#435 – Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships

28:19Humility is a big part of that. And Twitter is a good place to illustrate that. Years ago I used to, I was a student in TA, then instructor and then directed a cold spring harbor course on visual neuroscience. These are summer courses that explore different topics. And at night, we would host what we hoped were battles in front of the students, where you'd get two people on it. Would it be neural prosthetics or molecular tools that would first restore vision to the blind kind of arguments? And you'd kind of like, it's kind of a silly argument because it's going to be a combination of both, right?

28:56But 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 well placed insult. It wasn't coming out swinging. I think ultimately, 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 ton of composure and respect. And you know, you just, you would hope that people would grow from that example.

29:35Well, I'll tell you that the, the, the podcasters that I'm scouting, it's their energy, but it's also how they treat other people, how they respond to comments. And, um, you know, we're, we're blessed to have pretty significant reach when we put out a podcast like, someone else's podcast, it goes far and wide. So like a skateboard team, like a laboratory, where you're selecting people to be in your lab, you're, you want to pick people that you would enjoy working with and they're collegial. And etiquette is lacking nowadays, but you're in the suit and tie, bringing it back. Bringing it back, you said that your conversation with James Hollis, a young and psychoanalyst had a big impact on you.

30:15What do you mean? James Hollis is a 84 year old union psychoanalyst is written 17 books, including under Saturn 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 Hollison, an online lecture that was recorded, I think, in San Diego. It's on YouTube. The audio is terrible, called Creating a Life. And this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span. I can't remember. It was on my way to Europe and I called my girlfriend at the time. It's like, I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard.

30:51And he talks about the shadow. He talks about your developmental upbringing and how you either align with or go 180 degrees off your parents' tendencies and values in certain areas. He talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of life, to live a full life. So, it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast. And he wasn't able to travel. So our team went out to DC and sat down with him. And we rarely do that nowadays. People come to our studio and he came in. He had some surgeries recently and he kind of came in with some assistance from a, you know, a cane and then sat down and just blew my mind.

31:37From start to finish, he didn't miss a syllable. And every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence of with real potency and actionable items. I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said, when we take ourselves out of stimulus and response, and we just force ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while seated or while lying down. It doesn't have to be meditation, but it could be that we access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want. And that if we do that practice repeatedly 10 minutes a day here 15 minutes a day there that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us and the directions we need to take.

32:32But that so often we just stay in stimulus response. We just do do do do do do which is great. We have to be productive but we miss those important messages and interestingly he also put for this idea of what is this like get up, shut up, suit up, yeah, something like that. Like get out of bed, suit up, and shut up, and get to work. He also has that in him, kind of a Goggin's type mindset. So be able to turn off all this self -reflection and self -analysis and just get shit done, get shit done. But then also take dedicate time and stop and just let stuff guys are to the surface from the unconscious mind.

33:11And he quote Shakespeare and he quotes Jung and he quotes everybody through history with with incredible accuracy and exactly the way needed to drive home a point. But that conversation to me was one that I really felt like, okay, you know, if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason, that one's in the can and I feel really great about it. To me, it's the most important guest recording we've ever done, in particular because he has wisdom. And while I hope he lives to be 204, chances are he's got another 20, 30 years with us, hopefully more. But I really, really wanted to capture that information and get it out there.

33:59So 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. 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 a ocean that we don't have direct access to. Yes. Yeah. We've 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, And does that mean that we could all be, you know, horrible people or marvelous people, benevolent people, perhaps?

34:43I think that thankfully more often than not, people lean 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. And how, how, how all are we going to grow? Otherwise, you know, we have these unconscious blind spots of denial or repression or whatever, you know, the psychiatrist tell us, but it clearly exists within all of us. And we have neural circuits for rage. We all do. We have neural circuits for altruism and known to born without these things. And some people, they're atrophied and some people, they're hypertrophied.

35:29but I'm looking inward and recognizing what's there is key or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what Rick Rubin is accessing when he goes silent, silent body, active mind. That's interesting. What is it for you? What place do you go to that generates ideas? That helps you generate ideas. I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean, I'm always exploring for protocols I have to. That'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 come to the surface or the dice serothian way of formulaing complete sentences and well being still in the body.

36:14What I have found works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music. He writes music every day. He's a music producer. He's obviously a singer guitar player for Rancid. And he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs. And many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists Tim helped them write. Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni Mitchell talked about this too, you find some creative outlet that's like 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet.

37:00And you do that thing. So for me that's drawing. I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience based drawing, drawing neurons, that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while, my mind starts churning on the nervous system and biology. And then I come up with areas I'd like to explore for the podcast, ways I'd like to address certain topics. Right now I'm very interested in autonomic control. A beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes and without changing luminance through a biofeedback mechanism. And that gives them control over their so -called automatic autonomic nervous system.

37:37And I've been looking at what what the circuitry is and it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function. And as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, oh, like what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size? Then you go in and there's a paper published in Nature Press, one of the nature journals and there's a recent paper on this. It's like, oh, cool. And then we talk 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 15 degrees off center from your main thing?

38:04It's a great way to access, I believe, 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 allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work? No I'd really like to focus on emptiness and silence so I They pick the dragon and have the slay, so whatever the problem is, they work on it, and I just sit there and stare at it.

38:42I don't love how fucking linear you are. It's just, and if there's no, if you're tired, I'll just sit. I believe in the power of just waiting. And usually I'll stop being tired. The energy rises from somewhere, or an idea pops from somewhere, but there needs to be a silence and emptiness. It's an empty room just me and the dragon and we wait. That's it. Like if it's usually with programming, you're thinking about a particular design, a kind of why design this thing to solve this problem. Any cognitive enhancers? I've got quite the gallery in front of me. Oh, that's right. Yeah. Should we walk through this?

39:20Yeah. This is not a sales thing. I tend to do this bounce back and forth. Your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices. So water. All of my refrigerator. I know right there's no food in there. 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 their cold and that's by the way my least favorite favorite flavors I was saying that's that's the reason it's still left in the fridge the cherry one is really good the black cherry There's an orange one.

39:52Yeah, I pushed the Sled this morning and pulled the sled from my workout at the gym and it was hot today here in Austin so So some salt is good. And then Matina, your Bermote, zero sugar, full confession, I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love your Bermote. Half -arge in teen, but drinking Mati since I was a little kid. There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three, sending all my grandfather's lap, sipping Mati 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.

40:26So 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 tonight until later I figure that's good. Yeah, Brian's an interesting one, right? He's really pushing this thing. The optimization of everything. Although he just hurt his ankle, he posted a photo of the hurt his ankle, so now he's injecting BPC body protection compound, 157, which many, many people are taking by the way. I didn't episode on peptides. I should just say, you know, BPC 157, one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis, like development of new vascular, which can be great in some context, but also if you have a tumor, you don't really want to vascularize that tumor anymore.

41:05So I worry about people taking BPC157 continually, but and there's very little human data. I think there's like one study, and it's a lousy one. So a lot of animal data. Some of the peptides are interesting, however, there's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pinellin, which is a little bit I find it even if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it seems to do something to the circadian timekeeping mechanism because then on other days, when I don't take it, I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple weeks and then typically stop, maybe try something else.

41:45But I stay out of things that really stimulate any of the major hormone pathways when it comes to peptides. That's actually a really good question of how do you experiment? Like how long do you try to think to figure out if it worked for you? Well, I'm very sensitive to these things, so I've been doing a lot of things for a long time, so if I add something in, it's always one thing at a time, and I notice right away if it does not make me feel good. Like there's a lot of excitement about some of the so -called growth hormones, the credi -gogs, hyper -muralin, testimonialin, sermuralin. I've experimented a little bit with those in the past, and they've nuked to my rap and movement sleep, but given me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good to me, but other people like them.

42:26I also just generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these hormone pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues, but some people take them safely. But usually after about four or five days, I know if I like something or I don't, and then I move on, but I am not super adventurous with these things. I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things, they'll try anything, that's not me, and I do blood work. But also, I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting and I'm teaching a course in the next spring. Stanford, I'm going to do a big undergraduate course.

43:04So 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. All right, you're not going to the Olympics. You're not trying to truly maximize the mass -picking your performance. No, and I'm not trying to get down below whatever, you know, 7 % body fat or something. I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes, caffeine in the form of mate, and then this coffee thing. And then here's one that I think I brought out for discussion. This is a piece of Nicarat. They're not a sponsor.

43:38Nicaratine is an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure and it is probably not safe for everybody. But, you know, nicotine is gaining in popularity, like crazy. Mainly these pouches that people put in the lip not, we're not talking about smoking, vaping, dipping or snuffing. You know, my interest in nicotine started, this was in 2010. I was visiting Columbia Medical School and I was in the office of the great neurobiologist Richard Axel, won the Nobel Prize, co -recipient with Linda Bach for the discovery of the molecular basis of old faction. Brilliant guy. He's probably in his late 70s now.

44:18Probably. Yeah. And he kept popping Nick Red in his mouth. And I was like, what's this about? And he said, oh, well, this was just anecdote, right? But he said this. He said, oh, well, you know, it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. I said, it does. And he goes, yeah, yeah. I don't know if he was kidding or not. He's known for making jokes. And then he said that when he used to smoke, It really helped his focus and creativity, but then he quit smoking because he went lung cancer And he found that he couldn't focus as well so he would choose Nicarat So occasionally like right now Well, I do a half a piece, but I'm not Russian So I'm a little, you know, you deduced pop the whole thing in your mouth So I'll do a couple milligrams every now and again and it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach in particular But you fast all day you're still doing one meal a day one meal a day.

45:02Yeah. Yeah, I did a nicotine pouch with Roganet dinner. And I got high. Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of Zen, take one a day, pretty soon they're taking a canister a day. So you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself two pieces of nicorette, total per week. And you will notice that in the day after you use it, sometimes your throat will feel a little bit like, like a little spasm, like you might want to cough once or twice. And so, you know, if you're a singer or you're podcast or something, you have to do long podcast, you want to just be mindful of it.

45:41But yeah, you're supposed to, and I like keeping it in your cheek. And here we go. But it did make me intensely focused in a way that was a little bit scary because the Nucleus Bessalis is in the, you know, basal four brain. And Nucleus has colonergic neurons that radiate out axons, little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex N elsewhere. And when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually, we know that there's an elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there and it binds to nicotinnecacetylcholine receptor sites there.

46:20So it's kind of an intentional modulation by a pseudo -calling. So you're getting it with nicotine, you're getting an exogenous or artificial heightening of that circuitry. And the time I had talked across on the podcast, he told me that apparently it helped some, as he said, publicly, keep his love life vibrant. Really? It caused a bit of constrictions. Like he literally said, it makes it take very hard. He said that publicly also. Well, as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's sex life, no disrespect.

46:59The major effect of nicotine on the vascus, or my understanding is that it causes vasoconstriction, not vasodilation. Drugs like siallus, tidalifil, biagre, etc., vasodilators, they allow more blood flow. So nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow to the periphery, but provided dosages are kept low. I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all. And I don't recommend young people use it, you know, 25 and younger, brain's very plastic at that time. And certainly smoking, dipping, vaping, and snuffing aren't good because you're going to run into trouble for other reasons. But in any case, even there are vapings that controversial topic.

47:47Probably 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 educator, not piss somebody off. Just depends on where the center of mass is and how far outside that you are. For me, the caffeine is the main thing. And actually, it's a really big part of my life. And one of the things you recommend that people wait a bit in the morning to consume caffeine. If they experience a crash in the afternoon, this is one of the misconceptions I regret maybe even discussing it for people that crash in the afternoon.

48:28Oftentimes if they delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before, you're I can 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 8 .30 AM, especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy, which is mid -morning, 10 AM, 11 AM, and I start exercising then, I'm basically exhausted all afternoon.

49:04And I don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the intensity of the workout. But so I like to be done, showered, and heading into work by 9 a .m. But I don't always meet that much. So you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start with exercising. I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early. And then that fuels you all day long. I think that if you wait until you're feeling at your best to train, sometimes that's detrimental mental because then in the afternoon when you're doing like the work we get paid for, like research, podcasting, etc. Then oftentimes, you know, your brain isn't firing as well.

49:42Yes. I haven't really rigorously tried that wake up and just start running or loses the jaco thing. And then there's this phenomenon called entrainment where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or view bright light at a certain time of day for three to seven days in a row, pretty soon there's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone in theory can become a morning person to some degree or another. And this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off. You know, people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't because it clicked because you have this incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep.

50:23And there's some papers that have been published in the last couple of years. Nature neuroscience and elsewhere showing that people can answer math problems in their sleep. simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless. This does not mean that if you ask your partner a question and sleep that they're going to answer accurately, like they might screw up the whole, um, uh, cumulative probability of 20 % across multiple months. All right. Listen, what happened? What happened? Here's 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.

50:58The entire recording took 11 hours.

51:04And by the way, I'm very proud of that episode. There's many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode. And my first question is, what were you doing during the episode? But in all seriousness, we should say that it's four and a half hours. And for people, then they should, listen to the episode, So it's extremely technical episode. Like you're not stopping facts and referencing huge number of papers. It's must be exhaust. I don't understand how you can possibly talk about that. It's about sperm hell, sperm agences, it talks about the ovulatory cycle.

51:39It talks about things people can do that are considered absolutely supported by science. It talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge, a little bit that are a little bit more experimental. It talks about IVF, it talks about XC, it talks about all of that. it talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age, et cetera. But there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the probability of a successful pregnancy as a function of age. And so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing cumulative probability. And by the way, we've published cumulative probability history of many of my laboratories, or his papers, including one that was a nature article in 2018.

52:21So we run these all the time. And yes, I know the difference between independent and cumulative probability. Yeah, that's just like, I do. The way the clip was cut and what I stated, unfortunately, combined to like a pretty great gaff where I say, you're just adding, I said, you're just adding percentages 20 to 120 % and then I made it kind of, unfortunately my humor isn't always so good. and I made a joke, I said 120%, but that's a different thing altogether. What I should have said was that's impossible, you know, and here's how it actually works. But then it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram for successful pregnancy.

53:07But somewhere in the early portion, I mistated something, right? I made a math error, which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent dependent and cumulative probability, which I do. And it got picked up and run, and people had a really good laugh with that one at my expense. And so what I did in response to it was rather than just say everything I just said now, I said, I just came out online and said, hey folks, in an episode dated this on fertility, I made a math error. Here's the formula for cumulative probability, successful pregnancy of that age. Here's the graph. Here's the you know 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 biology 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 but a lot of people did understand it some smart people out there obviously I call my dad and he was just laughing.

54:11He goes, oh, this is good It's like the old school way of hammering academics. But the point being, there's a teaching moment, giving an opportunity to say, hey, I made a mistake. I also made a mistake in another podcast where I did a micron to millimeter conversion and we're sending me your conversion. 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 related to data. You apologize and correct the mistake, use the teaching moment.

54:47The other one was to say, hey, you know, in all the thousands of hours of content we've put out, I'm sure I've made some small errors. I think I once said serotonin when I'm in dopamine and you're going, you're riffing. And it's a reminder to be careful to edit double check. But the internet usually edits for us. and then we go make corrections, but it didn't feel good at first, but ultimately, you know, I can laugh at myself about it. Long ago at Berkeley when I was teeing my first class, it was a biosecology class, it was 1998 or 1999, I was drawing the pituitary gland, which is, you know, has an anterior and a posterior lobe, actually it's a medial lobe, too.

55:30I had my five, six hundred students in that lecture hall, and I drew, it was chalkboard, and I drew the two lobes of the pituitary and I said, my back was to the eye and I said, you know, and so they just sort of hang there and everyone just erupted and laughter because it looked like a scrotum with two testicles. And I remember thinking like, oh my god, like, I don't think I can turn around, like in faces, you know. And like, I got to turn around sooner 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.

56:03Yeah, and you haven't forgotten about that either. Right, there's a high salience for these kinds of things. And it also was kind of fun to see how excited people get to see people trip. It's like an elite sprinter trips and does something stupid, like, you know, runs the opposite direction out of the blocks or something like that. Or, you know, I recall at one 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. And they killed the guy. Yeah, let's look it up. I just said World Cup. Yeah, he was gunned down.

56:45Hodgers Escobar. Yeah. Scored against his own team in 1994 World Cup in the United States. Just 27 years old, playing for the Columbia National Team. Yeah. Last name, Escobar. It's a good name. I think it would protect you. Listen, you know, so there are some gaps that get people killed, right? So, you know, how forgiving are we for online mistakes? You know, I said, it's the nature of the mistakes. People were quite gracious about the gap and some weren't. And it's interesting that we, as public health science educators, will do long podcasts sometimes, and you need to be really careful what's great as AI allows you to check these things now more readily.

57:41So that's cool. And there are ways that it's now going to be more self -correcting. I mean, you know, I think there's a lot of errors out there on the internet and people are finding them and it's cool like things are getting cleaned up. Yeah, but mistakes nevertheless will happen. Do you feel the pressure of not making mistakes? Sure. I mean, you know, I try and get things right to the best of my ability. I check with experts. It's kind of interesting when people really don't like something that was said in a podcast. a lot of times I chuckle because I'm, you know, I'd stand for we have some amazing scientists, but I talk to them elsewhere.

58:24And it's always interesting to me how, you know, I'll get divergent information and then I'll find the overlap in the Venn diagram and I have this question, do I just stay with the overlap in the Venn diagram? Like I didn't episode on oral health. I didn't know this until I researched that episode, but oral health is critically related to heart health and brain health. There's a bacteria that causes cavity streptococcus, 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 starting the mouth, basically.

59:07I talked to no fewer than four dentist dental experts and there was a lot of convergence. I also learned that teeth can demeneralize, that's the formation of cavities, they can also remeneralize. As long as the cavities in to 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 remeneralize teeth, provided the milieu is right. things like alcohol -based mouth washes, killing off some of the critical things you need. It's fascinating. And I put out that episode thing, and I'm not a dentist.

59:41I'm not a oral health episode. I talked to a pediatric dentist. There's a terrific one, Dr. Downscore Stacey, STACI on Instagram. That's great content. Talk to some others. And then I just waited for the attack. I was like, here we go. And it didn't come. And dentist, we're thanking me. I was like, whoa. You know? Now, that's a rare thing. More often than not, if I do an episode about, say, psilocybin or MDMA, you get some people liking it, or ADHD and the drugs for ADHD. We did a whole episode on the Ritalin Vibance, Adderall stuff. You get people saying, thank you. You know, I prescribed this to my kid, and it really helps.

1:00:19And this, 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 going to catch shit. What's frustrating for me is when I see claims that I'm against fluoridization of water, which I'm not. We talked about the benefits of fluoride. It builds hyper strong bonds within the teeth. It went and looked at some of the crystal structure, not the crystal structure, but essentially Actually the micron and sub -micron structure of teeth is incredible and where floor I can get in there and form these super strong bonds.

1:01:05And you can also form them with things like hydroxyapatite and why is there floor -iding water? Well, it's the best. Okay, you say some things that are interesting, but then somehow it gets turned into like your against floorization, which I'm not. Or I've been accused of being against sunscreen. I wear mineral -based sunscreen on my face. I don't want to get skin cancer, or I use a physical barrier. here. 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, so we're talking about there are certain sunscreens that are problematic.

1:01:37So what in Rhonda Patrick's now starting to get vocal about this. And so there are certain topics that's interesting for which you have to listen carefully to what somebody is saying. But But there's a lumper or lumping as opposed to splitting 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 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 going to get the newest information out there.

1:02:28Like peptides, there's very little human data unless you're talking about Viley C or the Melana stuff in the alpha -melana state stimulating hormone stuff which are prescribed for female libido to enhance female libido or sermerellen which is for certain growth hormone deficiencies. With rare exception, there's very little human data. But people are still super interested and a lot of people are taking and doing these things. So you want to get the information out. Do you try to not just look at the science, but research what the communities are talking with, the various communities they're talking about?

1:02:57Like maybe research what the conspiracy theorists are talking about just so you know all the armies there are going to be attacking your castle. Yes. So like for instance, there's a community of people online that believe that like if you consume seed oils or something that like you're setting up your skin for sunburn and if you don't, you know, like there's all these like theories. But I like to, so I like to know what the theories are. I like to know what the extremes are, but I also like to know what the standard conversation is. But there's generally more agreement than disagreement. I think where, 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, are just different than a vitamin.

1:03:42And then they are compounds. There are compounds that have real benefit. But people get very nervous about the fact that they're not regulated. But some of them are vetted for potency and for safety with more rigor than others. And it's interesting to see how people who take care of themselves and put a lot of work into that are often attacked. That's been interesting. Also one of the most controversial topics now days is ozempic mongaro. I'm very middle of the road on this. I don't understand why the quote unquote health wellness community is so against these things. I also don't understand why they have to be looked at as the only route.

1:04:24For some people, they've really helped them lose weight. And yes, there can be some muscle loss and other lean body loss, but that can be offset with resistance training. They've helped a lot of people. And other people are like, no, this stuff is terrible. I think the most interesting thing about ozempic monjaro is that they are G .O .P. one, they're in the G .O .P. one pathway, gucagon like peptide one, and they was discovered in heela monsters, which is a lizard basically, and someone with the, now the, now the entomologist will dive on me. It's a big, big lizard -looking thing that doesn't eat very often, and they figured out that there's this peptide that allows it to curb its own appetite at the level the brain and the gut, and it has a lot of homology to sequence homology to what we now call GLP1.

1:05:10So I love anytime there's animal biology links to cool human biology links to a drug that's powerful that can help people with obesity and type two diabetes, and there's evidence that can even curb some addictions. 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 health wellness biohacking community has like slammed on ozempic mondrar, it's like they're like just get out and run and do listen, there are people 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.

1:05:48Well why do you think the criticism is happening? Is it that ozempic became super popular so people are misusing it or that kind of thing? No I think what it is is that people think if it's a pharmaceutical, it's bad. And then, or if it's a supplement, it's bad, depending on which camp they're in. And it wouldn't be wonderful to kind of like fill in the gap between this divide. That, you know, what I would like to see in politics and in health is neither right nor left, but what we can just call a league of reasonable people that looks at things on an issue by issue basis and fills in the center.

1:06:22Because I think most people are in the, 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 drives interest. But I'm a very, like, I look at issue by issue, person by person. I don't like in group out group stuff. I never have. I've got friends from all walks of life. I said this on other podcasts and it always sounds like a political statement. But like the push towards, like, you know, polarization is so frustrating. If there's one thing that's discouraging to me as I get older each year, I'm like, are we ever going to get out of this polarization?

1:07:03Speaking of which, how are you going to vote for the presidential election? I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it well. What do you think the role of podcasts is going to be in this year's election? I would love long -form conversations to happen with the candidates. I think it's going to be 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 also. I would imagine that both would go on but separately. Separately. I think it debate. Joe does debates, but I think Joe is best as one -on -one conversation really intimate.

1:07:46I just wish that Joe Biden would actually do long -form conversations. I thought he had done it. It wasn't me. I think it was on Jay Shetty. He did Jay Shetty. He did it a few, but what 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 political type of NBC CNN type of interview you get a set of questions and you don't get to really feel the human expose the human to the light and at the full we talked about the shadow, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

1:08:27So 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 and you're going to be strictly sticking to the question, answer type of feel, but just shoot and shit, which Rogan is the best by far in the world at that. I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does. And the number, I mean the three or four podcasts per week plus the UFC announcing plus comedy tours and stadiums plus, you know, doing comedy shows in the middle of the week plus, you know, husband and father and a friend and just do the guys got like superhuman levels of output.

1:09:20I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business and I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are running for office in a different way and to really get to know them. Well, listen, I guess you, I mean, is it clear that he's going to do jail time or maybe he gets away? No, I was going to say, does that mean you're going to be podcasting from in prison. Yeah, we're going to fact, I'm going to figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison. Please don't. Please don't. Well, that's, yeah. I'm sure they have visitors, right? That just doesn't feel enough. Let it go to get the interview.

1:09:59Yeah, I understand. You wouldn't be able to wear that suit. You'd be wearing a different suit. That's true. Yeah. It's going to 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 see what what happens. Here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these, like they're not dinners, but gatherings where, you know, a local, you know, bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from the entertainment industry, big agencies, big tech, like big, big tech, many people have been on this podcast.

1:10:42And they'll host a discussion or a debate. And what you find, if you look around the room and you talk to people, is that about half the people in the room are very left leaning and very outspoken about that. And they'll tell you exactly who they want to see when the presidential race. And the other half will tell you that they're for the other side. A lot of people that that people assume are on one side of the aisle or the other, are in the exact opposite side. Now some people are very open about who they're for, but it's been very interesting to see how, when you get people one -on -one, they're like telling you, they want X candidate to win or Y candidate to win.

1:11:23And sometimes I'm like, really? I can't believe it, like you. Like yep. And so it's what people think about people's political links is often exactly wrong. And that's been eye -opening for me. And I've seen that in university campuses too. And so it's going to be really, really interesting to see what happens in November. In addition to that, as you said, most people are close to the center, despite what Twitter makes it seem like. Most people, whether they're sent a lot to the center right, they're kind of close to the center. Yeah, I mean, here's to me the most interesting question, Who is going to be the next big candidate in years to come?

1:12:05Like who's that going to be? Right now, I don't see or know of that person. Who's it going to be? Yeah, the young promising candidates. We're not seeing them. We're not seeing. Another way to ask that question, who would want to be? Well, that's the issue, right? You know, who wants to live in this 12 -hour news cycle where you're just trying to, you know, don't come on the other team so that nobody notices like the, the, the shit that you fucked up, you know, like that, that's not, like that's not only not fun or interesting, it also is just like, it's got to be psychosis inducing at some point.

1:12:41And I think that, you know, God willing, we're going to, you know, some young guy or woman is like on this and refuses to, to back down and was just like determined to be president and will make it happen, but like I don't even know who the Bible candidate is are. Maybe you look, you know. We should ask Sagar. Sagar wouldn't know. Yeah, yeah. Maybe Sagar himself. Sagar's show is awesome. Yeah, it is. He and Crystal do a great thing. He's incredible. Especially since they have somewhat divergent opinions on this. Yeah. That's what makes it so cool. He's great. He looks great in the suit looks real set.

1:13:22He's taking real good care of himself. He I think he's getting married soon Congratulations, sorry for giving me for not remembering your wife, but future wife's name He won my heart by giving me A biography of Hitler as a present. That's what he gave you. Yeah, I gave you a hatchet With a poem and that shows the fundamentals of different women's crime in it Which was pretty damn good And I realize everything we bring up on the screen is like really depressing like the soccer player getting killed. Can we bring up something happy? Sure. We're going to nature's metal Instagram. That's a pretty intense.

1:14:02We actually did a collaborative post on a shark thing. Really? Yeah. What kind of shark thing? So to generate the fear VR stimulus from my lab in 20 was it yet 2016? We went down to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico. I mean, a guy named Michael Muller, who is a very famous portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks. And we used 360 video to build VR of great white sharks, right back to the lab. We published that study in current biology. In 2017 went back down there and that was the year that I exited the cage. You lowered the cage with the crane and that year I exited the cage.

1:14:49I had a whole mess with an air failure the day before I was breathing from a hookal 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. It's a 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 eggsated with some other divers. And it turns out with these great white sharks, it inguallubated the waters very clear, and you can swim toward them. And then they'll veer off you if you swim toward them. Otherwise, they see you as prey.

1:15:18Well, in the evening, you 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 the water was fishing for tuna for dinner and a shark took the tuna off the line and it's a very dramatic take and you can see the just absolute size of these great white sharks, the waters they're filled with them. That's the one. So this video, just the Neural Link link was shot by Matt McDougal who is the head neurosurgeon Neural Link. There it is. Now believe it or not, it looks like it missed like it didn't get the fish.

1:16:00It 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 really get a sense of the, of the, the girth of this freaking thing. So as it comes up, you pop the size of that thing. And they move through the water with such speed. Just a couple, so when you're in the cage and the cage is lower down below the surface, they're going around. You're not allowed to jump in the water there. or 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 swim toward them, they veer off.

1:16:37But what's interesting is that if you look at how they move through the water, all it takes for one of these great white sharks when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat is like two flicks of the tail. And it becomes like a missile. It's just unbelievable economy of effort. And Ocean Ramsey, who is, in my opinion, in the greatest of all KJX at Shark Divers, this woman who dealt with enormous great white sharks. She really understands their behavior when they're aggressive, when they're not gonna be aggressive, she and her husband won, I believe his name is, do they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks.

1:17:12We 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 KJX thing the next day, I told myself after coming up from the KJX, that's it, I'm no longer taking risks with my life, if I want to live, got back across the border a couple of days later. I was like, that's it. I don't take risks with my life any longer. But yeah, that McDougal shot that video. And then it went, quote unquote, viral through nature's metal. We passed them that video. Actually, I saw a video where an instructor was explaining how to behave with a shark in the water, and that you don't want to be swimming away, because then you're acting like a prey.

1:17:52That's right. And then you want to be acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it. Right towards them and they'll bank off. Now if you don't see them, they're ambush predators. You know, you're swimming in the surface. And apparently if they get close, you should just like guide them away by like grabbing them and moving them away. Some people will actually roll them. But if they're coming in full speed, you're not gonna roll the shark. But here we are back to dark stuff again. I like the shark attack map. And the shark attack map shows that, you know, Northern California, there were a couple actually, guys head got taken off.

1:18:22He was swimming north of San Francisco. There's been a couple in northern California. That was really tragic. But most of them are in Florida and Australia. Florida. So with the stir friter foundation shark attack map, there it is. They have a great map. There you go. So they look like they have all the little scars on them. So if you zoom in on, I mean, look at this. If you go to the North America. Look at skulls. There's a yeah, where they're deadly attacks. but in Northern California, sadly, this is really tragic. If you zoom in on this one, I read about this. This guy, if you can click the link, 50 year old male, he was in chest high water.

1:19:02This 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 nine, Jai was in his chest high water, 25 to 50 yards from shore. Great, breached the water seized his head and that was it. So it does happen, it's very infrequent. If you don't go in the ocean, it's a very, very, very low probability. But if it doesn't happen, six times in a row. 120 percent chance. Yeah. If anything wins a saltwater crocodile or a shark. Okay. I do not like saltwater crocodiles. They scare me to no end. Muller, Michael Muller, who dove all over the He sent me a picture of him diving with salty salt water crocs in Cuba.

1:19:51It was a smaller one, but goodness gracious. Have you seen the size of some of those salt water crocs? Yeah. I'm thinking the sharks are so agile. They're amazing. They've had camd one or body camd one moving through the kelp 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 are in the surface. You just realized if you're out there, you're not, and you're swimming and you get hit by a shark, you're not just gonna talk shit and say that a salty has way more bite force, but according to the internet, recently data indicates that the shark has a strong good bite.

1:20:31So I was assuming that a crocodile would have a strong good bite force, and therefore agility doesn't matter, but apparently a shark. Yeah, and turning one of those big salty is this is probably not that, the turning around like a battleship. I mean those sharks are unbelievable. 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 it's eye kind of like looking at you. They can't really fove you, but they'll look at you and you're tracking it. And then you'll look down and you'll realize that one's coming at you.

1:21:02They're ambush prayers. They're working together. They're fascinating. I like how you know that they can't fove you. You're already considering the vision system there. It's a very primitive. I was on the side of the head. Vision is decent enough. They're mostly obviously sensing things with their electrode sensing in the water, but also of action. Yeah, I spend far too much time thinking about and learning about the visual systems of different animals. If you get me going on this, we'll be here all night. See, this is what I have this Muglet R2. I saw this in a store and I got it because this is from a shark.

1:21:39Goodness. Yeah, I can't say I ever saw one of teeth this big, but it's beautiful. Yeah, it's probably Probably your blood pressure just goes and you don't feel I feel a thing. Yeah Before we went down for the KJX it a guy in our crew pat dosos Very experienced diver asked one of the South African divers that so what you know like what's the contingency plan if like somebody catches a bite and they were like He was like every man for himself and they're like basically saying like if somebody catches a bite like that's it. You know, anyway, I thought we were going to bring up something happy. Well, that is happy.

1:22:18Well, nature is beautiful. Yeah, nature is beautiful. We lived, but you know, they're happy things. You brought up nature as metal. This is the difference between Russian Americans and Americans. It's like, maybe this is actually a good time to bring up your ayahuasca journey. I've never done ayahuasca, but I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about Ibane, Iboge. But you told me that you did ayahuasca and that for you, it wasn't the dark, scary ride that it is for everybody else. Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me. I did it twice actually. And have you done high -dose psilocybin? Never.

1:22:59No. I just did small dose psilocybin a couple times. So I was, you know, nervous about it. I was very, you know, I understand. I've done high -dose stillist, I haven't had terrifying, but I've always gotten something very useful out of it. So I mean, I was nervous about like, whatever demons might hide in the shadow, in the Jungian shadow, like I was nervous. But I think it turns out, I don't know what the lesson is to draw from that, but my experience be boy Russian. It must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's also something to the jungle. So, it strips away all the bullshit of life and you're just there.

1:23:35I forgot the outside civilization exists. I forgot time because when you don't have your phone, you don't have meetings or calls or whatever, you lose the sense of time. The sun comes up, the sun comes down. 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 that 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 -wave length and long wavelength light Like when you look at a sunrise.

1:24:11It's got blues in yellows or in genielles you can the evening reds orange and and blues and in the middle of the day It's like full spectrum light now. It's always full spectrum light, but because of some atmospheric L -Mens and because of the low solar angle, that difference between the different wavelengths of light is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your eye pay attention to and signal to your circadian timekeeping mechanism. Like, we are at the core of our brain and the superchisomatic nucleus. We are wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun. That's the biological time.

1:24:46Which makes perfect sense because, obviously, as the planet spin and revolve. I also wonder 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, there are social rhythms, there are feeding rhythms. Sometimes in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species. But yet getting out from the canopy is critical. Of course, even under the canopy during the daytime, there's far more photons than at night. You know, there's always when I'm telling people to get sunlight in their eyes in the morning and in the evening, people say there's no light, no sunlight this time here.

1:25:27I'm like, go outside on a really overcast day. It's far brighter than it is at night, right? So there's still lots of sunlight, even if you can't see the sun as an object. But I love of time perception shifts. And you mentioned that in the jungle, it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun. You also mentioned that on Ayahuasca, you zoomed out from the earth. These are like, to me, the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another brain, of course, from only ever had a human brain. But which is that you can consciously set your time domain window. Like you can, we can be focused here, we can be focused on all of Austin, or we can be focused on the entire planet, you can make those choices consciously.

1:26:09But in the time domain, it's hard. Like different activities bring us into fine slicing or more broad bending of time, depending on what we're doing, programming or exercising or researching or podcasting. But just how unbelievably fluid the human brain is in terms of the aperture of the time space window of our cognition and of our experience. 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 lifespan and that there's more to come.

1:26:51You know, I mean, people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in or they think it's going to go on forever. or when we're happy, we rarely think this is gonna last forever, but it's interesting contrast in its own right. But I think that psychedelics, while I have very little experience with them, I have some, and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the different apertures. Well, how to surf that wave is probably a skill. One of the things I was prepared for, anything is important is not to resist. I think I understand what it means to resist the thing a powerful wave.

1:27:31It's not going to be good. So you have to be able to surface. I was ready for that to relax through it. Maybe because I'm quite good at that from knowing how to relax and all kinds of disciplines playing piano and guitar when I was super young and then through Jiu Jitsu, knowing the value of relaxation and through all kinds of sports, you should be able to relax the body fully it just accept whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it was a very positive experience for me. Do you have any interest in eboga? I'm very interested in iBegaine eboga. There's a colleague of mine in researcher at Stanford, Nolan Williams, who's been doing some transcranial magnetic stimulation and brain imaging on people who have taken the iBegaine.

1:28:12IBegaine, as I understand, it gives a 22 -hour psychedelic journey where no hallucinations with eyes open, but you close your eyes and you get a I'm a very high resolution image of actual events that happened in your life, but then you have agency within those movies. I think you have to be of healthy heart to be able to do it. I think you have to be on a heart rate monitor. It's not trivial. It's not like these other psychedelics. But there's a wonderful group called Veteran Solutions that has used Iboga combined with some other psychedelics in the veterans community to great success for things like PTSD.

1:28:54And it's a group I've really tried to support in any way that I can, mainly by being vocal about the great work they're doing. But you hear incredible stories of people who are just like near cratered in their life or zombieed by PTSD and other things post -war. get back a lightness or achieve a lightness and a clarity that they didn't feel they had. So I'm very curious about these compounds. The state of Kentucky, we should check this, but I believe it's taken money from the opioid crisis settlement for I began research. So this is like no longer, yes, if you look here, let's see, did they do it?

1:29:34Oh no, oh no, they backed away. Kentucky backs away from the plant to fund opioid treatment research. They were going to use the money to treat opioid. Now officials are backing off. 50 billion, what is on its way over the coming years? 50 billion dollars. 50 billion dollars is on its way to state and local government over the coming years. The pool of funding comes from multiple legal statements with pharmaceutical companies that profit in for manufacturing or selling opioid painkillers. Kentucky has some of the highest number of deaths from the opioid. So they were going to do psychedelic research with IBagane supporting research on illegal folks.

1:30:12So I could have like drug called IBagane. Well, I guess they backed away from it. Well, so we're like, we'll get some happy news up on the internet and this stuff. So I'm talking about the shark and the crocodile fighting. Yeah, yeah, that's true. And you survived the jungle. Well, that's the thing. I was writing to you on what's that? Multiple times, because I was gonna put on the internet. 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 Well jungle or not One of the lessons is also, you know when you hear the call for adventure Just fucking do it.

1:30:55I was gonna ask you it's kind of silly question, but like give me a Small fraction of the things on your bucket list Bucket list. Yeah Yeah, good Mars. Yeah, what's the status of that? I don't know, I'm being patient about the whole thing. Red Planet ran that cartoon of you guys. That was pretty funny. That was pretty funny. That was pretty funny. That's what my Goggins is already up there. Yeah, that's a funny one. Probably also true. I would love to die in Mars. I just love humanity reaching onto the stars and doing this bold adventure and taking big risks and exploring a love exploration. What about seeing different animal species?

1:31:40I'm a huge fan of this guy Joel Sartori 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. Um, this guy's Instagram is amazing. Like portraits of animals. Well, look at it. Look at these portraits. The amount of, um, I must say personality, because we don't want to project anything onto them. But yeah, the, like the eyes and the occasion you put them moving on, it's a little owl. I delight in things like this. I've got some content coming on animals and animal neuroscience and eyes.

1:32:19and dogs or all kinds of animals. And I'm very interested in kids content that incorporates animals. We have some things brewing there. Like I could look at this kind of stuff all day long. Look at that bat. Like bats, people think about bats is kind of like well flickering, a little annoying disease carrying things. But look how beautiful that little sucker is. How's your podcast with the cookie monster coming? Oh yeah, we've been in discussions with cookie. The, it's, can I 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 cookies come from all directions.

1:33:02You know, it's like, it's just embodying the desire for, for something and, which is an incredible aspect of ourselves. The other one is, 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 They've been talking about the loneliness crisis. He came on the podcast and a lot of people were talking about Problems with loneliness mental health issues with loneliness Elmo puts out a tweet. Hey, how's everyone doing out there and Everyone gravitates toward it. You know, so the different Sesame Street characters really embody the different that kind of Aspects of self through very like narrow neural circuit perspective You know, it's not full of against a shy and Oscar the Grouch.

1:33:46Grouchy, right? And the count, one, a two. The archetypes of... Yeah, the archetypes are very young in once again. 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, 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 sophistication or something. Well, that's illustrates a lot. Yeah, it was a lot. But yeah, I also I love animation. So I'm not anime.

1:34:22That's not my thing, but animation. So I'm very interested in the use of animation to get science content across. So there are a bunch of things brewing, but anyway, I delight in start Tories work and and and it's there's a conservation aspect to it as well. But I think that But mostly, I want to thank you for finally putting up something that, like, where something's not being killed or, like, let some sad, sad outcome. These are all really positive. I like all of them. They're really cool. And everyone's, while I'll look at that mountain line. But I also like to look at these and some of them remind me of certain people, right?

1:34:57So let's just scroll through, like, for instance, I think when we don't try and process it too much. So, like, okay, look at this cat, this, amazing. I feel like that somebody, I feel like this is like someone I met once. As a curiosity. Yeah, curiosity and a playfulness. Carnivore. Carnivore, frontalized eyes. Found in the area. Of course it's the area perception. 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 this one's natural. Just kidding. Let's see. No filter. No filter.

1:35:36Yeah. Um, let's see if we, like I feel like bears. I'm a big fan of bears. Yeah, bears are beautiful. This one kind of reminds me of you a little bit. There's like a stoic nature to it, a curiosity. So you can kind of feel like the essence of animals. You don't even have to do psychedelics to get there. Oh, look at that. He's like the behind the scenes of how it's actually. Yeah. And then there's um, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, the, in the jungle, the diversity of life was also stark. From a scientific perspective, just the fact that most of those species are not identified was fascinating. Right. It was like every little insect is a kind of discovery.

1:36:16Right. I mean, one of the reasons I love New York City so much, despite 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, 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 scuba diving or snorkeling, it's like a kelp bed, you know. The Bay Area is like a kelp bed. Everyone's in one all some big fish goes by. It's like a big IPO. But like most of the time, not a whole lot happens. Actually, the Bay Area, it's interesting as I've been going back there more and more recently.

1:36:49There are really cool little subculture starting to pop up again. There's incredible skateboarding. the GX1000 guys were these guys that that bomb down hills, they're nuts like they're just going like that to just speed not tricks. You got to see GX1000 these guys going down hills in San Francisco. They are wild and occasionally unfortunately occasionally someone get hit by car, but GX1000 look into intersections they have spotters you can see someone there. Oh, I see there's a like the into traffic. Yeah, into traffic. So in San Francisco. Yeah, this is crazy. Like this is unbelievable and and they're they're just wild but in any case what's on your bucket list you haven't done.

1:37:35Well I'm working on a book so I'm actually going to head to a cabin for a couple weeks and write which I've never done. People talk about doing this but I'm gonna do that. I'm excited for that just the mental space of really dropping into writing like Jack Nicholson the shining kind of let's hope not. Let's hope not. You know, before I mean, I only started doing public facing anything for posting on Instagram in 2019, but I used to head up to Wallala 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.

1:38:12I used to do it all the time. I missed that. So some of that I'm trying to spend a bit more time with my relatives in Argentina, relatives on the East Coast. See my parents more. They're in good health, thankfully. I want to get married and have a family. That's an important priority. And put a lot of work in there. Yeah, it's a big one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Put a lot of work into the the the runway on that. What are advice for people about that or give advice to yourself about how to find love in this world, how to find in how to build a family, get there. And then I'll listen to it someday and see if I hit the marks.

1:38:52Yeah, well, obviously pick the right partner, but also do the work on yourself, know yourself, that the Oracle, know that I self. And I think, listen, I have a friend, he's a new friend, but he's a friend, who I met for a meal. He's a very, very well -known actor overseas. and his stuff has made it over here and we become friends and we went to lunch and we were talking about work and being public facing and all this kind of thing. And then I said, you have kids writing, he says he has four kids. I was like, oh yeah, you know, I see your post with the kids, you seem really happy. And he said, he just looked at me lean, and he said, it's the best gift you'll ever give yourself.

1:39:36And he also said and pick your partner, the mother of your kids very carefully. So, you know, that's good advice coming from excellent advice coming from somebody who's, you know, very successful in work and family. So that's the only thing I can pass along. We hear this from friends as well, but kids are amazing and family is amazing. And, you know, that's the different people, all these people want to, like, be immortal and live to be 200 or something. There's also the old fashioned way of having children that live on and evolve a new legacy, but they have half your DNA. So that's exciting. Yeah, I think you make an amazing dad.

1:40:19Thank you. It seems like a fun thing. And I've also gotten advice from friends who are super high performing and have a lot of kids. They'll say, just don't over think it. Start having kids. Let's go. Right, well the chaos of kids is kind of the like it can either bury you or it can or it can give you energy But I grew up in a big pack of boys always doing like wild and crazy things and so that kind of energy is great And and if it's not a big pack of wild boys, it's you know You have daughters and they can be you know different form of chaos sometimes same form of chaos How many kids do you think you want?

1:40:56You know, it's either two or five Yeah, very different dynamics. You're one of two, right? You're a 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. Sorry, yeah, three, four times a week, you know. Sometimes just briefly, but we're tight. You know, we're really look out for one another. She's an amazing person, like truly an amazing person and has raised her daughter in an amazing way. She's like, you know, my niece is like gonna have to college in a year or two and like my sister's done an amazing job.

1:41:37And her dad's done a great job too. They both really put a lot into the family aspect. And I just spend time with a really amazing person in Peru and the Amazon jungle and he He is one of 20 kids. Wow. So he's got, it's mostly guys. So it's just a lot of brothers, and I think two sisters. Wow. I just had Jonathan Height on the podcast. The guy was talking about anxious generation causing an American mind. He's great. But he was saying that in order to keep kids healthy, they need to not be on social media or have smartphones until they're 16. I've actually been thinking a lot about getting a bunch of friends onto neighboring properties.

1:42:17You know, everyone talks about this. Not creating a commune or anything like that, but I think I think Jonathan's right we were more or less our brainwiring does best when we raised in Small village type environments where kids can forage the whole free range kids idea and I grew up skateboarding and building forts and dirt -cloth wars and all that stuff It would be so strange to have a childhood without that Yeah, and I think more and more as we wake up to the negative aspects of digital interaction will put more and more value to in -person interaction. So 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.

1:42:58It's really, really cool. The suburbs, like where I grew up, like as soon as we could get out, take the seven F bus of San Francisco and hang out with, you know, wild ones like that. you know, while there were dangers, I mean, we couldn't wait to get out of the suburbs. The moment that, you know, forts and dirt -clothed 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.

1:43:35I'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. Colorado, Montana, or high on my list right now, and to be able to pivot back and forth between the two would be great just for different experiences. Also I like a very physical life. The idea of getting up on the sun with the sun in Montana or Colorado type environment. I've been doing some effort towards finding a spot for that. And New York City to me, I know it's got its issues and people say it wasn't what it was Okay, I get it, but listen, I've never lived there. So for me, I'll be entirely new and You know Sholes seems full of life There's an energy to that city and he represents that I mean there's yeah And and the full diversity of weird that is Represented in New York City's great.

1:44:27Yeah, walk down the street There's like a person with like a cat on their head and no one gives a shit Yeah, that's great, right San Francisco used to be like that. The joke was like you have to be naked and on fire and San Francisco before someone stays, but now it's changed. But again, recently I've noticed that San Francisco is not just about the skateboarders. There's some community houses of people in tech that are super interesting. There's some community housing of people not in tech that I've learned about them and known people have lived there and it's cool. Like there's stuff happening in these cities that's new and different.

1:45:02I mean, that's what youth is for. They're supposed to evolve things out. So amidst all that, you still have to get shit done. I've been really obsessed with tracking time recently, like making sure I have daily activities, habits that I'm maintaining, and I'm very religious about making sure I get shit done. Do you use an app or something like that? No, just Google Sheets. So basically, I spreadsheet and I'm tracking daily and not write scripts that whenever I achieve a goal, it glows green. Yeah. Do you track your workouts and all that kind of stuff too? No. Just the fact that I got the workout done.

1:45:44Yeah. So I just, it's a checkmark thing. So I'm 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 out that many of them I do way longer, but just even just doing it. I have to do it every day. And there's currently 11 of them. It's just the thing, like one of them is playing guitar, for example. So do you do that kind of stuff? Do you do daily habits? Yeah, I do. My wake up, if I don't feel I slept enough, I do this non -sleep, depress, eoganeager thing that I've talked about a bunch.

1:46:27We actually released a few of those tracks as audio tracks on Spotify 10 -minute, 20 -minute ones puts me back into a state that feels like sleep and I feel very rested actually Matt Walker and I are gonna run a study He's just submitted the IRB to run a study on NSDR and what is actually doing to the brain There's some evidence of increases and 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 a week, run three days a week, and then take one day off.

1:47:06And like to be done by 839, and then I wanna get into some real work. I actually have a sticky note on my computer, like just like reminding me how good it feels to accomplish some real work. And then I go into it right now, it's the book writing, researching a podcast, and just fight tooth and nail to stay off, social media, text message, WhatsApp, YouTube, all that. Get something done. How long can you go? Can you go like three hours? Just deep focus. If I hit a groove, yeah, 90 minutes to three hours, if I'm really in a groove. That's the thing. For me, I start the day actually this way. I'm afraid I'd really prize that those morning hours I start with the work.

1:47:49Yeah.

1:47:53I'm trying to hit the four hour mark of deep focus straight. I love it. Then all can't work. Yeah. I'm really, really. Yeah. It's often torture actually. It's really, really difficult. Oh, yeah. The agitation, but I've sat across the table from you a couple of years ago when I was out here in Austin doing some work and I was working on stuff. You were going to, and I know 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. Oh, and I'm building that hydraulic pressure and then go. Yeah, I try and get something done of value.

1:48:26Then the communication starts and talking to my podcast producer, my team is everything. I mean, like the magic potion in the podcast is Rob Moore, right? Who's in the, has been in the room with me every single solo costellies to be in there with us because that's it. People have asked journalists have asked can they sit in, friends have asked? Nope. Just Rob. And for guests, interviews, he's there as well. And I talk to Rob all the time. All the time we talk multiple times per day. And in life, I've made some errors in certain relationship domains in my life in terms of partner choice and things like that.

1:49:07And I certainly don't blame all of them, but I played my role. But in terms of picking business partners and friends to work with, I mean, Rob, it's just, it's been bulls eyes. And it's just Rob has been amazing Mike playback our photographer and the guys I mentioned earlier like We just Communicate as much as we need to and we pour over every decision like near neuroticism before we make we put anything out there and So it's like you've created decisions of like topics to cover all that yeah Like it 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 perform podcast with Andy Gallup and then we're launching like is that the right contour Mike's the real he's got the aesthetic thing because he was at DC so long as a portrait photographer and his cute close friends with Ken block to Jim Conna like all the car jumping in the city stuff like I mean Mike is a mask he's a he's a true master of that stuff and we just pour over every little decision but even which sponsors you know there doesn't said ads now by the way that that old geosercizer thing of me saying, oh, you guy went from a two to a seven.

1:50:16I never said that, that's AI. I would never call number off somebody, a two to a seven. Are you kidding me? It's crazy. So as AI, if you bought the thing, I'm sorry. But like our sponsors, we list the sponsors that we have in Y on our website. And like the decision, do we work with this person or not? Do we still like the product? I mean, we've got ways with sponsors because of like changes in the product or change, you know, most time it's amicable, all good. but you know, like just every detail and that just takes a ton of time and energy. But I try and work mostly on content and my team's constantly trying to keep me out of the other discussions.

1:50:51But I, because I obsess, but yeah, you have to. You have to have a team of some sort, someone that you can run things bot. For sure, but one of the challenges, the larger the team is, and I'd like to be involved in a lot of different kinds of stuff, including engineering, self robotics, work, research. which all of those interactions, at least for me, take away from the deep work, the deep focus. Unfortunately, I get drained by social interaction, even with the people I love and really respect and all that kind of stuff. You're an introvert. Yeah, they fund them out to an introvert. So to me, it's a trade off, getting shit done versus collaborating.

1:51:31And I have to choose wisely because without collaboration, without a great team, which I'm fortunate enough to be a part of, like you wouldn't get anything really done. But as an individual contributor to get stuff done, like to do the hard work of researching, or programming, all that kind of stuff, you need the hours of deep work. I used to spend a lot more time alone. That's all my bucket lists, 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 get back to work. I'm really, after I go to the jungle, ago, I appreciate not using the device.

1:52:10I've played with the idea of like spending certain maybe like one week a month not using social media at all. I used it is so after that morning block, I'll eat some lunch and I'll usually do something while I'm doing lunch or something and then a bit more work and that real work, deep work and then around 2 .30 I do a non -sleep depressed, take a short nap, wake up, boom, maybe a little more caffeine and then lean into it again. And then if you, I find if you 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 Jocco'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.

1:52:53And it's really cool, like they all work all day and train all day, and then in the evening, they get together and they sauna and cold plunge. I'm really into this whole thing of gathering with other people at a specific time of day. I have a gym at my house and Tim will come over and train. We've slowed that down in recent months. But I think gathering in groups once a day, being alone for part of the day, it's like very fundamental stuff. We're not saying anything that hasn't been said millions of times before, but how often do people actually do that? And call the party, you know, like be the person to like bring people together if it's not happening.

1:53:31That's something I've really had to learn even though I'm an introvert. Like, right, I'm like gather people together. You came through town the other day and a lot of people at the house. Yeah. It was rad. Actually, it was funny because I was getting a massage when you walked in. I don't sit around getting massages very often, but I was getting one that day. And then everyone came in and the dog came in and I ever was piled in. It was very sweet. Again, no devices. But choose wisely the people you gather with. Right. Right. And I was clothed. Thank you for clarifying. I wasn't, which is very weird.

1:54:05Uh, yeah. Yeah. The, the, the friends you surround yourself with. That's another thing. It's like, I understood that from my awasca and from just the experience and then Junggo is like, just select the people. Just be careful how you allocate your time. I just saw on somewhere. Conor McGregor has this good line. I wrote it down about loyalty. He said, don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. Oh. That guy's, I mean, he's being on loyalty. All the shit talk, all of that, set that aside. To me, like, loyalty is really big. Because then if you're investing certain people in your life, and they stick by you, and you stick by them, and what else is life about?

1:54:48Yeah. Well, hardship will show you who your real friends are. That's for sure. And we're fortunate to have a lot of them. It'll also show you who really has put in the time to try and understand you and and understand people like people are complicated. I love that. So you read the quote once more. Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with. Yeah, so in that way, a hardship is a gift.

1:55:20It shows you definitely and it makes you stronger. It definitely makes you stronger. Let's go get some food. Yeah, you're one meal a day guy. Yeah, I actually ate something earlier, but it was like a protein shake and a couple pieces of built -on. I hope we're eating a steak. I hope so too. I'm full of nicotine and caffeine. Yeah. What do you think? How do you feel? I feel good. Yeah. I was thinking you'd probably like, I only did a half a piece and I won't have more for for a while, but a little too good. Yeah. Thank you for talking once again, my brother. Yeah, thanks so much, Lex. It's been a great ride, this podcast thing, and you're the reason I started the podcast.

1:56:00You inspired me to do it. You told me to do it. I did it, and you've also been an amazing friend. You showed up in some very challenging times, and you showed up for me publicly. You've shown up for me in my home, in my life, and, you know, it's an honor. to have you other friend. Thank you. I love you brother. I love you too. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Andrew Huberman. To support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description. And now let me leave you with some words from Carl Jung. Until you make the unconscious conscious it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

1:56:40Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.