#585 - Andrew Huberman

25:32That's dopamine. But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what? Okay. So it depends on the quesadilla. Let's, let's go with three different scenarios. Okay. And we could change out quesadilla here for jackpot at the casino table, sex, winning a UFC fight. We're winning the bet on the UFC fight. Being nervous about asking a girl out and then actually doing it. Comedy when you move to crowd work and you're like, this feels like I'm out on a tightrope. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So any of those things, anything where there's a potential payoff, then something happens. Let's use the quesadilla example, cause it's straightforward.

26:08You have the quesadilla and it's pretty good. Tastes like the quesadilla you usually make. Okay, what happens? Your dopamine starts dropping a little bit. Not a lot, but you're okay. It starts dropping. Let's say just by way of example, you eat four quesadillas. each time it's going to be a little bit less dopamine from the actual eating of the quesadilla. Yeah. The second quesadilla, you can barely even taste it sometimes. Let's say you bite into the quesadilla and it's like, oh, this tastes weird. Like there's something off here. Dopamine plummets. So how much dopamine you get depends on the anticipation minus what you actually get something called reward prediction error.

26:50But the language doesn't really matter. That's a bunch of nerd speak for when an experience is worse than you expected, your dopamine drops below where it started. When an experience is better than you expected, surprise, it's way above where you started and it stays up there for a while. So the dopamine system loves surprise. Now, all of this is related to learning. This is an ancient system designed for you to learn where are the payoffs, where's the water, where's the food, Where are the mates? Where's the money? Where's the resources? These are ancient circuits that we are doing non-ancient things with.

27:27And so, for instance, you do comedy tours, right? When you do your comedy tours and like you really nail it one night, like really nail it, it does two things. It raises your baseline level of dopamine. So the next time you go out, you have confidence, right? You're still feeling that. But it also raises the threshold for dopamine, right? Right now, it's harder to get dopamine. You can't have the same experiences that you had prior to that really killer night and get the same amount of dopamine that you used to. It's officially the best time of the year for Hoops fans. Playoff drama, buzzer, beaters, and the chaos we live for.

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32:49So the drug of all drugs for this to really nail home dopamine as a concept. Sex, or what? Well, behaviorally, sex, you're right. So, and people have behavior addictions, process addictions. Methamphetamine. If you were gonna look at what creates the biggest rise in dopamine the fastest, so it's dopamine over time. Because listen, when you write jokes or, you know, when I'm, you know, reading papers, I love reading science papers. I'm like mining for papers. Every once in a while, I'll take a little break and I'm super into cephalopods, octopuses. I'm building an octopus tank at home right now.

33:26So that's kind of my, my indulgence is, is octopus. You know, it's a little bit of dopamine, right? Methamphetamine is a huge rapid increase in dopamine. Then what happened? How much do we get off that? Bring it up real quick. I just want to see what is it. It's, it's, it's how fast it occurs. It This is why crack cocaine was so much more addictive than snorted cocaine, right? It was the speed with which it hits the system. How much dopamine does an activity release? Baseline is 100%, food is 150%. So in 50 % increase, video games, 175%, sex 200. I disagree with sex, by the way. I think it depends on, you know, if you're, and people should know this, if you live with somebody and you guys are having sex a lot and you've known each other a long time, there's a lot of the reason why people are like looking for novelty in their relationship, et cetera.

34:14I'm not trying to be salacious here, but new sexual partner is probably about 400, 500%. Yeah. Yeah. And I think most people would not dispute that. Cocaine goes to 450%, amphetamine, 1 ,000%. Methamphetamine, 1 ,300%. That meth, that methyl group increases the speed. That speed increases dopamine. So it's almost, it could potentially almost be kind of the same, but the speed at which it happens is so much greater that it intensifies it so much. That's right. And remember that the brain is thinking in terms of approach, pause, or retract. So when there's a ton of dopamine, listen, anyone on cocaine or methamphetamine, everything's a good idea to them.

34:56Oh, yeah, anything. Right. And then you think about cannabis. Cannabis has its own discussion, its own effects, but very different system and tends to make people pretty happy with right where they are. The opioids tends to make people overly happy with right where they are. They tend to be amotivated, not motivated. So dopamine in this context, what happens is then dopamine drops below baseline after a drug or porn, or even, you know, somebody's, you know, let's say they make the huge mistake of like going outside their marriage to a prostitute or something. It's the anticipation, the fear, the excitement, boom.

35:30Then it drops below baseline. And now here's the real rub. In order to get back to baseline, Most people, when they're in that trough, what do they do? They use more. But each time they use, while they're in that trough, when dopamine is low, this is the key thing. When dopamine is low, no matter how much you do of that substance, no matter how much you engage in that behavior, that dopamine is going to have less and less of an effect, and it's not even going to get you above baseline. You have to wait. The period of abstinence is when these circuits return to normal. And with the exception of alcohol, where people can die from rapid withdrawal.

36:07This is why every addiction recovery program has a period of abstinence. They don't tell you to kind of taper off cocaine. They're like, listen, this has got to stop. And then when people relapse, the problem is they get, no pun intended, they get a bump, but that dopamine level is not where it used to be. And they're constantly, quote unquote, chasing the dragon or whatever you want to call it. So these dopamine circuits evolved for a good reason to drive us toward adaptive behaviors. But listen, I have friends in the tech sector, in the finance sector. You see this in the finance guys. It's often finance guys.

36:42They're doing Adderall. They're day trading. They're night trading. You know, their friends are making a ton of money. And we also have the social comparison thing. So I'm not going to say that social media hijacks all of this, but let's just say, and I love social media. I'm on Instagram and X. I teach there. I learn there. Love your content. Love Segura's content. You know, I'm learning there. Tim Dillon, right? Like I love it. But there are elements of this where if you find yourself on social media, but you're kind of like, what am I doing here? Like, this is like, nothing's happening here.

37:13You are in a dopamine trough. You're in a trough. So we've already gotten your high. You've gotten it. And we hear dopamine hits. If it were really dopamine hits, you'd be going, whoa, yeah, amazing. Cool. No, that happens now and again. But what's happening is the threshold for what really draws you in is getting higher and higher. Which goes to show why when it comes sometimes to like sex addiction and pornography addiction that people's – what the kink that they need or the thing they need to see gets more out there because they have to – just to even get back to the baseline, they have to – they've got to find more.

37:48They need a higher arc. Definitely. I had a couple questions. Sorry. No, no. And say where you're at. Can you distill dopamine? Like is there – is it manufacturable, dopamine? There are things, yes. So there are things that are precursors to dopamine and things that stimulate the release of dopamine. So things that stimulate the release of dopamine, the amino acid L-tyrosine. Okay. It's found in hard cheeses like Parmesan cheese, believe it or not. Some people think they're a little bit addicted to cheese in some ways. Oh, they do? Some people think that, yeah. It's a, L-tyrosine is a supplement as well.

38:26Ooh, L-tyrosine. He sounds like he's from Rome, huh? There's a very interesting hairy little bean. No joke. This is a hairy little bean called macuna purines. He's going to say something else. Macuna purines. Macuna purines? Macuna purines. This is a velvety bean. If you just put velvet bean L-dopa, it is 99 % L-dopa, which is the precursor. It gets converted to dopamine. I'll take L-8 ball of it. Remember that movie Awakenings where people were frozen? Yes. With Robert De Niro. That's right. And Robin Williams. Yes, Robin Williams. And they gave those patients, it was a true story. It's based on a story by the neurologist writer, Oliver Sacks.

39:10And they gave those people L-DOPA. That velvety little bean is L-DOPA. So you say, can you manufacture it? You can take the thing that is the precursor. Now, if you do that, you'll feel dopaminergic as neuroscientists say, you'll be like buzzed. You'll be energized. Like Shakira. Uh, absolutely. And then, and then you'll feel the drop. So, and then methamphetamine stimulates the release as we saw cocaine stimulates release behaviors. Listen, I don't want to demonize dopamine. No, not at all. Dopamine is, you know, I'm sure I had a surge of dopamine walking in here today. I'm a fan of your show.

39:46I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you. I was excited, nervous about it. And then it happened. And hopefully I will, uh, the reward prediction error won't be less than you anticipated. That's my goal. It's already fascinating. So I think that, you know, can you manufacture it? Well, there are things that can stimulate its release. Now what's beautiful, what's really beautiful is when I usually, I think usually it happens when you're a teen. For me, it was 19 when I discovered biology, you know, wasn't good at skateboarding, wasn't bad, but you know, I liked running and working out, but I never thought about becoming a professional athlete.

40:17And then I discovered learning and biology and I thought wow, this is something that i'm highly motivated to do I didn't really understand dopamine then we didn't know that much about it, but i'm motivated to do it So there's dopamine from doing it It brings me resources at first degrees and knowledge later, you know the ability to buy a house, right? Um, so much of my life is built around the work that I did Like a maniac really between the age of 19 and i'm 49 now just working non-stop and so there's functional dopamine. And pretty soon you start weaving it in like, oh, I can also rest and have some recreation and that's giving me dopamine.

40:52So our lives are built around this molecule we call dopamine. And so the ways that you can manage it almost orchestrate dopamine to use it to your advantage. It's very usable. I think the thing to remember the following dopamine is not about the pursuit of pleasure. It's about the pleasure of pursuit. It's about motivation. The other thing to remember about dopamine is it can, if it's increased very dramatically and very fast, it can drive addiction. And I define addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure. A great life is where many, many things bring you pleasure.

41:29And then the, perhaps the most important thing for people, especially if they're concerned about porn, gambling, internet use, or whatever, even if they're not a full-blown addict, they're just kind of feeling like a slave to everything going on that, you know, just everything, highly processed foods, all of that is that any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without effort before it will eventually destroy you or bring you close to destruction. So something that just feels so good that you, that all you had to do was open a package. All you had to do was take a pill or open a website or open a website.

42:03That is the slippery slope. And if we think more in terms of, you know, yeah, Pandora's box doesn't really have a key on it, huh? Yeah. Like I, listen, I'm not a huge UFC fan, but I'd, I've been to a few fights and it's fun. And I see you guys down there in the front row and this kind of thing. Look, someday I imagine given my friend set and given my interests, maybe I'll just buy a ticket and it'd be a great thrill. Right. But if I were a kid and I suddenly were just planted there every single night, guess what? You move one row back, it's going to feel like bad seating, you know? And it's, this is why the children of very wealthy people, unless your father is like a Warren Buffett who insists that you actually work and this kind of thing.

42:42Yeah. The children of very wealthy people often destroy their lives. You know, they destroy their lives because they haven't had to work to have all this stuff. And there's this huge cushion below them. In fact, my graduate advisor. Yeah, they're almost swimming in dope and they're almost in the hot tub, but they never been in the pool. And then they're exactly. And then they're, and then they're down below baseline. And then it takes more and more and more. You know, that show. Is that genetic then? Sorry to interrupt you, but is that genetic that your baseline level for dopamine? mean is that genetic no this is all behaviorally driven and you know i'm not saying parents so you said it's all behaviorally driven all behavior so i'm just saying yeah say if like you had a like you know your father was an addict or somebody and then it could the next generation have that same like need to get back to that baseline and it could be inherited type of thing well there okay so there are certain addictions that appear to have some genetic component but it's confounded as we say, it's mixed up with the behavioral stuff around that.

43:40Like for instance, the probability of somebody becoming a severe alcoholic, they now call it alcohol use disorder. And I'm, I'm not trying to be irreverent, but I just call it alcoholism. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I'm going to, I'm going to try and stay out of the lanes of political correctness. Yeah. We've all got it in here. So great. So the probability that somebody will become an alcoholic greatly increases if if their first drink, just their first sip comes before age 13, okay? Now, some parents think, hey, listen, if my kid has a beer when they're eight and 10, then they won't have this, you know, kind of mysterious feeling around alcohol.

44:13That's one theory, but we know on good statistics that drinking before the age of 13 greatly increases the probability of becoming an alcoholic. So now you can imagine in which households will that happen? Well, where they're trying to normalize high alcohol intake. So it can be both genetic and circumstantial. But do some countries in suffer with the higher alcoholism rates then? Yes. Yes. Even European ones? Northern European countries, especially in the winter. I have Northern European relatives. I'll tell you in the winter, they can drink up there and it's dark and, and, you know, alcohol is a depressant.

44:43There's also about 8 % of people have a gene variant that when they drink, they don't feel the same sedative type quality to alcohol. When, when you drink, the first thing that happens for everybody is your prefrontal cortex. This is like the part of your brain right behind your forehead. It's the part that sets context. Like what's, what's appropriate in different places. Oh yeah. It inhibits you. Everybody gets a little more talkative, right? Everyone's talking, talking, talking, but then you drink more and people are starting to pass out on the couch and people are slurring their words. About 8 % of people get a dopamine surge and an energy increase from alcohol with increasing alcohol intake.

45:21These are the people, remember when you're in your twenties and there's that guy and he's still awake at like three in the morning. he's in the kitchen and he's bumping around in the cupboard and you see him the next morning yeah and he's like hey and you're like we were passed out blacked out drunk he's doing laundry or whatever he's just like hey let's go running yeah he's doing you know making a lemonade or whatever so that's a that's a genetic predisposition wow and so but is that a positive one it sounds like it is kind of well it's probably adaptive in some you know they've got you got the cursor on russia i mean listen i'm friends with lex friedman i mean that kid can drink compared to me.

45:55Oh, dude. Yeah. He definitely. I don't drink. I had my last sip in 2019. Amen. Well, and Lex has the depression to show it, man. He's got that emo side of him that takes over him. You know, he's definitely, I think he just put something out again on X. I mean, it's perfect. No, I love Lex because he, there's this transparency about him to me that is remarkably human, you know, like this, like ever hopeful, talented, but also very like honest. He's just So Lex. He just said, I'm an introvert who hides from the world often way too much. One thing I wish I did more is call and text my friends. I think about them often and feel lucky to know them, but experience a strange anxiety that prevents me from texting and calling.

46:34Silly introvert brain wants to pull me into isolation and darkness. Then again, once I hang out with said friends, it's like we've been talking every day. So maybe there's no problem. And it's just how dude friendships are. P.S.C. Thoughts brought to you by Brain on six shots of espresso. That's perfect. And I think, you know, with Lex. That's high octane. And, you know, I won't claim that he posted that because of me, but I'd been texting him for like three weeks now and it's just crickets. And then I'll get something back that just says here. Yeah. And you just learn with him over time. That's just, you know, that's just that.

47:05Well, that's Russian communication. I mean, it can take five generations to get a hug out of somebody, you know, it's like. I love the Russians. Oh, they're unbelievable. And they, you know, a lot of them had carried stone dolls as children. Like, imagine if your doll, your baby doll is made of stone. It's like that's your whole concept of the world is going to be so different. Bring up stone dolls. Bring back that chart up again. I want to see what they were doing over there. Alcoholism by country. United States, 13.9%. Canada, only 8%. UK, 8.7%. And what's the darkest one over there? It's Russia.

47:37And what's it at? 20.9%. Hell yeah. It's cold and bleak. Oh yeah. You got to be fucking brain dead over there. North Korea is lowest, but we don't really know what's going on in North Korea. No, we don't know. This is just a fun chart, but it's also exciting to just make - That's one place I never want to visit. Be reminded that the Russians live like that. I want to ask you about this. So one of the big things that I think is a huge problem that's about to happen in the world is pornography addiction, right? I think it's – I believe it's humongous. I believe it's bigger than alcoholism. I believe it's like the wave of it that we're starting to see like people really suffering from it.

48:15I think it's one of the reasons why there's a lot of divorce. What do you see like neuroscientifically about how we can, how people can start to manage that? And then even just what you just talked about, about dopamine, it's like, I think it's helping people realize with that, that it's like such a hole that you're getting into. No, no, whatever that thing is called. No pun intended. How does that, how can people start to cut that off for themselves? Is there anything they can do manage? Like, or do they have to get help if they believe that they're suffering from like pornography or sexual addiction?

48:53Yeah. Super important questions. I'm so glad you're raising this because, you know, it's interesting. If you look at the research on pornography and sexual behavior generally, right, what you'll find mostly in the academic studies of those areas is kind of an attempt to normalize a lot of behavior. There are reasons for that. Some pseudo political, some just kind of the way those studies were done for a long time. But it's really important to emphasize that it takes a while for science to catch up to culture. Okay. It takes a while for science to catch up to culture. And the reason is not because scientists are lazy or they're uninterested is that doing science well takes a long time.

49:36Look, I've run studies in my lab on animals, on humans, clinical trials. It takes a long time, like three, four years sometimes. To get real information? to get a really good study done. Meanwhile, life is happening. And in the last five years, especially, there's been an exponential growth of the amount of pornography available online, the different formats, right? Only fans, you know, all the different sites that people can go to free paid AI. And within each of those, there's also been a huge amplification of what's called like high intensity porn. What's high intensity porn? It's more than two people.

50:13It's BDSM. Now BDSM is its own discussion that maybe we could talk about at some point, you know, just separately about this merge of pain and pleasure that the reason I'll just, the punchline is that dopamine is also increased by what we call the cessation of pain. When pain starts and then stops, you get an amplified dopamine surge. So a lot of people are watching or engaging in what we would call violent porn, right? And we're, as primate species, humans, we have an empathy. So when people are watching pornography, they're obviously not experiencing the same things exactly those people are doing and experiencing, but they're tuning into it, right?

50:54They're getting to it. And we can only speculate as to what they're doing to themselves, right? Typically when we're talking about porn, let's just be direct, we're also talking about masturbation, right? Typically when we're talking about watching video porn, sometimes it's women, most often it's men. by a huge majority. Oh yeah, the men are the one watching it. Yeah. Although, you know, years ago I had a girlfriend, a woman I was dating very seriously, and she confessed to me that prior to our relationship, she had developed a porn compulsion. It wasn't an addiction. You know, an addiction, again, is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure.

51:26It hadn't taken her to the point where it was destructive, but she had the wisdom to cut herself off from it early on. Okay, so it does happen with women, but it's much more frequent with men. So here's the thing. we can think of pornography now as like the methamphetamine of pornography compared to the pornography of, you know, we always hear about, oh, you know, like when I was growing up, the playboy or, or, you know, that, the thing, when I was a kid, like I'll confess as first didn't know I was going to do a confession, but they had those like sex education books where they were like sketch drawings and pencil.

51:58Oh yeah. Bring them. And I, you know, when I was, you know, probably 14, 13, I was like, this is awesome. Yeah. You know, this was awesome, but it was about, you know, teaching you basically about sex. It was teaching you about body parts. And that was, you know, for sure. Pencil drawings. I can't believe we're looking this up. No, it's interesting. Cause I think a lot of people, if you do pencil drawings, who knows what kind of freaky stuff's gonna jump up here. No, we have a blocker on. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. There we go. There we go. So yeah. Yeah. See human loving. This is very different than today's porn.

52:34Sex and Hugh. I love how they used to call it human loving. Human loving. That's nice though. There's something, at least it makes more sense. It puts even your head into something, you know, instead of like a Brittany's butt world or whatever, you know, which takes it to a whole different deal. And there was no discussion whatsoever of elements of pain or BDSM or power play. There you go. You know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, for a heterosexual young male, the fact that they put her naked facing us as opposed to the guy on the other side, you're like, okay, cool. But, you know, the other thing about pornography is that in a young brain, this is very important, and it relates to everything we're talking about today.

53:12From about age zero to 25, your brain is incredibly plastic. It's modified by experience just by being in those experiences. When you say plastic, you mean it's more like it's not solid yet? That's right. You can literally wire neurons, plasticity, wire neurons to other neurons very readily. I mean, this was known for a long time, but it was really formalized by my scientific great-grandparents, David Hubel and Torsten Weasel. They won a Nobel prize for showing that if you take a cat, a monkey, or a kid, and you close one eyelid for just a few hours each day, the brain becomes blind to visual input through that eye once you open the eye up, unless you do something else like close the other eye in order to reverse that plasticity.

53:55However, if today I just - Wow. Yeah, that's how fast and permanent it is, unless you do something to reverse it. But if I did that same thing to you now or me now, there'd be no brain change. You close your eye, obviously you can't see through a closed eye, pop open the eyelid later, you see just fine. So we know that from until about age 25, the brain just modifies itself based on experience. So if you're doing cocaine, amphetamine, or let's just stay with this example, you're watching high intensity, violent porn with more than two people, right? You know, we forget that every time you add another person, and you have two women and one guy, or what's this woman on X?

54:30I mean, I have to say it makes, it gives me an aversive response, which I think is the healthy response. Every time she announces, I think she's like sleeping with a hundred and a thousand people. And listen, she's obviously in control of her own life. Yeah, she's sleeping with the Western Conference right now. I think I just saw the other day. I don't know what her, Barbarate, is it Barbarate Blues? Bonnie Blue. Body Blue. Yeah. Bonnie. Bonnie Blue. This is like methamphetamine with heroin. and you get the picture, it's starting to layer in all these different things. And so the young, you think about the young male brain in particular, young female brain watching this stuff.

55:05And it's not just setting a behavioral expectation, because we always hear about that. You know, they think sex is like that and it's not. It's setting this incredibly high threshold for what they consider stimulating. Not just stimulating sexually, but stimulating mentally. And it's crazy. It's like, you know, listen, I like playing cards every once in a while. So you go play a card game with your friends. Be like the first time you play cards, you got a million bucks. You know, you're, or you're back there in the high state. You're in like the Dana White room, right? Like I know, like when I see sometimes his gambling hands, right?

55:38He's, you know, but he can afford to play. And he also knows where that fits into the rest of his life. But you think about a kid, you know, you have a chance to win a, you know, a million dollars. Actually, there's this scene in that movie, that show, remember Succession? Yes. A show that it's all about dopamine. This family of rich brats who are completely corrupt. Everything's about more, more, more. Dopamine has been called in a book, I forget the author, the molecule of more. It's all about wanting more. And there's this dreadfully sad scene where they go out to play, I think it was like a baseball game or something.

56:14And they bring their garden help and they take the kid and they say, hey, if you can and hit a home run, these people's kids, people are clearly, and they say, if you hit a home run, you have a million dollars. And you see the anticipation, this would transform these kids and their parents' life. And then he doesn't get the million dollars. And they give him like some watch that's probably worth$25 ,000. This is dopamine reward prediction error in a nutshell. Had they given him the watch, the family probably would have been pretty thrilled. They could sell it, they could use it. Had they not been involved in the game, their dopamine is the same as when they go home at night, but they had a chance at a million dollars.

56:53And when they didn't get that, it drops them below baseline. And then you see the kid that evening, like sitting around his apartment, just completely despondent with the watch sitting there as if it was worth nothing. That's dopamine. And when you think about pornography, that's what young people are being exposed to. So their first sexual experiences, not only are quite different. Remember, pornography is about, obviously, people are getting aroused by watching other people have sex. Oh, yeah. You know, I don't know what kind of sex people are having out there, but in my experience, you know, the whole business of sex and learning how to have great sex is about learning to be in the experience with somebody.

57:33And it's a communication. It's an ongoing communication. And it's about being in the experience, being present, not watching someone else have sex. Oh, yeah. I was thinking the other day, watching some other dude like have sex with a woman it's kind of i don't even know if it's homoerotic i don't know what it is it's definitely when you really when you take a step back from it it's a little bizarre it's definitely intrusive right but for surely it alters the way that you think about things i mean i know in my own life i got exposed to pornography real early i would bike across town to get a little look at some pornos perfectly normal behavior for a young male Pretty normal.

58:07I was breaking into houses to fricking, you know, get it. I had friends like you growing up. Where did you grow up? Louisiana. I had friends growing up. I mean, in the, in South, South Bay, Palo Alto was pretty tame, but when we, when I started getting into the skateboard thing, you know, we drew from kids from all over and listen, I'm very grateful for that early exposure. Oh yeah. It's easy to jerk off to, if you've got some good graffiti. Oh no, I meant early exposure to kids that from all walks of life, but I knew kids like you breaking into houses. Oh dude. Yeah. I remember. Yeah. It would be crazy.

58:34you would like, you know, yeah, just like breaking it in that just like, yeah, we made some poor choices. But I think the fact that here's one thing I noticed for myself, right? So, well, I had like a lot of like I had kind of a disorder, I guess, where like I had some intimacy issues where I couldn't. I had like some issues like just like probably with my mom from growing up of not having a connection. And so if a woman, if I got around a woman, I got very nervous, right? It was like a very extremely nervous, right? So I think it made it like once I saw pornography, I was like, okay, well, here's a way that I can be near a woman or near as a female where I can have some form of intimacy without having to have a real person there.

59:22So that for one for me was – it was okay. It made sense that that's how I adapted to it as a kid or how I understood it as a kid. It makes sense. but as an adult it didn't help me at a certain point and then the secondary part for me was you know you would just see you would see sex like in images or scenes or a way a camera set up and so then that's how you start to think of intimacy it's like you know it's like okay well we have to do this scene you know it's not like you would stage things around your room or anything you didn't have any cameras or anything but you would just like you thought of each thing as like like a scene or a scenario.

1:00:00So yeah, you're not out there shooting baskets. You're trying to like recreate the NBA final, you know? Right. And that's a lot, that's a lot of pressure. So it was a ton of pressure. So it was like, and you almost couldn't even, yeah, there was no real connection. So that for me was a real cul-de-sac of like trying to figure out how to evolve like intimately, you know, and, and, and it's, it's some of that's taken a long time to get through and different like, uh, class, like not classes, but like ayahuasca really helped me a lot. Different medicines helped a lot with like just unbinding all that anxiety.

1:00:39That was just like this young person who just, uh, didn't know how to relate to females, you know? You know, so I've been speaking recently about moon pay and what it is and what it ain't baby. Cause you know, I've, I've had that. I've been, I've had one foot in crypto and one foot out over the years. I'm walking that line, you know. But I'm not going to stop telling you about MoonPay because it's where I'm at now. It's what's brought me back into the crypto game. MoonPay powers the entire world of crypto. Some people say they are the PayPal of crypto. Seriously, nearly every crypto app you're using or thinking about using uses MoonPay to let you buy crypto with your favorite payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, Venmo, and even PayPal.

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1:03:54Unless you're rocking with ShipStation, ShipStation helps you be able to count on your day-to-day remaining calm. Our experience with ShipStation has been monumental. From using it to help us get out of our original relationship with shipping and with organizing, with our website and with our merch. Calm the chaos of order fulfillment with shipping software that delivers. Switch to ShipStation today. Go to shipstation.com forward slash Theo to sign up for your free trial. That's shipstation.com forward slash T-H-E-O. Yeah, I think it's a really important conversation. If I may, you know, I mean, listen, like I said, I'm 49 now, but you know, I am forever grateful to my first girlfriend.

1:04:53I was a virgin when she and I started sleeping together. She had slept with this other guy. All I knew about him was he was like some buff football player. I'm like the skinny skateboard kid. Oh dude, my first girlfriend slept with a dude before me who wore a cape, dude. A fucking. You wore a cape? Yeah. Like fuck dude. What the heck? Yeah. listen, I mean, I remember going into that like any young male thinking like, my goodness, you know, this is like, there's a lot of pressure. And one of the things I'm so grateful to her for is, you know, we were able to talk a bit at first. No, you know, it was just like, you're just wanting to go perfect.

1:05:32Right. You just wanted to go perfect. And I will say one of the huge mistakes people make, maybe we can save some, some people, some men and women, young, young men and women, some serious stress. One of the huge mistakes people make is to try and take that edge off with alcohol. First of all, it starts to really muddy all the consent stuff. So you're already like, you're already playing with fire, right? Because, you know, when people are inebriated, there's all, they're not in their right mind. So the other thing is that by chemically removing that stress, you, many people come to depend on those chemicals to relax and they don't Learn the skills, right?

1:06:11As I always joke, you know, now it's not a joke. It's serious. You know, nowadays, like every young male who wants to like get a little bit, you know, jacked is like, should I take TRT? And I'm like, dude, you're 25. You're already filled with testosterone. They're like, yeah, but you know, and you're like, learn how to train, learn how to eat. And when you're in your late forties, talk to a doctor, freeze some sperm because it's going to shut down your sperm production. Maybe then, but like just chill. And in the same way, it's like, I think there's immense pressure. There's also something that's happening now that I hear about a lot, which is from the beginning of time, women have talked to one another.

1:06:44OK, I had the. Oh, yeah. Chatty Cathy. You heard of that term? No. Is that what it's called? It's a famous term. Who brought it up? Let's get to the bottom of that term really quick, because people have heard it a lot and you don't know where it really started. Do we know that the phrase Chatty Cathy originally came from the name of popular talking doll manufactured by Mattel in the 1960s? the doll's pull string mechanism played pre-recorded phrases when the string was activated like you don't make any money or you get your own dinner i made those up but damn chat kathy's a vibe look at her she had buck tooth a little tooth there yeah back when you get a good british gal but go on was there anything left on that information um over time the term chatty kathy became a common idiom to describe someone who is especially talkative and i'm just joking ladies but uh but that's interesting where that came from i never knew always heard that I never heard that term.

1:07:36You know, so I had the great benefit and the disadvantage as well of having a sister, right? Having a sister is great because you don't think women are weird. Like I grew up with a girl living next door to me, my sister, we shared a bathroom, all that. But I also heard the way her and her friends talk about boys. And so from a young age, I was like, man, I can't make a mistake on a first date. I got to do everything perfect because it's going to be the rundown. but back then there was no social media. Now young guys tell me they are terrified to go out on dates because let's say they do something wrong.

1:08:13Let's say they're less than perfect. They are very concerned. It's going to end up on some site and they're going to be shamed. And I'll tell you, I do think, and of course I take the male perspective because that's the only body I've ever lived in. But I do think that a lot of the complaints about, you know, young, you know, there are no men today, young, young males, like in the twenties and thirties, you know, a lot of these guys are terrified because they feel like everything's potentially going to become public, positive or negative. And I hear a lot from young males about the pornography question about all this.

1:08:44And I like, there's one kid that I've kind of mentored over time. I've known him since he was a little kid and now he's in his twenties and he's doing great in life, but he's had his, his challenges. And he, I'll tell you, it's really interesting. He said to me, he goes, look, you know, it's hard, good looking kid. He's right now he's working construction and he's, he's doing great. And he said, look, it's hard to find someone who just kind of want to keep your relationship just the two of you. But he did, he, he had a girlfriend and she wasn't the one. So he found one and they have a closed container.

1:09:17They call it, you know, it was like the new, new language or something. And he's like, man, it's awesome. And he's like, you know, if I'm nervous about something related to intimacy, we talk about it. It turns out she's nervous too. And he feels super safe. And, but he had to literally anti that up because where he went to school, I won't say where he went to school because he'll murder me. But you know, it's like the opposite Arizona state, right? There's all this stuff about people talking behind the scenes and then posting it to the internet. And that's enough. And so that drives guys more into the loneliness and isolation of porn and substance abuse.

1:09:53And so I'm not blaming women here. I'm not blaming men here. I'm just saying that when it comes to intimacy, everybody's nervous about that. Right. When I was a kid, there was like Dr. Ruth and there were those books. And then you had this thing called experience and you'd have to, well, that went well, that went less well, that went really well. And then over time you learn how to have the communication and enjoy yourself in it. But it's hard. It's difficult. Now you can have a thing where it's like, say you go out on a date with a girl and then they could make a video like, oh, this guy tried to kiss me.

1:10:22You want to lose just like, but I guess guys could do that too. But just, just the risk of that on either side, it's like, then that wins, you know, it's like, how many times are we going to let technology defeat what just means being human? Right. And like, and at what point do we start to choose? Like, Hey, I'm going to make a moral, like a choice for myself and whoever I'm going to date with, maybe have a talk with them first or something like, you know, but it's like every time it's like technology is the one that seems to like take away like things that used to be so real to us. Yeah. Because then you're both in a cave, you're both just masturbating or whatever.

1:11:00And you're both like broken hearted in a, in some semblance, it seems like, is that crazy to say that? No, I don't think so at all. I mean, listen, text messages, I hate telling people this, but like everything you text is potentially public. I don't care if you're a public facing AKA famous person or not. And that terrifies people. At the same time, you know, there can be great intimacy through writing. You know, my first girlfriend and I wrote each other letters for years, for years. I still have letters from girlfriends. You know, I cherish those. I don't break them out too often. If you have a new girlfriend, you basically, you got to hide those away pretty carefully.

1:11:32But I assume anyone I date's got those, you know, from their former relationships. And I'm not bothered by that. I mean, that's part of the experience. You go get them out, but I agree, man. I get nervous because sometimes like for a date or something i would like to do well let's um do a zoom call or something first because it's like you know especially we live a little bit away from each other let's see if we even talk well or something but then you're worried like well is somebody recording this or what's going on yes they're recording it yeah i'm just kidding i mean listen well the old stereotype was girls feared getting slut shamed right guys feared getting dork shamed like loser shamed Yeah.

1:12:09Right. Big, you know, it's been said by the evolutionary biologists. Donnie's a loser, dude. And they speculate a lot, but the evolutionary biologists will say, you know, woman's greatest fear is violence from a man. Man's greatest fear is being laughed at by a woman. Oh God. Right. And, and right, exactly. And so there's this battle nowadays. I'm glad we're talking about this because there's this kind of unspoken battle between the masculine and feminine forces. Well, it's just funny that you say that because I just realized that the majority of my childhood was some woman. I don't even know who it was laughing in the distance in my head.

1:12:43Oh, man. Well, and like, especially when I got an upperbity and that kind of ton of time. But well, and there's nothing that feels better than, you know, feeling like you can deeply satisfy your partner and they're devoted to you and you're devoted to them. It's a wonderful. I mean, that's the stuff that, you know, love and marriages and families and to be direct, great sex are made of. Right. Right. But this is one of the most important conversations to our audience, because I think this is the thing that's it's killed. You know, relationships are falling up. It's like if we don't if this doesn't get fixed now, it's going to be.

1:13:13I think it's, you know, societies can change and end really fast, especially with like technology now. To me, it's it's just like we're at a crucial moment for relationships. I totally agree. I mean, you know, young guys approach me a lot about the porn thing, about concern about like, Are they going to be shamed on one of these sites if they, you know, do something wrong? And I'm not talking about like wrong, like they were forceful. I'm talking about wrong, like they made a mistake. Yeah. Or they said something dumb. Or, you know, I think a lot of - What's that one, Nick? Didn't you have a site you were pulling up?

1:13:45This is one right here. Are we dating the same guy? Women turned to Facebook to uncover cheating and violence. Experts say use of groups to warn others about dangerous men is indictment on government's failure to keep women safe. This is from The Guardian. So it's obviously very pro the groups, but there's negative consequences like people being reported just for dating multiple women that they're not exclusive with and stuff like that. But it's also it's very pro who you said. Guardian is very pro the app as like an empowerment for women, the way they can stay safe. Yeah. Well, I think apps that protect people against violence are great.

1:14:18I think that, you know, if you look at the data on infidelity in and out of marriage, it's equally distributed between men and women. Okay. So there's no, there's no men cheat more than women. It's, it's, it's clearly equally distributed. So, um, the data play that over and over again, you look at divorce data, but you just look at self-report data, all different forms of data collection that really orient towards honesty because people lie all the time and studies and statistics point to that. I think that, you know, the most important thing really, if we're talking about forming intimacy, whether or not sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, or both is that people feel that their communications are vaulted between them, right?

1:15:00What does vaulted mean? Vaulted means it's just between them. What happened, what's exchanged between them stays between them. That's intimacy in its own right. Is it that it's something here? It's between us, right? That's right. I mean, I, you know, I have a half joking solution to this, but I'm only half joking. Oh yeah, for sure. And I should say, I've had some great relationships and I've had some not great relationships, right? I'm on great terms with most all of my ex-girlfriends, you know, and I'm so grateful to, especially one from about, it was a long relationship, about seven years, where she really taught me how to like have the uncomfortable conversation.

1:15:41And I'm still learning, right? And we're still good friends. But I'll tell you one of the solutions to this.

1:15:51men, find a good lesbian friend. You want to really understand where you're strong, where you're weak. And you want to learn to just kind of relax around women. Be around a woman that you have no chance of sleeping with. That buddy oyster, bro. You know, I have a couple of lesbian friends and I'll tell you, I've always had a couple of lesbian friends. I'm convinced lesbians are going to save us all. God, I got to get one. They are, you know, you know what I'm saying? Yeah. And you got to get it out of your head that you're going to sleep with them. Yes. Because these are what we call platinum star lesbians.

1:16:19They are interested in women and women. Oh yeah. I'm talking to a chick in a Westbrook jersey. And they, it's interesting because they have an amazing perspective on men. That's from a women's perspective. And they also have an amazing perspective on women. They can say things like, she's crazy. Andrew, you date her, you're going to be in pain. And they can also say things like, she seems pretty cool. I would date her, except she's not into women. And you, that's good. Women can see things in women that men can't see. Men can see things in men that obviously women can't see. I mean, I grew up in a big pack of guys.

1:16:52Like I only hit bullseyes when it comes to assessment of friends and business partners, men and women. But you know, with men, I can just tell he's a sociopath. He's cool. He's not cool. I can just tell it's like a sixth sense. The other thing, you know, across the sexes, you know, a macaque monkey blindfolded on LSD has better optics. And I don't think I'm alone in that. Right? Because we get stirred. It's not all about the anticipation of sex. It's that the styles of communication are different. The way that stories and information is turned into things by one sex. It's like a whole different world.

1:17:28Lesbians normalize all of this and they're extremely direct. And some of my best friends are lesbians. I love them to death. I would - We got to get some damn lesbians over here. Lesbians are going to save us all, man. Yeah, I love that. That would be a great musical. Lesbians are going to save us all. and I believe that I would love to see that and I think that yeah I think there is this you know for a while there people were like gays and gays and you know don't be gay and that kind of stuff probably like 50 years ago that was like a thing you know and then but now I think one of the one of the neat things about gay folks is there are that they have like a special recipe you know that's built into them.

1:18:12Well, gay men have it worked out. Like I have a good friend I've known since childhood. It was wild because he basically slept with like more women than any of us in high school. He's a gay gentleman? He ended up being gay. Wow. Went off to college. He's as gay as could be. Yeah. And, you know, and the communication, he's explained like the communication in the gay community, gay male community. So easy. Well, it's just very direct. Right. People ask for sex if they want it. They say no if they don't want to. Want lunch? Want to come? Yeah. I mean. That's it. Straight up. I mean, the stereotype is it matches.

1:18:40there are some married gay couples, obviously monogamous, et cetera, but it aligns with all the, the male stereotypes of promiscuous multiple partners. That's, that's the kind of stereotype, right? Um, you know, the grill and come, that'd be my team, dude. If you had a gay flag football team in college, dude, uh, for the, uh, for, at the, um, rec center grill and come. You want to here's some wild data on homosexuality and hormones. Okay, so years ago when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, I was part of a study, I wasn't the main author, that looked at finger length ratios and homosexuality in men and women and how much testosterone was in utero.

1:19:22Now, I don't want anyone to freak out and just start staring at their fingers, but because it has to be measured correctly. All right. So if you hold up your right hand, like I'm holding up my right hand, my ring finger here is a little bit longer than my pointer finger okay which one's ring finger yeah so uh turn but turn it the other way around for me yeah okay so your ring finger is a little bit longer than your pointer finger yeah okay that is the typical heterosexual male pattern okay now people are gonna be like this is bullshit listen this has been replicated more than five times in humans okay so on the right hand and and you don't know sometimes they look a little more equal but it's replicated five generations five different studies have repeated this and it holds up every single time so and if sometimes you have to measure from that first crease on the palm side but if we were to measure it yeah so so this this pointer finger is smaller than the ring finger okay it's called the d2 to d4 ratio scientists are super nerdy okay turns out that if you look at gay men men that identify as gay they're they're very few men that identify as bisexual actually.

1:20:28But if you look gay men, that difference is much more pronounced, much bigger. They have a hyper male pattern. Now it can't be due to behavior, right? You could say, well, they're having sex with a lot more people. Sex increases testosterone. No, it's directly related to how much testosterone you were exposed to in utero when you were in your mommy's belly. Now, can you get exposed to testosterone in your mom's belly if someone ejaculates into the mom? that hasn't been looked at, but I don't think so. There's a lot to talk about here. So yeah, you can put that hand down. So gay men have a hyper male pattern that the index finger, excuse me, the pointer finger tends to be relatively shorter than the ring finger.

1:21:13So the pointer finger is shorter than the ring finger. Yeah, yeah, on the right hand. Good, the right hand is where it's, there you go. See, so, yep, yeah, yeah, there you go. Ooh, fuck. Okay, so. I wish it's close. Well, no, no. It's a very small difference in everyone. Okay. But in gay men, it tends to be much greater. So in the gay men, the pointer finger is a little bit more shorter than the ring finger. Correct. Wow. And we're not talking about absolute. We're talking about the ratio. Okay. Now check this out. Now check it out. Lesbians tend to have the same pattern as heterosexual men, which is not to say they are men, right?

1:21:49Believe me, I got lesbian friends. They are women. A lot of people, when they hear lesbian, they think of like a sort of cartoon stereotype of a lesbian. There are a lot, trust me, there are a lot of different lesbians. Actually, my lesbian friends recently have been trying to school me on how you spot a lesbian. Turns out there's all sorts of interesting things. The lesbian community is not supposed to give away these secrets. It's kind of like magicians, you know, but let's just say like number of rings and stuff is our like interesting correlates. Okay. Love the lesbian community. Yeah, we got to find some good lesbians, man, in the future.

1:22:19So here's what's wild. Yeah. the more older brothers a guy has, the more testosterone he's exposed to in utero and the higher probability it is that he'll be gay. Wow. Now that's not always the case. It doesn't mean you have five older brothers, you'll be gay, but much higher probability of being gay if you have more older brothers. With each older brother, the probability of a male baby growing up into a gay man increases significantly. Gosh. Okay, super interesting. Now, all of this is interesting because it shows that there's what we call organizational effects of hormones in utero. None of this can be because of behavior.

1:22:56In fact, these differences are present at birth. Okay. Okay. And then of course the question I asked when I was on the study is if I would chop off my index finger, does my testosterone go up? The answer is no. So, you know, so when we think about like partner selection, like, you know, heterosexual, homosexual, you know, I think years ago it was thought that this was, you know, there were still people that thought this was a behavioral choice. Listen, newsflash. this is clearly a biological phenomenon okay none of this that clearly like you know and and i understand that but there's but there's of course also flexibility you could imagine that some people because of experience decide that they're gonna you know bat for the other team oh for sure a lot of my gay friends like it's not a choice right it's just like it's who you are and i'm like well why after you've had a drink are you trying to get me to choose it that's a thing for That's a very good point.

1:23:45It's like reverse psychology. They're trying to trick you or something. Wiener trick. That's interesting. My lesbian friends have never tried to convince me to be a lesbian. But the. But I don't blame gay dudes if they. Because I think the ultimate, the ultimate thing you can get as a gay dude is a straight dude. You know, that's the hot shit. Well, OK. So in the. I can't speak for lesbians, but my close lesbian friends tell me that also, yeah, like flipping somebody. Yeah. For them is like considered a trophy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But you know, so the last sort of study in this - Like catching a big foot or whatever.

1:24:17There's a neuroscientist by the name of Simon LeVay, who years ago looked in the brain for brain differences between gay and straight men. And he found one. There's a little area of the hypothalamus called the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus area four that is different in size between gay men and straight men. Wow. And you know, it's hard to argue that that comes from behavior. It could have. The problem with that study is they got the brains from deceased AIDS patients and AIDS is a known neurodegenerative condition. So, you know, there's no perfect study of any of this. I don't know how we got into this, but I think basically we're talking about lesbians are going to save us all.

1:24:57But, you know, one thing that I think is so important about the work you do, and seriously, one of the reasons I wanted to come here today is because you're normalizing conversations about addiction, porn, sex, intimacy. You know, you asked why, I think you answered your question earlier. Why is podcasting so big and important now? Because you're not going to get this kind of conversation on a legacy news channel. They're going to bring in somebody who's like the expert and they're going to talk about things from the perspective of never having done them. They're not going to reveal anything about themselves.

1:25:30And here we are kind of, you know, like brushing up against the barbed wire of some of these topics in an effort to really talk about them because this is what a lot of people are struggling with. Yeah, some of that intimacy disorder stuff was a nightmare for me because when I was in my 20s, I was so nervous around women that a lot of times I had erectile dysfunction. Could you talk to your partner about it? Back then it was probably taboo, right? Oh, yeah. No, I think I just felt defeated. It felt very much like, damn, something's wrong with me. I don't know what's wrong with me. you know and it was like um i remember i had uh it's funny because kind of with like my first girlfriend i didn't really have it and then it started to happen and then the same thing happened with my second girlfriend and then after that once i kind of got into like age 23 it was or like 24 it was like a problem for a long time so it was like a bug in your brain oh yeah so once it was like i knew it was there then it was like always this thing so oh fuck i can't even i i i forgot about all these nightmare times where you'd be on a date and you'd be like how's this date going and then like are we gonna get like animate and what's gonna happen and i would like you know i remember like um i would eat like you know those gas station wiener pills like uh you know like black attacks 40 or whatever i've seen them on the camera they don't work dude i think they're all just caffeine and stimulants which can't be good can't be good one of them i took yeah just zoom in on some of those no that's day quill i mean that's not gonna help anybody uh yeah triple green rhino 87 macho man um white black guy that's a crazy name for one wait what yeah i made that up okay i didn't see that there i thought i have a visual defect or something oh yeah uh body beast let's do it over King Kong.

1:27:25But nowadays, a lot of this has worked out because the drug Tadalafil, also known as Cialis, was developed as a way to increase blood flow to the prostate. By the way, every male 35 or older, this was suggested by the director of male sexual health at Stanford School of Medicine, Mike Eisenberg. So I'm not just pulling this out of nowhere. Every male 35 or older should probably be on a low dose, 2.5 to five milligrams of Tadalafil in the evening. It's very inexpensive. It does require a prescription. Why? Because the prostate needs blood flow. And it also serves, you know, it has this pro-erectile function, right?

1:28:02And of course, one has to do all the other things correctly. You gotta be sleeping, exercising, et cetera. Also, a lot of guys think they should be doing Kegels. You know, that thing where you're like, you know, kind of tight. That actually will tighten your pelvic floor and block blood flow to the penis and make erection more difficult. Hadn't been doing it. Yeah, so they did, you know, a lot of this stuff wasn't taught. Yeah, I remember, I would take some of them so much sometime. I remember one time I was trying to like perform, like have sex with this gal or something. And my, I'd taken so many of those wiener pills.

1:28:29My nose just started bleeding all over this woman. And I was like, what is happening? Did she freak out? I don't know. It was in Miami. Everybody, we had like a belly full of crab or whatever. It was like this nice crab place, but it was like, and my nose just, it was just like, that was crazy. But it just became this crazy dance in my head where it was like, wiener pills, trying to be normal like trying to calm down like put an ice in my shirt just all these things to like shit like just be able to be normal for uh sex that shit was a nightmare yeah i mean it was a nightmare and then you're stuck in this universe where that is becomes like your whole battle and then you get afraid to even talk to girls sometimes or relate to them because you're like well what you know if i take a girl down this road and it's not able to work out then who am i then where am I at, you know?

1:29:19Yeah. And then imagine that, but layered on top of that is the fear of being shamed by, listen, I don't know that I, you know, I'm just going to bring it up. I don't know the specifics, but I remember hearing a few years ago, there was a comedian who was like shamed for being bad in bed or something. Was this like, and that was one of the first kind of, he was kind of canceled for being bad in bed. Wasn't that? That was, all right. Well, and listen, if there was like coercive stuff or whatever, I don't know, but I wasn't there, obviously, obviously didn't read the article either, but I think, you know, you layer on top the fear of being ashamed.

1:29:53Right. And all of a sudden, you know, like you're talking about like collapsing a young male's existence. I mean, you know, I think, yeah, I, like I said, for the fourth time, I'm forgive me for repeating myself, 49. So I, I, thanks, man. I feel good. Well, listen, I quit drinking. I never drank that much, but also I've been doing things that I love. I was going to say that one of the things that'll keep you young is dopamine, really not from pharmacology, but being in pursuit of things that you love. Positive anticipation. But I think that - Let's go into that in just a second, but let's finish out this, what you were saying.

1:30:24Yeah, I think that, you know, I benefited tremendously from being open with that first girlfriend. Yes. That first girlfriend just saying, hey, like, you know, like, she had this like buff boyfriend in another school, but actually it was wild because he ended up killing himself. And that was years later. And I remember thinking this guy was like the football hero, right? He ended up committing suicide. And I remember thinking, wow, I thought in my mind, he was like, couldn't be outdone. Right. And so talking to her, I remember her just saying like, first she said something like, we were kids, right?

1:31:04We were like 16, you know, she said, you know, you're, you're wonderful. And I remember thinking like, I don't want to be called wonderful. Like I'm trying to get good at this thing. Right. And I think if I've learned anything, like if I could send like a, like all points bulletin out, it's like everything we know about the erectile response is that it's what we call parasympathetic. It comes from the relaxation response. Orgasm is related to, it's almost like a stress of sorts. It's pleasurable, but high arousal. The key to all of it is a lot of exhales, a lot of nasal breathing, and just slow the whole thing down.

1:31:38Slow the whole thing down. That, you know, later, once you're comfortable with somebody, if you got like five minutes and you're gonna like go for the quickie thing in the kitchen before you leave to work. Okay, that's a whole program, okay? That's like that guy, Lethal Shooter on Instagram, the guy can make a basket from anywhere. Like he worked up to that. What you're trying to do is slow down the whole thing like and get into sensation. You gotta get out of your head. Now it's one thing to say, get out of your head. It's another to do it. So the whole process there starts with just, only going so far as then you communicate with the person, slow down.

1:32:16These things have a real beauty to them because when people start entering that dance and communicating well with one another, all of a sudden, like the magic of biology takes over. And then someone thinks, oh, well now it's going to go back. Then you just kind of restart and do the whole thing. And nowadays I think young males go quickly. They're like, I'm gonna take 20 milligrams. It's a dowel, fill this out. Listen, that probably would help, but learning how to do this, this thing that we call intimacy, right? I mean, intimacy is a lot of things, but knowing that what's happening there is between the two of you.

1:32:48And that also means you guys, cause you know, there's also been a long history of men talking about all the women they slept with. And then that doesn't feel good necessarily to the other women, you know? So the real, the art of intimacy is something that we've lost. And listen, I'm not saying that all sexes has this element, you know, sometimes people just want to get together and get raw, like, but that's, that's a, you know, that's an advanced skill that you may or may not want to engage in. Right. And I think that slowing the whole thing down, like, Hey, we're going to be together in bed four times before we ever actually have intercourse.

1:33:21Like that's weird to look at you while I say that, but you know what I'm talking about? No, no, no. It would have been great. This is the kind of thing that can transform, not only avoids problems, but can transform your notion of like what's possible in relationship. Oh, I had to work. Slow, slow, slow, slow. And then once that intimacy is set, then there can be some, you know, more adventurous exploration at speed. But, you know, it's all about it's all about slowing that thing down, slowing the whole process down. Yeah, dude, I remember. Oh, dude, I remember this frickin my girlfriend at the time.

1:34:00I was like, I thought I couldn't get an erection. Right. So I had her call me a different name. Like we're making out. That was your that was your solution. Well, this dude Robert in our grade was getting mad erections, everybody was saying. And I'd be like, call me. And I, oh, this is so embarrassing. But I'd be like, call me Robert. Call me Robert. And it didn't fucking help. And she's like, it was just the most embarrassing. That shit was super embarrassing, dude. Because even if I was Robert, I couldn't even get an erection at the time. So that was horrible. Trying to think of what else happened.

1:34:27Dude, oh, I've gone. I mean, you know, over the years, I've gone, you know, down the gamut of all of it. like hiring escorts or, you know, thinking like, oh, we need more than one part, like all that, like just thinking like all these things would change it, you know, drugs, alcohol, like all these different things to like trying to fine tune how I would feel. Okay. I think even just to be in like a conversation, like just to be like an intimate conversation, like, oh, I wished I would have from the beginning been like, just with a girl, I've been, hey, like, this is what's going on. and this is how I'm feeling and this is what's popping, you know?

1:35:03And like, and even made it cool or whatever. And it would have brought us closer together. But instead I took this huge bypass of like things that I thought would, like I thought that intimacy was just a one man show. Well, yeah, it's so important what you're saying that it was all your responsibility. Does that make any sense or not? Yeah, listen, newsflash, men and women. There are women who are great in bed and there are women who are not great in bed. You know, there are great lovers who are women. There are not great lovers. I'll tell you what makes a great female lover. Somebody who can relax and enjoy herself.

1:35:38And part of that is the communication. And also somebody who's tuned into what works for you. You know, it took me a long time because I, listen, I think all young men deal with this, right? You want to perform well. And it's interesting. You mentioned Robert and I mentioned this other guy that sadly eventually killed himself, but every young male knows the experience of there's like this satellite male. You're holding yourself up against this image and an idea, right? This image and idea, that's very dangerous thinking. You know what I think? I think that every male should understand that at some point you're the satellite male.

1:36:10You're the satellite male. So you got to get out of that kind of thinking and understand that like dancing, like athletics, like it takes time to get good at. You need reps and you need reps under conditions where you can learn. you know i think you know it sounds like you put the pressure on yourself to be like a sexual athlete from go and like you got to learn layups no pun intended you got to learn that your free throws you got to lay downs but i look at all that pornography that's what it was i've been looking at all that porno you know and it got me all bent out yeah it's like if you want to play basketball you don't go look at lethal shooters instagram and go i'm gonna do that tomorrow yeah I mean, he built up to that, you know?

1:36:50So I think we're using an analogy here and metaphor, but it's just so important that this guy is - He's got a pop item right there, lethal shooter, huh? Yeah, this guy is like - He's just like that, huh? Yeah, and I'll tell you, no, it's reps. It's reps, reps, reps. He did a live one night that I caught really late at night when I was in New York. He can visually measure the angle the ball has to go in. He's not shooting, he is shooting for the basket, but he's trying to put the ball in a cone of a particular angle. He's looking above the basket at the, at the angle he needs to sink that thing.

1:37:22He'll put a gummy bear into a 16 ounce bottle from across a court. And then he yells at you for, for doubting him. Well, I love that. What's he doing here? Oh, he's, what do they call that game? Game, uh, cornhole. What a weird name for a game. Yeah. You wonder how it started. Boom. Look at this guy. Beanbag. And he goes, I understand it now. So, yeah, he's really good. That man, lethal shooter right there. Yeah, he reps. He worked up to that. And he didn't work up to it by picking up a basketball, metaphorically speaking, and saying, okay, I got to make this or else my life is destroyed and people are going to be talking about it.

1:37:57Yeah. So I think there has to be a private world, an intimate world where people can explore in a healthy way, communicate in a healthy way, know it's between them. And then you get to this beautiful vista with intimacy where you're like, I love this or I love that. And, you know, I mean, uh, and it brings people together. Oh, I mean, listen, I mean, I want to be respectful to, you know, my former partners, but you know, it's one of these things where you go like, wow, like I really, I really learned something from that person. Now, of course, as a man, you also have to have an ego intact enough to know she learned a few things from somebody else too, right?

1:38:32Unless you, unless it's a first relationship, right? This notion that you're the only person that's ever been there is quite rare. And part of being a grown male is accepting that. And frankly, you know, different strokes for different folks, you know, but I think you got to understand, like, we're all here because either in a dish or in a human, sperm met egg, okay? This drive that's dopamine driven to reproduce and sex, the reason those things are so closely woven is, and that drives so much of culture and behavior and shame and addiction and pleasure and all this stuff is because it's why we're here.

1:39:06Like - Right. I mean, this is everything. And, you know, now Elon and other people are talking about how the, you know, the replacement rate for humans is way, way down because we have birth control and people aren't having sex as much. I mean, it is possible that humans fail to replace themselves as a species, you know. And then you got guys like him who are trying to make up for that deficit. Oh, yeah. He's popping off, dude. He's got like what, like 14 kids or something? He'll knock up a fucking parking meter. You don't give a damn, boy. He's the only dude who put. Oh, man. Yeah, he put definitely, he'll get it.

1:39:39I want to pivot a little bit. I saw, we're starting to see stuff, like I've been noticing recently these articles about measles. Have you seen this stuff hitting the airwaves? Is that realistic? It just starts to seem, if you can see one of them, Nick can bring it up. Person may have spread measles at Shakira concert in MetLife Stadium, health officials say, right? This just seems like a person who attended a Shakira concert at Medlife Stadium on May 15th was infected with measles and may have spread the highly contagious virus at the event. Health officials say this almost reads like the beginning of a movie, right?

1:40:16Like highly contagious, infected, spread at a concert. So it makes it super scary, right? All these, but like all the viruses tend to spread more quickly indoors. Measles can live in an airspace for up to two hours and it's highly transmissible, especially amongst the unvaccinated. So this is an article. What's this in? This is North Jersey dot com, which is owned by USA Today. OK, OK. Conventional media. So so I'm just like, what is going on here? Are we are they just trying to see another thing that will stick to society? What do you as a scientist? What do you even think when you read something like this?

1:40:51OK, super important, specific and general question you're asking. First question as a scientist I would ask is, what was the frequency of people with measles coming into the hospital before there was a focus on measles? Got it. Like two years ago, before the discussion about measles and vaccines was as prominent, at least measles vaccines, right? Back then it was all about COVID vaccines. So I'd say, if we were to look in the medical history, because hospitals keep records, this was in East Rutherford. Okay, so in New Jersey, I have relatives in New Jersey, how many measles cases were identified in the last 10 years.

1:41:29Right. And what percentage of those reported having been in a public place prior? That's what I'd want to know, because that will tell you whether or not this is the media amplifying. Here we go. Texas outbreak drives up early U.S. measles cases in early 2025. Number of measles cases reported in the U.S. per year. Yeah. Well, we hear about these things like bird flu. Remember a few years back, it was monkeypox. Yeah. monkey pox we don't hear about monkey pox anymore that was like monkey pox is coming for us yeah every every couple there's something that pops off like this every few months it's like hoof mouth syndrome or canary baby you know there are cases of measles that can be very detrimental but there's a an episode of the brady bunch do you remember this episode of the brady bunch where they all get measles and then at the end alice walks in and she's got the spots and she goes i've got measles too you know when i was a kid i had the chicken pox now i'm not trying to make light of the measles, right?

1:42:21Like any infectious disease, there's inflammation of the body and brain. There are cases where these diseases cause serious long-term effects. And then there are cases where it has less of an effect. The most important thing to understand for me would be what are the real statistics of like, is measles becoming more frequent? Is that tied to the shift? Because let's face it, regardless of where you stand on the issue of vaccination, people are now taking a look again at vaccination. The vaccine schedules have expanded. Right. You know, I'm part of the medical community. I'm an employee of Stanford School of Medicine.

1:42:53And I would say I fall more just full disclosure into the more conventional standpoint of this. I want to be really clear because of I do believe that there are certain vaccinations that are highly beneficial. I also think there are a number of vaccinations that for public health reasons should be explored further if for no other reason to discover that, yes, we were right or no, we were wrong. It's just critically important. I mean, you know, I think any good, any self-respecting scientists would say, those are the data, let's look again. Now there's this real twist in the data around the autism vaccine thing that's very, that's really unfortunate.

1:43:34And this is one of the reasons why this is such a hot button issue is that the guy, Andrew Wakefield, who originally tried to tie the vaccine to autism, he was found guilty of fraud. Okay. Now I wasn't involved in the papers of the case, but like that puts a twist in everything because - Did he go to jail? I believe he did, or he at least lost his medical license. Okay. There have been other instances, you know, of scientific fraud, but that one in particular caused the entire field to assume he was completely wrong about everything. And now there are folks like Robert Kennedy, who is, like him or not, is our head of HHS.

1:44:07Okay, I actually know Robert. Actually, I'm going to host Che Bhattacharya, who is my colleague at Stanford. He's the head of NIH. And so I think right now there's a, here, what were the consequences? Andrew Wakefield did not go to prison, although he was found guilty of serious professional misconduct by the UK General Medical Council and was struck off the medical register, effectively ending his career as a physician. There's no record or evidence that he was ever criminally prosecuted or in prison for his actions related to the fraudulent 1998 Lancet study linking the MMR vaccine to autism.

1:44:35The sanctions against him were professional and civil, not criminal. So an important thing that must be done. I know this issue is, you know, I'm going to catch hate either way. What's a hot issue right now? It's a super hot issue. Listen, as a parent, can you imagine you have a kid and your kid seems for all measures perfectly healthy, has some treatment vaccine or a pill or a trip to, you know, the supermarket and that kid fundamentally changes their behavior afterwards. You know, the one thing we know is, this is also a deep hypothalamic circuit, as we say, there is a hardwired circuit for mothers, especially, you know, dads can be protective, but mothers to protect their young.

1:45:15So, you know, when the moms are pissed off and curious, they are unrelenting. And no amount of discussion about that was resolved because the Wakefield thing was gone is going to satisfy them. So my personal take is run the studies you need to run, make sure they're run properly with an unbiased look at all of this. So important because the thing about vaccines and autism is really a microcosm for a much larger theme about how much can we trust the medical community. And listen, I know scientists, I was weaned in this. My dad's a scientist. Like most scientists, like 99.9 % of scientists want to get things right.

1:45:52We are in the business of trying to un-tease the secrets of nature and do good things with them. Okay. And yet there are those that will manipulate the system. No one goes into science to get rich. They go into biotech to get rich, but you don't become a bench scientist at a university to get rich. Trust me. But how can those scientists be manipulated as a group? Like when you look back at, like how can that happen? Like, is it journals that are compromised? Is it the medical industry that gets compromised? But how do you have like a whole, you know? Sure. So I'll try and keep this relatively succinct.

1:46:27This is a whole landscape and it's something that is like really deep and important to me as a science communicator, health communicator who has friends on both sides, you know, of these debates. The most important thing to understand is scientists are trying to figure out the truth. They are also human and they're highly incentivized to advance their careers. One of the things that I've observed in science is not people making up data. that's exceedingly rare. But scientists sometimes when they don't get the answer they want in an experiment, they'll come up with reasons for why that experiment probably wasn't run right.

1:47:03And maybe we should discard the data. Okay, let's say that one time when they don't get - When they don't get the answer they want, they will come up with reasons why, oh, that antibody wasn't as fresh or the conditions weren't right. And they will start to steer the data, steer the - I have observed that. Okay. I've observed that a lot in my career, sadly, far less common are people outright making up data, what we call fudging data, just like making up numbers. There's a famous case in nanotechnology of this kid whose last name was Shon. He was like a wunderkind in the sense that he had like, it's very hard to publish papers in science or nature.

1:47:37This is like the Superbowl rings of science. I've had a couple in nature, a couple in science, and I feel immensely blessed for that. Shon was publishing 12 papers a year in nature and science. Wow. And at some point, people start looking more closely at their data. Okay. And what happened? They saw that the random noise plots, random should be random, right? You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to understand that random should be random. He was so lazy that he was replotting the random noise in two different experiments. You can't get the same random noise in two different experiments.

1:48:10So there are bad apples like him. He's gone now. But most scientists are trying to get it right. and yet there's this thing that we have to constantly check ourselves on. This is why you have to, what we call blind the data. You look at it not knowing what condition you're looking at. This is why replication is so key and the big problem in science, and I do think this new administration cares about this, it's hard to get a job as a professor for replicating work. Everyone wants to see the new thing. So a PhD student comes into my lab, they want to study something. We rarely say, oh, let's go do what someone else did and make sure they're right.

1:48:44No, you pick something new. So a lot of mistakes have passed, get kind of baked into the field. And this is what happened in the Alzheimer's field. This is why, you know, one mistake, which probably was somebody outright fudging as well, making stuff up, kind of get woven into the lineage. Then other papers get published more easily. And then lo and behold, 25 years later, we said, we don't have a single good treatment for Alzheimer's. Best thing you can do is get good sleep. There's a little study out today about creatine maybe helping, but we're just nipping around the corners of this extremely important problem.

1:49:12So I must say, and this is not for political correctness. Listen, I'm a tenured professor at Stanford. So I don't have to worry about quote unquote losing my job. I mean, there are ways you can lose your job even with tenure. But I just want to say with all the bad things about science, the Wakefield thing, the Alzheimer's thing, the replication crisis, the lack of incentive for people to replicate work. I do have to say something very important. there are so many treatments for diseases that exist nowadays that we take for granted that were born out of basic research scientists in a lab just trying to figure things out without the idea of a treatment someday my scientific great-grandparents i mentioned them earlier david huble and torrent weasel did that experiment of closing one eye in a kitty cat and monkey showed that the brain is immensely plastic that gave birth excuse me that gave birth to an entire field of the molecules involved and the hormones involved and why it shuts down with age how how to open plasticity in adulthood.

1:50:08In many ways, it's given rise to this whole field of psychedelics for the treatment of brain disorders in order to reopen plasticity. They did not do those experiments thinking there would be any medical application, but we now know as compared to the seventies, when a kid has a lazy eye or a cataract or what we call strabismus or any of that, we now know to get in and treat those eye diseases early while the brain is still plastic. Their work has saved the vision. In other words, has prevented blindness of countless people around the world. And there's this whole initiative in places overseas to remove cataracts, save vision.

1:50:45So I can give you a million, not a million, I can give you thousands of examples of that. Immunotherapies for cancer, neuroplasticity, the incredible work being done on psilocybin for depression, MDMA, which hopefully will be approved by the FDA soon for the treatment of PTSD. incredible 70%, seven zero remission rates. The understanding of that drug, methylene, dioxy, methamphetamines, methamphetamine with a little twist, okay? The understanding of that was born out of serious scientists slaving away in their labs for very little pay because they love discovery. And I'm not saying that to just kind of say, oh, all scientists are great, but I think we have to be very careful.

1:51:27The replication crisis is real. we need to take another look at all issues related to public health. You can tell I'm very passionate about this. Listen, I text Bobby all the time. I'm like, listen, man, we got to look at this. We got to look at, and you know what? We can't allow ourselves to go too far in one direction or the other. I say, let's not waste any time. Let's take a look at all these vaccines again in great controlled studies. Yeah, what do we lose by looking at them? Nothing. But I'll tell you, to say what I'm saying here, like I'm going to, this will be cut and clipped and contorted.

1:51:58you know i'm just going to come out with it trad medias you know the moment i started showing up on rogan listen i think joe rogan has done tremendous amount of good for science communication matt walker me david sinclair other people on there physicists you know but then the adjacency to anyone who's asking these larger questions puts you in the bullseye of oh you know he you know andrew's a science denier flat earth or whatever no i believe that any solid field should be subject to self-scrutiny and outside scrutiny. And this is why, listen, I've published a number of papers and I always say, listen, I'm happy to be wrong for the right reasons.

1:52:34Like we were trying our damnedest to get it right. You can't be wrong for the wrong reasons, like making shit up. You make a mistake, you correct yourself. It's called being an adult. And you can tell that like this gets my energy going because I will tell you, I am very concerned about the future of science in this country either way, because we've got to split right down the middle and there's all this finger pointing and somebody, hopefully Jay Bhattacharya, our new director of the NIH, God willing, he's going to bridge this gap. I'm trying to do what I can behind the scenes to really get people talking.

1:53:05Cause there's so much shit talking behind the, you know, I hate them and I hate them. And, but listen, we all got to live in this world. Forgive me for going on a monologue, but I'm telling you, I'm glad we need, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and, and we really, really need to, whatever we explore, we need to explore it properly, but scientists are good people, man. And I don't make my living doing science anymore. So I can say that with no bias. They're good people, 99.9 % of them. And then the, and those bad apples, excuse my language, but fuck them. Oh, for sure. Because they ruin it all for everybody.

1:53:39Oh yeah. Well, and it also leads to impairment. It leads to disease. It leads to, um, you know, atrocities that happen to people. And it's for usually for the sake of profit. Do you believe that big pharma would lobby against certain tests being done or residual testing, reexamination of past findings, et cetera, in order to keep things a certain way? Okay. So does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. So two things about big pharma. First of all, I don't have any direct links to big pharma. You know, people think because I'm at Stanford, I've been accused of being part of MKUltra. I don't even know what that is, but it sounds scary.

1:54:20Oh, I don't know, dude. What's MKUltra? Winning the Jets fucking lost. I know that, dude. I've been told I'm a CIA plant, MKUltra. I mean, that stuff is crazy. Oh, dude, somebody told me I went to the Middle East or something. Somebody said I was working for something, Bangladesh or something. I was like, dude, I've never had anybody ask me to do anything. I wasn't even born. I wasn't even born. I was born in 75. Yeah, well. So Big Pharma, look, they're a business, okay? So there are drugs like SSRIs, which we will say have been not so helpful for the treatment of depression for most people. But guess what?

1:54:54SSRIs are tremendously helpful for people with OCD. Real OCD is a condition where the compulsion, the behavior makes the obsession worse. Imagine a mosquito bite. Every time you scratch it, it's just worse and worse and worse. Destroys lives. SSRIs have helped those people a lot. The drug companies are highly incentivized to keep drugs out of generic so that the prices come down. They do a game. I know this because I was involved in exploring drugs for eye disease years ago. And I would learn from these companies. If you can have a drug that goes through all the research and development, costs millions of dollars, and then is used, say, for the treatment of a heart condition.

1:55:29If you can bypass the need to do all the safety studies because you discovered that that drug is now also useful for, say, preserving vision and macular degeneration or glaucoma or diabetes, whatever, you save yourself a lot of money. Same drug. you maintain the patent and you can't have generic competitors. So drug companies, I don't think people talk about this enough, are highly incentivized to not discover new drugs, but rather to continue with the same drugs and find new uses for the same drugs. Wow. That's rarely talked about. That's a serious problem. The other thing about drug companies, because the negative side effect of that is what that something gets kind of shoehorned in and working for something, but the very expensive drugs for everybody.

1:56:06Because if you look at the difference between a, like there are these new sleep medications called the Doras. They shut down the wakefulness the system as opposed to making you sleepy. They have a lot less abuse potential. They're like $300 a month. And as long as they can maintain the patent on that, there won't be the generic version because it probably costs the profit margins on these things are huge because they're trying to cover the research and development they did there. You know, so that's just one example, but the drug companies are incentivized. Yeah. The door is I've tried them. I felt, I felt lousy.

1:56:34And is that like, um, uh, ambient or whatever? No. So ambient is a problem because it can give give you memory issues. This works through something that's called the hypocretinorexin system. It was discovered in narcoleptic dogs in the basement of Stanford, believe it or not. There's all sorts of cool stuff there, but the drug companies are a concern in one sense, which is that, look, dopamine as we learned is involved in movement. It's involved in reward. Schizophrenics take drugs to block dopamine. And if you see someone on the street corner, nowadays it's complicated with fentanyl, but you see the person kind of writhing, it's called tardive dyskinesia.

1:57:09that's because those drugs, the neuroleptics, as we call them, reduce the auditory hallucinations. They relieve a lot of those symptoms of schizophrenia, but it also hits dopamine in the spinal system, the motor system, and then they have these motor side effects. So the problem is most pharmaceuticals have side effects because most chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, they're in multiple places in the brain, not just the area that you're concerned about repairing. So, you know, I'm not super anti big pharma, but I will say I am very pro self-directed healthcare. This is why I'm, you know, a big part of my initiative with the podcast is get people getting sunlight in their eyes in the evening, get some sunlight in your eyes in the after in the morning, excuse me, sunlight in your eyes in the morning, you know, hydrate, exercise, get on a normal circadian rhythm.

1:57:57One of the most important things for mental health is bright mornings and days, dark nights. And how do you get on that circadian rhythm, man? And that's something that I've struggled with. I think my circadian rhythm is God, it's a, I'm going to turn into a cicada. Well, we got to get you some of the red lens glasses. I'm not doing a promotional here, but getting the screens dim or wearing red lens glasses in the evening to block the blue and green lights. But how to even set up our circadian rhythm? Bright light in the morning. If you wake up and the sun's out, get outside, take that brimmed hat off, take the sunglasses off, look in the direction of the sun.

1:58:29You don't have to force yourself to let, get five to 15 minutes of sunlight, drink your coffee, get some exercise, maybe even do like a hundred jumping jacks, get your system going. Very simple way to put this is early in the day, you want movement, caffeine, hydration, sunlight. If you can't get sunlight, you get bright light from like an artificial light. You can get a 10 ,000 lux light on Amazon for like a hundred bucks. I have no relationship to any of those companies. Get your morning kind of going. You know, it's hard to be Jocko Willink. It's hard, but you got to kind of force a little bit of that on yourself.

1:58:58And then in the afternoon, taper off the caffeine, dim the screens, lower your heart rate, do some long exhale breathing, you know, just take it down a notch. And over about three days of doing that, what you'll find is I start to wake up in anticipation of the day. You have this circadian rhythm that learns, well, I'm going to be active in a few hours. And you start waking up in the morning at a particular time. That whole phenomenon, you set your clock for 7 a.m. and you wake up at 6.59, your brain is clocking time. So does that mean you need to go to bed at like 8 p.m. for a week to get your circadian rhythm set?

1:59:32Or what's the truth? Everyone's slightly different, different chronotypes. So I do best, for instance, I know if I had total control going to bed sometime between 10 and 11 p.m. And I wake up around 6 a.m. Okay, yes, I can go to bed at nine and wake up at four, but I can't stick to that schedule very long. My system just genetically is not wired for it. Some people are real night owls. They do best going to sleep at 2 a.m. and waking up at 10. They just feel better. try a couple different schedules for at least three days. And then wherever you feel kind of most yourself, kind of like, you know, for me going to bed by 1030 and waking up by six is kind of a natural antidepressant.

2:00:08When I sleep in and go to bed late, I start feeling off. Then I start abusing caffeine because I love caffeine. Love, love, love caffeine. And I'm a big fan of caffeine. But then I start abusing it. I start taking too much. And then, you know, and then it, you know, potentially can drift into other stimulants, you know, and then you're, then you're a mess. So, but you know, some people do really well going to bed at eight 30 and waking up at 4am. But look, the world is not really wired for that. If you're going to have any kind of social life, like Mark Wahlberg or something, he's always has things like I wake up at three.

2:00:40Well, him and, uh, and, uh, Ari Emanuel from WME, like, yeah, those guys are like the 4am club. They're like texting each other and like up. Yeah. I get texts from Ari every once in a while. He's like, man, up early, he's hyper Barrett chamber, but he's, he, I mean, he's got like 12 cylinders. That guy is like, go, go, go, go, go, go. And listen, some people need more sleep than others. I do great on six or six and a half. When I sleep eight, I actually feel more groggy. So if you get your schedule right, you don't need quite as much sleep. But before I came out here today, I did a half hour, what I call, it used to be called yoga nidra.

2:01:11It's non-sleep deep rest, NSDR. You just do long exhale breathing. You listen to a script, you relax your body. The data show you come out of that with your dopamine level 60 % higher than you went into it. It replenishes your vigor. Yogi Nidra? Yeah, well, Yogi Nidra or NSDR, non-sleep depressed. And these are zero cost tools, right? Got it. So how many milligrams of caffeine are you taking a day? Are you usually taking a day? You ready for this? Yeah. All right. A normal cup of coffee would be about 200 milligrams of strong coffee. I consume about 800 milligrams of caffeine a day. I drink, I'm half Argentine.

2:01:45So I drink, I drink yerba mate. Oh yeah. A cold brew, zero sugar yerba mate, or I drink yerba mate out the gourd. If you're going to drink yerba mate, don't get the sugary kind. Nope, get the loose leaf. No, I have a yerba mate brand. It's not that one. You can get that yerba homie. Ours is Matina, which is, I'm not going to do a promotional here. But the point here is that if you like energy drinks, you like yerba mate, you like coffee, I'm like more power to you. This is 200 and a cup of coffee. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And what's in one of these? What's it? So there was actually a study just published on taurine that everyone's worried about, but that study was in vitro.

2:02:19I need to see a lot of data. There's a lot of data actually that taurine is beneficial for the heart and it has kind of an anti-aging thing. It's in, you know, a lot of energy drinks. Yeah. It's like a lysine and a taurine. I love caffeine. I mean, man, caffeine and nicotine. Right now I'm kind of easing back on it. The delivery mechanism, you don't want to smoke vape, dip or snuff, you get cancer. People go, oh, vaping's not bad. Popcorn lung is real. People hate me for saying that vaping is bad. Not as bad as smoking, vaping ain't good for you. And what flavor is the worst flavor, any flavor?

2:02:52It's all bad for you, man. But the gums and the pouches provided it's a low dose, it's very habit forming, but you know, three to six milligrams or something on occasion, this is the problem. People go to pretty soon, they're doing a whole canister a day. Oh yeah. But I got a buddy got a fucking mouthful of my buddy, like damn cotton, I'd Joe over there. Nicotine is a very interesting drug because it's a stimulant, but it relaxes you too. But it does cause, excuse me, vasoconstriction. And that's not good for all the stuff we were talking about earlier. You want blood flow to the brain and to your extremities, you know?

2:03:28And so some nicotine early in the day, little bit, no big deal with caffeine to get work done. And remember, effort that precedes dopamine in constructive areas of life, writing, comedy, podcasting, school, sports, socializing in healthy ways. Like this is good. Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can from doing things that we would consider, you know, that sometimes add a level of disappointment or shame? And maybe shame is not the word I want to use. Yes, you can. it just, you need to be more determined and focused on it. You know, remember it's how quickly the dopamine comes in with porn and methamphetamine, cocaine, and all of that.

2:04:13It's how quickly gambling raises dopamine. You know, the stuff we're talking about, work, focus, learning, all that, it's work. I mean, it's hard work, but the effort that precedes dopamine is a completely different beast because you're in control and it doesn't put you in the trough. but I did see a, you know, I guess we don't call them tweets now. What do we call them on X? Some guy made a billion dollars. And a couple of weeks later, he said, I don't know what's going on, but I feel like I'm suicidally depressed. And I just said, that's dopamine. He got the reward. And what he misses is the hunt.

2:04:46You have to stay in the hunt. This is like the will to live is the hunt for new things. Ah, the will to live. 31 year old guy who sells his startup for 100 million shares why he is depressed and how to think about your career and life i sold my company mvmt i know that company they made watches right a few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved i made my life really cushy and comfortable i uh optimize for being as stress-free as possible i play video games when i want i wake up when i want and really have no reason to get out of bed if i don't want to i always thought this was a dream that i'd be happy forever.

2:05:24I realized I'm in an incredibly unique situation and wanted to share some things I've learned and I'm still working through. I mean, for you, you know, and forgive me, I've been monologuing a bit because I just want to make sure I blast through some of this info that hopefully people can make to use. But I, you know, for you, right, you've got the podcast, you do your comedy tours, you know, I'm not a comedian, but I love going to see live comedy. Oh yeah, it's fun. And I just have to imagine that staying busy in pursuit has got to be super important to your overall wellbeing. What's funny you say that.

2:05:57I think it's like, yeah, I didn't know that I liked to work really. You know, I mean, I knew that I was persistent maybe, and I liked comedy, but then like, as other things have started to arise and like learning the podcast and then you're running a business and then, you know, I, I like to work, you know, I really enjoy it. I think I'm probably competitive in some ways. Do you have a, you don't, I'm not going to ask you to tell us, but do you have a couple of comedians in your mind that like, you're like, I can, I can best that. Or is it besting against yourself? Oh no. I think it's just, can you still make yourself laugh?

2:06:32That's my thing. Is that what's your writing? I'm very curious about this. What's your writing process? Oh, I'll talk to somebody. Usually I'm telling, I'm trying to talk with a gal and entertain her or talk with one of my buddies and entertain them. And there's something that'll get said. That's just kind of like, oh, that's perfect, man. Um, so that's kind of how I'll do it. And then I'll put it on a stage from there, you know, and I'll record my sets and, um, and I've started to put some of them into like chat GPT or AI. So it can like show me what was new during this one or the last one and learn little intricacies and things like that.

2:07:01Things that worked and things that changed. Do you get ideas in your dreams? Do you ever wake up laughing? Ayahuasca. I've gotten ideas. I've gotten, um, I got like some good bits. Uh, how often are you doing? Uh, maybe every 18 months I'm kind of do again to do something. like that. I want to talk to this guy, Brian Hubbard, I believe is his name, who does the Ibogaine. He talks about Ibogaine. I've been very, I'm not, I can't take any credit for that project, but my colleague at Stanford, Nolan Williams, triple board certified psychiatrist and neurologist, he's the one running the brain imaging of the veterans that Brian has been bringing down to Mexico to do the Ibogaine DMT work.

2:07:37Wow. And Nolan has discovered there are these changes in brain like the insula, which are involved in kind of self-reflection, self-body relationship, all sorts of things. The data from those studies are incredible. I mean, these tier one operators, you know, which is code for have to be ready in 24 hours to go overseas and kill high risk, high consequence work. The number of those guys I've talked to that were dependent on alcohol, drugs, and other substances, they go down there and do it once or twice and never even feel the desire to use again. It's just striking. Yeah, the Ibogaine sounds amazing.

2:08:14I also hear it's terrifying. A couple of those guys told me, and they have a high bar for this. A couple of those guys have told me it is the most terrifying experience of their entire life, but also brought them the most amount of peace. Well, it's 22 hour psychedelic journey followed by DMT. Are you asleep during it? No, you're awake. And what I hear is that you don't hallucinate when your eyes are open, but when you close your eyes, you get high definition recall of previous experiences, but you have agency. You can act differently in there and rewire. I've never done it. I'm very curious to do it.

2:08:45I've never done ayahuasca. I have had some incredibly beneficial clinical experiences with MDMA and with psilocybin. And it's just complete. I don't encourage kids to do it. You need a really good practitioner. You have to find a way to do it legally. And there are ways. Oh yeah. It's a lot of - Man, it is a game changer. A lot of bootleg stuff going on out there. But I do think that, yeah, it's like getting back to nature, getting back to the roots. And literally you're getting back to the roots of like what will – what can reorganize. I think the nature inside of us, it gets so rattled by us maneuvering it and existing in the world.

2:09:19I don't know how we manage to damage our own nature so much over time. Well, maybe it's instead of saying lesbians will save us all, it's lesbians and psychedelics will save us all. That's kind of my new campaign. I mean, dude, look at this guy right here. That's Rick Rubin. That's, you know, I was saying earlier, you know, that's me when it comes to being able to see clearly along certain dimensions of life. But that's when you come to rely on good friends and you do your inner journey work and figure it out. Yeah, I mean, I think it's fascinating. And I think just the fact that we can get - Can I get a copy of that?

2:09:53This thing is awesome. Man. How'd y 'all get that? Just ChatGPT. Oh, it's so great. Cock a monkey blindfolded on LSD. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I've looked at decisions I've made in my life and go, you know, I pretty much had the clarity that that guy right there had. And, but in other areas of my life, like the decision to go into skateboarding and leave the decision to pursue science and then podcasting. And, you know, my life's a dream, man. Like, I can't tell you, like, you know, people will think I'm just trying to puff you up, but like to be sitting here talking to you, I'm a fan to be able to explore ideas and to learn from such a diverse array of people.

2:10:33Like I love talking to scientists, but I love talking to comedians and creatives. And like my childhood hero became one of my best friends because he heard the podcast and - Really? Yeah. I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but Tim Armstrong, the singer for Rancid and the Transplants, he has that band with Rob Astin and Travis Barker. I mean, Tim's like my hero and we've become very good friends. he's a he's a real life poet he's an incredible musician he's produced a ton of music for others he's a very you know soft-spoken he's he's a true music producer and performer that's fascinating and he we became he's one of my best friends me and david spade i just can't even believe that we're buddies and i get to like ask him about stuff or even listen to him tell jokes over dinner like yeah sometimes things like that like not to name drop but yeah it just blows your mind some of the people you'll get to come across, you know?

2:11:27Well, and for people listening, I, you know, I have to say, like, I used to watch and, you know, watch things and read and listen to podcasts. And like, I wanted to be part of it, but like being myself, and that's really the key. Rick always says this. He's like, the way to succeed in any genre that you're interested in is to be you, because no one's done that yet. The moment you try and be like the other guy, you know, or the other gal is when it falls flat, right? The reason Tony Hawk's Tony Hawk is because he's a pioneer and he just kept going. There's only one of him. Yeah. You know, and there are others in skateboarding and others in podcasting, but like, like it's like that trust in, in self.

2:12:05You just have to, if you just show up you and do your personal work too, I do think, you know, journaling, meditation, working out. It's a relationship with you. Yeah. Like, and you just show that you just show up you. So like, you know, I think we got the answer to your initial question. Why is podcasting what it is? Is because like, we just show up. We didn't have a template. There's no script, nothing. We just show up. Just a couple guys in their closets, man. We're talking about finger lengths and lesbians and monkeys on LSD and measles vaccine and some of the biggest issues in public health.

2:12:35And, you know, your name was mentioned in a moment of praise at the inauguration of the president of the United States. Yeah, that's crazy. We are living. I don't think we're living in a simulation. I think what's so fucking awesome about this life is it's real. Not that it's fake. It's all the shit that's real that blows my mind. And just, I think, what you can be called upon to be a part of, you know, and taking agency, having some more agency. The biggest thing I notice in my life is how do I get to know myself better and get to utilize myself better? And not just for me, but for like, and really to listen to God better.

2:13:12How do I learn to have a relationship with something that's bigger than me so that I can get better direction, you know, and better peace at times? because God's not just there for direction. I believe that he's also there for reflection and for rest, you know, and just to be able to, you know, I don't know. Do you pray every day? I pray every day. Yeah, me too. I'm a scientist, but I'm a believer. You know, I've always believed in God and I used to hide praying because I grew up in a complicated home religiously for different. We've got a real mixed family, but also like the attitudes about religion, very mixed, some very positive, some not positive.

2:13:50but a few years ago, a friend of mine who was a former tier one operator and he's run some of my security stuff. Like he encouraged me to start reading the Bible. And I was like, wow, there's so much wisdom here. And then he encouraged me to start praying. And it's, I know people are going to, some people roll their eyes. Some people will be like, get it. And when you start praying before sleeping in the morning, yeah, I prayed right before I came in here in the bathroom. I literally get on my knees and pray before anything important this morning at night. And And people, how can you be a scientist and believe in God?

2:14:20And it's like, well, easy. Because as a scientist, you learn that even as a, let's just say a vision scientist, there are animals that can see parts of the visual spectrum that we can't see. UV light, infrared light, pit vipers can see it. Mosquitoes see things we don't see. So the moment you start just thinking, wait, our human brain can understand and make sense of certain things, but not others through logic and reasoning and emotion. you go well there's this not just possibility of an entire set of energies out there that we're not aware of it's absolutely certain and then you go well that's a big leap to the idea that there's a a guy or you know and his son is the you know is uh you know is is christ and christ was but when you start reading the stories and you start like looking at our real world experience you go you know so much of this makes sense and it doesn't make nature and science any less interesting.

2:15:14It makes it more interesting. It makes it more important. It's like we're here, I believe, that we're here to access that energy, allow it to come through us. Yeah. I don't think we podcast. I think energy comes through us and we podcast. Oh, I think the funnest thing sometimes is getting an idea because I'm like, this didn't come from me. What the hell am I doing? I'm just like something out here that's trying to position myself to be the best receptor. It's almost like when you're trying to put those dog ears out for a television or whatever, like an old black and white TV. You're trying to pick up the signal.

2:15:49It's like, I'm just trying to best get myself in situation to, to, to receive a decent signal. Do you believe, sorry to yesterday, I was in a conversation with a Stanford and Harvard trained psychiatrist, one of the smartest people I know. And he said to me, he said, you know, he's him talking, he said, you know, I believe in miracles. He's like, there are miracles. And I was like, really? And he explained a case of a patient, like there is no way this person should still be alive, let alone flourishing as they are. The number of things that had to organize for that to work out. And, um, you know, so I'm kind of obsessed these days with like this notion of miracles.

2:16:23Oh, I love that. Have you considered, cause we, we will sometimes interview people who have had a miracle experience happen to them. And it's really fascinating sometimes just to hear some of their stories. It's something I would like to do more. Um, one of the things I want to do is just, I want to come over to your pod, man, next time I'm in town and, um, and we can do this again sometime. We, I feel like we only got to talk about a few things, but that's perfect. It'll give us more stuff to talk about in the future. And just thank you, Andrew, for just being a good voice. You have a lot to say and you share information well.

2:16:48And it's like, I think we're at a time where people just need to have information that isn't compromised by like a bank or an advertiser that's telling someone they have to speak a certain way, you know, unless it's an advertisement where you're reading for Takovas or for Liquid IV or something, you know. But yeah, thank you for all your commitment to sharing information with us, man. Thank you. Yeah. And thanks for spending time with us today. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. And I want to say, you know, the universal love that I see out there for you is not a coincidence. You know, it's so interesting.

2:17:18Like people can't put you in a box. And I love that because there's so much pressure to like put people in a box. Yeah. And people really feel your heart in everything you do. And in part, it's the vulnerability. It's also when you say like, the hell with that and really stretch your wings the way you've developed this incredible expertise at the various things you do, comedy and others. So, you know, I'm very grateful to be here today. I'm a fan and you just have the love of so many people and it's not an accident, man. You're a real leader and I appreciate you. That's very nice of you to say, man.

2:17:51I appreciate it. Thank you very much. That's a very thoughtful thing to say. And yeah, thank you for being here today. And I look forward to seeing you out in Malibu. Yeah, let's do it again on the HLP. Amen.

2:18:10cornerstone oh but when I reach that ground I'll share this peace of mind I found I can feel it in my bones but it's gonna take