March 30, 2024 • 59 mins
Andrew Huberman is having a rough one after New York Mag published a long read looking into his personal and professional life.
Andrew Huberman’s Mechanisms of Control The private and public seductions of the world’s biggest pop neuroscientist. https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/andrew-huberman-podcast-stanford-joe-rogan.html
Andrew Huberman Has Supplements on the Brain: https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/critical-thinking-health-and-nutrition/andrew-huberman-has-bad-case-supplement-brain
So, Should You Trust Andrew Huberman? https://slate.com/technology/2024/03/andrew-huberman-huberman-lab-health-advice-podcast-debunk.html
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
our podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, where
we explore the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet,
and identity. So this is me doing my best impression
(00:28):
of one of my favorite podcasters, Michael Hobbs. Mike, what
do you know about Andrew Kuberman?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, I'll do my best, Peter, And as far as
I know, I don't know a whole lot about him.
But he's a podcaster, a scientist of some sort, and
he seems to have a pretty big following in the
health lifestyle space.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's pretty spot on. So Angie Huberman is a neuroscientist.
He has a very popular podcast. It's one of the
most popular podcasts in the world. He currently is a
professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University's School of Medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Ever heard of it, Yeah, a little old college called
Stanford University.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So since twenty twenty one, he has hosted a extremely
popular health and science focused podcast called Huberman Lab that
is basically all about biohacking your life, your health, and
your relationships buttressed by science. He has the third most
popular podcast in the United States on Spotify, and at
(01:37):
least at one time his podcast was the most followed
on Apple. He has five point one million YouTube subscribers
and as Instagram account has like five point five million people.
A lot of people swear by his life advice. All
different kinds of people listen to his podcast. I don't
want to make it seem like it's just men, but
it has really especially taken off with men. I have
heard Huberman called Goop for men.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Goop as in like slimy gunk.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Goop, as in the lifestyle brand brought to us by
Gwyneth Paltrow. But instead of telling women to like drink
fifty five dollars smoothies or whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Or like insert some crystals or.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Insert some crystals into their Vershina, it's for men. So
the reason why we're talking about Andrew Huberman is because
he is in the zeitgeist right now. After this very long,
very well written, very well researched New York mag article
just dropped doing this deep dive into his personal life
and his relationships with women. Now I'm not even gonna
(02:35):
pretend to not be biased here. I live for a
long read in New York Mag or The Cut specifically,
Like we are fans of New York Mag in this house.
If there's ever a long read in New York Mag,
you know that's going to be the kind of piece
that everyone is talking about for a week. And the
Human Bean article it's no exception.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's such a written article. It reads like literature,
Like there were so many sentences that I read.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
It's like, that's an amazing sentence. Such a nice read.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And so for folks who are listening who have not
read it, I do want to give the caveat that
it's very long. I listened to the article and that
took about an hour, Like like New York Meg has
the option to have someone read it. That took about
an hour. Reading it took a while, so like it
is a long read, but I thought it was worth it.
And the piece has kind of invited scrutiny, not just
(03:29):
into answer Schuberman's personal life, but it's professional work as
a scientist and a podcaster too. Mike, you are a scientist,
that's right, and you are a man also, right, So
I thought that you actually might be a good person
to talk to you about this. Like I said, should
they upfront that you have not deeply studied Huberman's science
(03:52):
or his body of work, but you generally like have
a sense of what is it is not okay or
ethical in the eyes of science, correct.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, or at least I It's something that I spent
a lot of time thinking about and reading about.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
And you know, who.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Ultimately gets to say what is right and ethical is
kind of an existential question. But yeah, those are things
that I think about and feel like I have a
good basis to evaluate things.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So initially I actually wasn't even going to get into
this on the show because you know, at first, I
was sort of seeing a lot of people's reactions to
the piece, and I thought people were saying, like, Oh,
this is just frivolous, this is about his dating life, whatever, whatever,
And I was like, oh, we I'm interested in this,
but we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast. But
it kind of was a little bit of a bug
in my brain, and after reading the article, I noticed
(04:44):
that I was thinking about it quite a lot, and
I was sort of trying to put it in context
with this current political and social and media moment that
we're in where we have the rise of people like RFK,
Like I do think we're in this sort of I
don't know, suito science moment with men. You know, a
lot of times when we're talking about medical misinformation, we're
(05:06):
talking about women, but I think we talk a lot
less about how we see it moving with men. And
I thought this article just really kind of got me
thinking about that, and it also spoke to something I've
been noticing as this trend in podcasting for a while,
like white guy tech or science podcaster who sort of
talks to other white guy science or tech podcasters and
(05:30):
thus enjoy this kind of like self sustaining vibe as
we are trustworthy white men of science and technology and
knowledge and you should listen to us. We're very learned men.
And I really do see Huberman as fitting within that,
even though I do think that he kind of enjoyed
maybe a more elevated position within that circle. I know
(05:54):
that he's the kind of podcaster who's friendly with folks
like Joe Rogan. He goes on Rogan Show all the time, Timaris,
So if you don't know who that is, he's another
very popular kind of lifestyle entrepreneur, guru podcaster and Lex Friedman,
who is the number one tech podcaster in the world,
who in researching for this episode, I realized sometime between
(06:18):
last night and maybe four months ago, when I did
a podcast episode about him, he blocked me on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Oh Man, how does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Bridget honestly confused, because I went and checked. I have
never tweeted at him. I barely tweet and I did
a search and I was like, yeah, I've never mentioned
him on Twitter. I have mentioned him on the podcast
quite a few times, and so I have a difficult
time imagining that Lex Redman is listening to this podcast.
But you know, maybe he heard what I had to
(06:50):
say about his show and didn't like it and was like,
let me just block her just preemptively.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
So maybe he just did not want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Lex, if you're listening, I'm sorry I made fun of
your podcast. Anyway. I think we're kind of seeing Huberman's
status as like a learned public man, and the way
that we think about that status that is typically occupied
by a certain type of white man I think we're
sort of seeing that unravel a little bit now with
this piece. We're seeing people kind to peek behind the
(07:22):
curtain of that.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That New York magpiece certainly made it seem so right
they and they made the point specifically, sort of like
the point that you just made that it's it's not
just like, look at the messy details of this person's life,
but really connects with his public persona and I guess
(07:43):
brand that he is serving up to people.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, And I guess I would posit that that is
why any of this matters, why anybody should care. People
might be thinking, well, why should I care how this
podcaster treats the women in this personal life. I am
not particularly interested in Angreie Huberman's personal or romantic life.
I will in this episode get into some of what
the article says about his relationships with women, so folks
have that context to understand like why we're talking about
(08:08):
this at all. But the reason that I'm interested in
talking about him is because there is a ton of
overlap in Huberman's podcasting and sort of public sciencing work
for lack of a better phrase, and technology and like
popular attitudes that tech leaders hold a lot of people
in tech are listening to his show Huberman Lab and
using that to guide their own thinking. This absolutely makes sense,
(08:30):
and a culture where you have this mix of productivity
hacks that bleed over into like lifestyle or health hacks
like ketto and instrument fasting and pills and potions and
powders and quick fixes that promise quick success. Now, this
is just my opinion as a casual observer of all
of this. I do think there is like a thread
of fat phobia or like ableism in this, this idea
(08:54):
that being physically fit is akin to also being professionally
successful and thus being the happiest and best version of yourself,
the version of yourself that has the healthiest and most
full relationships. It sounds like this is a mindset that
says all of that starts with being a physically fit,
physiologically fit healthy.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I think you're right, And I think that is an
idea that's been repackaged and resold many times over the
past several hundred years, even before then, probably right, like
the idea that physical health is you know, tightly linked
(09:34):
with spiritual health and virtue, that's an idea that grifters
have been.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Lucratively promoting for a long time.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So Huberman himself is like really jacked, and I can't
help but think that that plays into all of this.
As writer Maria Alex Beach put it on Twitter, he's
the prototype of the American beef female, which which we
don't associate with scientists. The dissonance between how he looks
and what he knows is compelling. He gathers our communal
preoccupation with health, body self care, anti aging, longevity, with
(10:11):
our respect for those with wisdom and knowledge enchanted were
easy to hustle. Essentially, he's the worst of us.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
That description from Maria Alex Beach, it makes me think
of Beast from the Marvel movies, like a big, jacked
beast of a man who's also a nerdy scientist.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's a type. So Huberman is like the main guy
of what's known as biohacking, or trying to shift or
improve your physiology and nervous system to function better. Now,
on its face, this is not a bad thing, like inherently,
and in fact, I would actually argue that women are
kind of the og biohackers. Like I remember back when
(10:52):
a lot of the tech bros were skipping meals and
instead drinking that drink soilent, which a lot of women
were like, oh, you mean slim fast. It was a base,
a degendered slim fest that your mom maybe drank in
the eighties. You know. So, I think biohacking is something
that I associate with women that has kind of been
rebranded as for masculine men.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, that I think rebranded is a good way to
put it, because it's a term that I think is
primarily used to market things. And yeah, the idea that
it's you know, I hadn't thought about this, but originally
was more associated with women.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Even back in the early twentieth century, women were talking
about the timing of menstrual cycles to avoid unintended pregnancies
and speculating about a pill that might someday allow women
to avoid them altogether.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Right, biohacking exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
But the biohacking space has kind of been taken up
by a real masculine energy, which again I think makes
sense in this social media climate where people are always
talking about, you know, high value men and low value men.
There is a ton of overlap between the biohacking space
and just a real toxic brand of masculinity. But in general,
(12:11):
I think that men have kind of been an untapped
market when it comes to stuff like lifestyle and diet advice.
As women, I can tell you we are we have
been inundated by that kind of junk since we were children,
So we have a good sense of it because a
lot of it out there that is trected toward us.
I think that men, it's just a different market and
maybe a little bit of an untapped market when it
(12:32):
comes to lifestyle and diet advice specifically for men. So
when someone like Huberman comes along and has this different
vibe of lifestyle and diet advice for men, one that
sort of gives the perception as being rooted in science,
not just toxic masculinity. Of course, it takes off. Pubreman
emerges in twenty twenty one as this kind of kinder, gentlier,
(12:53):
less BROI version of biohacking. However, as Jonathan Jerry, science
communicator with the Office of Science and Society at McGill
University puts it, Huberman presents the same kind of stuff,
just in a less broy less masculine package. Jerry writes,
even though this podcast is firmly rooted in the masculine
space of body optimization that has grabbed hold of large
(13:16):
swaths of the tech sector, Huterman is a lot less
BROWI than his fellow influencers. There's a real gentleness and
care to his delivery. The packaging is less aggressive, but
the content does not stray far from Silicon Valley's love
affair with the tweaking of healthy human biology. And to
add to that, I'll just say it, in my opinion,
I think a lot of men in this space might
(13:39):
just have issues with women. I think a lot of
them maybe don't respect women that much. I think they
maybe don't see women as equals. I think they maybe
don't really value what women have to say, how women think.
And so I think in that context, both professionally and
maybe personally, it maybe does kind of matter how somebody
like Andrew Huberman treats women. To me, As you said,
(14:02):
this is so much more than a look how messy
this guy's personal life is. That's all gotgat it story.
It's a story that maybe answers some of the very
long held criticisms of Andrew Huberman's podcast, like that he
barely features any women experts, for one, and it poses
questions about what happens when people who have expertise in
one area of study kind of dine out on that
(14:24):
and make it seem like they know what they're talking
about when it comes to everything. And on top of that,
the dangers of building your life around the advice of
somebody who the article suggests we may not even really know.
So if you don't listen to Huberman's podcast, you might
not know this. But lots and lots and lots of
people deeply subscribe to Huberman's life advice. There's a term
(14:46):
for it on TikTok. A Huberman husband a man who
follows Huberman's life advice, and that advice like has them
getting up before sunrise, has them waiting ninety minutes before
having their first coffee of the day, you know, has
them getting like a specific kind of low angle sunlight
and doing a high intensity workout and an ice bath
in the morning and all of this stuff. So if
all of these people are building their identities around this
(15:09):
guy's guidance, which they absolutely are, I do think looking
into how he thinks about women is worthwhile. But I
don't think that's a frivolous clickbait dive into someone's personal
life that is really unfair.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Necessarily, Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I think.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Anybody who positions themselves to a wide public audience as
a person who has the answer right, like who has
wisdom that should be followed that other people should shape
their lives around. I think it's absolutely appropriate to scrutinize
their words, their message, and the extent to which their
(15:50):
personal values live up to what they are publicly espousing.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So there have been a lot of popular tech voices
who disagree with you. Lex Freedmen, for one, says that
probing into Andrew Hubermant's personal life is an invasion of
privacy and essentially a hit job, which you know, I
don't know, Like I can sort of see what they're
saying in some regards, but I would point to the
fact that Hubermant's podcast is in part about having healthy
(16:15):
relationships and emotional intelligence. So like, if you build an
entire big platform about how people should listen to you
about how to have healthy relationships and a healthy emotionality,
maybe looking into how you have built relationships and how
you show up emotionally is fair game. Like on this
podcast that I host, I intentionally almost never talk about
(16:37):
my personal relationships on the podcast. So guess what, Like,
nobody's digging into my personal relationship history because I'm not
saying listen to me, and when it comes to personal relationships,
it never comes up. So like, I do kind of
feel like if you build an entire platform that it's
about listening to you and modeling after what you say,
it does seem kind of fair to me to look
(16:57):
into it. And if you don't want people looking into it,
you don't have to build that kind of platform.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Let's hit a quick break.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Ederer back, and I would guess I would say that
beyond his dating life, this piece is really looking at
the values of this person who has risen to be
one of the country's biggest pop scientists, who specifically has
become a guru to others. So like, if this person
is a guru to millions of people, it matters. If
(17:38):
this person is also a liar, it matters if this
person is also a grifter. Here's how the New York
magpiece puts it. Huberman sells a dream of control down
to the cellular level, but something has gone wrong. In
the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between
the podcast or preaching dopominergic restraint and a man with
new found wealth with access to a world unseen by
(18:00):
most professors. The problem with the man who is always
working on himself is that he may also be working
on you.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Dun, dun, dunn.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So let's get into exactly what is in this article.
The majority of this piece, and the messiest bits, frankly,
are about his chaotic romantic life. Basically, Huberman is accused
of dating at least six women at the same time,
all while giving the women the impression that they are monogamous.
He maintains this via a very elaborate system of deception
and lies. The women are all kind of like him.
(18:30):
They're all very health conscious. They're all described as the
kind of people who are really particular about what they
put in their body. So because they were all told
that they were exclusive with Huberman, they all had unprotected
sex with him, not being told that he was also
having unprotected sex with a lot of other women at
the same time. You know, these women were living this
kind of intentional lifestyle that he preaches on the show.
(18:53):
And here is Andrew, in my opinion, kind of sabotaging
that by depriving them of the ability to make health
choices for their own bodies through deception. Like, I don't
think that is a frivolous thing for anybody to be doing,
let alone a scientist whose whole thing is you should
be really mindful about what you put in your body
(19:13):
unless that thing you're putting in your body is me.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, earlier on you asked about ethics, and you know,
it's a complicated thing for anyone to know what is
ethical or not. But it's also like not that complicated
in some ways. And if you want a big, bright
red warning flag that an ethical boundary is being crossed,
(19:38):
just keep an eye out for deception, right, Like, if
there's deception happening, you should really question whether what's going
on is ethical.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So that's like, that feels like a pretty strong line
here that that has been crossed.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well, according to these women in this article, there was
a lot of just going on. Let's get into it. Basically,
he was not treating these women with respect, to say
the least. So here's a couple of bits from the
article that really drive that point home. It is suggested
that he may have given at least one of these
women an std HPV. Specifically, in twenty twenty one, one
(20:19):
woman tested positive for a high risk form of HPV,
one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. I had
never tested positive, she says, and had been tested regularly
for ten years. A spokesperson for Huberman says he has
never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC, there
is currently no approved test for HPV in men. When
the woman brought this up, she says that Andrew told
(20:41):
her that you could contract HPV from many things. I'm
sure he did say that, Yeah, maybe you gotta have
a toilet seed.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe I don't know, Yeah, I don't know what you do.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So there's one woman who has kids from a previous relationship,
and she says that Huberman fixated on this and that
it's something they thought about a lot. At one point,
she says that he told her that being in a
relationship with her was like bobbing for apples in feces.
Apparently things only got worse when they moved in together.
(21:14):
Sarah was in fact changing, She felt herself getting smaller,
constantly appeasing. She apologized again and again and again. I
have been selfish, childish and confused, she said. As a result,
I need your protection. A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah's
accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation,
denies that he fixated on Sarah's decision to have children
(21:34):
with another man, and denies that he said that being
with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. Which
side note. If somebody that I am in a romantic
relationship with ever tells me that being with me is
like bobbing for apples and feces, I have every bit
of information I need about how this person feels about me.
There is no other piece of clarifying information or context
that is needed for me to understand how they feel
(21:54):
and what's going on.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's also such a strange phrase, like I have to
imagine that it was said in anger, Like he was
probably pretty mad when he said that.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It's that sort of thing you say when you're feeling great.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
You think he said it as like pillow talk, a
sweet whisper.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I don't. I think he probably said it when he
was mad. But to be so mad to say something
like that and then use the term feces. There are
so many other words in the English language that align
more with like emotions of anger and rage than feces.
So it's like this weird artificial layer of like restraint
(22:31):
or scientific jargon to like put a clean face on
just really saying a terrible thing to a woman.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well, when asked about that comment, a spokesperson for Huberman said, quote,
doctor Huberman is very much in control of his emotions. Which,
if there's ever a situation in my life where a
spokesperson has to be telling the public that bridget Todd
is very in control of emotions, I don't want to
know what's going on. Woof.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So apparently Hubert was actively undergoing IVF with this woman
while also maintaining other relationships behind her back, a point
that he doesn't even really disagree with. He disputes that
they were trying to start a family together, but his
spokesperson clarified that they did not want to try for
a baby together, that he quote decided to create embryos
(23:30):
by IVF. I don't know how that is different than
intending to sort a family with her I guess that
that specific point is important to him in some way.
I don't know how that's. Like that claim is not
really in dispute, but like it's important to him to
be like, Oh, we didn't want a baby, we were
just doing IVF.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
There seems to be some like weird feelings around children
going on with that whole story around that woman, Like
the idea that a major source of friction in their
relationship was that he disapproves of her decision to have
kids with a different man before they ever met. That
just feels kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, So, if you've ever been played by a player,
this next one is gonna sound real familiar to you.
Huberman relied on pretty sexist and misogynistic tropes about women
being crazy to keep the women from finding out about
each other. So the piece reads, whenever Sarah had suspicions
(24:29):
about Andrew's interaction with another woman, he had a particular
way of talking about the woman in question. She says
he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars.
He told her that one woman tore out her hair
with chunks of flesh attached to it. A story like
that's gotta be true. He told her a story about
a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby
to quote entrap him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies the
(24:52):
account of the denigraation of women and the dead baby
story and says that the hair story was taken out
of context. So curious to know the actual what is
that story in context?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
You know how women are always ripping their hair out
with chunks of their own flesh.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know how women are.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Bitches, me crazy bitches be tearing out and shun some.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Hair with flesh attached, literally just like raving lunatics all
the time.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Most of the time, Sarah believed him the women were
probably crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful.
So this is something that I have learned from like
not to be not just trying to be like a
relationship guru. But any man who tells you that like, oh,
there's just a bunch of crazy women in my orbit.
Every all the women around me are crazy, that man
is a liar. Like that man is not telling the truth.
That man is a liar. That is like one of
(25:43):
my like deeply held red flags and life. Because even
if that were true, what's going on with you, that
you just are the kind of person who like, all
these crazy women just flock to you like that doesn't
even if that was true, which it almost which I
think it almost never is, even that is not great.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It only holds up if one has a worldview that
all women are crazy. Right, It's not that I have
created this social dynamic where I'm surrounded by crazy women.
Just all women are crazy and they can't help but
be attracted to me, you know how I am. So
that's where we're at. I'm just surrounded by all these
crazy women. That's that's the way that that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yes I am. I am the healthy, normal, normal one,
and all these women, you know how women are. This
reminds me so much of a story from my personal
life involving friends where there was a friend breakup and
between a man and a woman, and the woman her
account was like very specific, she had so many details.
He did X y Z to me, he did this offense,
(26:45):
this offense on that day, this offense, and then his
account was like she was crazy, Like that was like
that was the like she had a dossier of his
specific wrongdoings and he was just like she crazy. So
this is another pretty common thing. I think Huberman apparently
had a type. He went after these dynamic, assertive, confident women,
(27:09):
and then he wanted these women to be kind of
submissive to him. The piece reads multiple women recall him
saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the
woman was monogamous but the man was not. He told me,
says Mary, that what he wanted was a woman who
was submissive, who he could slap on the ass in public,
and who would be crawling on the floor for him
when he got home. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this. Also,
(27:34):
I feel been this port spokesperson who was like doctor
Huberman never said he wanted a woman who would be
crawling on the floor for him when he got home.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I am curious about the spokesperson because they're quoted so
many times in this article, and I mean, I don't
have the sense. I guess I don't really know how
big his operation is, but like, I kind of get
the sense that a lot of these guys don't have
like huge PR teams, So like, who is this spokesperson?
What were they doing before they woke up to find
(28:03):
themselves in this malstrom of.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Allegations to deny well.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Not responding in real time. I can tell you that
because the person who wrote this article for New York
mag says that they gave Humorman's team two days to
read the full thing and respond to any of the allegations,
and they basically like, this is what they got. So,
you know, curious to me too. So one other thing
to note about the way that he treats the women
is that he juggled them in this way that is
(28:32):
kind of weirdly almost impressive. Here's one passage. There was
a day in Texas when after Sarah left his hotel,
andrews up with Mary and texted Eve. They found days
in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself
to two of them. At the same time, they realized
that the day before he had moved in with Sarah
and Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he also
had been with her in December twenty twenty three, the
(28:52):
weekend before Sarah caught him on the couch with a
sixth woman. They realized on March twenty first, twenty twenty one,
a day of admittedly impressive logistical jiu jitsu while Sarah
was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to
La to stay with them into Panga. While Mary was
there visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her
with his dog, Costello. He drove to a coffee shop
where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about
(29:14):
their relationship. They thought they were in a good place.
He wanted to make it work. Phone died. He texted Mary,
who was waiting back at the place into Panga, and
later to Eve, thank you for being so next level
gorgeous and sexy. My god, this sounds stressful.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It does, and it truly is impressive to balance all
of this and make it all work. I think the
most shocking thing in this is that he, like he
flew this woman from Texas to La to be with him,
left her to watch his dog so he could go
meet up with another woman, did not have sex with
that woman, just had a very long, serious talk about
(29:53):
their relationship.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where George
wants to get He's dating two women and he's trying
to like get them both to like break it off
because it's too much work and neither of them will
do it, and so he's just trying to like balance
these two relationships, and he finds himself being like, oh,
I thought, like I'm seeing God's spell with one and
going he's skating with the other, And Jerry's like, which
(30:17):
is wish? And He's like does it matter? That's what
I feel like is going on here. It would be
so much easier to just be honest with all of them,
be like, listen, I'm dating all of you. Either you're
down with it or you're not. Like, the maintaining the
deception and the ruse sounds like it is so stressful
that I cannot imagine it is more satisfying than this
being like openly ethically non monogamous with all of them.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He's a famous, smart, good looking, wealthy guy. If he
just wanted to have a bunch of open relationships with
hot women, he could probably accomplish that, right.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I think so. But that's what I'm saying, Like, I
don't I think that he could have that if you
wanted that easily. I don't think he wants that, don't.
I don't think it's about that. I think that it's
about control and feeling like I am a I am
like an optimized, smart guy who was able to stay
(31:13):
one step ahead of all of these women, which I
know he fucking wasn't, but like, I think that's part
of it. I think the control of the deception is
part of it, because he could easily have that if
you wanted that. I also think, like, and this just
just like what I've seen from being in relationships. I
do think there's a kind of person who likes the
idea of having open relationships with people where everybody is
(31:37):
on the up and up and knows what's going on,
while simultaneously liking the idea of like settling down, starting
a family, doing IVF. Like he wouldn't be the first
person who maybe has conflicted desires at the same time.
Like that, that's not like difficult for me to imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
That makes a lot of sense. And you know, and
in his mind, he's smart enough to have it all, right,
Like yeah, the idea that we all have conflicting desires
one a lot of things, but have to make trade
offs because you can't have it all. It is seductive
(32:16):
to think that maybe you could have it all, all
you need to do is be sufficiently good at lying.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, And like again, I think this is all part
of his the ethos that he preaches that you can
hack yourself. There's some sort of like way to gamify life.
In this way, you can gamify life that you can
have a series of fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships with
a bunch of women and also settle down and have
(32:42):
that woman be monogamous to you and like have your kid.
I think that he's I think that I don't think
that the way that he is treating these women is
completely removed from the ethos that he preaches on the show.
I think they are connected and that is why. And
it's interesting to dive into how these women do say
that he showed up. So these women all found out
about each other through Instagram, which again I don't want
(33:05):
to sound like I'm giving romantic advice, but some advice
I do have is that if you are someone who
is like live and foul, I guess I'll say you
can't have Instagram. If you are someone who is like
like doing something in a relationship that you know you're
not supposed to be doing, you can't have an iPad.
You can't have it, you can't have Instagram. You need
(33:27):
to be really careful about how you show up digitally.
Because that's how they get you.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Wait, you can't have an iPad if you are.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
A serial cheeter iPads Like you know, you're texting on
your phone, some setting is trip that you forgot about
and there's now it's on the iPad, but back at
your apartment. I'm just saying, like, if you are someone
who is showing up in relationships in a certain kind
of way and people don't and the other person is
not aware of that, and that is a deception that
(33:54):
you are trying to like juggle and maintain. Technology is
something you have to be extra special care full about,
and it sounds like he was not extra special careful
about it.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Listeners, thank you for joining us on how to cover
your tracks with Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I mean this is just like it's twenty twenty four.
If you're gonna be if you're gonna be doing it.
Like also, Huberman, I feel like no one is better
at navigating Instagram than women, right, Like I have told
my friends like, oh, I want to find so and
so They've got them pulled up in a minute. They're like,
here he is, Here's everybody he's ever known, here's everything
(34:33):
about him. He went to Cabo last week, like, here's
his aunt, Like, I think that Huberman thought he was
smarter than all of these women. And nobody is smarter
than a group of like confident, poised, self assured women
who are good at Instagram. Nobody is smarter, Like, I
don't care how many degrees you have. I don't care
if you're at Stanford. You are not smarter than a
group of women who have Instagram.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Not gonna argue. I feel like a little intimidated.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Frankly, yeah, I'll find out such about you, Mike, you
better watch out. So basically, one of these women noticed
that another woman was like constantly watching her Instagram story
but never commenting and just like lurking. She realized that
this woman also was followed by doctor Huberman, and so
eventually she just DM her and said, is there anything
(35:20):
that you'd rather ask me directly? Which I think that
is such a baller move and I just think it
goes to show like he tried to put all this
like sexist, misogynistic junk in these women's heads to keep
them thinking that like all of the other women were
just like jealous stalkers, and it didn't work. These women
all join a group chat together they start comparing timelines.
(35:41):
That's when they realized always playing all of us. But
piece actually ends on kind of a sweet note. These
women all become friends. They have a very active group chat,
which again it just goes to show like, if you're
gonna pull this shit, don't pull it with a bunch
of smart, confident women. They'll just get to the bottom
of it together and join forces and then like you
will be a forever running joke in their group chat forever,
(36:03):
the women in they have they have this active group
chat to this day. They send pictures of each other's
pets to each other and they use the reply that
they say that Andrew would use whenever they would send
him racy picts, which is.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Mmmmm yeah, it's The article does end in a really
surprising way. It's like this group of women became friends
and they're all doing fine, which I think makes this
story a little bit different than some others where it's
like powerful influential man, uh you know, has problems with women.
(36:40):
Right when those stories break, often there's some kind of
like allegations of abuse of some kind, or there's like
a lawsuit of some kind. It doesn't sound like these
women are seeking any kind of like restitution or really anything.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
There. It just seems like they were more than happy
to talk this reporter.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And that's something that I want to talk about because
if I were to say the thing that the so
one of this article, I think these women are trying
to say, this person that millions of people have held
up as a guru, the values that he preaches on
the show are not the values that he lives by
in his actual life. Like I would say that it's
a bit subtle, but I think that's the so. What
of the inclusion of all of these details about his
(37:22):
romantic life is that humanman is somebody who preaches a
really specific like life routine and mindset built around personal
discipline and being really mindful of all the different kinds
of things that you led into your life that spike dopamine,
from coffee to booze.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Like.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
The piece points out that he seems to show disdain
for anybody who drinks even a small amount, but in
his personal life, he's maybe not practicing a lot of
the kind of personal discipline around things that spike his dopamine,
in this case, relationships. Like one of the women says
that he told her that he thought he was a
love addict. So you have this guru preaching and ethos
(37:59):
around being minds about what you led into your physical orbit,
while also like binging on women and relationships and not
being forthcoming about it. That kind of makes his whole
body of advice, I guess it kind of calls it
into question.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, and I mean we can even zoom out another
level from Huberman in particular to just like gurus in general.
It's a pretty well worn trope, almost a cliche that
you know, some guru who has the answer, who is
preaching restraint and control is sleeping with a bunch of
(38:33):
women who follow his advice.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Tail as old as time. So this is how he's
alleged to have treated women that he is romantically and
sexually involved with in the piece. But and this is
something I don't feel like has gotten enough attention. This
kind of casual lack of respect for women seems to
bleed over into his professional life as well. There is
this anecdote where he reached out to a woman scientist
(38:57):
about collaborating together. They set a time to meetman doesn't
show this is a real theme in the piece. Huberman
like making plans with men and women and then just
flaking and people saying like he's totally unreliable. So the
scientist emails him after he cancels on their time to
meet and says, well, I guess you're not serious about
collaborating together, which again I respect that. Like if somebody
(39:21):
last minute canceling on somebody who was like pretty busy
and pretty like has a pretty full schedule, I could
understand what she was like, Yeah, I guess you don't
really feel seriously about working together. Andrew Cuberman clearly felt
some type of a way about this rather than just
let it go. He and another male scientist, Stanford trained
psychiatrist Paul Conti, did an episode of Huberman's podcast about
(39:44):
aggressive Drive in which Huberman makes this woman whose time
he wasted the poster child for toxic aggression in the workplace.
He tells the story of her emailing him and saying
I guess you aren't serious about working together and says
so to me. Huberman said on the podcast that seems
like an example of somebody who has a well strong
(40:05):
aggressive drive and when disappointed lashes back or as passive.
There's some way in which this person doesn't feel good enough,
no matter what this person has achieved. So then there
is a sense of the need and right to over control. Sure,
said Huberman. So now we're going to work together, right,
So I'm exerting significant control over you, right, and then
maybe he's not aware of it. In this case, Andrew
(40:26):
said it was a she. So this woman, explained Kanti,
based entirely on Andrew's description of two emails, had allowed
her unhealthy quote excess aggression to be eclipsing the generative drive.
She required that Andrew bowed down before her in service
of the ego because she did not feel good about herself.
This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men
(40:51):
egging each other on diagnoses after diagnoses salient, Perhaps for
reasons other than those that you identify, we learned that
this woman lacks great attitude, generative drive, and happiness. She
suffers from envy, low pleasure drive, and general unhappiness. It
would appear at a distance to be an elaborate fantasy
of an insane woman built upon a single behavior. At
(41:13):
some point in time, a woman decided she did not
want to work with a man who didn't show up, Like,
where does this dude? Get off.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
It's worth pointing out following that story that his expertise
is in vision, right, Like he's a neuroscience about vision,
So talking about drives like the pleasure drive, aggressive drive,
these are not areas of his expertise, and you know,
they're actually closer to my expertise. And a lot of
(41:45):
that stuff is is often like just so stories, right,
Like it's kind of sounds like a common sense idea.
You make up a story that fits this concept that
you've introduced, so yeah, it all makes sense.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, And the just so story is that can you
believe a woman talk to me like that? Andrew Huberman, Like,
I think this guy got that email from this woman scientist,
and I think it stung more because it came from
a woman, and he's somebody who doesn't respect women, so
he had to like use his massive platform to speculate
(42:22):
on her like low pleasure drive and stuff and how
she like needed him to sacrifice his ego and crawl
to her and blah blah blah down Like it really
is so misogynistic and sexist, and I think it really
feeds back into the way that these women were saying
that he treated them as.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well I'm also not confident that this colleague exists or
that any of that actually happened. I mean, we have
no evidence that it did other than him saying so.
It feels very much like a story that somebody might make.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Up to make that to like prop themselves up and
talk about how everybody else is less than him. At
all those less thans happen to be women.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
It fits more.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Another big piece of this that I want to make
sure is not overshadowed, because his piece is largely, but
(43:29):
not entirely about his romantic issues, is how his character
reflects on the work that he puts out on the podcast,
which is maybe not great. The New York mag piece
gets into this writing Huberman's specialty lies in a narrow
field vision system wiring. How comfortable one feels with the
science propagated on huberman Lab depends entirely on how much
(43:50):
leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds
for multiple hours a week on subjects while outside of
his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates
wildly from lib animal studies posit certainty where there is
ambiguity and stumbles when he veers too far from his
narrow realm of study, but even they will tend to
admit that the podcast is an expansive, free, or as
(44:11):
he puts, at zero cost compendium of human knowledge. There
are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient,
and often moving descriptions of biological process. So this entire
thing has really shined a light on his financial relationship
with supplement companies, namely Athletic Greens which is now called
(44:31):
ag One, which is a big sponsor of his podcast.
He is also their scientific advisor. I don't know what
that means, Mike, do you have any idea.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, that's a reasonable thing for people to be a
you know, scientific advisor to this or that.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
I'm not going to dig in for that. That's reasonable,
I mean fair.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
There is a bit of a potential conflict of interest,
like when he promotes the product on the show, do
his listeners know that if they decide to buy it
gets into some more ethical gray area there, But just
being a scientific advisor, that's a reasonable thing.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, Well we'll get into that, so I should say
big caveat I'm a podcaster. If you listen to this podcast,
we obviously.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You know we do edg we do ads, We do ads.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Nobody would accuse us of not do big ass. So
I'm not really in a position where I can fault
people for taking money to keep the good folks who
help make their show paid and like keep the show going. However,
if you are a scientist and your entire show is
about your expertise as a scientist, I do think there
(45:39):
was a different thing where maybe there should be a
little bit more scrutiny over exactly what you were saying,
like how you were using your position as a scientist
to talk things, especially something that is maybe a bunk product.
AG one is kind of maybe a not so good product,
and that it makes a lot of big claims that
have dubious backing. Here's what the New mag article says
(46:00):
about Huberman's relationship with AG One. On every episode of
his Zero Cost podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of
a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens, now known as
AG one. It's one thing to hear Athletic Greens, promoted
by Joe Rogan. It is perhaps another to hear someone
who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back
from the lab, proclaim that this seventy nine dollars a
(46:22):
month powder quote covers all your foundational nutritional needs. In
an industry not known for its integrity, ag one is,
according to writer and professional debunker Derek Burrs, one of
the most egregious players in the space. So, I will say,
as a podcaster, one of my pet peeves is podcasters
(46:42):
who are like, we make this podcast for free. No,
if you have ads, you really don't like. If you
are a podcaster who supports your work via ads, listeners
are not listening to that show for free. They are
kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads.
And so I I really hate that claim that, like,
it's a free podcast, I'm making this content for you
(47:04):
for free. If you have ads, you're really not. That's
really just not true.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, And it's a good system, right. The listeners don't
have to pay money. The ads support the show, you know,
they pay us a small amount to make the show.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I feel like listeners probably, I feel like there are
listeners out there who maybe don't think it's a great system.
People are always like I hate your.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Ads, fair but you know they you know, the ads them.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I also don't love listening to ads, but it's kind
of the system we got. There's some others out there
love to you know, talk more about it, but I
guess the point I'm trying to make is that ads
aren't inherently harmful. But where it does get dubious is
when it's these health supplements that are sold as having
(47:56):
like health properties that just really are not backed up
by evidence, and it really betrays a lack of concern
for listeners, I think, and as a scientist, for a
scientist to shill for nutritional supplements that do not have
a strong evidence backing, in fact, have a dubious, dubious
(48:18):
evidence behind them. And my understanding is that what's actually
in AG one is a proprietary blend, so people don't
even know. But for a scientist to back that, it
casts a doubt over everything else they say, or at
least it should, right, Like, apparently that is the standard
(48:39):
of evidence that they need to support a claim, right,
and so that same standard does that same low standard
of evidence apply to all of the scientific claims that
he's making on his show?
Speaker 3 (48:52):
One would assume it probably does.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
So yeah, it just really I personally think that a
scientist to promote dubious nutritional supplements just undercuts everything else
they might have to say about any other topic.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Well, one of my favorite science podcasters, Wendy Zuckerman of
the Science Versus podcast, which I love the piece, quotes
a time when she called Huberman out on this. She
pointed out that her podcast would never endorse a product
with such a dubious science behind it, and Huberman said,
that's the good news about podcasts. People can choose which
podcast they want to listen to.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah, and that makes it clear right there, makes it
crystal clear how he sees this. His scientific integrity was
being publicly called into question, which is like the worst
thing that could happen to a scientist. And he responds
by pointing to the popularity of his podcast. Right, he
doesn't even address it. He's just like, well, you know,
people like my show, so I guess that makes it right.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
I mean, to me, it's like being like, you know
what it is, Wendy, I'm trying to get paid, so
I should say I don't know a ton personally about
ag Well, I read a couple of really good articles
that make a lot of good points about about AG
one we'll put in the show notes. One of them
is by Jonathan Jerry, that science communicator from McGill University
(50:10):
be quoted earlier that are really great Deep die of
will put in the show notes about how dubious AG
one is and the entire supplements industry is. You know,
it's pretty much unregulated, and you might be thinking, well,
supplements might not work, or they might not do what
they say they're going to do, but it couldn't hurt, right,
While using your credentials as a scientist to point people
(50:30):
who are looking for quick ways to optimize their health
down the road to supplements is not without risk, as
dietary supplements are not regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical drugs
and can routinely contain ingredients not listed on the bottle
or not contain the main ingredient listed at all, which
has been replaced by a cheaper look alike. Supplements derived
(50:50):
by herbs can cause all sorts of harm, including toxicity
to the liver. A recent paper highlights rising cases of
liver injury caused by these products.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
And even outside of liver injury or the supplements being
toxic in some way, which hopefully is pretty rare. I
think much more commonly people get harmed by thinking that
they are protecting themselves in some way when in fact
they're not. Right, Like, I think it's an idea that
(51:20):
by having a healthy immune system people will be protected
against COVID, which is true, but then I think that
can in a lot of cases show up where people
will take supplements that they think are super charging their
immune system in some way and then decline to get
(51:40):
the COVID vaccine, which is actually demonstrated conclusively by evidence
to reduce the chance of harm. So there's I think
there's a lot of opportunity cost that comes from this
widespread promotion of supplements that don't work.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yes, and like if you have eighty dollars a month
to spend toward a health intervention, if you're putting that
toward the thing that doesn't work over the thing that
maybe does work and has been demonstrated by science to work,
that is a problem. If he is a scientist is
encouraging you to do that. I do think that's a problem,
And I think especially in the podcast space, like as
a podcaster, you do have a different relationship to your audience,
(52:24):
you know. I think that, like it is an intimacy medium.
It is a medium where people are hearing you in
an intimate way in your earbuds, So listeners they might
really have a trust relationship with you. Like I think
a lot of people really trust Huberman. Jerry, that science
communicator from McGill makes it really clear that a scientist
using the medium of podcasting to build trust in people,
(52:46):
the vast majority of whom are not scientists themselves, only
to lead them to a path of supplements that personally
enriched Andrew Huberman just really isn't cool. Like it's not
like we're talking about Joe Rogan, who also hawks ag one.
We're talking about a Stanford scientist. As Jerry writes, inside
the walls of academia, there are guardrails on a podcast. However,
(53:08):
anything goes, and the credibility of academia goes a long
way to lend authority to supplement endorsements.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Yeah, it's absolutely true. It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, I mean the piece by Jerry really is like
he basically is like I'm disappointed to see somebody who
is such a gifted science communicator and like does have
a very good body of work in his specific lane
kind of selling that short for a check from the
supplement industry that is so shady and so not transparent,
(53:40):
and using science to do that. So it's not like
these people are calling him a fraud. They're saying the opposite.
Because you are somebody who knows what they're doing and
is very gifted, it is that much more disappointing to
see you lowering yourself to this.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Absolutely, I have not reviewed his work in any sort
of detail, but I looked through wors publishing. He's publishing
in like top tier journals like Nature and Neuroscience like this.
That's you don't get published there if you're doing bad work.
So clearly he's a talented scientist. Clearly he's very charismatic
(54:16):
and persuasive and able to speak to lots of people,
And so it is disappointed to see somebody with those
talents just use it for personal enrichment at the expense
of the people who are trusting them.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
So there have been a lot of accusations that his
podcast is full of pseudoscience, like he uses all the
right kind of sciences sounding jargon for claims that are
maybe dubiously backed up by science. I am not a scientist,
so I don't really feel able to say. And Mike,
as you were saying, like you have not actually like
studied his body of work, right.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
I just kind of reviewed where he was publishing, but
I didn't click into anything because that's not an area
that I really have the expertise to even evaluate.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
So let's hear from somebody who does have the expertise
to evaluate, and that is doctor Andrea Love, an immunologist
and a microbiologist who has been like she has been
debunking Huberman's bad science for a long time on her substack.
She is not a Johnny Come Lately who is jumping
on the bandwagon. She has been here for a while.
I get this, like folks should follow her substack and
(55:19):
follow her on Twitter. I get the sense that she
is somebody who has been like being like Huberman sucks.
Huberman sucks for a long time, and now everybody is
like finally on her side, and she's like, no, it
is my time to shine. There is no better feeling,
doctor Andrea Love. I hope you are like basking in
this because when somebody when when when the general public
(55:41):
finally crosses over and sees what you see? That's how
I always felt about Ellen. By the way, I was
an Ellen truther for a very long time. When the
when the public finally got there, I was like, yes,
let the hate flow through your vein.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Man, I remember that.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
That was like, I can't remember your time when I
saw you so happy?
Speaker 1 (55:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
So.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
In a piece the Doctor Love wrote for Slay it
called so should you Trust Andrew Huberman? She really breaks
it down, she writes, in reality, his podcast is focused
on pseudoscience. He often makes claims that appears scientific but
lack evidence, plausibility, and validity. Pseudoscience presents unsubstantiated conclusions, but
it can be incredibly hard to distinguish from conclusive evidence.
(56:23):
It contains grains of truth, but those grains of truth
are exaggerated beyond the point of usefulness, even so far
as to lead away from the truth. Huberman fills his
podcast with confident displays of pseudoscience, top with the appeal
to authority. He garners by regularly repeating his academic credentials
to gain your trust.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Wow, that sounds so similar to the way we talk
about conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
I would think of the same thing. So she basically
accuses Huberman of not carefully or fully citing studies and
data to make prescriptive recommendations for lifestyle changes. He cherry
picks weak or irrelevant studies while discarding large and more
robust studies that demonstrate something different. If you're not conducting
research or regularly dissecting scientific studies, this might not be obvious,
(57:08):
but to scientists it is. And that's something else that
I think is interesting here is that I bet that
listening to his show or hearing somebody parrot what he says,
if you are a scientist or a doctor, is probably
frustrating as hell. When I was prepping for this episode,
one of the questions I had was how do other
neuroscientists feel about his work and his podcasts? And there
(57:28):
are a lot of them on Reddit saying that, like, oh,
people will hear one kind of not totally correct thing
on his podcast and then try to tell her incorrectly
about her own job in a way that conveys authority
because they heard it on Huberman's podcast, Like that has
to be so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah, I mean that technique of cherry picking results from
small studies that support the conclusion you're trying to make
while disregarding wider bodies of evidence that support a different conclusion. Again,
tail as old as time. It's a super common tactic,
like if you aren't concerned with the balance of evidence,
(58:07):
which is what science is supposed to be looking at
to try to reach consensus on things. But if you
aren't concerned about that and you just want to like
cherry pick some weird result that supports whatever theory you've got,
this sky's the limit on whatever you might want to
find and say.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Length Wise, this episode is actually starting to feel a
bit like a Huberman Lab episode, and that it's getting
a little bit long. I have a ton more to say,
so let's cut here and this will be a two parter,
So come back next week for the conclusion of what
exactly is going on with Andrew Huberman. If you're looking
(58:51):
for ways to support the show, check out our mark
store at tangoti dot com. Flash store got a story
about an interesting thing in tech? I just want to
say hi, we just said hello at tangodi dot com.
You can also find transcripts for today's episode at teng
goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
was created by me bridget Tood. It's a production of
iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland
(59:13):
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
bridget Tood. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.
There Are No Girls on the Internet, as a production
of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this
is There Are No Girls on the Internet. Welcome to
our podcast There Are No Girls on the Internet, where
we explore the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet,
and identity. So this is me doing my best impression
(00:28):
of one of my favorite podcasters, Michael Hobbs. Mike, what
do you know about Andrew Kuberman?
Speaker 2 (00:35):
Well, I'll do my best, Peter, And as far as
I know, I don't know a whole lot about him.
But he's a podcaster, a scientist of some sort, and
he seems to have a pretty big following in the
health lifestyle space.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
That's pretty spot on. So Angie Huberman is a neuroscientist.
He has a very popular podcast. It's one of the
most popular podcasts in the world. He currently is a
professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University's School of Medicine.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Ever heard of it, Yeah, a little old college called
Stanford University.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
So since twenty twenty one, he has hosted a extremely
popular health and science focused podcast called Huberman Lab that
is basically all about biohacking your life, your health, and
your relationships buttressed by science. He has the third most
popular podcast in the United States on Spotify, and at
(01:37):
least at one time his podcast was the most followed
on Apple. He has five point one million YouTube subscribers
and as Instagram account has like five point five million people.
A lot of people swear by his life advice. All
different kinds of people listen to his podcast. I don't
want to make it seem like it's just men, but
it has really especially taken off with men. I have
heard Huberman called Goop for men.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
Goop as in like slimy gunk.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Goop, as in the lifestyle brand brought to us by
Gwyneth Paltrow. But instead of telling women to like drink
fifty five dollars smoothies or whatever.
Speaker 3 (02:11):
Or like insert some crystals or.
Speaker 1 (02:14):
Insert some crystals into their Vershina, it's for men. So
the reason why we're talking about Andrew Huberman is because
he is in the zeitgeist right now. After this very long,
very well written, very well researched New York mag article
just dropped doing this deep dive into his personal life
and his relationships with women. Now I'm not even gonna
(02:35):
pretend to not be biased here. I live for a
long read in New York Mag or The Cut specifically,
Like we are fans of New York Mag in this house.
If there's ever a long read in New York Mag,
you know that's going to be the kind of piece
that everyone is talking about for a week. And the
Human Bean article it's no exception.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Yeah, it's such a written article. It reads like literature,
Like there were so many sentences that I read.
Speaker 3 (03:04):
It's like, that's an amazing sentence. Such a nice read.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
And so for folks who are listening who have not
read it, I do want to give the caveat that
it's very long. I listened to the article and that
took about an hour, Like like New York Meg has
the option to have someone read it. That took about
an hour. Reading it took a while, so like it
is a long read, but I thought it was worth it.
And the piece has kind of invited scrutiny, not just
(03:29):
into answer Schuberman's personal life, but it's professional work as
a scientist and a podcaster too. Mike, you are a scientist,
that's right, and you are a man also, right, So
I thought that you actually might be a good person
to talk to you about this. Like I said, should
they upfront that you have not deeply studied Huberman's science
(03:52):
or his body of work, but you generally like have
a sense of what is it is not okay or
ethical in the eyes of science, correct.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, or at least I It's something that I spent
a lot of time thinking about and reading about.
Speaker 3 (04:08):
And you know, who.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Ultimately gets to say what is right and ethical is
kind of an existential question. But yeah, those are things
that I think about and feel like I have a
good basis to evaluate things.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
So initially I actually wasn't even going to get into
this on the show because you know, at first, I
was sort of seeing a lot of people's reactions to
the piece, and I thought people were saying, like, Oh,
this is just frivolous, this is about his dating life, whatever, whatever,
And I was like, oh, we I'm interested in this,
but we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast. But
it kind of was a little bit of a bug
in my brain, and after reading the article, I noticed
(04:44):
that I was thinking about it quite a lot, and
I was sort of trying to put it in context
with this current political and social and media moment that
we're in where we have the rise of people like RFK,
Like I do think we're in this sort of I
don't know, suito science moment with men. You know, a
lot of times when we're talking about medical misinformation, we're
(05:06):
talking about women, but I think we talk a lot
less about how we see it moving with men. And
I thought this article just really kind of got me
thinking about that, and it also spoke to something I've
been noticing as this trend in podcasting for a while,
like white guy tech or science podcaster who sort of
talks to other white guy science or tech podcasters and
(05:30):
thus enjoy this kind of like self sustaining vibe as
we are trustworthy white men of science and technology and
knowledge and you should listen to us. We're very learned men.
And I really do see Huberman as fitting within that,
even though I do think that he kind of enjoyed
maybe a more elevated position within that circle. I know
(05:54):
that he's the kind of podcaster who's friendly with folks
like Joe Rogan. He goes on Rogan Show all the time, Timaris,
So if you don't know who that is, he's another
very popular kind of lifestyle entrepreneur, guru podcaster and Lex Friedman,
who is the number one tech podcaster in the world,
who in researching for this episode, I realized sometime between
(06:18):
last night and maybe four months ago, when I did
a podcast episode about him, he blocked me on Twitter.
Speaker 3 (06:26):
Oh Man, how does that make you feel?
Speaker 1 (06:28):
Bridget honestly confused, because I went and checked. I have
never tweeted at him. I barely tweet and I did
a search and I was like, yeah, I've never mentioned
him on Twitter. I have mentioned him on the podcast
quite a few times, and so I have a difficult
time imagining that Lex Redman is listening to this podcast.
But you know, maybe he heard what I had to
(06:50):
say about his show and didn't like it and was like,
let me just block her just preemptively.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
Yeah, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
So maybe he just did not want to hear it.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
Lex, if you're listening, I'm sorry I made fun of
your podcast. Anyway. I think we're kind of seeing Huberman's
status as like a learned public man, and the way
that we think about that status that is typically occupied
by a certain type of white man I think we're
sort of seeing that unravel a little bit now with
this piece. We're seeing people kind to peek behind the
(07:22):
curtain of that.
Speaker 3 (07:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:23):
That New York magpiece certainly made it seem so right
they and they made the point specifically, sort of like
the point that you just made that it's it's not
just like, look at the messy details of this person's life,
but really connects with his public persona and I guess
(07:43):
brand that he is serving up to people.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
Yeah, And I guess I would posit that that is
why any of this matters, why anybody should care. People
might be thinking, well, why should I care how this
podcaster treats the women in this personal life. I am
not particularly interested in Angreie Huberman's personal or romantic life.
I will in this episode get into some of what
the article says about his relationships with women, so folks
have that context to understand like why we're talking about
(08:08):
this at all. But the reason that I'm interested in
talking about him is because there is a ton of
overlap in Huberman's podcasting and sort of public sciencing work
for lack of a better phrase, and technology and like
popular attitudes that tech leaders hold a lot of people
in tech are listening to his show Huberman Lab and
using that to guide their own thinking. This absolutely makes sense,
(08:30):
and a culture where you have this mix of productivity
hacks that bleed over into like lifestyle or health hacks
like ketto and instrument fasting and pills and potions and
powders and quick fixes that promise quick success. Now, this
is just my opinion as a casual observer of all
of this. I do think there is like a thread
of fat phobia or like ableism in this, this idea
(08:54):
that being physically fit is akin to also being professionally
successful and thus being the happiest and best version of yourself,
the version of yourself that has the healthiest and most
full relationships. It sounds like this is a mindset that
says all of that starts with being a physically fit,
physiologically fit healthy.
Speaker 3 (09:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I think you're right, And I think that is an
idea that's been repackaged and resold many times over the
past several hundred years, even before then, probably right, like
the idea that physical health is you know, tightly linked
(09:34):
with spiritual health and virtue, that's an idea that grifters
have been.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
Lucratively promoting for a long time.
Speaker 1 (09:47):
So Huberman himself is like really jacked, and I can't
help but think that that plays into all of this.
As writer Maria Alex Beach put it on Twitter, he's
the prototype of the American beef female, which which we
don't associate with scientists. The dissonance between how he looks
and what he knows is compelling. He gathers our communal
preoccupation with health, body self care, anti aging, longevity, with
(10:11):
our respect for those with wisdom and knowledge enchanted were
easy to hustle. Essentially, he's the worst of us.
Speaker 2 (10:19):
That description from Maria Alex Beach, it makes me think
of Beast from the Marvel movies, like a big, jacked
beast of a man who's also a nerdy scientist.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
It's a type. So Huberman is like the main guy
of what's known as biohacking, or trying to shift or
improve your physiology and nervous system to function better. Now,
on its face, this is not a bad thing, like inherently,
and in fact, I would actually argue that women are
kind of the og biohackers. Like I remember back when
(10:52):
a lot of the tech bros were skipping meals and
instead drinking that drink soilent, which a lot of women
were like, oh, you mean slim fast. It was a base,
a degendered slim fest that your mom maybe drank in
the eighties. You know. So, I think biohacking is something
that I associate with women that has kind of been
rebranded as for masculine men.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, that I think rebranded is a good way to
put it, because it's a term that I think is
primarily used to market things. And yeah, the idea that
it's you know, I hadn't thought about this, but originally
was more associated with women.
Speaker 3 (11:33):
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
Even back in the early twentieth century, women were talking
about the timing of menstrual cycles to avoid unintended pregnancies
and speculating about a pill that might someday allow women
to avoid them altogether.
Speaker 3 (11:47):
Right, biohacking exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
But the biohacking space has kind of been taken up
by a real masculine energy, which again I think makes
sense in this social media climate where people are always
talking about, you know, high value men and low value men.
There is a ton of overlap between the biohacking space
and just a real toxic brand of masculinity. But in general,
(12:11):
I think that men have kind of been an untapped
market when it comes to stuff like lifestyle and diet advice.
As women, I can tell you we are we have
been inundated by that kind of junk since we were children,
So we have a good sense of it because a
lot of it out there that is trected toward us.
I think that men, it's just a different market and
maybe a little bit of an untapped market when it
(12:32):
comes to lifestyle and diet advice specifically for men. So
when someone like Huberman comes along and has this different
vibe of lifestyle and diet advice for men, one that
sort of gives the perception as being rooted in science,
not just toxic masculinity. Of course, it takes off. Pubreman
emerges in twenty twenty one as this kind of kinder, gentlier,
(12:53):
less BROI version of biohacking. However, as Jonathan Jerry, science
communicator with the Office of Science and Society at McGill
University puts it, Huberman presents the same kind of stuff,
just in a less broy less masculine package. Jerry writes,
even though this podcast is firmly rooted in the masculine
space of body optimization that has grabbed hold of large
(13:16):
swaths of the tech sector, Huterman is a lot less
BROWI than his fellow influencers. There's a real gentleness and
care to his delivery. The packaging is less aggressive, but
the content does not stray far from Silicon Valley's love
affair with the tweaking of healthy human biology. And to
add to that, I'll just say it, in my opinion,
I think a lot of men in this space might
(13:39):
just have issues with women. I think a lot of
them maybe don't respect women that much. I think they
maybe don't see women as equals. I think they maybe
don't really value what women have to say, how women think.
And so I think in that context, both professionally and
maybe personally, it maybe does kind of matter how somebody
like Andrew Huberman treats women. To me, As you said,
(14:02):
this is so much more than a look how messy
this guy's personal life is. That's all gotgat it story.
It's a story that maybe answers some of the very
long held criticisms of Andrew Huberman's podcast, like that he
barely features any women experts, for one, and it poses
questions about what happens when people who have expertise in
one area of study kind of dine out on that
(14:24):
and make it seem like they know what they're talking
about when it comes to everything. And on top of that,
the dangers of building your life around the advice of
somebody who the article suggests we may not even really know.
So if you don't listen to Huberman's podcast, you might
not know this. But lots and lots and lots of
people deeply subscribe to Huberman's life advice. There's a term
(14:46):
for it on TikTok. A Huberman husband a man who
follows Huberman's life advice, and that advice like has them
getting up before sunrise, has them waiting ninety minutes before
having their first coffee of the day, you know, has
them getting like a specific kind of low angle sunlight
and doing a high intensity workout and an ice bath
in the morning and all of this stuff. So if
all of these people are building their identities around this
(15:09):
guy's guidance, which they absolutely are, I do think looking
into how he thinks about women is worthwhile. But I
don't think that's a frivolous clickbait dive into someone's personal
life that is really unfair.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
Necessarily, Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I think.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Anybody who positions themselves to a wide public audience as
a person who has the answer right, like who has
wisdom that should be followed that other people should shape
their lives around. I think it's absolutely appropriate to scrutinize
their words, their message, and the extent to which their
(15:50):
personal values live up to what they are publicly espousing.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So there have been a lot of popular tech voices
who disagree with you. Lex Freedmen, for one, says that
probing into Andrew Hubermant's personal life is an invasion of
privacy and essentially a hit job, which you know, I
don't know, Like I can sort of see what they're
saying in some regards, but I would point to the
fact that Hubermant's podcast is in part about having healthy
(16:15):
relationships and emotional intelligence. So like, if you build an
entire big platform about how people should listen to you
about how to have healthy relationships and a healthy emotionality,
maybe looking into how you have built relationships and how
you show up emotionally is fair game. Like on this
podcast that I host, I intentionally almost never talk about
(16:37):
my personal relationships on the podcast. So guess what, Like,
nobody's digging into my personal relationship history because I'm not
saying listen to me, and when it comes to personal relationships,
it never comes up. So like, I do kind of
feel like if you build an entire platform that it's
about listening to you and modeling after what you say,
it does seem kind of fair to me to look
(16:57):
into it. And if you don't want people looking into it,
you don't have to build that kind of platform.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Let's hit a quick break.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Ederer back, and I would guess I would say that
beyond his dating life, this piece is really looking at
the values of this person who has risen to be
one of the country's biggest pop scientists, who specifically has
become a guru to others. So like, if this person
is a guru to millions of people, it matters. If
(17:38):
this person is also a liar, it matters if this
person is also a grifter. Here's how the New York
magpiece puts it. Huberman sells a dream of control down
to the cellular level, but something has gone wrong. In
the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between
the podcast or preaching dopominergic restraint and a man with
new found wealth with access to a world unseen by
(18:00):
most professors. The problem with the man who is always
working on himself is that he may also be working
on you.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Dun, dun, dunn.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
So let's get into exactly what is in this article.
The majority of this piece, and the messiest bits, frankly,
are about his chaotic romantic life. Basically, Huberman is accused
of dating at least six women at the same time,
all while giving the women the impression that they are monogamous.
He maintains this via a very elaborate system of deception
and lies. The women are all kind of like him.
(18:30):
They're all very health conscious. They're all described as the
kind of people who are really particular about what they
put in their body. So because they were all told
that they were exclusive with Huberman, they all had unprotected
sex with him, not being told that he was also
having unprotected sex with a lot of other women at
the same time. You know, these women were living this
kind of intentional lifestyle that he preaches on the show.
(18:53):
And here is Andrew, in my opinion, kind of sabotaging
that by depriving them of the ability to make health
choices for their own bodies through deception. Like, I don't
think that is a frivolous thing for anybody to be doing,
let alone a scientist whose whole thing is you should
be really mindful about what you put in your body
(19:13):
unless that thing you're putting in your body is me.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, earlier on you asked about ethics, and you know,
it's a complicated thing for anyone to know what is
ethical or not. But it's also like not that complicated
in some ways. And if you want a big, bright
red warning flag that an ethical boundary is being crossed,
(19:38):
just keep an eye out for deception, right, Like, if
there's deception happening, you should really question whether what's going
on is ethical.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
So that's like, that feels like a pretty strong line
here that that has been crossed.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
Well, according to these women in this article, there was
a lot of just going on. Let's get into it. Basically,
he was not treating these women with respect, to say
the least. So here's a couple of bits from the
article that really drive that point home. It is suggested
that he may have given at least one of these
women an std HPV. Specifically, in twenty twenty one, one
(20:19):
woman tested positive for a high risk form of HPV,
one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. I had
never tested positive, she says, and had been tested regularly
for ten years. A spokesperson for Huberman says he has
never tested positive for HPV. According to the CDC, there
is currently no approved test for HPV in men. When
the woman brought this up, she says that Andrew told
(20:41):
her that you could contract HPV from many things. I'm
sure he did say that, Yeah, maybe you gotta have
a toilet seed.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Maybe I don't know, Yeah, I don't know what you do.
Speaker 1 (20:54):
So there's one woman who has kids from a previous relationship,
and she says that Huberman fixated on this and that
it's something they thought about a lot. At one point,
she says that he told her that being in a
relationship with her was like bobbing for apples in feces.
Apparently things only got worse when they moved in together.
(21:14):
Sarah was in fact changing, She felt herself getting smaller,
constantly appeasing. She apologized again and again and again. I
have been selfish, childish and confused, she said. As a result,
I need your protection. A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah's
accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation,
denies that he fixated on Sarah's decision to have children
(21:34):
with another man, and denies that he said that being
with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. Which
side note. If somebody that I am in a romantic
relationship with ever tells me that being with me is
like bobbing for apples and feces, I have every bit
of information I need about how this person feels about me.
There is no other piece of clarifying information or context
that is needed for me to understand how they feel
(21:54):
and what's going on.
Speaker 2 (21:55):
It's also such a strange phrase, like I have to
imagine that it was said in anger, Like he was
probably pretty mad when he said that.
Speaker 3 (22:05):
It's that sort of thing you say when you're feeling great.
Speaker 1 (22:08):
You think he said it as like pillow talk, a
sweet whisper.
Speaker 2 (22:11):
I don't. I think he probably said it when he
was mad. But to be so mad to say something
like that and then use the term feces. There are
so many other words in the English language that align
more with like emotions of anger and rage than feces.
So it's like this weird artificial layer of like restraint
(22:31):
or scientific jargon to like put a clean face on
just really saying a terrible thing to a woman.
Speaker 1 (22:44):
Well, when asked about that comment, a spokesperson for Huberman said, quote,
doctor Huberman is very much in control of his emotions. Which,
if there's ever a situation in my life where a
spokesperson has to be telling the public that bridget Todd
is very in control of emotions, I don't want to
know what's going on. Woof.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
So apparently Hubert was actively undergoing IVF with this woman
while also maintaining other relationships behind her back, a point
that he doesn't even really disagree with. He disputes that
they were trying to start a family together, but his
spokesperson clarified that they did not want to try for
a baby together, that he quote decided to create embryos
(23:30):
by IVF. I don't know how that is different than
intending to sort a family with her I guess that
that specific point is important to him in some way.
I don't know how that's. Like that claim is not
really in dispute, but like it's important to him to
be like, Oh, we didn't want a baby, we were
just doing IVF.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
There seems to be some like weird feelings around children
going on with that whole story around that woman, Like
the idea that a major source of friction in their
relationship was that he disapproves of her decision to have
kids with a different man before they ever met. That
just feels kind of weird.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Yeah, So, if you've ever been played by a player,
this next one is gonna sound real familiar to you.
Huberman relied on pretty sexist and misogynistic tropes about women
being crazy to keep the women from finding out about
each other. So the piece reads, whenever Sarah had suspicions
(24:29):
about Andrew's interaction with another woman, he had a particular
way of talking about the woman in question. She says
he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars.
He told her that one woman tore out her hair
with chunks of flesh attached to it. A story like
that's gotta be true. He told her a story about
a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby
to quote entrap him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies the
(24:52):
account of the denigraation of women and the dead baby
story and says that the hair story was taken out
of context. So curious to know the actual what is
that story in context?
Speaker 2 (25:02):
You know how women are always ripping their hair out
with chunks of their own flesh.
Speaker 3 (25:06):
You know how women are.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Bitches, me crazy bitches be tearing out and shun some.
Speaker 2 (25:13):
Hair with flesh attached, literally just like raving lunatics all
the time.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Most of the time, Sarah believed him the women were
probably crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful.
So this is something that I have learned from like
not to be not just trying to be like a
relationship guru. But any man who tells you that like, oh,
there's just a bunch of crazy women in my orbit.
Every all the women around me are crazy, that man
is a liar. Like that man is not telling the truth.
That man is a liar. That is like one of
(25:43):
my like deeply held red flags and life. Because even
if that were true, what's going on with you, that
you just are the kind of person who like, all
these crazy women just flock to you like that doesn't
even if that was true, which it almost which I
think it almost never is, even that is not great.
Speaker 2 (26:00):
It only holds up if one has a worldview that
all women are crazy. Right, It's not that I have
created this social dynamic where I'm surrounded by crazy women.
Just all women are crazy and they can't help but
be attracted to me, you know how I am. So
that's where we're at. I'm just surrounded by all these
crazy women. That's that's the way that that makes sense.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
Yes I am. I am the healthy, normal, normal one,
and all these women, you know how women are. This
reminds me so much of a story from my personal
life involving friends where there was a friend breakup and
between a man and a woman, and the woman her
account was like very specific, she had so many details.
He did X y Z to me, he did this offense,
(26:45):
this offense on that day, this offense, and then his
account was like she was crazy, Like that was like
that was the like she had a dossier of his
specific wrongdoings and he was just like she crazy. So
this is another pretty common thing. I think Huberman apparently
had a type. He went after these dynamic, assertive, confident women,
(27:09):
and then he wanted these women to be kind of
submissive to him. The piece reads multiple women recall him
saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the
woman was monogamous but the man was not. He told me,
says Mary, that what he wanted was a woman who
was submissive, who he could slap on the ass in public,
and who would be crawling on the floor for him
when he got home. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this. Also,
(27:34):
I feel been this port spokesperson who was like doctor
Huberman never said he wanted a woman who would be
crawling on the floor for him when he got home.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
I am curious about the spokesperson because they're quoted so
many times in this article, and I mean, I don't
have the sense. I guess I don't really know how
big his operation is, but like, I kind of get
the sense that a lot of these guys don't have
like huge PR teams, So like, who is this spokesperson?
What were they doing before they woke up to find
(28:03):
themselves in this malstrom of.
Speaker 3 (28:08):
Allegations to deny well.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Not responding in real time. I can tell you that
because the person who wrote this article for New York
mag says that they gave Humorman's team two days to
read the full thing and respond to any of the allegations,
and they basically like, this is what they got. So,
you know, curious to me too. So one other thing
to note about the way that he treats the women
is that he juggled them in this way that is
(28:32):
kind of weirdly almost impressive. Here's one passage. There was
a day in Texas when after Sarah left his hotel,
andrews up with Mary and texted Eve. They found days
in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself
to two of them. At the same time, they realized
that the day before he had moved in with Sarah
and Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he also
had been with her in December twenty twenty three, the
(28:52):
weekend before Sarah caught him on the couch with a
sixth woman. They realized on March twenty first, twenty twenty one,
a day of admittedly impressive logistical jiu jitsu while Sarah
was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to
La to stay with them into Panga. While Mary was
there visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her
with his dog, Costello. He drove to a coffee shop
where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about
(29:14):
their relationship. They thought they were in a good place.
He wanted to make it work. Phone died. He texted Mary,
who was waiting back at the place into Panga, and
later to Eve, thank you for being so next level
gorgeous and sexy. My god, this sounds stressful.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
It does, and it truly is impressive to balance all
of this and make it all work. I think the
most shocking thing in this is that he, like he
flew this woman from Texas to La to be with him,
left her to watch his dog so he could go
meet up with another woman, did not have sex with
that woman, just had a very long, serious talk about
(29:53):
their relationship.
Speaker 1 (29:56):
Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where George
wants to get He's dating two women and he's trying
to like get them both to like break it off
because it's too much work and neither of them will
do it, and so he's just trying to like balance
these two relationships, and he finds himself being like, oh,
I thought, like I'm seeing God's spell with one and
going he's skating with the other, And Jerry's like, which
(30:17):
is wish? And He's like does it matter? That's what
I feel like is going on here. It would be
so much easier to just be honest with all of them,
be like, listen, I'm dating all of you. Either you're
down with it or you're not. Like, the maintaining the
deception and the ruse sounds like it is so stressful
that I cannot imagine it is more satisfying than this
being like openly ethically non monogamous with all of them.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
He's a famous, smart, good looking, wealthy guy. If he
just wanted to have a bunch of open relationships with
hot women, he could probably accomplish that, right.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
I think so. But that's what I'm saying, Like, I
don't I think that he could have that if you
wanted that easily. I don't think he wants that, don't.
I don't think it's about that. I think that it's
about control and feeling like I am a I am
like an optimized, smart guy who was able to stay
(31:13):
one step ahead of all of these women, which I
know he fucking wasn't, but like, I think that's part
of it. I think the control of the deception is
part of it, because he could easily have that if
you wanted that. I also think, like, and this just
just like what I've seen from being in relationships. I
do think there's a kind of person who likes the
idea of having open relationships with people where everybody is
(31:37):
on the up and up and knows what's going on,
while simultaneously liking the idea of like settling down, starting
a family, doing IVF. Like he wouldn't be the first
person who maybe has conflicted desires at the same time.
Like that, that's not like difficult for me to imagine.
Speaker 2 (31:56):
That makes a lot of sense. And you know, and
in his mind, he's smart enough to have it all, right,
Like yeah, the idea that we all have conflicting desires
one a lot of things, but have to make trade
offs because you can't have it all. It is seductive
(32:16):
to think that maybe you could have it all, all
you need to do is be sufficiently good at lying.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
Yeah, And like again, I think this is all part
of his the ethos that he preaches that you can
hack yourself. There's some sort of like way to gamify life.
In this way, you can gamify life that you can
have a series of fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships with
a bunch of women and also settle down and have
(32:42):
that woman be monogamous to you and like have your kid.
I think that he's I think that I don't think
that the way that he is treating these women is
completely removed from the ethos that he preaches on the show.
I think they are connected and that is why. And
it's interesting to dive into how these women do say
that he showed up. So these women all found out
about each other through Instagram, which again I don't want
(33:05):
to sound like I'm giving romantic advice, but some advice
I do have is that if you are someone who
is like live and foul, I guess I'll say you
can't have Instagram. If you are someone who is like
like doing something in a relationship that you know you're
not supposed to be doing, you can't have an iPad.
You can't have it, you can't have Instagram. You need
(33:27):
to be really careful about how you show up digitally.
Because that's how they get you.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
Wait, you can't have an iPad if you are.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
A serial cheeter iPads Like you know, you're texting on
your phone, some setting is trip that you forgot about
and there's now it's on the iPad, but back at
your apartment. I'm just saying, like, if you are someone
who is showing up in relationships in a certain kind
of way and people don't and the other person is
not aware of that, and that is a deception that
(33:54):
you are trying to like juggle and maintain. Technology is
something you have to be extra special care full about,
and it sounds like he was not extra special careful
about it.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
Listeners, thank you for joining us on how to cover
your tracks with Bridget Todd.
Speaker 1 (34:11):
I mean this is just like it's twenty twenty four.
If you're gonna be if you're gonna be doing it.
Like also, Huberman, I feel like no one is better
at navigating Instagram than women, right, Like I have told
my friends like, oh, I want to find so and
so They've got them pulled up in a minute. They're like,
here he is, Here's everybody he's ever known, here's everything
(34:33):
about him. He went to Cabo last week, like, here's
his aunt, Like, I think that Huberman thought he was
smarter than all of these women. And nobody is smarter
than a group of like confident, poised, self assured women
who are good at Instagram. Nobody is smarter, Like, I
don't care how many degrees you have. I don't care
if you're at Stanford. You are not smarter than a
group of women who have Instagram.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Not gonna argue. I feel like a little intimidated.
Speaker 1 (34:58):
Frankly, yeah, I'll find out such about you, Mike, you
better watch out. So basically, one of these women noticed
that another woman was like constantly watching her Instagram story
but never commenting and just like lurking. She realized that
this woman also was followed by doctor Huberman, and so
eventually she just DM her and said, is there anything
(35:20):
that you'd rather ask me directly? Which I think that
is such a baller move and I just think it
goes to show like he tried to put all this
like sexist, misogynistic junk in these women's heads to keep
them thinking that like all of the other women were
just like jealous stalkers, and it didn't work. These women
all join a group chat together they start comparing timelines.
(35:41):
That's when they realized always playing all of us. But
piece actually ends on kind of a sweet note. These
women all become friends. They have a very active group chat,
which again it just goes to show like, if you're
gonna pull this shit, don't pull it with a bunch
of smart, confident women. They'll just get to the bottom
of it together and join forces and then like you
will be a forever running joke in their group chat forever,
(36:03):
the women in they have they have this active group
chat to this day. They send pictures of each other's
pets to each other and they use the reply that
they say that Andrew would use whenever they would send
him racy picts, which is.
Speaker 2 (36:16):
Mmmmm yeah, it's The article does end in a really
surprising way. It's like this group of women became friends
and they're all doing fine, which I think makes this
story a little bit different than some others where it's
like powerful influential man, uh you know, has problems with women.
(36:40):
Right when those stories break, often there's some kind of
like allegations of abuse of some kind, or there's like
a lawsuit of some kind. It doesn't sound like these
women are seeking any kind of like restitution or really anything.
Speaker 3 (36:57):
There. It just seems like they were more than happy
to talk this reporter.
Speaker 1 (37:01):
And that's something that I want to talk about because
if I were to say the thing that the so
one of this article, I think these women are trying
to say, this person that millions of people have held
up as a guru, the values that he preaches on
the show are not the values that he lives by
in his actual life. Like I would say that it's
a bit subtle, but I think that's the so. What
of the inclusion of all of these details about his
(37:22):
romantic life is that humanman is somebody who preaches a
really specific like life routine and mindset built around personal
discipline and being really mindful of all the different kinds
of things that you led into your life that spike dopamine,
from coffee to booze.
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Like.
Speaker 1 (37:39):
The piece points out that he seems to show disdain
for anybody who drinks even a small amount, but in
his personal life, he's maybe not practicing a lot of
the kind of personal discipline around things that spike his dopamine,
in this case, relationships. Like one of the women says
that he told her that he thought he was a
love addict. So you have this guru preaching and ethos
(37:59):
around being minds about what you led into your physical orbit,
while also like binging on women and relationships and not
being forthcoming about it. That kind of makes his whole
body of advice, I guess it kind of calls it
into question.
Speaker 2 (38:13):
Yeah, and I mean we can even zoom out another
level from Huberman in particular to just like gurus in general.
It's a pretty well worn trope, almost a cliche that
you know, some guru who has the answer, who is
preaching restraint and control is sleeping with a bunch of
(38:33):
women who follow his advice.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Tail as old as time. So this is how he's
alleged to have treated women that he is romantically and
sexually involved with in the piece. But and this is
something I don't feel like has gotten enough attention. This
kind of casual lack of respect for women seems to
bleed over into his professional life as well. There is
this anecdote where he reached out to a woman scientist
(38:57):
about collaborating together. They set a time to meetman doesn't
show this is a real theme in the piece. Huberman
like making plans with men and women and then just
flaking and people saying like he's totally unreliable. So the
scientist emails him after he cancels on their time to
meet and says, well, I guess you're not serious about
collaborating together, which again I respect that. Like if somebody
(39:21):
last minute canceling on somebody who was like pretty busy
and pretty like has a pretty full schedule, I could
understand what she was like, Yeah, I guess you don't
really feel seriously about working together. Andrew Cuberman clearly felt
some type of a way about this rather than just
let it go. He and another male scientist, Stanford trained
psychiatrist Paul Conti, did an episode of Huberman's podcast about
(39:44):
aggressive Drive in which Huberman makes this woman whose time
he wasted the poster child for toxic aggression in the workplace.
He tells the story of her emailing him and saying
I guess you aren't serious about working together and says
so to me. Huberman said on the podcast that seems
like an example of somebody who has a well strong
(40:05):
aggressive drive and when disappointed lashes back or as passive.
There's some way in which this person doesn't feel good enough,
no matter what this person has achieved. So then there
is a sense of the need and right to over control. Sure,
said Huberman. So now we're going to work together, right,
So I'm exerting significant control over you, right, and then
maybe he's not aware of it. In this case, Andrew
(40:26):
said it was a she. So this woman, explained Kanti,
based entirely on Andrew's description of two emails, had allowed
her unhealthy quote excess aggression to be eclipsing the generative drive.
She required that Andrew bowed down before her in service
of the ego because she did not feel good about herself.
This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes, both men
(40:51):
egging each other on diagnoses after diagnoses salient, Perhaps for
reasons other than those that you identify, we learned that
this woman lacks great attitude, generative drive, and happiness. She
suffers from envy, low pleasure drive, and general unhappiness. It
would appear at a distance to be an elaborate fantasy
of an insane woman built upon a single behavior. At
(41:13):
some point in time, a woman decided she did not
want to work with a man who didn't show up, Like,
where does this dude? Get off.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
It's worth pointing out following that story that his expertise
is in vision, right, Like he's a neuroscience about vision,
So talking about drives like the pleasure drive, aggressive drive,
these are not areas of his expertise, and you know,
they're actually closer to my expertise. And a lot of
(41:45):
that stuff is is often like just so stories, right,
Like it's kind of sounds like a common sense idea.
You make up a story that fits this concept that
you've introduced, so yeah, it all makes sense.
Speaker 1 (42:01):
Yeah, And the just so story is that can you
believe a woman talk to me like that? Andrew Huberman, Like,
I think this guy got that email from this woman scientist,
and I think it stung more because it came from
a woman, and he's somebody who doesn't respect women, so
he had to like use his massive platform to speculate
(42:22):
on her like low pleasure drive and stuff and how
she like needed him to sacrifice his ego and crawl
to her and blah blah blah down Like it really
is so misogynistic and sexist, and I think it really
feeds back into the way that these women were saying
that he treated them as.
Speaker 2 (42:39):
Well I'm also not confident that this colleague exists or
that any of that actually happened. I mean, we have
no evidence that it did other than him saying so.
It feels very much like a story that somebody might make.
Speaker 1 (42:53):
Up to make that to like prop themselves up and
talk about how everybody else is less than him. At
all those less thans happen to be women.
Speaker 3 (43:02):
It fits more.
Speaker 1 (43:08):
After a quick break, let's get right back into it.
Another big piece of this that I want to make
sure is not overshadowed, because his piece is largely, but
(43:29):
not entirely about his romantic issues, is how his character
reflects on the work that he puts out on the podcast,
which is maybe not great. The New York mag piece
gets into this writing Huberman's specialty lies in a narrow
field vision system wiring. How comfortable one feels with the
science propagated on huberman Lab depends entirely on how much
(43:50):
leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds
for multiple hours a week on subjects while outside of
his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates
wildly from lib animal studies posit certainty where there is
ambiguity and stumbles when he veers too far from his
narrow realm of study, but even they will tend to
admit that the podcast is an expansive, free, or as
(44:11):
he puts, at zero cost compendium of human knowledge. There
are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient,
and often moving descriptions of biological process. So this entire
thing has really shined a light on his financial relationship
with supplement companies, namely Athletic Greens which is now called
(44:31):
ag One, which is a big sponsor of his podcast.
He is also their scientific advisor. I don't know what
that means, Mike, do you have any idea.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
Yeah, that's a reasonable thing for people to be a
you know, scientific advisor to this or that.
Speaker 3 (44:45):
I'm not going to dig in for that. That's reasonable,
I mean fair.
Speaker 2 (44:49):
There is a bit of a potential conflict of interest,
like when he promotes the product on the show, do
his listeners know that if they decide to buy it
gets into some more ethical gray area there, But just
being a scientific advisor, that's a reasonable thing.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Okay, Well we'll get into that, so I should say
big caveat I'm a podcaster. If you listen to this podcast,
we obviously.
Speaker 3 (45:12):
You know we do edg we do ads, We do ads.
Speaker 1 (45:17):
Nobody would accuse us of not do big ass. So
I'm not really in a position where I can fault
people for taking money to keep the good folks who
help make their show paid and like keep the show going. However,
if you are a scientist and your entire show is
about your expertise as a scientist, I do think there
(45:39):
was a different thing where maybe there should be a
little bit more scrutiny over exactly what you were saying,
like how you were using your position as a scientist
to talk things, especially something that is maybe a bunk product.
AG one is kind of maybe a not so good product,
and that it makes a lot of big claims that
have dubious backing. Here's what the New mag article says
(46:00):
about Huberman's relationship with AG One. On every episode of
his Zero Cost podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of
a powder formerly known as Athletic Greens, now known as
AG one. It's one thing to hear Athletic Greens, promoted
by Joe Rogan. It is perhaps another to hear someone
who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back
from the lab, proclaim that this seventy nine dollars a
(46:22):
month powder quote covers all your foundational nutritional needs. In
an industry not known for its integrity, ag one is,
according to writer and professional debunker Derek Burrs, one of
the most egregious players in the space. So, I will say,
as a podcaster, one of my pet peeves is podcasters
(46:42):
who are like, we make this podcast for free. No,
if you have ads, you really don't like. If you
are a podcaster who supports your work via ads, listeners
are not listening to that show for free. They are
kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads.
And so I I really hate that claim that, like,
it's a free podcast, I'm making this content for you
(47:04):
for free. If you have ads, you're really not. That's
really just not true.
Speaker 2 (47:08):
Yeah, And it's a good system, right. The listeners don't
have to pay money. The ads support the show, you know,
they pay us a small amount to make the show.
Speaker 1 (47:20):
I feel like listeners probably, I feel like there are
listeners out there who maybe don't think it's a great system.
People are always like I hate your.
Speaker 3 (47:25):
Ads, fair but you know they you know, the ads them.
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (47:33):
I also don't love listening to ads, but it's kind
of the system we got. There's some others out there
love to you know, talk more about it, but I
guess the point I'm trying to make is that ads
aren't inherently harmful. But where it does get dubious is
when it's these health supplements that are sold as having
(47:56):
like health properties that just really are not backed up
by evidence, and it really betrays a lack of concern
for listeners, I think, and as a scientist, for a
scientist to shill for nutritional supplements that do not have
a strong evidence backing, in fact, have a dubious, dubious
(48:18):
evidence behind them. And my understanding is that what's actually
in AG one is a proprietary blend, so people don't
even know. But for a scientist to back that, it
casts a doubt over everything else they say, or at
least it should, right, Like, apparently that is the standard
(48:39):
of evidence that they need to support a claim, right,
and so that same standard does that same low standard
of evidence apply to all of the scientific claims that
he's making on his show?
Speaker 3 (48:52):
One would assume it probably does.
Speaker 2 (48:55):
So yeah, it just really I personally think that a
scientist to promote dubious nutritional supplements just undercuts everything else
they might have to say about any other topic.
Speaker 1 (49:09):
Well, one of my favorite science podcasters, Wendy Zuckerman of
the Science Versus podcast, which I love the piece, quotes
a time when she called Huberman out on this. She
pointed out that her podcast would never endorse a product
with such a dubious science behind it, and Huberman said,
that's the good news about podcasts. People can choose which
podcast they want to listen to.
Speaker 2 (49:29):
Yeah, and that makes it clear right there, makes it
crystal clear how he sees this. His scientific integrity was
being publicly called into question, which is like the worst
thing that could happen to a scientist. And he responds
by pointing to the popularity of his podcast. Right, he
doesn't even address it. He's just like, well, you know,
people like my show, so I guess that makes it right.
Speaker 1 (49:49):
I mean, to me, it's like being like, you know
what it is, Wendy, I'm trying to get paid, so
I should say I don't know a ton personally about
ag Well, I read a couple of really good articles
that make a lot of good points about about AG
one we'll put in the show notes. One of them
is by Jonathan Jerry, that science communicator from McGill University
(50:10):
be quoted earlier that are really great Deep die of
will put in the show notes about how dubious AG
one is and the entire supplements industry is. You know,
it's pretty much unregulated, and you might be thinking, well,
supplements might not work, or they might not do what
they say they're going to do, but it couldn't hurt, right,
While using your credentials as a scientist to point people
(50:30):
who are looking for quick ways to optimize their health
down the road to supplements is not without risk, as
dietary supplements are not regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical drugs
and can routinely contain ingredients not listed on the bottle
or not contain the main ingredient listed at all, which
has been replaced by a cheaper look alike. Supplements derived
(50:50):
by herbs can cause all sorts of harm, including toxicity
to the liver. A recent paper highlights rising cases of
liver injury caused by these products.
Speaker 2 (50:59):
And even outside of liver injury or the supplements being
toxic in some way, which hopefully is pretty rare. I
think much more commonly people get harmed by thinking that
they are protecting themselves in some way when in fact
they're not. Right, Like, I think it's an idea that
(51:20):
by having a healthy immune system people will be protected
against COVID, which is true, but then I think that
can in a lot of cases show up where people
will take supplements that they think are super charging their
immune system in some way and then decline to get
(51:40):
the COVID vaccine, which is actually demonstrated conclusively by evidence
to reduce the chance of harm. So there's I think
there's a lot of opportunity cost that comes from this
widespread promotion of supplements that don't work.
Speaker 1 (52:00):
Yes, and like if you have eighty dollars a month
to spend toward a health intervention, if you're putting that
toward the thing that doesn't work over the thing that
maybe does work and has been demonstrated by science to work,
that is a problem. If he is a scientist is
encouraging you to do that. I do think that's a problem,
And I think especially in the podcast space, like as
a podcaster, you do have a different relationship to your audience,
(52:24):
you know. I think that, like it is an intimacy medium.
It is a medium where people are hearing you in
an intimate way in your earbuds, So listeners they might
really have a trust relationship with you. Like I think
a lot of people really trust Huberman. Jerry, that science
communicator from McGill makes it really clear that a scientist
using the medium of podcasting to build trust in people,
(52:46):
the vast majority of whom are not scientists themselves, only
to lead them to a path of supplements that personally
enriched Andrew Huberman just really isn't cool. Like it's not
like we're talking about Joe Rogan, who also hawks ag one.
We're talking about a Stanford scientist. As Jerry writes, inside
the walls of academia, there are guardrails on a podcast. However,
(53:08):
anything goes, and the credibility of academia goes a long
way to lend authority to supplement endorsements.
Speaker 3 (53:14):
Yeah, it's absolutely true. It's unfortunate.
Speaker 1 (53:19):
Yeah, I mean the piece by Jerry really is like
he basically is like I'm disappointed to see somebody who
is such a gifted science communicator and like does have
a very good body of work in his specific lane
kind of selling that short for a check from the
supplement industry that is so shady and so not transparent,
(53:40):
and using science to do that. So it's not like
these people are calling him a fraud. They're saying the opposite.
Because you are somebody who knows what they're doing and
is very gifted, it is that much more disappointing to
see you lowering yourself to this.
Speaker 3 (53:53):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (53:53):
Absolutely, I have not reviewed his work in any sort
of detail, but I looked through wors publishing. He's publishing
in like top tier journals like Nature and Neuroscience like this.
That's you don't get published there if you're doing bad work.
So clearly he's a talented scientist. Clearly he's very charismatic
(54:16):
and persuasive and able to speak to lots of people,
And so it is disappointed to see somebody with those
talents just use it for personal enrichment at the expense
of the people who are trusting them.
Speaker 1 (54:30):
So there have been a lot of accusations that his
podcast is full of pseudoscience, like he uses all the
right kind of sciences sounding jargon for claims that are
maybe dubiously backed up by science. I am not a scientist,
so I don't really feel able to say. And Mike,
as you were saying, like you have not actually like
studied his body of work, right.
Speaker 3 (54:48):
Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 2 (54:49):
I just kind of reviewed where he was publishing, but
I didn't click into anything because that's not an area
that I really have the expertise to even evaluate.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
So let's hear from somebody who does have the expertise
to evaluate, and that is doctor Andrea Love, an immunologist
and a microbiologist who has been like she has been
debunking Huberman's bad science for a long time on her substack.
She is not a Johnny Come Lately who is jumping
on the bandwagon. She has been here for a while.
I get this, like folks should follow her substack and
(55:19):
follow her on Twitter. I get the sense that she
is somebody who has been like being like Huberman sucks.
Huberman sucks for a long time, and now everybody is
like finally on her side, and she's like, no, it
is my time to shine. There is no better feeling,
doctor Andrea Love. I hope you are like basking in
this because when somebody when when when the general public
(55:41):
finally crosses over and sees what you see? That's how
I always felt about Ellen. By the way, I was
an Ellen truther for a very long time. When the
when the public finally got there, I was like, yes,
let the hate flow through your vein.
Speaker 3 (55:52):
Man, I remember that.
Speaker 2 (55:53):
That was like, I can't remember your time when I
saw you so happy?
Speaker 1 (55:59):
Thank you.
Speaker 3 (56:02):
So.
Speaker 1 (56:03):
In a piece the Doctor Love wrote for Slay it
called so should you Trust Andrew Huberman? She really breaks
it down, she writes, in reality, his podcast is focused
on pseudoscience. He often makes claims that appears scientific but
lack evidence, plausibility, and validity. Pseudoscience presents unsubstantiated conclusions, but
it can be incredibly hard to distinguish from conclusive evidence.
(56:23):
It contains grains of truth, but those grains of truth
are exaggerated beyond the point of usefulness, even so far
as to lead away from the truth. Huberman fills his
podcast with confident displays of pseudoscience, top with the appeal
to authority. He garners by regularly repeating his academic credentials
to gain your trust.
Speaker 2 (56:41):
Wow, that sounds so similar to the way we talk
about conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (56:45):
I would think of the same thing. So she basically
accuses Huberman of not carefully or fully citing studies and
data to make prescriptive recommendations for lifestyle changes. He cherry
picks weak or irrelevant studies while discarding large and more
robust studies that demonstrate something different. If you're not conducting
research or regularly dissecting scientific studies, this might not be obvious,
(57:08):
but to scientists it is. And that's something else that
I think is interesting here is that I bet that
listening to his show or hearing somebody parrot what he says,
if you are a scientist or a doctor, is probably
frustrating as hell. When I was prepping for this episode,
one of the questions I had was how do other
neuroscientists feel about his work and his podcasts? And there
(57:28):
are a lot of them on Reddit saying that, like, oh,
people will hear one kind of not totally correct thing
on his podcast and then try to tell her incorrectly
about her own job in a way that conveys authority
because they heard it on Huberman's podcast, Like that has
to be so frustrating.
Speaker 2 (57:46):
Yeah, I mean that technique of cherry picking results from
small studies that support the conclusion you're trying to make
while disregarding wider bodies of evidence that support a different conclusion. Again,
tail as old as time. It's a super common tactic,
like if you aren't concerned with the balance of evidence,
(58:07):
which is what science is supposed to be looking at
to try to reach consensus on things. But if you
aren't concerned about that and you just want to like
cherry pick some weird result that supports whatever theory you've got,
this sky's the limit on whatever you might want to
find and say.
Speaker 1 (58:27):
Length Wise, this episode is actually starting to feel a
bit like a Huberman Lab episode, and that it's getting
a little bit long. I have a ton more to say,
so let's cut here and this will be a two parter,
So come back next week for the conclusion of what
exactly is going on with Andrew Huberman. If you're looking
(58:51):
for ways to support the show, check out our mark
store at tangoti dot com. Flash store got a story
about an interesting thing in tech? I just want to
say hi, we just said hello at tangodi dot com.
You can also find transcripts for today's episode at teng
goody dot com. There Are No Girls on the Internet
was created by me bridget Tood. It's a production of
iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative edited by Joey Pat Jonathan Strickland
(59:13):
as our executive producer. Tari Harrison is our producer and
sound engineer. Michael Almada is our contributing producer. I'm your host,
bridget Tood. If you want to help us grow, rate
and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
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