Andrew Huberman_ Focus_ Controversy_ Politics_ and Relationships _ Lex Fridman Podcast _435(M4A_128K)

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hardship will show you who your real friends are, that's
for sure. And can you read the quote once more?

Speaker 2 (00:05):
Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. The following
is a conversation with Andrew Huberman, his fifth time on
the podcast. He is the host of the Huberman Lab
podcast and is an amazing scientist, teacher, human being and

(00:27):
someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend. Also,
he has a book coming out next year that you
should pre order now called Protocols, An Operating Manual for
the Human Body. This is a Lex Freedman podcast. To
support it, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Huberman. You think there's

(00:51):
ever going to be a day when you walk away
from podcasting?

Speaker 1 (00:53):
Definitely. I mean I came up within and then on
the periphery of skateboard culture. And for the record, I
was not a great skateboarder. I always have to say
that because skateboarders are relentless if you call something you
didn't do or whatever. I mean, I could do a
few things, and I loved the community and I still

(01:15):
have a lot of friends in that community. Jim Fiebo
at Deluxe. You can look him up. He's kind of
the man behind the whole scene. I know Tony Hawked
any whale. These guys I got to see them come
up and get big and stay big in many cases
start huge companies like Danny and colin the case are DC.
Some people have a long life in something, some don't.

(01:35):
But one thing I observed and learned a lot from
in skateboarding, at the level of observing the skateboarders and
then the ones that started companies. And then what I
also observed in science and still observe is you do
it for a while, you do it at the highest
possible level for you, and then at some point you

(01:58):
pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in.
In fact, the greatest scientists, people like Richard Axel, Catherine Duloch.
There are many other labs in neuroscience, Carl Diisterroth. They're
not just known for doing great science, they're known for
mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on
to start their own labs. And I think in podcasting,

(02:20):
I am very fortunate I got in in a fairly
early wave, not the earliest wave, but thanks to your
suggestion of doing a podcast fairly early wave, and I'll
continue to go as long as it feels right and
I feel like I'm doing good in the world and
providing good. But I'm already starting to scout talent. My
company that I started with Rob Moore, Psychomedia. There's a

(02:41):
couple other guys in there too, Mike Playback, our photographer,
Ian McKee, Chris Ray, Martin Phoebes. We are a company
that produces podcasts. Right now that's Huberman Lab podcast, but
we're launching a new podcast, Perform with doctor Andy Gallpin nice,
and we want to do more of that kind of thing,
finding a really great talent, highly qualified people, credential people.

(03:02):
And I've got a new kind of obsession with scouring
the internet looking for the young talent in science, in
health and related fields. And so, will there be a
final episode of the HLP? Yeah, I mean Bulletbuster Cancer aside.
You know, someday they'll be the very last and thank

(03:23):
you for your interest in science, and I'll clip out.

Speaker 2 (03:26):
Yeah. I love the idea of walking away and not
be dramatic about it. Right when it feels right, you
can leave and you can come back whenever the fuck
you want John Stewart did this well with The Daily Show.
I think that was during the twenty sixteen election when
everybody wanted him to stay on and he just walked away.
Dave Chappelle, for different reasons.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
Walked away, disappeared, came back.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
Gave away so much money, didn't care, and then came
back and was doing like stand up in the park
in the middle of nowhere genius. You have Habib, who
undefeated walks away at the very top.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
Of a sport. Is he coming back?

Speaker 2 (04:04):
No, it's not.

Speaker 1 (04:05):
At least we don't know.

Speaker 2 (04:07):
Yeah, right, you don't know.

Speaker 1 (04:08):
I don't know if there's everywhere or word Yeah, I think,
you know, it's it's always a call, you know. You know,
the last few years have been tremendous growth. We launched
in January twenty twenty one, and even this last year
twenty twenty four, has been huge growth, you know, in
all sorts of ways. It's been wild and we have

(04:29):
some short form content planned. It's thirty minute shorter episodes
that really distill down the critical elements. We're also thinking
about moving to other venues besides podcasting, So there's always
the thought in the discussion. But when it comes to
like when to hang up your cleats. You know, it's
like there just comes a natural time where you can
do more to mentor the next generation coming in than

(04:52):
focusing on self, and so there will come a time
for that, and I think it's critical. I mean again,
I saw this in skateboarding, like Danny and Call and
Danny's brother Damon started DC with Ken Block, the driver
who unfortunately passed away a little while ago, rally car driver,
and they eventually sold it I think to Quicksilver or
something like that. But they're all phenomenal talents in their

(05:15):
respective areas, but they brought in the next on the
next line of amazing writers, the plan B thing. You know,
Paul rodriguezro skateboarders, they know who this is. Now. In science,
there are scientists like Fineman, for instance. I don't know
if anyone can name one of his mentor offspring. So
there are scientists who are phenomenal, like beyond world class, right,

(05:38):
multi generational world class, who don't make good mentors. I'm
not saying he wasn't a good mentor, but that's not
what he's known for. And then there are scientists who
are known for being excellent scientists and great mentors. And
I think there's no higher celebration to be had at
the end of one's career if you can look back
and like, hey, I put some really important knowledge into

(05:58):
the world. People made use of that knowledge, and guess
what you spawned all these other scientific offspring or sport
offspring or podcast offspring. I mean, in some ways we
look to Rogan and to some of the other earlier podcasts,
is like they you know, they paved the way. Rodna

(06:19):
Patrick first science podcast out there, so you know it
eventually the baton passes. But fortunately right now everybody's active
and it feels really good.

Speaker 2 (06:31):
Yeah, well, you're talking about the healthy way to do it.
But there's also a different kind of way where you
have somebody like Grisha Grigory Pearlman, the mathematician who refused
to accept the fields metal. So he's one of the
greatest living mathematicians and he just walked away from mathematics
and rejected the fields metal. What did you do after
he left mathematics life private? I respect that he's become

(06:57):
essentially recluse. Is these photos of him looking very broke,
like he could use the money he turned away the money.
He turned away everything you know, there's there's You just
have to listen to the inner voice. You have to
listen to yourself and make the decisions that don't make
any sense for the rest of the world and makes
sense to you.

Speaker 1 (07:16):
Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel
Peace Prize. That's punk. Yeah, yeah, he probably grew in
notoriety for that. Maybe he just doesn't like going in Sweden,
but it seems like it a beig fun trip. I
think they do it in a nice time of years.
But hey, that's his right, he earned that right.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
I think the best artists aren't doing it for the prize.
They aren't doing it for the fame or the money.
They're doing it because they love the art.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
That's the Rick Ruben thing. He got a verb it
through Download your Inner Thing. I don't think we've talked
about this, that this obsession that I have about how
Rick has this way of being very very still in
his body but keeping his mind very active as a practice.

(08:02):
When spend some time with him in Italy last June,
and we would tread water and his pool in the
morning and listen to history of rock and roll in
a hundred songs amazing podcast by the way. Yeah, and
then he would spend a fair amount of time during
the day, you know, in this kind of meditative state
where his mind is very active, body very still. And

(08:23):
then Carldiserroth, when he came on my podcast, talked about
how he forces himself to sit still and thinking complete
sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep.
And you know, there's a state of mind, rapid eye
movement sleep, where your body is completely paralyzed and the
mind is extremely active. And people credit rapid eye movements
sleep with some of the more elaborate, emotion filled dreams

(08:44):
and the source of many ideas. And there are other examples. Einstein.
People described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus
then pausing and would ask him what was going on,
and the idea of his was continuing to churn forward
at a high rate. So, you know, this is far

(09:07):
from controlled studies, but we're talking about some incredible minds
and creatives who have a practice of stilling the body
while keeping the mind deliberately very active, very similar to
rapid eve movement sleep. And then there are a lot
of people who also report, you know, great ideas coming
to them in the shower while running. So it can
be the opposite as well, where the body is very

(09:28):
active and the mind is perhaps more on kind of
like a default mode network, not really focusing on anyone
specific thing. You know.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
Interesting, there's a bunch of physicists and mathematicians have talked
to They talk about sleep deprivation and going crazy hours
to the night, obsessively pursuing a thing, and then the
solution to the problem comes when they finally get rest.

Speaker 1 (09:52):
Right and we know, we just did this sixth episode
special series on sleep with Matt Walker. I know that
when you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep,
you get a rebound in rap and eye movement sleep.
You get a higher percentage of rap and eye movement sleep.
And Matt talks about this in the podcast, and he

(10:13):
did an episode on sleep and creativity, sleep and memory
and rapid eye movement sleep comes up multiple times in
that series. There's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis
withdrawal and rapid eye movement sleep. People are coming off
cannabis off and will suffer from insomnia, but when they
finally do start sleeping, they like dream like crazy. Cannabis

(10:34):
is a very controversial topic right now.

Speaker 2 (10:36):
Oh yeah, I saw that.

Speaker 1 (10:37):
What happened.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
There's a bunch of drama around episode you did on cannabis.

Speaker 1 (10:42):
Yeah, we did an episode about cannabis, talked about the
health benefits and the potential risks. Right, it's neither here
nor there, depends on the person, depends on the age,
depends on genetic background, a number of other things. We
published that episode well over a year ago and it

(11:02):
had no issues online so to speak, and then a
clip of it was put to X where you know,
the real action occurs as you know, your favorite spot. Yeah,
the four ounce gloves as opposed to the sixteen ounce gloves,
that is X versus Instagram or YouTube. There was kind

(11:25):
of an immediate dogpile from a few people in the
cannabis research field.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
So PhDs and mds.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
There were people on our side. There were people on
our side, I mean yeah. The statement that got things
riled up the most was this notion that for certain
individuals there's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high
teach c containing cannabis for certain individuals. Not all that

(11:56):
sparked some issues there. It was really a split. You know,
you see this in different fields. There was one person
in particular who came out swaying with language that, in
my opinion is not like of the sort that you
would use at a university venue, especially among colleagues. But

(12:16):
that's fine, you know, we're all grown ups.

Speaker 2 (12:18):
Well, for me, from my perspective, it was strangely rude
and it had an air of like elitism that to
me was it the source of the problem during COVID
that led to the distrust of science and the popularization

(12:38):
of disrespecting science because some of these scientists spoke with
an arrogance and a douche baggery that I wish we
would have a little bit less of.

Speaker 1 (12:47):
Yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people
outside the university system are They don't they're not familiar
with like the inner workings of science and and the culture,
and so I have to be very careful how you
present when you're a university professor and when Yeah, so

(13:08):
you know, he came out swinging and some you know,
four letter word type language, and he was obviously upset
about So I simply said what I would say anywhere,
which was, hey, look, come on the podcast, let's chat
and when you give your tell me where I'm wrong
and let's discuss. And fortunately he agreed. And initially he said, well, no,

(13:28):
how can I be sure you're not going to misrepresent me?
And so I said, We got on a d M,
then an email, then I actually a phone call and
just said, hey, listen, like you're welcome to record the
whole conversation. We've never done a gotcha on my podcast,
and let's just get to the heart of the matter.
I think this little controversy is perfect kindling for a
really great discussion. And he had some other conditions that

(13:52):
we worked out and I and I felt like cool,
Like he's really interested. You get a very different person
on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say,
he's very collegial, and that conversation is on the schedule.
I said it, we'll fly you out, we'll put you up.
He said, no, he wants to fly himself. He really
wants to make sure that there's like kind of a
space between. I think some of the perception of science

(14:13):
and health podcasts in the academic community is that it's
all designed to sell something. Now we run ad so
it can be free to everyone else. But I think
look in the end, he agreed, and I'm excited for
the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of
that little exchange, there's been a bunch of press from

(14:33):
traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in many
cultures as within the United States, as when I say cultures,
I mean demographics in the United States as the drug
of choice. There have been people highlighting the issues of
potential psychosis and high THHC containing and so it's kind

(14:55):
of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of
on board certain elements that you know, I put forward,
and I think there's some controversy as to whether or
not the different strains, the indicas and stativas are biologically different,
et cetera. So we'll get down into the weeds unintended
during that one. And I'm excited. It's the first time
that we've responded to a direct criticism online about scientific

(15:18):
content in a way that really promoted like, oh, here
the idea of inviting a particular guest, and so it's great,
let's get a guest to his expert in cannabis. I
believe I could be wrong about this, that he's a
behavioral neuroscientist, is slightly different training, but look, he seems
highly credential. It'll be fun and we you know, we
welcome that kind of exchange. I I'm not being diplomatic.

(15:41):
I'm just saying like it's cool, like he's coming on,
you know, and he was friendly on the phone, right,
Like he literally came out online and was like basically
like kind of like fu, like F this and fu.
But you get someone on the phone and it's like, hey,
how's it going, and they're like, oh yeah, well, you know,
there was an immediate apology of like, hey, listen, I
came out normally, I'm like not like that, but on
you know, you got a different Okay. So it's a

(16:02):
little bit like it's a little bit like jiu jitsu. Right,
people say all sorts of things, I guess, but if
they if you're like, all right, well let's go, then
it's probably a different story.

Speaker 2 (16:10):
You know. It's not like jiujitsu because the jiu jitsu
people don't talk shit because they know what the consequences are.
Let me let me just say, on Mike and off Mike,
you have been very respectful towards this person, uh, and
look up to you and respect you and admire the
fact that you have been that said to me that
guy was being a dick, and when you graciously politely

(16:31):
invited him on the podcast, he was still talking down
to you the whole time. So I really admire and
look forward to listening to you talk to him. But
I hope others don't do that. Like you are a positive,
humble voice, exploring all the interesting aspects of science, like
you want to learn if there you've got anything wrong,

(16:54):
you want to learn about it. The way he was
being a dick, I was just hurt a lit bit,
not because of him, but because, like there's some people
I really really admire brilliant scientists that are not their
best cells on Twitter on X definitely, I don't understand
what happens to their brain.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Will they regress? They regress, and they also are protected,
you know, you know, when you remove the I mean,
no scientific argument should ever come to physical blows, right,
But when you remove the real world thing of being
right in front of somebody, people will throw all sorts
of stones at a distance, you know, and over a wall,

(17:34):
and they've got their their wife or their husband, or
their boyfriend or their dog or their cat to go
cuddle with them afterwards. But you get in a room
and it's like, you know, confrontational people in real life
are pretty rare, but hopefully if they do it, they
are like willing to back it up with knowledge. In
this case, right, we're not talking about physical altercation. Yeah,

(17:55):
he kept coming, and he kept putting on conditions. How
do I know you won't this? And I was like, well,
you record the conversation. How do I know you want
to listen? We'll pay for you to come out, how
do you know it? And eventually he just kind of
relented and and to his credit, you know, he's agreed
to come on. I mean, he still has to show up,
but once he does, you know, we'll treat him right
like we would any other guests.

Speaker 2 (18:15):
Yeah, you treat people really well. And I just hope
that people are a little bit nicer on the internet.

Speaker 1 (18:20):
Yeah. Well, you know, X is an interesting one because
you it thickens your skin, you know, to just to
go on there. I mean, you have to be ready
to deal.

Speaker 2 (18:28):
With sure, But I can still criticize people for being
douchebags because like that's still not good inspiring behavior, like
especially for scientists that should be sort of symbols of
scientific thinking, which requires intellectual humility. Humility is a big
part of that, and Twitter is a good place to

(18:50):
illustrate that.

Speaker 1 (18:51):
Yeah, years ago, I used to I was a student
in TA then instructor and then directed a Cold Spring
Harbor course on neuroscience. These are summer courses that explore
different topics and at night we would host what we
hoped were battles in front of the students where you'd
get to people on it. You know, would it be

(19:12):
neural prosthetics or molecular tools that would first, you know,
restore vision to the blind kind of arguments even kind
of like it's kind of a silly argument because it's
gonna be a combination of both, right, But you'd get
these great arguments, but the arguments were always couched in data,
and occasionally you'd get somebody would go like or would
curse or something. But it was the rare, very very

(19:34):
well placed, you know, insult. It wasn't you know, coming
out swinging. I think ultimately, you know, Twitter's a record
of people's behavior, that the Internet is a record of
people's behavior. And here I'm not talking about news reports
about people's behavior. I'm talking about how people show up
online is really important. You've always carried yourself with a

(19:55):
ton of composure and respect, and you know, you just
you would hope that people would grow from that example. Well,
I'll tell you that the podcasters that I'm scouting, it's
their energy, but it's also how they treat other people,
how they respond to comments. And you know, we're blessed
to have pretty significant reach. When we put out a
podcast like someone else's podcast, it goes far and wide.

(20:16):
So like a skateboard team, like a laboratory where you're
selecting people to be in your lab, you want to
pick people that you would enjoy working with and are
collegial etiquette, and etiquette is lacking nowadays, but you're in
the student tie bringing it back, bringing it back.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
You said that your conversation with James Hollis, a young psychoanalyst,
had a big impact on you. What do you mean.

Speaker 1 (20:42):
James Hollis is a eighty four year old Union psychoanalyst
who's written seventeen books, including Undersaturn, Shadow, which is on
the healing and trauma of men, that Eating Eden project,
Excuse Me, which is about relationships and creating a life.
I discovered James Hollis in an online lecture that was
recorded I think in San Diego. It's on YouTube. The
audio is terrible, called creating a Life. And this was

(21:06):
somewhere in the twenty eleven to twenty fifteen span, I
can't remember, and I was on my way to Europe
and I called my girlfriend at the time. I just
found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard. And he
talks about the shadow. He talks about your developmental upbringing
and how you either align with or go one hundred

(21:28):
and eighty degrees off your parents' tendencies and values in
certain areas. He talked about the specific questions to ask
of oneself at different stages of life to live a
full life. So it's always been a dream of mine
to meet him and to record a podcast, and he
wasn't able to travel, so our team went out to
DC and sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays.

(21:49):
People come to our studio, and he came in. He
had some surgeries recently, and he kind of came in
with some assistance from a you know, a cane and
then sat down and just blew my mind from start
to finish. He didn't miss a syllable, and every sentence
that he spoke was like a quotable sentence with real

(22:13):
potency and actionable items. I think one of the things
that was most striking to me was how he said,
when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response and
we just force ourselves to spend some time in the
quiet of our thoughts while walking or well seated or
well lying down, doesn't have to be meditation, but it

(22:35):
could be that we access our unconscious mind in ways
that reveals to us who we really are and what
we really want. And that if we do that practice
repeatedly ten minutes a day here, fifteen minutes a day there,
that we start to really touch into our unique gifts
and the things that make us each us and the

(22:56):
directions we need to take. But that so often we
just day and stimulus response, We just do doo doo
doo doo, which is great, we have to be productive,
but we missed those important messages. And interestingly, he also
put forward this idea of what is it like, get up,
shut up, suit up. Yeah, something like that, like get

(23:18):
out of bed, suit up, and shut up and get
to work. He also has that in him kind of
a Goggins type mindset.

Speaker 2 (23:25):
So be able to turn off all this self reflection
and self analysis and just get shit done.

Speaker 1 (23:30):
Get shit done, but then also take dedicated time and
stop and just let stuff. Guys are to the surface
from the unconscious mind. And he quotes Shakespeare, and he
quotes Young and he quotes everybody through history with incredible
accuracy and exactly the way needed to drive home a point.
But that conversation, to me, was one that I really

(23:52):
felt like, Okay, you know, if I don't wake up
tomorrow for whatever reason, that one's in the can, and
I feel really great about it. To me, it's the
most important guest recording we've ever done, in particular because
he has wisdom, and while I hope he lives to
be two hundred and four, chances are he's got another

(24:17):
what twenty thirty years with us, hopefully more. But I
really really wanted to capture that information and get it
out there. So I'm very very proud of that one.
And he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him, young, old, male, female, whatever,
and you're going to get something of value.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
What do you think about this idea of the shadow
that the good and the bad that we repress, that
hides from plain sight when we analyze ourselves, that's there.
I think there's like an ocean that we don't have
direct access to.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
Yes, yeah, Young said it. We have all things inside
of us, and we do, and some people are more
in touch with those than others, and some people it's repressed.
I mean, does that mean that we could all be,
you know, horrible people or marvelous people, benevolent people? Perhaps?
I think that Thankfully, more often than not people lean

(25:15):
away from the like violent and harmful parts of their shadow.
But I think spending time thinking about you know, one's
shadow shadows is super important. How else are we going
to grow otherwise? You know, we have these unconscious blind
spots of denial or repression or whatever you know the

(25:40):
psychiatrists tell us, but it clearly exists within all of us.
I mean, we have neural circuits for rage, we all do.
We have neural circuits for altruism, and no one's born
without these things. And some people there atrophied and some
people they are hypertrophied. But looking inward and recognizing what's there.

Speaker 2 (25:59):
Is key or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what
Rick Rubin's accessing when he goes silent, silent body, active mind.
That's interesting. What is it for you? What place do
you go to that generates ideas, that helps you generate ideas.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean,
I'm all always exploring for protocols I have to. It's
like in my nature. When I went and spent time
with Rick, I tried to adopt his practice of staying
very still and just letting stuff, you know, come to
the surface, or the dice Rothian way of formulating complete
sentences while being still in the body. What I found

(26:41):
works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does
to write music. He writes music every day. He's a
music producer. He's obviously singer guitar player for Rancid, and
he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop
artists and punk rock artists write great songs, and many
of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists

(27:05):
Tim helped them write. Tim wakes up sometimes in the
middle of the night and what he does is he'll
start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni
Mitchell talks about this too, you find some creative outlet
that like fifteen degrees off center from your main creative outlet,

(27:26):
and you do that thing. So for me, that's drawing.
I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience based on drawing neurons,
that kind of thing. And if I do that for
a little while, my mind starts churning on the nervous
system and biology, and then I come up with areas
I'd like to explore for the podcast. Ways I'd like
to address certain topics. Right now, I'm very interested in

(27:48):
autonomic control. A beautiful paper came out that shows that
anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes without changing
luminance through a biofeedback mechanism, and that gives them audit
control over their so called automatic autonomic nervous system. And
I've been looking at what the circuitry is and it's
it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know

(28:09):
underlies autonomic function. And as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, oh, like,
what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can
control their pupil size. Then you go in and there's
a paper publishing Nature Press. One of the Nature journals
and there's a recent paper on this, like oh cool,
and then we talked about this, and then how could
this be put into a kind of a post or
how could this you know? So doing things that are
about fifteen degrees off center from your main thing is

(28:30):
a great way to access I believe that the circuits
for in Tim's case, painting goes to songwriting. I think
for Joni Mitchell that was also the case, right, I
think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting.
For Rick, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's
listening to podcasts. I don't know that's his business. Do
you have anything that you like to focus on that

(28:52):
allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work. No.

Speaker 2 (28:56):
I really like to focus on emptiness and silence. So
I picked the dragon to have to sleigh, so one
of the problems have to work on and then just
sit there and stare at.

Speaker 1 (29:08):
I don't love how fucking lenear you are.

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Its just and if there's no if you're tired, I'll
just sit I believe in the in the power of
just waiting, and usually I'll stop being tired. Their energy
rises from somewhere or an idea pops from somewhere, but
there needs to be a silence and an emptiness. It's
an empty room, just me and the dragon, and we wait.

(29:32):
That's it. Like if it's a usually with programming, you're
thinking about a particular design, like how do I design
this thing.

Speaker 1 (29:39):
To solve this problem? Any cognitive enhancers. I've got quite
the gallery in front of me. Oh that's right, Yeah, sho,
should we walk through this? Yeah, there's not a sales thing.
It's just I tend to do this bounce back and forth.
Your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices.
So water, all right, Now there's no food in there.

(29:59):
There's water, there's element which they now have canned. Yeah,
and yes they're a podcast sponsor for both of us,
but that's not why I cracked one of these open.
I like them provide they're cold.

Speaker 2 (30:08):
And that's, by the way, my least flavor favorite flavors.
I was saying, that's that's the reason it's still left
in the fridge. This cherry one is really good, The
black cherry good. There's a orange one.

Speaker 1 (30:18):
Yeah. I pushed the sled this morning and pulled the
sled for my workout at the gym and it was
hot today here in Austin. So some salt is kid
and then Mattina Yobramnte zero sugar full confession. I helped
develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love Yerba
mante half Argentine. Been drinking Mate since I was a
little kid. There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet

(30:38):
when I'm like three, setting all my grandfather's lap sipping
Mate out the gourd. And then this my fun interesting
This is just a little bit of coffee with a
scoop of Brian Johnson gave me cocoa, just like pure
unsweetened cocoa, So I put that in chocolate and I
like it. It just for the taste, well actually nukes my appetite.
And since we're not going out to dinner, snit until later,

(30:59):
I figure that's good. Yeah. Brian's an interesting one, right,
He's really pushing this thing.

Speaker 2 (31:04):
The optimization of every Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:05):
Although he just hurt his ankle. He posted a photo
he hurt his ankle, So now he's injecting BPC Body
Protection Compound one five seven, which many many people are taking.
By the way, I did an episode on peptides, I
should just say, you know, BPC one five to seven.
One of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis,
like development of new vasculature, which can be great in

(31:27):
some context, but also if you have a tumor, you
don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore. So I
worry about people taking BPC one five to seven continually.
But and there's very little human data. I think there's
like one study and it's allowsy one, so a lot
of animal data. Some of the peptides are interesting. However,
there's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pinnelin,

(31:49):
which I find even if I've just taken it twice
a week before sleep, then it times it seems to
do something to the circadian timekeeping mechanism, because then on
other days when I don't take it, I get unbelievably
tired at that time that normally I would do the injection.
These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple
of weeks and then typically stop, maybe try something else,

(32:11):
but I stay out of things that really stimulate any
of like major hormone pathways. When it comes to peptides,
that's actually a really.

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Good question of how do you experiment, Like how long
do you try a thing to figure out if it
works for you.

Speaker 1 (32:24):
Well, I'm very sensitive to these things, so I and
I have been doing a lot of things for a
long time. So if I add something in, it's always
one thing at a time, and I noticed right away
if it does not make me feel good. Like there's
a lot of excitement about some of the so called
growth hormone secretagogues Hypermarole and Testamarrele and Surmarle, and I've
experimented a little bit with those in the past, and

(32:45):
they've nuked my rap and eye movement sleep but giving
me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good
to me, but other people like them. I also just
generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these
hormone pathways because you and run into all sorts of issues.
But some people take them safely, but usually after about
four or five days, I know if I like something

(33:05):
or I don't, and then I move on. But I
am not super adventurous with these things. I know people
that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things. They'll
try anything that's not me and I do blood work
but also I'm you know, I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting,
and I'm teaching a course next spring Stanford. I'm going

(33:28):
to do a big undergraduate course, so I'm trying to
develop that course and things like that. So I don't
need to lift more weight or run further than I
already do, which is not that much weight or far
as it is.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
All right, you're not going to the Olympics. You're not
trying to truly maximize the aspect of your performance.

Speaker 1 (33:45):
No, I'm not, and I'm not trying to get down
below whatever, you know, seven percent body fat or something.
I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes,
caffeine in the form of mate, and then this coffee,
and then and then here's one that I think I
brought out for discussion. This is a piece of nicorette.
They're not a sponsor. Nicotine is an interesting compound. It

(34:07):
will raise blood pressure and it is probably not safe
for everybody. But you know, the nicotine is gaining in
popularity like crazy, mainly these pouches that people put in
the lip. Not We're not talking about smoking, vaping, tipping
or snuffing. You know, my interest in nicotine started. This
was in two thousand and ten. I was visiting Columbia

(34:29):
Medical School and I was in the office of the
great neurobiologist Richard Axel won the Nobel Prize co recipient
with Linda Buck for the discovery of the molecular basis
of old faction. Brilliant guy. He's probably in his late
seventies now, probably yeah. And he kept popping nicorette in
his mouth, and I was like, what's this about, And
he said, oh, well, this was just anecdote, right, But

(34:51):
he said but he said this, He said, oh, well,
you know it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

Speaker 2 (34:55):
I said it does.

Speaker 1 (34:56):
He goes, yeah. I don't know if he was kidding
or not. He's known for making jokes. And then he
said that when he used to smoke, it really helped
his focus in creativity. But then he quit smoking because
he want lung cancer, and he found that he couldn't
focus as well. So he would choose nicorette so occasionally
like right now, well, each I do a half apiece.
But I'm not Russian, so I'm a little you know,

(35:16):
you know, did you just pop the whole thing in
your mouth. So I'll do a couple of milligrams every
now and again, and it definitely sharpens the mind on
an empty stomach in particular. But you fast all day,
you're still doing one meal a day.

Speaker 2 (35:27):
One meal a day. Yeah, yeah, I did a nicotine
pouch with rogan at dinner that got high.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams.
I know people that get a canister of zin take
one a day. Preson, they're taking a canister a day,
So you have to be very careful. I will only
allow myself two pieces of nicorette total per week. And
you will notice that, you know, in the day after

(35:54):
you use it. You know, sometimes your your throat will
feel a little bit like like a little spasm, me
like you might want to cough once or two. And so,
you know, if you're a singer or your podcast or
something you have to do long podcast, you want to
just be mindful of it. But yeah, you're supposed to
kind of like keep it in your cheek and here
we go.

Speaker 2 (36:10):
But it did make me intensely focused in a way
that was a little bit scary, because the nucleus basalis
is in the you know, in basal four brain nucleus
has cholinergic neurons that radiate out axons little wires that
release acetocholine into the new cortex en elsewhere.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
And when you focus on one particular topic matter or
one particular area of your visual field or listening to
something and focusing visually, we know that there's an elaboration
of the amount of acetocholin released there, and it binds
to nicotinic acetocholin receptor sites there. So it's a kind
of an intentional modulation by acetylcholin. So you're getting in

(36:52):
with nicotine, you're getting a exogenous or artificial heightening of
that circuitry.

Speaker 2 (36:58):
And the time I had Talk a Car also another podcast,
he told me that apparently it helps him, as he
said publicly, keep his love life vibrant.

Speaker 1 (37:10):
Really it caused vaso constrictions, like.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
He literally said, it makes his dike very hard.

Speaker 1 (37:14):
He said that publicly also, Okay, Well, as little as
I want to think about Tucker Carlson's sex life, no disrespect.
The major effect of nicotine on the vascult or My
understanding is that it causes vaso constriction, not vasodilation. Drugs
like cialis da Dalafhill viagreats that are vasodilators. They allow

(37:38):
more blood flow. Nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow
to the periphery, but provided dostages are kept low. And
I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all,
and I don't recommend young people use it. You know,
you know, twenty five and younger brains very plastic at
that time. And certainly smoking, dipping, vaping, it's nothing, aren't

(38:03):
good because you're going to run into run into trouble
for other reasons. But in any case, well, and even there,
vaping is a controversial topic, probably safer than smoking, but
has its own issues. And I said something like that,
and boy did I catch a lot of heat for that.
I can't say anything as a health science edge care
and not piss somebody off. It just depends on where

(38:24):
the center of masses and how far outside that you are.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
For me, the caffeine is the main thing, and actually
it's a really big part of my life. And one
of the things you recommend that people wait a bit
in the morning, oh yeah, to consume caffeine if they.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
Experience a crash in the afternoon. That this is one
of the misconceptions. I I regret maybe even discussing it.
For people that crash in the afternoon, oftentimes if they
delay their caffeine by sixty to ninety minutes in the morning,
they will offset some of that. But if you launch
is too big or you didn't sleep all the night before,

(39:02):
you're not gonna avoid that afternoon crash. But I'll wake
up sometimes and go straight to hydration caffeine, especially if
I'm gonna work out. Here's a weird one. If I
exercise before eight thirty am, especially if I start exercising
when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that
lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy,

(39:24):
which is mid morning ten am eleven AM, and I
start exercising, then I'm basically exhausted all afternoon. And I
don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the intensity
of the workout, But so I like to be done,
showered and heading into work by nine am, but I
don't always meet that.

Speaker 2 (39:41):
More So, you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if
you start out with exercising.

Speaker 1 (39:45):
I think you can get energy and wake yourself up
with exercise if you start early, and then that fuels
you all day long. I think that if you wait
until you're feeling at your best to train, sometimes that's
detrimental because then in the afternoon, when you're doing like
the work we get paid for, like research, podcasting, et cetera,
then oftentimes you know your brain isn't firing as well.

Speaker 2 (40:08):
That it's interesting, I haven't really rigorously tried that. Wake
up and just start running or this is the jocko thing.
And then there's this phenomenon called entrainment where if you
force yourself to exercise, or eat, or socialize, or ifview
bright light at a certain time of day for three
to seven days in a row, pretty soon there's an
anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone in

(40:32):
theory can become a morning person to some degree or another.
And this is also a beautiful example of why you
wake up before your alarm clock goes off.

Speaker 1 (40:42):
You know, people wake up and all of a sudden
it goes off. It wasn't because it clicked, it because
you have this incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep.
And there's some papers that have been published in the
last couple of years Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere are showing
that people can answer math problems in their sleep, simple
math problems, but math problems. Nonetheless, this does not mean

(41:02):
that if you ask your partner a question and sleep,
that they're going to answer accurately.

Speaker 2 (41:06):
Like they might screw up the whole. A cumulative probability
of twenty percent across multiple months.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
All right, listen, what happened? What happened? Here's a deal.
A few years back, I did a four and a
half hour, after editing, four and a half hour episode
on male and female fertility. The entire recording took eleven hours,
and at one point during the and by the way,
I'm very proud of that episode. There's many couples have

(41:34):
written to me and said they now have children as
a consequence of that episode. And my first question is
what were you doing during the episode? But in all seriousness, we.

Speaker 2 (41:43):
Should say that four and a half hours and people
then they should listen to the episode. You're it's extremely
technical episode. You're not stop dropping facts and referencing huge
number of papers. It must be exhaust I don't understand
how you can.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
Talk about sperm hell spermagenesis. It talks about the ovulatory cycle.
It talks about things people can do that are that
are considered absolutely supported by science. It talks about some
of the things kind of out on the edge a
little bit that are a little bit more experimental. Talks
about IVF, It talks about IXXY, it talks about all
of that. It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a
function of age, et cetera. But there's this one portion

(42:25):
there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability
of a successful pregnancy as a function of age. And
so there was a clip that was cut in which
I was describing cumulative probability. And by the way, we've
published cumulative probability historiams in many of my laboratories papers,

(42:45):
including one that was a Nature article in twenty eighteen,
so we run these all the time. And yes, I
know the difference between independent and cumulative probability, this like
I do. The way the clip was cut and what
I stated, unfortunately combined mind to like a pretty great
gaff where I say, you're just adding percent I said,

(43:06):
you're just adding percentages twenty twenty to one hundred and
twenty percent, and then I made a kind of Unfortunately,
my humor isn't always so good, and I made a joke.
I said one hundred and twenty percent. But that's a
different thing altogether. What I should have said was that's impossible,
you know, and here here's how it actually works. But
then it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability

(43:29):
histogram for successful pregnancy. But somewhere in the early portion
I misstated something, right. I made a math or which
implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability,
which I do. And it got picked up and run
and people had a really good laugh with that one

(43:49):
at my expense. And so what I did in response
to it was, rather than just say everything I just
said now, I said, I just came out online and said, hey, folks,
in an episode dated this on Fertility, I made a
math ere here's the formula for a cumulative probability successful
pregnancy at that age. Here's the graph, here's the you know.

(44:11):
And I offered it as a teaching moment in two ways.
One for people to understand cumulative probability. It was sort
of interesting to a number of people that had come
out critiquing the gaff also like bology, and folks came
out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. So
there was a lot of posturing, you know, the dog pile.
Oftentimes people are quick to dog pile. They didn't understand,

(44:32):
but a lot of people didn't understand. Some smart people
out there. Obviously. I called my dad and he was
just laughing. He goes, oh, this is good. It is
like the old school way of hammering academics. But the
point being there was a teaching moment. Give me an
opportunity to say, hey, I made a mistake. I also
made a mistake in another podcast where I did a

(44:52):
micron to millimeter conversion and we're sending me your conversion.
But and we always correct these in the show note captions.
We correct them in the audio. Now unfortunately on YouTube
it's harder to correct. You can't go and edit in
segments we put in the captions. But that was the
one teaching moment. If you make a mistake, it's substantive
and relate to data, you apologize and correct the mistake
used as teaching moment. The other one was to say, hey,

(45:15):
you know, in all the thousands of hours of content
we've put out, I'm sure I've made some small errors.
I think I once said, serotonin when I'm in dopamine,
and you know, you're going, you're you're riffing, and it's
a reminder to be careful to edit, double check. But
the Internet usually edits for us, and then we go
make corrections. But it didn't feel good at first, but ultimately,

(45:37):
you know, I can laugh at myself about it. Long
ago at Berkeley, when I was teaing my first class,
it was a biopsychology class between nineteen ninety eight or
nineteen ninety nine. I was drawing the pituitary gland, which is,
you know, has an anterior and a posterior lobe actually
as a media lobe too. I have five six hundred

(45:57):
students in that lecture hall, and I drew it as chalk,
and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary and
I said, my back was to the audience, I said,
you know, And so they just sort of hang there
and everyone just erupted and laughter because it looked like
a scrolled and went two testicles. And I remember thinking like,
oh my god, I don't think I can turn around
like and face this, you know, And I got to

(46:20):
turn around sooner or later. So I turned around and
we just all had to be laughed together. It was embarrassing.
I'll tell you one thing, though, they never forgot about
the two lobes of the pituitary.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, and you haven't forgotten about that either. Right.

Speaker 1 (46:33):
There's a high, high salience for these kinds of things.
And it also was kind of fun to see how
excited people get to see people trip. It's like an
elite sprinter trips and does something stupid, like, you know,
runs the opposite direction out of the blocks or something
like that, and or you know, I recall it. One

(46:53):
World Cup match years ago, a guy scored against his
own team. I think they killed the guy. Do you
remember that, some South American or Central American team. Yeah,
and they killed the guy. But yeah, let's let's look
it up. I just said World Cup. Yeah, he was gunned.

Speaker 2 (47:09):
Down andres Escobar, Yeah, scored against his own team in
nineteen ninety four World Cup in the United States, just
twenty seven years old, playing for the Columbia national team.

Speaker 1 (47:22):
Yeah. Last name Escobar. It's a good name. I think
it would protect you listen. You know, so there are
some gaffes that get people, uh killed, right, So you know,
how forgiving are we for online mistakes? You know, it's
the nature of the mistakes. People were quite gracious about

(47:44):
the the gaff and some weren't. And you know, it's
interesting that we as you know, public health science educators.
You know, we'll do long podcasts sometimes and you need
to you really careful. What's great is aim allows you
to check these things now more readily. So that's cool,

(48:09):
and there are ways that it's now going to be
more self correcting. I mean, you know, I think there's
there's a lot of errors out there on the Internet
and people are finding them and it's cool, like things
are getting cleaned up.

Speaker 2 (48:21):
Yeah, but mistakes, nevertheless will happen. Are you do you
feel the pressure of not making mistakes?

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Sure? I mean, you know, I try and get things
right to the best of you know, to the best
of my ability. I check with experts. It's kind of
interesting when people really don't like something that was said
in a podcast. A lot of times I chuckle because
I'm you know, at Stanford we have some amazing scientists,
but I talk to them else people elsewhere, and it's

(48:51):
always interesting to me. How you know, I'll get divergent
information and and then I'll find the overlap in the
vent diagram, and I have this like question, do I
just stay with the overlap in the vent diagram. I
did an episode on oral health. I didn't know this
until I researched that episode, but oral health is critically

(49:15):
related to heart health and brain health. There's a bacteria
that causes cavity, strepto caucus, you know, that can make
its way into other parts of the body through the
mouth that can cause serious issues. There's the idea that
some forms of dementia, some forms of heart disease are
start in the mouth. Basically, I talked to no fewer
than four dentist dental experts, and there was a lot

(49:39):
of convergence. I also learned that teeth can demineralize, that's
the formation of cavities. They can also remineralize as long
as the cavity isn't too deep, it can actually fill
itself back in, especially if you provide the right substrates
for it. That saliva is this incredible fluid that has
all this capacity to remineralize teeth provided the millu is right.

(50:00):
Things like alcohol based mouthwashes killing off some of the
critical things you need. This is fascinating. And I put
out that episode thinking, well, I'm not a dentist, I'm
not an oral health episode. But I talked to a
pediatric dentist. There's a terrific one doctor downscore Stacey Staci
on Instagram does great content, talk to some others. And

(50:21):
then I just waited for the attack. I was like,
here we go, and it didn't come, and dentists were
thanking me. I was like, oh, you know, that's a
rare thing. More often than not, if I do an
episode about say psilocybin or MDMA, you get some people
liking it, or ADHD and the drugs for ADHD. We
did a whole episode on the riddle in vio ance
af ter all stuff. You get people saying thank you.

(50:42):
You know, I prescribe this to my kid and it
really helps and this and I. But they're private about
the fact that they do it because they get so
much attack from other people. So I like to find
the center of mass report that try and make it
as clear as possible, and then I know that there's
some stuff where I'm gonna catch shit. What's frustrating for

(51:04):
me is when, like I see claims that I'm like
against floridization of water, which I'm not. Right, Like, we
talked about the benefits of fluoride. It builds hyper strong
bonds within the teeth, and went and looked at some
of the the literally the crystal structure not excuse me,
not the crystal structure, but the essentially the like micron

(51:25):
and sub micron structure of teeth. It's incredible and where
floor I can get in there and form these super
strong bonds, and you can also form them with things
like hydroxy appetite. And why is there fluoride in water?
Well it's the best. Okay, you get you say some
things that are interesting, but then somehow it gets turned
into like you're against floridization, which I'm not. Or I've
been accused of being against sunscreen. I wear mineral based

(51:47):
sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer,
or I use a physical barrier. There is a cohort
of people out there that think that all sunscreens are bad.
I'm not one of them. I'm not what's called a
sunscreen truther. But then you get attacked for like you
so we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic.
So what in Ronda Patrick's now starting to get vocal
about this. And so there's certain topics it's interesting for

(52:09):
which you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying.
But there's a lumper or lumping as opposed to splitting,
of of what health educators say. And so it just
seems like, like with politics, there's this like urgency to
just put people into a camp of experts versus like

(52:30):
renegade or something, and it's not like that. It's just
not like that. So the short answer is, I really strive,
really strive to get things right, but I know that
I'm going to piss certain people off. And You've taught me,
and Joe's taught me, and other podcasters have taught me that, Like,
if you worry too much about it, then you aren't

(52:52):
going to get the newest information out there. Like peptides,
there's very little human data unless you're talking about by
leci or the milana. You know the stuff in them,
molanosite stimulating hormone stuff which are prescribed for female libido
to enhance female libido, or curarellan, which is for certain
growth hormone deficiencies with rare exception, there's very little human data,
but people are still super interested in a lot of

(53:13):
people are taking and doing these things. So you want
to get the information out.

Speaker 2 (53:16):
Do you try to not just look at the science,
but research with the communities are talking with the various
communities they're talking about, Like maybe research what the conspiracy
theorists are talking about, just so you know all the
armies that are going to be attacking your castle.

Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yes, So like, for instance, there's a community of people
online that believe that like if you consume seed oils
or something that like you're setting up your skin for
sunburn and if you don't, you know, like there's all
these like theories, but I like to so I like
to know what the theories are. I like to know
what the extremes are. But I also like to know
what the standard conversation is. But there's generally more agreement

(53:55):
than disagreement. I think. Where you know, I've been kind
of bullish actually is you know, like supplements, Like people go, oh, supplements, Well,
there's food supplements like a protein powder just different than
a vitamin. And then they are compounds. There are compounds
that have real benefit, but people get very nervous about
the fact that they're not regulated, but some of them

(54:15):
are vetted for potency and for safety with more rigor
than others, you know. And it's interesting to see how
people who take care of themselves and put a lot
of work into that are often attacked. That's been interesting.
Also one of the most controversial topics nowadays is ozempic munjaro.

(54:38):
I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't
understand why quote unquote health wellness community is so against
these things. I also don't understand why they have to
be looked at as the only route for some people.
They've really helped them lose weight, and yes there can
be some muscle loss and other lean body loss, but
that can be offset with resistance training. They've helped a

(54:58):
lot of people, and other people are like, no, this
stuff is terrible. I think the most interesting thing about
ozempic moejarro is that they are gop one. They're in
the golp one pathway gukagon like peptide one, and it
was discovered in HeLa monsters, which is a lizard basically,
and now the entomologists will dive on me. It's a

(55:21):
big lizard looking thing that doesn't eat very often, and
they figured out that there's this peptide that allows it
to curb its own appetite at the level of the
brain and the gut, and it has a lot of
homology to sequence, homology to what we now call golp one.
So I love anytime there's animal biology links to cool
human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can

(55:42):
help people with obesity and type two diabetes, and there's
evidence that can even curb some addictions. Those are newer data,
but I don't see as either or In fact, I've
been a little bit disappointed at the way that the
whatever you want to call it, health wellness biohacking community
has like slammed on OZMA pick onejar. It's like they're like,
just get out and run and do listen. There are

(56:03):
people who are carrying substantial amounts of weight that running
could injure them. They get on these drugs and they
can improve and then hopefully they're also doing resistance training
and eating better, and then you know you're bringing all
the elements together.

Speaker 2 (56:14):
Well, why do you think the criticism is happening? Is
it that ozmpic became super popular, so people are misusing
it or that kind of thing.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
Now, I think what it is is that people think
if it's a pharmaceutical it's bad, and then or if
it's a supplement it's bad depending on which camp they're in.
And and it wouldn't it be wonderful to kind of
like fill in the gap between this divide. You know,
what I would like to see in politics and in
health is neither right nor left. But what we can

(56:42):
just call a league of reasonable people that looks at
things on an issue by issue basis and fills in
the center. Because I think most people are in our
I don't want to say center in a political way,
but I think most people are reasonable. They want to
be reasonable. But that's not what sells clicks, that's not
what that's not what drives interest. But I'm a very
like like I look at issue by issue, person by person.

(57:06):
I don't like in group out group stuff. I never have.
I've got friends from all walks of life. I said
this another podcast, and it always sounds like it like
a political statement. But like the the the push towards
like you know, polarization is it's so frustrating. If there's
one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older
each year, I'm like, wow, are we ever going to
get out of this like polarization? Speaking of which, how

(57:29):
are you going to vote for the presidential election?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the
people involved and do it well.

Speaker 1 (57:37):
What do you think the role of podcast is going
to be in this year's election?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
I would love long form conversations to happen with the
with the candidates. I think it's going to be huge.
I would love Trump to go on Rogan. I'm embarrassed
to say this, but I would love to honestly would
love to see Joe Biden go on Joe Rogan.

Speaker 1 (57:59):
Also, I would imagine that both would go on, but separately, separately.

Speaker 2 (58:03):
I think it's I think a debate. Joe does debates,
but I think Joe at his best, this one on
one conversation really intimate. I just wish that Joe Biden
would actually do long form conversations.

Speaker 1 (58:17):
I thought he had done it. It wasn't he. I
think it was on Ja Shetty.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
He did Jay Shetty. He did a few. But when
I mean long form, I mean really long form, like
two three hours and more relaxed. It was much more orchestrated,
because what happens when it's the interview is a little
bit too short. It becomes into this generic, uh political
type of NBCCN. That type of interview. You get a

(58:43):
set of questions and you don't get to really feel
the human, expose the human to the light in it
the full we talked about the shadow, the good, the bad,
and the ugly. So I think there's something magical about
two three four hours. But it doesn't have to be
that long, but it has to have that feeling to
it where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous

(59:06):
and you're going to be a strictly sticking to the
question answer type of feel but just shooting shit, which
Rogan is the best by far in the world at that.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is
at what he does and the number I mean, the
three or four podcasts per week, plus plus the UFC
annow saying, plus comedy tours and stadiums, plus you know,
doing comedy shows in the middle of the week, plus

(59:40):
you know, a husband and a father and a friend
and jiu jitsu. The guy's got superhuman levels of output.
I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business.
And I think that people want and deserve to know
the people that are running for office at in a
different way and to really get to know them. Well, listen,

(01:00:02):
you know, I guess you. I mean, is it clear
that he's going to do jail time or maybe he
gets away to find because I was gonna say, I mean,
does that mean you're gonna be podcasting from in prison?

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
Were going to back then I'm going to figure out
how to commit a crime so I can get in prison.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Well that's I'm sure they have visitors, right.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
That just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interviews. Well, yeah,
I understand you wouldn't be able to wear that suit.
You'd be wearing a different suit. That's true.

Speaker 1 (01:00:30):
Yeah, it's gonna be interesting, and you do. I'm not
just saying this because you're my friend, but you would
do a marvelous job. I think you should sit down
with all of them separately to keep it civil and
and see what what happens. Here's one thing that I
found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm
in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these like

(01:00:53):
they're not dinners, but gatherings where you know a local,
you know, a bunch of podcasters will come together, but
a lot of people from the entertainment industry, big agencies,
big tech, like big big Tech. Many of the people
have been on this podcast, and they'll host a discussion
or debate. And what you find if you look around
the room and you talk to people is that about

(01:01:15):
half the people in the room are very left leaning
and very outspoken about that, and they'll tell you exactly
who they want to see and win the presidential race,
and the other half will tell you that they're for
the other side. A lot of people that people assume
are on one side of the aisle or the other
are in the exact opposite side. Now, some people are

(01:01:38):
very open about who they're for. But it's been very
interesting to see how when you get people one on one,
they're like telling you they want ex candidate to win
or why candidate to win, And sometimes I like, really,
I can't believe it, like you like yep. And so
it's what people think about people politically is often exactly wrong.

(01:02:03):
And and that's been eye opening for me. And I've
see that in university campuses too, and and so it's
gonna be really really interesting to see what happens in November.

Speaker 2 (01:02:13):
In addition to that, as you said, most people are
close to the center. Despite what Twitter makes it seem
like most people, whether that's sent a lot to center, right,
they're kind of close to the center.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
Yeah. I mean, here's to me the most interesting question,
who is going to be the next big candidate in
years to come? Like, who's that going to be? Right now?
I don't I don't. I don't see or know of
that person. Who's it going to be?

Speaker 2 (01:02:37):
Yeah, the young promising candidates, we're not seeing them. I'm
not saying, like who Another way to ask that question,
who would want to be?

Speaker 1 (01:02:45):
Well, that's the issue, right, you know, who wants to
live in this twelve hour news cycle where you're just
trying to you know, dunk on the other team so
that nobody notices like that you're the ship that you
fucked up, you know, like that that's not like that's
not only not fun or interesting, it also is just
like it's got to be psychosis inducing at some point.

(01:03:07):
And I think that, you know, God willing, we're gonna
you know, some young guy or woman is like on
this and refuses to to back down and was just
like determined to be president and will make it happen.
But like, I don't even know who the Bible candidates are.

(01:03:30):
Maybe you Lex, you know, we should ask Sagar. Sagar
wouldn't know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Yeah, yeah, maybe Sagar himself. Sagar's show is awesome. I
and Crystal do a great thing. Is incredible, especially.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Since they have somewhat divergent opinions on it. That's what
makes it so cool.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
He's great, he looks great in the suit, looks real sack.

Speaker 1 (01:03:48):
He's taking really good care of himself. I think he's
getting married soon. Congratulations forgive me for not remembering your
your wife future wife's name.

Speaker 2 (01:03:55):
He won my heart by giving me a by goophy
of Hitler as a present.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
That's what he gave you. Yeah, I gave you a
hatchet with a poem, and that just shows the fundamental
of different way that when the poemscribed in it, which
was pretty damn good, I realized everything we bring up
on the screen is like really depressing, like the soccer
player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy?

Speaker 2 (01:04:23):
Sure? To Nature's Metal Instagram, those.

Speaker 1 (01:04:27):
Are pretty intense. We actually did a collaborative post on
a on a shark thing.

Speaker 2 (01:04:31):
Really yeah, what kind of shark thing?

Speaker 1 (01:04:33):
So to generate the fear VR stimulus from my lab
in twenty was it yet? Twenty sixteen, we went down
to Guadaloupe Island off the coast of Mexico, ME and
a guy named Michael Muller who's a very famous portrait
photographer but also takes photos of sharks, and we used

(01:04:55):
three sixty video to build VR of great white sharks,
brought it back to the lab. We published that study
in Current Biology in twenty seventeen. Went back down there
and that was the year that I exited the cage.
You lowered the cage with a crane, and that year
I exited the cage, I had a whole mess with

(01:05:15):
a air failure. Of the day before, I was breathing
from a hookah line while in the cage, I had
no scuba on. Divers were out. The thing got both
constricted up and I had an air failure and I
had to actually share air and it was a whole
mess story for another time. But the next day, because
I didn't want to get PTSD and it was pretty scary,
the next day I cage exited with some other divers.
It turns out with these great white sharks in Guadalupe,

(01:05:38):
the water's very clear and you can swim toward them
and then they'll they'll veer off you if you swim
toward them, otherwise they see us prey. Well. In the evening,
you've brought all the cages up and you're hopefully all alive.
And we were hanging out fishing for tuna. We had
one of the crew on board had a line in

(01:05:59):
the water and was fishing for tuna for dinner, and
a shark took the tuna off the line and it's
a it's a very dramatic take, and you can see
the just absolute size of these great white sharks that
the waters they are filled with them. That's the one.
But so this video just the neurallink link was shot
by Matt McDougall, who is the had neurosurgeon neural link there.

(01:06:23):
It just takes it now, believe or not, looks like
it missed, like it didn't get the fish. It actually
just cut that thing like a bandsaw. So I'm up
on the deck with Matt. Yeah, and so when you
look at it from the side, you you really get
a sense of this, of the the girth of this
freaking thing. So as it comes up size of that thing.

(01:06:44):
And they moved through the water with such speed. Just
a couple of so when you're in the cage and
the cage is lowered down below the surface, they're going around.
You're not allowed to chum the water there. Some people
do it, but and then when you kjag sit, they're like,
what are you doing out here? And then you know
they you swim toward them, they veer off. But what's
interesting is that if you look at how they move

(01:07:06):
through the water, all it takes for one of these
great white sharks when it sees a tuna or something
it wants to eat, is like two flicks of the
tail and it becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable
economy of effort and ocean Ramsey, who is, in my opinion,
the greatest of all kJ ex at shark divers, this
woman who dove with enormous great white sharks. She really

(01:07:28):
understands their behavior when they're aggressive, when they're not going
to be aggressive. She and her husband Wan I believe
his name is do they understand how the tiger sharks
differ from the great white sharks. We were down there
basically like not understanding any of this. We never should
have been there, and actually the air failure of the
day before, plus kjag sing. The next day, I told
myself after coming up from the kJ exit, that's it.

(01:07:49):
I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want
to live. Got back across the border a couple days
later and I was like, that's it. I don't take
risks with my life any longer. But yeah, McDougall, Mat
McDougall's that video and then it went quote unquote viral
through Uh the Nature is Metal. We passed them that video.

Speaker 2 (01:08:07):
Actually, uh, I saw a video where an instructor was
explaining how to behave with the shark in the water,
and that you don't want to be swimming away because
then you're acting like a prey, and then you want
to be acting like a predator by looking at it
and swimming towards it, right.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
Towards them, and they'll bank off. Now if you don't
see them, they're ambush predators. You know, you're swimming in the.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
Surface, and apparently if they get close, you should just
like guide them away by like grabbing them and moving away.

Speaker 1 (01:08:32):
Some people will actually roll them, but if they're coming
in full speed, you're not going to roll the shark.
But here we are back to dark stuff again. I
like the shark attack map, and the shark attack map
shows that, you know, northern California, there were a couple
actually a guy's head got taken off. He was swimming
north of San Francisco. There's been a couple of Northern
California that was really tragic, but most of them are

(01:08:54):
in Florida, in Australia, Florida. Same with the Surf Rider
Foundation Shark attack map there it is they have a
great map there you go, so they look like they
have all their scars on them. So if you if
you zoom in on I mean lokly this. If you
go to the North America.

Speaker 2 (01:09:11):
Look at skulls, there's there's a yeah where they're where
they're deadly attacks.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
But in yeah, northern California. Sadly, this is really tragic.
If you zoom in on this one. I read about
this this guy if you can click the link, fifty
year old mill. He was in chest high water. This
is just tragic. I feel so sad for him. And
his family. You know, he's just three members of the
party chose to go in. He was, you know, nine,

(01:09:38):
I was in his chest high water, twenty five to
fifty yards from shore, great Breach. The water seized his
head and that was it. You know. So it does happen,
It's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean,
it's very, very very low probability.

Speaker 2 (01:09:54):
But but if it doesn't happen six times in a row,
you're in twenty percent chance.

Speaker 1 (01:10:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
Who do you think wins a saltwater crocodile or a shark?

Speaker 1 (01:10:05):
Okay, I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me
to know. And Muller, Michael Muller, who dove all over
the world. He sent me a picture of him diving,
uh with salty saltwater crocs in Cuba. It was a
smaller one, but goodness, Groch, have you seen the size
of some of those saltwater crops. Yeah, I'm thinking, I'm thinking.
The sharks are so agile. They're amazing. They've headcammed one

(01:10:28):
or body cammed one moving through the celt bed and
you look and it's just they're so agile moving through
the water and it's looking up at the surface like
the cameras the service, and you just realize, if you're
out there, you're not and you're swimming and you get
hit by by a shark, you're not.

Speaker 2 (01:10:46):
Just gonna talk shit and say that a salty has
way more bite for us. But according to the Internet,
recently data indicates that the shark has a stronger bite.
So I was I was assuming that a crocodile would
have a stronger bite force and therefore agility. It doesn't matter,
but apparently a shark.

Speaker 1 (01:11:04):
Yeah, and turning one of those big salties is probably
not that you know, turning around. It's like a battleship.
I mean, those sharks are unelieving. They hit from all sorts. Oh,
and they they do this thing. We saw this. You're
out of the cage or in the cage and you
and you'll look at one and you'll see its eye
kind of like looking at you. They can't really phobe it,
but they'll look at you and you're tracking it, and

(01:11:25):
then you'll look down and you'll realize that one's coming
at you. They're just they're they're ambush prayers, they're working together.
It's fascinating, Like, I like, how you know that they
can't phoviate.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
You're already considering the vision system there, and it's a
very on the system.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
Very primitive eyes on the side of the head. Their
vision is decent enough. They're mostly obviously sensing things with
their electro sensing in the water, but also oh faction. Yeah,
I spend far too much time thinking about and learning
about the visual systems of different animals. If you get
me going on this, like, we'll be here all night.

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
See this is what I saw this in the store,
and I got it because this is from a shark.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
Goodness, yet, I can't say I ever saw one with
teeth this big, but it's beautiful. Yeah, it's probably you know,
probably your blood pressure just goes and you you don't
feel I feel a thing.

Speaker 2 (01:12:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:12:17):
Before we went down for the kJ exit, a guy
in our crew, Pat Dastu's very experienced diver, asked one
of the South African divers that, so, you know, like,
what's the contingency plan if like somebody catches a bite?
And they were like he was like every man for
himself and they're like basically saying like, if somebody catches
a bite, like that's it. You know. Anyway, I thought

(01:12:41):
we were gonna bring up something happy, well that is happy. Well, yeah,
nature is beautiful. We lived, but you know that there
are there are happy things. You brought up. Nature is metal.
This See, this is the difference between Russian Americans and Americans.
It's like, maybe this is actually a good time to
bring up your ayahuasca journey. I've never done ayahuasca, but

(01:13:05):
I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about ibagain eboga.
But you told me that you did ayahuasca and that
for you it wasn't the dark, scary ride that it
is for everybody else.

Speaker 2 (01:13:19):
Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me. I did
it twice actually.

Speaker 1 (01:13:22):
And have you done high dose psilocybin?

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
Never know? I just did small dose psilocybin a couple
of times. So I was, you know, nervous about it.

Speaker 1 (01:13:30):
I was very understanding. So I've done high dose psilocybin.
It's terrifying, but I've always gotten something very useful out
of it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:37):
So, I mean, I was nervous about like whatever demons
might hide in the shadow and the UNGI in the shadow,
Like I was, I was nervous, but ye I think
it turns out. I don't know what the lesson is
to draw from that, but my experience boys Russian, it
must it must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's
also something to the jungle there. It strips away all

(01:13:58):
the bullshit of life and you're just there. I forgot
the outside civilization exists. I forgot time because like when
you don't have your phone, you don't have meetings or
calls or whatever, you lose the sense of time. The
sun comes up, the sun comes down.

Speaker 1 (01:14:14):
That's the fundamental biological timer. You know, every mammalian species
has a short wavelength, so you think like blue UV type,
but like absorbing cone and a longer wavelength absorbing cone.
And it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's
morning and evening because when the sun is low in
the sky, you've got short wavelength and long wavelength light.

(01:14:35):
Like when you look at a sunrise, it's got blues
and yellows, orange and yellows. Look in the evening, red's
orange and blues. And in the middle of the day
it's like full spectrum light. Now it's always full spectrum light,
but because of some atmospheric elements and because of the
low solar angle. You like, that difference between the different
wavelengths of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons

(01:14:57):
in your eye pay attention to and signal to your
circadian time keeping mechanism. Like we are at the core
of our brain and the super chismatic nucleus we are,
we are like wired to be entrained to the rising
and setting of the sun. Like that's the biological timer,
which makes perfect sense because you know, obviously as the planets,
as the planet's spin and revolve.

Speaker 2 (01:15:18):
I also wonder like how that is affected by you know,
in the rainforest, the sun is not visible often so
you're under the cover of the trees, so maybe that
affects well.

Speaker 1 (01:15:28):
There are social rhythms, they're feeding rhythms sometimes in terms
of some species will signal the timing of activity of
other species. And but yeah, getting out from the canopy
is critical. Of course, even under the canopy during the daytime,
there's far more photons than at night. You know, this
is always when I'm telling people to get sunlight in

(01:15:49):
their eyes in the morning and in the evening, people say,
there's no light, no sunlight this time here, like it
go outside on a really overcast day, it's far brighter
than it is at night, right, so there's still lots
of sunlight, and we can't see the sun as an object.
But I love time perception shifts, and you mentioned that
in the jungle it's linked to the rising and setting

(01:16:09):
of the sun. You also mentioned that on Ayahuasca you
zoomed out from the earth. These are like to me
the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as
opposed to another brain. Of course I've only ever had
a human brain, but which is that you can consciously
set your time domain window, Like we can be focused here,
we can be focused on all of Austin, or we

(01:16:31):
can be focused on the entire planet. You can make
those choices consciously. But in the time domain it's hard.
Like different activities bring us into fine slicing or more
broad binning of time, depending on what we're doing programming
or exercising, or researching or podcasting. But just how unbelievably
fluid the human brain is in terms of it's the

(01:16:53):
aperture of the time space window of our cognition and
of our experience. And I feel like this is perhaps
one of the more valuable tools that we have access
to that we don't really leverage as much as we should,
which is when things are really hard, you need to
zoom out and see it as one element within your
whole life span and that there's more to come, you know.

(01:17:18):
I mean people commit suicide because they can't see beyond
the time domain they're in, or they think it's going
to go on forever. When we're happy, we rarely think
this is going to last forever. But which is an
interesting contrast in its own right. But I think that psychedelics,
while I have very little experience with them, I have
some and it sounds like they're just a very interesting

(01:17:40):
window into the different apertures.

Speaker 2 (01:17:43):
Well, how to surf that wave is probably a scale.
One of the things I was prepared for and I
think is important is not to resist. I think I
understand what it means to resist. The thing a powerful
wave and it's not going to be good, so you
have to be able to surf it. So I was
ready for the to relax through it, and maybe because
I'm quite good at that from knowing how to relax

(01:18:08):
and all kinds of disciplines playing piano and guitar when
I was super young, and then through jiu jitsu. Knowing
the value of relaxation and through all kinds of sports
to be able to relax the body fully just accept
whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it
was a very positive experience for me.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
Do you have any interest in eboga. I'm very interested
in I began Eboga. There's a colleague of mine and
researcher at Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's been doing some transcranial
magnetic stimulation and brain imaging on people who have taken
I begain. I begin as I understand it gives a
twenty two hour psychedelic journey where no hallucinations with eyes open,

(01:18:46):
but you close your eyes and you get a very
high resolution image of actual events that happened in your life.
But then you have agency within those movies. I think
you have to be of healthy heart to be able
to do it. I think you have to be on
a heart rate monitor. It's not true, it's not like
these other psychedelics. But there's a wonderful group called Veterans
Solutions that has used eboga combined with some other psychedelics

(01:19:14):
in the veterans community to great success for things like
PTSD and it's a group I've really tried to support
in any way that I can, mainly by being vocal
about the great work they're doing. But you hear incredible
stories of people who are just like like near cratered
in their life or zombie by PTSD and other things

(01:19:36):
post war get back a lightness or achieve a lightness
and a clarity that they didn't feel they had. So
I'm very curious about these compounds. The state of Kentucky.
We should check this, but I believe it's taken money
from the Opioid Crisis Settlement for I begain research. I mean,
so this is like no longer. Yes, if you look here,

(01:19:58):
let's see. Uh did they do oh no, no, oh no,
they backed away.

Speaker 2 (01:20:03):
Kentucky backs away from the plan to fund opio treatment researchers.

Speaker 1 (01:20:06):
They were going to use the money to treat opio
Now officials are backing off. Fifty billion. What is on
its way over the coming years fifty billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
Fifty billion dollars is on this way to state in
local government over the coming years. The pool of funding
comes from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies that profited
from manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers.

Speaker 1 (01:20:27):
Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from
the opio so they were going to do psychedelic research
with I begain supporting research on illegal illegal folks psychedelic
drug called abagant. Well, I guess they backed away from it. Well,
sooner later we'll get some happy news up on the internet.

Speaker 2 (01:20:46):
During this episode, talking about the shock and the crocodile fighting, yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
True, true, and you survived the jungle.

Speaker 2 (01:20:54):
Well, that's the thing I was.

Speaker 1 (01:20:55):
I was. I was writing to you on WhatsApp multiple
times because I was gonna put on the inner are
you okay and if you're like alive, and then I
was gonna just like put it to Twitter just like
he's alive. But then, of course you're far too classy
for that, so you just came back alive.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Well, jungle or not. One of the lessons is also
you know, when when you hear the call for adventure,
just fucking do it.

Speaker 1 (01:21:21):
I was gonna ask you, it's kind of silly question,
but like, give me a small fraction of things on
your bucket list.

Speaker 2 (01:21:28):
Bucket list, yeah, uh, go to Mars.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Yeah, what's what's the status of that? I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
I'm being patient about the whole thing.

Speaker 1 (01:21:38):
Red Planet ran that cartoon of you guys. That one's
pretty funny.

Speaker 2 (01:21:42):
It's true.

Speaker 1 (01:21:43):
That was pretty funny one where Goggins is already up there. Yeah,
that's a funny one.

Speaker 2 (01:21:48):
Probably also true. I would love I would love to
die in Mars. Oh, but I just love humanity reaching
on to the stars and doing this bold adventure and
taking big risks and exploring. I love exploration.

Speaker 1 (01:22:04):
What about seeing different animals species. I'm a huge fan
of this guy, Joel Startre, where he has this photo
arc project where he takes portraits of all these different animals.
If people aren't already following him on Instagram, he's doing
some really important work. This guy's instagram is amazing. Well

(01:22:26):
look at it. Look at these portraits. The amount of
I don't say personality because we don't want to project
anything onto them, but the like the eyes and he
occasionally put him moving on. There's a little owl. I
delight in things like this. I've got some content coming
on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes and dogs or

(01:22:47):
all kinds of all animals, and I'm very interested in
kids content that that incorporates animals. We have some things
brewing there. Like I could look at this kind of
stuff all day long. Wave that bat like bats people
think about bats. That is kind of like a little flickering,
a little annoying disease carrying things. But look how beautiful
that little sucker is.

Speaker 2 (01:23:07):
How's your podcast with the Cookie Monster coming?

Speaker 1 (01:23:10):
Oh yeah, we've been discussions with cookie the It's uh,
I can't say too much about that. But cookie Monster
embodies dopamine right, Cookie Monster wants cookie right, wants cookie
right now? You know, like it was that it was
that one tweet Cookie Monster eye bounce, because cookie is
come from all directions. You know, it's like it's just
embodying the desire for something and which is an incredible

(01:23:34):
aspect of ourselves. The other one is, do you remember
a little while ago Elmo put out a tweet, Hey,
how's everyone doing out there? And it went viral and
you know, the Surgeon General of the United States have
been talking about the loneliness crisis. He came on the podcast,
and you know a lot of people have been talking
about problems with loneliness, mental health issues with loneliness. Elmo
puts out a tweet, Hey, how's everyone doing out there?

(01:23:57):
And everyone gravitates toward it, you know, so that the
different Sesame Street characters really embody the different that kind
of aspects of sell through very like narrow neural circuit
Perspectivegus is shy, and Oscar the Grouch scrouchy, right, and
the count one two.

Speaker 2 (01:24:15):
The archetypes of Yeah, the archetype is very young.

Speaker 1 (01:24:18):
And yeah, and I think that, you know, the creators
of Sesame Street clearly either understand that or it's an
unconscious genius to that. So, yeah, that there are some
things brewing on conversations with Sesame Street characters. It's not
I know, you'd like to talk to Vladimir Putin, I'd
like to talk to Cookie Monster. It illustrates the differences
in our like a sophistication or something. Well, that's illustrates

(01:24:41):
a lot. Yeah, illustrates a lot. But yeah, I also
I love animation, So I'm not anime, that's not my thing,
but animation. So I'm very interested in the use of
animation to get uh, science content across. So there are
a bunch of things brewing. But but anyway, I delight
in Startory's work and and and it's there's a conservation

(01:25:02):
aspect to it as well. But I think that mostly
want to thank you for finally putting up something that
like where something is not being killed or like let
some sad, sad outcome.

Speaker 2 (01:25:11):
These are all really positive.

Speaker 1 (01:25:12):
They're really cool. They're really cool, and every once in
a while, look at look at that mountain lion. But
I also like to look at these and and some
of them remind me of certain people. Right, So let
let's just scroll through. Like, for instance, I think when
we don't try and process it too much, so like like, okay,
look at this cat. This amazing, Like I feel like
that's somebody. I feel like this is like a like

(01:25:35):
someone I met once as a curiosity and curiosity and
a playfulness carnivore carnivore frontalized eyes found. Right, So then
you go down you know it's like this beautiful fish
neon pink, right, so it reminds you of some of
the like the influencers you see on Instagram, right, except

(01:25:56):
this one's natural just kidding. Uh, let's see no filter. Yeah,
let's see. Like I feel like bears. I'm a big
fan of bears. Yeah, bears are beautiful. This one kind
of reminds me of you a little bit. There's like
a stoic make sure to it a curiosity so you
can kind of feel like the essence of animals. You
don't even have to do psychedelics to get there.

Speaker 2 (01:26:18):
Look at that. He's like the behind the scenes of
how it's actually yeah, and then there's wow, yeah yeah.
The in the jungle. The diversity of life was also
stark from a scientific perspective, just the fact that most
of those species are not identified. What's fascinating, right, It
was like a little every little, every little insect is

(01:26:40):
a kind of discovery, right. I Mean.

Speaker 1 (01:26:42):
One of the reasons I love New York City so much,
des by its problems at times, is that everywhere you
look there's life. It's like a tropical reef. If you've
ever done scuba diving or snorkeling, you look on a
tropical reef and it's like there's some little crab working
on something, and like, everywhere you look there's life. You know,
the Bay Area, if you go to diving or snorkeling,
it's like a celt bed. You know, the bear is

(01:27:02):
like a celt bed. Every once in a while, some
big fish goes by, it's like a big I po
but like most of the time, not a whole lot happens.
Actually the Bay Area, it's interesting as I've been going
back there more and more recently, there are really cool
little subcultures starting to pop up again. Nice. There's incredible skateboarding,
the g X one thousand guys. But these guys that

(01:27:24):
that bomb down hills, they're in nuts, like they're just
going like.

Speaker 2 (01:27:29):
There's just speed, not tricks.

Speaker 1 (01:27:31):
You gotta see g X one thousand, these guys going
downhills in San Francisco. They are wild and occasionally, unfortunately
occaionally someone will get hit by car. But GX one thousand.
Look into intersections, they have spotters. You can see someone there.
Oh I see there's a like into traffic, Yeah, into traffic.

Speaker 2 (01:27:49):
So in San Francis.

Speaker 1 (01:27:50):
Yeah, this is crazy, Like this is unbelievable and and
they're they're just wild.

Speaker 2 (01:27:57):
But in any case, what's your book of list? The
Evan done?

Speaker 1 (01:28:01):
Well, I'm working on a book, So I'm actually going
to head to a cabin for a couple of weeks
and write, which I've never done. People talk about doing this,
but I'm going to do that. I'm excited for that,
just the mental space of really dropping into writing like
Jack Nicholson in the Shining Cabin, Let's hope not, Let's
hope not. You know, before I mean only start doing

(01:28:21):
public facing anything for posting on Instagram in twenty nineteen.
But I used to head up to Wailalla on the
northern coast of California sometimes by myself to a little
cabin there and spend a weekend by myself and just
read and write papers and things like that. I used
to do that all the time. I missed that, so

(01:28:41):
some of that. I'm trying to spend a bit more
time with my relatives in Argentina, relatives in on the
East coast, see my parents more. They're in good health, thankfully.
I want to get married and have a family. That's
an important priority. And putting a lot of a lot
of work in there.

Speaker 2 (01:28:56):
Yeah it's a big one.

Speaker 1 (01:28:57):
Yeah, yeah, putting a lot of work in to the
runway on that.

Speaker 2 (01:29:03):
What our advice for people about that, or give advice
to yourself about how to find love in this world,
how to find how to build a family. Get there
and then I'll listen to it someday and see if
I hit the marks. Yeah, well, obviously pick the right partner,
but also like, do the work on yourself, know yourself

(01:29:24):
that the oracle know thyself. And I think, listen. I
have a friend.

Speaker 1 (01:29:31):
He's a new friend, but he's a friend who I
met for a meal. He's a very very well known
actor overseas and his stuff has made it over here
and we become friends. And we went to lunch and
we were talking about work and being public facing and
all this kind of thing. And then I said, you
have kids, right, And he says he has four kids.

(01:29:52):
I was like, oh, yeah, you know, I see your
posts with the kids. You seem really happy, he said.
He just looked at me and leaned in and he said,
it's the best gift you'll ever give yourself. And he
also said, and pick your partner the mother of your
kids very carefully. So you know, that's good advice coming
from excellent advice coming from somebody who's you know, very

(01:30:14):
successful in work and family. So that's the only thing
I can pass along. We hear this from friends farus
as well. But kids are amazing and family is amazing.
And you know that's the different people, All these people
who want to like be immortal and like live to
be two hundred or something. You know, there's also the
old fashioned way of you know, having children that live

(01:30:38):
on and involve a new legacy. But they have you know,
half your DNA, so that's exciting.

Speaker 2 (01:30:43):
Yeah, I think you make an amazing dad, and thank you.
It seems like a fun thing. And you know, I've
also gotten the advice from friends who are super high
performing and have a lot of kids. They'll say, just
don't overthink it, right, start having kids.

Speaker 1 (01:30:59):
Let's go right. Well, the chaos of kids is kind
of the like it can either bury you or it
can or it can give you energy. But I grew
up in a big pack of boys always doing like
wild and crazy things, and so that kind of energy
is great. And if it's not a big pack of
wild boys, it's you know, you have daughters and they
can be you know, different form of chaos, sometimes the
same form of chaos.

Speaker 2 (01:31:21):
How many kids do you think you want?

Speaker 1 (01:31:24):
You know, it's either two or five. Yeah, very different dynamics.
You're one of two, right your mother? Yeah, I mean
I'm very close with my sister. I couldn't imagine having
another sibling because there's so much richness there. We talk
almost every day, you know, three four times a week,
you know, sometimes just briefly. But we're tight, you know,

(01:31:46):
we're really look out for one another. She's an amazing person,
like truly an amazing person and has like raised her
daughter an amazing way. She's like, you know, my nieces
like had to college in the year or two, and like,
my sister done an amazing job. And her dad's done
a great job too. They both really put a lot

(01:32:07):
into the family aspect.

Speaker 2 (01:32:10):
And don't you have to spend time with a really
amazing person in Peru in the Amazon jungle. And he
is one of twenty kids. Wow, so he's got it's
mostly guys. It's just a lot of brothers and I
think two sisters.

Speaker 1 (01:32:25):
I just had Jonathan Height on the podcast, the guy
who's talking the Anxious generation causing an American mind. He's great,
but he was saying that, you know, in order to
keep kids healthy, they need to not be on social
media or have smartphones until they're sixteen. I've actually been
thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends onto
neighboring properties. You know, everyone talks about this, not creating
a commune or anything like that. But I think I

(01:32:48):
think Jonathan's right. We were more or less. Our brain
wiring does best when we are raised in small village
type environments where kids can forage the whole free range
kids idea. And I grew up skateboarding and building forts
and dirt cloud wars and all that stuff. It would
be so strange to have a childhood without that.

Speaker 2 (01:33:08):
Yeah, And I think more and more as we wake
up to the negative aspects of the digital interaction, will
put more and more value to in person interaction.

Speaker 1 (01:33:17):
So I mean it's cool to see, for instance, kids
in New York City just kind of moving around the
city with so much sense of agency. It's really really cool.
The suburbs like where I grew up, Like as soon
as we could get out take the seven f bus
up to San Francisco and hang out with you know,
wild ones like that. You know, while there were dangers,
I mean, we could wait to get out of the
suburbs the moment that you know, forts and dirt cloud

(01:33:39):
wars and stuff didn't cut it. We just like wanted
into the city. So bucket list, I will probably move
to a major city, not Los Angeles or San Francisco
in the next few years, New York City potentially. Those
are all such different flavors of experiences. Yeah, so I'd
love to live in New York City for a while.

(01:34:01):
I've always wanted to do that, and I will do that.
I've always wanted to also have a place in a
very rural area, So Colorado Montana are high on my
list right now, and to be able to pivot back
and forth between the two would be great just for
such different experiences. And also I like a very physical life,
so the idea of getting up in the sun with
the sun in the Montana or Colorado type environment, and

(01:34:26):
I've been doing some putting some effort towards finding a
spot for that. And New York City, to me, I know,
it's got its issues and people say it wasn't what
it was, Okay, I get it, but listen, I've never
lived there, so from you be entirely new and you know,
Shoals seems full of life.

Speaker 2 (01:34:44):
There is an energy to that city and he represents that.
I mean, there's yeah, and the full diversity of weird
that is represented in New York City is great.

Speaker 1 (01:34:53):
Hey, walk down the street, there's like a person with
like a cat on their head and no one gives
a shit.

Speaker 2 (01:34:57):
You know.

Speaker 1 (01:34:58):
San Francisco used to be like that. The joke was
like you have to be naked and on fire and
San fran let's go before someone takes But now it's changed.
But again, recently, I've noticed that San Francisco it's not
just about the skateboarders. It's there's some community houses of
people in tech that are super interesting. There's some community
housing of people not in tech that I've learned about

(01:35:19):
have and known people have lived there, and it's it's cool,
like there's stuff happening in these cities that's new and different.
I mean, that's what youth is for. They're supposed to evolve,
evolve things out.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Uh So, amidst all that you still have to get
shipped done, I've been really obsessed with tracking time recently,
like making sure I have daily activities of habits that
I'm maintaining, and I'm very religious about making sure I
get shipped done.

Speaker 1 (01:35:51):
Use an app or something like that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:52):
Just Google sheets, so basically a spreadsheet and I'm tracking
daily and I write scripts that that whenever I I
achieve a goal glows green.

Speaker 1 (01:36:03):
Yeah. Do you track your workouts and all that kind
of stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
Too, just the fact that I got the workout done. Yeah,
So I just it's a check mark thing. So I
really really big on making sure I do a thing.
It doesn't matter how long it is. I have a
rule for myself that I do a set of tasks
for at least five minutes every day. And it turns

(01:36:26):
out that many of them might do way longer. But
just even just doing it, I have to do it
every day. And it's currently eleven of them. It's just
the thing, like one of them is playing guitar, for example.
So do you do that kind of stuff? Do you
do like daily habits? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:36:43):
I do. I wake up if I don't feel I
slept enough. I do this non sleep deep breast yoga
nidra thing that I talked about a bunch. We actually
released a few of those tracks. That's audio tracks on Spotify.
Ten minute, twenty minute ones. Puts me back into a
state that feels like sleep, and then I feel very arrested. Actually,
Matt Walker and I are going to run a study.

(01:37:04):
He's just admitted the I orb to run a study
on NSDR and what it's actually doing to the brain.
There's some evidence of increases in dopamine et cetera. But
those are older studies, still cool studies. But so I'll
do that, get up, hydrate and if I've got my
act together, I punched some caffeine down, like some matina,
some coffee, maybe another matina and resistance train three days

(01:37:27):
a week, run three days a week, and then take
one day off and like to be done by eight
thirty nine. And then I want to get into some
real work. I actually have a sticky note on my computer.
It's like just like reminding me how good it feels
to accomplish some real work. And then I go into it.
Right now it's the book writing, researching a podcasts and
just fight tooth and nail to stay off social media, text, message, WhatsApp, YouTube,

(01:37:53):
all that, get something done.

Speaker 2 (01:37:55):
How long can you go? Can you go? Like three
hours deep focus if.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
I hit a groove, yeah, ninety minutes to three hours
if I'm really in a groove.

Speaker 2 (01:38:07):
For me, I start the day. Actually, that's why I'm
afraid I'd really prize that those morning hours I start
with the work. Yeah, and the it's it's it's a
I'm trying to hit the four hour mark of deep focus.

Speaker 1 (01:38:22):
Great, I love it.

Speaker 2 (01:38:23):
Then the yeah, I'm really really chippy. Yeah, it's it's
often torture. Actually it's really really difficult.

Speaker 1 (01:38:31):
Oh yeah, the agitation. But I've sat across the table
from you a couple years ago when I was out
here in Austin doing some work and I was working
on stuff you were, and I noticed you're just like
stare at your notebook sometimes just like pen at the
same position, and then you'll get back into it like
they're those won't building that hydraulic pressure and then go yeah,
I try and get something done of value. Then it

(01:38:53):
the communications start and talking to my podcast producer, my
team is everything. I mean like that, the magic potion
in the podcast is Rob Moore, right, who's in the
has been in the room with me every single solo.
Costella used to be in there with us, because that's it.
People have asked journalists of asking and they sit in
friends have asked, Nope, just Rob. And for guests interviews,

(01:39:18):
he's there as well. And I talked to Rob all
the time, all the time. We talk multiple times per day.
And you know, in life, I've made some errors in
certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner
choice and things like that, and certainly don't blame all
of it on them, but you know, I've played my role.
But in terms of picking business partners and friends like

(01:39:42):
you know to work with, I mean, Rob's just it's
been bullseyes and it's just Rob has been amazing. Mike playback,
our photographer and the guys I mentioned earlier, Like, we
just communicate as much as we need to, and we
pore over every decision like near neuroticism before we make
we put anything out there.

Speaker 2 (01:39:58):
And so included like even created decisions of like topics
to cover all that.

Speaker 1 (01:40:03):
Yeah, like a photo for the book jacket the other day.
Mike shoots photos then and then we look at them.
We pour over them together. Logo for the performed podcast
with any gallpun that we're launching, Like is that the
right contour? Mike's the real He's got the aesthetic thing
because he was at DC so long. It's a portrait photographer,
and he's cute with close friends with Ken Block, did

(01:40:23):
Jim Conna, like all the car jumping in the city stuff, Like,
I mean, Mike is a master, He's a He's a
true master of that stuff. And and we just pour
over every little decision. But even which sponsors. You know,
there are dozens of ads now by the way, that
that whole jawser sizer thing of me saying, oh, the
guy went from a two to a seven, I never
said that. That's AI, Like I would never call number

(01:40:45):
off somebody a two to a seven? Are you kidding me?
It's crazy? So it's AI. If you bought the thing,
I'm sorry. But like our sponsors, we list the sponsors
that we have and why on our website, and like
the decision do we work with this person or not?
Do we still like the product? I mean, we've we've
got ways with sponsors because of like changes in the
product or change you know, most time it's amicable, all good,

(01:41:06):
but you know, like just every detail and that just
takes a ton of time and energy. But I try
and work mostly on content, and my team's constantly trying
to keep me out of the other discussions. But I
because I obsess. But yeah, you have to. You have
to have a team of some sort, someone that you
can run things spot for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:41:25):
But one of the challenges the larger the team is.
And I'd like to be involved in a lot of
different kinds of stuff, including engineer stuff, robotics work, research.
All of those interactions, at least for me, take away
from the deep work, the deep focus. Unfortunately, I get
drained by a social interaction, even with the people I

(01:41:46):
love and really respect and all that kind of stuff.
You're an introvert, yeah, like fundamentally and introvert. So to me,
it's a trade off getting shit done versus collaborating, and
I have to choose wisely because without collaboration, without a
gree which I'm fortunate enough to be a part of, like,
you wouldn't get anything really done. But as an individual
contributor to get stuff done, like to do the hard

(01:42:08):
work of researching or programming all that kind of stuff,
you need the hours of deep work.

Speaker 1 (01:42:14):
I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's
that's on my bucket list. Spend a bit more time
dropped into work alone. It I think social media like
causes our brain to go the other direction. I try
and answer some comments and then and then get back
to work.

Speaker 2 (01:42:29):
I'm really after going to the jungle. I appreciate not
using the device I played with the idea of like spending. Certainly,
maybe like one week a month not using social media
at all. I used it.

Speaker 1 (01:42:44):
So after that morning block, I'll eat some lunch and
I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something,
and then a bit more work and then real work,
deep work, and then round two thirty, I do a
non sleep deep breast, take a short nap, wake up boom,
maybe a little more caffeine, and then lean into it again.
And then you know, if you I find if you've

(01:43:05):
really put in the deep work two or three bouts
per day, by about five or six pm, it's over.
I was down at Jocko's place not that long ago
and in the evening did a sauna session with him
and some family members of his and some of their friends.
And it's really cool, like they'll all work all day
and train all day, and then in the evening they
get together and they sauna and cold plunge. I'm really

(01:43:26):
into this whole thing of gathering with other people at
a specific time of day. I have a gym at
my house, and you know, Tim will come over and
train or you know that we've kind of slowed that
down in recent months, but I think gathering in groups
once a day, being alone for part of the day.
It's like very fundamental stuff. We're not saying anything that

(01:43:48):
hasn't been said millions of times before, but how often
do people actually do that and call the party, you know,
like be the person to like bring people together if
it's not happening. That's something I've really had to learn,
even though I'm an introvert, Like, right, like gather people together.
You came through town me the other day and it's
a lot of people at the house.

Speaker 2 (01:44:05):
It was brad.

Speaker 1 (01:44:06):
Actually, it was funny because I was getting a massage
when you walked in. I don't sit around getting messages
very often, but I was getting one that day, and
then everyone came in and the dog came in. Like
everyone piled It was very sweet.

Speaker 2 (01:44:18):
Again, no devices, but choose wisely. The people you gather.

Speaker 1 (01:44:22):
With, right, right, and I was clothed.

Speaker 2 (01:44:26):
Thank you for clarifying I wasn't, which is very weird.
Uh yeah, yeah. The friends you surrounded yourself with. That
that's another thing. It's like I understood that from my
ahuasca and from just the experience and the jungle is
like just select the people. Just be careful how you

(01:44:46):
allocate your time. I just saw on somewhere. Connor McGregor
has this good line. I wrote it down about loyalty.
He said, don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with.
Oh that guy's I mean he's been on loyalty, all
the shit talk, all of that set that aside to me, like,
loyalty is really big because then if you invest in

(01:45:07):
certain people in your life and they stick by you
and you stick by them, and what the what else
is life about?

Speaker 1 (01:45:14):
Yeah? Well, hardship will show you who your real friends are,
that's for sure, and you know we're fortunate to have
a lot of them. It'll also show you who you
know who really like has put in the time to
try and understand you and understand people like people are complicated.
I love that. So can you read the quote once more?

Speaker 2 (01:45:35):
Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. Yeah, So
in that way, a hardship is a gift.

Speaker 1 (01:45:47):
It shows you definitely and it makes you stronger. It
definitely makes you stronger.

Speaker 2 (01:45:53):
Let's go get some food.

Speaker 1 (01:45:55):
Yeah, you're one meal a day guy.

Speaker 2 (01:45:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:57):
I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a
protein ship and a couple pieces of biltong. I hope
we're eating a steak.

Speaker 2 (01:46:03):
So I hope so too full of nicotine and caffeine.

Speaker 1 (01:46:06):
Yeah, what do you think? How you feel?

Speaker 2 (01:46:08):
I feel good? Yeah I was.

Speaker 1 (01:46:10):
I was thinking he'd probably like I only did a
half a piece and I won't have more for for
a little while.

Speaker 2 (01:46:15):
But a little too good. Yeah, thank you for talking
once again, brother.

Speaker 1 (01:46:20):
Yeah, thanks so much. Lex. It's been a great ride,
this podcast thing. And you're the reason I started the podcast.
You inspired me to do it, you told me to
do it. I did it. And you've also been an
amazing friend. He showed up and some very challenging times,
and you've shown up for me publicly. You've shown up
for me in my home, in my life, and you know, uh,

(01:46:43):
it's an honor to have you as a friend.

Speaker 2 (01:46:46):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (01:46:47):
I love you, brother, I love you too.

Speaker 2 (01:46:49):
Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Huberman. To
support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description.
And now let me leave you some words from Carl Young.
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your
life and you will call it fate. Thank you for
listening and hope to see you next time.