Andrew Huberman: Focus, Stress, Relationships, and Friendship | Lex Fridman Podcast #277
if you get into a sauna the way I just described not the two hours a day but 30 minutes twice a week or three times per week you reduce the likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event by 27% if you do it four or more times per week you reduce the probability of Dying by 50% is there any scientific evidence that being naked is beneficial in the sauna well in certain context it leads to um child birth okay well I'll have to read up on that I think Dorothy Parker said uh the cure for boredom is curiosity there is no cure for curiosity the following is a conversation with Andrew huberman his third time on this podcast he's a brilliant neuroscientist at Stanford University and the host of one of the best the best if you ask me health and science podcast in the world called huberman Lab podcast check him out on Instagram Twitter and YouTube most importantly and Drew is a great human being and has quickly become a great friend this is leex Freedman podcast to support it please check out our sponsors in the description and now dear friends here's Andrew huberman we meet again my friend uh we should talk on each other's podcast once a year I think we should make a deal I was just talking to the guys this is show called Lou I don't know if you know it and yeah with Louis CK and there's this thing called Bang Bang which people that probably watching know exactly what I'm talking about it's this worst possible thing you can do in terms of meals which is you go to a restaurant do a full meal and then go to another restaurant and do a full meal and you P you exactly so they go Mexican Italian Sushi Pizza barbecue IHOP that that one is disgusting this kind of thing reminds me of the joy of food last time we were hanging out we went we went to see Jo do comedy and then we went to eat Russian food yeah and it was a particularly fun experience to go to a Russian restaurant I was the only person there that didn't speak Russian yeah and eat Russian food with you and um because I felt walking in they they trusted you they didn't trust me yeah the funny thing about the the people there they were talking to you in Russian and then they refused to sort of uh switch to English even though they do you speak no Russian this is Russian house in Austin by the way uh anyway what by way of question what's the worst or or the best depending on your perspective cheap meal let's call it a pigging out meal but it could be a cheap meal uh that you've ever had or you want to have that's like on the bucket list or something that's in the past like where you did the something like a bang bang which is like you're talking about multiple thousands of calories that you just feel horrible about yourself but you still keep eating cuz it's delicious but also great company something about the atmosphere is just right screw the diet screw all the things you know just like you should be doing but just throw it all out the window I've done that several times yeah I don't do this anymore but um the entire time I was a post talk so five years and the entire time I was a pre- tenured professor so five years so I basically followed the uh Tim Ferris slow carb diet which is you know people can look it up but it worked really well it was basically some you know like good animal proteins you know fish and meat and things like that slow carb slow carb because like low glycemic stuff is mostly lentils and beans and and things and vegetables no no Dairy no um anyway but then one pasta in there sorry to interrupt no no pasta so it wasn't low carbet it was low glycemic carb and I did that and it worked terrifically well just for energy levels cuz I want to be able to train and work and then one day a week you're supposed to go full cheat day and so I would do what used to be 12 hours but then it became 24 you know you start to redefine what the day is um and I would and that was when Costello was pretty young and we would do it together so I would get pizzas and croissants and donuts and I would just do the full thing and by the end of the day you don't want to look at an item of food you're just repulsed by food the only modification I made was the next day I would fast completely just to avoid the gastric distress of eating anything and um so I would do them on Sundays and then Mondays I'd fast all day and then by Tuesday I felt pretty good again but Sunday and Monday or you just feel like you're sliding down the slope of just blood sugar disaster terrible idea or a good idea you know at the time I enjoyed it I love donuts croissants all that kind of stuff what's interesting is after stopping that whole protocol now I just try and eat well each day it's really a protocol now I basically I do a pseudo intermittent fasting I don't not really strict but I'll start eating around 11:00 eat my first meal around 11:00 I usually train in the morning eat my last bite of food somewhere around 8 or 9 and I'm not super strict I might have some berries or something late at night three meals two meals two two two meals and then maybe a little bit of snacking on some nuts or something in the middle ever fast 24 hours never done a long fast except when I was doing the days and then um and actually there were a couple different ways to do chej that were fun like if you were in a new city you could try all the restaurants that you wanted yeah and I think Tim and our mutual friend John romanello did a I think it was like a cheat Day marathon where they did you know marathon's 26.3 miles they went to 26.3 different locations in New York they put it on a map and I never took it to that extreme but wa wait over how many days one day that was their Che just cuz they were you know just a little bit of something at each Place yeah exactly I mean there are things that guys do in their 30s that you just shouldn't do in your 40s I can say that cuz I'm in my 40s and uh now I just try and eat well most days and what's interesting is about 12 to 14 months ago I completely lost all appetite for sweets I don't know what happened I still love Savory food so meat and butter and cheese uh and I love vegetables too I love fruit also but lost all appetite so if you put a doughnut in front of me or ice cream or something like I just it's it's almost aversive to me and I don't know what happened I don't know what changed it's probably a scientific explanation sure is it has to do make neur dementia the sugar the uh the desire for that Rush maybe is gone from your uh from your soul so what was the most delicious things croissant Donuts what what is there a thing that um there's a place in uh Portland I don't know if it's still open called little te's Bakery and they have croissants that easily rival the croissants in Paris people make a lot of the the pastry in Paris but it's really the bread in Paris that's amazing we lived there when I was a kid and we did a sabatical there and you know there they do the baguette morning bake and afternoon bake and there's nothing like the bread in Paris um or the people you know and but if you're in the if you're in the Pacific Northwest you know you can find amazing croissants there what do you do with the croissant what do you do with the bread butter or is it just I actually used to I don't eat them anymore I don't have much of an appetite for them even though they're not a sweet food but um I'm always putting butter on the croissant butter on the butter croissant no Jam I would never I would never adulterate my croissant I I have to actually be honest about this cuz people talk about steak and they they talk about bread with the butter I feel like butter is cheating I feel like you're disrespecting the fundamental food by adding butter cuz butter it's like it's like it's like a elite version of ketchup you're well there we diverge because for me bread is just a vehicle for butter a cracker is just a vehicle for cheese oh so that's just the the cracker and the bread is just texture it's just that people look at you funny if you if you just eat the butter straight which occasionally I do I got it but so I put a little piece of bread underneath it not because I'm low carb strictly low carb but just because otherwise you get some funny looks that's like pasta is is a vehicle for pasta sauce it's interesting but like Indian non breed you have uh you have the bread i' I I've had a lot of sou searching on which part of Indian is brings me so much joy is it the bread or is it all the sauces that come with the bread well there we diverge again because for for whatever reason and no disrespect to anyone but Indian food doesn't appeal to me well you're a lucky man because the the number of calories in that food it sneaks like non breed I don't know how non bread is made but I think it's just soaked in oil and it just very intensely like the density of calories is very very high for me barbecue I would say is probably the that's good anytime I'm in Austin I start thinking about barbecue I do love you know I do love meat my dad's Argentine I mean I love steak I love meat I mean Argentina chorizo sausage is an appetizer before you have steak so it's meat on top of meat and it's not just you know it's not just the men right you see women sometimes very petite women eating steaks that are bigger than their the their skull size you know slowly they eat very slowly there and they all eat dessert too which is interesting and they generally do the sort of one meal per day and do that kind of reflexively that's how I think about it cuz I often eat one meal a day especially when I'm traveling it feels like a cheap meal because it allows it gives you a bit of more freedom to just lose yourself in the quantity of the food I did the 3-day fast and I ate uh chicken breast like literally chicken breast with nothing else just grilled and it was the most delicious piece of meat I've ever eaten and that uh and that gives you the problem is when you fast for 3 days you really can't pig out you really shouldn't well your stomach will shrink in siid already your gut microbiome is almost completely depleted by fasting a lot of people think oh cleanses and fasts are great for the microbiome they quash your microbiome however when you start eating again the microbiome comes back better than it was before your fast for people who don't know Sergey and Todd are on the call they're kind of pulling stuff up they just pulled up Phelps with the I forget how many calories he was eating 10,000 you know what's interesting there's some some cool physiology around this the reason he needed to eat so much is not that he was burning that many calories in pure movement it's that when you do exercise in water even if it's warm water the heat transfer in water is greater so you burn far more calories and again here I I'm admittedly lifting that from a knowledge that was passed on to me by Tim Ferris I did so but I checked it out and it's absolutely true so if you exercise in water even if it's not really cold water your caloric needs go way up which is why you get out of the pool and you're often really hungry and for fans of the Hub Lab podcast and and if you're not a fan what what what are you doing with your life uh you would probably chuckle at the fact that uh Andrew just cited his sources even on that statement cuz you're so good at I don't know how your memory works but um the only person whose memory is is better than Joe Rogan is yours but my colleagues joke um you know Pub Med sort of Scrolls through through my through my mind um also in science as you know attribution is so baked into what we do and um and I think that it's interesting because now spending a lot of time on social media media attribution is not as common and um but in Academia you learn really early on that if you give a talk about your data and you site all these amazing sources all it does is make you look better right whereas in social media and elsewhere in the business sector it's almost like citing other people people feel as if it's going to take away some of the credit all it does is place you in the company of people that do really nice work so I have trem and I have genuine and tremendous respect for Tim he's been about 10 years ahead on a huge number of health related things and other things extremely kind person very thoughtful person so it's also just a pleasure to shine light on other people right yeah yeah well I actually to push back I I know there's a culture of if you you write a paper standing on the shoulders of giants is a powerful thing but there's also a culture of not giving credit to the strongest idea in your paper and instead say it's kind of or imply that it's original there is a culture of kind of not celebrating others I think people get most competitive in all walks of life but especially in science when they're as the closer they get in the exact of the thing they work on and so there's this dance you know there's a few researchers in each of the individual little things that you work on if you're studying a particular kind of ant you know that other asshole that also is studying that particular ant and then you're not going to often give credit for the brilliant ideas that that other researchers doing and I think one of the things you've discovered and just is part of your nature and which is why it's it's really great that you've uh have an audience and you inspire others to do the same you celebrate that other ant studer it's great and you everybody wins it raised all boats but that initial instinct to be like uh what is it in Borat like my neighbor my neighbor gets a a toaster I get a bigger toaster that yeah that mindset do you know it's not that I'm not not competitive in certain domains but um yeah I get great pleasure from um sharing things that I find and um I think that you know at the end of the day you're as strong as your community and you can build a wonderful Community just by pointing out things that you love like these are all just loves I see a paper and I love it only rarely do I think a I wish we had done that I usually think fantastic now I can just focus on something else CU they checked off that box and by the way you mentioned Pub Med and and barbecue I I should mention that I got a chance to hang out with uh Rick Rubin thanks to you he's a friend of yours and you made the connection that was a huge gift to my spirit I guess he's a truly truly special human being and the there's a lot I could say about why he's a special human being I'd love to learn how you met him but I should ALS just mention on the pub Med thing it was so interesting talking to him about music and uh both on the podcast and privately and just listening to music together because when you mention a song he does this thing where he like closes his eyes and he finds that song in the album that we're talking about and he steps through the album you could you could see the brain like stepping through individual songs to find that song in the album and there's that kind of lookup process and then he puts himself mentally in that space of like okay this is uh you know whatever the album is and not just the ones he produced but all of it he's an encyclopedia of of music and it's so interesting it also uh the thing I really love about him something like a calmness that radiates from him that it's okay to close your eyes and place yourself in in the in the place where that album was recorded in the feeling of that album like that that silence let's go there let's go there together it's like Alice and Wonderland and we'll go there together you do good Rick Rubin minus the beard minus the beard his beard is epic right you can't fake a beard like that you know how' you guys meet yeah Rick I'm very blessed to to consider a a close friend um Rick and I got introduced through a common friend during the pandemic and we started doing some FaceTime together and just talking about things related to science and health and I I'm not a musician I have no musical ability or talent I have a good ability to memorize lyrics and I Love lyrics and I love poetry so I asked him a lot of questions about musicians that I happen to love that he's worked with and knows and so he would give me stories about musicians and I would talk to him about health and then eventually we formed a friendship where we would talk about any number of different topics in life and then we started spending time together in person uh when he was in town or nearby and as you now know uh you know Rick in addition to all his incredible accomplishments has an incredible understanding of how to get the brain and body into state right and as you pointed out he's willing to do the things that allow him to help uh these incredible artists get into the best state to do their craft and so if he needs to sit there and be quiet with his eyes closed for a minute or two and or more uh he'll do that um he has routines to allow himself to get into State and it's really inspiring me to think about states of Mind as something that you know we'd all love to just just flip the switch and say we're focused or we're creative but um to actually ratchet through the the challenging steps in order to do that and to figure out what one needs to do on a regular basis to get into a proper State it's not just going to come from a cup of coffee a a you know a lamp of a particular wavelength or something it's going to be those things but it's also going to be really teaching oneself how to get into proper State yeah you did episode on hypnosis do you think it's a kind of self hypnosis yes I do um because hypnosis is a con you limit the context you're very alert and you're very calm and um he has a number of these different practices and and so we would talk about those and then we also have enjoyed a lot of discussions about deep Neuroscience in fact I introduced Rick to a friend of mine who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist and they've become friendly you know Rick is one of these people that he sort of defies def definition um incredibly kind incredibly private person too so you know I'm being respectful of that but um and then of course uh he's a fan of your podcast and so when I learned that I I just made natural sense to introduce you and I know he really enjoyed meeting you and um we talk about you a lot and and of course in a positive light you know I think his dedication to getting into these states of mind and his willingness to do that has completely transformed my routines around life like for instance before doing a very long podcast record Rec ing the solo ones which often take me several hours or more six hours to record sometimes more sometimes less I realize that there's a certain brain State associated with that so I have to really limit the kind of interactions I have for the two hours before I actually walk and talk out loud through my neighborhood people think I'm crazy but I live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of crazy creatives anyway you saying you're not crazy well um at least not institutionally uh defined as crazy yet but um you know getting into State of Mind is something that we'd all just imagine we flip the switch but Rick really convinced me you have to do the work to do the work can you maybe uh Linger on that elucidate a little bit more your process of how you get in that space that's really interesting cuz I have to admit I do everything last minute before podcast I don't know uh like there's a lot of anxiety because like whatever if I have to pack if I have to set up stuff you were luckily a few minutes you showed up a few minutes later which for an academic is right on time right on time but the stress is immense and uh on top of that you look at like a situation with Rick ruin is I I had to set up microphones in front of him and just that stress the anxiety he knows a lot about microphones what did he say which I really loved he's like how close do you like the microphone to be it's like uh that's a very Rick Ruben kind of thing right that the details really matter yeah the details really matter right down to your relationship to the microphone right distance and whether or not it brings out the tamber in your voice but of course this is what he does he he produces music but he also said like you know he is the professional he said how close do you like it to be and he said it with a gentleness where I had like an existential crisis where I don't I don't know I he gave me so much like wow like he made me feel like an artist like that the microphone uh distance is a decision you're supposed to make well I I have to say and this has actually come up in some of our conversations about you I mean you are you are an artist and actually Joe Rogan once I heard him talking about podcasting and the fact that he's always trying to get better at it you know and he described podcasting at one moment as an art right and it is it's a certain medium of communication and there's a Cadence and a rhythm that um when it's working it really can facilitate the transfer of information when it's not it doesn't I mean obviously Joe just being himself has tapped into that Cadence that allows and that's made so many people excited to hear him talk well in his case and in general I think part of the art is uh refusing the world as you get a bigger audience change who you are there's one quote that I've seen out there where he says you know I'm like the talking about himself he says you know I'm like the fish that got through the net there's no stage version of me right how he is in person is how he is you know out in the world and of course there's Nuance to his life right and his different um relationships of course but it's true I mean we've had the you know the great Fortune of spending time with him out away from the microphones so to speak Joe is Joe so can you speak to your that process you mentioned the walking and the talking to yourself cuz that's fascinating yeah I try and do a couple of things um first of all I when was a kid I had a little bit of a grunting tick um when I was five or six um I would feel this buildup of tension in my throat and I would do this grunting tick if I get very tired I start to do it still we actually know that this is related to these basil ganglia circuits for go noo you've got an accelerator in a break basically in your neural circuitry and um kids with Tourette and OCD um the break doesn't work quite as well and so one thing that happens is if I wake up in the morning and I'm especially if I'm well rested well if I'm not well rested I do a hypnosis or Yoga Nidra in order to recover my sleep that works really well but then once I'm into the process of preparing the podcast I've already gone through my notes I know what I want to say more or less in kind of General contour and then I take a walk and I I try to so no phone with me and I try to assess whether or not my energy is too high or too low for podcasting because when you podcast as you know you have to punch out a lot of material but then there's times when you really need to slow down and emphasize and articulate and so uh what I do this is I don't I've never revealed this uh what I do actually is I will recite the lyrics of songs for about 10 minutes um songs I love while I walk out loud it calms you and focuses you what does it do I think it gets my vocal cords warmed up and it also do you sing or speak them I often sing them uh and fortunately nobody hears and as I do this I start to evaluate whether or not I'm straining to get the words out or whether or not I'm straining to make them slow enough so that I can articulate them so there are days when I have so much energy that I I'm trying to speak faster than I should in order to articulate properly there are other days when I'm tired and I can't sort of keep up with my thoughts and so what I try and do is assess that and then adjust the transmission the RPM so to speak for instance I can speak very quickly and then I can slow down so I I can change the Cadence of my voice and when you teach in the classroom you learn as you know because you're an excellent teacher I've watched your lectures in the classroom as you teach in the classroom when you want to slow down every teacher knows you turn to the Whiteboard or chalkboard and you start writing right it gives you a break and then you turn around and you fire back the kind of machine gun fire of of information and then you slow down or you underline something when you podcast you don't have that opportunity right there are no visuals in my podcast so what I try and do is always get my voice warmed up and make sure that I'm thinking and speaking at approximately the same rate and then I also do this thing of I put my vision into panoramic Vision when I walk which is very calming and then I actually start to remind myself of the purpose of podcasting this sounds very Mission statemente but you asked what I do yeah I I remind myself first and foremost that what I want to communicate what I want to come through is the beauty and utility of biology and I only feel comfortable saying the word beauty publicly now about science things thanks to you because uh I I think love and beauty it love and beauty Dr Andrew hman love and beauty um but also darkness and hatred and uh if you're talking about the Lex Freedman podcast you have to adjust you have to address the shadow also the shadow side but I think about the I want to communicate the the beauty and utility of biology and then I I check my my emotional state I want to make sure that I'm not angry about anything and certainly if I am that I'm going to set it aside for the podcast because that's not a place for for my whatever I might be dealing with I also really start to feel into the parts of the research and the papers I found that I really love because that's the part of me that I I like the most frankly um and on the podcast if there's a paper like for instance we have a paper uh excuse me a podcast coming out soon about um heat as a tool you know sauna but some other things and in researching this I learned so much about um these heat shock proteins and the use of sauna in Finland for increasing growth hormone but also for the treatment of mental illness I and I realized I I fell in love with this literature it's just a beautiful literature these people are true Pioneers for doing this work now everyone's in sauna but this was 20 years ago the way the experiments were done were amazing with all these Finnish people with thermocouples up there rectum to measure temperature swimming in pools it's it's hilarious and great and so I start to think about and I think you know I just start to really access my love of the the work and then when we finally sit down meaning my producer Rob and I and record I just sort of want to just bask in in sharing it just like the little version of me when I was six or seven I used to spend all weekend reading the encyclopedia Guinness Book of World Records making my mother drive me places to introduce me to I had this obsession with trapping animals when I was a kid meet these people and then on Monday I would insist on giving a a lecture in class just as a little kid so that's basically what it is I just try and access that that childlike energy and um so I want to be clear the goal is always to make the information interesting clear and actionable and if it's also surprising then there then that's a bonus but that's basically the process but yeah I'm I'm singing and talking and and getting into State and I used to feel very uh sheepish about sharing any of this this time I've ever shared it out loud but but Rick was the one who encouraged me to find a process that works and continue to develop that process and not let anything get near that process people in my personal life know this and when it's time it's like I don't care what else is going on on I'm I'm moving into that brain State and there's probably a process like that for anything that you do in life that you take seriously so the people that have perfected this is athletes like if Olympic level athletes they have to have a process like this know I think Tiger Woods actually was um taught self hypnosis quite young um and used self- hypnosis often during his tournaments sometimes to Great uh success and other times less so is there other places in life that you use kind of a protoc like a mental protocol to get ready many of the best areas of life are their own form of hypnosis right um you know that you're in hypnosis if for instance you're in a movie movie and something happens and you feel the emotional lift with without being self-conscious about it um yes I think that um one thing that we've tried to do in our house is around meal times to try and set a state that food isn't just something that we just throw down our our throats and I'm fortunate that you know my partner cooks really well and so I try and give her the space to do that and that's a whole thing of her getting into State and then for the cooking the the preparation of I can just see it I just see the way she approaches the whole thing and the the pleasure in serving it and and I'm an Eater Not a cooker um but both are important roles you could be a very good eater like there there's something about is there anything better in this world than that feeling especially if it's a family getting around a table just the warmth of that I don't know the it's like uh the cold outside of the the cruel world cannot touch you in this place that you've returned to and if um I mean did you grow up eating meals as a family yeah yeah I mean down no television no well I didn't really have television period uh outside of meals so most of my time was spent um you know like a stray cat uh Outdoors just running around uh playing soccer I imagine you in this like dirt or concrete lot between two very high ized buildings playing soccer in uh in like athletic gear that you only see in Eastern Europe you know how like you come to the states and people wear their athletic gear you go to Europe and you see maybe it's the soccer culture yeah but you see athletic gear that you just don't see anywhere else that's interesting I mean I we grew up pretty poor so I first of all I was always wearing my brother's who's an older brother brother's clothes uh and they were like old uh like the my favorite things were American things I didn't understand it would be like a Pepsi shirt or something and it would just that was the gear and it was like too large for me but I thought I was the coolest person ever just wearing this fancy like Kanye like type of fashion yeah there's something about I feel like in in uh Eastern Europe they wear athletic gear where like the guys like zip up color no that's like fancy stuff that's if you like those are the cool kids I see I see like the cool soccer players of football players that uh like they were in a league of some kind so they would get uniforms or like or they somehow I always thought anyone who had anything nice had to do something really bad to get it that that was my way view of the world because like um like I I guess I didn't understand how it's it's possible to be rich cuz most of us we were surrounded by people who are poor and that life was beautiful and simple and it's like why do you escape that life but you still admire the the cool like uh when we got McDonald's it was like what kind of world does this place come from like who invented this this it's a fascinating view from a child's perspective of like of capitalism essentially yeah but but the fact you ate dinner together is really interesting uh my parents divorced when I was an adolescent so then there was a total fracture of any family structure but prior to that we ate dinner together every night I was expected to know how to use my knife and fork and you know it was like a very um structured thing uh I don't know if kids do that now um you know if I ever have kids they're going to do that and certainly um actually on the way over here I was thinking I was think you know uh I really want a lot of kids I want it like a whole litter and um I was thinking if Lex has kids and I have kids then like then we can we can like pck them against each other with jiu-jitsu this is my chance at Redemption you um long soccer right they'll all want to be Engineers or physicists um they won't want to be biologists um but but in all seriousness I I look forward to the day that our our kids uh play together you know yeah I think there's something uh so the family dinner the ritual of the family dinner like but also the special occasion dinners like uh where there's a little bit more preparation a little bit more cooking um whether it's on the weekend or for some holiday uh in Russia it was was a thing that actually I find completely missing for the most part in America is there was neighbors there was a you broke the walls between families much more commonly like there would be kind of regular characters like a sitcom almost you know if you watch a sitcom it's never just the family there's always like other characters that just bursting in the door bursting in the door I'm going to start doing that here just to make you feel at home just start showing up your studio I know where you live I think people want to respect uh like uh you know Michael M lives next door to me and I think people want to respect each other's privacy or something like that and I think we we all get super busy and you know like it's kind of work to do this uh dinner together or you know you know if you see it as a thing that needs to be scheduled it's work we get busy there's a lot of stuff going on but if it's part of a ritual a part of the culture that the all all of those walls get broken down and and then you realize like that's like later looking back those are the things you miss it's like that's what that's what life is about like all the stupid stuff you're doing in terms of career whatever all the busy thing those don't matter what matters it's the people and yeah in Academia you know it's changed in the last few years of course um but one of the great Joys was professors will stop by your office or your lab nobody set set up an appointment there's a guy when I was a professor in San Diego a guy named Harvey carton he's a member of the National Academy he's the the truly the world's expert in the evolution of vision and evolution of brains generally and uh he would show up in my lab and he was just start talking to the students in post talks and um I mean an A pure encyclopedia uh and then you at some point you'd say hey Harvey I gotta go and you you kick him out right or this guy he's a physicist David Klein David Kleinfeld who's a same way actually David Kleinfeld is interesting one he a student of his went to on to create the beis and Butthead cartoon and one of them is David he's a physics Professor now people can look him up and David's one of those guys who just walk into your office he just sit down you just start talking to you he and and so there's a kind of a family fi it's like cheers or Seinfeld or one of those shows where somebody just walks in and uh yeah I think you and I both share a love of the community around things and podcasting is a little bit more isolated um I should say for the guest episodes the preparation is completely different because it's more conversational and so there I don't do any of this business of putting myself into State I just try to make sure that the guest is um taken care of and I do list out the questions I'm going asked before but those I actually really like the interview episodes far more than I like this doing the solo ones just psychologically mean I just like learning from someone directly because you asking an expert about something like sitting here with you when we recorded the podcast where you were a guest on the hubman Lab podcast and for the first time and finally someone was explaining to me the difference between machine learning artificial intelligence and all these other things you know and I'm I finally forgiving you for making me cry about Costello on camera uh but because it helped me move through it but but in all seriousness that the interview ones are are a sheer pleasure the solo ones I really enjoy but they're they're their work sometimes I think like I'm going to sweat a little blood prepping for them well it's interesting because I I do think prepping for interviews is having a similar process might be also very valuable like I have to I have to think about that cuzz um I think when you do a conversation for several hours especially when it's a high stakes one so it's not like you and I now it's more like it's just chatting and so on World Order isn't going to shift according to although you never know we never know knowing you will probably be into some pretty controversial topics in a few minutes you like to ride the edge more than I do there are a number of topics that I just completely avoid and my response to those is always that uh I have a lot of opinions about that but not a lot to say you know but whereas you you've become far uh braver in terms of the topics you'll encounter and some of your guests have been a bit controversial right some of them are are people that not a lot of PE that a lot of people don't like um and you you've been willing to just sit down and maybe it's the Jiu-Jitsu thing you know I don't know I it is tricky one of my goals for this year was to talk to people that a lot of people really don't like are you going to share with us and here I am what PE people that that are in prison right major political leaders I've been thinking a lot about how to talk to really difficult controversial figures but find together something with them that's deeply honest about their nature about the the ideas they have about the world like reveal something real and some people you have to be very careful some people are very good at hiding the real inside them even from themselves that's something I think about a lot I think about dictators of the past and I put myself in the mindset well how do you reveal something real about this person to themselves I think that to me and you kind of spoke to that but uh a great conversation is when one where both of you discover something new like uh it's not just so I love that too that's my favorite thing what you mentioned which is allowing your curiosity and ask all kinds of questions and get excited to learn from an expert but also to push them to discover something about themselves about their ideas together and then that Discovery and sometimes it's uh a like we don't see it in the moment but the audience hears it it's weird to to say like uh I would compare it to when you're a musician you're playing with other musicians you lose yourself in the moment yeah it's all it's like it's working right it's working but you don't really uh see the big picture impact of what it's working right actually feels like and that's where the audience uh can could see that like if you talk to somebody evil uh you know for me as an interviewer I have to empathize with that person if I want to understand I have to put myself in that mind space and to put yourself in that mindset you really have to become that you have to PL you have to understand the evil inside of you like you have you can't just think if somebody's in power and has used that power to abuse others you can't just be a well I personally a person who seeks to understand you can't just be a journalist asking generic questions you have to put yourself in a in a place where you're somebody who's given a lot of power and slowly you start to abuse that power and what has that person become who are you I have to plug myself into those moments in my life in the past where I've been angry at something uh and where I've been cruel because I was angry in little ways but then you magnify them at scale and I have to I have to go there and that's very human and then I have to look at another person from across the table from me and understand well you're there too and then you had more opportunity to do truly cruel things and and then um and then where like you I have to plug myself into places where I've been or can imagine I can go where I was cruel to others and was unaware of it so I was in a my space where I was thinking that I'm doing good and I was doing not good again I've never gotten an opportunity to do any of those things at at a large scale but all of us have done it at a small scale and I plug myself into that and then we're we're here we're to if it's somebody who's in prison if it's somebody who's a dictator we're in that space where evil is is all of us have the capacity to do that evil and I have to imagine myself being able to do that evil and then we're here together in that dark dark place and then if it if it's just right something real can actually come something from that person's childhood a maybe Awakening to uh realiz that I thought I was a good person and I'm not and for that only happens when you truly EMP empathize those moments of Discovery are are beautiful but they also happen in science when you just have a conversation and you you realize uh I feel like talking to stepen wol from I feel like we constantly realize beautiful things together on this element of um you know evil and sociopathy that you know Yung had this notion that we have all things inside us and that we all have the capacity to be good or evil Etc um but I have the Good Fortune of working with somebody who has deep understanding of Psychiatry but also psychoanalysis and yian theory and um and he said to me recently he said you know whether or not all people have all things inside them is still debated in the psychology community and in the Neuroscience community and as a matter of philosophy but there are certain people not many but there are certain people for whom they've actually lived out many versions of their possible selves in the first person and so those are Unique Individuals then even if they tapped into these things at a as you mentioned as a at a more minor level as opposed to impacting people negatively at a at a at scale so being able to access those different parts of oneself is is key and you've been willing to step into that you know my podcast is not one in which we we get down to those matters you never know we might do an episode on on narcissism and sociopathy the other thing that I I took away from a conversation with a a friend who was a did a lot of years in Special Operations in the intelligence Community he said you know it's if you look at somebody's past at some point you will come to understand some pretty good reasons as to why they became who they are but you have to draw the his words the red line someplace and what he was referring to was the fact that certain people at least in the eyes of certain communities deserve to be eliminated as a consequence of their actions right regardless of what drove them to those actions so it gets right down to the line between psycho nature nurture uh neuroscience and the law and Justice um complicated complicated themes I I can think of a number of people that um I would love to hear you interview and here I'm not revealing the reasons why but except for the fact that I think you would be uniquely suited to bring out the important components of the conversation that other people have not been able to uh do which uh for instance Liz Holmes this is one of the most um mysterious and yet disliked people on the planet um uh she's sort of synonymous with deception MH um I don't know if there have been any real interviews of her since the whole thing um I haven't followed that case I listened to the book and I MH um I followed it a little because it was happening in my hometown right Theos was right up the road the building's still there it's interesting it's it's some of the most premier real estate in Silicon Valley but nobody wants it it's s like it's very hard to sell a home where somebody committed suicide or committed a murder even if it's a beautiful home this s feel like the Theos building is that building um so that would be a a a really interesting interview I would love to hear that interview one of the most interesting dark human beings in science yeah and then there will even be people that say you know um was it even science right it might have all been deception it might have been one part deception one part goal setting mixed in with clearly that there were so many factors impacting what happened um I think the big difference between Theos and that story and some of the other uh stories about Silicon Valley where people promised a lot more than they could deliver is they were promising things that were directly related to health and Healthcare people were taking blood tests with the understanding that the data they were getting was important information about sexually transmitted diseases and other disease and making real world decisions on the basis of that whereas if you remember when the iPhone first came out and uh Steve Jobs was still alive and the phones were dropping calls if you held it in a particular way and his response was a little flip he said it's it's hey folks it's a phone as if like don't get so worked up but people held him understandably to a very high standard you know she would sort of it seemed and I don't know because I certainly wasn't there seemed like she sort of adopted this idea that you could get it wrong a bunch of times before you get it right except if the allegations are true and I think they she was found guilty I believe on a number of counts that a number of the things that they were doing were were impacting real world decision- making where so Steve's point about the phone it's just a phone well it depends on the call if you're calling 911 then it's not just a phone right um but in the case of blood tests and disease you know that's that's serious I think that the Theos case was super interesting to me because of the number of people from major universities and from government that both trusted her and the number of people who did not trust her and yet either didn't speak up or no one listened to them it was only in the forensic version of it that everyone said oh yeah I knew that she was lying etc etc they were lying there multiple people involved in those lies apparently but I have a deep interest in the Neuroscience of of narcissism sociopathy and some of the darker aspects of the mind so yeah maybe someday maybe we'll do a podcast together can be like in the in the in the kind of early 9s version of Talk shows where we darken the lights and we we do it together you can use your voice cuz your voice is much more Sinister sounding than M good cop bad cop uh well it'd be interesting from a scientific perspective of somebody who is uh a sociopath or a psychopath how to reveal something real about them I think that requires not just well I don't know what that requires that requires is the same skill that it takes to be a good uh therapist right and some therapists won't work with sociopaths because um they don't feel any progress can be made some therapists will work with sociopaths because for the wealthy ones they often um they want their money I I I think most therapists are good and benevolent but there's some that will do it just same way lawyers will work with criminals knowing their criminals right um often times because they're criminals there are certain domains of psychiatry that are more tractable than others right borderlines are interesting I should just mention because they have this phenomenon of splitting so in the in the world of psychology the idea is that being neurotic is actually the goal the idea that you could be um you know feel something and then work a lot to overcome it or um have some sort of defense mechanism in place but that's not destructive that's actually a pretty healthy state to be in it's uh provided it's not destructive psychotic is truly delusional thinking about reality and the idea is that borderlines split intermittently split between psychotic and neurotic that's why it's was called there's beautiful work by Melanie Klein that describes this um which I'm just now kind of delving into but you know so the borderline is the person who is like I love you I love you I love you and then truly feels as if they hate you and you become the bad object um borderlines are challenging for psychologists because of the splitting right um um schizophrenics are challenging because of the the Detachment from reality and narcissists are challenging because they're often so Charming that even the therapists are Charmed I believe you mentioned Carl deso uh we we'll we'll talk about who's definitely not a narcissist he's one of the more humble people but he is brilliant thanks again to you you you've connected us uh I had the pleasure of of having a conversation with them you had a conversation with them I really enjoyed it on the podcast you guys come from the same science from the same place uh maybe different Journeys fasc and levels we were posts together Carl is truly the Michael Jordan the way and Gretzky five children amazing marriage to it also an amazing scientist his wife Michelle Mong in our neurology department at Stanford in incredible thinker writer very kind person uh humble um uh speaking of getting into State sorry Carl I'm going to out you on this but um Carl despite being at the highest levels of science and engineering and a practicing a psychiatrist his office is literally a Coke closet with a small table lamp when you meet with Carl if you manage to meet with him cuz he's very hard to get to MH you walk in you sit down as if you're going through some interrogation and some spy novel and he'll ask you what are you most excited about lately and I've got 11 minutes or something and that's a meeting with Carl yeah because he's that busy but he doesn't have the office with the pictures of the kids and the the thing and all that all that is kept elsewhere so in order to get I asked him why do you work in this office right you work on light and channels of light things related to light of all things here you are in this dark room you said well this is what gets me into the state of mind to be able to do what I want you to do very Rick Ruben is in in not the at all the same person but very similar in that he's figured out the physical space he needs in order to get into the optimal state to do the work that he needs to do in this lifetime and it's very unusual usual right if I don't have a window I kind of freak out I can do it here for a while we're in this black Cube here floating in space of course um but but I I find that amazing that these that these people that are operating at this super high level are willing to actually deprive themselves of a lot of conditions they're not sitting there with a with the secretary coming in offering them espresso every five minutes and things like that no no no that's New York Neuroscience I'm picking the New York Neuroscience Mafia is kind of famous for having all the you know tickets to the Opera and this and that and and they they enjoy lifestyle a lot the New York new oh there is one there definitely is one they know who they are uh they know who they are for people don't know uh Andrew huberman is from the west coast and now he's just starting Wars with the Neuroscience Mafia well they do amazing science they think they they love their lifestyle and that's wonderful but the culture is very different yeah um Carl and I think Silicon Valley in general kind of Prides itself on this kind of um monk likee aism right so but at then individual scale be deliberate about controlling the environment I think about that with the conversations too I haven't been deliberate about that either in terms of controlling the space you're in visually yes black curtains all those kinds of things there is nothing like the Lex Freedman podcast Studio first of first of all when you when you do them remotely I always feel like I'm in a witness relocation program exactly you only get the coordinates at the last moment and you always get the sense that there are people behind in the walls that um you know are recording things well there there's something about creating a feeling I have a sense that there's a robot over there there's there's severals throughout this place and I I think I think part of that part of creating a feeling would be having the robots constantly moving around and having a mind of their own because that would most closely put guests and other humans that interact with into a place that's uh closest to my mind because it's such an engineering mind and in one where when things come to life it's a beautiful place to be and whatever that is that could be like art but to me robots Are art and so I'm thinking about that both for me and for a guest and and I'm also thinking about the difficult guest just the return to you said Elizabeth Holmes one person maybe a couple things I want to say so one person I think I would like to talk to is galain Maxwell I always get afraid right before you reveal these kinds of things and now I know why I get afraid yeah I mean again assuming that she did the things that people claim she did they're despicable right I mean these were underage children right there's just no version of the story where she did the things she was accused of doing and is still a quote unquote good person there's just in my mind right um and yet I think there is tremendous interest in understanding like what led her to do all that at least for some people let me say a couple things so one is at a high level let me say that she believes or her current story is is that she's the victim of who of Jeffrey abstein oh my I think I'll just leave that there as as but so this is these are ideas that you're facing the nature of truth and the nature of the human mind is what it is and this is Imagine folks if you went into a room with a person that says that what do you do next let me also say that I never or rarely let me say not say never I rarely mention names that I'm interested in talking to without having made significant progress in already securing that interview so people sometime ask me about uh Vladimir zalinski and Vladimir Putin I do not bring them up lightly in terms of there's in terms of there being a path to an actual conversation that said something I regret but I'm not sure I know how what to do with it but in the case of all the people I just mentioned mentioned I haven't been preparing for those conversations I only start really preparing seriously when it's confirmed because it's such a heavy burden and one of the things I regret in having mentioned a conversation with uh Vladimir Putin before the war in Ukraine broke out in in the past few years is that I would mention it very Loosely very casually and without having really deeply put myself into a place that I'm ready to talk to him and that that that's a tricky thing because then the internet uh the the audience in general and just me when I listen back to my dumb self think well why are you speaking so lightly about these topics well I know you've had a long-standing interest in talking to him I think now you know uh well the I don't understand um how I would sit down and have a conversation with somebody like that but that's not in in the range of my skill sets right I or like uh maybe not in the range of things that you're drawn to somehow not so much I mean I would watch that episode with with great interest um well you did an episode recently with this guy who was a uh former cyber criminal turned State side right I think he works for the government now and there was a segment in there um remind me his name Brett Johnson Brett Johnson there was a segment in there where he talked about stealing a lifetime's worth of collected coins from some elderly woman and this was everything she had and then he openly admitted that he felt No Remorse which is the way he described is purely sociopathic and then of course we learned that he grew up in a family where criminal Behavior was very common it was kind of embedded into his um Notions of what typical behaviors were and I found myself somewhat conflicted but also hung you know hung up on this idea that you know I mean he was you know he had behaved as a sociopath um or in a sociopathic way and it it created a an internal conflict because he's quite Charming guest and his stories are terrific um especially I really enjoyed his discussions about how he would go out and um do all these things out of a desire to please his his girlfriend mhm you know so he was in service to other people despite being sociopathic you could say he was in service to them as a way to extract gets very complicated I think is the reason I went into science is that it at some level it's more about facts than it is opinions and judgments and I don't know that I have the ability to suspend judgment over the away from the kind of top level Contours of my initial reaction to like if it's true like the glain Maxwells and the Liz Holmes and the other sociopaths is one of just kind of revulsion and repulsion mhm but that could also reflect the fact that I'm not as you know uh neurologically sophisticated as somebody that can spin all the plates of of empathy forgi forgiveness but also um holding people accountable at the same time that's that's work that takes if you think about that's three four brain circuits having to work in parallel that's the difference between chess or a game of Go and a game of checkers I guess I'm playing checkers and you're playing chess so one is actually holding in your mind and two is the the raw skill of conversation you're you're very just having listening to your interviews you're very good conversation but the skill of conversation is really tricky I'm not being self-deprecating I'm being just objective I'm not good at conversation I'm working very hard getting better at it I'm I'm speaking not about just podcasting I'm speaking just normal life I I'm I have anxiety from social interaction I do you really oh huge Amal yeah yeah so this is interesting because I never detect that in you ever and I think uh there are people that we both know that have said to me that they too feel anxious and yet your voice is steady I don't see any perspiration oh yeah um you appear incredibly shitless I scar shit list with Rick rubben he's Rick Rubin is at when you first meet him is intimidatingly calm but as you get to know him a bit you realize that his the kindness and the generosity that you sense is real um but yeah I would never in a million years uh have guessed that you get anxious in conversation can I just make another quick comment this may come off entertaining to you Andrew maybe you've already gotten the same um but having mentioned Vladimir Putin Vladimir zalinski uh gay Maxwell there's a natural question how does Lex have access to these people who does he work for like how does he or who works for him for who works for him what does he have on others this I'm actually I ask I when look in the mirror um just somebody who kind of enjoys conspiracy theories it I want to ask the same question like well I usually ask in the following way like how the fuck am I so lucky like who am I being am I a robot being controlled by somebody else or like what how's this how's this my life right now what is happening it really does feel like a simulation so let me just speak the to several things first of all I have no boss I know I know of nor am I controlled by any intelligence agencies of Any Nation we're going to get you a dog Lex I could talk to uh I'm scared of getting a dog because I would fall in love so deeply I think that uh next time I'm bringing a puppy I'm just going to bring a puppy and I'm G leave it here man and then uh you'll never see me again I mean I love dog so much but the uh I was also surprised and maybe um I I have never talked to an intelligence agency which is very interesting to me like I I I I that you're aware of because they're very good at communicating with people with but I've been very suspicious on this exact point that's the downside of kind of uh being an introvert having anxiety about social interaction but then having so much love thrown your way because we connect over podcast podcasts have a powerful way of connecting people so people come with you with love that I really love I appreciate but I wonder like exactly this question like uh like why is this person with a Russian accent talking to me and show showing me so much love well because sorry to interrupt you again but um it's what we do um and it's a sign of Interest by the way to sometimes sometimes yeah I have a colleague at Stanford and she said you know Interruption 75% of the time is a sign of of real interest in what the person is saying if nothing else uh well you're very lovable well that that I mean I learned about Hedgehog in the fog from you you know when I learned you know you're very lovable people love you because you're lovable I love love okay so 100% And it's I mean especially here in Austin Texas people are so so amazing I go just hugs and just I I love people but do you want a family are you eventually 100% no I mean you're I take I take what you said as a challenge uh uh in terms of having a family with kids and they do Jiu-Jitsu and obviously defeat you and and and make you um miserable for your failures as a father because you couldn't uh um you going be a great dad build up an army of good juus of people but yes I I would love a family I would love to have uh children but I just want to finish that point cuz I'm nervous about it I'm nervous about the way people perceive what you're seeing is a forest gum type character like what who I am I I seem to be and and this is how like the world seems to work is you just try you try to be yourself like you try to find yourself that's maybe the better way to say it and just be that be kind to people work your ass off and say F you to anybody that wants to control you or to tell you what to do just be free and then put love out there in the world and doors open this Karma thing seems to work uh some like how the hell did how the hell am my friends with you now how the hell did I get a chance to eat barbecue with Rick Rubin right like had you guys had barbecue you had barbecue uh he right of course he's from New York any New Yorker that I know has very high standards for food because bad restaurants don't last long in New York and barbeq col say oh yeah oh yeah Texas barbecue well you know I would also add that you whether or not you realize it or not you took tremendous risk I mean we come from the same original Community which is academic science right and to be at MIT and to start posting lectures online is risky right to you know I was third or fourth man in on in terms of podcasting as an academic because you had gone on Rogan many times David Sinclair had gone on there you know th the especially before the the pandemic you just didn't see many academics and scientists talking in a public faing way uh so you took tremendous risk right you took tremendous risk always wearing that jacket and tie right um the only time I haven't seen you in that truly is when we rolled jiujitsu which is and here I'm being generous to myself saying I rolled Jiu-Jitsu and basically you choked me out in front of hundreds of thousand really it was uh it was a it was great fun and I I I thank you for doing that to have a beginner's mind is a beautiful thing I have admittedly I have not been taking the classes but I'm going to I truly am um especially should there's a small chance I might find myself in Austin a bit more often in the in the near future but the well if you're out in San Francisco you should train with Mark Zuckerberg he just started so there you oh yeah you guys could interes sure I mean he's actually uh I mean people listen to an episode perhaps he's a fascinating human being I listen to it it was great you took tremendous risk as an academic to do what you did so I do believe that when one takes intelligent risk because you can die your can your career you can do all sorts of um self-destructive or uh destructive things when taking risk you took risk and and they paid off right and you take different risks at different stages but I I don't throw around the word admiration lightly I mean I admire that you were in this classroom and in my team like I'm going to film this and put it online uh you one of your early interviews is with Ido portal who's very hard to get to I've communicate with EO a few times you should definitely talk to him I can't wait to talk to him I'm dying to talk to him I was supposed to do some um teaching with him uh right before the pandemic hit and then it got canceled cuz he couldn't travel but getting to him is exceedingly challenging so you do have this incredible ability to get to people um and for them to trust you and know you and I think it's through your authenticity and I think it's the fact that you're willing to go places where people haven't been before you know that this is what's the saying about pioneers how do you spot the Pioneers they're the people with the arrows in their backs you know so that that's the you know yeah and and that's actually a quote that I lifted from Terry snowski who's a there go you know exting sources again um Terry's you should talk to Terry he's a um uh computational neuroscientist down at the Suk Institute uh Howard Hughes investigator Etc but so you know taking risks that other people have not taken is that's a real thing and to do it with uh integrity and rigor that's a real thing and so yeah I'm complimenting you and and I hope it I hope it lands and lands deeply but I also hope that people will hear that and understand that it's one thing to to do what other people are already doing boldly it's a whole other thing to launch an entire art form or venue and you did that and uh you didn't write a book hopefully you will someday but you didn't go write a book a lot of academics have written books you went online Jordan Peterson another controversial character he did it too all those lectures that he filmed and then it's led to this other thing so um you know there's Karma and then there's also having the spine to just put it all on the line and do something for which there is no prior example to hold on to while you go through those headwinds the really fascinating thing and actually a lot of people tell me about you Andrew hberman like the reach of a podcast is really fascinating it's not the it's not the numbers of people people listen I don't know if that's important at all is what's important is like the depth of connection you have with certain people it really moves them like a great and like they really get you so there's a lot of big Andrew huberman fans that really get you it's not just the science it's the stuff between the lines it's Costello it's the whole picture of a scientist that finds Beauty and biology and reveals it and they love you for it you know um because it was on television at the time uh I followed that Amanda Knox story pretty carefully um and I don't watch television but whenever I would travel if there was a TV on the airplane I would find myself um getting wrapped into things like Locked Up Abroad you know like and these things where which make you terrified to travel anywhere let alone commit a crime overseas um you know the the scenes of some of these prisons are so dramatic and you know I mean her case got a ton of interest and then I you know she went and then was a student at the University of Washington um and has talked quite openly about you know how she was treated and how people assume guilt and you know and eventually you know she was exonerated and you know we can only go by what we know what the law determined but you know these are people that the world is fascinated by I would I'm guessing about a third of people have already decided this person is Despicable why would you ever give them an audience about a third of people I think are open to or at least interested in learning more about them and then I think the the remaining Third Kind of the third that the category that I put myself in which is what can I learn about people and myself even in my revulsion right what can I learn yeah what can I learn about myself from listening to this conversation with somebody that I that I like to think I'm not talking about Amanda here I'm talking about the other people you're talking about that I I don't I can't relate to right talk hearing conversation with and about people that you cannot relate to is informative otherwise your whole mind literally becomes insular right well there's an interesting thing I also had to um ever since the war in Ukraine broke up one of the questions I was asking myself uh and this is not to be dramatic it's just a very simple honest question that I think a lot of journalists that operate in the war zone or documentary filmmakers that every Reon they got a chance to meet have to be honest with themselves are you willing to put at risk your life for things you do what are you willing to die for yeah what are you willing to die for it sounds very dramatic but whenever risk goes up um I mean I don't know you you ask that if you want to take out a a trip out to space on a commercial space flight you have to are you willing are you willing to die for this for this journey now the odds they're really small I just watched Apollo 13 again yeah great movie yeah great I'm not going to space I'm not going to space afraid of heights no I'm not afraid of heights I'm I'm I just it feels like a feels like a terrible place to die yeah well first of all death anywhere is not great yeah although you know I have um a song teed up in my phone if my if the plane starts to go down yeah I'm going to spend the last few it's a rare song Nobody Knows It it's a song off of B track of my favorite band which is ran it's this song called the sentence and nobody nobody and I love it and I listen to it almost every day um ran the the sentence it's called the sent the band is called rancid famous band relatively love those guys love their music um and the song is the sentence you can only find it on like a bider outake and it's if you don't know how to decipher Tim Armstrong's voice then you probably won't understand the lyrics but um because it's sung very very fast but if the plane ever goes anytime there's turbulence I put that thing in I put the headphones in I like well you know if it's time it's time I'm gonna go out like this I don't want to drift off into the Galaxy just slowly asfixia and freezing to death that sounds horrible just like I wouldn't want to drown or burn but on a plane is okay well on a plane I mean like if the thing starts going down and there's truly nothing you can do you might as well at least listen to your favorite song yeah true true I'll probably go with the Pixies where's my mind like from Fight Club and just the calmness just sit back like uh the musicians playing at the Titanic I didn't know you were a pixie fan I'm going to have to not not so much a pixie fan actually I I should say that I just that was the whereas my mind it was the chosen song for Fight Club at the end when the buildings are coming down or something like that so that the the there's certain songs that just fit just right for the collapse of human civilization and you you're calmly appreciating like that that's just it this is how absurd this life is at any moment it can end and this is it this is uh I love how we both have uh death and demise yeah um soundtracks it's just a question when you're an academic doesn't come up often right well oh that's that's I just yeah there are some academics that are bold and brave it's it's not a phenotype being bold and brave in the physical world is not a common phenotype of academics I mean the great neurologists one of my TR I don't have many Heroes but Oliver Sachs is a true hero I mean um people think of him as a writer but he was foremost a neurologist and he took tremendous push back from the neurology Community for doing his books and his articles uh he has a great biography called on the Move there's a wonderful documentary that just came out about him he died in 2015 I'm actually um kind of a collector of his things um but he tremendous he was accused of horrible things until the movie Awakening came out with dairo and Robin Williams amazing movie by the way people don't they seem to not say great things about the movie I love that was amazing and it was only once he became famous from that movie that his AC More academic work started to receive any kind of attention and he was invited back to Colombia and NYU you know the New York Neuroscience Mafia is a real thing um and yes you know who you are and some of them are actually coming on the broadcast um they they they are you're uh I think we talked offline about this we should start a mafia to to B to fight off whatever is going on in the east coast although I'm still in MIT so I don't know how that works but Boston is different than New York yeah so I have tremendous respect for science done in New York don't get me wrong they are excellent scientists it's it's just a very different culture than on the west coast um and the personalities the the personalities tremendous respect for the mob well well and the the personalities are are a bit more um grandiose however because of some of the shift in science culture in the last few years things around um scandals and things of that sort um they've been forced to Tamp down some of their personality or at least their outspoken personality and I actually think it's revealed something really important and useful in science which is you know it used to be the case you could really inject your personality into what you do you know Richard fineman's a good example if he did what today what he did then Bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech naked um working out theorems in um strict clubs and things like that he would have lost his job in moments right so that kind of behavior isn't celebrated anymore it's actually punished um and I'm only half kidding about this New York Neuroscience Mafia but because I now exist in multiple Realms I can say these sorts of things and I again admiration and respect but I will say that I think it's important that people in science that and kids that are curious about science understand that you can have any personality provided that you're ethical and respectful in science and do well right there are true bench scientists that just want to be at the bench there are people that just want to be in their office there are people that um really enjoy public speaking and there are people that love meetings and there are people that hate crowds and so there's a place for everybody truly a place for everybody in science I would like to be able to shine light on the fact that there are you can have a shy personality an outgoing personality and you can all of those can be have excellent careers in science but you have to find the community in place that's right for you one reason I like Stanford is that Stanford is very much about the future we have Nobel Prize winners we have field medal winners and all that stuff and their names are on walls and we acknowledge their great works but most of what you hear about in the halls of Stanford is about what's happening now and what could happen next it's really about the future whereas when I've spent time at other institutions not to be named you hear that but there's a lot of kind of recycling and regurgitation of how wonderful people are based on things they did previously and the students at Stanford because of Silicon Valley sure they have respect for Nobel prizes they're delighted to be learning from and surrounded by all these great minds but they're mostly interested in what they're going to create and so I kind of uh not kind of I really like the shift toward possibility as opposed to things that are steeped in Tradition you know I've never been to high table dinner at Oxford I'm sure it's a wonderful experience I'm also not sure what purpose it serves for the world but I've never been and so I don't know what the conversations are and so maybe I'm you know speaking out of line here and then now I'm definitely not getting invited you're you're you're definitely getting invited but yeah I'm with you the the cultures pick pick the right ones for you that's why I like MIT this the spirit of it to me it's not about the past or the future is about just tinkering and having fun building cool stuff like the big ambitious projects it's there I mean maybe more on actually the biology and the health side but like the engineering side it doesn't matter if this has any impact let us build the coolest thing the world has ever built well what there uh whenever I'm in Kendall Square I've seen uh the they have those buildings there that actually tilt toward the ground these are these uh the architecture of MIT is also really impressive yeah this he pulled up S just pulled up Yas tweet I'm inspired by curiosity that is what drives me so let us expand the scope and scale of Consciousness so that we may aspire to understand the universe those those are like three Tweets in one but curiosity yeah yeah curiosity for its own sake what's that saying um I think Dorothy Parker said uh the cure for boredom is curiosity there's no cure for curiosity and you need to celebrate so let me just briefly mention to my lovely friends at MIT to celebrate different weirdness to celebrate the weird characters I've um I sometimes get loving pressure from my lovely friends at MIT to tone down the weirdness a bit really even from MIT I'm very fortunate to have a lot of Leverage to where I I have completely resist the pressure but I I'm very sure that there's young faculty that with that subtle pressure would um dissolve them into a puddle of tears not no no I oh they're from Boston excuse me from Boston that's right they're they're tougher than that that's right but it's a slight nudging towards Conformity that I think ultimately destroys um or at least lessens the uh uh the power of the kind of science that you can do when you encourage diversity diversity in all of its forms including the weirdness of ideas the outof the Box thinkers including the flamboyant Behavior online uh how you choose to educate how do you choose to inspire you know people talk about freedom of speech but it's not just like freedom of speech to say controversial things it's also freedom of speech to be weird like if you're for some reason assasinated in uh like you look at musk he talks about sex a lot let the guy put sex memes up who cares like I mean I feel like Elon can do basically whatever he wants right there's no pressure but there's a bunch of Elon in the academic world there's a bunch of el uh no actually sorry let me backtrack cuz the man deserves props right he's unparalleled he's he's a CEO of major companies you better believe there's pressure to behave more like a as opposed to a giggling school boy who's posting memes throughout the night but that is him and that freedom that's what Freedom looks like I talked to a lot of CEOs and a lot of them feel like uh caged birds who have long ago forgotten how to sing quite honestly like they they there's like shareholders and they come up with excuses for themselves here's why I have to be this way you have th understand so on there's PR there's marketing people there's lawyers there's all that kind of stuff but the final result is the authenticity suffocated the the beautiful weirdness of a CEO of a leader of a creator of a scientist all that that's all uh that's all gone well Steve Steve Jobs wouldn't have um kept his job in uh acting the way he did in his 20s and 30s in today's climate but he probably would have up dated his uh his protocols so to speak a little bit but maybe you know you're screaming at employees I mean these are these are anecdotes right I call them anec data because people treat them as data but they're they're really just anecdotes we don't know I wasn't there um but you know I like the idea of authenticity without oversharing right you're very authentic but there are aspects to your life that I'm aware of that your audiences will never be aware of and there are aspects of your life that I'll never be aware of and so you're still authentic but yeah which wait which ones are you aware of people are going to wonder like what what Sex Dungeon what is this no no no but interesting but interesting choice of examples um no but I think that um you know people lose lose careers on the basis of the movement of their thumbs right I mean the chair of Psychiatry at Columbia recently lost his position based on a a response to a tweet people can look that up this is one of the most famous Psychiatry departments in the world and he put something out there that was very insensitive at frankly and um everyone that I talked to about it was like gosh that was very very incens of not thoughtful at all and and he lost his job right or at least had to step down I don't know the specifics so um you know I I think I read some place that more than half of the uh job loss due to online behavior is because people were trying to be funny MH right I mean not everyone can pull off what Tim Dylan oh and by the way congratulations I heard that you and Tim just got married yeah I saw no no we didn't just get married he proposed got it got it got it and I said yes right so some people can get away oh yeah thank you thank you Sergey has that has that those 13.3 th000 likes one of those is mine uh so for people who are not aware one of the days in April tweeted that Tim Dylan asked me to get married and I said yes I think Tim uh said the wedding will be on Sixth Street in Austin bring all of your weapons which of course is totally inappropri this is this I I wasun I I was like uh PG funny and he's goes rated R uh funny right away but that said I mean if there's anyone I I would like to get married with it's it's that guy and we would do it in Austin and it would it would it would be epic it would be like the um the wedding from November Rain um one of Mr Mrs oh wow oh Mr Mister I apologize wow yeah and you broke and you broke broke tradition with the with the jacket color so it sounds to me that you are a free speech absolutist I think freedom is really important and that includes letting people who are hateful letting people who are controversial have a voice on platforms but it Bec comes I'm not sure what exactly to think because um I also treasure the quiet voices in the back of the room and sometimes the assholes um silence those voices meaning by being loud and obnoxious and so on it pushes away the thoughtful people so I'm also a fan of creating communities like you should be able to let people kind of build Community that's positive that's loving or that's constantly trolling or that's uh super hateful all those communities should have a place in the world but like the thing I've noticed is that uh hate can destroy a community full of hate can destroy Community full of love easier than a community full of love can overtake one with hate and so you have to kind of I don't know exactly how but create digital mechanisms that discourage the Collision of these communities they should all have a platform and ability to speak at to a large audience but I just you have to be careful to protect that like little flame of um of connection that people have yeah that's good the goodness it sounds like I mean the um yeah I think you you you know in any great City like New York which I love by the way um you want to have a symphony and opera house and you want some punk rock shows happening on the Lower East Side you you want all of that you just don't necessarily want them to overlap the in terms of social media you know and then podcasting and engagement one thing that I decided very early on is was to encourage comments and feedback Etc but I have in my mind what I call classroom rules you've taught in the university and then you teach in the university and there's C you establish a certain etiquette within the classroom of the kinds of questions that you'll tolerate right so there's always the student that's going to ask a question which is basically a 10-minute monologue about their experience that really isn't a question that pertains to a lot of people so you you um politely discourage that kind of question and you encourage the kinds of questions that are likely to be in the minds of many other students it's just more efficient that way or not politely which is um you know I try and respond to comments and I try and respond but also you know there's this also this really interesting question now if uh you block people or restrict people people think that you're somehow afraid of the information that they're posting but that's often not the case I'm not in the habit of blocking and restricting too many people occasionally we've had to do it only because of how other people are being treated in the comment section what I can take and what I think other people deserve to take are two completely different things David goggin right who we both know well um I don't know if he still does this but a few years ago he posted something like if people ask him when do you sleep he would just block them yeah because it wasn't consistent with what he was trying to say of course he sleeps but it's you know he's trying to get a particular message out I think people should just understand that everybody's page is their own to moderate right just like in a classroom there are certain rules of course of institution but then you establish the etiquette within the context of the kind of class you know a class about personality psychology or the um psychology of love you're going to have a very different range of of conversations than uh you know a class on um you know meman physiology so I I think um social media is a great place for conversation but it's not necessarily a great place for every kind of conversation yeah and I also should say the people that do get blocked I never this is something I do very deliberately blocked or ignored I never think poorly of them I actually explicitly think if if there's somebody that's like saying hateful things about me or whatever I always think positive thoughts it's not some kind of weird Guru thing but just actually found that as a hack I I think well of them and that allows me to never think of them again like I I send them my love and like I think this is a like fascinating human being with a fascinating story I would love to have time to actually learn about their story but there's not enough time in the world and I just think well of them and then I move on and enjoy a delicious meal with people that are close to me and I love and so on and just and move on and never adding to the negativity of like just even in the privacy of my own mind thinking a hateful thought towards them it's so serves no purpose whatsoever yeah I I love that about you and I know that what you just said to be true one of the I think more um toxic things in life is what's called um you know evacuative projection when people feel something and they try and evacuate it and project it onto somebody else projection is fascinating right what you essentially just said is that you don't accept projections and in fact you transmute them to put in the language of the Buddhist you know you transmute it into positivity and in that way you you you truly neutralize it um and transmute it I think that if people were better understood when they were experiencing or observing evacuative projection um the world would be a much healthier and happier place but it requires a certain a stable internal Rudder and um you know when we're tired or sick or angry you know we were hungry excessively hungry um all of us are less less good at it I've been positively struck by the nature of most of the um interactions not just feedback but my favorite thing as an educator in the classroom but also on social media my absolute favorite thing is when the comments to about other people's comments are positively reinforcing so you see people having conversations within the comments yeah and you realize this is like if you as an educator again you know you it's fun to teach and it's fun to talk to the students but the real pleasure is in walking by a small group of students on campus and hearing them talking about the material that's that just fills me with joy and and because what it means is that the ideas are reverberating in their nervous systems and will eventually Wick out to others so it's not just about feedback it's about a venue for for parsing information so you actually posted that we're going to talk on Instagram and I I collected a bunch of the questions which reminds me of I I have to um mention Mike Jones and a question he asked but also gift he gave quite a while ago if it's okay but first uh quick bathroom break yes we're looking at an Instagram page of Mike Jones knife and Tool you should check it out he G he uh Andrew gave me a gift from him that is a badass a butcher knife yours is the earth do do do from if by rer Kipling yeah the the story of this knife is kind of interesting perhaps to people where it was I I was coming out here to Austin to meet with Lex and it was his birthday I want to get him a gift but I didn't know what to get him and I contacted this guy Mike Jones that I learned about through Joe Rogan because the first remember in the old um days of Joe Rogan when you go on the episode afterwards you'd take a picture with an object so it's was like uh Elon with a flamethrower people would have the axe I picked up this um bushwhacker Hatchet thing and I was like I love this thing and and Joe said oh yeah you should check out Mike Jones's work he does these beautiful knives and so then I heard your episode with Joe and you recited a poem at the end it was right after your grandmother died and there's a line in that poem from the from if that um Mike engraved on that knife for you so he makes these by by hand I I love there is the old days before the podcast and first appearance that was the first time on there and um it was a lot of fun um in the old in the old studio in Los Angeles and um yeah Mike makes these beautiful knives and I have this in I just have a great admiration for crafts people so yeah do you use it do you cut your your one meal a day steaks with it I feel are you taking it with you on your travels exactly I actually uh used to keep it on the table but I thought it it it really intimidate guests a little bit but like you can put it on their side yeah right it's like oops it's trust right what's what's the story I mean yeah so but it's cuz it's not it's it's uh quite badass if I may say so the craftsmanship is obvious but also it is a knife it's got some like Dexter like qualities to it it looks like it's designed to to cleave through a limb if I had like a family or something where people there's nothing about this place that's softens your kind of sense that this might person might not murder me me let's put it differently uh this place could use a woman's touch that's one way to put it if it's okay let me because it is it is a poem I um go go to often actually uh you mentioned reciting some lyrics and I'm actually going to go back to that at some point to get get a few songs that touch you um but this is one of the things I I go to often I I I'll read it to remind myself it's uh advice from from father to son and it's a kind of Mantra that it's just nice to live by so if it's kill let me just use this opportunity one more time read If by rer Kipling if you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you but make allowance for their doubting too if you can wait to not be tired by waiting or being lied about don't deal in lies or being hat hated don't give way to hating and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise if you can dream and not make dreams your master if you can think and not make thoughts your aim if you can meet with Triumph and disaster and treat those two imposters just the same if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken Twisted by naves to make a trap for fools or watch the things you gave your life to broken and stoop and build them up with worn out tools if you can make one heap of all your winnings and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss and lose and start again at your beginnings and never breathe a word about your loss if you can force your heart to nerve and Sen you to serve your turn long after they're gone and so hold on when there's nothing in you except the will which says to them hold on if you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue I like this one and walk with Kings nor lose the common touch if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you if all men count with you but none too much if you can fill the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run yours is the Earth and everything that's in it and which is more you'll be a man my son thank you Andrew thank you thank you Mike for the knife is a I don't know it's a and and engraved in it yeah it's yours yours is the Earth and everything that's in it we toiled over what to engrave and then finally I just said Mike just pick something that speaks to you you're the Craftsman and so he selected that there's certain ways to pull yourself in that bat actually uh Carl daero gu daero he he uh wrote the book projections one of my favorite first of all just as you said incredible writer just amazing just I mean um if you wrote fiction if you wrote those kinds of things I'm curious to see where he goes with his writing it's very interesting I think that book took him 10 years to write which is Vindication for me and for you because we're both supposed to write books and we haven't done it yeah I mean you know in some sense your um first book will have you know decades in it right even if you just take uh half a year to write it it's like the first book like the first album for a musician I mean it's a life it's a journey it's a it's a it's every but he he uses uh poems and quotes in there really well it's a beautiful book it's a dreamy book I think when people hear that it's a book about Neuroscience they think they're going to get a textbook or a protocols book or something it's nothing like that but it really is a deep dive into the mind of the psychiatrist and the researcher and so much feeling and compassion I love that you love poetry I mean I didn't know that until I saw you on Rogan read if um and I'm not a a very uh rabid consumer of poetry but I I'm a big Wendell Berry fan um uh and I try and read a poem once every few days also I think if is a tough act to follow oh yeah you know oh yeah I mean that that's the richness and the I mean like you said EV every third line in there is something that you would you know you consider your life well- lived if you if you said that right what about the uh PR preparation for the solo podcast you said you listen to certain songs you no you sing or recite the lyrics of certain songs is there ones that kind of come to mind that interesting um yeah I've always been very lyrics driven and I don't understand music I've talked to Rick about this I think I've talked to you about this a little bit I don't really understand uh I mean I can hear music and like it but I don't really understand the the structure of it but lyrics make a lot of sense does it touch your soul music or is it the lyrics it's the lyrics it's not the instrumentals so I'm a huge Joe Strummer fan and I'm going to lose Punk points for saying this but I'm not a clash fan oh okay so he obviously is best known for The Clash most Clash songs start off great and then after about 30 seconds in at least in my mind just kind of disintegrate into a bunch of mush whereas um Joe Strummer in the mescaleros which is what he did as an adult as a you know later and some of his solo work he actually Rick produced some work that he did with Johnny Cash you know Rick pulled Johnny Cash Out of essentially out of retirement and had him do his albums before he he died and um so anything that Strummer did there's a there's a favorite song of Mine by Strummer it's called Burning Lights um you can find it there is an album now where you can find it or Tennessee rain or some of these things that he did which are a little bit more folky so not really Punk so I love that song um bunch of songs by rans that I love yeah you know and then if I listen to instrumentals I I do um I'll listen to classical piano some dreams are made for children but most it's not going to sound good as a poem they can play the people can play the song play the song okay yeah so I I'll I mean because it has to be Su Joe's voice is what makes the song got it um Joe's voice is what makes the song but yeah that song Burning Lights from I married uh I hired a contract killer or I don't know the lrics are pretty good I mean Joe is an amazing writer right I'm you know I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan um Glen Gould for classical piano he was at Asbergers you know and um and actually I think you can hear him grunting he had a Tourette's like tick um and I learned about Glen Gould from Oliver Sachs um so I'll listen to any number of things it depends on my mood if I'm feeling a little more tired and I need to be amped up I'll listen to something that's a little louder and faster if I'm feeling kind of keyed up and I need to bring the Cadence down a little bit um then I'll listen to something a little mellower poppier I I I love bands like um yeah I'm a big fan of this um British pop band called James there's like 20 bands named James but this one you know again I lose Punk points for saying that but they're amazing uh and best I think you've accumulated enough points where you can afford to view to lose a few yeah um but in any case uh yeah music and poetry are they're they're the they're the subconscious right I mean if you think about a Bob Dylan song or a really good Strummer song or a poem that the the words don't mean anything when read linearly but they make you feel something they're tapping into the subconscious that's really what they're doing they're they're pulling on neural threads of emotion based on either tamber or Cadence or something that's independent of the word structure and that to me is the beauty of music and poetry I often say Johnny Cash's version of hurt that I say it would be my favorite song ever well he did a 9in nail song he did he covered I think Rick produced that pretty sure he produced that he produced it I mean he did like the Rick produced the he pulled Johnny Cash Out from a dark place to produce something that um I mean when you look back is one of the great things ever in music which are these like uh haunting covers of certain songs and Originals Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer did a version of Redemption Song together that is uh that Rick produced which is um on Loop in my house sometimes you know for hours and hours that song is fascinating Bob Marley song sung by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer you know sometimes I think what it would be to be a fly on the wall when these guys were doing this Stu these songs of Freedom there's certain songs where you're like it it it um elicit an emotion that's unlike anything else I mean I was I was trying to figure that out with with Rick too like there's certain songs that make you want to pull up over to the side of the road and just weep or just uh get inspir to just get shit done or all those kinds of things or remember your family the people you've lost all that kind of stuff me hurt I hurt myself today to see if I still feel there's certain songs that um I've loved so much that I actually won't play them during a relationship until the relationship passes a certain yeah duration because you if you start sharing in those experiences with somebody in the and it starts to become associated with the relationship you braiding it in with the dopamine of uh of love and that relationship ends the song is forever tainted there are certain songs that I will never play in the company of anybody else they're mine they I I just I'm it's too risky to uh to give those up um and uh you know be and I think that um and there's like levels there they levels right uh exactly we'll leave it at that yeah and uh the interesting thing about this kind of preparing for the solo episode uh just interacting with Rick about that process of preparation and because you mentioned um so with interviews by the way so are you do Solo solo are you the only one in the room or no well it used to be Rob my producer who um I should say you know he's really the person behind the the podcast I mean we're first of all we're equal Partners everything you're just a pretty face uh we're just um and I'm aging man not not I'm I actually really I like I like aging it's weird a lot of people like friends with David Sinclair and it's all about not aging I I'm I don't want to live past 9095 I'm just trying to get as much done as I can in this short life and do it right and with integrity and heart and accuracy you know um and you like the stages oh yeah if you read Erikson's stages of development you realize that every stage of life is a is a it's a set of neural circuits trying to resolve a problem and um and if you're going to try and avoid that that progression sure you might live longer but um you know it's sort of like saying like do you want to go win the uh High School Jiu-Jitsu Championship no you graduated high school a long time ago right so I actually look forward to the future um even if it means that I'm starting to shift I think that uh my biology will shift you know I'll fight that I try and take good care of myself but um I don't want to get sick I don't want to suffer who does but I I'm embracing this whole uh developmental Arc I mean we don't de we're not children and then adults our entire life is one long developmental Arc and if you fail to embrace that you fail to extract the richness of of what it is to be a human being so um in any event for the um I record uh Rob is in the room I'll sometimes stop and ask him for feedback if I feel like something's not Landing right so he goes if it's clear he'll let me know if it's not clear he'll let me know excuse me and then you know Costello used to be in the room the early days of the podcast which weren't that long ago um he's snoring at my feet and farting and smelling up the room and we're all just kind of like gasping for a he's a bulldog that's what they do uh with him gone it it changed you know the the whole thing changed there will be another dog soon um and as you know I uh I've been moving through that grief process but having him there gave me a levity that um I miss but in my mind he's still there yeah he's still there yeah he's still there so uh and you know in time there'll be another dog and and who knows you know maybe there'll be a dog and a couple infants running around but that that would be more distracting so um but it's there's no podcast that exists just because of the podcaster this is true for Joe this is true for you your podcast for me that there's it's not just a staff of people that post stuff that's just the top level Contour there's the constant feedback and iteration of what you want it to become and trying to hold on to something that's essential along the way because everything has to evolve but you can't lose the the essence of something anytime a company or brand or a a course or a scientist has done that it just ends up terrible it just is a you know it becomes like a senatur version of itself so to Rick is very the the power of the people in the room is great to in to inspire and to destroy so you have to be extremely careful with the selection of people that are in the room to me I never really thought of it that way I I I thought only only positive things can happen oh by adding people in the by adding people in I think if there were an audience in the room for well you know what someday I'd love to do a live podcast with you um we're doing I saw you doing like a a couple of live things which is great that you're Paving the way there to well we did one I went up to University of British Columbia um uh and did a a lecture on a on a college campus and one of the more gratifying things that happen is this guy this kid in his early 20s I think stood up and said you know I've never been on a college campus I didn't think I could go onto a college campus and that I still rings in my mind whoever you are out there that meant so much to me cuz I was like yes there was something about that to me I was like okay this it made sense to come all the way up here and do this in person because you can get out to a lot more people online public speaking events it's not like it's that lucrative or anything I mean unless you're whatever you're a famous celebrity or politician or something I'm sure there are people that do well with it but that's not what it's about for us it it's really about being able to connect with people in a different venue and for interactions like that uh I don't know how many of them we will do um but I'm curious to see how it goes but I'd love to do a podcast with you is it energizing my my fear is the the fear of the introvert is that I don't know if I can handle so much love and Fascinating People all around it's like I don't know makes well we'll invite a few haters too well yes I mean but I love the haters too but I don't know it makes me nervous cuz I Jordan Peterson is currently on tour I got a chance to hang out with him when he does he does um a lot of live speaking Yeah he does like he's not on tour where he does like every other day and but he doesn't have any small kids at home anymore so he can do that so yeah you should do it before you also exhausting I mean I'm I'm just speaking from an athlete perspective like uh if you're MC Jagger with the Rolling Stones it it it's just physically I mean you have to speak potentially for 2 hours then offstage like hanging out with people it's a lot it's a lot of hours it's a lot of hours to stay focused to to to keep finding your place of like calmness and excit well and you're staying in hotels your circadian rhythm is disrupted you're not getting your like cold and sauna and your workout every day your food isn't optimal um I think done in patches I could enjoy it um because it's fun to meet people from different places I'm doing a a public lecture in Copenhagen for the lunbeck foundation in June June third and that one is particularly gratifying for me because the lunbeck foundation is an academic foundation so the fact that and so when they invited I asked you know do you want me to talk about what my lab does or do you want me to talk about the stuff on the podcast they're like no no not your lab you know we want to hear about this like Health stuff and the stuff that we cover on the podcast so that was amusing to me and tells me that um you know things are changing now I think 2020 and 2021 revealed a lot of things about people to ourselves but one thing that it made very clear is that there's an enormous appetite for tools for mental and physical health but also understanding about science and how science is done so thanks to you again I'm not saying this to flatter you it's true gratitude there is now a a runway for scientists to talk to people I mean you had the I always forget this guy's named the virus guy from Columbia uh Vincent renell yeah amazing right I mean forgetting the controversy around the all the stuff of 20221 I mean he is an encyclopedia of all things virology yeah people to listen to his podcast this week in virology he's also an incredible lecture and educator it's uh it's fascinating it's fascinating when people take again that leap of putting all that education online that's noncontroversial at all it's like everybody there people should go listen to him for the most part in terms of at his best at least uh there's no politics in it there's there's there's none of no he he's a virus jockey he likes playing around with bacteria and viruses and but that said we all molecular biology we all say stuff carelessly all the time so he he gets in a bit of trouble on some of the things you've said about like dismissing lab leak Theory like there's no way he dismisses that yeah but not he's not making like folks uh there's a difference when you say stuff uh like off the cuff and when you say stuff that's like core to your principles and you've thought about it for a very long time you talking for hour for hundreds of hours and you can just say stuff you could just say your opinions um Will Smith uh slapped I was wondering okay wait how long have we been recording I was wondering how long it was going to take us before someone we talked about Ukraine no no Will Smith I was wondering whether or not we'd make it theend I had it planned yeah I was literally in the back of my mind I had it planned that at the end if we didn't talk about the Will Smith Chris Rock thing that I was going to say it's amazing this is the first conversation to happen in uh in a long time where it wasn't mentioned oh no not pull it up no we don't need to see we don't need to see it revealed some interesting things about um human beings impulse control and uh lack thereof but um you know oh my goodness Chris Rock has material for the rest of his career yeah I think he's he's not short on material but I do see if I if I knew what I I wanted to tweet if if I knew you're allowed to just slab comedians my conversation with Tim Dylan would have gone very differently people just being humans I there's so much fascinating human nature on display there um it it's also in terms of it coming becoming a topic that a lot of people are talking about versus the war in Ukraine for example is also fascinating to watch like just these kind of news Cycles moving through I think in if I may I sorry to interrupt but um you know anytime we observe something very lyic very emotional you know we generally can empathize somewhat right uh we all know what it's like to feel angry we all know what it's like to feel ashamed we all know what it's like to feel shocked images of War are for most people very hard to relate to we see it it's you know the there these images and they're very traumatic and and challenging to look at at times and yet most people have no idea what it feels like to be shot at or what it feels like to have your home destroyed or what it feels like like to be um a an aggressor in that way so it's very so I think that people naturally Orient towards things that feel familiar to them even though the circumstances are different and people also forget they look at these celebrities it's just like looking at criticism of Will Smith you forget that they're human too that's that's one of the most surprising things for me having done this podcast and met celebrities and stuff like that they're human they're all human that's inspiring to me like some of these great folks that have won Nobel prizes and built some cool things they're just human like the rest of us well and if you look at actors and actresses I mean there's some amazing ones right and who also do well in their outside life but their careers were built on the business of pretending to be other people yeah and that's got to distort maybe positively but also just let's be honest what it is that the neuroplasticity there the changes in the areas of the brain that represent personality have to be quite different for somebody who pretends to be lots of different personalities and gets paid for it you're working the reward system into the system of self-identity and you know you have to imagine that that can really um contort somebody's Neurology in ways that maybe they are not as in maybe they are not in touch with reality in the same way that we are remember earlier we're talking about neurotic versus psychotic you know they may be more borderline in their kind of ground state than than we think and so I'm actually impressed anytime there's a celebrity who doesn't have a messed up life yeah I'm like oh wow you know finally somebody who's managed to you know maintain a some semblance at least from the outside of of normaly so first of all I can empathize with the actions the Will Smith did right they're not I think they're kind of sh not kind of they're just shitty you should probably talk privately manto man uh not cuz otherwise it's like a dramatic display it's like it's almost like you are a fake act you're acting well there are all these questions right I mean obviously it was aggressive at some level there's this question of whether or not it was impulsive I think most people feel yes there's a question there was the protective nature of it because he was doing it to you know in it apparently to in defense but then there's also the the context he lost touch with the context right um whereas Chris Rock basically gets um there there's the possible critique that he went too far that's going to be in the eye of the beholder um but then and depending on how you view comedy and jokes but then there's also the fact that he took that slap and then just snapped right back so much so that people thought maybe it was faked yeah he also waited with his hands behind his back that's just natural he likes to stand like that I mean I um the I I I got to tell a little bit of a story here to connect um to what Chris Rock did like I I wish what Chris Rock did in terms of just taking this lap and keep going first of all it just props for somebody that's able to maintain cool in that situation for the most part I think I like watched it once you only have to be alive on this planet yeah to see it you can't avoid seeing it I wish at that afterwards he would sort of say something loving and kind to Will Smith and and his wife and then hit him real hard lean into the joke see and but they're I think in hockey they call taking a number have a friend who plays hockey and there's this idea that like if someone checks you really badly in one game you don't go and check them again you don't get into a fight but three games later you like you blade them in the shin yeah like you so what the the ability to defer and to handle it in whatever fashion one feels is appro they're probably also friends and all those kind the things that they respect each other so he probably didn't but there's a comedian Instinct I saw this I was in open mic in uh here in Texas I won't say where there's many open mics in a we gone to a few of these these pretty fun no so there there is more sort of um rougher kind of yeah you've been hanging out in like West Texas exactly Austin's too tame for Lex so he's like head to West Texas exactly I put on a cowboy hat and instantly I became a cowboy I've been talking like a cowboy and I mean I I belong out there in the desert he's gone from eating you know meet and athletic green so rattlesnakes here rattlesnake J exactly no there was a open mic it was it was uh late at night and there I was one of the only people in the audience there's a couple of drunk folks a few drunk folks one of them was a couple uh and uh like bikers like uh with with helmets and so on a guy and a girl and then the comedian uh the open mic comedian did a joke about people who wear helmets I don't know if it was on purpose or not but he did the joke and then the guy about women who wear helmets and the guy this exact same situation the guy stood up walked up to him there was no slap it's so interesting cuz this happened before the Will Smith thing so he he walked up to the uh to the comedian and and and said he like uh he he I think he like pointed his finger down and told him to stop or something like that and then sat down this is an audience of like six people right and and uh at midnight around then there's no nobody no security nothing in Texas in Texas which implies oh then this guy was the energy drunk but also a biker and has what he felt felt his lady was now attacked by the comedian right with his words and this and the comedian was a kind of out of shape small guy just not threatening at all and probably in trouble and the comedian after he sat down he looked a little bit scared he paced back and forth and then he did the joke again wow and I was sitting and I started I I leaned back and I I just did this like because that is comedy and the guy was Ang getting angry and angry and he just sat there and and uh the comedian went on for a couple more minutes and then did another bad joke but another joke about how just like he leaned into it if you go to a small Comedy Club open mic or otherwise you're in the shooting gallery like you're basically there teed up as a PIN to get it um we went and saw Andrew scholes in in San Francisco in San Francisco yeah it was hilarious it was amazing I mean he's he's just masterful in his ability to command an audience you know and but I felt for the people up front but you know no sympathy either because you know you buy tickets to sit up front at at a scholes show you know you're going to get it but he was very loving yeah and funny first of all funny the funniness really helps you but the the the ethic of the comedian is like that fear lessness I what I really liked this is like the the danger there's risk to Comedy and there's also consequences have you watched that show the um what is it the marvelous Miss Mel show it's really good um I watched a few of them um guilty pleasure there uh she plays a a comic in the I think it's mid 1960s in in New York and um and there's a a character that somewhat resembles Lenny Bruce it's s meant to be Lenny Bruce um and they're always getting arrested and this this kind of thing I think I learned about it from Joe anyway it's the writing is great it's very funny um but yeah comedy is designed to push boundaries right and to get and to say the thing that you know uh other people aren't feel they can't say not something in science right science you're supposed to Etiquette is a big part of how you communicate ideas it's about constraining communication this is something I I mean I confess on the podcast in the goals of making it clear uh interesting surprising and actionable you know you have to constrain the amount and the style of information otherwise it becomes something else all together right I saw s Pai Google CEO said that he likes uh the thing you mentioned not the yoga NRA but the the nsdr nonsleep deep breath uh podcast over meditation I don't know if you saw that I saw that yeah yeah yeah uh why what what do you think that is what what do you think the difference is yeah so non-sleep deep rest nsdr is an acronym that I coined because it encompasses a lot of practices that are not meditation per se but that bring the brain and body into a state of relaxation and focus so hypnosis is one variant of nsdr there are other variant of nsdr you can just look these up and you'll find them and I think that they've caught on and that the Google um the CEO of Google uh is an avid practitioner of nsdr because it has this amazing ability to reset your energy levels and focus whereas with meditation many people find meditation hard and part of the reason they find it hard is that it requires focus nsdr is a state which is very calm and relaxing you don't have to work too hard you're just listening to a script whereas most forms of meditation not all but most forms of meditation involve cranking up the activity in your prefrontal cortex and trying to see your thoughts as opposed to thinking your thoughts or um focus on your breath but then third personing yourself in some respect and that's work and so many people who meditate quite intensely feel more exhausted now that doesn't mean that meditation doesn't have any utility but it's distinctly different than nsdr and I think that people are working certainly the CEO of Google after mag is working very hard and using his forebrain if he's going to have 20 or 30 minutes to take a break he should and I think this is what he's doing he should go out for a jog and not listen to anything and just kind of let his mind wander or sit there in a chair and just zone out or do SDR the problem is people are not that good at shifting States we are all actually pretty good at be even people with severe ADHD read an episode about this can become hyperfocused on things that they actually enjoy because dop and most of the drugs designed to treat ADHD are drugs that increase the levels of dopamine so when you like something there's dopamine release and you can focus it's when you don't like something that's hard to focus shifting States is hard I'm sure you've experienced this if if you've ever been in deep research or podcasting podcasting and then all of a sudden you go for a run you probably spend the first third of that run thinking and then in the middle third you're kind of that thinking is is fractured a bit and then in the final third is where you finally get to relax because the brain doesn't shift States very quickly we can go from sleep to wakefulness quickly we can go from wakefulness to sleep quickly but we don't shift between different states of Consciousness like a step function except in rare cases right fear is one all of a sudden we hear an explosion right now it's a step function we're in fear or we're in alertness right um a heighten state of alertness but nsdr is terrific at allowing people to learn to shift their state and I actually would venture to argue that part of the value of meditation and exercise is the actual state that you get into in deep meditation or exercise but just as valuable is the transition that you have to take yourself through from one state of mind to the other and then back again I when I look you you know David goggin he always seems to come up but he rep because he represents so many important things Drive determination override of emotional state going from being a 300 lb plus person to a fit person through he's never revealed anything substantial about what he ate or what he didn't need he's basically says like listen run a lot eat less right um but what's remarkable is so much of what he says is about those transitions about taking oneself from a state of I don't want to to scruffing oneself and like you're going to do anyway and then being able to carry that into into regular life so to speak so I think that um nsdr is immensely powerful it's zero cost and one of the reasons I'm such a fan of people doing it is that most people don't stick to a meditation practice there also been a few cases you might find this interesting there's a book by Scott Carney I forget what it's called I think it's called the Transcendence trap or something I'm G to have that title wrong but there have been a fair number of cases of people that go and do very extensive meditation silent meditation Retreats who then return to normal life and end up killing themselves there are states of mind inside of extended meditations or silent meditations that are very beneficial and I'm certainly not suggesting people don't meditate but I know at least one person who came back from one of these long extended meditation Retreats and wasn't able to shift their state back into one that was functional in regular life and that book includes a very dramatic story I don't want to give it away in case people um check out the book but Scott told the story to me directly once where someone feels they've reached Enlightenment and then commit suicide so these very unusual brain states are are potentially hazardous if people can't return from them so it's it's nice to focus not on those brain States but instead on the shifting right I do this morning I woke up a little bit earlier than I would have liked I use this revery app that's research back re.com there's a free of it and or you can try it for free so I feel for hypnosis for hypnosis and I do a self hypnosis to put me back into sleep and if I can't sleep to just put me into a state of deep relaxation I would I would put um hypnosis under the category of nsdr yoga needra under the category of nsdr they're now some nsdr scripts online if you just go to YouTube that are you can just listen to and do you like those I do yeah I think the one from made for is quite good I have an affiliation with them but it's free so I feel comfortable mentioning it I do I I really like the Ry app um I can very and as you the more you do them the more quickly you can shift your brain into a state of deep relaxation I will sometimes stop mid podcast if it if it's sometimes our recordings go seven eight hours and I'll stop and I'll do a one minute hypnosis they have one minute hypnosis inside Ry you're only going to you're only going to find that one minute hypnosis is effective if you are routinely doing 10 and 15 minute hypnosis in addition to that meaning I do it every other day or so 10 or 15 minutes so there's a there is there a YouTube uh one minute hypnosis or is this for the there are but inside of Revy as well you can find them online a really good pull it up so please um yeah so rev is good and then Michael cely s a l y he has some long hypnosis scripts but again these are all free and you know there's a lot of good research now on the neural networks and it shifts your so-called default netwk default mode Network it shifts how much of your forbrain you're using and it also is very very good if you I get so many questions about hey I'm really upset I found out about my girlfriend's sexual past or hey I'm so upset I found out that my boyfriend was cheating or oh soone so died how do I get over these emotions how do I deal with them and hypnosis has shown to be very useful for people to learn to bring themselves into a state of deep relaxation to literally project in their Mind's Eye these very intense things that they don't like and then for people to associate with other emotions in their body to learn to be calm while feeling your feelings to dissociate the Mind Body communication to some extent just observe the feelings observe them and start to associate them with positive experiences you're an Android guy so soon it should be available on Android and well then it doesn't exist for me it's only uh you know I don't get Android is the device of the people all you elitist people with your iPhones okay but tell me this about Android now now you want to this is the one thing that gets me yeah cuz I'm very close to someone who uses an Android phone I feel like like that so you you have great people in your life that's good to know no their messages always look green to me but I answer yours not despite that um but they I feel like the Android phones are very trigger happy like anything I touch does something whereas the Apple phone is kind of built for like a maak monkey to be able to operate which is great for me because I'm more of a maak monkey and you're a more sophisticated ape oh I see I see I think like you have to be more sensitive you have you have to have you know I mean I've got fat fingers you know I've got clumsy fingers you know and the Android is is too well maybe you need to soften your touch what I would do is go into the most sort by most popular um because there's some older ones that I really like and it generally scales with so I'll do the um this one the hypnosis for clearing subconscious um negativity that's an hourlong one the sleep and anxiety one 40 minutes but those you listen to as you fall asleep as you fall asleep we're going to do this now yeah yeah let's listen to it and I have created this hypnosis recording for for you to help you and this is the voice how often does the voice pop up and at the same time you don't watch it you just listen to your anxiety now one of the most important things to remember at the outset of any self hypnosis experience is to know and understand that hypnosis people really should know that stage hypnosis is about the hypnotist getting you to do things you wouldn't normally do MH self hypnosis which is what we're talking about here revery in this is about you getting your brain into the state that you want and um again I mean there's a ton of neuroimaging data and work on trauma and Pain Relief and our labs are working on this with David Spiegel's lab I I really encourage people to explore nsdr and if this feels a little too wacky and out there then I would just put in nsdr into YouTube and there's some good nsdr scripts yes s by the way uh S as a is a fan of your podcast no it's okay we don't need to play so I don't know him and um uh but I would yeah a lot of uh media Outlets picked up on his love of nsdr and I have to imagine running Google involves a lot of juggling a lot of of he's one of the great CEOs because everybody loves him everybody loves him have you interviewed him no but we'll we'll do the interview eventually so this annoying thing about me being a stickler for three hours CEOs don't seem to understand like not understand but it it's scheduling so what happens sers said yes definitely let's do it I'm a fan of the podcast he a fan of yours and and and then it goes to his executive assistant like oh let's find a slot and then they immediately think all right well 1 hour is good 45 minutes 90 minutes by Zoom 90 minutes yeah right well no they know in person I'm sticking on that but like it's like no we need more and it's so hard to to do you still travel to do your podcast or generally no most people come down here most people uh but for certain situations obviously um like if you're in prison right or you're ahead of if you get out on work for a l people have anklets so that they can go to on Lex Freedman pod it probably happen have you ever been in a prison no you know uh either visitation or on the inside from my hike I can see s Quenton it's really weird that San Quenton and Alcatraz you know Bay Area beautiful everyone thinks you know like there's the bay and there's alcatra and S Quenton sitting right there does that make you feel um you know it's amazing how easy it is to overlook that they're there and forget that they're there but when I drive by S Quenton I I think about it um I also think about the people who are in there who might be innocent I've seen some of those episodes on Rogan and elsewhere and Amanda Knox talks a lot about this right whether or not you believe her story or not I happen to believe her story uh personally based on what I know um what you know I'm sure there are people disagree with me I think to myself what it must be like to be in a cell and know in your heart's heart you didn't do it you know I mean I can't think of I can't think of many things worse I can't think of many things worse that's so clearly unjust but life is full of unjust things like this uh cruel things happen all the time you lose a loved one for no good reason you lose your job um you lose your home you I've been talking to a lot of refugees now and uh the war in Ukraine has really focused my mind to how much suffering there is in the world and so just cruel things happen all the time and and and people kind of there's this suffering and you you kind of go on you stick to the people really close to you they still love all around you traumatic events kind of focus your mind on the like very practical like okay how do we solve the problem how do we escape let's Sol like survival food shelter Focus remember that book um All Quiet on the Western Front by World War I there's this line in there I forget what it is about how war is like the smell of a skunk like a little bit is actually a little is slightly um there's something slightly delicious of it is what it says in the in the book um I happen to like the smell of like ferrets and skunks and things I had a pet ferret when I was a kid and I like that musky scent people most people just it's repulsive to them it's actually a gene believe it or not some people have the gene that makes that the musky scent repulsive some people love it um let me ask you this there's another Gene this is a fun one um microwave popcorn smells good neutral or disgusting to you good very good there are people who have a gene that leads them to the perception that the smell of microwave popcorn that you find is good it smells like putrid vomit to them it's a particular Gene variant and they can smell certain elements within the microwave popcorn um it's pretty it's prominent in France the uh this Gene and um so in Laboratories where uh you have a lot of French people it's often said like you're not allowed to make microwave popcorn it smells putrid disgusting you know so a lot of it's in the perception of the beholder right uh but okay we before I leave the nsdr is uh focus in general you said it's for shifting mind States is there advice you have for how to achieve focus on a task yes first of all we have to distinguish between modulators and mediators and I'll do this very briefly there are a lot of things that will modulate your state of focus but they don't directly mediate your sense of focus so for instance if right now a fire alarm went off in this building it would modulate our attention we would get up and leave it would be very hard to do what we're doing with that banging in the background at least at first so it's modulating Focus but it's not really involved in the mechanisms of Focus right in the same way being well rested when you sleep your autonomic nervous system that adjusts states of alertness and focus and calm works better than when you're sleep deprived so if you're sleeping better you're going to focus better so I always answer this way uh to a question like this because the best thing that anyone can do for their mental health physical health and performance and athletic or cognitive Endeavors or creative Endeavors is to make sure that you're getting enough quality sleep enough of the time for you and that's going to differ we could talk about what that means now in terms of things that mediate focus without getting into the description of mechanisms because we have podcasts about that it's very clear that mental focus follows visual Focus provided that you're a cited person much of the training that's being done now in China to teach kids to focus better literally has them stare at a Target blinking every so often but really training themselves to breathe calmly and maintain a tight visual aperture when you read you have to maintain a tight visual aperture you're literally scrolling like a highlighter in your mind's eye right it's kind of obvious once you hear it so for people that have problems focusing sleep well learn to dilate and contract your visual field consciously this can be done if you practice it a little bit and then be I said before it is very hard to get into a state of focus like a step function immediately like snapping your fingers what you can do is you can pick any object but ideally an object at roughly the same distance placed at roughly the same distance to which you're going to do that work and stare at it you're allowed to Blink and as your mind starts to drift every once in a while to understand that's normal but try and narrow your visual aperture and bring that into your visual field so that that's the most prominent thing kind of like portrait mode in your phone this would look very different in portrait mode than it would in just a standard photograph mode and then after doing that for 30 to 60 seconds moving into the work that you're about to do and really Encourage Yourself to do that if you're somebody who's low vision or no vision you're going to use your ears to do this Braille readers have trouble focusing sometimes because they feel other stuff and they hear other stuff so you you learn to adjust that aperture consciously and then of course there are the pharmacologic tools just enough caffeine but not too much right um we've talked about white noise Brown Noise music or no music really varies but it's very clear that binaural beats of 40 hertz can shift the brain into a heightened state of focus and cognition so if you're going to use binaural beats which should definitely be used with um headphones and there are a number of free apps out there and sources uh 40 htz seems to be the frequency that best supports the brain shifting into a particular can you give us the some some some some vinal beats yeah so you're going to look you'd want to find a uh an app that offers 40 Herz I think brainwave allows you to um slide bar up to the particular frequency that you want and I should say that um there are other frequencies that are interesting but 40 HZ binormal beat seems to be the one that there's the most quality research on so it's like a it's like a beat um but you're you're saying there's a lot of mixed science on the on the white noise and brown noise you really should be doing this with headphones because binaural beats are best accomplished by feeding two different frequencies to the two ears and then you have What's called the this brain stem area that reads out what are called inter oral time differences and then it extracts the the the Delta essentially turn it up and then in other things that can enhance Focus so you know the pharmacology around this is pretty interesting things that tickle the dopamine pathway and the acetylcholine pathway they work yeah um there's your rlin your adderal your mod which are prescription and there's a lot of of non-prescription use of those prescription drugs not so much in my generation but in people 35 and younger you know dat I hear all the time from day Traders and programmers and stuff and kids that play video games a lot of riddle and Aderall use I think that unless it's prescribed by a doctor for specific purpose of ADHD I don't think people should go that route frankly hits the dopamine system way too hard also has a number of negative effects on um sexual side effects all sorts of things that you just wouldn't want there are a few compounds like Alpha GPC um 300 Mig to 600 migs of alpha GPC with a cup of espresso if you're well rested you're like a laser for 90 minutes maybe two hours but then it's going to taper off and you have to just recognize that and then there's this whole world of neut Tropics now and people trying to figure out the racetams paracetamol ethylamine combined with this and you know it's not quite in the place where you'd like it to be there are a few companies that are doing this better than others we talk about some of these on the podcast but um I would always start with behavioral tools and then consider pharmacology and and then I suppose the the other thing for focus is um there these this is a little more esoteric but uh we covered this in an episode on workplace optimization um where you place your screen is important staring down at a screen is not going to be as effective as placing it at eye level or above you when the eyes are up literally your eyes are directed forward or up the brain stem centers is for alertness are activated when your eyes are down it's actually you're you're sort of it's like being pulled underwater a little bit in the autonomic arousal sense it's you're closing your eyes I mean um is one it reflects the brain stem centers that are active becoming less or for act for alertness excuse me becoming less active but there's a really cool effect that's active in this room right now which is that there have been some really interesting studies that when people work in small compact spaces or wear a hoodie or a hat that can also improve focus like blinders on a horse for obvious reasons now based on what I said before but also analytic work or the kind of work where there's a correct answer that you're seeking is best supported by these kind of low sealing environments whereas there's something called the cathedral effect which is when you work in an outdoor environment or a high ceiling environment it lends itself to kind of pun intended kind of loftier ideas and more creativity and that probably has to do with the fact that there's a natural tenden a reflex to expand your visual field in these high ceing environments expansion of the visual field changes the way the brain works in the time domain you're engineering and biology oriented uh listeners will understand this for the and music for those that don't the best way to think about it is when you have a narrow Focus portrait mode on your phone or you're very alert you are fine slicing life in time it's like a um think of it as a high frame rate like you're shooting in slow motion when you have a uh when you dilate your your view you're taking bigger time bins and the one way to just let this hopefully land home is that if you've ever had a really exciting day or podcast interview or experience of any kind your system is flooded with dopamine and norepinephrine alertness and motivation and all this excitement it seems like it goes by very very fast and yet when you think back to that it seems like a lot happened this happened then that happened now think about waiting in the doctor's office in a blank waiting room with no interesting art on the walls it feels like it goes by very very slow dopamine and norup andrine are at all-time low and yet when you think back on that experience it's as if nothing happened because you were you were parsing time differently so those are the roughly the tools and the and the neurochemicals around time perception in the time domain uh there's a wonderful book I'm forgetting the title so wonderful I forget the title by Dean um buano from UC CLA I think it's called the brain is a time machine that talks about this expansion and contraction of the time domain and what you can do to leverage it for work and creativity focus and so yeah it's fascinating that I think one way to define Focus for me is uh to the experience the feeling of focus is losing track of time is getting to a place where you're no longer op operating in time well and you mentioned being you know kind of uh cramming for for something well you'll release a lot of adrenaline and you'll it is true you can get a lot done under pressure because of the way that you're slicing time you don't actually have more time it's that you're finally in a brain state that lends itself well to parsing information really quickly now if we ramp up your level of stress enough it's definitely a you know it's a more or less normal distribution we get you stressed enough it's hard to remember anything you're not parsing time well but in that middle range almost every study shows the higher levels of autonomic arousal meaning or epinephrine adrenaline in your system the more effective you are at things and we know we always hear stress and adrenaline it's just bad bad bad but my colleague Ali Chrome at Stanford has done these beautiful studies where if you just educate people on how adrenaline makes them sharper thinkers they become sharper thinkers if you educate them on the fact that stress makes your cognition worse their cognition gets worse this is why I don't wear a sleep tracker if you tell people they slept poorly you're recovering score sucks they naturally perform less well the next day than if you tell them your recovery score is high and so I don't have anything against those companies but I in fact I we use some of their technology can be very useful in certain contexts but you want to determine your your mindset around these things and if you tell yourself hey deadlines make me sharp pressure makes me sharp you will perform better so Stress and Anxiety what what is that and can it be leveraged for good absolutely stressing look whether or not you get into a cold ice bath or a or a hot sauna so hot you want to get out or you get hit Square in the face with something over text that you really didn't want to hear or see it's adrenaline it's just adrenaline and so your subjective readout of that and what it means is really important and you can just channel that well you can if you if you agree with the following statement which I do and many people do because the data support it which is Ali Chum statement not mine which is she directs the mindbody lab at Stanford she's brilliant by the way um brilliant Harvard trained Yale trained trained licensed clinical psychologist also tenear professor she's a uh a Olympian uh no excuse me a division one athlete in gymnastics and uh martial arts and her dad um is a longtime martial arts trainer he's done work with special forces he's amazing human being and very humble very kind lovely woman and Professor scientist she says anything that you do and experience but especially stress is the consequence of that thing and what you believe about that thing and so if you consume a lot of information about the powers of stressful states to bring out your best you will perform better if you consume a lot of information about the power of stress to Cripple you you will perform worse there's absolutely no question the data are striking and this is not growth mindset this is just simply what sorts of what do you believe about stress based on the dominant knowledge that you're consuming about it so that's why it's fun to watch David goggin Here We Go Again David or Joo or or Joe or someone put or Cam Haynes you know put out this information about or Ryan Hall who ran for Stamford and then now is like into the powerlifting thing and running you know and there are others too of course when you start to consume a lot of that information it's not just inspiring it actually changes your perception of what your own stressful States mean they you can actually get better from stress if you're in the ocean of knowledge that stress grows you if you're in the ocean of living in the ocean of knowledge I was thinking like a pool in the summer you got the kitty pool the kids all peeing in it presumably you got the diving thing you got the high dive and all that if you believe that the experience of belly flopping off the high dive is going to make you a better diver in some sense it at least in this analogy it will whereas if you feel that it's just the most embarrassing thing ever and it's going to Cripple your ability to get out in the dive in front of anybody ever again well you're you're right about that too yeah we uh actually talk with Carl about depression all those kinds of things that there there could be these what are commonly seen as negative Journeys they could be when reframed can be used you know one of the reasons I enjoy our friendship so much is that you bring this Russian thing you know which I don't really understand it at a deep level how could I I'm not Russian but um but this mindset like that there's pain in life when I watched that Hedgehog in the fog cartoon I thought no wonder Russians go the way they do this is the most it's so sad it's beautiful in Sab it's so sad whereas out here it's like Sesame Street and you know my mother would not let me watch Sesame Street when I was a kid yes she thought it was too chaotic too chaotic too chaotic she was like it's too chaotic going on Captain Kangaroo we were allowed and then uh Mr Rogers we were allowed I never really liked shows I like doing things in outside in the in the yard um I was trying to trap all the animals I didn't want to watch stuff on TV but you know Hedgehog in the fog is enough to turn any kid into a a thinker and a philosopher and a poet here we go I fell in love with this when when you showed look it even walks with its arms behind its back so for people don't know and we're watching little Clips here to get into and it's it's a Hedgehog that is wandering about in this fog at night and can't even see a lamp the fog is so dense and there's a there's a feeling of searching and then there's a there's a horse that speaks from from a distance words of wisdom some people actually told me that they believe that's God that's supposed to represent God I always thought it was a motherly Voice or a voice a a voice of Conformity that wants you to return to safety and here's a the Hedgehog is searching for something that's in him for the unknown to explore the unknown and ultimately as it um as the cartoon unrolls it's he discovers a friend in a bear and he also discovers a lifetime passion for looking up at the stars and the Curiosity of exploring what is the there and I see that as science as exploring the mystery and also I see that as Brave to explore the mystery given all the uh uncertainty all around you but there is a Melancholy the whole sound of it the feel of it the look of it it was um it just captures both The Melancholy and the Wander of childhood which is like there's a loneliness to it like nobody understands me uh that's there that that children can can can feel cuz you're you're trying to figure out my favorite character right there I love the owl I love the owl the owl shows up every once in a while I love the owl sorry I I interrupted you again there's non secter it means you're interested 70% of the time the other 30% you're just an asshole so you have to figure out which so I'm told the uh there's nonsecular Parts in this cartoon it's it's voted is one of the greatest cartoons of all time short short little films documentary filmmakers it's a it is um you know in the Soviet Union in in a lot of sort of authoritarian regimes there's channels to communicate difficult ideas to people and you figure out those channels and in the Soviet Union one of those channels was uh children's cartoons so actually they're very much for adults yeah I I like that um in some countries not so much in the US uh children are treated with more respect for their intelligence you know that and not constantly getting this driil of of just kind of moronic explosions and whistles and bells and the the voices that um just kind of you know children obviously are children and need to be their brains are young and plastic and need to be um treated and nurtured uh as such but they but they have an intelligence and I think that um um you treat them like morons and and they're going to behave like morons you treat them as you know people who can uh consume information and make sense of it in their own way and that's what they're going to do they have a seriousness of looking at the world I love people like uh uh that talk with children like they're adults with this like you're as if you're talking to Minnie Einstein because you're like really uh they're asking some big questions and I think uh I mean people sometimes uh speak of me in this way like how dumb is this childlike person but like no no there's intelligence in these dumb simple questions in like a that a child asks and I always love those questions the Simplicity but also the depth of the those those questions the the reason I started watching your podcast was you did an episode early on with Ray Doo yeah and the first maybe the first but a question that you definitely asked him was you just said what is money and his answer was fantastic it's a it's a superb question and he gave a superb answer and I never would have thought to ask that question and it's it's the question and it was the question to tee things off with um so simple questions that get right to the heart of the matter you know and kids aren't often putting the same uh cultural filters and um you know they're not kids kids gen generally aren't concerned about getting cancelled either right um so they'll ask the question that no one else is willing to ask and they're not concerned about the how uh dumb the question sounds I find the most fascinating question is just really really simple and it is a bit embarrassing to ask those simple questions of what like what is well you're asking them for all of us so please ask them um I think that question what is money is crucial and I think the simple questions are the most obviously the most interesting one I got ask you about you had awesome podcast I mean I can ask you questions about basically all your podcast people should definitely listen to huberman lab but uh with with Andy Gap in the conversation uh he talked about strength and muscle building all that kind of stuff he's an encyclopedia yeah and he also works with a lot of UFC fighters and he works with he has a lab that includes a gym and so he works on endurance and powerlifting and also hypertrophy training Etc but he also does muscle biopsy so he runs the full spectrum and he's a full tenure professor and he does all the stuff so he's he's a really unique um person in this whole Fitness landscape because there are a lot of pts out there there are a lot of kinesiologists there are a lot of people studying nutrition and sports training but he I think he has the among the people out there he's at least in the top five probably within the top three of people that really have their arms around the full extent of what's possible with with training and um and he works with the UFC performance center well I mean he just had a very systematic way of describing things that was really nice you know um skill speed power strength uh hypotrophy so muscle mass right endurance all kinds of and then the philosophical of like adaptation how to overload stuff all that very is there stuff I I'll ask you about ice bath and sauna which was surprising to me there is there stuff you took away from that convers ation like principles uh about how to get strong how to build muscle mass that like broaden and and deepen your understanding of that task definitely and I'll do these in bullet points because if people want the logic behind them and the mechanism they can listen to that episode it's a really good episode I'll start with heat and cold really quickly and just say that avoid cold immersion so ice baths and being in cold water up to the neck uncomfortably cold Within the four hours after a a training session that's designed to evoke an adaptation either endurance hypertrophy or strength because the inflammation that you experience from a hard endurance workout or from a hard strength or a hard hypertrophy workout is the stimulus by that you're going to adapt to the cold water immersion reduces inflammation and can short circuit some of that after four hours you're probably okay but if you can do it a different day or you can do it before those sessions that's better Heat however can be done immediately after training and it's probably beneficial because of the way that it dilates the vascular system and deliver peruses the muscles and ligaments Etc with more nutrients and I should just mentioned that was a crucial piece of information it's a little bit surprising was it surprising to you absolutely because I actually the way I posed the question to him about cold was I hear that getting into an ice bath or a cold water immersion after training can reduce hypertrophy but I'm guessing it's not that big of a deal and he said no it is a big deal it will short circuit your progress now for that are only interested in performance who are doing a lot of workouts and trying to recover but not trying to grow muscle get stronger or build endurance then it makes sense to do cold because like skill development or something skill development or you're an athlete in season you know so you have to what's so great about Andy is he really points out the specific ways to train given your specific goals so for getting swole stay out of the ice bath after a workout there you go Le is always making fun of the Meatheads I love it um I put myself in the Meathead category only because I don't do a real sport now I work out and I run um which is I'm an aspiring meat head okay so one of these days I'm going to get back to jiujitsu or I'm going to get to Jiu-Jitsu now in terms of training he has this beautiful 3x5 concept for strength pick three exercises compound exercises multi-joint movements do them for do three to five exercises for three to five repetitions per set rest 3 to 5 minutes and do that three to five times per week and for details you can again look to the episode It's Time stamped but what's interesting about this is three to five times a week is a lot for a muscle group squatting five times a week for five reps meaning you're working pretty heavy meaning you're close to failure but not failure on for strength generally what Andy taught me is that people who are training mostly for strength can do these low rep type regimens frequently because most of the adaptation is neural and because you're not pushing to failure in most cas you don't get that sore and so it's the motor neurons getting the muscle fibers to contract more intensely or with more efficiency in other ways that's leading to these strength gains and this is why powerlifters can train every day or five days a week or four days a week for hypertrophy I learned from Andy that the repetition range can be pretty broad you're think anywhere from six to 30 repetitions you should do 10 sets per muscle group per week maybe even a bit more so high volume high volume but you have to go to failure or beyond in order to stimulate growth why does it work at such a great range of repetitions well there apparently are three ways that you stimulate hypertrophy and maybe more one is tissue micro damage to the tissue the other is through some sort of tension based changes in the molecular Gene programs of cells that lead to protein synthesis that don't that are distinct from damage and the other are metabolic effects of like high repetition work of superfusion of the muscle with blood we know that third category exists because people are now doing this Blood Restriction Training where they cuff off a muscle and they'll use a really light weight I've done these before you can use a 5 pound weight and do curls with this and you're you are in pain and the muscles are swelling out with blood it does lead to hypertrophy but in general you're not sore you're not doing tissue damage and by the way don't just turn to get it off a muscle because you have to use the proper cuffs um because you need the blood still to flow in One Direction you can't just cinch it off or you you'll potentially kill yourself if you um get a clot or you do it wrong so get the appropriate cuffs they're out there and then for endurance I learned something really cool so I I work out basically I go to the gym every other day on average three or four days a week I do that but generally not two days in a row it's workout next day I'll do cardio next day and the cardio for me is always a 30 to 45 minute jog kind of zone two cardio Andy informed me that to build endurance while building strength and maintaining some muscle size or even building muscle size I would be wise to take one day a week and add to that all out max heart rate work for 90 seconds at least so do 90 seconds then rest and then maybe do another 90 second allout Sprint I almost missed my flight going from Los Angeles to Austin I did that allout Sprint in the airport yesterday so I actually cons think it's done for me so there was a sprinting Dr huberman thr with three Bs that's awesome cuz I travel generally I I'll travel with a um too much stuff um I love how you were probably running late for a flight and used that as an opportunity to exp well as I was doing it I was thinking to myself okay Andy that's a 90 second Sprint because I got to the the security line I finally got TSC but that's for better that's for extending endurance that's for yeah it it actually has some carryover effects on on endurance if you're doing the other stuff and then he also said one day a week to do this workout and I haven't done it yet maybe we do it tomorrow it' be fun which is you run a mile you ask yourself how long did that take let's say it took eight minutes then you walk or rest for eight minutes then you run another mile as fast as you can and then you rest for the equivalent period and you do that one to three times once per week so and so as an all-around fitness program it make you could collapse this into something where you say okay you're going to work out with the weights for about an hour every other day maybe take two days off every once in a while maybe not you're going to do six to 15 repetitions you're going to push to failure on some of those not all because some of those are designed to build more strength you're not going to failure and heavier some are designed for hypertrophy higher rep and going to failure and then on off days you're going to jog for 30 to 45 minutes but for two days a week you're either at the end of your jog or whatever you're going to do some allout Sprints for 90 seconds and then rest and repeat and for another day you're going to do these mile repeats that's a pretty that's a pretty large chunk of exercise movement but if you kind of thread through the middle of all that what you end up with is some decent strength building protocols some decent hypertrophy some cardiovascular training that establishes the so-called a base or a so-called base so you're not going to get really good at anything you're not going to become a marathoner this way an optimizing Marathon you're not going to optimize powerlifting you're not going to optimize hypertrophy but for the typical person 75% of people 75% of the time they want some muscle they want some strength they want some endurance and they want the capacity to Sprint to the to the security gate without um you know leaving a lung in the terminal so it's like functional stuff like your life going up the stairs is easier moving about all the kind just regular life yeah and I should mention that cold showers after training don't seem to Short Circuit the um the training effect to the same extent that immersion in cold water does and that really speaks to the fact that cold showers even though they can provide some of the adrenaline for the Mental effects of like oh I have a lot of adrenaline in my system from a cold shower and I can remain calm there's there's utility to that it's not going to have the same metabolic effects or other positive effects that cold water exposure has been shown to have and that's unfortunate because most people have access to cold showers not everyone has access to a cold dunk or an ice dunk but um here in um Austin you have this place and know they don't pay me to say this but I always like going to this place whenever I'm town this place Kua and they've got a sauna and a couple ice baths and they even have those salt tanks that you can float on the surface have ice baths there they have cold water immersion it's pretty cold still haven't done an ice bath really I need to yeah I need to you're rushing you probably get in and and you won't even what is this what's the big deal here exactly or people pay for this I did a post right of you as a baby yeah it's an you know I had to go deep to get that photo of Lex um in a bassinet in the snow yeah because in Russia they actually did this for a long time they thought that it and indeed it does build the immune system to expose babies to the cold I don't I still don't know where you got that photo and then you were able to find exactly the right it was it was great it's great resech you didn't have a tie on but you had all the look and seriousness that you do now so it's clearly nature nurture clearly you were born with that what about sauna he does say that it's good to do heat so there's three ways you can do sauna that I can just toss out as like brief things if you want to get a really big growth hormone release for sake of metabolism fat loss you're training really really hard in Jiu-Jitsu and you want to recover you don't want to sauna too often because the study that um identified this massive 16-fold increase in growth hormone they had people do this it's crazy they got into okay temperatures are 80 to 100° Centigrade so that's 176 degrees Fahrenheit to 212 degrees Fahrenheit for 5 to 30 minutes is the typical ranges that people work in in these research studies for maximum growth hor hormone release don't do sauna more than once a week but get into the sauna for 30 minutes as hot as you can safely tolerate so probably for you that'll be 210 because you're I suspect you'll be on the high end of things then get out for 5 to 10 minutes no cold exposure get back in the sauna for 30 minutes then they had them do it again out for five minutes back for 30 minutes out for 5 minutes back for 30 minutes they had them do two hours of sauna exposure to get that growth hormone release now for the reduction in likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event stroke or otherwise the more often you do sauna the better so if you look at all cause all cause mortality or death due to cardiovascular events and you look at sauna use frequency using the same parameters 80 to 100 degrees Centigrade one to seven times per week basically the more often you get into the sauna for 30 minutes across the week so 30 minutes a day is better than four times a week four times a week is better than two times a week and two times a week is better than one and the reductions in mortality are really impressive 27 if you get into a sauna the way I just described not the two hours a day but 30 minutes twice a week or three times per week you reduce the likelihood of dying of a cardiovascular event by 27% if you do it four or more times per week you reduce the probability of Dying by 50% of a cardiovascular event and in these studies they rule out other things that people are doing smoking they even ask them do you live in an apartment are you in a happy relationship like they evaluate other potentially confounding variables now for people that don't have access to a sauna a hot water bath or hot tub is going to be your next best bet and if you don't have access to that do like the wrestlers do which is you know put on two sets of uh sweats and a hoodie and a and a stocking cap and wrap yourself in Plastics underneath all that and go for a run but don't please nobody die of hypothermia I mean you can die of warming up too much is this experience um Pleasant or stressful in the way so is it as stressful as an ice bath for example okay great question people always ask how cold to make the ice bath or the cold water or the shower you want it to be uncomfortably cold meaning you want to feel like I really want to get out but you can safely stay in and that's going to vary by person and experience with it experience yeah with the sauna it's the same thing how hot to make it well don't kill yourself obviously um be smart if you're pregnant you shouldn't be doing this anyway um but it's very clear that what you need is the release of something called dorphin we have endorphin which makes us feel good it binds to these mu opioid receptors in the body you have dorphin which is the terrible feeling that you get when you're in really hot temperatures it's also the terrible effect that alcoholics feel when they are in withdrawal you feel agitated you want to get out it's really unpleasant it's dorphin binding to the So-Cal Kappa opioid receptor is that's what you're trying to trigger when you do that a number of things happen you set off heat shock proteins that go repair broken proteins and misfolded proteins it also makes it so that later endorphin binds its receptor more strongly so when you have this uncomfortable experience in the heat you literally feel better in real life when pleasurable events come on when you experience them in the same way I like to say this that when you get into a cold ice bath or cold shower the increase in epinephrine and dopamine is two to 300% these are huge increases and they last many hours this is shown because lately I've get a little bit of push back on Twitter that which is you know um interesting place um people say well that's just in mice no all the studies I just referred to are all done in humans men and women fairly broad age ranges so you want to be uncomfortable in the cold you want to be uncomfortable in the Heat this is why I'm not a big fan of infrared saunas cuz they only go up to about 160 170° infrared light and far red light of all kinds has been shown to be beneficial for wound healing acne skin eyes they're even guys now putting on their testicles because it can increase testosterone and sperm production yeah hormone release hormone release but in terms of the sauna you want that strong heat stimulus yeah and then that's when you get crawl up to the 200 Mark and so on whenever I'm in New York and there's also one in San Francisco although the one in San Francisco is is clothing optional just to warn people there's an a place called Archimedes B is there any scientific evidence that being naked is beneficial in the sauna well in certain context it leads to um child birth okay well I'll have to read up on that I read that some but um I I suppose it's not required right uh for child birth but um but in all seriousness you know in New York I'll go to a place called Spa 88 and actually uh khabib's picture is on the wall he goes there oh and it's a there that one it's clothing it they require clothing I only just say that cuz it can be a little bit of a shock to people sometimes if they kind of walk in there a bunch of naked people the one in San Francisco I if I go I'm clothed mostly because you I run into co-workers or things like that you know I I sort of more uh oldfashioned in that way I suppose but um that you like to wear clothes or on quot work because yes yeah yeah I mean it just to me it just seems like you know that just be aware but but nonetheless the Bas have very hot saunas because they're russian-owned and in New York there's one on the Lower East Side but the Spy 88 place they have some saunas that the moment I get into those I have a hard time catching a full breath it burns they've got a cold dunk that's like a shock and then they've got a sauna wet sauna steam room that's a little mellower so the nice thing about a b is you can kind of find your place and then they do the plota where they take the eucalyptus leaves and you can pay someone and you basically you cover your groin and then they beat you with the the the the leaves and it's supposed to bring the vasculature to the surface I've only done it once once and frankly I found it um to be a little bit um unnerving I didn't really like the experience but I I'll try and get into a sauna as often as I possibly can which is you know once or three times per week and I try and do the cold exposure shower or immersion but early in the day CU it really wakes you up one of my favorite things I've listened to I wish there was a video is um listening to a bunch of stuff with Rick Rubin and um he did a thing with Tim Ferris like Tim fa podcast I don't know if you've ever heard it but he he forced him to do they did the podcast in a sauna uhhuh and I don't think at the time Tim feris was adapted yeah if you're not heat adapted it can be pretty stressful and I mean obviously the whole experience is stressful as a as somebody with with microphones like what what is happening but I just love that Tim was vulnerable enough to kind of give themsel over to whatever the hell this experience is and I I'm just so happy that Rick like pushed that kind of idea and just let's let's do it let's that's a very Rick Ruben kind of thing to do and we must not we like we must do this this has to be done a podcast that was done from a sauna continuously would be really interesting like you could call it like the pressure cooker or something oh I mean like a regular podcast yeah like you have to sit with your guests in the sauna um or they have to sit in the SAA with well that was one of the interesting things is um it was a sad thing because I believe that there's no video of that podcast but you could tell there is a kind of there was suffering on especially on Tim's part it was like a degradation he he he started over time not being able to put words together correctly which he's very eloquent and so you could see there's like there's a struggle heat and cold pull you down from the inside you have to I mean there's a reason why the screening process for um make you know sealed seal they call SEAL training but it's really screening and training involves cold water is because you know if you're in the heat too long you'll die or damage tissue in cold you can do it quite extensively before you die or damage tissue but it is stressful I was going to say one thing that um I sometimes enjoy seeing these social media posts where people will get into the ice bath they'll look really stoic like they're really tough MH um but actually that's the Wimpy way to go through it when you get into cold water if you stay very still you develop a thermal sheath around you oh interesting that you're warming yourself the the really bold way is to get in and continue to sift your arms and legs and it ends up feeling miserably colder and then there's no sheath you're breaking up you're breaking up that thermal layer and then when you get out you'll notice a lot of people huddle or they'll they'll put or they'll grab the towel in general that's me I'll get back I'll get into the sauna but if you really want to stimulate the big increases in metabolism you stand out there and you dry off with with arms extended in open air and as that water evaporates off you it is really cold but your body is forced to activate a number of the warming programs related to metabolism this is the beautiful work of a woman named Susanna soberg who's um Scandinavian she published this paper last year in cell reports medicine and so I call this the soberg principle which is if you're doing ice and heat for whatever reason doesn't matter if you end on heat or cold but if you're using cold specifically to stimulate an increase in metabolism end with cold that's the sobered principle and with cold if you're alternating and then uh if you want to do it the tough way you let the Shivering so you just stand out and let the water evaporate yeah I mean if you ever weighted into a cold ocean you know everybody's kind of like holding themselves you know if you really just if you let yourself extend your limbs and move them around a bit so you break up that thermal layer uh that's that's the tough way to do it so when I see people on social media getting in and they're like really tough and trying to look hard yeah you want to be moving around smiling talking moving around is way way colder yeah are you able to talk can you do can so you suggest the podcast in the in the sauna how about this I propos this since I got you do the next podcast I'll get two so the folks from the plunge uh maybe we could bring Lexa a plunge he certainly uh deserves one and uh we can go side by side coffin style or we can face one another and we can do well we said we should do each other's podcast I maybe next you I can't wait to have you back on I mean we only scratched the surface well let's do at least part of the next hman Lab podcast either in I have a sauna and a cold plunge so we could do yeah we could do in we do a sauna and a cold plunge version I wonder the recording how the recording works if they recording a bit of an echo in the son I'm sure we can take out the Reverb uh so Sergey wants to ask you about sex performance uh very journalistic very hardcore hitting questions that we have here in the book generally or a specific uh no he has a certain problem he needs help with no uh generally you haven't done an episode on sex well we did an episode early on on sexual development yes we've done them on optimizing testosterone and estrogen and we touched a little bit on the uh on libido and somewhat on sex performance but not much we did an episode on relationships Love and Desire where we touched on libido specifically so just as a quick mention of something uh a lot of people take ssris or anti-depressants that can disrupt sexual function are a few compounds like Macar root and Tonga Ali and things like that that at least in a few studies in humans have been shown to offset some of the the sexual side effects um now in terms of sexual and then this sorry the episode on sexual development was about how the brain and body become organized in certain ways how the brain becomes organized if you have X chromosomes or Y chromosomes or Etc so early early develop early development mainly and the effects of hormones later on that template we will be doing a I'm actually putting together a series on Sexual Health everything from the menstrual cycle which both men and women should understand of course um understanding arousal understanding for instance a lot of people don't realize this but that um orgasm is actually the consequence of activity in the sympathetic meaning the stress arm of the autonomic nervous system whereas arousal is the consequence of the activity of the parasympathetic the calming aspect of the of of the aut it's counterintuitive right it's counterintuitive and it kind of works like a seesaw I mean there's arousal then there's relaxation then there's arousal but the the um and then immediately after orgasm and in males ejaculation what ends up happening is there's a rebounding of the parasympathetic nervous system which it leads to oftentimes people feeling very relaxed or or falling asleep so I'm going to do a Ser a short series on Sexual Health that will be that will include stuff about sexual performance but also um some I I'm working on getting a an expert guest who can talk about some of the neurologic changes that happen um as a consequence of sexual activity and we did an episode with uh a guy from UT Austin here David bus who's evolutionary psychologist talking about um we went pretty deep into some of the uh typical and unusual dynamics of of mating relation um whether or not people have kids or not and what impacts it but we're going to do an episode episod on menopause andropause what's very surprising is I get a lot of questions about sexual health from the young male audience um which tells me that well here's what I think it reflects I think that women because of their menstrual cycles early on start to talk to one another about changes in physiology and psychology as a function of this 28 day cycle that they all experience sooner or later males there's less of a conversation and it usually arrives in code people will say hey what should I take to increase my testost and I'll say well maybe nothing you know uh what are you specifically concerned about and then over time if you pull on those threads a little bit you you know you get your answer sometimes I'll just get a direct question um but I think that uh the psychology of all this and in terms of jealousy and the terms of um Notions of of uh roles in relationships is very Dynamic right now and I'm fascinated by this so we're going to do a four episode series what about sexual fantasy what uh Freudian for a second what role does sexual fantasy have in the human condition there's a book called The Erotic imagination it's a very psychoanalytic book written by a psychoanalyst that talks about um how well here's the uncomfortable reality Freud was at least right about one thing which is that the brain circuitry that you used to develop attachments to your caregivers mother and father or other caregivers do not disappear when you hit puberty they are repurposed for romantic and sexual relations and so this is why the whole notion of anxious attached and secure attached you know stems from childhood attachment patterns but it carries over to romantic relationships so that the relationship with your mother has and father and father has a or and and probably other close people to you in your young age has a secondary tertiary some kind of ripple effect on how your sexuality developed like what fantasies you might have all that oh without question and of course early experiences too and traumatic or positive or or neutral the thing that's really important to remember though in this transfer of circuitry from one role to another is that and it's certainly consistent with psychoanalysis that gender is interchangeable sex is interchangeable so for instance let's say you had a wonderful relation let's say this H let's take a hypothetical person okay I'm truly not referring to myself let's take a a a young woman who has a wonderful relationship to her father and a just absolutely terrible abusive relationship to her mother just for sake of example she then goes into adulthood and she is drawn to very abusive men not always but let's just use in this example and the dynamic is exactly the same as the dynamic she had with her mother that's actually a common occurrence even though in this context she's heterosexual she's romantically attracted to men what is seen over and over again is that the dynamic with one parent can be transferred onto a romantic dynamic but it doesn't have to be you know that if it was with the mother then it only has to do with relationships to women so gender is interchangeable because these circuitries are pre-sexual they're laid down in our brain before the brain has any concept of sexual interactions it's prepubertal excuse me and so um there are a lot of interesting examples and data to support this um the book attached is a pretty interesting book by uh two psychologists one I think is at Columbia University um that talks about how childhood Dynamics uh carry over to adult uh romantic attachment so as you can tell I get pretty alert in response to these questions I get a lot of them relate in this domain and they they have a lot of impact on people and they're wondering about they want to learn and no one knows what other people are doing or what's normal we kind of know deviancy we know perversion we know the extremes yeah we know the rules hopefully people know the rules but you know let's just be there are a lot of people in in the academic community in particular at certain East Coast Schools not to be named that are in open relationships this is more common now um it's not very common but it's more common yeah and you know obviously that's a way of bypassing some of these more primitive emotions about jealousy Etc and leveraging them towards maybe even ongoing relationships I'm not passing judgment one way or the other I always say for condition condition have to be met for any discussion about about sex and sexuality or sexual health age appropriate context appropriate consensual and species appropriate well that that's weird because the the thing I'm trying to figure out is why my sexual fantasy is to go to uh furry orgies and have sex with others dressed as as squirrels and me uh the other animals so that could be that I have to I'll see a therapist uh about that one I'm not going to respond to that except to say that um as long as those four conditions are met yeah consensual species appropriate so there's a bunch of questions on I uh on Instagram one of them on this topic on relationships uh somebody suggested to do a part three of why Lex is single there's a running joke about this uh so yeah why but I can answer it in part right yeah because well partially because you're very busy partially because um you've decided that until it's time you're going to wait until it's time it's time right I mean until it's time you're waiting and then um you're not saving yourself from Marriage uh I don't think but but in some sense um yeah your your wife your future wife is out there oh yeah yeah she's being programmed no I uh I mean I definitely I definitely believe that I mean first of all I just love people and I fall in love very easily with people with object objects with things with with with life with every moment and that way you're like Oliver Sach he fell he would fall in love with minerals and Concepts and things like that and so like to me this kind of uh so relationship is more like a commitment to one particular kind of um object of your love like uh it's almost like a it's like a journey that you take on together because also the interesting thing about humans is there Moment by moment a different person day by day week by week month by month they change they evolve there's an ups and downs and stuff like that so you're what you're doing is you're saying well I'm going to explore all the way that this human gets morphed and changed and the what makes them cry what makes them excited what makes them uh lonely uh like the the the habits how like when they form certain habits what how they feel when those habits are broken like the the stupid minute things that make everyday life you're going to be on that journey together figuring that out just the way we're trying to figure ourselves out when we're like optimizing these things about diet and health so on you're kind of doing this uh computation together because neither person really understands themselves um at all and you're together both confused about each other and you get to almost like um a relationship is a chance to understand yourself and to understand another person like together that process is some iterative you know the Dynamics right I mean you're merging two nervous systems one this was once described to me very well by an ex-girlfriend um who's truly brilliant she's really brilliant um she said you know there's four arrows this is maybe to an engineer or like a this will makees sense there's how you feel towards the other person yes there's how they feel towards you but then there's an there's an arrow that comes back to you which is how you feel about how they feel and then they have an arrow of how they feel about how you feel right this is why if someone else is Moody or somebody else is upset it there's one version of ourselves where we respond to that or they respond to us but there's another version where we respond to that but it's also there's a processing of what it means for us that they're behaving that way or feeling that way and this again leads us back to that early attachment circuitry because if a parent was stressed the child's role is not to soothe the parent in fact healthy models of parenting say that children shouldn't actually know how their parents feel for like the first eight years of their life they're not supposed to be in that mindset of empathizing for the parent this is often not the case but and maybe the cut off isn't exactly eight but you get the idea so the Dynamics of a relationship are where the learning is because we learn how we react to other people reacting it's it's not not a just a two Arrow system it's at least this four arrow thing um but there's also the the element of nurturing right I mean I think that um going through life with somebody is so much better than going through it alone and I I never thought I'd make that statement um so it wasn't always obvious to you no it wasn't always obvious to me I I've I've I've really enjoyed wonderful relationships um and some have been hard and and there's been a certainly been a lot of growth I'm on good terms with almost all my former girlfriends um and close with some enough that I'm I know their spouses and I'm close with their families and um but no it wasn't and I think that uh when people say relationship is hard the only really hard part about of a good relationship is just dealing with oneself and making sure that you're staying in that mode of caretaking because I do believe that if one is mainly focused on taking good care of the other person provided they're also focused on taking good care of you to some extent and we're good at taking care of ourselves everybody flourishes everything gets better but no I I don't think I experienced that until fairly recently um what do you think is the uh secret to a successful relationship there isn't just one but at the at least at in the top five is master or at least be good at autonomic self-regulation know how to calm yourself down don't expect the like looking to anything external to soothe yourself is it puts you in a terrible position to to be a caretaker of yourself and other people right so learn how to self soothe right learn how to calm your mind steady your actions steady your voice there are tools to do that we talk about on the podcast but elsewhere have that in place I also think that if if your main focus is on you want to have good boundaries Etc but on tending to the relationship doing a little bit more than you think you ought to do if everyone does that it it goes great I mean I'm sometimes so positively struck by how supported I feel um because for many years I was just kind of doing everything on my own so any little thing I'm like oh my goodness this feels huge um and also I think the Dynamics have to be right let's let's be really honest this is a little bit of a tricky topic but um there is a power dynamic in relationships sometimes not all but in some relationships it works much better if one person leads and the other person follows in other relationships it's more mutuality works best people need to know what they need and so knowing what you need and what you crave is really important and then once you do that you can create the relationship you want I've seen that over and over again and people are different um but I think that um ultimately I mean right it's it's there's the dopamine phase of a relationship and then there's the serotonin phase the kind of more mutuality coziness and sweetness there's a great book about how to make sure that the dopamine component and the serotonin component so to speak go on forever and it has to do with you know when you first meet someone you're attracted to them you're essentially objectifying them you meaning not in the way people might think you are not dependent on them for emotional stability or survival as you get close with somebody you really come to depend on them and then you tend to objectify them less and so this the book is the name is kind of corny but the it's written by an analyst again it's called can love last and it's a book about how really good strong relationships are the consequence of people constantly moving through this um dependency objectification Dynamic and I use those words in the true in the psychological sense not in the way they're typically thrown around nowadays so the idea you know In some cultures men and women will only touch for two weeks out of the month and then for the other two weeks the excitement and the sensuality and all and the sexuality is very heightened and then they go back to this kind of distancing now I don't think that's feasible for most people but if you look statistically those relationships tend to last a very long time with at least reported mutual feelings of intense attraction for many many many decades so human beings need to learn how to at least understand and control these Dynamics there's a lot of divorce there's a lot of cheating there's a lot of stuff out there it'd be great if people could resolve some of this stuff inside of the relationship in my opinion yeah and this kind of intense attraction I there's uh actually one of the poems that Carl uh dth introduced me to I think it's two English poems is the name but the uh one of the things I find myself for prolonged periods being attracted to is like you notice some kind of magic and you keep wanting to dig to the depth like of that magic trying know that person to really know a person deeply yeah you notice something yeah early on sure I don't know what that is but you just notice something special and you want to keep pulling at that thread and you never really do well you also have to be careful you know I get a lot of questions from God you have to be careful the questions you ask in a relationship too you have to make sure you really want that information and it's not just about people's past right if you ask somebody how they really feel about something about you and they tell you that may be soothing it may be intensely stressful you have to be here's one thing I know for sure for a relationship to work you have to be brave you can't go in there fully protected and yet you also can't go in there with no boundaries because you'll end up beat up what's that quote if you want to be a warrior prepare to get hurt if you want to be an Explorer prepared to get lost and if you want to be both you know and if you become a lover prepare to be both or something something like that I forget this is one of these Instagram type things that you see passing by and you go oh that's pretty true love Love's scary because it takes us back to that primitive circuitry that is as primitive and basic as hunger thirst the desire for heat when we're cold the desire for cold when we're overly warm it's a it's dorphin I mean when somebody leaves like the you know when somebody you were attached to leaves by death or by decision or you're forced apart the dorphin release is massive it is true discomfort people feel anxiety and discomfort and moving through that is a the hell of a process I mean if I knew how to best break up at a neurological level or if you just plug yourself into a wall and reset I mean I I'd do that episode tomorrow but we don't have that knowledge now come on the uh I think we've covered this before and it's even been me memeified I think losing love is part of the magic of love it means you've felt something I agree but at some point like if you've done it enough times you know life is finite you know it is beautiful to see these couples that seem very much in love despite many years despite having been together many years yeah the way they look at each other yeah they say they still see the magic yeah and they'll say we got lucky or it was it's been hard or this and that I think external conditions being a little tougher is helpful for a couple hardship I do I do because I think that you rally you know you you and you bond with people you know being obviously you want to survive those conditions but um yeah I do I think that is Bonnie and Clyde so and they were a little a little too much well a little too much they were sociopaths but the uh well when two sociopaths find fucking make you do crazy things well normally it's interesting normally sociopaths don't team up because they because they manipulate each other sociopaths sadly are um are usually only interested in manipulating the highly pliable or unsuspecting um but when romantic attraction is woven in then it gets um really diabolical any advice on finding the love of your life of my life this is this is uh why alxa single response why any advice yeah actually this comes from a friend of mine who is in a really excellent marriage um with great kids and family and high demand life it it's a decision like at some point you just priori you just prioritize it as okay I'm going to make this happen one way or another and um you don't force the discovery of that person but I mean I've occasionally said hey I think you should meet this person or that person and um well it wasn't maybe my judgment was might have been off but it the timing wasn't right or something something but I think that yeah you it's a decision and it also has to do with life structure I mean there were years so I when I was in graduate school I I didn't want a girlfriend I just wanted to be in lab and I sure I had romantic dating interests but I wasn't going to meet them through a committed you know live together situation wasn't where I was at and as a postto things were a little different etc etc so but at some point it's sort of like what do I want my daily routine to look like because ultimately a relationship however one structures is going to be part of your daily routine so at the point where you're like you know I'd really love to wake up next to somebody and do blank and blank together and then I'd love to work and then we meet for dinner and then we you know take the dog for a walk or take kids out or whatever it happens to be take a trip and do you have to be one has to be in the mindset of wanting to do couple like things people and a lot of people don't think about it that way they they either fall into something or they they don't see the benefit of coupling up I think that the pandemic um tuned people's awareness to the fact that some things are indeed easier on your own depends on finances etc etc but a lot of things are made better done with other people 100% but I ALS so I was very deliberately it's an interesting way to put it what do you want your day to look like I think what what do you want your day look like what you want your life to be I was very deliberately always uh first of all happy to be alone like conscious thinking uh I know a lot of friends were just unable to be alone I'm able to be alone but I'm much happier with another person like I'm able to share Joy with other humans I look forward to the day that our kids are rolling jiujitsu and my kids are you know hanging out with your kids and um if that notion sounds even remotely interesting then and fun then then it's sort of like you kind of backpedal from that and you go what has to happen how you get first engineer and think from first principles about love Andrew you're uh thank you for being my friend thank you for being an amazing human being who's so inspiring to so many people for constantly I I told this to Carl like one of the things that was really refreshing um about you is that you uh when I tell you an idea when I tell you a thought when I tell you something you didn't you you don't shut it down as a first step I saying that that's common in a scientific Community that's common in people around you you're you're seeing what's the goal there you get excited you get excited together and that's how you can really uh have a great friendship and a great great great stuff together so I I'm deeply grateful for that and just uh for connecting so many interesting people together you're doing an amazing job man and uh thank you for existing thank thank you for being you thank you for talking today and uh next time I'll see you in the sauna and yeah Beth well I want to say several things first of all thank you for having me on again it's an honor and a pleasure I don't say that formally i' really truly mean it I only the H Lab podcast as I always say only exists because you gave me the suggestion and I'm so grateful that you did so thank you and for doing what you do like you you are brave and you're first man in and you're just continue to do it just what as my postto advisor used to say whatever you're doing just keep going and then in terms of our friendship I mean I think uh you know and if you uh if you don't I'm going to just keep telling you anyway by texting in person you're an amazing friend uh there's deep trust there's immense respect and uh I love you brother I love you too man we did it thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew huberman to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you with some words from Ralph Waldo Emerson it is one of the blessings of old friends you can afford to be stupid with them I look forward to doing just that in the many years to come of friendship and fun conversations with Andrew thank you for listening and hope to see you next time