Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships | Lex Fridman Podcast #435

hardship will show you who your real friends are that's for sure you read the quote once more don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with the following is a conversation with Andrew huberman his fifth time on the podcast he is the host of The huberman Lab podcast and is an amazing scientist teacher human being and someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend also he has a book coming out next year that you should pre-order now called protocols an operating manual for the human body this is Alex frean podcast to support it

please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Andrew huberman you think there's ever going to be a day when you walk away from podcasting definitely I mean I came up within and then on the periphery of skateboard culture and for the record I was not a great skateboarder I always have to say that cuz skateboarders are Relentless if you call something you didn't do or whatever I mean I could do a few things and I loved the community and I still have a lot of friends in that Community Jim feibo

at Deluxe you can look him up he's kind of The Man Behind the whole scene I know Tony Hawk Danny Way all these guys I got to see them come up and get big and stay big in many cases start huge companies like Dan Danny and Colin MCAS are DC some people have a long life and something some don't but one thing I observed and learned a lot from in skateboarding at the level of observing the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies and then what I also observed in science and still observe is

you do it for a while you do it at the highest possible level for you and then at some point you pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in in fact the greatest scientists people like Richard Axel kathern dulock they many other labs in Neuroscience Carl daer off they're not just known for doing great science they're known for mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on to start their own labs and I think in podcasting I am very fortunate I got in in a fairly early wave not the earliest wave but

thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast fairly early wave and I'll continue to go as as long as it feels right and I feel like I'm doing good in the world and providing good but I'm already starting to scout Talent my company that I started with Rob Moore scyon media there's a couple other guys in there too Mike playback our photographer Ian Mackey Chris Ray Martin fobes we are a company that produces podcasts right now that's hubman Lab podcast but we're launching a new podcast perform with Dr Andy Galpin nice and we want to

do more of that kind of thing finding a really great talent highly qualified people credential people and I've got a new um kind of obsession with scouring the internet looking for the young talent in science in health and related fields and so will there be a final episode of the hlp yeah I mean bullet Buster cancer aside you know someday I'll they'll be the very last and thank you for your interest in science and I'll clip out yeah I love the idea of walking away and be dramatic about it right when it feels right you

can leave and you can come back whenever the fuck you want right uh John Stewart did this well with the Daily Show I think that was during the 2016 election when everybody wanted him to stay on and he just walked away Dave Chappelle for different reasons walked away disappeared came back gave away so much money didn't care and then came back and was doing like stand up in the park in the middle of nowhere genius you have khabib who who undefeated walks away at the very top of of a sport is he coming back no

at least we don't know yeah right you don't know I don't know if you know bears everywhere are worthed yeah I think you know it's um it's always a call you know you the last few years have been tremendous growth we launched in January 2021 and even this last year 2024 has been huge growth you know in all sorts of ways it's been wild and we have some some short form content planned 30 minute shorter episodes that really distill down the critical elements we're also thinking about moving to other venues besides podcasting so there's always

the thought and the discussion but when it comes to like when to hang up your cleats you know it's like there just comes a natural time where you can do more to Mentor the Next Generation coming in than focusing on self and so there will come a time for that and I think it's critical I mean again I saw this in skateboarding like Danny and Colin and Danny's brother Damon started DC with Ken Block the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago rally car driver and they eventually sold it I think to Quicksilver

or something like that but they're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas but they brought in the next you know the next line of amazing Riders the plan B thing you know Paul Rodriguez for skateboarders they know who this is now in science there are scientists like Fineman for instance I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor Offspring so there are scientists who are phenomenal like Beyond world class right multigenerational world class who don't make good mentors I'm not saying he wasn't a good Mentor but that's not what he's known for and

then there are scientists who are known for being excellent scientists and and great mentors and I think there's no higher um celebration to be had at the end of one's career if you can look back and like hey I put some really important knowledge into the world people made use of that knowledge and guess what you spawned all these other scientific Offspring or sport Offspring or podcast Offspring I mean in some ways we look to Rogan and to some of the other earlier podcasts is like they you know they paved the way Ronda Patrick first

science podcast out there so you know it eventually the baton passes but fortunately right now everybody's active and it and it feels really good yeah well you're talking about the healthy way to do it but there's also uh a different kind of way where you have uh somebody like uh gisha gregori Pearlman the mathematician who refused to accept the fields medal so he's one of the greatest living mathematicians and he just walked away from mathematics and rejected the fields medal what did he do after he left mathematics life private 100% I respect that he's become

essentially a recluse is these photos of him looking very broke like he could use the money he he turned away the money he turned away everything you know there's there there's you just have to listen to the inner voice you have to listen to yourself and make the decisions that don't make any sense for the rest of the world and make sense to you I mean Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize that's Punk yeah yeah he probably grew in notoriety for that maybe just doesn't like going in Sweden but

seemed like it would be a fun trip I I think they do it in a nice time of year but hey that's his right he earned that right I think the best artists aren't doing it for the prize they aren't doing it for the fame or the money they're doing it because they love the art yeah that's the the Rick Rubin thing you got to verb it through download your inner thing I don't think we've talked about this that this Obsession that I have about how Rick has this way of being very very still in

his body but keeping his mind very active um as a practice went spent some time with him in Italy last June and uh we would tread water in his pool in the morning and listen to history of rock and roll and 100 songs um amazing podcast by the way it is yeah and um and then he would spend a fair amount of time during the day you know in this kind of meditative state where his mind is very active body very still and then Carl diero when he came on my podcast talked about how he

forces himself to sit still and thinking complete sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep and you know there's a state of mind rapid eye movement sleep where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active and people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more elaborate emotion filled dreams and the source of many ideas and there are other examples Einstein people described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus then pausing and would ask him what was going on and the the idea that his mind was continuing to

churn forward at a high rate um so you know this is far from controlled studies but we're talking about some incredible minds and creatives who have a practice of steing the body while keeping the Mind deliberately very active very similar to Rapid ey movement sleep and then there are a lot of people who also report you know great ideas coming to them in the shower while running so it can be the opposite as well where the body is very active and the and the mind is perhaps more on kind of like a default mode network

not really focusing on anyone specific thing you know interesting as uh there's a bunch of physicists and mathematicians I've talked to they talk about sleep deprivation and going crazy hours through the night obsessively pursuing a thing and then the solution to the problem comes when they finally get rest right and and we know we just did this six episode Special series on sleep with Matt Walker we know that when you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep you get a rebound in rap and eye movement sleep you get a higher percentage of rapid

eye movement sleep and Matt talks about this in the podcast and he did an episode on sleep and uh creativity sleep in memory and Rapid ey movement sleep comes up multiple times in that series um there's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and Rapid ey movement sleep people are coming off cannabis often will suffer from uh insomnia but when they finally do start sleeping they like dream like crazy um cannabis is a very controversial topic right now oh yeah I saw that what happened there's a bunch of drama around uh episode you did

on cannabis yeah we did a episode about cannabis talked about the health benefits and the potential risks right it's it's neither here nor there um depends on the person depends on the age depends on genetic background a number of other things um we that episode well over a year ago and it had no issues online so to speak and then a clip of it was put to X where you know the real action occurs as you know your favorite spot um yeah the the the 4 oce gloves as opposed to the 16 oce gloves um

that is X versus Instagram or YouTube there was um kind of an immediate dog pile from a few people in the cannabis research field the phds and MDS yeah there were people on our side there were people not on our side I mean you know the the statement that got things riled up the most was this notion that uh for certain individuals there's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high THC containing cannabis for certain individuals not all um that sparked some issues um there was really a split you know you see this in different

fields it there was one person in particular Who Came Out Swinging with language that in my opinion is not like of the sort that you would use at a university uh venue um especially among colleagues but that's fine you know we're all grownup well for me from my perspective it was uh strangely rude and it had an air of like elitism that to to me uh was at the source of the problem during covid that led to the distrust of Science and the the the popularization of disrespecting science because so many scientists spoke with an

arrogance and a douche baggery that I wish we would have a little bit less of yeah it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the university system are um they don't they're not familiar with like the inner workings of science and um and the culture and so you have to be very careful how you present when you're a university Professor um and when yeah so you know he came out swinging at some you know four-letter word type language and he was obviously upset about so I simply said what I would say anywhere which

was hey look come on the podcast let's chat and um why don't you give your tell me where I'm wrong and let's discuss and and fortunately he agreed and initially he said well no how can I be sure you're not going to misrepresent me and so I said we got on a d DM then then an email then eventually phone call and just said Hey listen like you're welcome to record the whole conversation we've never done a gotcha on my podcast and let's just get to the heart of the matter I think this this little

controversy is perfect um kindling for for a really great discussion and um and he had some other conditions that we worked out and and I and I felt like cool like he's really interested you get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter I will say he's been very collegial and that conversation is on the schedule I said we'll fly you out we'll put you up he said no he wants to fly himself he really wants to make sure that there's like kind of a space between um I think some of

the perception of science and health podcast in the academic Community is that it's all designed to sell something no we run ads so it can be free to everyone else yeah but I think look in the end um he agreed and I'm excited for the conversation it was interesting because in the wake of that exchange there's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in many in many um cultures as uh within the United States as when I say cultures I mean demographics uh the United States as the as

the drug of choice um there have been people highlighting the issues of potential psychosis in high THC containing and so it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of onboard certain elements that you know put forward and I think there's some controversy as to whether or not the different strains the indicas and sativas have are biologically different Etc so we'll get down into the weeds pun intended during that one and I'm excited it's the first time that we've responded to a direct criticism online about um scientific content in a way that really

promoted like oh here the idea of inviting a particular guest and so it's great let's get a guest who um is expert in cannabis I I believe I could be wrong about this but he's a behavioral neuroscientist is slightly different training but look he seems highly credential it' be fun and we you know we welcome that kind of exchange I I'm not being diplomatic I'm just saying like it's cool like he's coming on you know and he was friendly on the phone right like he literally came out online and was like basically like kind of

like f you like F this and F you but you get someone on the phone it's like hey how's it going and they're like oh yeah well you know I there was an immediate apology of like Hey listen I came out normally I'm like not like that but online you know you got a different yeah okay listen so it's a little bit like it's a little bit like Jiu-Jitsu right people say all sorts of things I guess but if they if you're like all right well let's go then it's probably a different story you know

it's not like jiu-ju cuz in Jiu-Jitsu people don't talk shit CU they know what the consequences are let me let me just say on mic and off mic you have been very respectful towards this person uh and I'm look up to you and respect you and admire the fact that you have been that said to me that guy was being a dick and when you graciously politely invited him on the podcast he was still talking down to you the whole time so I really admire and look forward to listening to you talk to him but

I hope others don't do that like you are a positive humble voice exploring all the interesting aspects of science like you want to learn if there you've got anything wrong you want to learn about it the way he was being a dick I was just hurt a little bit not because of him but CU like there's some people I really really admire brilliant scientists that are not their best selves on Twitter on X definitely I don't understand what happens to their brain well they regress they they regress and and they also are protected you know

you know when you remove the I mean no scientific argument should ever come to physical blows right but when you remove the real world thing of being right in front of somebody yeah um people will throw all sorts of stones at a distance you know over a wall and they've got their their wife or their husband or their boyfriend or their dog or their cat to go cuddle with them afterwards um but you get in a room and it's like you know confrontational people in real life are are pretty rare but hopefully if they do

it they're like willing to back it up with knowledge in this case right we're not talking about physical altercation yeah he he kept coming and he kept putting on conditions how do I know you you want this and I was like well you record the conversation how do I know you want that listen we'll pay for you to come out how do you know and eventually he just kind of relented and um and it to his credit you know he's agreed to come on I mean he still has to show up but once he does

you know we'll treat him right like we would any other guest yeah you treat people really well and I I just hope that people are a little bit nicer on the internet yeah well you know X is an interesting one because you it thickens your skin you know to just to go on there I mean you have to be ready to deal with sure but I can still criticize people for for being douchebags because like that's still not good inspiring Behavior like especially for scientists that should be sort of symbols of uh scientific thinking which

requires intellectual humility humility is a big part of that and Twitter is a good place to illustrate that yeah yeah years ago I used to I was a student in ta then um instructor and then directed A Cold Spring Harbor course on visual Neuroscience these are summer courses that um explore different topics and at night we would host um what we hoped were battles in front of the students um where you'd get two people on a you know would it be neural Prosthetics or molecular tools that would first you know um restore Vision to the

blind kind of arguments you kind of like it's kind of a silly argument because it's going to be a combination of both right but you'd get these great arguments but the arguments were always couched in data and occasionally you'd get somebody would go like or would curse or something but it was the rare very um very well-placed you know um insult it wasn't you know Coming Out Swinging um I think ultimately you know Twitter's a record of people's behavior the the internet is a record of people's behavior and here I'm not talking about news reports

about people's behavior I'm talking about how people show up online is really important you've always um carried yourself with a ton of composure and respect and you know you just you would hope that people would grow from that example well I'll tell you that the the podcasters that I'm scouting it's their energy but it's also how they treat other people how they respond to comments and um you know we're blessed to have pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast like of someone else's podcast it goes far and wide so H like a skateboard

team like a laboratory where you're selecting people to be in your lab you're you want to pick people that you would enjoy working with and that are collegial etiquette and etiquette is is lacking nowadays but you're in the suit and tie you're bringing it back bringing it back uh you said that your conversation with James Hollis a young psychoanalyst had a big impact on you what do you mean James Hollis is a 84-year-old yion psychoanalyst who's written 17 books including under Saturn Shadow which is on the healing and Trauma of men the eating Eden Project

excuse me which is about relationships and creating a life I discovered James hollison an online lecture that was recorded I think in San Diego it's on YouTube the audio is terrible called creating a life and this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span I can't remember and I was on my way to Europe and I called my girlfriend at the time I like I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard and I he talks about the shadow he talks about your developmental upbringing and how you either align with or go 180 degrees

off your parents Tendencies and values in certain areas he talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of Life to Live a full life so it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast and he wasn't able to travel so our team went out to DC and sat down with him we rarely do that nowadays people come to our studio and he came in he had some surgeries recently and he kind of came in with some assistance from a you know a cane and then sat

down and just just blew my mind it from start to finish he didn't miss a syllable and every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence of with real potency and actionable items I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response and we just force ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while seated or while lying down doesn't have to be meditation but it could be that we access our unconscious mind in

ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want and that if we do that practice repeatedly 10 minutes a day here 15 minutes a day there that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the directions we need to take but that so often we just stay in stimulus response we just do do do do do which is great we have to be productive um but we miss those um important messages and interestingly he also put forward this idea of what

is it it's like get up shut up suit up yeah something like that like get out of bed suit up and shut up and get to work he also has that in him kind of a goggin type mindset so be able to turn off all this self-reflection and self analysis and just get shit done get shit done but then also take dedicated time and stop and just let stuff geyser to the surface from the unconscious mind and he quotes Shakespeare and he quotes Yung and he quotes everybody through history with with Incredible accuracy and um

and in exactly the way uh needed to drive home a point but that that conversation to me was one that I really felt like okay you know if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason that one's in the can and I feel really great about it it's it to me it's the most important um guest recording we've ever done um in particular because he has wisdom and while I hope he lives to be 204 chances are he's got another what 20 30 years with us hopefully more but I really really wanted to capture that

information and get it out there so I'm very very proud of that one um uh and he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him young old male female whatever and you're going to get something of value what do you think about this idea of the shadow that uh the good and the bad that we repress that hides from Plain Sight when we analyze ourselves that's there you think there's like a ocean that we we don't have direct access to yes yeah young said it we have all things inside of us and we do

and some people are more touch with those than others and some people it's repressed I mean does that mean that we could all be you know horrible people or marvelous people um benevolent people perhaps I think that um thankfully more often than not people lean away from the like violent and um harmful parts of their their Shadow but I think spending time thinking about you know one's shadow shadow knows is super important how how else are we going to grow otherwise you know we have these unconscious blind spots of of denial or um repression or

whatever you know the psychiatrist tell us but yeah it clearly exists within all of us I mean we have neural circuits for rage we all do we have neural circuits for altruism um and no one's born without these things and some people they're atrophied and some people they're hypertrophied but I looking Inward and and recognizing what's there is key or positive things like creativity maybe that's what Rick Rubin is accessing when he goes silent silent body active mind mhm that's interesting what is it for you what place do you go to that generates ideas that

helps you generate ideas I have a lot of new practices around this I mean I'm all always exploring for protocols I have to it's like in my nature um when when I went and spent time with Rick I I tried to adopt his practice of staying very still and just letting stuff you know come to the surface or the daoan way of formuling complete sentences in while being still in the body what I have found works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music he writes music every day he's a music

producer he's obviously singer guitar player for rancid um and he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs and many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists Tim helped them right Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting so what he's done and Joanie Mitchell talks about this too you find some creative Outlet that's like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet and you do that thing so for me that's

drawing I like doing anatomical drawings neuroscience-based drawing draw neurons that kind of thing and if I do that for a little while in my mind starts churning on the the nervous system and biology and then I come up with areas I'd like to explore for the podcast ways I'd like to address certain topics right now I'm very interested in autonomic control a beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes and without changing luminance through a bio feedback mechanism uh and that gives them Auto control over their so-called automatic

autonomic nervous system and I've been looking at what the circuitry is and it's it's beautiful so I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function and as I'm doing that I'm thinking oh like what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size then you go in and there's a paper published in nature press one of the nature journals and there's a recent paper on this like oh cool and then we talk about this and then how could this be put into kind of a post or how could this you

know so doing things that are about 15° off center from your main thing is a great way to access I believe the circuits for in Tim's case painting goes to songwriting I think for Joanie Mitchell that was also the case right I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting for Rick I don't know what it is maybe it's listening to podcast I don't know that that's his business do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work no I'd really like

to focus on emptiness and silence so I pick the dragon I have to slay so whatever the problem I have to work on and I just sit there and stare at it I love how fucking linear you are and it just and if there's no if you're tired I'll just sit I believe in the in the power of just waiting and usually I'll stop being tired or there energy rises from somewhere or an idea Pops from somewhere but there needs to be a silence and an emptiness it's an empty room just me and the dragon

and we wait that's it like if it's a usually with programming you're thinking about a particular design like how do I design this thing to solve this problem any cognitive enhancers I've got a quite the gallery in front of me oh that's right yeah should we walk through this yeah this is not this is not a a sales thing this just um I tend to do this bounce back and forth your refrigerator just happen to have a lot of different choices so water this is all my refrigerator I know right there's no food in there

there's water there's element which they now have canned and yes they're a podcast sponsor for both of us but that's not why I cracked one of these open I like them provide they're they're cold and that's by the way my least Flav favorite flavors I was saying that's that's the reason it's still left in the fridge the Cherry one is really good the black cherry there's a orange one yeah I pushed the um sled this morning and pulled the sled for my workout at the gym and and it was hot today here in Austin so

um some salt is good and then matin yate zero sugar full confession I help develop this I'm a partial owner but I love yate half Argentine been drinking mate since I was a little kid there's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three sting on my grandfather's lap sipping mate out the gourd and then this you might find interesting this is just a little bit of coffee with a scoop of Brian Johnson gave me cocoa just like pure unsweetened Coco so I put that in chocolate I like it just for the taste

well actually nukes my appetite and since I'm we're not going out to dinner tonight until later I figure that's good yeah Brian's an interesting one right he's really pushing this this thing the optimization of everything yeah although he just hurt his ankle he posted a photo that he hurt his ankle so now he's injecting bpc body protection compound 157 which many many people are taking by the way I did an episode on peptides I should just say you know bpc 157 one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis like development of new vasculature

which can be great in some context but also if you have a tumor you don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore so I worry about people taking bpc157 continually but um and there's very little human data I think there's like one study and it's a lousy one so a lot of animal data some of the peptides are interesting however there's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pineline which um I find even if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep then it times you it seems to do something to the

circadian timekeeping mechanism because then on other days when I don't take it I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection these are things that I'll experiment with for a couple weeks and then typically stop maybe try something else but I stay out of um things that really stimulate any of like major hormone Pathways um when it comes to peptides that's actually a really good question of how do you experiment like how long do you try a thing to figure out if it works for you well I'm very sensitive to

these things so I and I been doing a lot of things for a long time so if I add something in it's always one thing at a time and I notice right away if it does not make me feel good like there's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth hormone secretagogues hyperoral and tesamorelin Calin um I've experimented a little bit with those in the past and they've nuked my rap and eye movement sleep but given me a lot of Deep Sleep which doesn't feel good to me but other people like them I

also just generally try and avoid taking peptide that tap into these hormone Pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues but some people take them safely but usually after about four five days I know if I like something or I don't and then I move on but I am not super adventurous with these things I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things they'll try anything that's not me and I do blood work um but also I'm you know I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting and um I'm teaching a course

next spring Stanford I'm gonna do a big undergraduate course um so I'm trying to develop that course and things like that so um I don't need to lift more weight or run further than I already do which is not that much weight or or far as it is right you're not going to the Olympics you're not trying to truly maximize some aspect of your performance no and I'm not and I'm not trying to get down below whatever you know 7% body fat or something I I don't have those kinds of goals so hydration electrolytes caffeine

in the form of mate and then this coffee thing and then and then here's one that I think I brought out for discussion this is a piece of Nicorette they're not a sponsor um nicotine is an interesting compound it will raise blood pressure and it um is probably not safe for everybody but you know the nicotine is gaining in popularity like crazy mainly these um pouches that people put in the lip not we're not talking about um smoking vaping tipping or snuffing you know my interest in nicotine started this was in 2010 10 I was

visiting Columbia Medical School and I was in the office of the Great neurobiologist Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize co-recipient with Linda Buck for the um discovery of the molecular basis of old faction brilliant guy he's probably in his late 70s now probably yeah and he kept popping Nicorette in his mouth and I was like what's this about and he said oh well this was just anecdote right but he said but he said this he said oh well you know it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's I said it does he goes yeah yeah yeah I

if he was kidding or not he's known for making jokes and then he said that when he used to smoke it really helped his focus in creativity but then he quit smoking because he want lung cancer and he found that he couldn't focus as well so he would choose Nicorette so occasionally like right now we each I do a half a piece but I'm not Russian so I'm a little you know you did you just pop the whole thing in your mouth MH so I'll do a couple milligrams every now and again and it definitely

sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular but you fast all day you're still doing one meal a day meal a day yeah yeah I did uh nicotine polish with Rogan at dinner and I got high yeah that's a lot that's like usually six or eight milligrams I know people that get a canister of Zen take One A Day pretty soon they're taking a canister a day so you have to be very careful I will only allow myself two pieces of Nicorette total per week and you will notice that you know in the day

after you use it you know sometimes your your throat will feel a little bit like like a little spasm you like you might want to cough once or twice and so you know if you're a singer or you're podcaster or something you have to do long podcast you want to just be mindful of it but yeah you're supposed to kind like keep it in your cheek and here we go but it did make me intensely focus in a way that was a little bit scary cuz the nucleus balis is in the you know basil 4brain

nucleus has col energic neurons that radiate out axons little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex and elsewhere and when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually we know that there's a an elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there and it binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites there so it's a kind of intentional modulation um by acetycholine so you're getting an with nicotine you're getting a exogenous or artificial heightening of that circuitry and uh the time I had T Carlson

on the podcast he told me that apparently it uh helps him as he said publicly uh keep his uh love life vibrant really it causes visas of constrictions like he literally said it makes his dick very hard he said that publicly also okay well as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's um sex life um no disrespect uh the major effect of nicotine on the vascul my understanding is that it causes Vaso constriction not Vaso dilation drugs like Calis tadalfil viagara ETA vasod dilators they allow more blood flow um nicotine does the opposite

less blood flow to the periphery but provided dosages are kept low and I I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all and I don't recommend young people use it you know um you know 25 and younger brain's very plastic at that time and um and certainly smoking dipping vaping and snuffing aren't good because you're going to run into you run into trouble uh for other reasons but in any case um well and even there vaping is a controversial topic probably safer than smoking but has its own issues and I said something like that

and boy did I catch a lot of heat for that you can't say anything as a health science educator not piss somebody off you know it just depends on where the the center of mass is and how far outside that you are for me the caffeine is the main thing and actually it's it's a really big part of my life and one of the things you recommend that people wait a bit in the morning to consume caffeine if they experience a crash in the afternoon this is one of the misconceptions I um I regret maybe

even discussing it for people that crash in the afternoon often times if they delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning they will offset some of that but if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before you're not going to avoid that afternoon crash but I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration and caffeine especially if I'm going to work out here's a weird one if I exercise before 8:30 a.m. especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired I get energy that

lasts all day if I wait until my peak of energy which is midm morning 10:00 a.m. 11:00 a.m. and I start exercising then I'm basically exhausted all afternoon and I don't understand why I mean it depends on the intensity of the workout but so I like to be done showered and heading into work by 9:00 a.m. but I don't always meet that Mark so you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start out with exercising I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early and it and then

that fuels you all day long I think that if you wait until you're feeling at your best to Train sometimes that's mental because then in the afternoon when you're doing like the work we get paid for like research podcasting Etc then often times you know your your brain isn't firing as well that's interesting I haven't really rigorously tried that wake up and just start running or this is the Joo thing and then there's this phenomenon called entrainment where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or view bright light at a certain time

of day for three to seven days in a row pretty soon there's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated this is why anyone in theory can become a morning person to some degree or another and this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off you know people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off it wasn't because it clicked it's because you have this in incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep and there's some papers that have been published in the last couple of years Nature Neuroscience

and elsewhere showing that people can answer math problems in their sleep simple math problem but math problems nonetheless this does not mean that if you ask your partner a question and sleep that they're going to answer accurately like they might screw up the whole um uh cumulative probability of 20% across multiple months all right listen what happened what happened here's the deal a few years back I did a four and a half hour after editing four and a half hour episode on male and female fertility um the entire recording took 11 hours and at one

point during the and and by the way I'm very proud of that episode there's many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode and my first question is what were you doing during the episode but in all seriousness um we should say that it's 4 and a half hours yeah and for people and they should listen to the episode you're it's extremely technical episode like you're non-stop dropping facts and and referencing huge number of papers it's must be exhausted I don't understand how you can possi talk

about sperm Health spermatogenesis it talks about the ovulatory cycle it talks about things people can do that are that are considered absolutely supported by science it talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit that are a little bit more experimental it talks about IVF it talks about ixie it talks about um all of that it talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age Etc um but there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the uh probability of a successful pregnancy as a function

of age and so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing cumulative probability and by the way we published cumulative probability histograms in many of my Laboratories papers including one that was a nature article in 2018 so we run these all the time and yes I know the difference between independent and cumulative probability just like I do um the way the clip was cut and what I stated unfortunately combined to a like a pretty great Gaff where I say you just adding I said you're just adding percentages 20 20 20 to

120% and then I made us kind of unfortunately my humor isn't always so good and I made a joke I said um 120% but that's a different thing alog together what I should have said was um that's impossible you know and here here's how it actually works but then the the it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram for um successful pregnancy but somewhere in the early portion I I misstated something right I made a math error um which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability which I do and

it got picked up and and run and people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense and so what I did in response to it was rather than just say everything I just said now I said I just came out online and said hey folks in an episode dated this on fertility I made a math error here is the formula for cumulative probability successful pregnancy at that age here's the graph here's the you know and I I offered it as a teaching moment in two ways one for people to understand cumulative probability

it was sort of interesting too a number of people that had come out critiquing the Gaff also um like bology and folks came out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability there was a lot of posturing you know the dog pile oftentimes people are quick to dog pile they didn't understand but a lot of people did understand some smart people out there obviously I called my dad and he was just laughing he goes oh this is good this is like the old school way of of hammering academics um but the point being there's a

teaching moment um gave me an opportunity to say hey I made a mistake I also made a mistake in another podcast where I um did a micron to millimeter conversion and or centimeter conversion but and we always always correct these in the show note captions we correct them in the audio now um unfortunately on YouTube it's harder to correct you can't go and edit and segments so we put in the captions but that was the one teaching moment if you make a mistake it's substantive and relate to data you you you apologize and correct the

mistake use a teaching moment the other one was to say Hey you know in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out I'm sure I've made some small errors I think I once said serotonin when I me dopamine and you know you're you're going you're you're riffing and it's it's a reminder to be careful um to edit double check but the internet usually uh edits for us and then we go make corrections but it didn't feel good at first but ultimately you know I can laugh at myself about it um long ago at

Berkeley when I was teing my first class it was a biopsychology class be 1998 or 1999 um I was drawing the pituitary gland which is you know it has an anterior and a posterior lobe actually is a medial lobe too I have five 600 students in that lecture hall and I drew a chalkboard and I drew the two loaves of the pituitary and I said my back was to the audience I said you know and so they just sort of hang there and everyone just erupted in laughter cuz it looked like a scrotum with two

testicles and I remember thinking like oh my God like I don't think I can turn around like and face this you know and like oh got to turn around sooner or later so I turned around and we just all had a big laugh together it was embarrassing I'll tell you one thing though they never forgot about the two loes of the pituitary yeah and you haven't forgotten about that either right there's a high high salience for these kinds of things and it also was kind of fun to see how excited people get to see people

trip it's like an elite Sprinter trips and does something stupid like you know runs the opposite direction out the blocks or something like that and and or a you know I recall that one World Cup match years ago a guy scored against his own team I think they killed the guy do you remember that mhm some South American or Central American team yeah and they killed the guy but yeah let's let's look it up I just said um World Cup yeah he was gunned down Andre Escobar yeah scored against his own team in 1994 World

Cup in the United States just 27 years old playing for the Columbia national team yeah last name Escobar it's a good name you think it would protect you listen you know so there are some gaffs that get people uh killed right so you know how forgiving are we for online mistakes you know it's it's the nature of the mistakes people were quite gracious about the the Gaff and some weren't and you know it's interesting that um we as you know Public Health Science Educators um you know we'll do long podcast sometimes and and you need

to be really careful what's great is AI MH allows you to check these things now more readily so that's cool and there are ways that that it's now going to be more self-correcting I mean you know I think there's there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them and it's cool like things are getting cleaned up yeah but mistakes nevertheless will happen are you uh do you feel the pressure of not making mistakes sure I mean you know I try and get things right to the best of you know

to the best of my ability um I check with experts it's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was said in a podcast a lot of times I chuckle because I'm you know at Stanford we have some amazing scientists but there I talk to them else people elsewhere um and it's always interesting to me how you I'll get Divergent information and then I'll find the overlap in the VIN diagram and I have this like question do I just stay with the overlap in the VIN diagram like I did an episode on oral

health I didn't know this until I researched that episode but oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health that there's a bacteria that causes cavities streptococus you know that can make its way into other parts of the body through the mouth that um um can cause serious issues there's the idea that some forms of dementia some forms of heart disease are start in the mouth basically I talked to no fewer than four dentists Dental experts and there was a lot of convergence I also learned that teeth can demineralize that's the formation of

cavities they can also remineralize as long as a cavity isn't too deep it can actually fill itself back in especially if you provide the right substrates for it that saliva is this incredible fluid that has all this capacity to remineralize teeth provided the meal you is right things like alcohol-based mouthwashes killing off some of the critical things you need this fascinating and I put out that episode thinking oh I'm not a dentist I'm not an oral health episode but I talk to a pediatric dentist there's a terrific one Dr downcore Stacy St ACI on Instagram

does great content talk to some others um and like and then I just waited for the attack I was like here we go and it didn't come and dentists were thanking me like you know MH that's a rare thing more often than not if I do an episode about say psilocybin or MDMA you get some people liking it or ADHD and the drugs for ADHD we did a whole episode on the riddin viance ater all stuff you get people saying thank you you know I prescribe this to my kid and it really helps and and

this and but they're private about the fact that they do it because they C so much attack from other people so I like to find the center of mass report that try to make it as clear as possible and then I know that there's some stuff where I'm going to catch shit what's frustrating for me is when like I see claims that I'm like against fluidization of water which I'm not right like we talked about the benefits of fluoride it builds hyper strong bonds within the teeth I went and looked at some of the the

literally the crystal struct not excuse me not the crystal stru structure but the the essentially the like Micron and submicron structure of teeth it's like incredible and a where fluoride can get in there and form these super strong bonds and you can also form them with things like hydroxy appetite and why is there fluoride in water well it's the best okay you get you say some things that are interesting but then somehow it gets turned into like you're against fluidization which I'm not or I've been accused of being against sunscreen I wear mineral-based sunscreen on

my face I don't want to get skin cancer or I use a physical barrier there is a cohort of people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad I'm not one of them I'm not What's called a sunscreen truther but then you get attacked for like if you so we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic so what and Ronda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this and so there's certain topics that's interesting for which you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying but there's a lumper or lumping as

opposed to splitting of of of what health Educators say and so it just seems like like with politics there's this like urgency to just put people into a camp of expert versus like Renegade or something and it's not like that it's just not like that so I the short answer is I really strive really strive to get things right but I know that I'm going to piss certain people off and you've taught me and Joe's taught me and other podcasters have taught me that like if you worry too much about it um then you aren't

going to get the newest information out there like peptides there's very little human data unless talking about VII or the melan you know stuff in the alpha mocy stimulating hormone stuff which are prescribed for female libido to enhance female liido or um celin which is for certain growth hormone deficiencies with with rare exception there's very little human data but people are still super interested and a lot of people are taking and doing these things so you want to get the information out do you try to not just look at the science but research what the

communities are talking what the various communities are talking about like maybe research what the conspiracy theorists are talking about just so you know all the armies that are going to be attacking your Castle yes so like for instance there's a community of people online that believe that like if you consume seed oils or something that like you're setting up your skin for sunburn and if you don't you know like there's all these like theories but I like to so I like to know what the theories are I like to know what the extremes are but

I also like to know what the standard conversation is but there's generally more agreement than disagreement I think where um you know I've been kind of bullish actually is you know where like supplements like people go oh supplements well there's food supplements like a protein powder which is different than a vitamin and then they are compounds there are compounds that have real benefit but people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated but some of them are are vetted with for potency and for um safety with with more rigor than others you know

and it's interesting to see how people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into that are often attacked that's been interesting also one of the most controversial topics nowadays is OIC monjaro I'm very middle of the road on this I don't understand why the quote unquote Health Wellness Community is so against these things I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route for some people they've really helped them lose weight and yes there can be some muscle loss and other lean lean body loss but can

be offset with resistance training they've helped a lot of people and other people are like no this stuff is terrible I think the most interesting thing about OIC monjaro is that they are glp1 they're in the gp1 pathway gagon like peptide 1 and it was discovered in hila monsters which is a uh lizard basically and someone the now the now the entomologist will dive on me it's a big big lizard looking thing that doesn't eat very often and they figured out that there's this peptide that allows it to curb its own appetite at the level

of the brain and the gut and it has a lot of homology to sequence homology to what we now call gp1 so I love anytime there's animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can help people with obesity and type two diabetes and there's evidence that can even curb some addictions um those are newer data but I don't see as either or in fact I've been a little bit disappointed at the way that the um whatever you want to call it health Wellness biohacking Community has like slammed on OIC

Monaro it's like they're like just get out and run and do listen there are people who are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running could injure them they get on these drugs and they can improve and then hopefully they're also doing resistance training and eating better and then you know you're bringing all the elements together well why do you think the criticism is happening is it that Olympic became super popular so people are misusing it or that kind of thing no I think what it is is that people think if it's a pharmaceutical it's bad

yeah and then or if it's a supplement it's bad depending on which camp they're in and and wouldn't it be wonderful to kind of like fill in the gap between this divide that you know um what I would like to see in politics and in health is um neither right nor left but what we can just call A League of reasonable people that looks at things on an issue by isue basis and fills in the center because I think most people are in the are I don't want to say Center in a political way but

I think most people are reasonable they want to be reasonable but that's not what sells clicks that's not what that's not what drives interest um but I'm a very like like I look at issue by issue person by person I don't like ingroup outgroup stuff I never have I've got friends from all walks of life I said this on other podcast and it always sounds like like a political statement but like the the the push towards like you know polarization is it's so frustrating if there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older

each year I'm like wow are we ever going to get out of this like polarization speaking of which how are you going to vote for the presidential election I'm I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it well what do you think the role of podcast is going to be in this year's election I would love uh long form conversations to happen with um with the candidates I think it's going to be huge I would love Trump to go on Rogan I embarrassed to say this but I would love

to honestly would love to see Joe Biden go on Joe Rogan also I would imagine that both would go on but separately separately I think it's I think a debate Joe does debates but I think Joe at his best this one-on-one conversation really intimate um I I just wish that Joe Biden would actually do long form conversations I thought he had done a wasn't he I think he was on uh J shett podcast he did J shett he did he did a few but when I mean long form I mean uh really long form like

2 three hours and more relaxed it was much more orchestrated because what happens when it's the interview is a little bit too short it becomes into this generic uh political type of uh NBC CNN type of interview you get a set of questions and you don't get to really feel the human expose the human to the light and it the full we talked about the Shadow The Good the Bad and the Ugly so I think there's something magical about two three 4 hours mhm but it doesn't have to be that long but it has to

have that feeling to it where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous and you're going to be uh strictly sticking to the question answer type of feel but just shooting shit which Rogan is the best by far in the world at that yeah he's I I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does and the number I mean the three or four podcasts per week press plus the UFC announcing plus comedy tours in stadiums plus um you know doing comedy shows in the the middle of the week plus you

know a husband and a father and a friend and Jiu-Jitsu the guys got like super human levels of output I I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business and I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are uh running for office said a in a different way and to really get to know them um well listen you know I I guess you I mean is it clear that he's going to do jail time or maybe he gets away with fine I don't think because I was going to say

I mean does that mean you're going to be podcasting from in prison yeah we're going to in fact I'm going to figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison with please don't please don't well that's I'm sure they have visitors right that just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interview but yeah I understand you wouldn't be able to wear that suit you'd be wearing a different suit that's true yeah um it's G to be interesting and and you do I'm not just saying this because you're my friend but

you would do a marvelous job I think you should sit down with all of them separately to keep it civil and um and see what what happens here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape when I'm in Los Angeles I often get invited to these like they're not dinners but Gatherings where you know local um you know bunch of podcasters will come together but a lot of people from the entertainment industry big agencies big Tech like big big Tech many of the people have been on this podcast and they'll host

a discussion or a debate and what you find if you look around the room and you talk to people is that about half the people in the room are very left leaning and very outspoken about that and they'll tell you exactly who they want to see in the in the win the presidential race and the other half we'll tell you that they're for the other side a lot of people that people assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are in the exact opposite side now some people are very open about who

who they're for but it's been very interesting to see how um when you get people one-on-one they're like telling you they want X candidate to win or Y candidate to win and sometimes like really I can't believe it like you like yep and so it's what people think about um people's political leads is often exactly wrong and and that's been eye openening for me and I've SE that um university campuses too and and so it's going to be really really interesting to see what happens in in November in addition to that as you said most

people are close to the center despite what Twitter makes it seem like most people whether they Center left or center right they're kind of close to the center yeah I mean here's the to me the most inter in question who is going to be the next big candidate in years to come like who's that going to be right now I don't I don't I don't see or know of that person who's it going to be yeah the young promising candidates we're not seeing them we're not seeing like who another way to ask that question who

would want to be well that's the issue right you know it who wants to live in this 12-hour news cycle where you're just trying to you know dunk on the other team so that nobody notices like that you're the shit that you fucked up you know like that that's not like that's not only not fun or interesting it also is just like it's got to be psychosis inducing at some point and I think that you know God willing we're going to you know some young guy or woman is like on this and refuses to to

back down and was just like determined to be president and we'll make it happen but like I don't even know who the viable candidates are maybe you Lex you know we should ask Sagar Sagar would know yeah yeah uh maybe Sagar himself sagar's show is awesome yeah it he and Crystal do a great thing he's incredible especially since they have somewhat Divergent opinions on things that's what makes it so cool he's great he looks great in the suit looks real sexy he's taking real good care of himself I think he's getting married soon congratulations SAR

forgive me for not remembering your your wife future wife's name but uh he won my heart by giving me uh a biography of Hitler as a present that's what he gave you yeah I gave you a a hatchet with a poem inscrib that just shows the fundamental difference a poem inscribed in it which was pretty damn good I realize everything we bring up on the screen is like really depressing like the soccer player getting killed can we bring up something happy uh sure let's go to uh nature is metal Instagram those are pretty intense we

actually did a collaborative post on a on a shark thing really yeah what kind of shark thing so to generate the fear VR stimulus for my lab in 20 was it yeah 2016 we went down to Guadalupe island off the coast of Mexico me and a guy named Michael Mueller who's a very famous um portrait photographer but also takes photos of sharks and we used 360 video to build VR of great white sharks brought it back to the lab we published that study in current biology in 2017 went back down there um and that was

the year that I exited the cage you lower the cage with a crane and that year I exited the cage I had a whole mess with a air failure the day before I was breathing from a hookah line while in the cage I Had No SCUBA on divers were out the thing got Bo constricted up and I had an air failure and I had to actually share air and it was a whole mess story for another time but the next day because I didn't want to get PTSD and it was pretty scary the next day

I cage exited um with some other divers and it turns out with these great white sharks in gual Lupe that the water's very clear and you can swim toward them and then they'll they'll Veer off you if you swim toward them otherwise they see you as prey well in the evening you've brought all the cages up and you're hopefully all alive and we were hanging out fishing for a tuna uh we had a one of the the crew on board had um a a line in the water and was fishing for tuna for dinner and

a shark took the tuna off the line and it's a it's a very dramatic take and you can see the the just absolute size of these great white sharks the the waters there are filled with them that's the one but so this video just the neural Link Link was shot by Matt McDougall who is the um head neurosurgeon at neurolink there it is takes it now believe it or not looks like it missed like it didn't get the fish it actually just cut that thing like a band saw so I'm up on the deck with

Matt yeah and so when you look at it from the side you you really get a sense of this of the the girth of this freaking thing so as it comes up if you look at the size of that thing and they move through the water with such speed just a couple so when you're in the cage and the cage is lowered down below the surface they're they're going around you're not allowed to Chum the water there some people do it um but and then when you kjag sit they're like what are you doing out

here and then you know they you swim toward them they Veer off but what's interesting is that if you look at how they move through the water all it takes for one of these great white sharks when it sees a tuna or something it wants eat is like two flicks of the tail and becomes like a missile it's just unbelievable economy of effort and ocean Ramsay who is in my opinion the greatest of all KJ exit shark divers this woman who dove with enormous great white sharks she really understands their behavior when they're aggressive when

they're not going to be aggressive she and her husband Juan I believe his name is do they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks we were down there basically like not understanding any of this we never should have been there and actually the air failure of the day before plus K exing the next day I told myself after coming up from the K exit that's it I'm no longer taking risks with my life I want to live got back across the border um a couple days later I was like that's it

I I don't take risk with my life any longer but yeah McDougall Matt McDougall shot that video and then it went quote unquote viral through uh Nature's metal we passed them that video I actually uh I saw a video where an instructor was explaining how to behave with a shark in the water and that you don't want to be swimming away because then you're acting like a prey that's right and then you want to be acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it right towards them and they'll Bank off now if

you don't see them they're ambush you know swimming in the surface and apparently if they get close you should just like guide them away by like grabbing them and moving them away some people will actually roll them um but if they're coming in full speed you're not going to roll the shark but here we are back to dark stuff again I like the shark attack map and the shark attack map shows that um you know Northern California there were a couple actually a guy's head got taken off um he was swimming North of San Francisco

there's been a couple in Northern uh California that was really tragic but most of them are in Florida in Australia Florida the Surf Rider Foundation shark attap map there it is had they have a great map there you go so they look like they have all scars on them so if you if you zoom in on um I mean look at this if you go to North America um look like his skulls there's there's a yeah where their where their deadly attacks um but in yeah Northern California sadly this is really tragic if you zoom

in on this one um I read about this uh this guy if you click the link 50-year-old Mill he was in chest high water this is just tragic I feel so sad for him and his family you know he's just um three members of the party chose to go in he was you know NY was in his chest high water 25 to 50 yards from Shore great breach the water seized his head and that was it you know so it does happen it's very infrequent um if you don't go in the ocean it's a very

very very low probability um but but if it doesn't happen six times in a row no 120% chance yeah who do you think wins uh ass salwat crocodile or a shark okay I do not like saltwater crocodiles they scare me to no end Mueller Michael meller who Dove all over the world he sent me a picture of him diving uh with salties saltwater crocs in Cuba it was a smaller one but goodness graci have you seen the size of some of those saltwater crocs yeah um I'm thinking I'm thinking the the sharks are so a

agile they're amazing they've head cammed one or body cammed one um moving through the Kel bed um and you look and it's just they're so agile moving through the water and and it's looking up at the surface like the camera is looking at the surface and you just realize if you're out there um you're not and you're swimming and you get hit by by a shark you're not I was going to talk shit and say that a salty has way more bite force but according to the internet recently data indicates that the shark has a

stronger bite so I I was I was assuming that a crocodile would have a a stronger bite force and therefore agility doesn't matter but apparently a shark yeah and turning one of those big salties is is probably not that you know turning around it's like a battleship I mean those sharks are un believe they hit from All Sorts oh and they they do this thing we saw this you're out of the cage or in the cage and you and you'll look at one and and you'll see its eye kind of like looking at you they

can't really fobi it but they'll look at you and you're tracking it and then you'll look down and you'll realize that one's coming at you they're just they're they're Ambush Predators they're working together it's fascinating I like I like how you know that they can't fiate you're already considering the vision system there it's a very primitive system very primitive eyes on the side of the head they vision is decent enough they're mostly obviously sensing things with their um Electro sensing in the water but also um all faction um yeah I spend far too much time

thinking about and learning about the the visual systems of different animals if you get me going on this like we'll be here all night see this is what I have the muglet on to I saw this in a store and I got it cuz this is from a shark goodness yeah can't say I ever saw one with teeth this big but it's beautiful yeah it's probably you know probably your blood pressure just goes and you you don't feel feel a thing yeah it's not before we went down for the KJ exit um a guy in

our crew Pat dosu um very experience diver um asked one of the South African divers that um so what you know like what's the contingency plan if like somebody catches a bite and they were like he was like every man for himself and they're like basically saying like if somebody catches a bite like that's it yeah you know um anyway I thought we were going to bring up something happy well that is Happy Well we live yeah nature is beautiful uh we lived um but you know there are there are happy things you brought up

nature as metal this see this is the difference between Russian yeah Americans and Americans it's like maybe this is actually a good time to bring up um your iasa journey I've never done iasa um but I'm curious about it I'm also curious about ibaan iboga um but you told me that you did iasa and that for you it wasn't the dark scary ride that it is for everybody else yeah it was an incredible experience for me I did it twice actually and have you done high do psilocybin never know I just did small dose psilocybin

a couple times so I was you know nervous about it I was very understand so I've done high do cocy and it's terrifying but I've always gotten something very useful out of it so I mean I was nervous about like whatever demons might hide in the shadow in the Y in Shadow like I was I was nervous but I think it turns out I don't know what the lesson is to draw from that but my experience be born Russian it must must be the Russian thing I mean there also something into the jungle there it

strips away all the bullshit of life and you're just there I I forgot the outside civilization exists I forgot time because like when you don't have your phone you don't have meetings or calls or whatever you you lose a sense of time the sun comes up the sun comes down that's the the fundamental biological timer you know every Mamon species has a short wavelength so you think like blue UV type but like absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone and the and it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening because

when the sun is low in the sky you've got short wavelength and long wavelength light like if you look at a Sunrise it's got blues and yellows orange and yellows you look in the evening Reds orange and and blues and in the middle of the day it's like full spectrum light now it's always full spectrum light but because of some atmospheric elements and because of the low solar angle you like that difference between the the different wavelengths of light is is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your eye pay attention to and and signal

to your circadian timekeeping mechanism like we are at the core of our brain in the supermatic nucleus we are we are like wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun like that's the biological timer which makes perfect sense because you know obviously as the planets um as the planets spin and revolve I also wonder like how that is affected by you know in the rainforest the sun is not visible often so you're under the cover of of the trees so maybe that affects well there are social rhythms their feeding rhythms sometimes

in in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species and um but yeah getting out from the canopy is is critical of course even Under The Canopy during the daytime there's far more photons than at night you know this always when I'm telling people to get sunlight in their eyes in the morning and in the evening people say there's no light no sunlight this time here I'm like it go outside on a really cast day it's far brighter than it is at night right so um there's still lots of sunlight

even if you can't see the Sun as an object but I I love um time perception shifts and you mentioned that in the jungle it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun you also mention that on iasa you zoomed out from from the earth the these are like to me the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another brain course have only ever had a human brain but which is that you can consciously set your uh time domain window like you can we can be focused here we can be

focused on all of Austin or we can be focused on the entire planet you can make those choices consciously but in the time domain it's it's hard like different activities bring us into fine slicing or more or more broad binning of time depending on what we're doing programming or exercising or researching or podcasting but um just how unbelievably um fluid the human brain is in terms of its uh the aperture of of the time space window of our cognition and of our experience and I I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable

tools that we have access to that we don't really leverage as much as we should which is when things are really hard you need to zoom out and see it as one element within your whole lifespan and that there's more to come um you know I mean people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in or they think it's going to go on forever um when we're happy we rarely think this is going to last forever but uh which is interesting contrast in its own right but I think that psychedelics while

I have very little experience with them I I have some and and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the the different apertures well how to surf that wave is probably a skill one of the things I was prepared for and I think is important is not to resist I think I understand what it means needs to resist a thing a powerful wave and it's not going to be good so you have to be able to Surf it so I was ready for that to relax through it and maybe because I'm quite

good at that from knowing how to relax in all kinds of disciplines playing piano and uh guitar when I was super young and then through Jiu-Jitsu knowing the value of relaxation and through all kinds of sports to be able to relax the body fully and just accept whatever happens to you that process is probably why it was a very positive experience me do do you have any interest in iboga I'm very interested in ibigan iboga there's a colleague of mine and researcher at Stanford Nolan Williams who's been doing some transrenal magnetic stimulation and brain Imaging

on people who have taken ibigan ibigan um as I understand it gives a 22-hour psychedelic Journey where no hallucinations with eyes open but you close your eyes and you get a um a very high resolution image of actual events that happened in your life but then you have agency within those movies I think you have to be um of healthy heart to be able to do it I think you have to be on a heart rate monitor it's not trivial it's not like these other psychedelics um but there's a wonderful group um called veteran Solutions

um that has used iboga combined with um some other psychedelics um in the veterans community to to great success for things like PTSD and it's a group i' I've really tried to support in in any way that I can mainly by being about the great work they're doing but um you hear incredible stories of people who are just like like near cratered in their life or zombied by PTSD and other things postwar um get back a lightness or achieve a lightness and a Clarity um that they didn't feel they had so I'm very curious about

these compounds um the state of Kentucky we should check this but um I believe has taken money from the uh opioid crisis settlement for ibigan research I mean so this is like no longer yes so if you look here let's see uh did they do it oh no no oh no they backed away Kentucky backs away from the plan to fund opio treatment research with they were going to use the money to treat opio now officials are backing off 50 billion what is on its way over the coming years $50 billion $50 billion is on

its way to State and local government over the coming years the pool of funding comes from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies that profited from manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opioid so they were going to do psychedelic research with ibigan supporting research on illegal illegal folks psychedelic drug called ibigan well I guess they backed away from it well sooner or later we'll get some happy news up on the on the internet during this episode I don't know talk about the the shark and the crocodile

fighting yeah yeah that's true that's true and you survived the jungle does the the thing I was I was I was writing to you on WhatsApp multiple times cuz I was going to put on the internet are you okay and if you're like alive and then I was going to just like put it to Twitter just like he's alive but then of course you're far too classy for that so you just came back alive well jungle or not one one of the lessons is also you know when when you hear the call for adventure just

fucking do it I was gonna ask you it's kind of silly question but like give me a small fraction of things on your bucket list bucket list yeah uh go to Mars yeah what's what's the status of that I don't know I'm being patient about the whole thing red planet ran that cartoon of you guys uh going that one was pretty funny true actually that one was pretty funny one where goggin is already up there yeah that's that's a funny one probably also true I would love I would love to die in Mars oh I

I I just love Humanity reaching on to the stars and doing this bold adventure and taking big risks and exploring I love exploration what about seeing different animal species I'm a huge fan of this guy Joel Sartor um where he he has this photo Arc project where he takes portraits of all these different animals if people aren't already following him on Instagram he's doing some really important work um this guy's Instagram is amazing portraits of well look at it look at these portraits the amount of um I want say personality because we don't want to

project anything onto them but yeah the the like the eyes and he'll occasionally put a movie a little owl I Delight in things like this I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes oh and um dogs or all kinds of all animals um and I'm very interested in um kids content that that incorporates animals so we have some things Brewing there like I I could look at this kind of stuff all day long look at that bat like bats people think about bats is kind of like a little flickering a little

Annoying disease carrying things but look how beautiful that little sucker is how's your uh podcast with the Cookie Monster coming oh yeah we've been in discussions with cookie the um it's uh can't say too much about that but um Cookie Monster embodies dopamine right Cookie Monster wants cookie right wants cookie right now you know like it was that it was that one tweet Cookie Monster Eye balc because cookies come from all directions you know it's like it's just embodying the the the desire for for something and and which is an incredible aspect of ourselves the

other one is you remember a little while ago um Elmo put out a tweet hey how's everyone doing out there and it went viral and you know the Surgeon General of the United States have been talking about the loneliness crisis he came on the podcast and you know a lot of people been talking about problems with loneliness mental health issues with loneliness Elmo puts out a tweet hey how's everyone doing out there and everyone gravitates toward it you know so the the different Sesame Street characters really embody the different like kind of aspects of self

through very like narrow neural circuit perspective um you know sagus is shy and um Oscar the Grouch grouchy right and the count one two the archetypes of yeah the archetypes very young once again yeah and I think that um you know the creators of Sesame Street clearly either understand that or it's an unconscious genius to that so yeah there are some things Brewing on on uh conversations with Sesame Street characters it's not I know you'd like to talk to Vladimir Putin I'd like to talk to Cookie Monster it illustrates the differences in our like sophistication

or something illustrates a lot yeah illustrates a lot um but yeah I also I love animation so I'm not anime that's not my thing but animation so I'm very interested in the use of Animation to get uh science content across so there are a bunch of things Brewing but um but anyway I Delight in sartori's work and and and it there's a conservation aspect to it as well but I think that um mostly want to thank you for finally putting up something that like where something's not being killed or like like some sad sad outcome

these are all really positive they're really cool and every once in a while look at look at that uh mountain lion um but I also like to look at these and and some of them remind me of certain people right so let's just scroll through like for instance I think when we don't try and process it too much so like like okay look at this cat this Civic cat amazing like I feel like that's somebody I feel like this is like a like someone I met once as curiosity curiosity and a playfulness um carnivore carnivore

frontalization influencers you see on Instagram right except this one's natural just kidding um uh let's see no filter um filter yeah um let's see like I feel like Bears I'm a big fan of bears yeah bears are beautiful this one kind of reminds me of you a little bit there's like a stoic nature to it a curiosity so you can kind of feel like the essence of animals you don't even have to do psychedelics to get there look at that he's like the behind the scenes of How It's actually and then there's um wow yeah

yeah the In the Jungle the diversity of life was also Stark from a scientific perspective just the fact that most of those species are not identified was fascinating right it was like a little every little every little insect is a kind of Discovery right I mean one of the reasons I love New York city so much despite its problems at times is that um everywhere you look there's life it's like a tropical Reef if you've ever done scuba diving or snorkeling you look on a tropical reef and it's like there's some little crab working on

something and like everywhere you look there's life you know in the Bay Area if you go scuba diving or snorkeling it's like a kelp bed you know the Bay Area is like a Kel bed every once in a while some big fish goes by it's like a big IPO but like most of the time not a whole lot happens actually the Bay Area it's interesting as I've been going back there more and more recently um there are really cool little subcultures starting to pop up again nice um there's incredible skateboarding the gx1000 guys are these

guys that like bomb down Hills they're in nuts like they're just going like so just speed not tricks you got to see gx1000 these guys going downhills in San Francisco they are wild and occasionally unfortunately occasionally someone will get hit by a car but if you gx1000 look into intersections they have spotters you can see someone there um oh I see there's a some into traffic yeah into traffic so in San Francisco yeah this is crazy like this is unbelievable and um and they're they're just wild but in any case what's on your bucket list

that you haven't done well I'm working on a book so I'm actually going to head to a cabin for a couple weeks and write which I've never done um people talk about doing this but I'm going to do that that's I'm excited for that just the mental space of really dropping into writing like Jack Nicholson and The Shining C let's hope not okay let's hope not you know before I mean I only started doing public facing anything posting on Instagram in 2019 but I used to head up to Wala on the northern coast of California

um sometimes by myself um to a little cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just read and write papers and things like that I used do that all the time I I I missed that so some of that um I'm trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina relatives in on the East Coast see my parents more they're in good health thankfully I want to get married and have a family that's an important priority and putting a lot of lot of work in there yeah that's a big one yeah

one yeah putting a lot of work um into the the the runway on that um what's your advice for people about that or give advice to yourself about how to find love in this world how to find how to build a family get there and and then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the marks um yeah well obviously pick the right partner but also like do the work on yourself know know yourself the Oracle know thyself and I think um listen I have a friend he's a new friend but he's a

friend uh who I met for uh a meal he's a very very well-known actor overseas and his stuff has made it over here and um we become friends and we went to lunch and we were talking about work and being public facing and all this kind of thing and and then I I said you have kids right and he says he has four kids I was like oh yeah you know I see your post with the kids you seem really happy and he said he just looked at me he leaned in and he said it's

the best gift you'll ever give yourself and he also said and pick your partner the mother of your kids very carefully so you know that's good advice coming from excellent advice coming from somebody who's you know very successful in work and family so that's the only thing I can pass along we hear this from friends of ours as well but um kids are amazing and Family's am amazing and um you know that's a different people all these people who want to like be immortal and like live to be 200 or something you know there's also

the the oldfashioned way of you know having children that live on and evolve a new Legacy but they have you know half your DNA so that's exciting yeah I think you would make an amazing Dad thank you it seems like a fun thing and you know I've also gotten advice from friends who are uh super high performing and have a lot lot of kids they'll say just don't overthink it right start having kids let's go right well the chaos of kids is kind of the like it can either bury you or it can or it

can Fe give you energy but I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing like wild and crazy things and so that kind of energy is great and and if it's not a big pack of wild boys it's you know you have daughters and they can be you know different form of chaos sometimes same form of chaos um how many kids do you think you want um you know it's either two or five yeah very different Dynamics you're one of two right you have a brother yeah um I mean I'm very close with

my sister I couldn't imagine having another sibling because it there's so much richness there we we talk almost every day or you know three four times a week you know U sometimes just briefly but we're we're tight you know we're really look out for one another um she's amazing person like truly an amazing person and is like raised her daughter in amazing way she's like you know my niece is like gonna head to college in a year or two and like my sister's done an amazing job and her dad's done a a great job too

they they both really put a lot into um the family aspect got don't has to spend time with a really amazing person in the in Peru in the Amazon jungle and he is one of 20 kids wow so he's got Mo it's mostly guys so it's just a lot of brothers and I think two sisters wow I just had Jonathan height on the podcast the guy who's talking the anxious generation calling in the American mind he's great but he was saying that you know in order to keep kids healthy they need to not be on

social media or have smartphones until they're 16 I've actually been thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends onto neighboring properties you know everyone talks about this not creating a commune or anything like that but I think he I think Jonathan's right we we were more or less our brain wiring does best when we raised in small village type environments where kids can forage the whole Freer range kids idea and I grew up skateboarding and building Forts and dirt CLA Wars and all that stuff um it would be so strange to have a childhood

without that yeah and I think more and more as we wake up to the negative aspects of digital interaction we'll put more and more value to inperson interaction so I mean it's cool to see for instance kids in New York City just kind of moving around the city with so much sense of agency it's really really cool the suburbs like where I grew up like as soon as we could get out take the 7f bus up to San Francisco and hang out with you know Wild Ones like you know while there were dangers I mean

we couldn't wait to get out of the suburbs the moment that you know Forts and dirt CLA Wars and stuff didn't didn't cut it we just like wanted into the city so I um bucket list I will probably move to a major city not Los Angeles or San Francisco um in the next few years um New York City potentially those are all such different flavors of experiences yeah so i' I'd love to live in New York City for a while I've always wanted to do that and I and I will do that I've always wanted

to also have a place in a very rural so area so Colorado Montana are high on my list right now and to be able to Pivot back and forth between the two would be great just for such different experiences I and also I like a very physical life so the idea of getting up in the sun with the sun in Montana or Colorado type en environment um and and I've been doing some putting some effort towards finding a spot um for that and New York City to me I know it's got its issues and people

say it wasn't what it was okay I get it but listen I've never lived there so for me it would be entirely new and um you know sches seems full of life there is an energy to that City and he represents that I mean there's yeah and and the full diversity of weird that is represented in New York City is great yeah walk down the street there's like a person with like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit you know that's great San Francisco used to be like that the joke was

like you have to be naked and on fire in San Francisco before someone Tes but now it's changed but again it recently I've noticed that San Francisco it's not just about the skateboarders it's there's um some Community houses of people in Tech that are super interesting there's some community housing of people not in Tech um that I've learned about him been um known people have lived there and and it's it's cool like there's stuff happening um in these cities that's new and different I mean that's what youth is for they're supposed to evolve evolve things

out uh so amidst all that you still have to get shit done I've been really obsessed with tracking time recently like making sure I have daily activities I have habits that I'm maintaining and I'm very religious about making sure I get shit done do you use an app or something like that no just Google sheets so basically a spreadsheet and I'm tracking daily and I write scripts that that uh whenever I I achieve a goal glows green yeah do you track your workouts and all that kind of stuff too no the just the fact that

I got the workout done yeah so I just it's a check mark thing so I I'm really really big on making sure I do a thing it doesn't matter how long it is so I have a rule for myself that I do a set of tasks uh for at least five minutes every day and it turns out that many of them I do way longer but just even just doing it I have to do it every day and there's currently 11 of them it's just a thing like one of them is playing guitar for example

so do you do that kind of stuff do you do uh like daily habits yeah I do my um I wake up if I don't feel I slept enough I do this non-sleep deep rest yoga Nedra thing that I talked about a bunch we actually least a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify um 10 minute 20 minute ones puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested actually Matt Walker and I are going to run a study he just submitted the IRB to run a study on

nsdr and what it's actually doing to the brain there's some evidence of increases in dopamine Etc but those are older studies still cool studies but um so I'll do that get up hydrate and if I've got my act together I punch some caffeine down like some matina some coffee maybe another matina and resistance train 3 days a week run three days a week and then take one day off um and like to be done by 8:39 and then I want to get into some real work I actually have a sticky note on my computer it's

like just like reminding me how good it feels to accomplish some real work and then I go into it right now it's the book writing researching a podcast and just fight tooth and nail to stay off social media text message WhatsApp YouTube all that um get something done how long can you go can you go like 3 hours just deep focus if I hit a Groove uh yeah 90 minutes to three hours if I'm really in a Groove um that's tough that's for me I start the day actually that's why I'm afraid I'd really prize

that those morning hours I start with the work yeah and uh it's it's it's a I'm trying to hit the 4H hour mark of deep focus great I love it and of I'm really really big it's it's often torture actually it's really really difficult oh yeah the agitation but I I've sat across the table from you a couple years ago when I was out here in Austin doing some work and I was working on stuff you were and I no you'll just like stare at your notebook sometimes just like pen at the same position and

then you'll get back into it like there're those W building that hydraulic pressure and then go yeah try and get something done of value then it the Communications start and talking to my podcast producer my team is everything I mean like the the magic potion in the podcast is Rob Moore right um who's in the has been in the room with me every single solo costell used to be in there with us because that's it people have asked journalists have asked can they sit in friends have asked nope just Rob and uh for guest interviews

he's there as well and I talk to Rob all the time all the time we multiple times per day and um you know in life i' I've made some errors in certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that and um certainly don't blame all of it on them but you know I've played my role but but in terms of picking business partners and friends like you know to work with I mean Rob's just it's been bulls eyes and it's just Rob has been amazing Mike playback our photographer and

the guys I mentioned earlier like we just communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every decision like near neuroticism before we make we put anything out there and so including like even creative decisions of like topics to cover all that yeah like a like a photo for the book jacket the other day Mike shoots photos then and then we look at them we pour over them together um logo for the perform podcast with Andy Galpin that we're launching like is that the right Contour Mike's the real he's got the aesthetic thing

because he was at DC so long as a portrait photographer um and he he was close friends with Ken Block did Jim cona like all the car jumping in the city stuff like I mean Mike is a m he's a he's a true master of that stuff and um and we just pour over every little decision but even which sponsors you know there are dozens of ads now by the way that that whole jaer Sizer thing of me saying oh guy went from a two to a seven I never said that that's AI like I

would never call number off somebody a two to a seven are you kidding me it's crazy so it's AI if you bought the thing I'm sorry um but like our sponsors we list the sponsors that have and why on our website and like the decision do we work with this person or not do we still like the product I mean we've we've cut ways with sponsors because of like changes in the product or CH you know most the time it's amicable all good but you know like just every detail and that just takes a ton

of time and energy but I try and work mostly on content and my team's constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions um but I because I obsess but um yeah you you have to you have to have a team of sort someone that you can run things PO for sure but one of the challenges the larger the team is and I I'd like to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stuff including engineering stuff robotics work research all of those interactions at least for me take away from the deep work

the the deep focus unfortunately I get uh drained by social interaction even with the people I love and really respect and all that kind of stuff you're an introvert yeah like fundamentally an introvert so to me it's a tradeoff getting shit done versus collaborating and I have to choose wisely because without collaboration without a great team which I'm fortunate enough to be a part of like you wouldn't get anything really done but as an individual contributor to get stuff done like to do the hard work of researching or programming all that kind of stuff you

need the hours of deep work I used to spend a lot more time alone that's that's all my bucket list spend a bit more time dropped into work alone it I think social media like causes our brain to go the other direction I try and answer some comments and then and then get back to work I'm really after going to the Jungle I appreciate not using the device I've played with the idea of like spending C maybe like one week a month not using social media at all MH I use it so after that morning

block I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something and then a bit more work and that real work deep work and then around 2:30 I do a non-sleep depress take a short nap wake up boom maybe a little more caffeine and then lean into it again and then you know if you I find if you really put in the Deep work two or three boutots per day by about five or 6 p.m. it's over I was down at joo's place not that long ago and in the evening did

a sauna session with him and some family members of his and some of their friends and it's really cool like they'll all work all day and train all day and then in the evening they get together together and they they sauna and coal plunge I'm I'm really into this whole thing of of gathering with other people at a specific time of day I have a gym at my house and I I you know Tim will come over and train or you know that we've kind of slowed that down in recent months but I think gathering

in groups once a day being alone for part of the day it's like very fundamental stuff we're not saying anything that hasn't been said millions of times before but how often do people actually do that and and and call the party you know like be the person to like bring people together if it's not happening that's something I've really had to learn even though I'm an introvert like hey like gather people together you came through town the the other day and there a lot of people at the house rad actually it was funny cuz I

was getting a massage when you walked in I don't sit around getting massages very often but I was getting one that day and then everyone came in and the dog came in like everyone was piled in it was it was very sweet again no devices but Choose Wisely the people you gather with right right and I was clothed thank you for clarifying I wasn't which is very weird uh yeah yeah the the the friends you surround yourself with that that's another thing it's like I understood that from Mya and from just the experience in the

jungle is like just select the people just be careful how you allocate your time I just saw on um somewhere Conor McGregor has this good line I wrote it down about loyalty he said don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with oh that guy is I mean he's big on loyalty all the shit talk all of that set that aside to me like loyalty is really big cuz then if you invest in certain people in your life and they stick by you and you stick by them and what the what else is life about yeah

well hardship will show you who your real friends are that's for sure and um you know we're fortunate to have a lot of them it'll also show you who you know who really like has put in the time to try and understand you and and understand people like people are complicated I love that so can you read the quote once more don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with yeah so in that way a hardship is a gift it shows you definitely and it makes you stronger it definitely makes you stronger let's go get some

food yeah you're one meal a day guy yeah I actually ate something earlier but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of Bill Tong I hope we're eating a steak I hope so too I'm full of nicotine and caffeine yeah what do you think how you feel I feel good yeah I was I was thinking need probably like I only did a half a piece and I won't have more for for a little while but a little too good yeah thank you for talking once again by yeah thanks so much Lex um

been been a great ride this podcast thing and you're the reason I started the podcast you inspired me to do it you told me to do it did it and you've also been an amazing friend you showed up in some some very challenging times and you've shown up for me publicly you've shown up for me in in my home in my life and you know uh it's an honor to have you as a friend thank you I love you brother love you too thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew huberman the this podcast please

check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from Carl Young until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate thank you for listening and hope to see you next time