so that people thought maybe it was fake.
01:58:07 He also waited with his hands behind his back.
01:58:10 That’s just natural, he likes to stand like that.
01:58:12 I mean, I got to a little bit of a story here
01:58:18 to connect to what Chris Rock did.
01:58:22 Like I wish, what Chris Rock did in terms of just
01:58:27 taking the slap and keep going,
01:58:28 first of all, just props for somebody
01:58:30 that’s able to maintain cool in that situation
01:58:33 for the most part.
01:58:35 I think I like watched it once.
01:58:36 You only have to be alive on this planet
01:58:39 to see it, you can’t avoid seeing it.
01:58:42 I wish at that afterwards, he would sort of say something
01:58:47 loving and kind to Will Smith and his wife
01:58:52 and then hit him real hard, lean into the joke.
01:58:56 But I think in hockey, they call it taking a number.
01:59:00 I have a friend who plays hockey and there’s this idea
01:59:01 that if someone checks you really badly in one game,
01:59:04 you don’t go and check them again,
01:59:06 you don’t get into a fight.
01:59:07 But three games later, you blade them in the shin.
01:59:14 The ability to defer and to handle it
01:59:18 in whatever fashion one feels is appropriate.
01:59:20 They’re probably also friends and all those kinds of things
01:59:22 that they respect each other, so he probably didn’t,
01:59:25 but there’s a comedian instinct.
01:59:27 I saw this, I was at an open mic here in Texas.
01:59:33 I won’t say where, there’s many open mics.
01:59:35 Have you gone to a few of these?
01:59:36 These are pretty good.
01:59:37 No, so there is more sort of rougher kind of.
01:59:44 Yeah, you’ve been hanging out in West Texas lately.
01:59:47 Austin’s too tame for Lex, so he’s headed to West Texas.
01:59:50 Exactly, I put on a cowboy hat
01:59:53 and instantly I became a cowboy.
01:59:54 I’ve been talking like a cowboy.
01:59:56 I mean, I belong out there in the desert.
01:59:58 He’s gone from eating meat and athletic greens
02:00:02 to rattlesnakes, rattlesnake jerky.
02:00:03 Exactly.
02:00:04 No, there was a, open mic is late at night
02:00:08 and I was one of the only people in the audience.
02:00:11 There’s a couple of drunk folks, a few drunk folks.
02:00:15 One of them was a couple, like bikers with helmets and so on,
02:00:22 a guy and a girl.
02:00:23 And then the comedian, the open mic comedian,
02:00:28 did a joke about people who wear helmets.
02:00:31 I don’t know if it was on purpose or not,
02:00:33 but he did the joke.
02:00:34 And then the guy about women who wear helmets.
02:00:38 And the guy, it’s this exact same situation.
02:00:41 The guy stood up, walked up to him.
02:00:44 There was no slap.
02:00:45 It’s so interesting,
02:00:45 because this happened before the Will Smith thing.
02:00:47 So he walked up to the comedian
02:00:51 and said, I think he pointed his finger down
02:00:59 and told him to stop or something like that.
02:01:01 And then sat down.
02:01:02 This is an audience of like six people.
02:01:05 And at midnight around then, there’s nobody,
02:01:09 no security, nothing.
02:01:10 In Texas.
02:01:11 In Texas.
02:01:12 Which implies.
02:01:12 And then this guy was the energy drunk,
02:01:16 but also a biker and what he felt his lady
02:01:23 was now attacked by the comedian, right?
02:01:25 With his words.
02:01:27 And the comedian was a kind of out of shape, small guy.
02:01:32 So he’s not threatening at all and probably in trouble.
02:01:37 And the comedian, after he sat down,
02:01:39 he looked a little bit scared.
02:01:41 He paced back and forth.
02:01:43 And then he did the joke again.
02:01:47 Wow.
02:01:48 And I was sitting and I started,
02:01:50 I leaned back and I just did this like,
02:01:55 because that is comedy.
02:01:56 And the guy was getting angrier and angrier.
02:02:00 And he just sat there.
02:02:02 And the comedian went on for a couple more minutes
02:02:06 and then did another bad joke,
02:02:09 but another joke about him.
02:02:10 It’s just like, he leaned into it.
02:02:12 If you go to a small comedy club, open mic or otherwise,
02:02:15 you’re in the shooting gallery.
02:02:17 Like you’re basically there teed up as a pin to get it.
02:02:21 We went and saw Andrew Scholls in San Francisco.
02:02:24 In San Francisco?
02:02:25 Yeah, it was hilarious.
02:02:26 It was amazing.
02:02:27 I mean, he’s just masterful in his ability
02:02:30 to command an audience.
02:02:32 But I felt for the people up front,
02:02:34 but no sympathy either because you buy tickets
02:02:37 to sit up front at a Scholls show, you’re gonna get it.
02:02:41 But he was very loving.
02:02:43 Yeah, and funny.
02:02:44 First of all, funny.
02:02:46 The funniness really helps you.
02:02:48 But the ethic of the comedian is like that fearlessness.
02:02:52 What I really liked is like the danger,
02:02:57 there’s risk to comedy and there’s also consequences.
02:03:00 Have you watched that show?
02:03:02 What is it?
02:03:03 The Marvelous Miss Maisel show?
02:03:04 It’s really good.
02:03:05 I watched a few of them.
02:03:07 Guilty pleasure there.
02:03:09 She plays a comic in the, I think it’s mid 1960s in New York.
02:03:14 And there’s a character that somewhat resembles Lenny Bruce.
02:03:18 It’s sort of meant to be Lenny Bruce.
02:03:21 And they’re always getting arrested and this kind of thing.
02:03:24 I think I learned about it from Joe.
02:03:25 Anyway, the writing is great.
02:03:27 It’s very funny.
02:03:29 But yeah, comedy is designed to push boundaries, right?
02:03:32 And to say the thing that other people aren’t,
02:03:36 feel they can’t say.
02:03:38 Not something in science, right?
02:03:39 Science you’re supposed to,
02:03:40 etiquette is a big part of how you communicate ideas.
02:03:43 It’s about constraining communication.
02:03:46 This is something, I mean, I confess on the podcast,
02:03:48 in the goals of making it clear, interesting,
02:03:52 surprising and actionable,
02:03:54 you have to constrain the amount
02:03:57 and the style of information.
02:03:58 Otherwise it becomes something else altogether, right?
02:04:02 I saw Sandra Perchay, Google CEO,
02:04:05 said that he likes the thing you mentioned,
02:04:08 not the yoga nidra, but the NSDR,
02:04:11 non sleep deep rest podcast over meditation.
02:04:15 I don’t know if you saw that.
02:04:16 Yeah, I saw that, yeah.
02:04:18 Yeah.
02:04:19 Why?
02:04:20 What do you think that is?
02:04:21 What do you think the difference is?
02:04:22 Yeah, so non sleep deep rest, NSDR is an acronym
02:04:25 that I coined because it encompasses a lot of practices
02:04:28 that are not meditation per se,
02:04:31 but that bring the brain and body
02:04:32 into a state of relaxation and focus.
02:04:34 So hypnosis is one variant of NSDR.
02:04:37 There are other variants of NSDR.
02:04:38 You can just look these up and you’ll find them.
02:04:40 And I think that they’ve caught on
02:04:42 and that the CEO of Google is an avid practitioner of NSDR
02:04:49 because it has this amazing ability
02:04:51 to reset your energy levels and focus.
02:04:53 Whereas with meditation, many people find meditation hard.
02:04:57 And part of the reason they find it hard
02:04:58 is that it requires focus.
02:05:00 NSDR is a state which is very calm and relaxing.
02:05:04 You don’t have to work too hard.
02:05:05 You’re just listening to a script,
02:05:06 whereas most forms of meditation, not all,
02:05:08 but most forms of meditation involve cranking up
02:05:11 the activity in your prefrontal cortex
02:05:14 and trying to see your thoughts
02:05:16 as opposed to thinking your thoughts
02:05:18 or focus on your breath,
02:05:20 but then third personing yourself in some respect
02:05:23 and that’s work.
02:05:24 And so many people who meditate quite intensely
02:05:26 feel more exhausted.
02:05:28 Now that doesn’t mean that meditation
02:05:30 doesn’t have any utility,
02:05:31 but it’s distinctly different than NSDR.
02:05:33 And I think that people are working,
02:05:35 certainly the CEO of Google I have to imagine
02:05:37 is working very hard and using his forebrain.
02:05:39 If he’s going to have 20 or 30 minutes to take a break,
02:05:42 he should, and I think this is what he’s doing,
02:05:44 he should go out for a jog and not listen to anything
02:05:46 and just kind of let his mind wander
02:05:48 or sit there in a chair and just zone out or do NSDR.
02:05:52 The problem is people are not that good at shifting states.
02:05:57 We are all actually pretty good at,
02:05:59 even people with severe ADHD,
02:06:01 we had an episode about this,
02:06:03 can become hyper focused on things that they actually enjoy
02:06:07 because dope and most of the drugs designed to treat ADHD
02:06:10 are drugs that increase the levels of dopamine.
02:06:12 So when you like something,
02:06:13 there’s dopamine release and you can focus.
02:06:15 It’s when you don’t like something that’s hard to focus,
02:06:17 shifting states is hard.
02:06:18 I’m sure you’ve experienced this.
02:06:19 If you’ve ever been in deep research or podcasting,
02:06:22 podcasting, and then all of a sudden you go for a run,
02:06:24 you probably spend the first third of that run thinking.
02:06:27 And then in the middle third,
02:06:28 you’re kind of that thinking is fractured a bit.
02:06:30 And then in the final third
02:06:32 is where you finally get to relax
02:06:34 because the brain doesn’t shift states very quickly.
02:06:37 We can go from sleep to wakefulness quickly.
02:06:39 We can go from wakefulness to sleep quickly,
02:06:41 but we don’t shift between different states of consciousness
02:06:45 like a step function, except in rare cases, right?
02:06:49 Fear is one.
02:06:50 All of a sudden we hear an explosion right now,
02:06:51 it’s a step function.
02:06:52 We’re in fear or we’re in alertness, right?
02:06:56 A heightened state of alertness.
02:06:57 But NSDR is terrific at allowing people
02:07:01 to learn to shift their state.
02:07:03 And I actually would venture to argue that
02:07:07 part of the value of meditation and exercise
02:07:09 is the actual state that you get into
02:07:11 in deep meditation or exercise,
02:07:13 but just as valuable is the transition
02:07:16 that you have to take yourself through
02:07:17 from one state of mind to the other and then back again.
02:07:20 When I look, David Goggins, he always seems to come up
02:07:23 because he represents so many important things,
02:07:25 drive, determination, override of emotional state,
02:07:29 going from being a 300 pound plus person
02:07:31 to a fit person through,
02:07:32 he’s never revealed anything substantial
02:07:35 about what he ate or what he didn’t eat.
02:07:36 He basically says like, listen, run a lot, eat less, right?
02:07:40 But what’s remarkable is so much of what he says
02:07:44 is about those transitions,
02:07:46 about taking oneself from a state of I don’t want to
02:07:48 to scruffing oneself and like you’re gonna do it anyway.
02:07:52 And then being able to carry that into regular life,
02:07:55 so to speak.
02:07:56 So I think that NSDR is immensely powerful.
02:08:00 It’s zero cost.
02:08:01 And one of the reasons I’m such a fan of people doing it
02:08:04 is that most people don’t stick to a meditation practice.
02:08:08 There are also been a few cases
02:08:09 you might find this interesting.
02:08:10 There’s a book by Scott Carney.
02:08:11 I forget what it’s called.
02:08:13 I think it’s called the transcendence trap or something.
02:08:15 I’m gonna have that title wrong,
02:08:16 but there have been a fair number of cases of people
02:08:20 that go and do very extensive meditation,
02:08:22 silent meditation retreats,
02:08:24 who then return to normal life and end up killing themselves.
02:08:28 There are states of mind inside of extended meditations
02:08:31 or silent meditations that are very beneficial.
02:08:34 And I’m certainly not suggesting people don’t meditate,
02:08:37 but I know at least one person who came back
02:08:39 from one of these long extended meditation retreats
02:08:41 and wasn’t able to shift their state back
02:08:43 into one that was functional in regular life.
02:08:45 And that book includes a very dramatic story.
02:08:47 I don’t wanna give it away in case people
02:08:50 check out the book,
02:08:51 but Scott told the story to me directly once,
02:08:53 where someone feels they’ve reached enlightenment
02:08:58 and then commit suicide.
02:09:00 So these very unusual brain states
02:09:03 are potentially hazardous if people can’t return from them.
02:09:07 So it’s nice to focus not on those brain states,
02:09:11 but instead on the shifting.
02:09:12 Right, this morning I woke up a little bit earlier
02:09:15 than I would have liked.
02:09:16 I use this reverie app that’s research backed,
02:09:18 REVRI.com.
02:09:20 There’s a free version of it or you can try it for free.
02:09:23 So I feel comfortable.
02:09:24 That’s for hypnosis?
02:09:25 For hypnosis.
02:09:25 And I do a self hypnosis to put me back into sleep.
02:09:29 And if I can’t sleep,
02:09:29 you just put me into a state of deep relaxation.
02:09:31 I would put hypnosis under the category of NSDR,
02:09:35 yoga nidra under the category of NSDR.
02:09:37 There are now some NSDR scripts online
02:09:39 if you just go to YouTube that you can just listen to.
02:09:42 Do you like those?
02:09:43 I do, yeah.
02:09:43 I think the one from made for is quite good.
02:09:45 I have an affiliation with them, but it’s free.
02:09:46 So I feel comfortable mentioning it.
02:09:48 I do, I really like the reverie app.
02:09:50 I can vary.
02:09:52 And as you, the more you do them,
02:09:53 the more quickly you can shift your brain
02:09:55 into a state of deep relaxation.
02:09:56 I will sometimes stop mid podcast.
02:09:59 If it’s, sometimes our recordings go seven, eight hours
02:10:02 and I’ll stop and I’ll do a one minute hypnosis.
02:10:04 They have one minute hypnosis inside reverie.
02:10:06 You’re only going to,
02:10:08 you’re only going to find that one minute hypnosis
02:10:10 is effective if you are routinely doing 10
02:10:13 and 15 minute hypnosis in addition to that.
02:10:16 Meaning I do it every other day or so at 10 or 15.
02:10:19 So there’s a, is there a YouTube one minute hypnosis
02:10:22 or is this for the reverie?
02:10:23 There are, but inside of reverie as well.
02:10:25 You can find them online.
02:10:26 A really good.
02:10:27 Pull it up so I can see.
02:10:28 Yeah, so reverie is good.
02:10:29 And then Michael Sealy, S E A L E Y.
02:10:32 He has some long hypnosis scripts, but again,
02:10:34 these are all free and you know,
02:10:37 there’s a lot of good research now on the neural networks
02:10:40 and it shifts your so called default network,
02:10:42 the default mode network.
02:10:43 It shifts how much of your forebrain you’re using.
02:10:46 And it also is very, very good.
02:10:48 If I get so many questions about,
02:10:51 hey, I’m really upset.
02:10:53 I found out about my girlfriend’s sexual past
02:10:55 or, hey, I’m so upset.
02:10:57 I found out that my boyfriend was cheating
02:10:58 or, oh, so and so died.
02:10:59 How do I get over these emotions?
02:11:01 How do I deal with them?
02:11:02 And hypnosis has shown to be very useful for people
02:11:05 to learn to bring themselves into a state
02:11:07 of deep relaxation, to literally project in their mind’s eye
02:11:12 these very intense things that they don’t like.
02:11:15 And then for people to associate with other emotions
02:11:19 in their body to learn to be calm
02:11:21 while feeling your feelings,
02:11:23 to dissociate the mind body communication to some extent.
02:11:26 Just observe the feelings.
02:11:28 Observe them and start to associate them
02:11:30 with positive experiences.
02:11:31 You’re an Android guy,
02:11:32 so soon it should be available on Android.
02:11:35 Then it doesn’t exist for me.
02:11:36 Yeah, I know.
02:11:37 It’s only, you know, I don’t get it.
02:11:38 Android is the device of the people,
02:11:40 all you elitist people with your iPhones.
02:11:43 Tell me this about Android.
02:11:44 Now you want to, this is the one thing that gets me.
02:11:48 Cause I’m very close to someone who uses an Android phone.
02:11:50 I feel like that.
02:11:51 So you have great people in your life.
02:11:53 That’s good to know.
02:11:54 No, their messages always look green to me,
02:11:56 but I answer yours, not despite that.
02:12:00 But they, I feel like the Android phones
02:12:02 are very trigger happy.
02:12:03 Like anything I touch does something.
02:12:05 Whereas the Apple phone is kind of built
02:12:07 for like a macaque monkey to be able to operate,
02:12:10 which is great for me because I’m more of a macaque monkey
02:12:12 and you’re a more sophisticated ape.
02:12:14 Oh, I see.
02:12:15 I see.
02:12:15 I feel like that.
02:12:16 I think like you have to be.
02:12:17 They’re more sensitive.
02:12:18 Yeah, you have to have, you know, I mean,
02:12:19 I’ve got fat fingers, you know, I’ve got clumsy fingers.
02:12:22 The Android is too, well, maybe you need
02:12:24 to soften your touch.
02:12:26 What I would do is go into the most,
02:12:27 sort by most popular, because there’s some older ones
02:12:31 that I really like and it generally scales with that.
02:12:33 So I’ll do the, this one,
02:12:35 the hypnosis for clearing subconscious negativity.
02:12:38 That’s an hour long one.
02:12:40 The sleep and anxiety one, 40 minutes,
02:12:41 but those you listen to as you fall asleep.
02:12:44 As you fall asleep.
02:12:44 Oh, we’re going to do this now?
02:12:45 Yeah, yeah, let’s listen to it.
02:12:48 And I have created this hypnosis recording for you
02:12:52 to help you.
02:12:53 And this is the voice.
02:12:53 How often does the voice pop up?
02:12:55 And at the same time.
02:12:57 You don’t watch it.
02:12:58 You just listen to it.
02:12:59 Your anxiety.
02:13:03 Now, one of the most important things.
02:13:05 It’s a great voice.
02:13:06 At the outset of any self hypnosis experience
02:13:10 is to know and understand.
02:13:12 So people really should know that stage hypnosis
02:13:16 is about the hypnotist getting you to do things
02:13:19 you wouldn’t normally do.
02:13:21 Self hypnosis, which is what we’re talking about here,
02:13:23 reverie in this is about you getting your brain
02:13:26 into the state that you want.
02:13:28 And again, I mean, there’s a ton of neuroimaging data
02:13:32 and work on trauma and pain relief.
02:13:34 And our labs are working on this with David Spiegel’s lab.
02:13:36 I really encourage people to explore NSDR.
02:13:39 And if this feels a little too wacky and out there,
02:13:41 then I would just put in NSDR into YouTube
02:13:44 and there’s some good NSDR scripts.
02:13:46 Yeah, by the way, Sondar is a fan of your podcast.
02:13:49 No, it’s okay, we don’t need to play it.
02:13:50 Yeah, so I don’t know him.
02:13:53 But I get a lot of media outlets picked up
02:13:56 on his love of NSDR.
02:13:58 And I have to imagine running Google involves a lot of,
02:14:01 juggling a lot of.
02:14:02 He’s one of the great CEOs because everybody loves him.
02:14:05 Everybody loves him.
02:14:06 Have you interviewed him?
02:14:07 No, but we’ll do the interview eventually.
02:14:10 So it’s this annoying thing about me being a stickler
02:14:13 for three hours, CEOs don’t seem to understand.
02:14:17 Like, not understand, but it’s scheduling.
02:14:20 So what happens is Sondar said, yes, definitely, let’s do it.
02:14:23 I’m a fan of podcasts, is a fan of yours.
02:14:26 And then he goes to his executive assistant like,
02:14:30 oh, let’s find a slot.
02:14:32 And then they immediately think, all right,
02:14:34 well, one hour is good.
02:14:35 45 minutes.
02:14:36 90 minutes.
02:14:37 By Zoom.
02:14:38 90 minutes, yeah, right.
02:14:39 Well, no, they know in person that I’m a stickler on that.
02:14:42 But like, it’s like, no, we need more.
02:14:45 And it’s so hard to.
02:14:47 Do you still travel to do your podcast or generally?
02:14:49 No, most people come down here.
02:14:50 Most people, but for certain situations, obviously,
02:14:55 like if you’re in prison.
02:14:57 Right.
02:14:59 Or you’re ahead of.
02:15:00 Imagine if you get out on work for a lot of people
02:15:02 that have anklets so that they can go to an Alex Friedman
02:15:04 podcast, it’ll probably happen.
02:15:05 Have you ever been in a prison?
02:15:07 No, you know, either a visitation or on the inside.
02:15:13 From my hike, I can see San Quentin.
02:15:15 It’s really weird that San Quentin and Alcatraz,
02:15:17 you know, Bay Area, beautiful, everyone thinks like,
02:15:18 you know, like there’s the Bay and there’s Alcatraz
02:15:21 and San Quentin sitting right there.
02:15:22 Does that make you feel?
02:15:24 You know, it’s amazing how easy it is to overlook
02:15:27 that they’re there and forget that they’re there.
02:15:28 But when I drive by San Quentin, I think about it.
02:15:31 I also think about the people who are in there
02:15:33 who might be innocent.
02:15:34 I’ve seen some of those episodes on Rogan and elsewhere.
02:15:37 And Amanda Knox talks a lot about this, right?
02:15:40 Whether or not you believe her story or not,
02:15:42 I happen to believe her story, personally,
02:15:44 based on what I know, what, you know,
02:15:47 I’m sure there are people disagree with me.
02:15:48 I think to myself, what it must be like to be in a cell
02:15:52 and know in your heart’s heart, you didn’t do it, you know?
02:15:57 I mean, I can’t think of many things worse.
02:16:01 I can’t think of many things worse.
02:16:02 That’s so clearly unjust, but life is full of unjust things
02:16:08 like this, cruel things happen all the time.
02:16:12 You lose a loved one for no good reason.
02:16:16 You lose your job.
02:16:20 You lose your home.
02:16:22 Yeah, I’ve been talking to a lot of refugees now,
02:16:24 and the war in Ukraine has really focused my mind
02:16:27 to how much suffering there is in the world.
02:16:29 And so just cruel things happen all the time.
02:16:32 And people kind of, there’s this suffering,
02:16:36 and you kind of go on.
02:16:38 You stick to the people really close to you.
02:16:41 There’s still love all around you.
02:16:44 Traumatic events kind of focus your mind on the,
02:16:47 like, very practical, like, okay,
02:16:50 how do we solve the problem?
02:16:51 How do we escape?
02:16:52 Let’s solve, like, survival, food, shelter, focus.
02:16:56 Remember that book,
02:16:58 “‘All’s Quiet on the Western Front,” by World War I?
02:17:01 There’s this line in there.
02:17:01 I forget what it is,
02:17:02 about how war is like the smell of a skunk.
02:17:06 Like a little bit is actually a little bit is slightly,
02:17:10 there’s something slightly delicious of it,
02:17:12 is what it says in the book.
02:17:14 I happen to like the smell of ferrets and skunks and things.
02:17:17 I had a pet ferret when I was a kid,
02:17:19 and I like that musky scent.
02:17:21 Most people, just it’s repulsive to them.
02:17:23 It’s actually a gene, believe it or not.
02:17:25 Some people have the gene
02:17:26 that makes the musky scent repulsive.
02:17:29 Some people love it. Let me ask you this.
02:17:32 There’s another gene, this is a fun one.
02:17:34 Microwave popcorn, smells good, neutral,
02:17:37 or disgusting to you?
02:17:38 Good, very good.
02:17:39 There are people who have a gene
02:17:40 that leads them to the perception
02:17:43 that the smell of microwave popcorn that you find is good,
02:17:46 it smells like putrid vomit to them.
02:17:48 It’s a particular gene variant,
02:17:51 and they can smell certain elements
02:17:52 within the microwave popcorn.
02:17:55 It’s pretty, it’s prominent in France.
02:17:58 This gene, and so in laboratories
02:18:01 where you have a lot of French people,
02:18:04 it’s often said like you’re not allowed
02:18:05 to make microwave popcorn.
02:18:06 It smells putrid, disgusting, you know?
02:18:09 So a lot of it’s in the perception of the beholder, right?
02:18:14 But okay, before I leave the NSDR,
02:18:18 focus in general, as you said, it’s for shifting mind states.
02:18:23 Is there advice you have for how to achieve focus
02:18:28 on a task?
02:18:29 Yes.
02:18:31 First of all, we have to distinguish
02:18:32 between modulators and mediators,
02:18:34 and I’ll do this very briefly.
02:18:36 There are a lot of things
02:18:37 that will modulate your state of focus,
02:18:39 but they don’t directly mediate your sense of focus.
02:18:42 So for instance, if right now a fire alarm went off
02:18:44 in this building, it would modulate our attention.
02:18:48 We would get up and leave.
02:18:49 It would be very hard to do what we’re doing
02:18:50 with that banging in the background, at least at first.
02:18:53 So it’s modulating focus, but it’s not really involved
02:18:58 in the mechanisms of focus, right?
02:19:01 In the same way, being well rested when you sleep,
02:19:04 your autonomic nervous system that adjusts states
02:19:06 of alertness and focus and calm works better
02:19:09 than when you’re sleep deprived.
02:19:10 So if you’re sleeping better, you’re gonna focus better.
02:19:12 So I always answer this way to a question like this,
02:19:15 because the best thing that anyone can do
02:19:18 for their mental health, physical health, and performance
02:19:20 in athletic or cognitive endeavors or creative endeavors
02:19:23 is to make sure that you’re getting enough quality sleep,
02:19:26 enough of the time for you.
02:19:28 And that’s gonna differ.
02:19:29 We could talk about what that means.
02:19:30 Now, in terms of things that mediate focus
02:19:33 without getting into the description of mechanisms,
02:19:35 cause we have podcasts about that.
02:19:37 It’s very clear that mental focus follows visual focus,
02:19:42 provided that you’re a sighted person.
02:19:45 Much of the training that’s being done now in China
02:19:47 to teach kids to focus better,
02:19:49 literally has them stare at a target,
02:19:52 blinking every so often, but really training themselves
02:19:55 to breathe calmly and maintain a tight visual aperture.
02:20:00 When you read, you have to maintain
02:20:02 a tight visual aperture.
02:20:03 You’re literally scrolling like a highlighter
02:20:04 in your mind’s eye, right?
02:20:06 It’s kind of obvious once you hear it.
02:20:08 So for people that have problems focusing sleep well,
02:20:12 learn to dilate and contract your visual field consciously.
02:20:17 This can be done if you practice it a little bit.
02:20:19 And then as I said before,
02:20:21 it is very hard to get into a state of focus,
02:20:23 like a step function immediately, like snapping your fingers.
02:20:26 What you can do is you can pick any object,
02:20:28 but ideally an object at roughly the same distance,
02:20:31 placed at roughly the same distance
02:20:32 to which you’re going to do that work and stare at it.
02:20:35 You’re allowed to blink.
02:20:36 And as your mind starts to drift every once in a while
02:20:39 to understand that’s normal,
02:20:40 but try and narrow your visual aperture
02:20:43 and bring that into your visual field
02:20:45 so that that’s the most prominent thing,
02:20:47 kind of like portrait mode in your phone.
02:20:49 This would look very different in portrait mode
02:20:51 than it would in just a standard photograph mode.
02:20:53 And then after doing that for 30 to 60 seconds,
02:20:57 moving into the work that you’re about to do
02:20:58 and really encourage yourself to do that.
02:21:01 If you’re somebody who’s low vision or no vision,
02:21:03 you’re going to use your ears to do this.
02:21:05 Braille readers have trouble focusing sometimes
02:21:08 because they feel other stuff and they hear other stuff.
02:21:11 So you learn to adjust that aperture consciously.
02:21:15 And then of course the pharmacologic tools,
02:21:17 just enough caffeine, but not too much, right?
02:21:20 We talked about white noise, brown noise,
02:21:22 music or no music, really varies,
02:21:24 but it’s very clear that binaural beats of 40 Hertz
02:21:28 can shift the brain into a heightened state
02:21:31 of focus and cognition.
02:21:32 So if you’re going to use binaural beats,
02:21:34 which should definitely be used with headphones,
02:21:37 and there are a number of free apps out there and sources,
02:21:39 40 Hertz seems to be the frequency
02:21:43 that best supports the brain shifting
02:21:45 into a particular mode of focus.
02:21:46 Sorry, can you give us some binaural beats?
02:21:49 Yeah, so you’re going to look for,
02:21:51 you’d want to find an app that offers 40 Hertz.
02:21:54 I think Brainwave allows you to slide bar
02:21:59 up to the particular frequency that you want.
02:22:02 And I should say that there are other frequencies
02:22:05 that are interesting, but 40 Hertz binaural beats
02:22:07 seems to be the one
02:22:09 that there’s the most quality research on.
02:22:11 So it’s like a beat, but you’re saying
02:22:14 there’s a lot of mixed science
02:22:16 on the white noise and brown noise.
02:22:19 You really should be doing this with headphones
02:22:21 because binaural beats are best accomplished
02:22:23 by feeding two different frequencies to the two ears.
02:22:26 And then you have what’s called this brainstem area
02:22:28 that reads out what are called interaural time differences.
02:22:30 And then it extracts the delta essentially.
02:22:33 Turn it up.
02:22:33 And then in other things that can enhance focus.
02:22:41 So, you know, the pharmacology around this
02:22:43 is pretty interesting.
02:22:44 Things that tickle the dopamine pathway
02:22:45 and the acetylcholine pathway, they work.
02:22:47 Yeah.
02:22:48 There’s your Ritalin, your Adderals,
02:22:50 your Modafinils, which are prescription.
02:22:51 And there’s a lot of non prescription use
02:22:54 of those prescription drugs.
02:22:55 Not so much in my generation,
02:22:57 but in people 35 and younger, you know,
02:23:00 I hear all the time from day traders
02:23:02 and programmers and stuff and kids that play video games,
02:23:04 a lot of Ritalin Adderall use.
02:23:07 I think that unless it’s prescribed by a doctor
02:23:08 for a specific purpose of ADHD,
02:23:10 I don’t think people should go that route, frankly.
02:23:12 Hits the dopamine system way too hard.
02:23:15 Also has a number of negative effects on sexual side effects,
02:23:19 all sorts of things that you just wouldn’t want.
02:23:21 There are a few compounds like alpha GPC,
02:23:25 300 milligrams to 600 milligrams of alpha GPC
02:23:27 with a cup of espresso.
02:23:28 If you’re well rested, you’re like a laser for 90 minutes,
02:23:32 maybe two hours, but then it’s going to taper off
02:23:35 and you have to just recognize that.
02:23:37 And then there’s this whole world of nootropics now
02:23:39 and people trying to figure out the racetams,
02:23:42 paracetams and phenol ethylamine combined with this.
02:23:45 And, you know, it’s not quite in the place
02:23:47 where you’d like it to be.
02:23:48 There are a few companies
02:23:49 that are doing this better than others.
02:23:50 We talk about some of these on the podcast,
02:23:51 but I would always start with behavioral tools
02:23:55 and then consider pharmacology.
02:23:57 And then I suppose the other thing for focus
02:24:00 is there are these, this is a little more esoteric,
02:24:03 but we cover this in an episode on workplace optimization.
02:24:07 Where you place your screen is important.
02:24:09 Staring down at a screen is not going to be as effective
02:24:12 as placing it at eye level or above you.
02:24:15 When the eyes are up,
02:24:16 literally when your eyes are directed forward or up,
02:24:18 the brainstem centers for alertness are activated.
02:24:21 When your eyes are down, it’s actually you’re sort of,
02:24:24 it’s like being pulled under water a little bit
02:24:25 in the autonomic arousal sense.
02:24:27 It’s your closing your eyes is one,
02:24:32 it reflects the brainstem centers
02:24:34 that are active becoming less,
02:24:36 or for alertness, excuse me, becoming less active.
02:24:39 But there’s a really cool effect
02:24:41 that’s active in this room right now,
02:24:42 which is that there’ve been some really interesting studies
02:24:45 that when people work in small compact spaces
02:24:48 or wear a hoodie or a hat,
02:24:49 that can also improve focus like blinders on a horse
02:24:53 for obvious reasons now, based on what I said before,
02:24:55 but also analytic work or the kind of work
02:24:59 where there’s a correct answer that you’re seeking
02:25:02 is best supported by these kind of low ceiling environments.
02:25:05 Whereas there’s something called the cathedral effect,
02:25:07 which is when you work in an outdoor environment
02:25:09 or a high ceiling environment,
02:25:11 it lends itself to kind of pun intended,
02:25:14 kind of loftier ideas and more creativity.
02:25:17 And that probably has to do with the fact
02:25:19 that there’s a natural tendency, a reflex
02:25:21 to expand your visual field
02:25:23 in these high ceiling environments.
02:25:25 Expansion of the visual field
02:25:28 changes the way the brain works in the time domain.
02:25:31 Your engineering and biology oriented listeners
02:25:35 will understand this and music.
02:25:37 For those that don’t, the best way to think about it
02:25:39 is when you have a narrow focus portrait mode on your phone
02:25:42 or you’re very alert, you are fine slicing life in time.
02:25:47 It’s like a, think of it as a high frame rate,
02:25:50 like you’re shooting in slow motion.
02:25:52 When you have a, when you dilate your view,
02:25:56 you’re taking bigger time bins.
02:25:58 And that one way to just let this hopefully land home
02:26:01 is that if you’ve ever had a really exciting day
02:26:04 or podcast interview or experience of any kind,
02:26:08 your system is flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine,
02:26:11 alertness and motivation, all this excitement.
02:26:13 It seems like it goes by very, very fast.
02:26:15 And yet when you think back to that,
02:26:17 it seems like a lot happened.
02:26:19 This happened and that happened.
02:26:20 Now think about waiting in the doctor’s office
02:26:23 in a blank waiting room
02:26:24 with no interesting art on the walls.
02:26:26 It feels like it goes by very, very slow.
02:26:29 Dopamine and norepinephrine are at all time low.
02:26:31 And yet when you think back on that experience,
02:26:33 it’s as if nothing happened
02:26:35 because you were parsing time differently.
02:26:39 So those are the roughly the tools
02:26:41 and the neurochemicals around time perception
02:26:43 and the time domain.
02:26:44 There’s a wonderful book, I’m forgetting the title,
02:26:46 so wonderful I forget the title,
02:26:48 by Dean Bodo Mano from UCLA,
02:26:50 but I think it’s called The Brain is a Time Machine
02:26:53 that talks about this expansion and contraction
02:26:56 of the time domain and what you can do
02:26:58 to leverage it for work and creativity focus and so on.
02:27:01 Yeah, it’s fascinating that I think one way
02:27:03 to define focus for me is the experience,
02:27:07 the feeling of focus is losing track of time,
02:27:11 is getting to a place where you’re no longer
02:27:15 operating in time.
02:27:17 Well, and you mentioned being kind of cramming for something
02:27:21 where you’ll release a lot of adrenaline.
02:27:24 And it is true, you can get a lot done under pressure
02:27:27 because of the way that you’re slicing time.
02:27:29 You don’t actually have more time.
02:27:32 It’s that you’re finally in a brain state
02:27:34 that lends itself well to parsing information really quickly.
02:27:37 Now, if we ramp up your level of stress enough,
02:27:40 it’s definitely, it’s a more or less normal distribution.
02:27:44 We get you stressed enough,
02:27:45 it’s hard to remember anything,
02:27:46 you’re not parsing time well.
02:27:47 But in that middle range, almost every study shows
02:27:50 that the higher levels of autonomic arousal,
02:27:51 meaning norepinephrine, adrenaline in your system,
02:27:54 the more effective you are at things.
02:27:57 And we always hear stress and adrenaline,
02:27:59 it’s just bad, bad, bad.
02:28:00 But my colleague, Ali Krom at Stanford
02:28:02 has done these beautiful studies
02:28:03 where if you just educate people
02:28:05 on how adrenaline makes them sharper thinkers,
02:28:10 they become sharper thinkers.
02:28:11 If you educate them on the fact that stress
02:28:13 makes your cognition worse, their cognition gets worse.
02:28:16 This is why I don’t wear a sleep tracker.
02:28:18 If you tell people they slept poorly,
02:28:19 your recovery score sucks,
02:28:21 they naturally perform less well the next day
02:28:23 than if you tell them your recovery score is high.
02:28:26 And so I don’t have anything against those companies,
02:28:28 but in fact, we use some of their technology,
02:28:31 can be very useful in certain contexts,
02:28:33 but you want to determine your mindset around these things.
02:28:37 And if you tell yourself,
02:28:38 hey, deadlines make me sharp, pressure makes me sharp,
02:28:41 you will perform better.
02:28:43 So stress and anxiety, what is that?
02:28:48 And can it be leveraged for good?
02:28:51 Absolutely, look, whether or not you get into a cold ice bath
02:28:55 or a hot sauna so hot you want to get out,
02:28:58 or you get hit square in the face with something over text
02:29:02 that you really didn’t want to hear or see, it’s adrenaline.
02:29:06 It’s just adrenaline.
02:29:07 And so your subjective readout of that
02:29:09 and what it means is really important.
02:29:11 And you can just channel that.
02:29:13 Well, you can, if you agree with the following statement,
02:29:17 which I do, and many people do because the data support it,
02:29:20 which is Allie Crum’s statement, not mine,
02:29:22 which is she directs the mind body lab at Stanford.
02:29:24 She’s brilliant, by the way, brilliant Harvard trained,
02:29:27 Yale trained, trained licensed clinical psychologist,
02:29:30 also a tenured professor at Stanford.
02:29:31 She’s a Olympian, no, excuse me,
02:29:34 a division one athlete in gymnastics and martial arts.
02:29:39 And her dad is a long time martial arts trainer,
02:29:42 who’s done work with special forces
02:29:43 and he’s an amazing human being and very humble,
02:29:45 very kind, lovely woman and professor scientist.
02:29:50 She says, anything that you do and experience,
02:29:53 but especially stress is the consequence of that thing
02:29:58 and what you believe about that thing.
02:30:01 And so if you consume a lot of information
02:30:04 about the powers of stressful states to bring out your best,
02:30:07 you will perform better.
02:30:09 If you consume a lot of information
02:30:10 about the power of stress to cripple you,
02:30:13 you will perform worse.
02:30:15 There’s absolutely no question, the data are striking.
02:30:18 And this is not growth mindset.
02:30:20 This is just simply what do you believe about stress
02:30:24 based on the dominant knowledge
02:30:27 that you’re consuming about it.
02:30:28 So that’s why it’s fun to watch David Goggins,
02:30:31 here we go again, David or Jocko or Joe or someone put,
02:30:35 or Cam Haynes put out this information about,
02:30:37 or Ryan Hall who ran for Stanford
02:30:39 and then now is like into the power lifting thing
02:30:41 and running.
02:30:43 And there are others too, of course.
02:30:45 When you start to consume a lot of that information,
02:30:48 it’s not just inspiring,
02:30:49 it actually changes your perception
02:30:51 of what your own stressful states mean.
02:30:54 You can actually get better from stress
02:30:56 if you’re in the ocean of knowledge that stress grows you.
02:31:00 If you’re living in the ocean of knowledge,
02:31:03 I was seeing like a pool in the summer,
02:31:05 you got the kiddie pool,
02:31:06 the kids all peeing in it, presumably.
02:31:08 And you got the diving thing,
02:31:09 you got the high dive and all that.
02:31:10 If you believe that the experience of belly flopping
02:31:13 off the high dive is gonna make you a better diver,
02:31:17 in some sense, at least in this analogy, it will.
02:31:20 Whereas if you feel that it’s just the most embarrassing
02:31:22 thing ever, and it’s gonna cripple your ability
02:31:25 to get out in the dive in front of anybody ever again,
02:31:28 well, you’re right about that too.
02:31:31 Yeah, we actually talked with Carl about depression,
02:31:34 all those kinds of things that there could be
02:31:37 these, what are commonly seen as negative journeys,
02:31:41 they could be, when reframed, can be used.
02:31:46 You know, one of the reasons I enjoy our friendship so much
02:31:48 is that you bring this Russian thing,
02:31:50 which I don’t really understand it at a deep level,
02:31:52 how could I, I’m not Russian,
02:31:53 but this mindset like that there’s pain in life.
02:31:58 When I watched that Hedgehog in the Fog cartoon,
02:32:02 I thought, no wonder Russians call it the way they do.
02:32:05 This is the most, it’s so sad,
02:32:06 it’s beautiful in Sabbath, it’s so sad.
02:32:08 Whereas out here, it’s like Sesame Street,
02:32:11 and my mother would not let me watch Sesame Street
02:32:13 when I was a kid.
02:32:15 She thought it was too chaotic.
02:32:17 Too chaotic. Too chaotic.
02:32:18 She was like, it’s too chaotic.
02:32:19 Too many things going on.
02:32:20 Captain Kangaroo, we were allowed,
02:32:22 and then Mr. Rogers, we were allowed.
02:32:24 I never really liked shows,
02:32:25 I liked doing things outside in the yard.
02:32:29 I was trying to trap all the animals,
02:32:30 I didn’t wanna watch stuff on TV.
02:32:32 But Hedgehog in the Fog is enough to turn any kid
02:32:35 into a thinker and a philosopher and a poet.
02:32:38 Here we go.
02:32:40 I fell in love with this when you showed,
02:32:42 look, it even walks with its arms behind its back.
02:32:44 So for people who don’t know,
02:32:45 and we’re watching little clips here to get into,
02:32:48 and it’s a hedgehog that is wandering about
02:32:54 in this fog at night, and.
02:32:57 Can’t even see a lamp.
02:32:59 The fog is so dense.
02:33:00 There’s a feeling of searching.
02:33:03 And then there’s a horse that speaks from a distance.
02:33:08 Words of wisdom.
02:33:09 Some people actually told me that they believe that’s God.
02:33:12 That’s supposed to represent God.
02:33:15 I always thought it was a motherly voice, or a voice.
02:33:18 A voice of conformity that wants you to return to safety.
02:33:23 And here’s the hedgehog is searching
02:33:27 for something that’s in him for the unknown,
02:33:31 to explore the unknown.
02:33:32 And ultimately, as it, as the cartoon unrolls,
02:33:38 it’s, he discovers a friend in a bear.
02:33:43 And he also discovers a lifetime passion
02:33:46 for looking up at the stars,
02:33:47 and the curiosity of exploring what is up there.
02:33:50 And I see that as science, as exploring the mystery.
02:33:55 And also I see that as brave to explore the mystery
02:33:59 given all the uncertainty all around you.
02:34:01 But there is a melancholy, the whole sound of it,
02:34:04 the feel of it, the look of it.
02:34:06 It was, it just captures both the melancholy
02:34:12 and the wonder of childhood.
02:34:14 Which is like, there’s a loneliness to it.
02:34:17 Like, nobody understands me.
02:34:21 That’s there, that children can feel.
02:34:25 Because you’re trying to figure out.
02:34:27 That’s my favorite character right there.
02:34:28 I love the owl.
02:34:29 I love the owl.
02:34:30 The owl shows up every once in a while.
02:34:32 I love the owl.
02:34:33 Sorry, I interrupted you.
02:34:35 Again.
02:34:36 There’s non sequitur.
02:34:37 It means you’re interested 70% of the time.
02:34:39 The other 30%, you’re just an asshole.
02:34:41 So you have to figure out which.
02:34:43 So I’m told.
02:34:45 There’s non sequitur parts in this cartoon.
02:34:47 It’s voted as one of the greatest cartoons of all time.
02:34:49 Short, short little films, documentary filmmakers.
02:34:52 So it is, you know, in the Soviet Union,
02:34:56 in a lot of sort of authoritarian regimes,
02:35:02 there’s channels to communicate difficult ideas to people.
02:35:07 And you figure out those channels.
02:35:08 And in the Soviet Union,
02:35:09 one of those channels was children’s cartoons.
02:35:13 So you’re actually, they’re very much for adults.
02:35:16 Yeah, I like that in some countries,
02:35:19 not so much in the US,
02:35:22 children are treated with more respect
02:35:24 for their intelligence, you know,
02:35:27 and not constantly getting this drivel
02:35:29 of just kind of moronic explosions and whistles and bells
02:35:34 and the voices that just kind of, you know,
02:35:37 children, obviously are children and need to be,
02:35:39 their brains are young and plastic
02:35:41 and need to be treated and nurtured as such.
02:35:45 But they have an intelligence.
02:35:48 And I think that you treat them like morons
02:35:51 and they’re gonna behave like morons.
02:35:53 You treat them as, you know,
02:35:55 people who can consume information
02:35:58 and make sense of it in their own way.
02:36:00 And that’s what they’re gonna do.
02:36:02 They have a seriousness of looking at the world.
02:36:05 I love people that talk with children like they’re adults.
02:36:10 Well, like, here’s if you’re talking to a mini Einstein,
02:36:13 because you’re like really,
02:36:15 they’re asking some big questions.
02:36:17 And I think, I mean, people sometimes
02:36:19 speak of me in this way.
02:36:23 Like, how dumb is this childlike person?
02:36:26 But like, no, there’s intelligence
02:36:28 in these dumb, simple questions that a child asks.
02:36:32 And I always love those questions, the simplicity,
02:36:35 but also the depth of those questions.
02:36:39 Why?
02:36:40 The reason I started watching your podcast
02:36:41 was you did an episode early on with Ray Dalio.
02:36:44 Yeah.
02:36:45 And the first, maybe the first,
02:36:47 but a question that you definitely asked him
02:36:50 was you just said, what is money?
02:36:53 And his answer was fantastic.
02:36:55 It’s a superb question and he gave a superb answer.
02:36:58 And I never would have thought to ask that question.
02:37:02 And it’s the question.
02:37:04 And it was the question to tee things off with.
02:37:07 So simple questions that get right
02:37:10 to the heart of the matter, you know,
02:37:12 and kids aren’t often putting the same cultural filters
02:37:17 and you know, kids generally aren’t concerned
02:37:21 about getting canceled either.
02:37:23 So they’ll ask the question
02:37:25 that no one else is willing to ask.
02:37:26 And they’re not concerned about
02:37:27 how dumb the question sounds.
02:37:30 I find the most fascinating questions
02:37:32 are just really, really simple.
02:37:33 And it is a bit embarrassing to ask those simple questions
02:37:37 of like, what is anything?
02:37:40 You’re asking them for all of us, so please ask them.
02:37:43 I think that question, what is money, is crucial.
02:37:46 And I think the simple questions are the most,
02:37:49 obviously the most interesting.
02:37:51 I’m gonna ask you about, you had awesome podcasts.
02:37:53 I mean, I can ask you questions about basically
02:37:55 all your podcasts.
02:37:56 People should definitely listen to the Huberman Lab,
02:37:57 but with Andy Gap and the conversation,
02:38:00 you talked about strength and muscle building
02:38:02 and all that kind of stuff.
02:38:03 He’s an encyclopedia.
02:38:04 Yeah.
02:38:05 And he also works with a lot of UFC fighters
02:38:08 and he works with, he has a lab that includes a gym.
02:38:11 And so he works on endurance and powerlifting
02:38:14 and also hypertrophy training, et cetera.
02:38:16 But he also does muscle biopsy.
02:38:19 So he runs the full spectrum
02:38:21 and he’s a full tenured professor
02:38:23 and he does all this stuff.
02:38:25 So he’s a really unique person
02:38:29 in this whole fitness landscape
02:38:31 because there are a lot of PTs out there.
02:38:33 There are a lot of kinesiologists.
02:38:34 There are a lot of people studying nutrition
02:38:36 and sports training.
02:38:37 But I think he has the, among the people out there,
02:38:40 he’s at least in the top five,
02:38:42 probably within the top three of people
02:38:45 that really have their arms around the full extent
02:38:47 of what’s possible with training.
02:38:50 And he works with the UFC Performance Center.
02:38:53 Well, I mean, he just said a very systematic way
02:38:55 of describing things that was really nice.
02:38:58 You know, skill, speed, power, strength,
02:39:02 hypertrophy, so muscle mass, right?
02:39:05 Endurance, all kinds of,
02:39:06 and then the philosophical of like adaptation,
02:39:08 how to overload stuff, all that very,
02:39:11 is there stuff, I’ll ask you about ice bath and sauna,
02:39:14 which was surprising to me there.
02:39:16 Is there stuff you took away from that conversation,
02:39:21 like principles about how to get strong,
02:39:25 how to build muscle mass,
02:39:28 that like broadened and deepened your understanding
02:39:31 of that task?
02:39:32 Definitely.
02:39:33 And I’ll do these in bullet points
02:39:34 because if people want the logic behind them
02:39:36 and the mechanism, they can listen to that episode.
02:39:38 It’s a really good episode.
02:39:39 I’ll start with heat and cold really quickly
02:39:40 and just say that avoid cold immersion.
02:39:44 So ice baths and being in cold water up to the neck,
02:39:47 uncomfortably cold within the four hours
02:39:50 after a training session that’s designed
02:39:53 to evoke an adaptation,
02:39:55 either endurance, hypertrophy, or strength,
02:39:57 because the inflammation that you experienced
02:39:59 from a hard endurance workout or from a hard strength
02:40:02 or a hard hypertrophy workout is the stimulus
02:40:05 that you’re going to adapt to.
02:40:07 The cold water immersion reduces inflammation
02:40:10 and can short circuit some of that.
02:40:12 After four hours, you’re probably okay,
02:40:14 but if you can do it a different day
02:40:16 or you can do it before those sessions, that’s better.
02:40:18 Heat, however, can be done immediately after training
02:40:21 and it’s probably beneficial
02:40:22 because of the way that it dilates the vascular system
02:40:25 and perfuses the muscles and ligaments, et cetera,
02:40:28 with more nutrients.
02:40:29 And I should just mention
02:40:31 that was a crucial piece of information.
02:40:33 It’s a little bit surprising.
02:40:34 Was it surprising to you?
02:40:36 Absolutely.
02:40:36 Because I actually,
02:40:37 the way I posed the question to him about cold
02:40:39 was I hear that getting into an ice bath
02:40:41 or a cold water immersion after training
02:40:43 can reduce hypertrophy,
02:40:44 but I’m guessing it’s not that big of a deal.
02:40:45 And he said, no, it is a big deal.
02:40:47 It will short circuit your progress.
02:40:48 Now, for people that are only interested in performance,
02:40:51 who are doing a lot of workouts and trying to recover,
02:40:53 but not trying to grow muscle, get stronger,
02:40:54 or build endurance, then it makes sense to do cold.
02:40:57 Like skill development or something.
02:40:58 Skill development, or you’re an athlete in season.
02:41:01 So you have to, what’s so great about Andy
02:41:04 is he really points out the specific ways to train
02:41:06 given your specific goals.
02:41:08 So if we’re getting swole,
02:41:09 stay out of the ice bath after a workout, there you go.
02:41:12 Lex is always making fun of the meatheads.
02:41:14 I love it.
02:41:15 I put myself in the meathead category
02:41:17 only because I don’t do a real sport now.
02:41:19 I work out and I run, which is working out.
02:41:21 I’m an aspiring meathead, okay, so.
02:41:24 One of these days I’m going to get back to Jiu Jitsu,
02:41:25 or I’m going to get to Jiu Jitsu.
02:41:27 Now, in terms of training,
02:41:28 he has this beautiful three by five concept for strength.
02:41:31 Pick three exercises, compound exercises,
02:41:34 multi joint movements, do them for,
02:41:37 do three to five exercises
02:41:40 for three to five repetitions per set,
02:41:45 rest three to five minutes,
02:41:47 and do that three to five times per week.
02:41:49 And for details, you can, again, look to the episode.
02:41:51 It’s timestamped.
02:41:51 But what’s interesting about this is
02:41:53 three to five times a week is a lot for a muscle group.
02:41:55 Squatting five times a week for five reps,
02:41:58 meaning you’re working pretty heavy,
02:42:00 meaning you’re close to failure,
02:42:01 but not failure for strength generally.
02:42:03 What Andy taught me is that people
02:42:08 who are training mostly for strength
02:42:10 can do these low rep type regimens frequently
02:42:13 because most of the adaptation is neural.
02:42:16 And because you’re not pushing to failure,
02:42:18 in most cases, you don’t get that sore.
02:42:21 And so it’s the motor neurons getting the muscle fibers
02:42:25 to contract more intensely or with more efficiency
02:42:29 in other ways that’s leading to these strength gains.
02:42:32 And this is why power lifters can train every day
02:42:34 or five days a week or four days a week.
02:42:37 For hypertrophy, I learned from Andy
02:42:41 that the repetition range can be pretty broad.
02:42:44 You’re thinking anywhere from six to 30 repetitions.
02:42:48 You should do 10 sets per muscle group per week,
02:42:52 maybe even a bit more.
02:42:53 So high volume.
02:42:54 High volume, but you have to go to failure
02:42:59 or beyond in order to stimulate growth.
02:43:01 Why does it work at such a great range of repetitions?
02:43:03 Well, there apparently are three ways
02:43:06 that you stimulate hypertrophy and maybe more.
02:43:08 One is tissue micro damage to the tissue.
02:43:11 The other is through some sort of tension based changes
02:43:14 in the molecular gene programs of cells
02:43:17 that lead to protein synthesis
02:43:19 that are distinct from damage.
02:43:21 And the other are metabolic effects
02:43:22 of like high repetition work
02:43:23 of super fusion of the muscle with blood.
02:43:26 We know that third category exists
02:43:27 because people are now doing this blood restriction training
02:43:29 where they cuff off a muscle
02:43:31 and they’ll use a really lightweight.
02:43:32 I’ve done these before.
02:43:33 You can use a five pound weight and do curls with this
02:43:35 and you are in pain and the muscles are swelling up
02:43:38 with blood.
02:43:39 It does lead to hypertrophy,
02:43:40 but in general, you’re not sore.
02:43:42 You’re not doing tissue damage.
02:43:44 And by the way, don’t just turn to get off a muscle
02:43:46 cause you have to use the proper cuffs
02:43:48 because you need the blood still to flow in one direction.
02:43:50 You can’t just cinch it off
02:43:52 or you’ll potentially kill yourself
02:43:53 if you get a clot or you do it wrong.
02:43:56 So get the appropriate cuffs, they’re out there.
02:43:59 And then for endurance, I learned something really cool.
02:44:01 So I work out basically,
02:44:02 I go to the gym every other day on average,
02:44:06 three or four days a week I do that,
02:44:07 but generally not two days in a row to work out.
02:44:09 Next day I’ll do cardio next day.
02:44:11 And the cardio for me is always a 30 to 45 minute jog
02:44:14 kind of zone two cardio.
02:44:16 Andy informed me that to build endurance
02:44:18 while building strength and maintaining some muscle size
02:44:22 or even building muscle size,
02:44:24 I would be wise to take one day a week
02:44:27 and add to that all out max heart rate work
02:44:32 for 90 seconds at least.
02:44:34 So do 90 seconds then rest
02:44:36 and then maybe do another 90 second all out sprint.
02:44:38 I almost missed my flight going from Los Angeles to Austin.
02:44:41 I did that all out sprint in the airport yesterday.
02:44:44 So I actually can think it’s done for me.
02:44:47 So there was a sprinting Dr. Huberman throughout.
02:44:51 With three bags.
02:44:52 That’s awesome.
02:44:53 Cause I travel, generally I’ll travel
02:44:55 with too much stuff.
02:44:57 I love how you were probably running late for a flight
02:45:00 and use that as an opportunity to explore.
02:45:02 Well, I was doing it.
02:45:02 I was thinking to myself,
02:45:03 okay, Andy, that’s a 90 second sprint.
02:45:05 Cause I got to the security line.
02:45:07 I finally got TSC.
02:45:08 But that’s for better, that’s for extending endurance?
02:45:11 That’s for, yeah.
02:45:12 It actually has some carry over effects on endurance
02:45:15 if you’re doing the other stuff.
02:45:16 And then he also said one day a week to do this workout
02:45:18 and I haven’t done it yet.
02:45:19 Maybe we do it tomorrow.
02:45:19 It’d be fun.
02:45:20 Which is you run a mile,
02:45:22 you ask yourself, how long did that take?
02:45:26 Let’s say it took eight minutes.
02:45:28 Then you walk or rest for eight minutes.
02:45:30 Then you run another mile as fast as you can.
02:45:33 And then you rest for the equivalent period.
02:45:34 And you do that one to three times once per week.
02:45:38 So you do.
02:45:38 And so as an all around fitness program,
02:45:41 it make, you could collapse this into something
02:45:43 where you say, okay,
02:45:44 you’re gonna work out with the weights
02:45:45 for about an hour every other day.
02:45:48 Maybe take two days off every once in a while.
02:45:49 Maybe not.
02:45:50 You’re going to do six to 15 repetitions.
02:45:53 You’re gonna push to failure on some of those, not all,
02:45:56 because some of those are designed to build more strength.
02:45:58 You’re not going to failure in heavier.
02:46:00 Some are designed for hypertrophy, higher rep
02:46:02 and going to failure.
02:46:03 And then on off days,
02:46:04 you’re gonna jog for 30 to 45 minutes.
02:46:07 But for two days a week,
02:46:09 you’re either at the end of your jog or whatever,
02:46:12 you’re gonna do some all out sprints for 90 seconds
02:46:15 and then rest and repeat.
02:46:17 And for another day, you’re going to do these mile repeats.
02:46:22 That’s a pretty large chunk of exercise movement.
02:46:27 But if you kind of thread through the middle of all that,
02:46:30 what you end up with is some decent strength,
02:46:32 building protocols, some decent hypertrophy,
02:46:34 some cardiovascular training
02:46:36 that establishes the so called A base or a so called base.
02:46:40 So you’re not gonna get really good at anything.
02:46:42 You’re not gonna become a marathoner this way,
02:46:44 an optimizing marathon.
02:46:45 You’re not gonna optimize powerlifting.
02:46:47 You’re not gonna optimize hypertrophy.
02:46:48 But for the typical person, 75% of people, 75% of the time,
02:46:52 they want some muscle, they want some strength,
02:46:53 they want some endurance,
02:46:54 and they want the capacity to sprint to the security gate
02:46:58 without leaving a lung in the terminal.
02:47:01 So it’s like functional stuff,
02:47:03 like your life going up the stairs is easier,
02:47:05 moving about, all that kind of just regular life.
02:47:08 And I should mention that cold showers after training
02:47:12 don’t seem to short circuit the training effect
02:47:17 to the same extent that immersion in cold water does.
02:47:19 And that really speaks to the fact that cold showers,
02:47:21 even though they can provide some of the adrenaline
02:47:23 for the mental effects of like,
02:47:25 oh, I have a lot of adrenaline in my system
02:47:26 from a cold shower and I can remain calm.
02:47:28 There’s utility to that.
02:47:30 It’s not going to have the same metabolic effects
02:47:32 or other positive effects that cold water exposure
02:47:35 has been shown to have.
02:47:36 And that’s unfortunate because most people
02:47:39 have access to cold showers,
02:47:40 not everyone has access to a cold dunker.
02:47:41 Or an ice dunk.
02:47:42 But here in Austin, you have this place,
02:47:45 and no, they don’t pay me to say this,
02:47:47 but I always like going to this place
02:47:48 whenever I’m in town, this place, Kuya.
02:47:50 And they’ve got a sauna and a couple ice baths.
02:47:52 And they even have those salt tanks
02:47:53 that you can float on the surface.
02:47:54 Do they have ice baths there?
02:47:55 They have cold water immersion, it’s pretty cold.
02:47:59 Still haven’t done an ice bath.
02:48:00 Really? I need to, yeah, I need to.
02:48:02 You’re Russian, you’ll probably get in
02:48:03 and you won’t even know.
02:48:04 Yeah, what is this?
02:48:05 What’s the big deal here?
02:48:06 Exactly, or people pay for this.
02:48:08 I did a post, right, of you as a baby.
02:48:10 Yeah.
02:48:11 You know, I had to go deep to get that photo of Lex
02:48:14 in a bassinet, in the snow.
02:48:16 Yeah.
02:48:17 Because in Russia, they actually did this for a long time.
02:48:20 They thought that it would,
02:48:21 and indeed it does build the immune system
02:48:23 to expose babies to the cold.
02:48:25 I still don’t know where you got that photo.
02:48:27 I didn’t know you were able to find exactly the right,
02:48:29 it was great.
02:48:31 It was great research.
02:48:32 You didn’t have a tie on,
02:48:33 but you had all the look and seriousness that you do now.
02:48:36 So it’s clearly nature nurture,
02:48:37 clearly you were born with that.
02:48:39 What about sauna?
02:48:40 He does say that it’s good to do heat.
02:48:42 So there are three ways you can do sauna
02:48:44 that I can just toss out as like briefings.
02:48:46 If you want to get a really big growth hormone release
02:48:48 for sake of metabolism, fat loss,
02:48:50 you’re training really, really hard in jujitsu
02:48:52 and you want to recover,
02:48:54 you don’t want to sauna too often
02:48:56 because the study that identified this massive
02:48:59 16 fold increase in growth hormone,
02:49:02 they had people do this, it’s crazy.
02:49:04 They got into, okay, temperatures are 80
02:49:07 to 100 degrees centigrade.
02:49:09 So that’s 176 degrees Fahrenheit
02:49:11 to 212 degrees Fahrenheit for five to 30 minutes
02:49:15 is the typical ranges that people work in
02:49:17 in these research studies.
02:49:20 For maximum growth hormone release,
02:49:22 don’t do sauna more than once a week,
02:49:24 but get into the sauna for 30 minutes,
02:49:27 as hot as you can safely tolerate.
02:49:29 So probably for you, that’ll be 210
02:49:31 because I suspect you’ll be on the high end of things.
02:49:34 Then get out for five to 10 minutes, no cold exposure,
02:49:38 get back in the sauna for 30 minutes.
02:49:40 Then they had them do it again,
02:49:41 out for five minutes, back for 30 minutes,
02:49:44 out for five minutes, back for three minutes.
02:49:45 They had them do two hours of sauna exposure
02:49:48 to get that growth hormone release.
02:49:51 Now for the reduction in likelihood
02:49:54 of dying of a cardiovascular event stroke or otherwise,
02:49:57 the more often you do sauna, the better.
02:49:59 So if you look at all cause mortality
02:50:01 or death due to cardiovascular events,
02:50:03 and you look at sauna use frequencies
02:50:06 using the same parameters, 80 to 100 degrees centigrade,
02:50:09 one to seven times per week,
02:50:10 basically the more often you get into the sauna
02:50:12 for 30 minutes across the week,
02:50:15 so 30 minutes a day is better than four times a week.
02:50:17 Four times a week is better than two times a week
02:50:19 and two times a week is better than one.
02:50:21 And the reductions in mortality are really impressive.
02:50:25 27, if you get into the sauna the way I just described,
02:50:29 not the two hours a day, but 30 minutes twice a week
02:50:32 or three times per week,
02:50:33 you reduce the likelihood of dying
02:50:35 of a cardiovascular event by 27%.
02:50:38 If you do it four or more times per week,
02:50:41 you reduce the probability of dying by 50%
02:50:44 of a cardiovascular event.
02:50:46 And in these studies,
02:50:47 they rule out other things that people are doing, smoking.
02:50:50 They even ask them, do you live in an apartment?
02:50:52 Are you in a happy relationship?
02:50:53 Like they evaluate other potentially confounding variables.
02:50:57 Now for people that don’t have access to a sauna,
02:50:59 a hot water bath or hot tub is gonna be your next best bet.
02:51:03 And if you don’t have access to that,
02:51:04 do like the wrestlers do,
02:51:05 which is put on two sets of sweats and a hoodie
02:51:09 and a stocking cap and wrap yourself in plastics
02:51:12 underneath all that and go for a run,
02:51:14 but please nobody die of hyperthermia.
02:51:16 I mean, you can die of warming up too much.
02:51:18 Is this experience pleasant or stressful in the way,
02:51:25 so is it as stressful as an ice bath, for example?
02:51:27 Great question.
02:51:28 People always ask how cold to make the ice bath
02:51:31 or the cold water or the shower.
02:51:33 You want it to be uncomfortably cold,
02:51:35 meaning you want to feel like I really wanna get out,
02:51:38 but you can safely stay in.
02:51:39 And that’s gonna vary by person and experience with it.
02:51:42 Experience, yeah.
02:51:43 With the sauna, it’s the same thing.
02:51:46 How hot to make it?
02:51:47 Well, don’t kill yourself, obviously be smart.
02:51:50 If you’re pregnant, you shouldn’t be doing this anyway,
02:51:53 but it’s very clear that what you need
02:51:56 is the release of something called dinorphin.
02:51:58 We have endorphin, which makes us feel good.
02:52:00 It binds to these mu opioid receptors in the body.
02:52:04 You have dinorphin, which is the terrible feeling
02:52:07 that you get when you’re in really hot temperatures.
02:52:09 It’s also the terrible effect that alcoholics feel
02:52:12 when they are in withdrawal.
02:52:14 You feel agitated, you wanna get out,
02:52:15 it’s really unpleasant.
02:52:16 It’s dinorphin binding to the so called
02:52:18 kappa opioid receptor, that’s what you’re trying to trigger.
02:52:22 When you do that, a number of things happen.
02:52:24 You set off heat shock proteins that go repair
02:52:27 broken proteins and misfolded proteins.
02:52:29 It also makes it so that later endorphin binds its receptor
02:52:33 more strongly.
02:52:34 So when you have this uncomfortable experience in the heat,
02:52:38 you literally feel better in real life
02:52:40 when pleasurable events come on,
02:52:42 when you experience them.
02:52:44 In the same way, I like to say this,
02:52:45 that when you get into a cold ice bath or cold shower,
02:52:48 the increase in epinephrine and dopamine is two to 300%.
02:52:54 These are huge increases and they last many hours.
02:52:57 This is shown, because lately I’ve gotten a little bit
02:53:00 of pushback on Twitter, which is interesting place.
02:53:06 People say, well, that’s just in mice.
02:53:07 No, all the studies I just referred to
02:53:08 are all done in humans, men and women,
02:53:11 fairly broad age ranges.
02:53:12 So you want to be uncomfortable in the cold.
02:53:15 You wanna be uncomfortable in the heat.
02:53:17 This is why I’m not a big fan of infrared saunas
02:53:19 because they only go up to about 160, 170 degrees.
02:53:22 Infrared light and far red light of all kinds
02:53:26 has been shown to be beneficial for wound healing,
02:53:27 acne, skin, eyes.
02:53:29 There are even guys now putting on their testicles
02:53:31 because it can increase testosterone and sperm production.
02:53:34 Yeah, hormone release.
02:53:36 Hormone release.
02:53:37 But in terms of the sauna,
02:53:39 you want that strong heat stimulus.
02:53:41 Yeah, and that’s when you crawl up to the 200 mark
02:53:44 and so on.
02:53:45 Whenever I’m in New York,
02:53:46 and there’s also one in San Francisco,
02:53:47 although the one in San Francisco is clothing optional,
02:53:49 just to warn people, there’s a place called Archimedes Banya.
02:53:52 Is there any scientific evidence that being naked
02:53:55 is beneficial in the sauna?
02:53:57 Well, in certain contexts,
02:53:58 it leads to childbirth.
02:54:01 Okay, well, I’ll have to read up on that.
02:54:03 I read that somewhere.
02:54:04 I suppose it’s not required for childbirth,
02:54:07 but in all seriousness,
02:54:10 in New York, I’ll go to a place called Spa 88,
02:54:12 and actually, Khabib’s picture is on the wall.
02:54:14 He goes there.
02:54:15 And that one, it’s clothing.
02:54:18 They require clothing.
02:54:19 I only just say that
02:54:20 because it can be a little bit of a shock to people sometimes
02:54:21 if they kind of walk in there,
02:54:22 a bunch of naked people, the one in San Francisco.
02:54:25 If I go, I’m clothed,
02:54:26 mostly because I run into coworkers or things like that.
02:54:29 You know, I’m sort of more old fashioned in that way,
02:54:33 I suppose.
02:54:33 But…
02:54:34 Do you like to wear clothes around coworkers?
02:54:36 Yes.
02:54:37 Yeah, in general. Very old fashioned.
02:54:38 Yeah, I mean, to me, it just seems like, you know,
02:54:40 just be aware.
02:54:41 But nonetheless, the Banyas have very hot saunas
02:54:44 because they’re Russian owned.
02:54:46 And in New York, there’s one on the Lower East Side,
02:54:48 but the Spa 88 place, they have some saunas
02:54:51 that the moment I get into those,
02:54:53 I have a hard time catching a full breath.
02:54:55 It burns.
02:54:56 They’ve got a cold dunk that’s like a shock.
02:54:59 And then they’ve got a sauna, a wet sauna steam room
02:55:01 that’s a little mellower.
02:55:02 So the nice thing about a Banya
02:55:03 is you can kind of find your place.
02:55:05 And then they do the plaza
02:55:06 where they take the eucalyptus leaves
02:55:08 and you can pay someone.
02:55:10 And you basically, you cover your groin
02:55:12 and then they beat you with the leaves.
02:55:15 And it’s supposed to bring the vasculature to the surface.
02:55:17 I’ve only done it once.
02:55:18 And frankly, I found it to be a little bit unnerving.
02:55:22 I didn’t really like the experience,
02:55:24 but I’ll try and get into a sauna
02:55:26 as often as I possibly can,
02:55:28 which is once or three times per week.
02:55:30 And I try and do the cold exposure shower or immersion,
02:55:34 but early in the day, cause it really wakes you up.
02:55:37 One of my favorite things I’ve listened to,
02:55:40 I wish there was a video,
02:55:42 is listening to a bunch of stuff with Rick Rubin.
02:55:45 And he did a thing with Tim Ferriss,
02:55:47 like the Tim Ferriss podcast.
02:55:49 I don’t know if you’ve ever heard it,
02:55:50 but he forced them to do, they did the podcast in a sauna.
02:55:56 And I don’t think at the time Tim Ferriss was adapted.
02:56:01 If you’re not heat adapted, it can be pretty stressful.
02:56:03 And I mean, obviously the whole experience is stressful
02:56:05 as somebody with microphones, like what is happening?
02:56:09 But I just love that Tim was vulnerable enough
02:56:12 to kind of give themself over
02:56:15 to whatever the hell this experience is.
02:56:17 And I am just so happy that Rick like pushed
02:56:22 that kind of idea and just let’s do it.
02:56:25 That’s a very Rick Rubin kind of thing to do.
02:56:27 And we must, like we must do this, this has to be done.
02:56:31 A podcast that was done from a sauna continuously
02:56:34 would be really interesting.
02:56:35 Like you could call it like the pressure cooker
02:56:37 or something.
02:56:38 Oh, I mean like a regular podcast.
02:56:38 Yeah, like you have to sit with your guests in the sauna
02:56:42 or they have to sit in the sauna.
02:56:43 That was one of the interesting things
02:56:45 is it was a sad thing because I believe there’s no video
02:56:48 of that podcast, but you could tell there was a kind of,
02:56:53 there was suffering and especially on Tim’s part.
02:56:56 It was like a degradation.
02:56:58 He started over time not being able
02:57:01 to put words together correctly, which he’s very eloquent.
02:57:05 And so you could see there’s like, there’s a struggle.
02:57:10 Heat and cold pull you down from the inside.
02:57:12 You have to, I mean, there’s a reason why
02:57:14 the screening process for, they call it SEAL training,
02:57:18 but it’s really screening and training involves cold waters.
02:57:21 Cause if you’re in the heat too long,
02:57:23 you’ll die or damage tissue.
02:57:25 In cold, you can do it quite extensively
02:57:27 before you die or damage tissue, but it is stressful.
02:57:30 I was going to say one thing that I sometimes enjoy seeing
02:57:33 these social media posts where people will get
02:57:35 into the ice bath and they’ll look really stoic.
02:57:37 Like they’re really tough,
02:57:39 but actually that’s the wimpy way to go through it.
02:57:43 When you get into cold water, if you stay very still,
02:57:47 you develop a thermal sheath around you
02:57:51 that you’re warming yourself.
02:57:53 The really bold way is to get in and continue
02:57:56 to sift your arms and legs.
02:57:57 And it ends up feeling miserably colder.
02:58:00 And then there’s no sheath
02:58:02 cause you’re breaking up that thermal layer.
02:58:04 And then when you get out, you’ll notice a lot
02:58:06 of people huddle or they’ll put, or they’ll grab the towel.
02:58:09 In general, that’s me.
02:58:10 I’ll get back, I’ll get into the sauna.
02:58:12 But if you really want to stimulate the big increases
02:58:15 in metabolism, you stand out there and you dry off
02:58:18 with arms extended in open air.
02:58:20 And as that water evaporates off you, it is really cold,
02:58:23 but your body is forced to activate a number
02:58:25 of the warming programs related to metabolism.
02:58:28 This is the beautiful work of a woman named Susanna Soberg,
02:58:31 who’s Scandinavian.
02:58:32 She published this paper last year in Cell Reports Medicine.
02:58:34 And so I call this the Soberg principle,
02:58:36 which is if you’re doing ice and heat for whatever reason,
02:58:40 it doesn’t matter if you end on heat or cold,
02:58:41 but if you’re using cold specifically
02:58:44 to stimulate an increase in metabolism, end with cold.
02:58:47 That’s the Soberg principle.
02:58:49 And with cold, if you’re alternating,
02:58:52 and then if you want to do it the tough way,
02:58:55 you let the shivering, so you just stand out
02:58:57 and let the water evaporate.
02:58:59 Yeah, I mean, if you ever waded into a cold ocean,
02:59:01 everybody’s kind of like holding themselves in,
02:59:04 if you really just, if you let yourself extend your limbs
02:59:06 and move them around a bit so you break up
02:59:08 that thermal layer, that’s the tough way to do it.
02:59:12 So when I see people on social media getting in
02:59:13 and they’re like really tough and trying to look hard.
02:59:16 Yeah, you want to be moving around.
02:59:17 Yeah, smiling, talking, moving around is way, way colder.
02:59:22 Are you able to talk?
02:59:23 Can you do, so you suggest the podcast in the sauna.
02:59:27 How about this?
02:59:28 I proposed this since I got choked.
02:59:29 You want to do the next podcast?
02:59:31 I’ll get to, so the folks from The Plunge,
02:59:33 maybe you could bring Lex a plunge.
02:59:35 He certainly deserves one.
02:59:37 And we can go side by side coffin style,
02:59:40 or we can face one another when we’re doing it.
02:59:42 Well, we said we should do each other’s podcast.
02:59:44 I mean, it’d be next.
02:59:44 Well, I can’t wait to have you back on.
02:59:46 I mean, we only scratched the surface.
02:59:47 Well, let’s do at least part of the next
02:59:49 Human Lab podcast either in the.
02:59:51 I have a sauna and a cold plunge, so we could do it.
02:59:53 Yeah, we could do.
02:59:55 We do a sauna and a cold plunge version.
02:59:57 I wonder how the recording works,
02:59:59 if the recording. A bit of an echo in the sauna,
03:00:01 but I’m sure we can take out the reverb.
03:00:04 So Sergey wants to ask you about sex performance.
03:00:09 Very journalistic, very hardcore hitting questions
03:00:12 that we have here on the.
03:00:13 Generally, or a specific.
03:00:15 No, he has a certain problem he needs help with, no.
03:00:18 Generally, you haven’t done an episode on sex.
03:00:21 Well, we did an episode early on, on sexual development.
03:00:24 Yes.
03:00:25 We’ve done them on optimizing testosterone and estrogen.
03:00:27 And we touched a little bit on the, on libido
03:00:31 and somewhat on sex performance, but not much.
03:00:34 We did an episode on relationships, love and desire,
03:00:38 where we touched on libido specifically.
03:00:40 So just as a quick mention of something,
03:00:43 a lot of people take SSRIs or antidepressants
03:00:46 that can disrupt sexual function.
03:00:47 There are a few compounds like maca root and punga ali
03:00:51 and things like that, that at least in a few studies
03:00:53 in humans have been shown to offset
03:00:55 some of the sexual side effects.
03:00:57 Now, in terms of sexual, and then the, sorry,
03:01:01 the episode on sexual development was about how the brain
03:01:04 and body become organized in certain ways,
03:01:06 how the brain becomes organized if you have X chromosomes
03:01:09 or Y chromosomes or et cetera.
03:01:11 So early, early development.
03:01:12 Early development mainly.
03:01:13 And the effects of hormones later on that template.
03:01:16 We will be doing a, I’m actually putting together a series
03:01:21 on sexual health, everything from the menstrual cycle,
03:01:26 which both men and women should understand, of course,
03:01:28 understanding arousal, understanding, for instance,
03:01:32 a lot of people don’t realize this,
03:01:33 but that orgasm is actually the consequence of activity
03:01:37 in the sympathetic, meaning the stress arm
03:01:40 of the autonomic nervous system.
03:01:42 Whereas arousal is the consequence of the activity
03:01:46 of the parasympathetic, the calming aspect
03:01:49 of the autonomic nervous system.
03:01:51 That’s counterintuitive, right?
03:01:52 It’s counterintuitive and it kind of works like a seesaw.
03:01:55 I mean, there’s arousal, then there’s relaxation,
03:01:56 then there’s arousal, and then immediately after orgasm
03:02:01 and in males ejaculation, what ends up happening
03:02:03 is there’s a rebounding of the parasympathetic nervous system
03:02:07 which it leads to oftentimes people feeling very relaxed
03:02:09 or falling asleep.
03:02:11 So I’m going to do a short series on sexual health
03:02:15 that will include stuff about sexual performance,
03:02:17 but also some, I’m working on getting an expert guest
03:02:22 who can talk about some of the neurologic changes
03:02:26 that happen as a consequence of sexual activity.
03:02:30 And we did an episode with a guy from UT Austin here,
03:02:33 David Buss, who’s an evolutionary psychologist,
03:02:36 talking about, it went pretty deep into some of the typical
03:02:41 and unusual dynamics of mating relation,
03:02:44 whether or not people have kids or not and what impacts that,
03:02:46 but we’re going to do an episode on menopause, andropause.
03:02:49 What’s very surprising is I get a lot of questions
03:02:52 about sexual health from the young male audience,
03:02:56 which tells me that, well, here’s what I think it reflects.
03:03:00 I think that women, because of their menstrual cycles,
03:03:03 early on start to talk to one another about changes
03:03:06 in physiology and psychology as a function
03:03:08 of this 28 day cycle that they all experience
03:03:10 sooner or later.
03:03:11 Males, there’s less of a conversation
03:03:14 and it usually arrives in code.
03:03:15 People will say, hey, what should I take
03:03:16 to increase my testosterone?
03:03:18 And I’ll say, well, maybe nothing.
03:03:20 You know, what are you specifically concerned about?
03:03:23 And then over time, if you pull on those threads
03:03:25 a little bit, you know, you get your answer.
03:03:28 Sometimes I’ll just get a direct question.
03:03:30 But I think that the psychology of all this
03:03:33 and in terms of jealousy and the terms of notions
03:03:36 of roles and relationships is very dynamic right now.
03:03:40 And I’m fascinated by this.
03:03:41 So we’re going to do a four episode series.
03:03:43 What about sexual fantasy?
03:03:46 What, to get Freudian for a second,
03:03:48 what role does sexual fantasy have in the human condition?
03:03:52 There’s a book called The Erotic Imagination.
03:03:56 It’s a very psychoanalytic book written
03:03:57 by a psychoanalyst that talks about how,
03:04:01 well, here’s the uncomfortable reality.
03:04:03 Freud was at least right about one thing,
03:04:05 which is that the brain circuitry that you used
03:04:09 to develop attachments to your caregivers,
03:04:11 mother and father or other caregivers,
03:04:14 do not disappear when you hit puberty.
03:04:16 They are repurposed for romantic and sexual relations.
03:04:20 And so this is why the whole notion of anxious attached
03:04:23 and secure attached, you know, stems from childhood
03:04:26 attachment patterns, but it carries over
03:04:27 to romantic relationships.
03:04:29 So that the relationship with your mother has.
03:04:32 And father.
03:04:33 And father has a, and probably other close people to you
03:04:36 in your young age has a secondary, tertiary,
03:04:41 some kind of ripple effect on how your sexuality developed.
03:04:44 Like what fantasies you might have, all that.
03:04:46 No, without question.
03:04:47 And of course, early experiences too,
03:04:48 and traumatic or positive or neutral.
03:04:51 The thing that’s really important to remember though,
03:04:53 in this transfer of circuitry from one role to another
03:04:57 is that, and it’s certainly consistent with psychoanalysis
03:05:00 that gender is interchangeable, sex is interchangeable.
03:05:04 So for instance, let’s say you had a wonderful relationship.
03:05:07 Let’s say this, let’s take a hypothetical person, okay?
03:05:10 I’m truly not referring to myself.
03:05:12 Let’s take a young woman who has a wonderful relationship
03:05:15 with her father and a just absolutely terrible
03:05:18 abusive relationship to her mother.
03:05:20 Just for sake of example.
03:05:22 She then goes into adulthood and she is drawn
03:05:26 to very abusive men.
03:05:28 Not always, but let’s just use in this example.
03:05:32 And the dynamic is exactly the same
03:05:34 as the dynamic she had with her mother.
03:05:36 That’s actually a common occurrence.
03:05:37 Even though in this context, she’s heterosexual,
03:05:40 she’s romantically attracted to men.
03:05:41 What is seen over and over again is that the dynamic
03:05:44 with one parent can be transferred onto a romantic dynamic,
03:05:47 but it doesn’t have to be, you know,
03:05:49 that if it was with the mother,
03:05:51 then it only has to do with relationships to women.
03:05:53 So gender is interchangeable
03:05:54 because these circuitries are presexual.
03:05:58 They’re laid down in our brain
03:06:00 before the brain has any concept of sexual interactions.
03:06:04 It’s preverbal, excuse me.
03:06:06 And so there are a lot of interesting examples
03:06:09 and data to support this.
03:06:11 The book Attached is a pretty interesting book
03:06:14 by two psychologists.
03:06:16 One I think is at Columbia University
03:06:19 that talks about how childhood dynamics carry over
03:06:22 to adult romantic attachment.
03:06:25 So as you can tell, I get pretty alert
03:06:27 in response to these questions.
03:06:29 I get a lot of them relate in this domain.
03:06:32 They have a lot of impact on people
03:06:33 and they’re wondering about, they wanna learn.
03:06:35 And no one knows what other people are doing
03:06:37 or what’s normal.
03:06:37 We kind of know deviancy.
03:06:39 We know perversion.
03:06:40 We know the extremes.
03:06:42 We know the rules.
03:06:43 Hopefully people know the rules,
03:06:44 but let’s just be,
03:06:47 there are a lot of people in the academic community,
03:06:51 in particular at certain East Coast schools not to be named
03:06:54 that are in open relationships.
03:06:57 This is more common now.
03:06:59 It’s not very common, but it’s more common.
03:07:03 And obviously that’s a way of bypassing
03:07:06 some of these more primitive emotions
03:07:08 about jealousy, et cetera,
03:07:10 and leveraging them towards
03:07:12 maybe even ongoing relationships.
03:07:13 I’m not passing judgment one way or the other.
03:07:16 I always say four conditions have to be met
03:07:18 for any discussion about sex and sexuality
03:07:21 or sexual health.
03:07:21 Age appropriate, context appropriate,
03:07:25 consensual and species appropriate.
03:07:28 Well, that’s weird because the thing I’m trying to figure out
03:07:31 is why my sexual fantasy is to go to furry orgies
03:07:36 and have sex with others dressed as squirrels
03:07:41 and me, the other animals.
03:07:43 So that could be, I’ll see a therapist about that one.
03:07:48 Can I ask you?
03:07:48 I’m not gonna respond to that except to say that
03:07:52 as long as those four conditions are met.
03:07:54 Yeah.
03:07:55 Consensual, age appropriate,
03:07:56 context appropriate, species appropriate.
03:07:57 So there’s a bunch of questions on Instagram.
03:08:00 One of them on this topic, on relationships,
03:08:05 somebody suggested to do a part three of why Lex is single.
03:08:08 There’s a running joke about this.
03:08:11 So.
03:08:12 But I can answer it in part, right?
03:08:14 Because, well, partially because you’re very busy,
03:08:17 partially because you’ve decided that until it’s time,
03:08:22 you’re gonna wait until it’s time, it’s time, right?
03:08:26 I mean, until it’s time, you’re waiting.
03:08:28 And then, I mean, not saving yourself for marriage,
03:08:31 I don’t think, but in some sense,
03:08:34 yeah, your future wife is out there.
03:08:37 Oh yeah, yeah.
03:08:38 She’s being programmed.
03:08:39 No, I mean, I definitely believe that.
03:08:43 I mean, first of all, I just love people
03:08:45 and I fall in love very easily with people,
03:08:47 with objects, with things, with life, with every moment.
03:08:50 And that way you’re like Oliver Sacks,
03:08:51 he would fall in love with minerals
03:08:54 and concepts and things like that.
03:08:56 And so like to me, this kind of,
03:08:58 so relationship is more like a commitment
03:09:04 to one particular kind of object of your love.
03:09:10 Like it’s almost like a,
03:09:12 it’s like a journey that you take on together
03:09:14 because also the interesting thing about humans
03:09:18 is they’re moment by moment a different person,
03:09:20 day by day, week by week, month by month,
03:09:23 they change, they evolve.
03:09:24 There’s an ups and downs and stuff like that.
03:09:26 So what you’re doing is you’re saying,
03:09:29 well, I’m going to explore all the ways
03:09:31 that this human gets morphed and changed
03:09:34 and what makes them cry, what makes them excited,
03:09:38 what makes them lonely, like the habits,
03:09:44 like when they form certain habits,
03:09:47 how they feel when those habits are broken,
03:09:49 like the stupid minute things that make everyday life,
03:09:52 you’re gonna be on that journey together
03:09:54 figuring that out, just the way we’re trying to figure
03:09:56 ourselves out when we’re like optimizing these things
03:10:00 about diet and health and so on,
03:10:01 you’re kind of doing this computation together
03:10:04 because neither person really understands themselves
03:10:08 at all and you’re together both confused about each other
03:10:11 and you get to almost like a relationship is a chance
03:10:16 to understand yourself and to understand another person,
03:10:21 like together, that process is somewhat iterative.
03:10:25 You know the dynamics, right?
03:10:27 I mean, you’re merging two nervous systems.
03:10:29 This was once described to me very well by an ex girlfriend
03:10:32 who’s truly brilliant, she’s really brilliant.
03:10:36 She said, you know, there’s four arrows.
03:10:39 This is maybe to an engineer or like a, so it makes sense.
03:10:42 There’s how you feel towards the other person.
03:10:45 There’s how they feel towards you,
03:10:47 but then there’s an arrow that comes back to you,
03:10:51 which is how you feel about how they feel.
03:10:54 And then they have an arrow of how they feel
03:10:56 about how you feel, right?
03:10:57 This is why if someone else is moody
03:10:59 or somebody else is upset,
03:11:01 there’s one version of ourselves where we respond to that
03:11:05 or they respond to us,
03:11:06 but there’s another version where we respond to that,
03:11:09 but it’s also, there’s a processing of what it means for us
03:11:12 that they’re behaving that way or feeling that way.
03:11:15 And this again leads us back
03:11:17 to that early attachment circuitry
03:11:19 because if a parent was stressed,
03:11:22 the child’s role is not to soothe the parent.
03:11:25 In fact, healthy models of parenting say
03:11:27 that children shouldn’t actually know how their parents feel
03:11:30 for like the first eight years of their life.
03:11:32 They’re not supposed to be in that mindset
03:11:34 of empathizing for the parent.
03:11:35 This is often not the case,
03:11:37 but maybe the cutoff isn’t exactly eight,
03:11:40 but you get the idea.
03:11:41 So the dynamics of relationship are where the learning is
03:11:44 because we learn how we react to other people reacting.
03:11:46 It’s not just a two arrow system.
03:11:49 It’s at least this four arrow thing.
03:11:52 But there’s also the element of nurturing, right?
03:11:54 I mean, I think that going through life with somebody
03:11:57 is so much better than going through it alone.
03:12:00 And I’d never thought I’d make that statement.
03:12:04 So it wasn’t always obvious to you?
03:12:05 No, it wasn’t always obvious to me.
03:12:07 I mean, I’ve really enjoyed wonderful relationships
03:12:11 and some have been hard
03:12:12 and there’s certainly been a lot of growth.
03:12:14 I’m on good terms with almost all my former girlfriends
03:12:18 and close with some enough that I know their spouses
03:12:21 and I’m close with their families.
03:12:24 But no, it wasn’t.
03:12:25 And I think that when people say relationship is hard,
03:12:29 the only really hard part of a good relationship
03:12:32 is just dealing with oneself
03:12:34 and making sure that you’re staying
03:12:35 in that mode of caretaking.
03:12:38 Because I do believe that if one is mainly focused
03:12:40 on taking good care of the other person,
03:12:42 provided they’re also focused on taking good care of you,
03:12:46 to some extent, and we’re good at taking care of ourselves,
03:12:49 everybody flourishes, everything gets better.
03:12:51 But no, I don’t think I experienced that
03:12:52 until fairly recently.
03:12:54 What do you think is the secret
03:12:58 to a successful relationship?
03:13:02 There isn’t just one, but at least in the top five
03:13:07 is master or at least be good at autonomic self regulation.
03:13:12 Be good at autonomic self regulation.
03:13:16 Know how to calm yourself down.
03:13:18 Don’t expect the, like looking to anything external
03:13:21 to soothe yourself is it puts you in a terrible position
03:13:24 to be a caretaker of yourself and other people, right?
03:13:27 So learn how to self soothe, right?
03:13:29 Learn how to calm your mind, steady your actions,
03:13:32 steady your voice.
03:13:33 There are tools to do that.
03:13:34 We talk about on the podcast, but elsewhere,
03:13:35 have that in place.
03:13:36 I also think that if your main focus is on,
03:13:41 you want to have a good boundaries, et cetera,
03:13:43 but on tending to the relationship,
03:13:46 doing a little bit more than you think you ought to do,
03:13:48 if everyone does that, it goes great.
03:13:50 I mean, I’m sometimes so positively struck
03:13:52 by how supported I feel because for many years,
03:13:57 I was just kind of doing everything on my own.
03:13:59 So any little thing, I’m like, oh my goodness,
03:14:01 this feels huge.
03:14:02 And also I think the dynamics have to be right.
03:14:04 Let’s be really honest.
03:14:05 This is a little bit of a tricky topic,
03:14:07 but there is a power dynamic in relationships.
03:14:13 Sometimes, not all, but in some relationships,
03:14:16 it works much better if one person leads
03:14:18 and the other person follows.
03:14:21 In other relationships, it’s more mutuality, works best.
03:14:24 People need to know what they need.
03:14:26 And so knowing what you need and what you crave
03:14:29 is really important.
03:14:30 And then once you do that,
03:14:31 you can create the relationship you want.
03:14:33 I’ve seen that over and over again.
03:14:34 And people are different.
03:14:36 But I think that ultimately, I mean, right,
03:14:41 there’s the dopamine phase of a relationship.
03:14:44 And then there’s the serotonin phase,
03:14:46 the kind of more mutuality, coziness and sweetness.
03:14:49 There’s a great book about how to make sure
03:14:52 that the dopamine component and the serotonin component,
03:14:56 so to speak, go on forever.
03:14:58 And it has to do with, you know,
03:14:59 when you first meet someone and you’re attracted to them,
03:15:01 you’re essentially objectifying them,
03:15:04 meaning not in the way people might think,
03:15:07 you are not dependent on them
03:15:09 for emotional stability or survival.
03:15:11 As you get close to somebody,
03:15:12 you really come to depend on them
03:15:14 and then you tend to objectify them less.
03:15:16 And so this book, the name is kind of corny,
03:15:18 but it’s written by an analyst again,
03:15:20 it’s called Can Love Last?
03:15:21 And it’s a book about how really good, strong relationships
03:15:26 are the consequence of people constantly moving
03:15:28 through this dependency objectification dynamic.
03:15:33 And I use those words in the psychological sense,
03:15:37 not in the way they’re typically thrown around nowadays.
03:15:39 So in some cultures,
03:15:41 men and women will only touch
03:15:45 for two weeks out of the month.
03:15:46 And then for the other two weeks,
03:15:49 the excitement and the sensuality and all,
03:15:52 and the sexuality is very heightened.
03:15:54 And then they go back to this kind of distancing.
03:15:56 Now, I don’t think that’s feasible for most people,
03:15:58 but if you look statistically,
03:16:00 those relationships tend to last a very long time
03:16:02 with at least reported mutual feelings
03:16:05 of intense attraction for many, many, many decades.
03:16:10 So human beings need to learn how to at least understand
03:16:14 and control these dynamics.
03:16:16 And there’s a lot of divorce, there’s a lot of cheating,
03:16:17 there’s a lot of stuff out there.
03:16:18 It’d be great if people could resolve some of this stuff
03:16:20 inside of the relationship, in my opinion.
03:16:24 Yeah, and this kind of intense attraction,
03:16:26 there’s actually one of the poems
03:16:32 that Karl Deisseroth introduced me to.
03:16:36 I think it’s Two English Poems is the name.
03:16:38 But one of the things I find myself
03:16:41 for prolonged periods being attracted to
03:16:45 is you notice some kind of magic
03:16:50 and you keep wanting to dig to the depths of that magic.
03:16:55 You need to really know that person.
03:16:57 To really know a person deeply, yeah.
03:17:00 You notice something early on.
03:17:03 I don’t know what that is,
03:17:04 but you just notice something special
03:17:06 and you want to keep pulling at that thread
03:17:09 and you never really do.
03:17:10 Well, you also have to be careful.
03:17:12 I get a lot of questions from guys.
03:17:13 You have to be careful the questions you ask
03:17:15 in a relationship too.
03:17:16 You have to make sure you really want that information.
03:17:18 And it’s not just about people’s past, right?
03:17:20 If you ask somebody how they really feel
03:17:21 about something about you and they tell you,
03:17:24 that may be soothing.
03:17:25 It may be intensely stressful.
03:17:27 You have to be, here’s one thing I know for sure.
03:17:31 For a relationship to work, you have to be brave.
03:17:34 You can’t go in there fully protected.
03:17:37 And yet you also can’t go in there with no boundaries
03:17:39 because you’ll end up beat up.
03:17:42 What’s that quote?
03:17:43 If you want to be a warrior, prepare to get hurt.
03:17:45 If you want to be an explorer, prepare to get lost.
03:17:47 And if you want to be both, you know,
03:17:49 if you become a lover, prepare to be both or something.
03:17:52 Something like that.
03:17:52 I forget, this is one of these Instagram type things
03:17:55 that you see passing by and you go, oh, that’s pretty true.
03:17:56 Love is scary because it takes us back
03:17:59 to that primitive circuitry that is as primitive
03:18:03 and basic as hunger, thirst, the desire for heat
03:18:05 when we’re cold, the desire for cold when we’re overly warm.
03:18:10 It’s a, it’s Dynorphin.
03:18:11 I mean, when somebody leaves, like the, you know,
03:18:14 when somebody you are attached to leaves by death
03:18:17 or by decision or you’re forced apart,
03:18:20 the Dynorphin release is massive.
03:18:23 It is true discomfort.
03:18:24 People feel anxiety and discomfort.
03:18:27 And moving through that is a hell of a process.
03:18:30 I mean, if I knew how to best break up
03:18:32 at a neurological level,
03:18:34 or if you could just plug yourself into a wall and reset,
03:18:37 I mean, I’d do that episode tomorrow,
03:18:39 but we don’t have that knowledge.
03:18:41 Come on, I think we’ve covered this before
03:18:44 and it’s even been memeified.
03:18:45 I think losing love is part of the magic of love.
03:18:49 It means you’ve felt something.
03:18:51 I agree, but at some point,
03:18:52 like if you’ve done it enough times,
03:18:54 you know, life is finite, you know.
03:18:57 It is beautiful to see these couples
03:18:59 that seem very much in love despite many years,
03:19:04 despite having been together many years.
03:19:06 Yeah, the way they look at each other.
03:19:08 Yeah, they’ll say.
03:19:09 They still see the magic.
03:19:10 Yeah, and they’ll say, we got lucky
03:19:11 or it was, it’s been hard or this and that.
03:19:14 I think external conditions being a little tougher
03:19:18 is helpful for a couple.
03:19:20 Hardship.
03:19:21 I do, I do, because I think that you rally, you know,
03:19:24 and you bond with people, you know,
03:19:26 obviously you want to survive those conditions,
03:19:29 but yeah, I do.
03:19:31 I think that it helps.
03:19:32 Bonnie and Clyde.
03:19:33 So any.
03:19:34 Well, they were a little.
03:19:35 Oh, a little too much.
03:19:37 Well, a little too much.
03:19:38 They were sociopaths, but the,
03:19:41 well, when two sociopaths find one.
03:19:42 Love can make you do crazy things.
03:19:44 Normally, it’s interesting,
03:19:45 normally sociopaths don’t team up
03:19:47 because they manipulate each other.
03:19:50 Sociopaths sadly are usually only interested
03:19:53 in manipulating the highly pliable or unsuspecting,
03:19:58 but when romantic attraction is woven in,
03:20:01 then it gets really diabolical.
03:20:05 Any advice on finding the love of your life, of my life?
03:20:09 This is, why Lexus single response?
03:20:12 Why, any advice?
03:20:15 Yeah, actually this comes from a friend of mine
03:20:17 who’s in a really excellent marriage
03:20:19 with great kids and family and high demand life.
03:20:24 It’s a decision.
03:20:25 Like at some point you just prioritize it as,
03:20:28 okay, I’m going to make this happen one way or another.
03:20:33 And you don’t force the discovery of that person.
03:20:36 But I mean, I’ve occasionally said,
03:20:38 hey, I think you should meet this person or that person.
03:20:41 And well, it wasn’t, maybe my judgment
03:20:44 might’ve been off, but the timing wasn’t right or something.
03:20:47 But I think that, yeah, it’s a decision.
03:20:49 And it also has to do with life structure.
03:20:52 I mean, there were years.
03:20:53 So when I was in graduate school,
03:20:54 I didn’t want a girlfriend.
03:20:56 I just wanted to be in lab.
03:20:57 And I, sure I had romantic dating interests,
03:21:00 but I wasn’t going to meet them through a committed,
03:21:02 live together situation.
03:21:04 It wasn’t where I was at.
03:21:05 And as a postdoc, things were a little different,
03:21:07 et cetera, et cetera.
03:21:08 So, but at some point it’s sort of like,
03:21:09 what do I want my daily routine to look like?
03:21:12 Because ultimately a relationship, however one structures,
03:21:16 is going to be part of your daily routine.
03:21:18 So at the point where you’re like,
03:21:19 I’d really love to wake up next to somebody
03:21:21 and do blank and blank together.
03:21:23 And then I’d love to work and then we meet for dinner.
03:21:27 And then we take the dog for a walk or take kids out
03:21:30 or whatever it happens to be, take a trip.
03:21:32 You have to be, one has to be in the mindset
03:21:35 of wanting to do couple like things.
03:21:38 And a lot of people don’t think about it that way.
03:21:40 They either fall into something
03:21:43 or they don’t see the benefits of coupling up.
03:21:48 I think that the pandemic tuned people’s awareness
03:21:52 to the fact that some things are indeed easier on your own,
03:21:57 depends on finances, et cetera, et cetera.
03:21:59 But a lot of things are made better done with other people.
03:22:05 100%, but I also, so I was very deliberately,
03:22:10 it’s an interesting way to put it,
03:22:13 but what do you want your day to look like?
03:22:15 I think what do you want your day to look like?
03:22:17 What do you want your life to be?
03:22:18 I was very deliberately always, first of all,
03:22:23 happy to be alone, like a conscious thinking.
03:22:27 I know a lot of friends were just unable to be alone.
03:22:31 I’m able to be alone, but I’m much happier
03:22:34 with another person.
03:22:35 Like I’m able to share joy with other humans.
03:22:39 I look forward to the day that our kids are rolling jiu jitsu
03:22:43 and my kids are hanging out with your kids.
03:22:47 And if that notion sounds even remotely interesting
03:22:53 and fun, then it’s sort of like you kind of backpedal
03:22:56 from that and you go, well, it has to happen.
03:22:57 How do you get to reverse engineer
03:23:00 and think from first principles about love?
03:23:03 Andrew, thank you for being my friend.
03:23:06 Thank you for being an amazing human being
03:23:08 who’s so inspiring to so many people for constantly.
03:23:11 I told this to Carl, like one of the things
03:23:13 that was really refreshing about you is that
03:23:21 when I tell you an idea and I tell you a thought,
03:23:23 when I tell you something,
03:23:25 you don’t shut it down as a first step.
03:23:29 I was saying that that’s common in the scientific community.
03:23:31 That’s common in people around you.
03:23:32 You’re seeing what’s the goal there.
03:23:34 You get excited, get excited together.
03:23:37 And that’s how you can really have a great friendship
03:23:40 and do great stuff together.
03:23:43 So I’m deeply grateful for that.
03:23:45 And just for connecting so many interesting people together.
03:23:50 You’re doing an amazing job, man.
03:23:51 And thank you for existing.
03:23:53 Thank you for being you.
03:23:54 Thank you for talking today.
03:23:56 And next time I’ll see you in the sauna and ice bath.
03:23:59 Well, I wanna say several things.
03:24:01 First of all, thank you for having me on again.
03:24:03 It’s an honor and a pleasure.
03:24:04 And I don’t say that formally, I really truly mean it.
03:24:07 I only, the Huberman Lab Podcast, as I always say,
03:24:10 only exists because you gave me the suggestion
03:24:12 and I’m so grateful that you did.
03:24:14 So thank you.
03:24:15 And for doing what you do, like you are brave
03:24:19 and you were first man in
03:24:20 and you’re just continuing to do it.
03:24:22 As my postdoc advisor used to say,
03:24:24 whatever you’re doing, just keep going.
03:24:27 And then in terms of our friendship,
03:24:28 I mean, I think you know, and if you don’t,
03:24:32 I’m gonna just keep telling you anyway,
03:24:34 by texting in person, you’re an amazing friend.
03:24:37 There’s deep trust, there’s immense respect
03:24:40 and I love you, brother.
03:24:42 I love you too, man.
03:24:44 We did it.
03:24:46 Thanks for listening to this conversation
03:24:47 with Andrew Huberman.
03:24:48 To support this podcast,
03:24:50 please check out our sponsors in the description.
03:24:52 And now let me leave you with some words
03:24:54 from Ralph Waldo Emerson.
03:24:57 It is one of the blessings of old friends.
03:24:59 You can afford to be stupid with them.
03:25:02 I look forward to doing just that
03:25:04 in the many years to come
03:25:06 of friendship and fun conversations with Andrew.
03:25:09 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.