Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships | Lex Fridman Podcast #435
- Hardship will show you
who your real friends are. That's for sure. - Can you read the quote once more? Don't eat with people
you wouldn't starve with. The following is a conversation
with Andrew Huberman, his fifth time on the podcast. He is the host of the Huberman Lab Podcast and is an amazing scientist,
teacher, human being, and someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend. Also, he has a book coming out next year that you should pre-order now called "Protocols: An Operating
Manual for the Human Body." This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Huberman. You think there's ever gonna be a day when you walk away from podcasting? - Definitely. I mean, I came up within and then on the periphery
of skateboard culture. And for the record, I was not a great skateboarder. I always have to say that 'cause skateboarders are relentless. If you call something you
didn't do or whatever, I mean, I could do a few things. And I loved the community and I still have a lot of
friends in that community. Jim Thiebaud at Deluxe, you can look them up. He's kind of the man
behind the whole scene. I know Tony, Hawk, Danny Whale, all these guys. I got to see them come up and get big and stay big. In many cases, start huge companies like
Danny and Colin McKay are DC. Some people have a long life
in something, some don't. But one thing I observed and learned a lot from skateboarding at the level of observing
the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies, and then what I also observed in science and still observe is
you do it for a while, you do it at the highest
possible level for you. And then at some point, you pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in. In fact, the greatest scientists, people like Richard Axel, Catherine Dulac, there are many other labs in neuroscience. Karl Deisseroth. They're not just known
for doing great science. They're known for mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on to start their own labs. And I think in podcasting, I am very fortunate I got
in in a fairly early wave, not the earliest wave, but thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast fairly early wave. And I'll continue to go
as long as it feels right and I feel like I'm
doing good in the world and providing good, but I'm already starting to scout talent. My company that I started with Rob Moore, Scicomm Media. There's a couple other guys in there too. Mike Blabac, our photographer, Ian Mackey. Chris Ray, Martin Fobes. We are a company that
produces podcasts right now. That's Huberman Lab Podcast. But we're launching a new podcast, Perform with Dr. Andy Galpin. - [Lex] Nice. - And we wanna do more
of that kind of thing, finding really great talent, highly qualified people,
credentialed people. And I've got a new kind of obsession with scouring the internet, looking for the young talent in science, in health and related fields. And so will there be a
final episode of the HLP? Yeah, I mean, bullet buster cancer aside, someday they'll be the very last and thank you for your
interest in science, and I'll clip out. - Yeah. I love the idea of walking away and not be dramatic about it. When it feels right, you can leave and you can come back
whenever the fuck you want. - [Andrew] Right. - Jon Stewart did this
well with "The Daily Show." I think that was during the 2016 election when everybody wanted him to stay on and he just walked away. Dave Chappelle, for different
reasons, walked away. - Disappeared, came back. - Gave away so much money. Didn't care. And then came back and was doing standup in the park in the middle of nowhere. Genius. You have Habib who, undefeated, walks away at the very top of a sport. - Is he coming back? - No, he's done. - At least we don't know. Yeah. - Right, you don't know. I don't know if he knows. - It bears everywhere our word. (both laughing) - Yeah, I think it's always a call. The last few years have
been tremendous growth. We launched in January 2021. And even this last year, 2024 has been huge growth
in all sorts of ways. It's been wild. And we have some short
form content planned, 30-minute shorter episodes that really distill down
the critical elements. We're also thinking about moving to other venues besides podcasting. So there's always the
thought and the discussion, but when it comes to when
to hang up your cleats, it's like there just comes a natural time where you can do more to mentor the next generation coming in, then focusing on self. And so there will come a time for that. And I think it's critical. I mean, again, I saw
this in skateboarding. Like Danny, and Colin, and Danny's brother Damon
started DC with Ken Block, the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago, rally car driver. And they eventually sold it, I think to Quicksilver
or something like that. But they're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas. But they brought in the
next line of amazing riders, the plan B thing, Paul Rodriguez. For skateboarders, they know who this is. Now, in science, there are scientists like
Feynman, for instance. I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor offspring. So there are scientists
who are phenomenal, like beyond world class, multi-generational world class who don't make good mentors. I'm not saying he wasn't good mentor, but that's not what he's known for. And then there are
scientists who are known for being excellent
scientists and great mentors. And I think there's no higher celebration to be had at the end of one's career. If you can look back and be like, "Hey, I put some really
important knowledge into the world. People made use of that knowledge." And guess what? You spawned all these
other scientific offspring or sport offspring or podcast offspring. I mean, in some ways, we look to Rogan and to some of the other
earlier podcasts is, like, they paved the way. Rhonda Patrick, First
Science Podcast out there. Eventually, the baton passes. Fortunately, right now, everybody's active and
it feels really good. Yeah, well, you're talking about the healthy way to do it, but there's also a different kind of way where you have somebody
like Grigori Perelman, the mathematician who refused
to accept the Fields Medal. So he's one of the greatest
living mathematicians, and he just walked away from mathematics and rejected the Fields Medal. - What did he do after
he left Mathematics? - Life, private, 100%. - I respect that. - He's become essentially
recluse is these photos of him looking very broke. He could use the money. He turned away the money. He turned away everything. You just have to listen
to the inner voice. You have to listen to yourself and make the decisions
that don't make any sense for the rest of the world
and makes sense to you. - I mean, Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. That's punk. - Yeah. - Yeah.
- Yeah. - He probably grew in notoriety for that. Maybe he just doesn't
like going in Sweden, but seemed like it would be a fun trip. I think they do it in a nice time of year, but, hey, that's his right. He earned that right. - I think the best artists
aren't doing it for the prize. They aren't doing it for
the fame or the money. They're doing it because they love the art. - Yeah, that's the Rick Rubin thing. You gotta verb it through, download your inner thing. I don't think we've talked about this, this obsession that I have
about how Rick has this way of being very, very still in his body, but keeping his mind
very active as a practice when spent some time with
him in Italy last June. And we would tread water
in his pool in the morning and listen to history of rock
and roll and a hundred songs. Amazing podcast, by the way. - It is. - Yeah. And then he would spend
a fair amount of time during the day in this
kind of meditative state where his mind is very
active body, very still. And then Karl Deisseroth, when he came on my podcast, talked about how he forces
himself to sit still and think in complete
sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep. And there's a state of mind, rapid eye movement sleep, where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active. And people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more
elaborate emotion-filled dreams and the source of many ideas. And there are other examples. Einstein, people described
him as taking walks around the Princeton campus, then pausing and would
ask him what was going on and the idea that his mind was continuing to churn forward at a higher rate. So this is far from controlled studies, but we're talking about
some incredible minds and creatives who have a practice of stilling the body while keeping the mind
deliberately very active, very similar to rapid eye movement sleep. And then there are a lot of people who also report great ideas coming to them in the shower, while running. So it can be the opposite as well, where the body is very active and the mind is perhaps more on kind of like a default mode network, not really focusing on
any one specific thing. - Interesting. There's a bunch of physicists and mathematicians I've talked to. They talk about sleep deprivation and going crazy hours through the night, obsessively pursuing a thing. And then the solution to the problem comes when they finally get rest. - We just did this
six-episode special series on sleep with Matt Walker. We know that when you
deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep, you get a rebound in
rapid eye movement sleep, you get a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep. And Matt talks about this in the podcast,. And he did an episode
on sleep and creativity, sleep and memory, and rapid eye movement sleep
comes up multiple times in that series. There's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and rapid eye movement sleep. People are coming off
cannabis often will suffer from insomnia, but when they finally do start sleeping, they dream like crazy. Cannabis is a very
controversial topic right now. - Oh yeah, I saw that. What happened? There's a bunch of drama around episode you did on cannabis. - Yeah, we did a episode about cannabis, talked about the health benefits
and the potential risks. It's neither here nor there. Depends on the person, depends on the age, depends on genetic background, a number of other things. We published that episode
well over a year ago and it had no issues online, so to speak. And then a clip of it was put to X where the real action occurs
as your favorite spot. Yeah, the four ounce gloves as opposed to the 16 ounce gloves that is X versus Instagram or YouTube. There was kind of an immediate dog pile from a few people in the
cannabis research field. - The PhDs and MDs, yeah. - There were people on our side. There were people not our side. I mean, the statement
that got things riled up the most was this notion that for certain individuals, there's a high potential
for inducing psychosis with high THC containing cannabis for certain individuals, not all. That sparked some issues. There was really a split. You see this in different fields. There was one person in particular who came out swinging with language that in my
opinion is not like of the sort that you would use at a university venue, especially among colleagues. But that's fine. We're all grownups. - Well, for me, from my perspective, it was strangely rude. And it had an era of elitism that to me, was it the source of
the problem during COVID that led to the distrust of science and the popularization
of disrespecting science because so many scientists
spoke with an arrogance and a douchebag array that I wish we would have
a little bit less of? - Yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the
university system are... They're not familiar with
the inner workings of science and the culture. And so you have to be very careful how you present when you're
a university professor. So he came out swinging at a
four-letter word type language, and he was obviously upset about. So I simply said what
I would say anywhere, which was, "Hey, look,
come on the podcast. Let's chat And why don't you tell me where I'm wrong and let's discuss." And fortunately, he agreed. And initially, he said, "Well, no, how can I be sure you're not gonna misrepresent me?" We got on a DM, then an email, then eventually phone call and just said, "Hey, listen, you're welcome to record the whole conversation. We've never done a gotcha on my podcast. Let's just get to the heart of the matter. I think this little
controversy is perfect kindling for a really great discussion." And he had some other
conditions that we worked out. And I felt like, cool. He's really interested, although you get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say he's been very collegial and that conversation is on the schedule. I said, "We'll fly you out. We'll put you up." He said, no, he wants to fly himself. He really wants to make sure that there's kind of a
space between, I think, some of the perception of
science and health podcasts in the academic community
is that it's all designed to sell something. No, we run ads, so it can be free to everyone else. Look, in the end, he agreed and I'm excited for the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of
that little exchange, there's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in many cultures within
the United States as... When I say cultures, I mean, demographics. The United States as the drug of choice. There have been people
highlighting the issues of potential psychosis
in high THC containing. And so it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of onboard certain elements
that I put forward. And I think there's some controversy as to whether or not
the different strains, the indicas and sativa are
biologically different, et cetera. So we'll get down into the weeds, pun intended, during that one. And I'm excited. It's the first time that we've responded to
a direct criticism online about scientific content in a way that really promoted like, oh, the idea of inviting
a particular guest. And so it's great. Let's get a guest who's
expert in cannabis. I believe, I could be wrong about this, but he's a behavioral neuroscientist at slightly different training. But look, he seems highly credentialed. It'd be fun. And we welcome that kind of exchange. I'm not being diplomatic. I'm just saying it's cool. He's coming on. - [Lex] No, you- - And he was friendly on the phone. He literally came out online and was basically kind of like FU, like F this and FU. But you get someone on the phone, it's like, "Hey, how's it going?" And they're like, "Oh yeah, well..." There was an immediate apology of like, "Hey, listen, I came out. Normally, I'm not like that, but online...." Yeah, you get a different. - Okay, listen. - It's a little bit like jujitsu, right? People say all sorts of things, I guess. But if you're like, "All
right, well, let's go,| then it's probably a different story. - It's not like jujitsu. 'cause in jujitsu, people don't talk shit 'cause they know what
the consequences are. Let me just say on mic and off mic, you have been very respectful
towards this person. And I look up to you and respect you and admire the fact that you have been. That said to me, that guy was being a dick. And when you graciously,
politely invited him on the podcast, he was still talking down
to you the whole time, so I really admire and look forward to
listening to you talk to him, but I hope others don't do that. You are a positive, humble voice, exploring all the interesting
aspects of science. You want to learn. If you've got anything wrong, you wanna learn about it. The way he was being a dick, I was just hurt a little bit. Not because of him, but 'cause like there's some people I really, really admire, brilliant scientists that are not their best
selves on Twitter, on X. - [Andrew] Definitely. - I don't understand what
happens to their brain. - Well, they regress. They regress. And they also are protected. I mean, no scientific
argument should ever come to physical blows. But when you remove the real world thing of being right in front of somebody, people will throw all sorts
of stones at a distance and over a wall. And they've got their
wife, or their husband, or their boyfriend, or their dog, or their cat to go cuddle
with them afterwards. But you get in a room and it's like confrontational people in real life are pretty rare. Hopefully, if they do it, they're willing to back it up
with knowledge in this case. We're not talking about
physical altercation. He kept coming, and he kept putting on conditions. How do I know you want this? And I was like, "Well, you
can record the conversation." "How do I know you want that?" "Listen, we'll pay for you to come out." How do you know..." And eventually, he just kind of relented. To his credit, he's agreed to come on. I mean, he still has to show up. But once he does, we'll treat him right, like we would any other guest. - Yeah, you treat people really well. I just hope that people
are a little bit nicer on the internet. - Yeah. Well, X is an interesting one because it thickens your skin to just to go on there. I mean, you have to be ready to deal with- - Sure. But I can still criticize
people for being douchebags 'cause that's still not
good inspiring behavior. Especially for scientists, that should be sort of symbols
of scientific thinking, which requires intellectual humility. Humility is a big part of that. And Twitter is a good
place to illustrate that. - Yeah. Years ago, I was a student in TA, then instructor, and then directed a cold
spring harbor course on visual neuroscience. These are summer courses that explore different topics. And at night, we would host what we hoped were battles in front of the students where you'd get two people on... Would it be neural prosthetics or molecular tools that
would first restore vision to the blind kind of arguments? It's kind of a silly argument 'cause it's gonna be
a combination of both. But you'd get these great arguments, but the arguments were
always couched in data. And occasionally, you'd get
somebody would go, like, "Argh!" or would curse or something, but it was the rare, very well placed insult. It wasn't coming out swinging. I think ultimately Twitter's a record of people's behavior. The internet is a record
of people's behavior. And here I'm not talking
about news reports about people's behavior. I'm talking about how
people show up online is really important. You've always carried yourself with a ton of composure and respect. You would hope that people
would grow from that example. Well, I'll tell you that the podcasters that I'm scouting, it's their energy, but it's also how they treat other people, how they respond to comments. We're blessed to have
pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast, of someone else's podcast, it goes far and wide. So like a skateboard team, like a laboratory where
you're selecting people to be in your lab, you want to pick people that you would enjoy working with and that are collegial. Etiquette is lacking nowadays, but you're in the suit and tie. You're bringing it back. - Bringing it back. - You said that your
conversation with James Hollis, a Jungian psychoanalyst
had a big impact on you. What do you mean? - James Hollis is a 84-year-old
Jungian psychoanalyst who's written 17 books, including "Under Saturn's Shadow," which is on the healing and trauma of men, the Eden Project, excuse me, which is about relationships
and creating a life. I discovered James Hollis online lecture that was recorded I think in San Diego. It's on YouTube. The audio is terrible
called "Creating a Life." And this was somewhere
in the 2011 to 2015 span. I can't remember. And I was on my way to Europe and I called my girlfriend at the time. I was like, "I just found
the most incredible lecture I've ever heard." And he talks about the shadow. He talks about your
developmental upbringing and how you either align with or go 180 degrees off
your parents' tendencies and values in certain areas. He talked about the
specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of life to live a full life. So it's always been a
dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast. And he wasn't able to travel. So our team went out to DC and sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays. People come to our studio. And he came in. He had some surgeries recently and he kind of came in
with some assistance from a a cane and then sat down and just blew my mind. From start to finish, he didn't miss a syllable. And every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence with real potency and actionable items. I think one of the things that was most striking
to me was how he said, when we take ourselves out
of stimulus and response, and we just force ourselves to spend some time in
the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while
seated or while lying down. Doesn't have to be meditation, but it could be that we
access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want. And that if we do that
practice repeatedly, 10 minutes a day here, 15 minutes a day there, that we start to really
touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the directions we need to take. But that so often we just
stay in stimulus response. We just do, do, do, do do, which is great. We have to be productive, but we miss those important messages. And interestingly, he also
put forward this idea of... What is this? It's like get up, shut up, suit up. Yeah, something like that. Get out of bed, suit up, and shut up, and get to work. He also has that in him, kind of a Goggins type mindset. - So be able to turn off
all this self-reflection and self-analysis and just get shit done. - Get shit done. But then also dedicate time and stop and just let stuff geyser to the surface from the unconscious mind. And he quotes Shakespeare, and he quotes Jungian. And he quotes everybody through history with incredible accuracy and, and exactly the way needed
to drive home a point. That conversation to me was one that I really felt like, okay, if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason, that one's in the can. And I feel really great about it. To me, it's the most
important guest recording we've ever done in particular because he has wisdom. And while I hope he lives to be 204, chances are, he's got
another 20, 30 years with us, hopefully more. But I really, really wanted
to capture that information and get it out there. So I'm very, very proud of that one. And he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him, young, old male, female, whatever. And you're gonna get something of value. What do you think about this idea of the shadow that the good and the bad that we repress, that hides from plain sight when we analyze ourselves, that's there? You think there's like a ocean that we we don't have direct access to? - Yes. Yeah, Jungian said it. We have all things inside of us and we do. And some people are more in touch with those than others. And some people, it's repressed. I mean, does that mean that we could all be horrible people or marvelous people, benevolent people? Perhaps. Thankfully, more often than not, people lean away from the violent and harmful parts of their shadow. But I think spending time thinking about one's shadows is super important. How else are we going to grow? Otherwise, we have these
unconscious blind spots of denial or repression or whatever the psychiatrists tell us. But yeah, it clearly
exists within all of us. I mean, we have neural circuits for rage. We all do. We have neural circuits for altruism and no one's born without these things. And some people, they're atrophied. And some people, they're hypertrophied. But looking inward and
recognizing what's there is key. - Or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what Rick Rubin is accessing. When you go silent body, active mind, that's interesting. What is it for you? What place do you go to
that generates ideas, that helps you generate ideas? - I have a lot of new
practices around this. I mean, I'm always
exploring for protocols. I have to. It's in my nature. When I went and spent time with Rick, I tried to adopt his practice
of staying very still and just letting stuff come to the surface or Deisserothian way of
formulating complete sentences while being still in the body. What I have found works better is what my good friend Tim
Armstrong does to write music. He writes music every day. He's a music producer. He is obviously a singer/guitar
player for Rancid. And he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs. And many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists, Tim helped them write. Tim wakes up sometimes in
the middle of the night. And what he does is he'll
start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni Mitchell talks about this too, you find some creative outlet that's like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet and you do that thing. So for me, that's drawing. I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience-based
drawing, drawing neurons, that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while, my mind starts churning on the
nervous system and biology. And then I come up with
areas I'd like to explore for the podcast, ways I'd like to address certain topics. Right now, I'm very interested
in autonomic control. A beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to
control their pupil sizes and without changing luminance through a biofeedback mechanism. And that gives them auto control over their so-called automatic
autonomic nervous system. And I've been looking
at what the circuitry is and it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function. And as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, oh, like what
about autonomic control and those people that
supposedly can control their pupil size? Then you go in and there's a paper
published in Nature Press, one of the Nature journals. And there's a recent paper on this. Like, oh cool. And then we talk about this. And then how could this be
put into a kind of a post? So doing things that are
about 15 degrees off center from your main thing is
a great way to access. I believe that the circuits
for, in Tim's case, painting goes to songwriting. I think for Joni Mitchell, that was also the case. I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting. For Rick, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's listening to podcasts. I don't know. That's his business. Do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you
then an easier transition into your main creative work? - No, I really like to focus
on emptiness and silence. So I pick the dragon I have to slay, so whatever the problem I have to work on and I just sit there and stare at it. - I love how fucking linear you are. - And if there's no, if you're tired, I'll just sit. I believe in the power of just waiting. And usually, I'll stop being tired or energy rises from somewhere or an idea pops from somewhere, but there needs to be a
silence and an emptiness. It's an empty room, just me and the dragon and we wait. That's it. Usually with programming, you're thinking about a particular design. How do I design this thing
to solve this problem? - Any cognitive enhancers? I've got a quite the
gallery in front of me. - Oh that's right, yeah. - Should we walk through this? - Yeah. - This is not a a sales thing, It's just I tend to do
this bounce back and forth. Your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices. So water. - This is all my refrigerator. - I know, right? There's no food in there. There's water. There's Element which
they now have canned. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah. - And yes, they're a podcast
sponsor for both of us, but that's not why I
cracked one of these open. I like them provided they're cold. - And that's, by the way,
my least favorite flavor as I was saying. That's the reason it's
still left in the fridge. - The cherry one is really good. - The black cherry. There's orange one. - Yeah. I pushed the sled this morning and pulled the sled for
my workout at the gym. And it was hot today here in Austin, so some salt is good. And then Mateína Yerba Mate,
zero sugar, full confession. I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love yerba mate. Half Argentine. Been drinking mate since
I was a little kid. There's actually a photo
somewhere on the internet when I'm like three, sitting on my grandfather's lap, sipping mate out the gourd. And then this you might find interesting, this is just a little bit
of coffee with a scoop of... Brian Johnson gave me cocoa, just like pure unsweetened cocoa. So I put that in chocolate. I like it,. - Just for the taste. - Well, actually, nukes my appetite. And since we're not going out to dinner tonight until later, I figure that's good. Yeah, Brian's an interesting one. He's really pushing this thing. - The optimization of everything. - Yeah. Although he just hurt his ankle, he posted a photo, he hurt his ankle. So now he's injecting BPC
body protection compound 157, which many, many people
are taking, by the way, I did an episode on peptides. - [Lex] Mm-hmm. - I should just say BPC 157, one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis, like development of new vasculature, which can be great in some context, but also if you have a tumor, you don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore. So I worry about people
taking BPC 157 continually. And there's very little human data. I think there's like one study and it's a lousy one. It's a lot of animal data. Some of the peptides are interesting. However, there's one that
I've experimented with a little bit called Pinealon, which I find even if I've
just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it seems to do something to the circadian timekeeping mechanism because then on other
days when I don't take it, I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple weeks
and then typically stop, maybe try something else. But I stay out of things
that really stimulate any of like major hormone pathways when it comes to peptides. - That's actually a really good question of how do you experiment? How long do you try a thing to figure out if it works for you? - Well, I'm very
sensitive to these things, and I have been doing a lot
of things for a long time. So if I add something in, it's always one thing at a time, and I notice right away if it does not make me feel good. There's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth
hormone secretagogues, ipamorelin, tesamorelin, and sermorelin. And I've experimented a little bit with those in the past and they've nuked to my
rapid eye movement sleep. But given me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good to me, but other people like them. I also just generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these hormone pathways because you can run into
all sorts of issues, but some people take them safely. But usually after about four or five days, I know if I like something or I don't and then I move on. But I am not super
adventurous with these things. I know people that will
take cocktails of peptides with multiple things. They'll try anything. That's not me. And I do blood work,. But also I'm mainly reading
papers and podcasting. And I'm teaching a course
next spring, Stanford. I'm gonna do a big undergraduate course. So I'm trying to develop that course and things like that. So I don't need to lift more weight or run further than I already do, which is not that much
weight or far as it is. - Right. You're not going to Olympics. You're not trying to
truly maximize some aspect of your performance. - No. And I'm not trying to
get down below, whatever, 7% body fat or something. I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes, caffeine in the form of mate and then this coffee thing. And then here's one that, I think, I brought out for discussion. This is a piece of Nicorette. They're not a sponsor. Nicotine is an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure, and it is probably not safe for everybody. But the nicotine is gaining
in popularity like crazy. Mainly, these pouches that
people put in the lip,. We're not talking about
smoking vaping, dipping, or snuffing. My interest in nicotine started, this was in 2010, I was visiting Columbia Medical School, and I was in the office of the great neurobiologist, Richard Axel, won the Nobel Prize, co-recipient with Linda
Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction. Brilliant guy. He's probably in his late
seventies now, probably. Yeah. And he kept popping Nicorette in his mouth and I was like, "What's this about?" And he said, "Oh well,
this was just anecdote." But he said this, he said, "Oh well, it
protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." I said, "It does/?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I don't know if he was kidding or not. He's known for making jokes. And then he said that
when he used to smoke, it really helped his focus in creativity. But then he quit smoking 'cause he didn't want lung cancer and he found that he
couldn't focus as well, so he would choose Nicorette. So occasionally, right now, I do a half a piece, but I'm not Russian so I'm a little... You did just pop the
whole thing in your mouth. - Mm-hmm. - So I'll do a couple
milligrams every now and again. And it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular. But you fast all day, you're still doing one meal a day, - One meal a day. - Yeah. - Yeah, I did a nicotine
pouch with Rogan at dinner and I got high. - Yeah, that's a lot. That's usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of Zin, take one a day, pretty soon they're
taking a canister a day. So you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself two pieces of Nicorette total per week. And you will notice that in the day after you use it, sometimes your throat
will feel a little bit like a little spasm, like you might want to
cough once or twice. And so if you're a singer or you're a podcaster or something, you have to do long podcast, you wanna just be mindful of it. But yeah, you're supposed
to kind of like keep it in your cheek and here we go. - But it did make me intensely focus in a way that was a
little bit scary 'cause... - The nucleus basalis is
in the in basal forebrain. Nucleus has cholinergic neurons that radiate out axons, little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex and elsewhere. And when you focus on one
particular topic matter or one particular area
of your visual field or listening to something
and focusing visually, we know that there's an
elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there, and it binds to nicotinic acetylcholine
receptor sites there. So it's a kind of an
intentional modulation by acetylcholine. With nicotine, you're getting exogenous or artificial heightening
of that circuitry. - And the time I had Tucker
Carlson on the podcast, he told me that apparently, it helps him, as he said publicly, keep his love life vibrant. - Really? It causes vasoconstriction. - Well, he literally said it
makes his dick really hard. He said that publicly also. - Okay, well, as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's- - Trust me. - Sex life, no disrespect. The major effect of nicotine
on the vasculature., my understanding is that
it causes vasoconstriction, not vasodilation. Drugs like Cialis,
Tadalafil, Viagra, et cetera, vasodilators, they allow more blood flow. Nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow to the periphery. But provided dosages are kept low... I don't recommend people
use it frequently or at all. And I don't recommend young people use it, 25 and younger. Brain's very plastic at that time. And certainly smoking,
dipping, vaping aren't good because we run into
trouble for other reasons. But in any case, and even there, vaping is a controversial topic. Probably safer than smoking, but has its own issues. I said something like that and boy did I catch a
lot of heat for that. You can't say anything as
a health science educator and not piss somebody off. It just depends on where
the center of masses and how far outside that you are. For me, the caffeine is the main thing. And actually, it's a
really big part of my life. And one of the things you recommend that people wait a bit in the morning to consume caffeine. - If they experience a
crash in the afternoon, that this is one of the
misconceptions I regret maybe even discussing it, for people that crash in the afternoon, oftentimes if they delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before, you're not gonna avoid
that afternoon crash. But I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration, caffeine, especially if I'm gonna workout. Here's a weird one. If I exercise before 8:30 AM, especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy, which is mid-morning, 10:00 AM 11:00 AM and I start exercising then, I'm basically exhausted all afternoon. And I don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the
intensity of the workout, but I like to be done showered and heading into work by 9:00 AM, but I don't always meet that mark. - So you're saying it
doesn't affect your energy if you start out with exercising? - I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with
exercise if you start early, and then that fuels you all day long. I think that if you wait until you're feeling
at your best to train, sometimes that's detrimental because then in the afternoon when you're doing the
work we get paid for, like research, podcasting, et cetera, then oftentimes your brain
isn't firing as well. - That's interesting. I haven't really rigorously tried that, wake up and just start running or listen. - This is the Jocko thing. And then there's this
phenomenon called entrainment where if you force yourself to exercise, or eat, or socialize, or view bright light at
a certain time of day for three to seven days in a row, pretty soon there's an
anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone in theory
can become a morning person to some degree or another. And this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off. People wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't 'cause it clicked. It's because you have this incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep. And there's some papers
that have been published in the last couple of years, Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere showing that people can answer math
problems in their sleep, simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless. This does not mean that if you ask your partner a question in sleep that they're
gonna answer accurately,. - They might screw up the
whole cumulative probability of 20% across multiple months. - All right, listen. - What happened? - What happened? Here's the deal. A few years back, I did a four and a half
hour after editing, four and a half hour episode on male and female fertility. The entire recording took 11 hours. And by the way, I'm very
proud of that episode. Many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode. And my first question is, what were you doing during the episode? But in all seriousness- - We should say that it's
four and a half hours. - [Andrew] Yeah. - And they should listen to the episode. It's extremely technical episode. You're nonstop dropping facts and referencing huge number of papers,. It must be exhausting. I don't understand how you can possibly- - It talk about sperm
health, spermatogenesis. It talks about the ovulatory cycle. It talks about things people can do that are considered absolutely
supported by science. It talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit that are a little bit more experimental. It talks about IVF. It talks about ICSI. It talks about all of that. It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age, et cetera. But there's this one
portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability of a successful pregnancy
as a function of age. And so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing
cumulative probability. And by the way, we've published cumulative probability histograms in many of my laboratories, papers, including one that was in
Nature article in 2018. So we run these all the time. And yes, I know the
difference between independent and cumulative probability, just like I do. The way the clip was cut and what I stated unfortunately combined to a pretty great gaff where I said, you're just
adding percentages to 120%. Unfortunately, my humor
isn't always so good. And I made a joke. I said, "120%, but that's a
different thing altogether." What I should have said
was, that's impossible and here's how it actually works. But then it continues where I then describe the
cumulative probability histogram for successful pregnancy. But somewhere in the early portion, I misstated something. I made a math error, which implied I didn't
understand the difference between independent and
cumulative probability, which I do. And it got picked up and run. And people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense. And so what I did in response to it was rather than just say
everything I just said now, I just came out online and said, "Hey, folks, in an episode
dated this on fertility, I made a math error. Here's the formula for
cumulative probability, successful pregnancy at that age. Here's the graph." I offered it as a teaching
moment in two ways. One, for people to understand
cumulative probability. It was sort of interesting too, a number of people that had come out critiquing the GAF. Like Balaji and folks came out, pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. So there was a lot of posturing. The dog pile, oftentimes, people are quick to dog pile. They didn't understand. But a lot of people did understand, some smart people out there, obviously. I called my dad and he was just laughing. He goes, "Oh, this is good. This is like the old school way of hammering academics." But the point being, it was a teaching moment, given me an opportunity to
say, "Hey, I made a mistake." I also made a mistake in another podcast where I did a micron to
millimeter conversion or centimeter conversion. And we always correct these
in the show note captions. We correct them in the audio now. Unfortunately, on YouTube, it's harder to correct. You can't go and edit in segments. We put in the captions. But that was the one teaching moment. If you make a mistake, it's substantive and relate to data, you apologize and correct a mistake, use a teaching moment. The other one was to say, hey, in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out, I'm sure I've made some small errors. I think I once said serotonin
when I meant dopamine. You're going, you're riffing. And it's a reminder to be
careful to edit, double check. But the internet usually edits for us and then we go make corrections. But it didn't feel good at first. But ultimately, I can
laugh at myself about it. Long ago at Berkeley, when I was TAing my first class, it was a biopsychology
class between 1998 or 1999, I was drawing the pituitary gland, which has anterior and a posterior lobe, actually as a medial lobe too. I probably have 5, 600
students in that lecture hall. It was chalkboard and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary. My back was to the audience. I said, "And so they
just sort of hang there." And everyone just erupted in laughter 'cause it looked like a
scrotum with two testicles. And I remember thinking like, "Oh my God, I don't
think I can turn around, I can face this." Oh, gotta turn around sooner or later. So I turned around and we just all had a big laugh together 'cause it was embarrassing. I'll tell you one thing, though, they never forgot about the
two lobes of the pituitary. - Yeah. And you haven't forgotten
about that either. - Right. There's a high salience
for these kinds of things. And it also was kind of fun to see how excited people
get to see people trip. It's like an elite sprinter trips and does something stupid, like runs the opposite
direction out the blocks or something like that. I recall one World Cup match years ago, a guy scored against his own team. I think they killed the guy. Do you remember that? - [Lex] Mm-hmm. - Some South American or
Central American team. - [Lex] Yeah, yeah. - And they killed the guy. But yeah, let's look it up. I just said World Cup. Yeah, he was gunned down - Andres Escobar scored
against his own team in 1994 World Cup in the United States, just 27 years old, playing for the Columbia National team. - Yeah. Last name, Escobar. That's a good name. - I think it would protect you. - Listen, so there's some gaffes that get people killed. So how forgiving are
we for online mistakes? It's the nature of the mistakes. People were quite gracious about the gaff and some weren't. And it's interesting that we as public health
science educators, we'll do long podcasts sometimes and you need to be really careful. What's great is AI allows you to check these things now more readily. So that's cool. And there are ways that it's now gonna be
more self-correcting. I think there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them and it's cool. Things are getting cleaned up. - Yeah. But mistakes nevertheless will happen. Do you feel the pressure
of not making mistakes? - Sure. I mean, I try and get things right to the best of my ability. I check with experts. It's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was said in a podcast. A lot of times, I chuckle 'cause... At Stanford, we have
some amazing scientists, but I talk to them, people elsewhere. And it's always interesting to me how I'll get divergent information and then I'll find the
overlap in the Venn diagram. And I have this question, do I just stay with the
overlap in the Venn diagram? I did an episode on oral health. I didn't know this until
I researched that episode, but oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health. That there's a bacteria that causes cavities streptococcus that can make its way into
other parts of the body through the mouth that
can cause serious issues. There's the idea that
some forms of dementia, some forms of heart disease
start in the mouth, basically. I talked to no fewer than
four dentists, dental experts and there was a lot of convergence. I also learned that
teeth can demineralize, that's the formation of cavities. They can also remineralize. As long as a cavity isn't too deep, it can actually fill itself back in, especially if you provide
the right substrates for it. That saliva is this incredible fluid that has all this capacity to remineralize teeth
provided the milieu is right. Things like alcohol-based
mouth wash is killing off some of the critical things you need. It's fascinating. And I put out that episode thinking, oh, well, I'm not a dentist, I'm not an oral health episode, but I talked to a pediatric dentist. There's a terrific one, doctor_staci, S-T-A-C-I, on Instagram, does great content. Talked to some others. And then I just waited for the attack. I was like, "Here we go," and it didn't come. And dentists were thanking me. I was like, "Whoa." - [Lex] Mm-hmm. - That's a rare thing. More often than not, if I do an episode about, say, psilocybin or MDMA, you get some people liking it, or ADHD and the drugs for ADHD. We did a whole episode
on the Ritalin, Vyvanse, Adderall stuff. You get people saying, "Thank you, I prescribed this to my kid and it really helps," but they're private about
the fact that they do it because they catch so much
attack from other people. So I like to find the
center of mass report that, try and make it as clear as possible. And then I know that there's some stuff where I'm gonna catch. What's frustrating for
me is when I see claims that I'm like against
fluoridization of water, which I'm not. We talked about the benefits of fluoride. It builds hyper strong
bonds within the teeth. I went and looked at some of
literally the crystal sruc... Excuse me, not the crystal structure, but essentially like micron and sub-micron structure
of teeth is incredible and where fluoride can get in there and form these super strong bonds. And you can also form them with
things like hydroxyapatite. And why is there fluoride in water? Well, it's the best. Okay. You say some things that are interesting, but then somehow it gets turned into like you're against fluoridization, which I'm not, or I've been accused of
being against sunscreen. I wear mineral-based sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer, or I use a physical barrier. There is a cohort of
people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad. I'm not one of them. I'm not what's called a sunscreen truther. But then you get attacked
for like if you... So we're talking about
there are certain sunscreens that are problematic. And Rhonda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this. And so there's certain
topics, it's interesting, for which you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying, but there's a lumper or lumping as opposed to splitting of what health educators say. With politics, there's this urgency to just put people into a camp of expert versus
renegade or something. And it's not like that. It's just not like that. So the short answer is I really strive, really strive to get things right, but I know that I'm gonna
piss certain people off. And you've taught me and Joe's taught me and other
podcasters have taught me that if you worry too much about it, then you aren't gonna get the
newest information out there. Like peptides, there's
very little human data, unless you're talking
about Vyleesi or the stuff in the alpha-Melanocyte-stimulating
hormone stuff which are prescribed for female libido to enhance female libido or Sermorelin, which is for certain growth
hormone deficiencies. With rare exception, there's very little human data, but people are still super interested in, a lot of people are taking
and doing these things, so you wanna get the information out. - Do you try to not just
look at the science, but research what the various
communities are talking about, like maybe research the conspiracy theorists
are talking about, just so you know all the armies that are going to be
attacking your castle? - Yes. So like for instance, there's a community of
people online that believe that if you consume seed oils or something that setting
up your skin for sunburn and if you don't. There's all these theories. So I like to know what the theories are. I like to know what the extremes are, but I also like to know what
the standard conversation is. But there's generally more
agreement than disagreement. I think where I've been kind of bullish actually are supplements. People go, "Oh supplements." Well, there's food supplements
like a protein powder, which is different than a vitamin. And then they are compounds. There are compounds
that have real benefit, but people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated. But some of them are
vetted with for potency and for safety with
more rigor than others. And it's interesting to see how people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into
that are often attacked. That's been interesting. Also, one of the most controversial topics nowadays is Ozempic, Mounjaro. I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't understand why the quote, unquote, "health wellness community"
is so against these things. I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route. For some people, they've really helped them lose weight. And yes, there can be some muscle loss and other lean body loss, but that can be offset
with resistance training. They've helped a lot of people. And other people are like, "No, this stuff is terrible." I think the most interesting
thing about Ozempic, Mounjaro is that they're
in the GLP-1 pathway, glucagon-like peptide 1. And it was discovered in Gila monsters, which is a lizard, basically. Now, the entomologist will dive on me. It's a big lizard-looking thing that doesn't eat very often. And they figured out
that there's this peptide that allows it to curb its own appetite at the level of the brain and the gut. And it has a lot of homology to sequence hemology to
what we now call GLP-1. So I love anytime there's
animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can help people with
obesity and type 2 diabetes. And there's evidence that can
even curb some addictions. Those are newer data. But I don't see as either or. In fact, I've been a little
bit disappointed at the way that the, whatever you wanna
call it, health wellness, biohacking community has
slammed on Ozempic, Mounjaro. They're like, "Just get out and run." Listen, there are people who are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running could injure them. They get on these drugs
and they can improve. Hopefully, they're also
doing resistance training and eating better, and then you're bringing
all the elements together. - Well, why do you think
the criticism is happening? Is it that Ozempic became super popular so people are misusing
it or that kind of thing? - No, I think what it
is, is that people think if it's a pharmaceutical, it's bad. - Yeah. - Or if it's a supplement, it's bad depending on
which camp they're in. And wouldn't it be wonderful to kind of fill in the
gap between this divide? What I would like to see in politics and in health is neither right nor left, but what we can just call a
league of reasonable people that looks at things on
an issue by issue basis and fills in the center 'cause I think most people are in the, I don't wanna say, center in a political way, but I think most people are reasonable. They want to be reasonable, but that's not what sells clicks. That's not what drives interest. I look at issue by
issue, person by person. I don't like ingroup,
outgroup stuff I never have. I've got friends from all walks of life. I said this on other podcasts and it always sounds like
a political statement. The push towards polarization, it's so frustrating. If there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older each year, I'm like, "Wow, are we ever gonna get out of this polarization?" Speaking of which, how are you gonna vote for
the presidential election? - I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people
involved and do it well. - What do you think the role of podcast is gonna be
in this year's election? I would love long form conversations to happen with the candidates. I think it's gonna be huge. I would love Trump to go on Rogan. I'm embarrassed to say this, but I honestly would love to see Joe Biden go on Joe Rogan also. - I would imagine that both would go on, but separately. - Separately is, I think, a debate. Joe does debates, but I think Joe at his best, this one-on-one conversation
really intimate. I just wish that Joe Biden would actually
do long form conversations. - I thought he had done a... wasn't he? I think it was on Jay Shetty's podcast. - He did Jay Shetty. He did a few. But when I mean long form, I mean really long form, like two, three hours and more relaxed, it was much more orchestrated. Because what happens when the interview's a
little bit too short, it becomes into this
generic political type of NBC, CNN type of interview. You get a set of questions and you don't get to
really feel the human, expose the human to the light in... The full, we talked about the shadow, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So I think there's something magical about two, three, four hours. - [Andrew] Mm-hmm. - But it doesn't have to be that long. But it has to have that feeling to it where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous, and you're going to be strictly sticking to the question answer type of feel, but just shooting shit, which Rogan is the best by
far in the world at that. - I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does. I mean, the three or
four podcasts per week plus the UFC announcing, plus
comedy tours, and stadiums, plus doing comedy shows
in the middle of the week, plus a husband, and a father,
and a friend, and jujitsu, the guy's got like
superhuman levels of output. I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business. And I think that people want and deserve to know the
people that are running for office in a different way and to really get to know them. Well, listen, I guess you... I mean, is it clear that
he's gonna do jail time or maybe he gets away with fine? - No, I don't think I'm- - 'Cause I was gonna say, I mean, does that mean
you're gonna be podcasting from jail?
- In prison, yeah. In fact, I'm going to figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison with- - Please don't, please don't. I'm sure they have visitors. - Right. - That just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interview. But yeah, I understand. - You wouldn't be able to wear that suit. You'd be wearing a different suit. - That's true. - Yeah.
- That's true. - It's gonna be interesting. I'm not just saying this 'cause you're my friend, but you would do a marvelous job. I think you should sit down with all of them separately to keep it civil and see what happens. Here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these... They're not dinners, but gatherings where a local bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from
the entertainment industry, big agencies, big tech, like big, big tech, many of the people have
been on this podcast. And they'll host a discussion or debate. And what you find, if you look around the room and you talk to people, is that about half the people in the room are very left-leaning and very outspoken about that. And they'll tell you exactly who they wanna see win
the presidential race. And the other half will tell you that they're for the other side. A lot of people that people
assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are
in the exact opposite side. Now, some people are very
open about who they're for, but it's been very interesting to see how when you get people one-on-one, they're telling you they
want X candidate to win or Y candidate to win. And sometimes I'm like, "Really? I can't believe it. Like, you?" Like, yep. And so it's what people think about people's political
leaning is often exactly wrong. And that's been eye-opening for me. And I've seen that in
university campuses too. It's gonna be really, really interesting to see what happens in November. - In addition to that, as you said, most people are close to the center despite what Twitter makes it seem like. Most people, whether that's
center left to center right, they're kind of close to the center. - Yeah. I mean, to me, the most
interesting question, who is gonna be the next big
candidate in years to come? Who's that going to be? Right now, I don't see or know of that person. Who's it gonna be? - Yeah, the young promising candidates., we're not seeing them. Another way to ask that question, who would want to be? - Well, that's the issue, right? Who wants to live in
this 12-hour news cycle where you're just trying
to dunk on the other team so that nobody notices that you fucked up? That's not only not fun or interesting, it also is just like... It's gotta be psychosis-inducing
at some point. And I think that, God willing, we're gonna... Some young guy or woman is on this and refuses to back down and was just determined to be president, and we'll make it happen. I don't even know who the
viable candidates are. Maybe you, Lex. We should ask Saagar. Saagar would know. - Yeah, yeah. Maybe Saagar himself. - Saagar's show is awesome. - Yeah, it is.
- He and Crystal do a great thing. - He's incredible. - Especially since they have somewhat divergent opinions on things, that's what makes it so cool. - He's great. He looks great in the
suit, looks real sexy. - He's taking real good care of himself. I think he's getting married soon. Congratulations, Saagar. Forgive me for not remembering
your future wife's name. - He won my heart by giving me a biography
of Hitler as a present. - That's what he gave you? - Yeah. - I gave you a hatchet
with a poem inscribed- - That just shows the
fundamental difference- - With a poem inscribed in it, which was pretty damn good. I realized everything we bring up on the screen is really depressing, like the soccer player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy? - Sure. Let's go to Nature Is Metal Instagram. - That's pretty intense. We actually did a collaborative
post on a shark thing. - Really? - [Andrew] Yeah. - What kind of shark thing? - So to generate the fear VR stimulus from my lab in 20,... Was it? Yeah, 2016. We went down to Guadalupe
Island off the coast of Mexico. Me and a guy named Michael Muller, who's a very famous portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks. And we used 360 video to build VR of great white sharks. Brought it back to the lab. We published that study
in Current Biology. In 2017, went back down there. That was the year that I exited the cage that you lower the cage with the crane. And that year, I exited the cage. I had a whole mess with air failure the day I was breathing from a hookah line while in the cage. I had no scuba on. Divers were out. The thing got boa constricted up, and I had an air failure. And I had to actually share air and it was a whole mess. Story for another time. But the next day, because I didn't want to get PTSD and it was pretty scary, the next day, I cage exited with some other divers. And it turns out with these great white
sharks in Guadalupe, the water's very clear and
you can swim toward them and then they'll veer off
you if you swim toward them. Otherwise, they see you as prey. Well, in the evening, you've brought all the cages up and you're hopefully all alive. And we were hanging out fishing for tuna. One of the crew on board
had a line in the water and was fishing for tuna for dinner. And a shark took the tuna off the line. It's a very dramatic take. And you can see just absolute size of these great white sharks. The waters there are filled with them. That's the one. So this video, just the Neuralink link was
shot by Matt MacDougall, who is the head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. There it is. Now, believe it or not, it looks like it missed, like it didn't get the fish. It actually just cut that
thing like a band saw. So I'm up on the deck with Matt. Yeah. And so when you look at it from the side, you really get a sense of the girth of this fricking thing. So as it comes up, if you... The size of that thing. And they move through the water with such speed, just a couple. So when you're in the cage and the cage is lowered
down below the surface, they're going around, you're not allowed to
chum the water there. Some people do it. And then when you cage exit, they're like, well, what
are you doing out here? And then you swim toward them, they veer off. But what's interesting is that if you look at how they
move through the water, all it takes for one of
these great white sharks when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat
is like two flicks of the tail and becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable economy of effort. And Ocean Ramsey who is, in my opinion, the greatest of all
cage exit shark divers, this woman who dove with
enormous great white sharks, she really understands their behavior when they're aggressive, when they're not gonna be aggressive. She and her husband, Juan, I believe his name is, they understand how
the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks? We were down there basically
not understanding any of this. We never should have been there. And actually, the air
failure the day before plus cage exiting the next day, I told myself after coming
up from the cage exit, "That's it. I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want to live." Got back across the
border a couple days later and I was like, "That's it. I don't take risks with
my life any longer." But yeah, MacDougall, Matt
MacDougall shot that video and then it went, quote, unquote, "viral" through the Nature is Metal. We passed them that video. - Actually, I saw a video where an instructor was
explaining how to behave with a shark in the water and that you don't wanna be swimming away because then you're acting like a prey. - [Andrew] That's right. - And then you wanna be
acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it. - [Andrew] Right, towards them and they'll bank off. Now, if you don't see them, they're ambush predators. You're swimming in the surface. - [Lex] Apparently, if they get close, you should just guide
them away by grabbing them and moving them away. - Some people will actually roll them, but if they're coming in full speedy, you're not gonna roll the shark. But here we are back to dark stuff again. I like the shark attack map and the shark attack map shows that Northern California, there were a couple, actually. A guy's head got taken off. He was swimming north of San Francisco. There's been a couple
of northern California that was really tragic, but most of them are in
Florida and Australia. - Florida. - The Surfrider Foundation
shark attack map. There it is. They have a great map. - There you go. - So they look like- - Beautiful. - They have all the scars on them. So if you zoom in on... I mean, look at this. If you go to the North America. - Look at skulls. - Yeah, where there are deadly attacks, but in Northern California, sadly. This is really tragic. If you zoom in on this one. I read about this. This guy, if you can click the link, 52-year-old male, he was in chest high water. This is just tragic. I feel so sad for him and his family. Three members of the party chose to go in. Njai was in his chest-high water, 25 to 50 yards from shore. Breached water seized
his head and that was it. So it does happen. It's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean, it's a very, very, very low probability. - But if it doesn't happen, six times in a row. - 120% chance. - Yeah. Who do you think wins? a salt water crocodile or a shark? - Okay. I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me to no end. Muller, Michael Muller, who dove all over the world, he sent me a picture of him diving with saltwater crocs in Cuba. It was a smaller one. But goodness, have you seen the size of some of those saltwater crocs? - Yeah. - Yeah. I'm thinking the sharks are so agile. They're amazing. They've head cammed one or bodycammed one moving
through the kelp bed. They're so agile moving through the water. Up at the surface, the camera's looking at the surface. And you just realize if you're out there, and you're swimming, and you get hit by a shark, you're not gonna- - I was gonna talk shit and say that a salty
has way more bite force. But according to the internet, recently, data indicates that
the shark has a stronger bite. So I was assuming that a crocodile would've
a stronger bite force and therefore agility doesn't matter, but apparently a shark. - Yeah. And turning one of those
big salty is probably not that turning around. It's like a battleship. I mean, those sharks are unbelievable. They hit from all sorts. Oh, and they do this thing. We saw this. You're out of the cage or in the cage, and you'll look at one. And you'll see its eye kind
of like looking at you. They can't really fovea, but they'll look at you. And you're tracking it. And then you'll look down, and you'll realize that
one's coming at you. They're ambush preyers. They're working together. It's fascinating. - I like how you know
that they can't fovea you. - [Andrew] Right. - You're already considering
the vision system there. It's a very primitive system. - Very primitive eyes
on the side of the head. Their vision is decent enough. They're mostly obviously sensing things with their electro sensing in the water, but also olfaction. Yeah, I spend far too
much time thinking about and learning about the visual systems of different animals. If you get me going on this, we'll be here all night. - See, this is why I
have the smuggler on too. I saw this in a store and I got it 'cause this is from a shark. - Goodness. I can't say I ever saw
one with teeth this big, but it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Probably your blood pressure just goes and you don't feel feel a thing. - Yeah. It's not gonna... - Before we went down for the cage exit, a guy in our crew, Pat Dossett, very experienced diver, asked one of the South
African divers that, "What's the contingency plan if somebody catches a bite?" And they were like... He was like every man for himself. And they're like, basically saying like, "If somebody catches a bite, that's it." Anyway, I thought we were
gonna bring up something happy. - Oh, that is happy. Well, nature is beautiful. - Yeah, nature is beautiful. We lived. There are happy things you brought up. Nature is Metal. See, this is the difference between Russian Americans and Americans. It's like maybe this
is actually a good time to bring up your ayahuasca journey. I've never done ayahuasca, but I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about ibogaine, iboga, but you told me that you did ayahuasca and that for you, it wasn't the dark, scary ride that it is for everybody else. - Yeah, it was an incredible
experience for me. I did it twice, actually. - And have you done high dose psilocybin? - Never, no. I just did small dose
psilocybin a couple times. So I was nervous about it. I was very- - Understandably so. I've done high dose psilocybin. It's terrifying. But I've always gotten
something very useful out of it. - So I mean, I was nervous about whatever demons
might hide in the shadow, in the Jungian shadow. I was nervous. But I think it turns out... I don't know what the
lesson is to draw from that, but my experience- - Be born Russian. - It must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's also
something to the jungle there. It strips away all the bullshit of life and you're just there. I forgot the outside civilization exists. I forgot time because when you don't have your phone, you don't have meetings
or calls or whatever, you lose a sense of time. The sun comes up, the sun comes down. - That's the fundamental biological timer. Every mammalian species
has a short wavelength. So you think like blue UV type, but like absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone. And it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening because when the sun is low in the sky, you've got short wavelength
and long wavelength light. When you look at a sunrise, it's got blues and yellows,
orange and yellows. You look in the evening, reds, orange, and blues. And in the middle of the day, it's full spectrum light. Now, it's always full spectrum light. But because of some atmospheric elements and because of the low solar angle, that difference between
the different wavelength of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your
eye pay attention to and signal to your circadian
timekeeping mechanism. At the core of our brain and the suprachiasmatic nucleus, we are wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun. That's the biological timer. Which makes perfect sense because obviously as the
planets spin and revolve. - I also wonder how that is affected. In the rainforest, the sun is not visible often, so you're under the cover of the trees. So maybe that affects- - Well, there are social rhythms. There are feeding rhythms. sometimes in terms of some
species will signal the timing of activity of other species, but yet getting out from
the canopy is critical. Of course, even under the
canopy during the daytime, there's far more photons than at night. This is always when I'm telling people to get sunlight in their
eyes in the morning and in the evening. People say, "There's no
sunlight this time here," I'm like, "Go outside on
a really overcast day. It's far brighter than it is at night." So there's still lots of sunlight, even if you can't see
the sun as an object. I love time perception shifts. And you mentioned that in the jungle, it's linked to the rising
and setting of the sun. You also mentioned that on ayahuasca, you zoomed out from the earth. These are like, to me, the
most interesting aspects of having a human brain as
opposed to another brain. Of course, I've only
ever had a human brain, which is that you can consciously set your time domain window. We can be focused here. we can be focused on all of Austin, or we can be focused on the entire planet. You can make those choices consciously. But in the time domain, it's hard. Different activities
bring us into fine slicing or more broad bending of time depending on what we're doing, programming, or exercising,
or researching, or podcasting. But just how unbelievably
fluid the human brain is in terms of the aperture
of the time space window of our cognition and of our experience. I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable tools
that we have access to that we don't really leverage
as much as we should, which is when things are really hard, you need to zoom out and see it as one element
within your whole lifespan, and that there's more to come. I mean, people commit suicide because they can't see beyond
the time domain they're in, or they think it's gonna go on forever. When we're happy, we rarely think this
is gonna last forever, which is an interesting
contrast in its own right. But I think that psychedelics, while I have very little
experience with them, I have some and it sounds like they're
just a very interesting window into the different apertures. - Well, how To surf that
wave is probably a skill. One of the things I was prepared for and I think is important is not to resist. - [Andrew] Hmm. - I think I understand what it means to resist a thing, a powerful wave, and it's not going to be good. So you have to be able to surface it. So I was ready for that
to relax through it. And maybe because I'm quite good at that from knowing how to relax and all kinds of disciplines, playing piano and guitar
when I was super young And then through jujitsu, knowing the value of relaxation and through all kinds of sports to be able to relax the body fully, just accept whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it was a very Positive
experience for me. - Do you have any interest in iboga? I'm very interested in ibogaine, iboga. There's a colleague of mine and researcher at
Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's been doing some
transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain imaging on people
who have taken ibogaine. Ibogaine, as I understand, it gives a 22-hour psychedelic journey where no hallucinations with eyes open, but you close your eyes and you get a very high resolution image of actual events that
happened in your life, but then you have agency
within those movies. I think you have to be of healthy heart to be able to do it. I think you have to be
on a heart rate monitor. It's not trivial. It's not like these other psychedelics. But there's a wonderful group
called Veteran Solutions that has used iboga combined
with some other psychedelics in the veterans community to great success for things like PTSD. And it's a group I've
really tried to support in any way that I can, mainly by being vocal about
the great work they're doing. But you hear incredible stories of people who are just like near cratered in their life or zombied by PTSD and other things post-war, get back a lightness or achieve
a lightness and a clarity that they didn't feel they had. So I'm very curious about these compounds. The state of Kentucky, we should check this, but I believe it's taken money from the opioid crisis
settlement for ibogaine research. I mean, so this is like no longer... Yes, if you look here. Let's see. Did they do it? Oh no, oh no.
- No. - They backed away. - Kentucky backs away for the plan to fund opioid treatment research. - They're going to use
the money to treat opioid, Now, officials are backing off. 50 billion, what, is on its
way over the coming years. $50 billion. - $50 billion is on its way to state and local government
over the coming years. The pool of funding comes
from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies that profited from manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers. - Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opioid. So they were going to do
psychedelic research with ibogaine, supporting research on illegal folks. Psychedelic drug called ibogaine. Well, I guess they backed away from it. Well, sooner or later, we'll get some happy
news up on the internet during this episode. - I don't know what I'm talking about, the shark and the crocodile fighting. - Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's true. And you survived the jungle. - [Lex] Well, that's the thing. - I was writing to you on
WhatsApp multiple times 'cause I was gonna put it on the internet. Are you okay? And if you're alive, and then I was gonna
just put it to Twitter, just like he's alive. But then, of course, you're
far too classy for that. So you just came back alive. - Well, jungle or not, one of the lessons is also when you hear the call for adventure, just fucking do it. - I was gonna ask you, it's kind of silly question, but give me a small fraction of things on your bucket list. - Bucket list. - [Andrew] Yeah. - Go to Mars. Yeah, what's the status of that? - I don't know. I'm being patient about the whole thing. - Red Planet ran that
cartoon of you, guys. That one's pretty funny. - [Lex] That's true, actually. - That one was pretty funny. One where Goggins is already up there, that's a funny one. - Probably also true. I would love to die in Mars. I just love humanity
reaching onto the stars and doing this a bold adventure and taking big risks and exploring. I love exploration. - What about seeing
different animal species? I'm a huge fan of this guy, Joel Sartore, where he has this photo arc project where he takes portraits of
all these different animals. If people aren't already
following him on Instagram, he's doing some really important work. This guy's Instagram is amazing. - Portraits available. - Well, look at these portraits. The amount of, I don't
wanna say personality 'cause we don't wanna
project anything onto them, but like the eyes, and he'll occasionally put them... This is a little owl. I delight in things like this. I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes. - [Lex] And dogs or all kinds of things. - All animals. And I'm very interested in kids content that incorporates animals, so we have some things brewing there. I could look at this kind
of stuff all day long. Look at that bat. People think about bats as
kind of little flickering, a little annoying disease things. But look how beautiful
that little sucker is. - How's your podcast with
the Cookie Monster coming? - Oh yeah. We've been in discussions with Cookie. Can't say too much about that, but Cookie Monster
embodies dopamine, right? Cookie Monster wants cookie, right? Wants cookie right now. It was that one tweet Cookie Monster, "I bounce because cookies
come from all directions." It is just embodying the
desire for something, which is an incredible
aspect of ourselves. The other one is, do you remember a little while ago, Elmo put out a tweet, "Hey, how's everyone doing out there?" And it went viral. And the Surgeon General of the United States had been talking about the loneliness crisis. He came on the podcast. A lot of people have been talking about problems with loneliness, mental health issues with loneliness. Elmo puts out a tweet, "Hey, how's everyone doing out there?" And everyone gravitates toward it. The different "Sesame Street"
characters really embody the different kind of aspects of self through very narrow neural
circuit perspective. Snuffleupagus is shy and Oscar the Grouch, Grouchy, right? And the Count 1, the 2. - [Lex] The archetypes of- - [Andrew] Yeah. - [Lex] The archetypes is
very Jungian once again. - Yeah. And I think that the creators of "Sesame Street" clearly
either understand that or it's an unconscious genius to that. So yeah, there are some things brewing on conversations with
"Sesame Street" characters. I know you'd like to
talk to Vladimir Putin. I'd like to talk to Cookie Monster. It illustrates the differences in our sophistication or something, illustrates a lot. Yeah, illustrates a lot. I love animation. So I'm not anime, that's not my thing, but animation. So I'm very interested
in the use of animation to get science content across. So there are a bunch of things brewing. But anyway, I delight in Sartore's work. There's a conservation
aspect to it as well. But I think that mostly wanna thank you for finally putting up something where something's not being
killed or some sad outcome. - These are all really positive. - They're really cool. They're really cool. And every once in a while... Look at that mountain lion. But I also like to look at these and some of them remind
me of certain people. So let's just scroll through. Like for instance, I
think when we don't try and process it too much, so, like, okay... Look at this cat, this civic cat. - Amazing. - I feel like this is someone I met once as a young kid.
- Curiosity. - Curiosity and a playfulness. - Carnivore. - Carnivore, frontalized eyes. - Found in forested areas. - Right. So then you go down. This beautiful fish. - [Lex] Neon pink. - Right. It reminds you of some of
the influencers you see on Instagram, except this one's natural. Just kidding. Let's see. - No filter. No filter. - Yeah. Let's see. I feel like- - Bears. I'm a big fan of bears. - Yeah, bears are beautiful. This one kind of reminds
me of you a little bit. There's like a stoic
nature to it, a curiosity. So you can kind of feel
like the essence of animals. You don't even have to do
psychedelics to get there. - Oh, look at that. He's like the behind the scenes of how it's actually- - [Andrew] Yeah. And then there's- - Wow.
- Yeah. - Yeah. In the jungle, the diversity of life was also stark. From a scientific perspective, just the fact that most of those species are not
identified was fascinating. - [Andrew] Right. - Every little insect
is a kind of discovery. - Right. I mean, one of the reasons
I love New York City so much just by its problems at times is that everywhere you look, there's life. It's like a tropical reef. If you've ever done scuba
diving or snorkeling, you look on a tropical reef and it's like there's some
little crab working on something and everywhere you look, there's life. In the Bay Area, if you go scuba diving or snorkeling, it's like a kelp bed. The Bay Area is like a kelp bed. Every once in a while, some big fish goes by. It's like a big IPO. But most of the time, not a whole lot happens. Actually, the Bay Area, t's interesting as I've
been going back there more and more recently. There are really cool
little subculture starting to pop up again. - [Lex] Nice. - There's incredible skateboarding. The GX1000 guys are these
guys that bomb down hills. They're nuts. They're just going like- - So just speed, not tricks. You gotta see GX1000, these guys going downhill
in San Francisco. They are wild. And occasionally, unfortunately, occasionally someone
will get hit by a car. But GX1000. Look, into intersections, they have spotters. You can see someone there. - Oh, I see. There's a- - Into traffic. Yeah, into traffic. - [Lex] In San Francisco. - Yeah, this is crazy. This is unbelievable. They're just wild. But in any case. - What's on your bucket
list that you haven't done? - Well, I'm working on a book. So I'm actually going to head to a cabin for a couple weeks and write, which I've never done. People talk about doing this, but I'm gonna do that. I'm excited for that. Just the mental space of
really dropping into writing. - Like Jack Nicholson
in "The Shining" cabin. - Let's hope not. Let's hope not.
- Okay. - I mean, I only started
doing public facing anything, posting on Instagram in 2019, but I used to head up to Gualala on the northern coast of California, sometimes by myself to
a little cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just read and write
papers and things like that. I used to do that all the time. I miss that. So some of that. I'm trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina, relatives on the east coast, see my parents more. They're in good health, thankfully. I wanna get married and have a family. That's an important priority and putting a lot of work in there. - Yeah, that's a big one. - Yeah, yeah.
- That's a big one. - Putting a lot of work
into the runway on that. - What's your advice
for people about that? Or give advice to yourself about how to find love in this world, how to find, how to build a family and get there. - And then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the marks. Yeah, well, obviously
pick the right partner, but also do the work on
yourself, know yourself. The oracle know thyself. Listen, I have a friend, he's a new friend, but he's a friend who I met for a meal. He's a very, very well
known actor overseas. And his stuff has made it over here. And we become friends, and we went to lunch. And we were talking about
work and being public facing and all this kind of thing. And then I said, "You have kids, right?" And he says he has four kids. I was like, "Oh yeah, I see
your posts with the kids, you seem really happy." He just looked at me, leaned in and he said, "It's the best gift you'll ever give yourself." And he also said, "And pick your partner, the mother of your kids very carefully." So that's excellent advice
coming from somebody who's very successful in work and family. So that's the only thing I can pass along. We hear this from friends of ours as well, but kids are amazing and family's amazing and that's the different people. All these people who
want to like be immortal and live to be 200 or something. There's also the old fashioned way of having children that live on and evolve a new legacy, but they have half your DNA. So that's exciting. - Yeah. I think you make an amazing dad. - [Andrew] Thank you. - It seems like a fun thing. I've also gotten the advice from friends who are super high performing
and have a lot of kids and they'll say, "Just don't overthink it. Start having kids." Let's go. - Well, the chaos of
kids can either bury you or it can give you energy. But I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing
wild and crazy things. And so that kind of energy is great. And if it's not a big pack of wild boys and you have daughters, and they can be different
form of chaos sometimes, same form of chaos. How many kids do you think you want? - Mm. You know, it's either two or five. - Very different dynamics. You're one of two, right? You have a brother? - Yep.
- Yeah. - I mean, I'm very close with my sister. I couldn't imagine having another sibling 'cause there's so much richness there. We talk almost every day or three, four times a week. Sometimes just briefly. But we're tight we really look out for one another. She's an amazing person, like truly an amazing person and has raised her
daughter in an amazing way. My niece is like gonna head to college in a year or two. My sister's done an amazing job and her dad's done a a great job too. They both really put a lot
into the family aspect. - Got a chance to spend time with a really amazing person in Peru, in the Amazon jungle. And he is one of 20 kids. - [Andrew] Wow. - It's mostly guys. So it's just a lot of brothers
and I think two sisters. - Wow. I just had Jonathan Haidt on the podcast, the guy who's talking the anxious generation causing the American mind. He's great. But he was saying that in order to keep kids healthy, they need to not be on social media or have smartphones until they're 16. I've actually been thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends onto neighboring properties. Everyone talks about this. Not creating a commune
or anything like that. I think Jonathan's right, more or less our brain wiring does best when we raised in small
village type environments where kids can forage the
whole free range kids idea. And I grew up skateboarding and building forts and dirt
clawed wars and all that stuff. It would be so strange to have a childhood without that. - Yeah. And I think more and more as we wake up to the negative aspects of digital interaction, we'll put more and more value to in-person interaction. - I mean, it's cool to see, for instance, kids in New York City just kind of moving around the city with so
much sense of agency. It's really, really cool. The suburbs where I grew up, as soon as we could get out, take the seven 7F bus up to San Francisco and hang out with wild ones, while there were dangers, I mean, we couldn't wait
to get outta the suburbs. The moment that forts and dirt clawed wars and stuff didn't cut it, we just wanted into the city. So bucket list, I will probably move to a major city, not Los Angeles or San Francisco, in the next few years. New York City, potentially. - Those are all such different
flavors of experiences. - Yeah. So I'd love to live in
New York City for a while. I've always wanted to do that. And I will do that. I've always wanted to also have a place in a very rural area. So Colorado, Montana are
high on my list right now. And to be able to pivot back and forth between the two would be great, just for such different experiences. And also, I like a very physical life. So the idea of getting up with the sun in a Montana or Colorado type environment. And I've been putting some effort towards finding a spot for that. And New York City to me, I know it's got its issues and people say it wasn't what it was. Okay, I get it. But listen, I've never lived there. So for me, it'd be entirely new. Shul seems full of life. - There is an energy to that city and he represents that. I mean there's- - [Andrew] Yeah. - And the full diversity of weird that is represented in
New York City is great. - Yeah, he walked down the street, there's like a person with
like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit. - [Lex] Yeah, that's great. - San Francisco used to be like that. The joke was, like, you have to be naked and on fire in San Francisco before someone takes it, but now it's changed. But again, recently I've
noticed that San Francisco, it's not just about the skateboarders, there's some community
houses of people in tech that are super interesting. There's some community
housing of people not in tech that I've learned about and known people have lived there. It's cool. There's stuff happening
in these cities that's new and different. I mean, that's what youth is for. They're supposed to evolve things out. - So amidst all that, you still have to get shit done. I've been really obsessed
with tracking time recently, like making sure I have daily activities. I have habits that I'm maintaining. And I'm very religious about
making sure I get shit done. - Do use an app or something like that? - No, just Google Sheets. So basically a spreadsheet
and I'm tracking daily. And I write scripts that
whenever I achieve a goal, it glows green. - Yeah. Do you track your workouts and all that kind of stuff too? - No. Just the fact that I got the workout done. - [Andrew] Yeah. - So it's a check mark thing. So I'm really, really big
on making sure I do a thing. It doesn't matter how long it is. So I have a rule for myself
that I do a set of tasks for at least five minutes every day. And it turns out that many of them, I do way longer, but even just doing it, I have to do it every day. And there's currently 11 of them. And it's just a thing, like one of them is playing
guitar, for example. So do you do that kind of stuff? Do you do daily habits? - Yeah, I do. I wake up. If I don't feel I slept enough. I do this non-sleep deep
rest yoga nidra thing that I talked about a bunch. We actually released a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify. 10-minute, 20-minute ones
puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested. Actually, Matt Walker and
I are gonna run a study. He's just submitted the
IRB to run a study on NSDR and what it's actually doing to the brain. There's some evidence of
increases in dopamine, et cetera, but those are older studies, still cool studies. So I'll do that. Get up hydrate. And if I've got my act together, I punch some caffeine down, like some Mateína, some coffee, maybe another Mateína, and resistance train three days a week, run three days a week. And then take one day off. And like to be done by 8:39. And then I want to get
into some real work. I actually have a sticky
note on my computer. It's just like reminding
me how good it feels to accomplish some real work. And then I go into it right now. It's the book writing,
researching a podcast, and just fight tooth and nail to stay off social media, text message, WhatsApp, YouTube, all that. Get something done. - How long can you go? Can you go three hours just deep focus? - If I hit a groove, yeah, 90 minutes to three hours if I'm really in a groove. - That's tough. For me, I start the day... Actually, that's why I'm
afraid I'd really prize that those morning hours
I start with the work. - [Andrew] Yeah. - I'm trying to hit the
four-hour mark of deep focus. - Great. I love it. - And it often- - Report, report. - Yeah, I'm really, really faithfully... - [Andrew] Yeah. - It's often torture, actually. It's really, really difficult. - Oh yeah. The agitation. But I've sat across the table
from you a couple years ago when I was out here in
Austin doing some work and I was working on stuff you were... And I noticed you'll just stare
at your notebook sometimes, just like pen at the same position and then you'll get back into it. There are those building
that hydraulic pressure and then go. Yeah, I try and get
something done of value, then the communications start. And talking to my podcast producer. My team is everything. I mean, the magic potion in
the podcast is Rob Moore, who's has been in the room with me, every single solo. Costello used to be in there with us because that's it. People have asked, journalists have asked, can they sit in? Friends have asked. Nope, just Rob. And for guest interviews, he's there as well. And I talk to Rob all the time. All the time, we talk multiple times per day. In life, I've made some errors in
certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that. And certainly don't
blame all of it on them, but I've played my role. But in terms of picking business partners and friends to work with him, I mean, Rob's just... It's been bullseye. Rob has been amazing. Mike Blabac, our photographer, and the guys I mentioned earlier, we just communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every
decision like near neuroticism before we put anything out there. - Including like even created decisions of like topics to cover all that. - Yeah, like a photo for the
book jacket the other day. Mike shoots photos. And then we look at them, we pour over them together. Logo for the Perform
Podcast with Andy Galpin that we're launching, is that the right contour? Mike's the real... He's got the aesthetic thing 'cause he was at DC so long as a portrait photographer. And he was close friends with Ken Block who did Jim Connor, like all the car jumping
in the city stuff. He's a true master of that stuff. And we just pour over
every little decision. But even which sponsors, there are dozens of ads now. By the way, that whole jazzer sizer thing of me saying, "Oh, a guy
went from a two to a seven," I never said that. That's AI. I would never call number off
somebody a two to a seven. Are you kidding me? It's crazy. So it's AI. If you bought the thing, I'm sorry. But like our sponsors, we list the sponsors we have and why on our website. And like the decision, do we work with this person or not? Do we still like the product? I mean, we've got ways with sponsors 'cause of changes in the product. Most of the time, it's amicable, all good, but like just every detail and that just takes a
ton of time and energy. But I try and work mostly on content. And my team's constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions 'cause I obsess. You have to have a team of some sort, someone that you can run things by - For sure. But one of the challenges, the larger the team is, and I'd like to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stuff, including engineering stuff,
robotics, work, research, all of those interactions,
at least for me, take away from the deep work, the deep focus.
- Right, right. - Unfortunately, I get
drained by social interaction even with the people I love and really respect and
all that kind of stuff. - [Andrew] You're an introvert. - Yeah. Fundamentally an introvert. So to me, it's a trade off getting shit
done versus collaborating. And I have to choose wisely because without collaboration,
without a great team, which I'm fortunate
enough to be a part of, you wouldn't get anything really done. But as an individual contributor, to get stuff done, to do the hard work of
researching or programming, all that kind of stuff, you need the hours of deep work. - I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's on my bucket list, spend a bit more time
dropped into work alone. I think social media causes our brain to go the other direction. I try and answer some comments and then get back to work. - After going to the jungle, I appreciate not using the device. I've played with the
idea of spending certain, maybe like one week a month
not using social media at all. - I used it. So after that morning block, I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something. And then a bit more work and
that real work, deep work. And then round 2:30, I do a non-sleep deep rest, take a short nap, wake up, boom, maybe a little more caffeine, and then lean into it again. I find if you've really
put in the deep work two or three bouts per day
by about 5:00 or 6:00 PM, it's over. I was down at Jocko's
place not that long ago in the evening, did a sauna session with him and some family members of his and some of their friends. And it's really cool. They all work all day and train all day. And then in the evening, they get together, and they sauna and cold plunge. I'm really into this
whole thing of gathering with other people at a
specific time of day. I have a gym at my house. Tim will come over and train. We've kind of slowed that
down in recent months. But I think gathering
in groups once a day, being alone for part of the day, and it's very fundamental stuff. We're not saying anything that hasn't been said
millions of times before, but how often do actually do that? And call the party. Be the person to bring people together if it's not happening. That's something I've really had to learn even though I'm an introvert. Like, "Hey!" I'm like, "Gather people together." You came through town the other day and a lot of people at the house. It was rad. Actually, I was playing 'cause I was getting a
massage when you walked in. I don't sit around getting
massages very often, but I was getting one that day. And then everyone came
in, and the dog came in, and everyone was piled in. It was very sweet. - Again, no devices, but choose wisely the
people you gather with. - Right, right. And I was clothed. - Thank you for clarifying, which is very weird. Yeah, yeah. The friends you surround yourself with, that's another thing. I understood that from my ayahuasca and from just the experience
in the jungle is, like, just select the people. Just be careful how
you allocate your time. I just saw somewhere. Conor McGregor has this good line, I wrote it down, about loyalty. He said, "Don't eat with people
you wouldn't starve with." - Ooh. - I mean, he's big on loyalty. All the shit talk, all of that, set that aside. To me, loyalty is really big because then if you invest in
certain people in your life and they stick by you
and you stick by them, what else is life about? - Yeah. Well, hardship will show you
who your real friends are. That's for sure. And we're fortunate to have a lot of them. It'll also show you who really has put in the time to try and understand you
and understand people. People are complicated. I love that. So you read the quote once more. - Don't eat with people
you wouldn't starve with. Yeah. So in that way, a hardship is a gift. It shows you. - Definitely. And it makes you stronger. It definitely makes you stronger. - Let's go get some food. Yeah, you are one meal a day guy. - Yeah. I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of biltong. I hope we're eating a steak. - I hope so too. I'm full of nicotine and caffeine. - Yeah. What do you think? How you feel?
- I feel good. - Yeah. I was thinking you'd probably... I only did a half a piece and I won't have more for
a little while, but... - [Lex] Little too good. - [Andrew] Yeah. - Thank you for talking
once again, brother. - Yeah, thanks so much, Lex. It's been a great ride,
this podcast thing. And you're the reason
I started the podcast. You inspired me to do it. You told me to do it. I did it. And you've also been an amazing friend. You showed up in some
very challenging times and you've shown up for me publicly. You've shown up for me
in my home, in my life. It's an honor to have you as a friend. Thank you. - I love you, brother. - Love you too. - Thanks for listening
to this conversation with Andrew Huberman. To support this podcast, please check out our
sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with
some words from Carl Jung, "Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you'll call it fate." Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.