A Process for Finding & Achieving Your Unique Purpose | Robert Greene

1. 0:00 – 1:58

   Robert Greene

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. (instrumental music) I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Robert Greene. Robert Greene is an author who has written more than five best-selling books, including The 48 Laws of Power, The Laws of Human Nature, and Mastery. He did his bachelor's training at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Robert Greene's books are both unique and important for several reasons, not the least of which is that they explore the interaction between the psychology of self, self-exploration, and the psychology of human interaction, all rooted in history and modern culture, and at the same time, in a way that pertains to everybody. I first learned about Robert's work from reading the book Mastery, which, to my mind, is a brilliant exploration and a practical tool for how to think about and pursue one's purpose. Whenever I'm asked for book suggestions, I always include Mastery in my top three recommendations. During today's discussion, we cover a wide range of topics, including how to find and pursue and achieve one's purpose. We talk about the selection of a life partner, as well as romantic and other types of relationships. We also discuss the topics of motivation and urgency, and this concept of deathground, which arose during our discussion of Robert's recent stroke. Robert's stroke rendered him certain limitations, but also has allowed him to explore how to write, how to exercise, indeed, how to interface with life in general in new ways that allow him to continue to expand his sense of purpose. I'm certain that by the end of today's episode, you will have gleaned tremendous amounts of new knowledge that will allow you to navigate forward along the path to your purpose, perhaps find your purpose if you feel you haven't done that yet, as well as to greatly enhance your relationship with yourself, with others, and indeed, to the world around you.

2. 1:58 – 5:56

   Sponsors: ROKA, Helix Sleep & Waking Up

   1. AHAndrew Huberman1:58

      Before we begin, I'd like to emphasize that this podcast is separate from my teaching and research roles at Stanford. It is, however, part of my desire and effort to bring zero-cost to consumer information about science and science-related tools to the general public. In keeping with that theme, I'd like to thank the sponsors of today's podcast. Our first sponsor is ROKA. ROKA makes eyeglasses and sunglasses that are of the absolute highest quality. Now, I've spent a lifetime working on the biology of the visual system, and I can tell you that your visual system has to contend with an enormous number of challenges in order for you to be able to see clearly. ROKA understands those challenges and has designed their eyeglasses and sunglasses accordingly so that you always see with crystal clarity. ROKA eyeglasses and sunglasses are designed with a new technology called Float Fit, which allows them to fit perfectly and not move around even when you're active. In fact, whenever I'm wearing my ROKA eyeglasses or sunglasses, I usually forget that I'm wearing them. I happen to wear ROKA eyeglasses at night when I drive or if I'm reading at night, and I wear ROKA sunglasses during the daytime if it's very bright, especially if I'm driving into sunlight. If you'd like to try ROKA eyeglasses or sunglasses, you can go to roka.com, that's R-O-K-A dot-com, and enter the code Huberman for 20% off your first order. Again, that's R-O-K-A dot-com, and enter the code Huberman at checkout. Today's episode is also brought to us by Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are tailored to your unique sleep needs. Now, sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. When we are sleeping well and enough, mental health, physical health, and performance all stand to be at their best. One of the key things to getting a great night's sleep is to make sure that your mattress is tailored to your unique sleep needs. Helix Sleep has a brief two-minute quiz that if you go to their website, you take that quiz and answer questions such as, do you tend to sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to r-run hot or cold in the middle of the night? Maybe you don't know the answers to those questions, and that's fine. At the end of that two-minute quiz, they will match you to a mattress that's ideal for your sleep needs. I sleep on the Dusk, D-U-S-K, mattress, and when I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about two years ago, my sleep immediately improved. So if you're interested in upgrading your mattress, go to helixsleep.com/huberman, take their two-minute sleep quiz, and they'll match you to a customized mattress for you. And you'll get up to $350 off any mattress order and two free pillows. Again, if interested, go to helixsleep.com/huberman for up to $350 off and two free pillows. Today's episode is also brought to us by Waking Up. Waking Up is a meditation app that includes hundreds of meditation programs, mindfulness trainings, yoga nidra sessions, and NSDR, non-sleep deep rest, protocols. I started using the Waking Up app a few years ago, because even though I've been doing regular meditation since my teens, and I started doing yoga nidra about a decade ago, my dad mentioned to me that he had found an app, turned out to be the Waking Up app, which could teach you meditations of different durations and that had a lot of different types of meditations to place the brain and body into different states, and that he liked it very much. So, I gave the Waking Up app a try and I, too, found it to be extremely useful, because sometimes I only have a few minutes to meditate, other times I have longer to meditate. And indeed, I love the fact that I can explore different types of meditation to bring about different levels of understanding about consciousness, but also to place my brain and body into lots of different kinds of states depending on which meditation I do. I also love that the Waking Up app has lots of different types of yoga nidra sessions. For those of you who don't know, yoga nidra is a process of lying very still but keeping an active mind. It's very different than most meditations, and there's excellent scientific data to show that yoga nidra and something similar to it, called non-sleep deep rest, or NSDR, can greatly restore levels of cognitive and physical energy, even with just a short 10-minute session. If you'd like to try the Waking Up app, you can go to wakingup.com/huberman and access a free 30-day trial. Again, that's wakingup.com/huberman to access a free 30-day trial. And now for my discussion with Robert

3. 5:56 – 8:26

   Mastery (The Book), Purpose

   1. AHAndrew Huberman5:56

      Greene. Robert, I'm so happy you're here.

   2. RGRobert Greene5:59

      I'm really happy to be here, Andrew. Thank you so much for inviting me.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman6:03

      A short story...In 2015, I was teaching a course to undergraduates. This was a big course, 450 students.

   4. RGRobert Greene6:12

      Where was this?

   5. AHAndrew Huberman6:12

      This was when I was a professor at University of California, San Diego.

   6. RGRobert Greene6:16

      Uh-huh.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman6:16

      I was about to move back to Stanford. Um, but the course was entitled Neural Circuits in Health and Disease. But there was a final lecture where I would do a lot of Q&A with the students about science, about careers, about career paths, and what I found was that many of the students had questions about not just science, but about how to learn and forage for information.

   8. RGRobert Greene6:38

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman6:39

      And I recommended three books at the end of the course every year that I taught it. I taught it for four years. And one of the books was the book Longitude, which is a wonderful story about discovery of timekeeping devices at sea.

   10. RGRobert Greene6:53

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman6:54

       Um, one book I'll leave as a mystery. Um, not to be (laughs) not to be mysterious, but because it's not... It's, it's a science book. I'll just tell you what it is. It's, um, uh, Principles of Neuroscience, so I thought that they should-

   12. RGRobert Greene7:05

       I don't know that one. (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman7:05

       Yeah, it's a big... It's, it makes a better, uh, doorstop, uh, for most than, than a book, but it's-

   14. RGRobert Greene7:10

       Oh.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman7:10

       ... it's a wonderful resource, um, if you want to learn about neuroscience. And your book Mastery.

   16. RGRobert Greene7:15

       Wow.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman7:16

       And the reason I recommended Mastery is because these students were soon going to go into the great jungle of-

   18. RGRobert Greene7:21

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman7:22

       ... you know, post, uh, undergraduate education. And, and for me, I found Mastery to be an absolutely transformative book.

   20. RGRobert Greene7:29

       Wow.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman7:29

       In that it taught me so much about how to learn from others, how to expect certain types of, um, interactions when one kind of assigns themselves to a mentor. (laughs)

   22. RGRobert Greene7:42

       Yeah.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman7:42

       Um, and vice versa. And it talked about some things that we'll get into in more depth today, but not the least of which is about identifying that, um, unique seed that exists within all of us that-

   24. RGRobert Greene7:54

       Yeah.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman7:54

       ... can guide our best decisions-

   26. RGRobert Greene7:56

       Yeah.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman7:57

       ... in terms of finding our purpose. And it... And so I will usually end with a great debt of gratitude, and I'll probably do that again-

   28. RGRobert Greene8:03

       (laughs)

   29. AHAndrew Huberman8:03

       ... at the end. But I want to start with a great debt of gratitude.

   30. RGRobert Greene8:07

       Oh, thank you.
4. 8:26 – 18:00

   Finding Purpose, Childhood, Learning & Emotional Engagement

   1. AHAndrew Huberman8:26

      So, I tell you that and I also will use that as a segue for, um, asking you now since I'm sure people's ears are perked up to this, you know, how do you find, uh, your purpose? Um, could you share with us what, what it is to find one's purpose and how early life events perhaps can cue us-

   2. RGRobert Greene8:44

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman8:45

      ... to what that purpose is for each of us?

   4. RGRobert Greene8:47

      Well, thank you for that, that marvelous introduction. As you know, I'm almost blushing. That's, that's fantastic story. Um, well, you know, being a human being is not easy as opposed to an animal because we're born and nobody gives us, like, a direction. Our parents might be a little bit, our college teachers, et cetera, mentors, but generally, we're on our own. And it's a very, very difficult process. You wake up in the morning and you don't really know what you're s- what you can do. You could choose 12 different paths. It can be very confusing and very overwhelming. When you find that sense of purpose, when you find what I call your life's task, everything has a direction, everything has a purpose. Your energy is concentrated. It's not like you're just going down a single narrow pathway. It's not like life becomes boring and it's just about discipline and solving problems. It's actually the most exciting thing that can ever happen to you because you never have that lost feeling. You wake up in the morning and you go, "Yeah, this is what I need to accomplish." People come at you with all kinds of distractions and boring and irritating things. You're able to cut it out. It's just the most marvelous piece of internal radar that you can have. So, I genuinely wish that everybody can find that kind of internal radar. And so, it's not easy and I understand that. There's no, like, instant formula because we're all about instant formulas. It's difficult and I want you to know that, so it's not like, "Robert can give me the answer in three minutes." No, I can't. But there's a process involved. It's not s- it's not, you know, a mystery. You can follow a very singular process. And the idea is, you're talking about childhood, the way I like to frame it is, when you were born, you are a phenomenon, you are unique. Your DNA has never occurred in the history of the universe going back billions of years, it will never occur in the future. Your life experience with your parents and everything that you experienced in your early years going on up is unique, it's yours. You're one of a kind, right? So, that is your source of power. To waste that is just the worst thing you can do in your life. And what, what the power is, is finding that uniqueness, what makes you you and how you can mine that and how you can go deep into it and use that to create a career path, right? And so, I tell people when you're a child, when you're four or five or even younger, you have what the great psychologist Maslow called impulse voices. They're little voices in your head that say, "I love this. I hate that. I like this food. I don't like when mommy moves this way. I like when daddy comes from here." You're very cued into who you are and what you like and what you don't like and these voices kind of direct you in certain ways, right? And when you're very young, they direct you towards intellectual, mental pursuits as well. And there's a book I recommend for everybody, uh, it's Howard Gardner's Five Frames of Mind. It's helped me immensely. The idea is he talks about five forms of intelligence. Our problem is we think of intelligence as mostly intellectual, but there are many forms of intelligence. There's the intelligence that has to do with words. There's abstract intelligence that has to do with patterns and mathematics. There's kinetic intelligence that has to do with the body. There's social intelligence. He has five of them. And the idea is...... your brain naturally veers towards one of them. It can veer towards two of them, that happens, but generally one of them kind of dominates, right? And it's like a grain in your brain that's going in a certain direction. You want to go with that grain and... 'cause that's where your power will lie. So, when you're young, if you go back and think about when you were four or five, you, you can maybe get a picture of some kind of direction or voice inside of you that was impelling you towards this. I know for me, it was words. Uh, from... I can remember when I was six years old, I was just obsessed with words, just the letters in words, almost like in a s-... almost slightly schizophrenic way. I would spell words backwards, I would take them apart, I would do anagrams, I loved palindromes, right? So, I had a thing about words and language. It's very primal. Some people, you know, Albert Einstein, when he was four years old, his father gave him a birthday gift of a compass, and he was just mesmerized by this compass. The idea that there are invisible forces out there in the cosmos moving this needle, and he's obsessed with the idea of invisible forces. Steve Jobs, when he was, like, seven or eight or maybe younger, in Burlingame, California, his father... They passed by a store with dev-... technological devices in the window, and he was just hypnotized by the design of those devices and the glass tubes and everything. So, he wanted to go in that direction. You know, Tiger Woods saw his father hitting golf balls in the garage, and he was just, like, screaming with joy. He had to f-... He had to do that, right? You know, I could give you a million different examples of this. Of course, these are people who are famous, obviously. We can go back and find that. It's easier. But what happens to you... And please cut me off if I'm going on too long here.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman14:04

      No, please continue.

   6. RGRobert Greene14:05

      Okay. (laughs)

   7. AHAndrew Huberman14:05

      Please.

   8. RGRobert Greene14:06

      What happens to you is, you're seven, now you're getting older, and you're starting to not hear that voice anymore. You're hearing the voice of your teachers telling you, "You're not good at this field. You need to get better at math." You know? "You, you shouldn't be interested in these sports or anything." "You should be going in this dir-..." Your parents are starting to tell you this is the career they want for you, or the direction they want you to go in, right? You start hearing that more than your own voice. And as you get older, it gets worse and worse and worse. Then when you're a teenager, it's all about what other people are doing, your peers, what's cool, what's not cool, you know? And that kind of is more... So, all of this noise enters your brain, and you can't hear that anymore. You don't know who you are. And so, you go to college, you kind of maybe choose a cr-... a, a major that seems practical, that your parents want you to go into. Maybe you kind of wander around, you're, you're not sure, and then you enter the work world without that inner radar that I'm talking about, and you... brother, you're lost, right? "Where should I go?" "Well, I need to make money," right? And so you make a choice based on the need to make a lot of money. Some pe-... not everyone, but some people do that. And I understand that need, we all need to make a living, but that can set you off in a very bad path because you're not connected emotionally. The thing is, when you figure out that primal inclination, that grain that's inside of you, then you have the, the energy to, to do... to be disciplined, to go through boring tasks, to learn. You learn at a faster rate 'cause you're emotionally engaged. When you're emotionally engaged in a subject, the brain learns twice, three times, four times as fast as when you're not. I always give the example, in college I studied foreign languages, which was kind of a passion of mine. For three or four years I studied French, and then I went to Paris, and I couldn't speak a word. It was, it was useless, 'cause it didn't teach me anything practical, right? I was totally confused. And then... but I was in Paris and I, and I loved it and I wanted to live there, right? And I had a girlfriend and I needed to speak French to her. And I can tell you, in one month, I learned more than those four years of university, because I wanted to, because I was engaged. My emotions were there. It was like I had to survive to learn French. Whereas... so most of us, we don't have a need, really, to learn this subject. We're half... we're paying half attention. But when you find that thing that really connects to you, you're p- paying deep attention. Your emotions are engaged. You're learning at a much faster rate, okay? And so, the thing is, how do you find that when you're older? When you're 21, I g-... I g-... I give people a lot of help, and it's usually not so difficult. We can go through that process. It gets harder when you're 30 and you've been wandering around, but it's not impossible. I didn't really start to find my exact path until I was 38, 39, to be honest. So, there's hope. When you get 40 and you get 50, it gets more and more difficult, right? And it's very sad if you've wasted that seed of uniqueness that I'm talking about. And I tell people there are ways of going back, and we go through a process like archeology. We have to dig and dig and dig and find those bones from your childhood that indicated what you were meant to do. But when you find your life's task, everything opens up. It doesn't mean you figured out, "Okay, I've got to aim for this particular job when I'm 28." That's not how it works. It gives you a sense of direction. You can try different things, you can experiment, you can have fun when you're in your 20s. You're gonna learn, you're gonna learn skills, but it gives you an overall framework instead of, whoa, all of this confusion, this chaos, social media, the internet, I could go here, here, here. You're lost at sea. It gives you a very important sense of direction, a compass.

5. 18:00 – 22:50

   Early Interests, Delight & Discovery

   1. RGRobert Greene18:00

   2. AHAndrew Huberman18:00

      As you describe this, I, I have this image of, um... you know, you mentioned animals, um, that presumably don't have a lot of flexibility in terms of the niches they can exist in, but the way I imagine this process is that, as a human, we're plopped into a environment, and here I'm using a analogy where, um, we don't really know if we are an aquatic animal, a terrestrial animal or a-

   3. RGRobert Greene18:25

      (laughs)

   4. AHAndrew Huberman18:25

      ... or an avian, right?

   5. RGRobert Greene18:26

      Or an amphibian, right? (laughs)

   6. AHAndrew Huberman18:27

      Or an amphibian, for that matter. Um, and to make the wrong choice-... right? To be an amphibian who's trying to fly, although th- I'm sure they're out there, um, in the animal kingdom. Uh, it, it's not just a waste of time, it's probably deadly.

   7. RGRobert Greene18:41

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman18:42

      Um, and not to over-dramatize the, the failure of finding one's purpose, but I see it that way, whereas, um, perhaps we could just say that the process of finding one's purpose is to, to realize like, ah, you know, um, I'm an amphibian. I can go in and out of water, whereas a bunch of other creatures around me stop at the water's edge.

   9. RGRobert Greene19:01

      Right, right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman19:02

       Right? And th- this is really cool, and a bunch of these other things, like these flying things, that they can't actually even go in the water.

   11. RGRobert Greene19:07

       Right.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman19:07

       Some of them might, you know, be on the surface or dive into it, but they, they can't do what I can do.

   13. RGRobert Greene19:11

       Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman19:11

       So, the process of self-discovery, it sounds like it's about, um, restricting one's choices to a, a, a sort of wedge within the full landscape of-

   15. RGRobert Greene19:20

       Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman19:20

       ... of options. And, um, you know, f- for me, I can certainly recall after reading Mastery, it helped me recall some early seed emotions that I experienced as a very distinct sensation in my body. Um-

   17. RGRobert Greene19:33

       Can you describe that?

   18. AHAndrew Huberman19:34

       Yeah, um, well, without making it too, um, specific to my, my unique taste, you know, as a kid I loved, um, flora and fauna. I loved learning about biology.

   19. RGRobert Greene19:44

       Sure.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman19:44

       Again, no surprise there. Um, but animals and how they move in particular and fish and going to a, a proper aquarium store for the first time for me and going snorkeling for the first time was like, wow, and as... even as I describe it, it's almost like my body floats. I feel it in my left arm of all things, and it feels like there's something to do about it. It's not just that I'm in observation of things that delight me.

   21. RGRobert Greene20:07

       Right.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman20:07

       It's like there's something... there's an activation state created within me, like, "I got to do something with this." And typically, it's tell everybody about it until they won't listen anymore. (laughs) Um, but oftentimes, it's to also draw those things, to think about them, and, and I just delight in them. It's a constant source of delight. And so seeds such as those, and there are a few other things in that, in that landscape of flora and fauna and learning about animals and biology, including the human animal, and then organizing information feels so satisfying to me. It's like a drug that, um... and so it just felt... feels like this, you know, eternal spring of, of life, right? And so for me, that's what it was, and to... r- and in 2015, when I was teaching that course, the course I loved, but I was feeling a little bit astray in my scientific career, and then I read Mastery, and I realized, yes, I love running a laboratory. I love teaching, but there's something else for me-

   23. RGRobert Greene21:01

       Right.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman21:01

       ... and it has to do not with a podcast. I didn't even know what a podcast... I probably... I knew what a podcast was. I was listening to podcasts at that time, but, um, but I wasn't on social media. I had no thoughts of having a podcast, but what I wanted was that feeling in its total number of forms.

   25. RGRobert Greene21:17

       Right.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman21:17

       That's the goal. Get that feeling in as many forms as possible.

   27. RGRobert Greene21:20

       Right.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman21:20

       Is that, is that about right?

   29. RGRobert Greene21:21

       That's e- that's, that's absolutely perfect because the connection to what I'm talking about, it's not an intellectual thing. It's e- it's visceral. It's emotional. It's physical, right? And you feel it in your body, and when you're doing it, it's like it's at your level. It's like you're swimming with the current. You feel that things are easy. Everything clicks together. There's a delight. Not everything is going to be delightful. There's going to be tedium involved. There's going to be moments of boredom, but you're able to withstand the moments of boredom because you feel that deep overall connection. So yes, that's precisely what I'm talking about. I mean, it's... for me, it's a little bit... s- similar thing is, I said about words, but the other thing that I was obsessed with when I was a kid was early human ancestors. Don't ask me why. I just was so obsessed with our ancestors millions of years ago and how it's possible to be living here in the 60s or 70s with cars and everything but to come to where we are now, and I wrote a st- a short story when I was eight years old about a vulture. It was written from the point of view of a vulture watching the first humans kind of emerge on the planet. I'm sure it was absolutely awful, dreadful, but the weird thing is, I'm writing a new book, and all I'm doing in that book is going into ear- into early humans, and I feel like a kid again. I'm so excited. I'm so happy. So I can very much relate to your story.

6. 22:50 – 28:25

   Love vs. Hate Experiences & Learning

   1. RGRobert Greene22:50

   2. AHAndrew Huberman22:50

      You mentioned these five different forms of intelligence-

   3. RGRobert Greene22:53

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman22:53

      ... or frame, frames of mind-

   5. RGRobert Greene22:54

      Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman22:54

      ... as you refer to them. Um, and I'm certainly aware that, you know, I lean towards a more intellectual interests, although, as you pointed out, the, the excitement, the delight is visceral.

   7. RGRobert Greene23:06

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman23:07

      And the actions are actions. They're of the body ultimately.

   9. RGRobert Greene23:10

      Right.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman23:10

       Um, one has to draw, speak, write books, et cetera, um, to, to transmute that excitement into something real. For people that are not as intellectually tuned but maybe are kinesthetically tuned, for instance, um, I can only wonder what that's like. Uh, I'm not completely uncoordinated, but I don't think I have a kinesthetic attunement, uh, or frame of mind, but I've, for instance, um, had a podcast listener mention that they think in feels, that they literally experience thought as a ser- as sort of a patchwork of, of bodily sensations.

   11. RGRobert Greene23:49

       Right.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman23:49

       And that thought for them is not of the stuff from the neck up, but only from the neck down, which to me was really intriguing, and so I only raise this because, um, there have to be a, as you pointed out, there's an infinite number of different sort of, um, orientations based on our unique DNA and experience, but what do you think explains why these particular seeds, or, uh, as you point out, like, the, the g- the direction that the grain runs in the brain. I mean, it's, it's partially going to be nature. It's going to be DNA.

   13. RGRobert Greene24:21

       For sure.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman24:21

       Um, but we th- we're talking about this as if there's some exciting or awe-inspiring or delightful thing that captures us. Can it be the other way too? Can it be, um, you know-... one has a bad experience as a child in an intellectual environment, and then decides, you know, "I'm, I'm going in the d-" Things of the body feel good. Th- things of the mind, of intellect, feels bad. And does it matter whether or not we are drawn to our purpose by recognizing what we love or what we hate, um, or are both useful?

   15. RGRobert Greene24:56

       Oh, they're both very, very useful. Um, you know, a lot of intelligence is, is not... is non-verbal. We think in terms of images. We're, we're very much infected by the emotions of other people. So, I know, for instance, uh, my mother is very, very interested in history. She's obsessed with history, and I probably absorbed her interest in history. I don't think there's a genetic g- gene for that interest, you know? So, you're, you're gonna absorb things from your parents as well, so it's not all just genetic. But yeah, what you hate will pay a big... will, will have a big thing. But the problem with doing that is, if you go into a direction in your, in, you're in elementary school, et cetera, and they force you to learn math and you hate it, what it tends to do is it turns you off from learning in general. You think, "I don't want to, I don't want to... I don't want to be disciplined. I don't want to go through anything, because it's painful. Doesn't lead anywhere. It's not me." Frustration. It turns you off from learning in general. So, it's really, really important for a child to have the love experience as early as possible so that they can know what they hate and why they hate it, right? And then they can rebel and they can go into that field, as opposed to, "I hate learning, I hate discipline, I hate studying, I hate trying things over and over again." If you're kinesthetically oriented, and you know, a part of me, I understand that because I love sports, is you have to, you have to practice. It's gonna take a lot of... it's not... you're not gonna instantly be good at, at something, right? And that's gonna require a love of it, right? But if your math experience is, "I hate learning shit," you're not... it's gonna transfer to sports. You're gonna hate discipline in general. So, it's very important for parents to let that child have at least glimmers of that love moment. I know for me, when I, um, finished college and I entered the work world, I had to get a job. I got... worked in journalism. I hated it. I hated working for other people. I hated office politics. I hated all the egos. I hated the smarminess. I hated the lack of quality. It was all just about, you know, making money and getting things out there. And then I worked in Hollywood. I hated Hollywood. I hated working in Hollywood. That formed me very much, made me go in the direction that I went in, but only from the basis of I knew that I wanted to be a writer. So, you know, that's very important, that it's not just hate. It can form you, but there also has to be that positive, deep emotional love of something that also is grounded in you in some way.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman27:33

       Yeah, what you just said really highlights the fact that energy and motivation can come from eithers- either pressure. You know, desire for something or desire to get away from something.

   17. RGRobert Greene27:44

       Right.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman27:44

       And, um, earlier when you were talking about, um, how we are so much more engaged and driven towards things that stir us emotionally, and, and actually, we know based on the neuroscience, as you know, uh, too, I'm sure, that, um, only by the release of certain neurochemicals in the brain and body would our brain have any reason to change, right?

   19. RGRobert Greene28:06

       Right.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman28:06

       If you don't feel agitation and you can do everything that you're trying to do, of course your brain wouldn't change. Like, why would it, right?

   21. RGRobert Greene28:11

       Right.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman28:12

       That agitation is a... is a signature of the neurochemicals that are saying, "Hey, something's different now."

   23. RGRobert Greene28:17

       Right, right, right.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman28:18

       "We... You might need to do something different, including rewire yourself." Right?

   25. RGRobert Greene28:21

       Right, right.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman28:22

       Um, and that can come from positive or negative experiences.

7. 28:25 – 31:47

   Self-Awareness, Frustration, Excitation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman28:25

   2. RGRobert Greene28:25

      Definitely. Of course.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman28:26

      I'm obsessed with this idea of energy. I mean, we all want to have more energy and focus, and normally we hear about the concept of energy in the context of caloric energy, like, "What should we eat, and when, and how much?" and "We need to get sleep." But what you're really referring to is neural energy, like the, the engagement of ourselves that's, you know, uh, sitting there ready to be engaged, but it requires the right experiential macronutrients, right? (laughs) The experiential micronutrients, as opposed to, of course we need good nutrition, but that's not sufficient. It's necessary but not sufficient. So, uh, would you say that when, um, we are... Let, let's say, since a good number of our listeners are in adulthood, um, you know, from our 20s on, that the things that excite us as adults, that really generate some feeling of readiness or, or grab our attention, um, are still informative toward guiding our decisions about best life and life purpose?

   4. RGRobert Greene29:23

      Well, um, what do you... what exactly do you mean by that? I mean, like, because there are things that excite you in, in a kind of a quick way, like, you know, where you have to relieve some tension, and you... there's entertainment and there's things that kind of give you pretty immediate gratification. Then there's the larger pic- picture of something that will give you fulfillment over years to come. So, you can feel that when you're older and you can pay attention to it, but a lot of the time is, we're, we're paying too much attention to the immediate pleasures of life, to what gives us instant gratification, and that's what we're grabbing for. So, this is m- a much more kind of deeper process that involves that digging that I was saying. It's, it's deeper than just kind of, "I like this, I don't like that," you know, kind of thing. It's, it's more... it's more something macro than, than just, just that. And so, when you're in your 20s or in your 30s or your 40s, you want to be paying attention to yourself. And the problem with people in the world today is, you're not paying attention to yourself. You're not inside your own head. You don't hear those voices. You don't hear what you love, what you like anymore, because as I said, there's so many of these other distractions going on. And so, you're always, like, attuned to what other people like.... right? Because you're in social media, this is what people are following, this is what they're interested in. As opposed to disengaging, backing off from that and, and looking at yourself and going through the process of, "That's not me, actually. I don't really like that." You know? And so what you're talking about is f- I think very profound, is levels of frustration or anxiety are definite signals that you must pay attention to. Because they're telling you this isn't a good direction for you, this is a waste of time for you. And in general I tell people self-awareness, being able to hear those voices, to understand that your frustration is telling you something. And sometimes you, you just act on it without understanding it. But understanding why you're frustrated, why you don't like your career, why you're not happy about where you're going, is the key to everything. It will open up and it will be actually, be able even in your 30s to return you to that childhood inclination. But if you can't listen to where those emotions come from, then they're useless, they're not teaching you anything.

8. 31:47 – 33:18

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. RGRobert Greene31:47

   2. AHAndrew Huberman31:48

      As we all know, quality nutrition influences of course our physical health, but also our mental health and our cognitive functioning, our memory, our ability to learn new things, and to focus. And we know that one of the most important features of high quality nutrition is making sure that we get enough vitamins and minerals from high quality unprocessed or minimally processed sources, as well as enough probiotics and prebiotics and fiber to support basically all the cellular functions in our body, including the gut microbiome. Now, I, like most everybody, try to get optimal nutrition from Whole Foods, ideally mostly from minimally processed or non-processed foods. However, one of the challenges that I and so many other people face is getting enough servings of high quality fruits and vegetables per day, as well as fiber and probiotics that often accompany those fruits and vegetables. That's why way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, I started drinking AG1. And so I'm delighted that AG1 is sponsoring the Huberman Lab Podcast. The reason I started taking AG1, and the reason I still drink AG1 once or twice a day, is that it provides all of my foundational nutritional needs. That is, it provides insurance that I get the proper amounts of those vitamins, minerals, probiotics, and fiber to ensure optimal mental health, physical health, and performance. If you'd like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to claim a special offer. They're giving away five free travel packs plus a year's supply of vitamin D3K2. Again, that's drinkag1.com/huberman to claim that special offer.

9. 33:18 – 43:57

   Sublime Experiences, Real vs. False; Authenticity & Time

   1. AHAndrew Huberman33:18

      So it sounds like one of the goals is to engage in what I'll just call for the moment unadulterated self-referencing. You know, unadulterated, uh, in the re- all senses of the word. (laughs) Because, um, as a child, eh, as you point out, um, at stages of life that are before puberty they're literally pre-sexual. Um, which I think is important, right? Because, um, puberty to me as a neurobiologist who started off as a developmental neurobiologist, I can tell you that puberty is the most profound transformation that the brain undergoes-

   2. RGRobert Greene33:55

      Oh, for sure.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman33:55

      ... in the entire lifespan. There's just absolutely no question about it. Everything is different after puberty because of all of the new relational dynamics that become apparent, and our potential involvement in them.

   4. RGRobert Greene34:07

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman34:07

      It's just, it's, you know, it's not talked about enough how dramatically puberty changes the brain.

   6. RGRobert Greene34:12

      Sure.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:13

      I mean, we are different people before and after puberty.

   8. RGRobert Greene34:15

      Hormones that are suddenly raging.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman34:17

      The hormones are there, and it's not just changes in how we view the world, but changes in how the world views us.

   10. RGRobert Greene34:23

       Yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman34:24

       And not just through the lens of sexuality, but also, um, expectation of what we are capable of, what we are responsible for or not responsible for. Our learning capacity, I mean, d- puberty is like this, eh, you know, for, it's also the most rapid stage of aging in our entire lifespan.

   12. RGRobert Greene34:40

       Wow,

   13. NANarrator34:40

       I didn't know that.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman34:40

       Those kids that go home for the summer and then come back, like, shaving, you know?

   15. RGRobert Greene34:45

       (laughs)

   16. AHAndrew Huberman34:45

       I, I was sort of a late, I wasn't a late bloomer but I had a long protracted puberty, but I remember those kids. I'm sure we all, we all remember those kids. Um, everything changes, and so I think prior to puberty these seeds as you've described them of, of delight or of resistance to things, I think they are unadulterated, they're not contaminated-

   17. RGRobert Greene35:03

       Right, right, right.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman35:03

       ... by the voices and expectations of others. And so I can see the challenge of reaching back to those at, as an adult. Um, I wonder if this relates to, um, something that I've heard you talk about before, although perhaps not as much as some of the other topics you've discussed publicly, which is, um, the real versus the false sublime.

   19. RGRobert Greene35:24

       Oh.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman35:24

       Um, could you perhaps just define for us what sublime really is, what a sublime experience is, and, and the distinction between real and false-

   21. RGRobert Greene35:34

       Wow.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman35:34

       ... sublime experiences, because I, I feel like this relates-

   23. RGRobert Greene35:37

       Oh, really?

   24. AHAndrew Huberman35:38

       ... to finding that seed, right. It's, uh, it's about finding authentic seeds of within us, as opposed to when emotions can be distracting and misleading.

   25. RGRobert Greene35:46

       Wow. I never thought, I never made that connection, and it's the book that I'm writing right now, so thank you for that. I'll have to think about that. I'm actually, I'm writing a book on the sublime, and, um, I have several ways of kind of illustrating. I generally like to use a metaphor, and the metaphor is that being a human being, being a social human being living in a particular culture means that you live inside of a circle. And that circle of that time are the conventions of thinking, of ideas that are acceptable, of behavior that is acceptable. This is where you, where you can go mentally, where you can go physically, you know, all the codes and conventions. So that circle for ancient Egypt and for 21st century America, they're obviously very different, but it's the same circle, it's the same limiting factor. You're not supposed to go outside of it. These are thoughts, experiences, behavior you're not supposed to do....the sublime is what lies just outside that circle. Um, the word sublime comes from, "On the threshold of." It's like, here's a door and the sublime is literally at the threshold of the door. You're looking out into something else, right? And the quintessential sublime experience is a near-death experience. You're standing on the, on the doorway, the threshold of death itself, right? And so, in my book, I'm illustrating the different kinds of sublime experiences that you can have in relation to the cosmos, in the relation to thinking about being alive. Just being alive is the strangest sensation you could possibly have. I h- I know that very personally after my stroke. I go into childh- chapter on childhood and how sublime your own childhood was. I go into animals, the relation to animals. I go, I have a chapter about the brain, a chapter about love. I'm working right now on a chapter about history, okay? But what I'm trying to say is, the human brain is wired for these experiences. It's wired for transcendental experiences that take us out of the narrow little realm that we live in. Because we're aware of our death as the only animal truly conscious of its own mortality and it frightens the hell out of us. And the idea that we can see something larger than, than just th- the, the banal parts of our life is a doorway that open, allows us to kind of transcend the moment, to feel connected to something larger, to feel connected to some power in the cosmos, to evolution itself, right? And so, we're wired for that, and I'm writing a chapter now about 40,000 years ago at, at the moment where I think the sublime was born. It's a story that I'm trying to illustrate right now, with our upper Paleolithic ancestors. So it's deep inside of us. We need it, we have to have it. In the 21st century, we have very few avenues for it, any real avenues. Religion used to be the main kind of way of, of accessing this. And so, because it's so deep, we reach for false forms of the sublime that give us the sense that we're, we're transcending, but it's not at all because sublime has to come from within. It's an experience that you have, that you're generating in your own mind, in your own experience. The false sublime comes from outside. It comes from drugs, it comes from alcohol, it comes from shopping. It comes from online rage. It comes from joining a cause and just getting out all your aggression and violence, right? It comes from causes. It comes from addictions, okay? It gives you a sense, it calms you down and makes you feel like there's something else going on in life besides your job that you're, y- you're sick of, but it's not real, it's not lasting. It's false. It's an illusion. It's not based on anything real. It's not connecting to that deep part of human nature that's wired for these experiences. So what happens is you have to have more and more and more and more of it. You have to have, you know, more of this rush. You need more of the drug, you need more of the alcohol, you need more of the sex, you need more of the porn. It's never going to satisfy you. But the real sublime, you don't have that feeling. It's like, it's transformative. Once you feel it, it lasts for you for the rest of your life. It's what Maslow, again, called a peak experience. So that's the difference between the false and the real sublime. I haven't quite connected it to what you're saying, but if I think about it, I think you're onto something very interesting.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman40:19

       I mean, maybe the connection I was trying to draw was, uh, doesn't hold, but yeah, for me, um, those early experiences of seeing things that just delighted me in a way that felt like, uh, that not only is, uh, the, the thought process, it was a long time ago, when something like, "Oh my goodness, I can't believe this exists. This is so cool. This is the coolest thing." And so cril- clearly created an activation state within me, but then there was also a thought and a feeling of, again, a lot of this is sort of pre, uh, pre-ver- it's not truly pre-verbal. I could speak at that age, but it was, um, that's of me and I'm of it, right? There's a connection there. And then it was, there's something to do about this. The activation state created in the body was, you know, "I, I need to learn more about this. I need to tell people about this. I need to think about this. I need more examples of this and see whether or not they're all like this." You know, et cetera, et cetera. Um, i- so certainly, it meets some of the criteria of a sublime experience.

   27. RGRobert Greene41:24

       Definitely.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman41:25

       And I knew, again, when I was in graduate school and again when I was this, uh, young professor about to transition to tenure that I knew it was goi- going to do something different. It was as if I was on the threshold of something, but I didn't know what that next thing was, but I could trust it because of that early experience of knowing that's the thread. I, like, like, I'm an amphibian. This is my environment.

   29. RGRobert Greene41:46

       (laughs) Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman41:46

       And you're an amphibian too.
10. 43:57 – 55:51

    Power & Relationships; Purpose & Mastery

    1. AHAndrew Huberman43:57

       I'd like to shift slightly to a topic that you've written extensively about, which is power. Um, and not just power, but also seduction, which you've written extensively about, and of course you've written about finding one's purpose. So tell me if the framework that I've just given myself liberty to create is an accurate one, and i- if it's not, I, I'm hoping that, um, it's not in perhaps some interesting ways. So to me, you talk about, and we will talk about power as, as a resource. It's, it's something that, um, I- it's there as a resource, it, it could be used or not used. Um, and I think of seduction as one form of exchange between an individual. So there's a verb associated with seduction. Power I'm thinking of more as a noun in this context. You're the word guy. Um, and then, you know, purpose is, uh, is really about finding, like, to what end or ends one is going to, um, devote power, seduction, and the other forces that allow human beings to interact with each other in the world. Um, but power as a resource that can be expressed in different ways and accessed in different ways, maybe we could just explore that a little bit, because, you know, when we hear the word power, I think a lot of people kind of brace themselves, like, "Here we go, someone's going to try and have power over me, this is about manipulation," and so on and so forth. But I learned pretty early on that every, every career endeavor, there's, there are power dynamics. There's mentor/mentee, there are teachers and their students, and both have power. Um, in inter- in romantic relationships, there's a power exchange. There are yeses and there are nos, there are maybes. There are, um, uh, covert and overt contracts.

    2. RGRobert Greene45:46

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman45:46

       "I'll do this because I want to."

    4. RGRobert Greene45:48

       Right.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman45:48

       "You'll do this because you want to, great. Sounds great." Overt contract. There are also covert contracts. "Well, I don't feel safe doing that, so what I'll do is I'll take something on, through, from the interaction that you're not aware of so that I can sort of, um, ease my sense of danger and make my, give myself the illusion of feeling safe," and all sorts of kind of complicated human dynamics that have to do with us having this forebrain thing that can do all of that gymnastics. So maybe we could start very simply by just saying, you know, how would you define power in terms of its, uh, functional definition, like, in, in, in interpersonal relations, and then why do you think power is so essential to all relationships? That's really what I, I'd like to get to. Why is it so essential? Why couldn't it be something else?

    6. RGRobert Greene46:35

       Well, the way I define power is I try and take it away from that kind of negative context that most people have and that you, that you brought up, and I bring it to something very primitive and very primal. The way the human being is wired, the feeling that we have no control over our environment, and in the earliest period it was literally over our environment and wild animals and nature and, and the climate, et cetera. But now the sense that you have no control over your career, over your children, over your parents, is deeply, deeply immiserating, and it compels us to act in certain ways, either attempts to find positive ways of power or doing what you call covert ways of getting power. You know, passive-aggressive, traditionally passive-aggressive means. So it's deeply wired in us to want a degree of control over the immediate environment and immediate events. We can never have complete control, and the idea of having complete control is nonsense, and it would actually be very ugly, because you want a degree of letting go and letting circumstances come to you, et cetera, et cetera. So the sense of you, you, you want to feel like, with other people and relationships, that you can influence them, that you can move them in a certain direction, either to get you to love you and treat you better, or either just stop annoying, irritating behaviors, or either to, you know, wake up and, and find, and, and, and do productive activity if it's your children, et cetera. You want to have the ability to influence people, to move them in a certain direction, either in your interest or in their interest, right? And once you have that need, and every single human being ever who's ever lived has that need, and we often don't recognize it because we're embarrassed by it. We're embarrassed by our desire for power, for our need to control. Every human being has it, right? And it's not easy, because human beings are complicated. They don't... If you say, "Do this," and you're talking to your son, he'll do the opposite, or he'll do something else. You can't just force people in a direction, right? By being overt and telling them, "This is what you need to do," you create resentment, you create an enemy.... they may, they may say, "Yes. Yes, Daddy. Yes, husband, I'll do what you say." But they're, you, they're go- they're gonna resist you deep down inside, right? So, people are tricky. They wear masks. They pretend to say one thing and they do another. They have their egos, and you inadvertently wound their egos or trip them in some way, and they react in a way that you don't expect. And so, power is this kind of invisible realm that envelops society, where people are continually battling each other and struggling in it, but no one is, like, talking about it. No one's being overt about it. No one's saying, "This is exactly what I'm trying to do." And so, when you enter the social world and the career world, you're not expecting these battles. You don't know ... No one's taught you. No one's trained you. Your parents don't train you. Nobody trains you. And you make mistakes and you realize how political people are. If you're a sharky character, and there, there's a c- certain percentage of them, you realize, wow, I can deceive people. I can manipulate them. I can get what I want. I can pretend to love them and they'll, they'll fall for me and I can do all this other stuff. But for most of us, the 95% of us who aren't sharks, and I'm, I'm including myself in that category, it's, it's, it's very, very disturbing to suddenly enter that world and see all that invisible power games on this ... No one's given you any advice or helped you. And so, take it out of the realm of it's just about trying to dominate the world and manipulate and exploit and, and abuse. It's something inside of you. You have this need, and your suppression of it will only make you come out in passive ways, and you won't be able to control certain things. If you want to move people, if you want them to follow your ideas, if you want them to be more aligned with your politics or your ideas, you have to be subtle. You have to learn psychology. You have to learn certain aspects of how to almost move people without them realizing it's in certain directions, w- which is like the art of seduction. And if you're not interested in that, if you're just gonna tell people what you think, what you're gonna do, that means you're not interested in practical action. You're not interested in results. You're just interested in venting your own frustrations or your own anger. So, learning the subtle little dynamics of power is extremely essential because we're a social animal. It doesn't mean that you're gonna get dirty, that you're gonna suddenly go out there and manipulate the hell out of people. Most of The 48 Laws of Power is about defense, about how to defend yourself from the sharks about there, how to defend yourself from making classic mistakes, like outshining the master, like talking too much, like arguing with people instead of demonstrating your ideas, on and on and on. It's not an ugly thing. It actually makes you a better social individual. So, that's how I, I like to frame it.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman51:51

       That's very interesting. I, I think, uh, as a young guy growing up, it was so important to me, um, to know where I fit in with my friend group. Um, and I didn't think of it so much as a hierarchy. Um, nor, when I was in my academic studies, did I think of it as a hierarchy, even though it was. Clearly was, right? Um, so much as it ... The goal was to figure out where was my unique slot that I could, um, do the most good for myself and others.

    8. RGRobert Greene52:25

       Right.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman52:25

       You know, kind of finding my spot, um, I don't want to say on a shelf, 'cause that, uh, gives an image of something vertical, but, you know, in the ... Let's make it lateral.

    10. RGRobert Greene52:32

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman52:32

        A lateral arrangement of different people with different strengths, different life purposes, trying to figure them out. You know, where, where should I be in order to express that and also feel connected to others? And, um, and in order to do that, I did have to, I realize now, based on your answer, I did have to figure out, um, you know, who's trying to have power over, who's pretending that they don't want power but is actually exerting power, um, you know, these sorts of things. And there's an incredible peace that comes from knowing that one is in their correct place, both profession, interpersonally, in relation to oneself, but also in the context of one's peer, peer group. It's kind of like, yeah, this is where I belong. Because trying to gain power when one is trying to move to a position that isn't right for them or in a way that isn't right for them just seems so energetically costly.

    12. RGRobert Greene53:25

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman53:25

        It seems like a waste of a life, frankly.

    14. RGRobert Greene53:27

        Right, right.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman53:27

        You know, uh, uh, trying to gather resources simply to, to have them, to give the illusion of power but then being afraid of losing them just sounds like a recipe for, for misery, as you pointed out.

    16. RGRobert Greene53:37

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman53:38

        You know, whereas figuring out where am I most powerful in the benevolent sense of the word, that, that, that seems like a good, a good pursuit.

    18. RGRobert Greene53:46

        Well, it's connecting up to, to mastery again and finding your life's purpose. You know, I, I, I knew when I was young that I couldn't exert physical power because I was a skinny little runt, and I was ... I wasn't bullied but people would kind of pick on me, et cetera, et cetera. So, I veered towards intellectual pursuits where I could have power, and in the end, you know, you might have been a jock and you might have done well in high school, but ha ha, look at me now. I'm not saying that it's a beautiful thing. That, that's ... But that's part of human nature, the desire to actually, you know, prove yourself and find that niche that you, that you belong to, so you don't have that kind of hum- that sense of inferiority, which Alfred Adler, the psychologist, describes very eloquently. So, a lot of it is kind of compensating when you're a child for things that are your weaknesses and finding what you're so good at, that you do have that power, and people can't bully you, right? And you, you're, you're like now a famous neuroscientist, whereas they're, like, who knows what they're doing kind of thing. So, power definitely d- is connected in some way to that inner sense of what you were meant to do, and you feel it with the, with the ease and the connection that comes from it, right? So-... I can honestly say that my dislike of working for other people and office politics and egos, I now have a, a, of an existence where I don't have to deal with any of that. And I'm so blessed, and I wake up every morning and I pray to God, "Thank God I, I found this, because it's, it's the perfect lifestyle for me."

    19. AHAndrew Huberman55:22

        Yeah, you're, are, can be accurately described as an intellectual beast. So it's, um-

    20. RGRobert Greene55:28

        (laughs)

    21. AHAndrew Huberman55:28

        ... in that, it, it, which is like a compliment, right? Um, we hear the word beast and we think, uh, you know, a ferocious beast trying to harm others.

    22. RGRobert Greene55:34

        No, I'm, I'm, I'm happy being a beast. (laughs)

    23. AHAndrew Huberman55:36

        But yeah, you, you know, and so I think finding where we can be a beast, you know, and, and for some people that's painting or, or-

    24. RGRobert Greene55:42

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman55:42

        ... gardening or whatever it might be-

    26. RGRobert Greene55:43

        Sure.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman55:44

        ... um, I think is, uh, again, ties back to the, these issues of, uh, or this quest of, for mastery.

11. 55:51 – 1:07:04

    Seduction, Vulnerability, Childhood

    1. AHAndrew Huberman55:51

       Seduction is also a very loaded word, right?

    2. RGRobert Greene55:54

       It's even more uglier than power.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman55:56

       (laughs) Because seduction-

    4. RGRobert Greene55:58

       For real.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman55:58

       ... right, seduction kind of drips with, uh, the idea that somebody is tricking someone else into doing something that they otherwise would not want to do. But seduction is both our propensity to do it and to have it done to us. It is hardwired into our nervous system and has a lot to do with the hypothalamus and a bunch of other areas that I won't bore us with the nomenclature, but, um, seduction to me implies some sort of exchange. I suppose we could seduce ourselves through denial or convincing ourselves that, of, of something, but more often than not when we talk about seduction, we're talking about an interaction between two or more people. So, um, what are some of the core principles of seduction, and, and if you care to play, um, anthropologist a bit, um, and a neuroscientist, I, I would invite that. Uh, why do you think we have neural circuits in our brain that allow us to seduce and be seduced?

    6. RGRobert Greene56:58

       Well, um, I don't know how if, if I'm, if I'm being kind of an armchair intellectual here, but my, my theory is some of it has to go back to social, um, events long in our pre-history, which have to do with taboos. And society was initially kind of organized by a series of taboos, right? M- most notably the taboo on incest. And what happens, and this is not my theory, it's the theory of the, Malinowski, Malinowski is how to pronounce it, um, is that the moment a taboo enters the human brain, like you're not supposed to sleep with this woman, the desire arises inside of you to actually sleep with that woman. The n- the, the sense of no, the sense that this is prohibited stirs the desire, stirs the contrary impulses in humans. And we can be very, um, what's the word? Perverse creatures, right? So if you've ever tried to suppress a thought, you realize that it keeps coming up, keeps coming up. You can't suppress it. Don't think of an elephant, Andrew. Whatever you do, don't think of an elephant. You're thinking of it because you can't help it, right? The idea that you're not supposed to desire this person stirs that actual desire. So I believe the sense of something being taboo and transgressive is the ultimate kind of origin of our desire for seduction. But seduction involves vulnerability. It involves somebody gets inside, somebody gets under our skin, right? And to do that, we have to let them in. So the person being seduced is in some ways to a degree complicit, because if you just put up a wall and you said, "No, I- I'm not gonna be seduced," nothing will happen. But you have a vulnerability. You're letting that person into your psyche, into your inner space. The paradigm for that is early childhood. So Freud talks a lot about this. I don't know if people still believe in Freud anymore, but-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman59:03

       I certainly do.

    8. RGRobert Greene59:04

       Okay.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman59:04

       Absolutely.

    10. RGRobert Greene59:05

        But j-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman59:05

        A genius of both psychology and physiology.

    12. RGRobert Greene59:08

        For sure.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman59:08

        Wrong about a lot of things, did a lot of things he shouldn't have done. I, let's acknowledge that. Uh, I think everyone would agree that sleeping with your patients and being a cocaine addict, bad ideas. But at the same time, he had an absolute, like near supernatural levels of insight and brilliance into human nature.

    14. RGRobert Greene59:25

        Did he sleep with his patients?

    15. AHAndrew Huberman59:26

        I believe he did. Um, but if I just-

    16. RGRobert Greene59:29

        He was, he had like-

    17. AHAndrew Huberman59:29

        ... if I just threw that on him without him doing it, then, you know, uh, forgive me.

    18. RGRobert Greene59:32

        Well, he certainly had emotional attachments to his patients that he shouldn't have had. I don't know if he slept with them. He very well might have. But his idea was that the child is seduced by the parent. You're in an extremely vulnerable position, right? Your life depends on them. And they're seducing you with their energy. You're letting them in, right? And that kind of creates a pattern for the rest of your life. And so for instance, the feeling of being carried by your father and just being taken around physically is a form of seduction because you don't know what he's going to do to you. You're very excited. You want that surprise, right? And to me it's related to the seduction of a story. Stories are very seducing to us. We don't know where they're taking us. We don't know what the next chapter is, what's going to happen to this character or not. The surprise lowers our resistance and opens our mind up to what's going to happen next. There's a form of seduction. Fairy tales, the stories you were reading as a child, your interactions with your parents, they're deeply, deeply ingrained in you. You cannot be seduced unless you are vulnerable, right? And so I like to switch it around and get it out of the negative connotations. Being vulnerable is actually a positive trait. I think a lot of people now in the world today because things are so harsh and invasive that people become too invulnerable.... they don't want to let anything in, right? And this now infects their relationships with other people. They don't want to be influenced. They, they want to be strong inside of themself. They're afraid of giving into the other person, of surrendering to their influence. But it's actually a delightful feeling to surrender to the power of another person and then h- reverse that charge and have them surrender to your power. So, when I'm reading a writer, and sometimes, uh, they completely seduce me, like Friedrich Nietzsche is one of my favorite writers, I let go of everything, I let him enter my brain, and I'm completely seduced. I let him lead me along. But then I encounter writers that I don't like at all. I'll, I'll mention one. It ... y- you know, probably not a good thing, but Steven Pinker. I don't like Steven Pinker. I find him really annoying, okay? Um, but I force myself to try and find a way to be seduced by him, to let him into my brain, to see where he's coming from, to open myself to the possibility that he could be correct. So vulnerability, letting people into your mental space, is a form of intelligence. It's a, it's a kind of an emotional and an intellectual intelligence.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:18

        And forgive me for interrupting, but I think it also implies a level of confidence, because empathy or allowing oneself to be vulnerable to the point where you're seduced by something, um, by definition, i- if you're choosing to do it, uh, implies that you also have the confidence that you can get back to yourself afterward.

    20. RGRobert Greene1:02:37

        Of course.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:37

        Right? That you're not going to get lost-

    22. RGRobert Greene1:02:39

        Of course.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:39

        ... in the circumstances. You're not going to be hijacked to the point of no return.

    24. RGRobert Greene1:02:42

        Right.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:43

        Or in some way that's detrimental to you.

    26. RGRobert Greene1:02:45

        That's right.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:45

        So, so it, it's, um, it ... And I'm going to sound really nerdy here. It's a, it's collinear with, with confidence in many ways. Sure, like, take my mind and take it where you will, because I know I can come back at any time.

    28. RGRobert Greene1:02:57

        Right, right. And the same thing in a physical seduction in a romantic sense, right? You're opening yourself up to the charm, to the energy of the other person, but if they start displaying dark energy and you see that they're abusive or something is wrong, you have the ability to retreat.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:14

        Ah, well, there it gets tricky, because the-

    30. RGRobert Greene1:03:16

        It gets very tricky.
12. 1:07:04 – 1:08:05

    Sponsor: InsideTracker

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:04

       like to take a quick break and thank our sponsor, InsideTracker. InsideTracker is a personalized nutrition platform that analyzes data from your blood and DNA to help you better understand your body and help you reach your health goals. Now, I've long been a believer in getting regular blood work done for the simple reason that many of the factors that impact your immediate and long-term health can only be analyzed from a quality blood test. Now, a major problem with a lot of blood tests out there, however, is that you get information back about metabolic factors, lipids, and hormones, and so forth, but you don't know what to do with that information. With InsideTracker, they make it very easy, because they have a personalized platform that allows you to see the levels of all those things, metabolic factors, lipids, hormones, et cetera, but it gives you specific directives that you can follow that relate to nutrition, behavioral modifications, supplements, et cetera, that can help you bring those numbers into the ranges that are optimal for you. If you'd like to try InsideTracker, you can go to insidetracker.com/huberman to get 20% off any of InsideTracker's plans. Again, that's insidetracker.com/huberman.

13. 1:08:05 – 1:18:42

    Power Dynamics & Romance; Equality, Love Sublime & Connection

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:05

       I've heard before, um, and I promise this is not an original idea that I'm pretending to have heard elsewhere, that my friend asked me to ask sort of question, that in all sexual exchanges, there's a power exchange.

    2. RGRobert Greene1:08:17

       Definitely.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:18

       Um, maybe you could elaborate on that. Um, because as you were describing some of the seductive power dynamics that exist, uh, a phrase that I've heard before, uh, came to mind, um, that at first made me chuckle, but then made me think, um, quite deeply about this issue of the relationship between sexual and power dynamics, which is this notion of topping from the bottom. You know, if one is giving someone else the e- impression that they are more powerful, by virtue of the word giving, they actually hold some power, right? Power is, can be given or taken, but, um, oftentimes, uh, seductive exchanges and sexual exchanges, and romantic exchanges, in particular, are about both people, uh, buying into a illu- a temporary illusion. Let's pretend that you're in charge when actually I'm in charge. Okay. But I know that you think that you're in charge. W- okay, let's just pretend none of that exists and just do X, right? And I think this is, uh, another example of covert contracts, and it's one that actually can potentially create a lot of problems post hoc, right? (laughs) Um, but I think the relationship between sex, romance, and power is an important area to explore in the context of this.

    4. RGRobert Greene1:09:34

       Well, I wrote The Art of Seduction with the idea that it was an art invented by women. It was invented by women who had no power, essentially, socially, politically, in any sense of the word, in, in, and domestically, right? And, but the one power that they could, that they could wield over a man was through sex, some physical attraction. And so, they developed this art of kind of luring a man into their world through various theatrical effects, Cleopatra being kind of the archetype of this, and then luring the, the powerful man into this world. He has the illusion that he's the one pursuing her, but, in fact, she is the one controlling the dynamic. So oftentimes, the person who appears to be the weaker one in the relationship, who's not doing the pursuing, is actually inviting the pursuing, is actually leading the other person on. So there's a lot of kind of appearance games going on, and you can never really figure out who exactly is in control of the dynamic. 'Cause one person is, like, allowing the other person to lead them on, but the fact that you're allowing them is a degree of power. It's a degree of control, right? So it's very hard to figure out, and sex and power and romantic relationships are very much intertwined in us physically, emotionally, neurologically. You can't avoid it, right? Th- and so I think it's kind of dishonest to say that, that none of that exists. That it's like, that there's some egalitarian paradise out of there when it, it's really not wired in us for that kind of relationship.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:18

       There's a recent scientific publication/factoid that I wanted to share with you in this context, just because I'd like your thoughts on it. Uh, David Anderson, who's a phenomenal neurobiologist, he's been a guest on this podcast before. He's a professor at Caltech. Studies, um, basically the functions of the hypothalamus, so-

    6. RGRobert Greene1:11:36

       Okay.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:36

       ... things like, uh, aggression, mating-

    8. RGRobert Greene1:11:39

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:11:39

       ... and, and things of that sort. Um, and does it so it, in, with great detail. He's a virtuoso of the hypothalamus. And he published a paper two years ago showing that indeed there are neural circuits in the brain of animals, and presumably in humans as well, that control sexual mounting behavior, but that there is actually a separate circuit for purely non-sexual mounting and physical power over that's expressed in animals. And anyone that's ever owned a dog and gone to the dog park will see same-sex mounting between dogs, or mounting between dogs that has apparently, um, no sexual endpoint.

    10. RGRobert Greene1:12:21

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:21

        And in exploring this literature, and some talking to David about it, it's very clear that there are neural circuits, um, that have everything to do with essentially one animal of a species getting on top of the other animal, usually from behind, oftentimes scruffing or biting the back of the neck, and saying, "I control you." It's, uh, it's often done in a playful context, especially between animals. Not always aggressive, but there's a certain element of aggressive to it. But it essentially says, "I decide whether or not you are mobile or not for this moment." And that it... and this is very important. (laughs) I want to emphasize this. This is a circuit that is entirely separate from all of the reflexes associated with sexual behavior in males and females. I find this to be fascinating. Um, and... because we hear about power over, right? And we hear about power, and we think about physical power over, but the idea that something as primitive as mounting, just like something as primitive as biting or as striking, uh...... has its own unique set of circuits in the brain, I think substantiates every- everything that you put in, uh, in your books about power, and maybe even seduction as well. So, as I just kind of tossed that out there for consideration, I- I- I wonder, um, if you have any reflections on it? If not, um, feel free to just say, "I don't." But... Of course, but to me, this was a really important discovery, because I think everyone looks at mounting behavior and says, "Oh, that has to be sexual." And sometimes it's, uh...

    12. RGRobert Greene1:13:47

        Oh, I see what you mean.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:48

        But it- but it's not. That there's a ho- there seemed to be a host of neural circuits in the brain that are- are really about defining who's on top, literally, that has nothing to do with sex.

    14. RGRobert Greene1:14:01

        Yeah, I'm sure that's true. I've never- I've never- I've never, um, read anything about that. But I can say that, um, I wrote a chapter in- in my new book about love, and that's a different thing than- than seduction. And I was trying to come up with an idea of love that does have an element of equality, that doesn't have this power dynamic going on in it.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:24

        Oh, I love that.

    16. RGRobert Greene1:14:25

        And, um, you know, kind of like the antithesis of my Art of Seduction, where I'm almost contradicting myself. And I was going into the- into the biology of it, and even into the physics of it. So, there is a famous, uh, French biologist whose name escapes me. I'm sorry, I can't remember. From the '20s and '30s. Um, and he was studying paramecium, and he foudn... He was studying them, you know, they're- they're in these ponds, et cetera. And he said that there was these moments where these single-celled organisms were suddenly coupling. They were all joining together, just one to one, and they were, uh, absorbing the membrane of one inside the other. And then they would, like, go... And then once one couple did that, all the paramecium started joining up together, then they would sink to the bottom of the pond. And paramecium don't reproduce through sex. They reproduce through dividing themselves, right? Self-reproduction. And so, he was saying that the desire to couple, to- to- to connect to someone so deeply where you absorb, one is absorbed in the other, is biologically wired into us. Goes back millions and millions and millions of years, and it's a desire, essentially a biological desire for love, right? And it's an energy that permeates all- all the w... It's- it's not just about power and hierarchies. And that he- he was showing other creatures that had something similar going on. And, you know, in physics, we talk about entanglement, and we also talk about, um, you know, matter. If matter isn't absu- uh, isn't, um, uh, opposed by a lot of kinetic energy, it joins together. I mean, particles join together to form matter, et cetera, et cetera. So there's something in the universe that's trying to connect things to each other. So there's this- this kind of energy that exists in the world, where we have a deep need to connect to somebody with... Outside of those power dynamics, right? Where there's a degree of equality, where we're drawn to each other, and we let go of the ego games, we let go of the playing. We k- uh, kind of surmount our own physiology, our own hypothalamus, and we engage in this, I call it love sublime. And it involves the physical part, the sexual part is the trigger for it. Because when we have sex with someone, your body is suddenly permeable to their energy in a way that you cannot control. It releases all kinds of- of chemicals in the brain that are very powerful. And oftentimes, that sense is, uh, too powerful, and you react, a- and you're afraid of it, and you pull back. But if you don't react, and you go further, then the mind also becomes permeable to the other person, and their energy and their desire. And so then, it kind of creates a spiraling effect with the physical and the mental connection, reaches the state that I call love sublime. Now, it's an ideal. It doesn't really exist that much out there in the world today. But there are st- stories in history that illustrate it, and I believe it is a biological necessity for us to feel a deep, deep sense of connection. We normally ascribe that to religion, to God, et cetera, but I maintain the essence of love, the model for- for love, is between two human beings, straight or homosexual, doesn't matter. And that feeling of surmounting our own neurology, our own system, and- and entering this zone is deeply, deeply satisfying. We all want it. And it has to involve letting go of the power dynamics, letting... And everything being equal. It's not that the other person is exactly like you. You recognize their difference. But- but as far as being worthy of attention, as being worthy... And respected, you leave all that other stuff outside. So there is a zone that's possible that's outside this power dynamic that we're talking about.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:36

        I'm excited that you're writing about this. Uh, so this is for your next book?

    18. RGRobert Greene1:18:39

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:40

        Oh, I'm ver- very excited.

14. 1:18:42 – 1:29:45

    Vulnerability in Relationships, Creativity; Social Media, Justice

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:42

       I couldn't help but think of some of the parallels between what you describe and what we're observing nowadays in the landscape of politics and social dynamics, where clearly, um, there is no setting aside of egos. People feel atta- both sides feel attacked. Everyone in between feels confused, like, "Why do I have to pick a side?" Um, and there seems to be no hint of a future where people are setting down their swords, i- which means, if we were to go with your earlier definition, which I like a lot, that, um, nobody feels safe enough to be vulnerable...... enough to, um, to allow the union of, of people to occur, which is just a way, a way of rewording, you know, a bunch of other things, um, and not nearly as eloquently as, as you described it. But if setting aside of power dynamics and making oneself vulnerable is the, is the key to accessing love-

    2. RGRobert Greene1:19:38

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:38

       ... in the romantic context surely, but also in the, um, societal context. I mean, what are the channels for that? I mean, I suppose there is the argument, not mine, that everyone should just take a boatload of psychedelics and see the interconnectedness of things, but that seems like an unrealistic route. I, I just don't see that being, you know, um, you know, 12th grade graduation, um, curriculum, um, nor do I think it would be healthy, uh, to be clear. I think that you'd, we'd end up with a lot of expression of, of problems there, um, but short of a magic substance that could increase feelings of, uh, connectedness among everyone simultaneously, um, how are you going to save humanity, Robert? (laughs)

    4. RGRobert Greene1:20:18

       Well, um, 'cause I'm, I'm concerned about young people in particular with hookup culture, with pornography, etc., etc. It's kind of rewiring the human brain and we're losing what I was just describing, and I see a lot, particularly a lot of young people, and I don't blame them because they've grown up in a world that's very chaotic and very hostile.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:39

       Could, could I say, I think it's, um, and not to be nitpicky here, but I, I love what you just said. I think, in my mind it's high... Things like that are hijacking the hard-wiring of the brain.

    6. RGRobert Greene1:20:48

       Okay.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:49

       Um, and I'm-

    8. RGRobert Greene1:20:49

       You're right, you're right.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:50

       ... just, uh, no-

    10. RGRobert Greene1:20:50

        You're right

    11. NANarrator1:20:50

        That's true.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:50

        ... and I'm not... Again, forgive me, my, the audience is probably going, "Oh."

    13. RGRobert Greene1:20:53

        You can't really rewire the brain like that, so.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:55

        Right. Well, I think we can expand and rewire upon our hard-wiring, but so much of what you, you talk about in your books is about finding one's essence, but then also, w- what I love about your books so much, among many other things, is that it's about that dance between the hard-wiring and, and the possible of through effort. So anyway, forgive me for-

Episode duration: 3:11:17