How to Achieve True Happiness Using Science-Based Protocols | Dr. Laurie Santos

1. 0:00 – 2:52

   Dr. Laurie Santos

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      (instrumental music) Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Laurie Santos. Dr. Laurie Santos is a professor of cognitive science and psychology at Yale University. She is a world expert in happiness and in the science of emotions generally. Today, we talk about true happiness, not in any kind of loose and aspirational way, but instead, what the research really tells us about how to create lasting happiness for ourselves. We talk about relationships and happiness, that is, relationships of all kinds, between friends, between romantic partners, between family members, and of course, with ourselves. We talk about all of that in the context of what to do, what not to do, and how to frame your whole notion of what happiness is and how to attain it in the context of daily to-dos. For instance, most all of us by now have heard about the power of gratitude and gratitude practices. In fact, I've done an entire episode about gratitude and the science of gratitude. But Dr. Laurie Santos today explains that by shifting our orientation toward gratitude, toward something more aligned with what delights us, we are able to better tap into the mechanisms that enable us to feel happier in a more pervasive way. We also discuss topics such as hedonic adaptation, that is, how our pursuit of things and our whole experience of pleasure sets the stage for what's going to feel like a meaningful pursuit and pleasureful in the days and weeks to follow. This is very important for everyone to hear, especially in this modern age of so-called dopamine hits, easy-to-achieve dopamine, highly processed foods, and the various things that you can find online. And speaking of online, we also discuss the role that smartphones and social media play not just in our happiness, but in our cognition. You'll be shocked, indeed, I was shocked to learn that just having your phone in the room where you are trying to learn something significantly diminishes your performance on things like mathematics and the learning of other topics. We get into all of that today, the interrelated parts, and I promise that it's all made extremely clear and actionable thanks to Dr. Laurie Santos' incredible expertise, and she is an incredible teacher. In fact, the course that she has taught at Yale University, entitled Psychology and the Good Life, is the most popular course ever taught at Yale over the course of 300 years. And that popularity will not come as a surprise, as you now get to learn from Dr. Laurie Santos directly. This was a remarkable episode, I must say. I learned so much, and I'll just highlight one big takeaway that I've implemented in my own life and that you can frame in the back of your mind as you listen to today's episode, is the difference between being happy with one's life as opposed to in one's life, and indeed, how to achieve both.

2. 2:52 – 6:00

   Sponsors: Eight Sleep & Express VPN

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:52

      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 Eight Sleep. Eight Sleep makes smart mattress covers with cooling, heating, and sleep tracking capacity. Now, I've spoken many times before on this podcast about the critical need for us to get adequate amounts of quality sleep each night. That's truly the foundation of all mental health, physical health, and performance. And one of the best ways to ensure that you get a great night's sleep is to control the temperature of your sleeping environment, and that's because in order to fall and stay deeply asleep, your body temperature actually has to drop by about one to three degrees, and in order to wake up feeling refreshed and energized, your body temperature actually has to increase about one to three degrees. Eight Sleep makes it incredibly easy to control the temperature of your sleeping environment by allowing you to control the temperature of your mattress cover at the beginning, middle, and end of the night. I've been sleeping on an Eight Sleep mattress cover for nearly four years now and it has completely transformed and improved the quality of my sleep. Eight Sleep has now launched their newest generation of the Pod Cover, the Pod 4 Ultra. The Pod 4 Ultra has improved cooling and heating capacity, higher fidelity sleep tracking technology, and even has snoring detection that will automatically lift your head a few degrees to improve your airflow and stop your snoring. If you'd like to try an Eight Sleep mattress cover, go to eightsleep.com/huberman to save up to $350 off their Pod 4 Ultra. Eight Sleep currently ships in the USA, Canada, UK, select countries in the EU, and Australia. Again, that's eightsleep.com/huberman. Today's episode is also brought to us by ExpressVPN. ExpressVPN is a virtual private network that keeps your data secure and private. It does that by routing your internet activity through their servers and encrypting it so that no one can see or sell your data. Now, I'm familiar with the effects of not securing my data well enough. Several years ago, I had one of my bank accounts hacked, and it was a terrible amount of work to have that reversed and for the account to be secured. When that happened, I talked to my friends in the tech community, and what they told me was that even though you think your internet connection may be secure, oftentimes it's not, especially if you're using wifi networks such as those on planes, in hotels, at coffee shops and other public places. Surprisingly, even at home, your data might not be as secure as you think. To make sure that what I described before would never happen to me again, I started using ExpressVPN. The great thing about ExpressVPN is that I don't even notice that it's running since the connection it provides is so fast. I have it on my computer and on my phone, and I keep it on whenever I'm connected to the internet. With ExpressVPN, I know everything is secure, my web browsing, all my passwords, all my data, and of course, anything that's behind an account wall, like a bank account. It can't be tracked and no one can access or steal your data, which is terrific. If you'd like to start protecting your internet activity using ExpressVPN, you can go to expressvpn.com/huberman and you can get an extra three months free. Again, that's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N.com/huberman to get an extra three months free. And now for my discussion with Dr. Laurie Santos.

3. 6:00 – 11:18

   Happiness, Emotion & Cognition; Emotional Contagion

   1. AHAndrew Huberman6:00

      Dr. Laurie Santos, welcome.

   2. LSDr. Laurie Santos6:02

      Thanks so much for having me on the show.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman6:05

      I want to talk about this thing that everyone seems to want, but most everyone has trouble keeping themselves in a state of happiness, which raises the question of whether or not we should even be seeking to constantly be in a state of happiness. But just to sit back from that question for a moment, how should we think about the relationship between emotions and this thing that we call cognition? Because I think a lot of where we're going today is to distinguish between feelings, thoughts, and behaviors, and as neuroscientists, psychologists, et cetera, we have to understand the difference between emotions and cognition and maybe where they overlap, so if you could educate us a bit on that, I think that will, uh, set the stage nicely for understanding happiness.

   4. LSDr. Laurie Santos6:51

      Yeah. Well, I'm glad you started there actually because, you know, uh, the very definition of happiness, I think, as social scientists tend to think about it, includes both of these parts, right? So I think social scientists tend to think about happiness as being happy in your life and being happy with your life. So being happy in your life is sort of the emotion side, right? Have a decent number of positive emotions, maybe slightly less negative emotions. Like, you existing in your life feels good. That's kind of an emotional part, right? Um, but then there's also kind of how you think your life is going. Do you have purpose? Are you kind of happy with how things are going? It's how you think about your life, which is sort of a cognitive thing, and so even the earliest social scientists who started thinking about happiness, at the time they called it subjective well-being 'cause I think psychologists were like, "Ooh, happiness towns- sounds too wooey. Like, we'll call it something else." But it means exactly the same thing. It means subjective well-being, right? When they started thinking about subjective well-being, they divided it into this sort of affective/emotional part, which is, like, how you feel in your life, but also this cognitive part, how you think your life is going. So that basic dichotomy has been there since the very beginning of folks studying happiness scientifically.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman7:55

      I'm already struck by this distinction between how things are going in your life versus with your life. Um, one requires a, a kind of first person experiencing of life in your life, you know?

   6. LSDr. Laurie Santos8:07

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:07

      Do you wake up feeling good? Are you, um, feeling good with your inside of your friendships and other relationships, family, romantic relationships, school, work? The other, um, involves a bit of a third person-ing of self-

   8. LSDr. Laurie Santos8:19

      Yep.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman8:20

      ... of looking at one's, um, CV, either actual CV or, um, reflected CV, uh, through the lens of other people and kind of getting a sense, like, am I doing well? Am I not doing well? Um, I think this is a really important distinction, um, because it seems like ultimately, the goal, if I may, is to be happy in your life regardless of the third person-ing, provided that you're not doing damage to somebody else's happiness in life. (laughs)

   10. LSDr. Laurie Santos8:48

       Yeah. Well, I think ideally, it'd be nice to do both, right? And I think there are moments when these things dissociate, right? So, you know, you interact with lots of interesting rich people out here in California. I think a lot of them have, in kind of in their life feels pretty good, right? They have lots of hedonic pleasures, they're drinking nice wine, hanging out at the beach. (laughs)

   11. AHAndrew Huberman9:05

       Oh, you'd be amazed. You'd be amazed at how much s-

   12. LSDr. Laurie Santos9:06

       But, but, but then, but-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman9:06

       ... how much, uh, how much suffering they report.

   14. LSDr. Laurie Santos9:09

       Oh, that's interesting.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman9:09

       Right? How much suffering they report.

   16. LSDr. Laurie Santos9:10

       So this is the question is, is, is this sort of cognitive part the, like, third person part or is it the reporting part? And I think when the psychologists are thinking about it, they really think about it as the reporting part, right? And, and this gets tricky, right, because, you know, I see folks having their nice glass of wine on the beach, and I'm thinking, like, "That's coming with lots of positive emotion." Like, I bet if I tested them and could have a direct look at their sensory experience, it'd probably be pretty positive. It's only when they reflect on their life and they're asking, "Well, how's it going?" that they say, "Oh, you know, I don't know. My stocks went down." Or, like-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman9:40

       When I hear about, um, lack of happiness, let me think of some of the kind of bullet point ones that come, seem to come up repetitively. Uh, they are indeed not related to lack of resources. I don't hear that.

   18. LSDr. Laurie Santos9:53

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman9:53

       What I've heard, and this is also true for where I spend part of my time and where I grew up, which is in Silicon Valley, which is also, not everyone, but there are people there who have accrued tremendous amount of wealth. The mean has shifted very high, uh, and hence the cost of living. Um, but it's often concerns about, um, their kids.

   20. LSDr. Laurie Santos10:15

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman10:16

       Or their mother is ill. Their child is struggling in a particular way. Um, very often, that's what it is. They're concerned about the lack of well-being in their kids related to mental health or physical health or other relatives' mental health/physical health, or they're upset about something politically. (laughs)

   22. LSDr. Laurie Santos10:37

       Yeah. (laughs)

   23. AHAndrew Huberman10:37

       But we won't go there. (laughs)

   24. LSDr. Laurie Santos10:37

       Yeah. We won't go there. Yeah. No, I think this is true, right? You know, so much of our happiness is made up of the happiness of other people, right? Um, both kind of how they're doing and how we think they're doing cognitively, but literally just emotionally, right? You know, if you've ever been around a family member or a spouse who was incredibly pissed off, really sad, it's, it's incredibly hard not to catch those emotions yourself, and we as psychologists know how these processes work, right? There's Emotional contagion where you're literally catching the emotions of other people. And so oftentimes, the things that you most worry about to be happy yourself is focusing on the happiness of the people around you because that literally becomes your happiness at a very fundamental level.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman11:16

       Mm-hmm.

4. 11:18 – 14:43

   Extrinsic vs. Intrinsic Rewards

   1. AHAndrew Huberman11:18

      Yeah. I'm pausing just to think about this a little bit more. As we grow up, um, and I realize it varies by place and lots of circumstances, but as we grow up, we are taught to pay attention to how our life is going a bit from the outside. We-

   2. LSDr. Laurie Santos11:34

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman11:35

      ... gain evaluations starting really young, little stars on our pictures or, "Good job," or nowadays they say, "Great effort in drawing" or, you know- (laughs)

   4. LSDr. Laurie Santos11:44

      Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman11:45

      ... this whole thing, the growth mindset, uh, language. Um, but I don't know that in the United States we are taught to, um, think about being happy in our life.

   6. LSDr. Laurie Santos11:57

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman11:57

      Right? As, as kids, I think all kids, all, all mammals, uh, seem to gravitate towards, um, joyful experiences for them. Playing is, is almost always an innate, um, joyful experience. But then as the evaluations start coming in, we, we get better and better at ass- assessing our performance and where we are, um, relative to the sort of standard goals of the third grade, the fifth grade, the 12th grade. Um-But at the same time, I don't think anyone ever sat me down and said, um, "How are you going to evaluate if you're feeling good in your life, like that you're savoring your soccer game, that you're savoring your time with friends?" Uh, that was never, n- never taught to me.

   8. LSDr. Laurie Santos12:40

      Yeah, and I think there's a real danger of these kind of extrinsic rewards, as you might call them, all the stuff outside, the grades, you know, the performance measures and so on, literally stealing your intrinsic rewards. Um, there's this funny phenomenon in psychology where if you have something that's intrinsically rewarding, so let's say exercise, right? Like, I wanna go out, you know, and like, n- run, uh, like a bunch, right? I love running. I get this intrinsic reward from running. Now I get some sort of tool, whether it's my watch or something I'm scribbling down in a phone app, and I have to, like, log my running. Now it becomes a sort of extrinsic reward. It's not just like the feeling of running, but it sort of takes on this extrinsic idea. And then what happens is sometimes we end up going for that reward anyway. Um, the fiction writer David Sedaris has this wonderful, uh, article called The Fitbit Life where he talks about how he wanted to get fit, it's intrisi- intrinsic reward of, you know, exercising more, and he got the Fitbit, and then it was all about the Fitbit, and he would set the level higher and set the level higher, and he himself was miserable and no longer enjoying running to the point that, like, at some point he just would walk around, you know, shaking his arm just to get up to those final steps, right? That's a really terrible case where your extrinsic reward winds up taking over. But so many of the cases you just talked about are ones in our real life where that comes up much more insidiously than with like a Fitbit or something like that. You talked about play in mammals, the easiest thing that little kid animals do all over the place. Little kid humans don't do that as much anymore, because even from really young ages, they're, you know, in toddler, you know, university where they're kind of learning things to get into the next grade and get the perfect grade so they can get into institutions like ours, right? It all becomes about extrinsic rewards. And so I think you're really right. We're kind of extrinsicizing all the rewards to the point that we're not getting to internal happiness. It was hard already to pay attention to that stuff because, and I think we'll probably talk about this, it's hard to be mindful about your emotions. You really have to pay attention to what's going on. But I think it's gotten even harder because we have these metrics, they're all over the place in our culture, but they're just not the intrinsic thing. They're some es- extrinsic marker that could make the intrinsic thing even less fun.

5. 14:43 – 21:39

   Money, Comparison & Happiness

   1. LSDr. Laurie Santos14:43

   2. AHAndrew Huberman14:43

      For people that, um, grow up or live in areas where... well, let's just say that, that have less, um, disposable wealth. Um, is there... there must be data on sort of, um, relationship to intrinsic versus extrinsic, um, forces on happiness. I mean, I can make up all sorts of stories in my head about how people starting out from very different circumstances would be more or less happy. But what do the data say?

   3. LSDr. Laurie Santos15:10

      Yeah, so these effects of kind of resources on happiness are really interesting and they're nuanced, right? So if you look at the lower end of the kind of income spectrum, you would obviously say that money affects happiness, right? If you can't put food on the table, if you can't put a roof over your head, definitely getting a little bit more in the end is gonna affect your happiness in a positive way. And the data sort of bear this out. Um, this very, there's a very famous study by the, uh, Nobel Prize winning economist Danny Kahneman, RIP. Back in 2010, he did this cool study where he looked at the correlation between income and happiness as reported in how much stress you have, um, how much positive emotion you experience and so on. At the low end of the income scales, it just goes up and up and up, right? More money just almost linearly gives you more happiness. But what Danny found, and this is the second part of this nuanced picture, is that that slope kind of levels off and it levels off in 2010 dollars at around $75,000. What does that mean? That means if you get more than $75,000, um, you're not gonna feel any less stressed, you're not gonna experience any more positive emotion. Even if I double or triple or quadruple your income, on those metrics, you're not gonna see any increase.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman16:18

      And those are, um, pre-tax 2010.

   5. LSDr. Laurie Santos16:22

      Yeah, they didn't get into like-

   6. AHAndrew Huberman16:23

      D- okay.

   7. LSDr. Laurie Santos16:23

      ... the real, 'cause it, 'cause you're like, "Oh my God, well, I live in California." Like if you live in Iowa, maybe it's not so bad, but like, and those numbers will change, but the upshot is there's probably some number in like 2025, 2024 numbers that might be like, you know, maybe $100,000, $120,000. Whatever it is, the point is that there's some number at which getting more is not gonna increase your happiness at the same slope. Now there's been nuanced fights about this as there is a lot in kind of real research about, well, is that really true? Does the slope really ever go up? And now the picture seems to be, well, the slope might go up a teeny tiny, like negligible bit, but it doesn't go up as, as much as say, getting an extra 10 minutes of exercise in or another 20 minutes of sleep or scribbling the things you're grateful for. All those things will impact your happiness much more than like quintupling your income. And so do, do your resources affect happiness? Yeah, if you ain't got any resources, y- you definitely will feel happier if you can get them. But if you have a lot, getting more really isn't gonna help.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman17:22

      Sorry to interrupt, but lately I've been, um, saying on the basis of those findings about this then 75-

   9. LSDr. Laurie Santos17:30

      Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman17:31

       ... K per year, probably now, like you said, 100 to 125K or let's, let's say-

   11. LSDr. Laurie Santos17:35

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman17:35

       ... something like that, um, would be the equivalent amount, uh, that money indeed cannot buy happiness, but it can buffer stress. Do you think that's true? You're making me rethink that statement. M- maybe it-... doesn't buffer stress past a certain amount?

   13. LSDr. Laurie Santos17:52

       Yeah, I mean, I think in, in the original Kahneman data, he found that it doesn't, right? I mean, s- it's, uh, well, how much stress you report on a daily basis was literally one of the measures they were using for happiness. But I think you're right, it can, uh, th- the risk around it can buffer it, right? I think if you're at a certain set of means, you know that, like, you know, if a bad thing happens, you're going to be okay, so it can allow you to make riskier decisions, it can allow you to do things that you might not do if you're right at that boundary where losing some money might pop you back down. I think the problem is that one of the ways we evaluate our financial situation, but pretty much every situation, I think this goes back to the neuroscience, is that we don't do it objectively. We do it relative. And when you think about your relative financial status, there's lots of other folks around to whom you're comparing yourself. I think one of the reasons that rich folks don't necessarily think they're less stressed when they have very high levels of wealth and so on is because they're looking around and everyone's doing much better than them. Like, and this is just a fundamental feature of the way we evaluate stuff, right, is that we don't evaluate in objective terms. We evaluate relative to these reference points. And honestly, as you get richer, you're kind of going up this sort of logarithmic scale where the reference points are getting even further away from you, and I think that that can have a huge hit on people's perception of their own happiness and their perception of their stress levels, right? Because they're working towards a goal that's probably not gonna make them that much happier, but they haven't kind of abandoned this intuition that more money will make me happy. Um, on my podcast, The Happiness Lab, I had this guy, Clay Cockerill, who was really fun. He's a, a, a wealth psychologist, so he's a mental health professional that only works with the 0.0001%, and already, we should say, "Well, if, if wealth made you happy, he should be out of a job." But no, he has lots of clients, lots of, I guess, very well-paying clients. He looked like he was doing well for himself, um, but he talks about how those folks haven't abandoned this notion that more money will make them happy. They set some standard, like, "Oh, if, as soon as I become, as soon as I get 50 million, I'll be happy," or, "As soon as I become a billionaire." But then they get to that point, they're not feeling any more positive emotion, they're not feeling less stressed, and rather than saying, "Well, hang on, maybe that hypothesis was wrong, more money doesn't work," they say, "Ah, the hypothesis is still right. More money will make me happy. I just get a... It wasn't 50 million, now it's 100 million," or whatever it is. And so I think that that's a lot due to the fact that folks are comparing their wealth levels against others, and our, our comparison system sucks because we constantly compare ourselves against others, but we never pick people that are doing worse than us. We always pick people who are doing better than us.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman20:20

       I know a fair number of very happy wealthy people. I know a fair number of very miserable wealthy people. I know a fair number of, um, happy, uh, non-wealthy people, and a fair number of miserable, inside, th- where they report feeling miserable, um, un- un-wealthy people.

   15. LSDr. Laurie Santos20:38

       Well, it fits completely with what, you know, a lot of the happiness research suggests, right? Which is that it's much less about our circumstances than we think when it comes to who's happy and who's not, right? You know, we often think, you know, "If I could get more money," or, "If I could get more accolades at work," or, "If I could get a new partner, if I could move somewhere, I'd be happier." But g- exactly what you're saying, if you look at people with all those different life circumstances, both the good version and the bad version, you find some happy folks and some not so happy folks. And now what researchers are starting to think is that it actually doesn't involve our circumstances as much as we think. Again, I, like, would bracket it, unless those circumstances are really dire. Circumstances don't matter as much as we think. It tends to be the kind of stuff that's much more under our control than our circumstances, right? It tends to be how we behave, what our, what thought patterns we use, the emotions we seek out, the social connection we experience. Those things matter much more. And so I think, you know, your experience with the happy and not so happy rich folks and the happy and not so happy poor folks kind of bear out what we think, which, like, it's just not your circumstances that doesn't matter as much as you assume.

6. 21:39 – 32:16

   Tool: Increase Social Connection; Real-Time Communication

   1. LSDr. Laurie Santos21:39

   2. AHAndrew Huberman21:39

      Let's talk about this relationship between feelings, thought patterns, and behaviors in the context of happiness. I think anyone listening to this or watching this probably wants to be happy as much as possible. I mean, I suppose there are a few songwriters, poets-

   3. LSDr. Laurie Santos21:55

      (laughs) There's-

   4. AHAndrew Huberman21:55

      ... and I've got some friends in, in, uh, in those, uh, domains of life, and they do seem to derive a lot of, um, insight and inspiration and have done amazing things, um, through the kind of depths of, uh, unhappy human emotion. Um, we can get back to that later because I do think there's something about the contrast of moving from these more painful emotions to happiness that's very different than moving from a state of immense happiness to slightly less, but we can get back to that. But most people would like to be happy as much as possible. Uh, I certainly would. Uh, who wouldn't? And one, of course, can ask, "Well, should I work on my feelings, like, think about my feelings, try and shift my feelings, let my feelings move through me in a cathartic way? Um, should I work on the thought patterns? Should I work on the behaviors?" I'm a big believer, from, from my own experience, that behaviors are powerful in setting the general trajectory of thought patterns and feelings, but I've also experienced it going the other way too. So, what does the research say about this, and w- what can we do? 'Cause everyone wants to be happier.

   5. LSDr. Laurie Santos23:04

      Yeah. Well, we just talked about the thing you're not supposed to do. You don't have to change your circumstances, and that's great 'cause, like, quintupling your income is tricky. You know, moving is tricky. You know, switching your life around all over the place is hard, right? And the good news is the science shows you don't have to do that. That doesn't work as well as you think. But you can hack your behaviors and your thought patterns and your feelings to get some good results, right? Let's, let's take behaviors, right? One of the biggest behavioral changes you can make to feel happier is just to get a little bit more social connection. Like, psychologists do these fun studies where they look at people's, like, daily usage patterns, so how much time are you spending sleeping or exercising or at work or whatever? And the two things that predict whether or not you're happy or not so happy is how much time you spend with friends and family members and how much time you're just physically around other people.... like, the more of that you do, the happier you're gonna be. Um, and, you know, that's just a correlation, right? So your savvy listeners are thinking right now, like, "Well, is it that hanging around with other people causes you to be happy or do you tend to, like, hang out with other people more if you are happy? Like, which direction does the causal arrow go?" And here we have these lovely studies by psychologists who do these kind of funny experiments where they offer people, like, a $10 Starbucks gift card to just talk to somebody (laughs) . Um, usually talk to a stranger, like, that they don't know on the train. This is some lovely work by Nick Epley and others have done this, whereas you force people to get social, and what people predict, especially with strangers, is like, "Ooh, that's gonna feel awkward and kind of weird." But what you find across the board, and this includes and introverts and extroverts, is that talking to somebody actually feels good. It increases your positive emotion, it gives you a sense that your life is going better, you feel less lonely. It just has these positive outcomes that we don't expect.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman24:46

      I love social connection. The problem I have with social connection is that if I drop in with somebody for, you know, 30 minutes or a couple of hours, when that's done, I usually have so much that I need to tend to that I end up staying up later than I need to in order to complete that, diminishing my sleep, and then I- I feel like there's a underlying kind of, like, sinking ship sense to my physiology-

   7. LSDr. Laurie Santos25:10

      (laughs)

   8. AHAndrew Huberman25:10

      ... and then I have to recover my sleep. So, it, you know, everything's a trade-off.

   9. LSDr. Laurie Santos25:14

      Yeah. Yeah.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman25:14

       Um, what's interesting about the study you just mentioned is that it's just a brief coffee, presumably, so-

   11. LSDr. Laurie Santos25:20

       Yeah.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman25:20

       ... maybe one doesn't need to spend quite as much time, um, with people. But I think, uh, you know, I think, like, even years ago... Actually, he's dead now, but there was a, a... I guess it's okay to say it even though he's dead. He, he was a somewhat, uh, eccentric professor-

   13. LSDr. Laurie Santos25:37

       Mm-hmm. Yeah.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman25:37

       ... at UC Berkeley. I took a class from him when I was a graduate student there, named Seth Roberts. He's known for some kind of bizarre theories about eating and-

   15. LSDr. Laurie Santos25:44

       Oh, yeah. Yeah.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman25:45

       ... if people wanna look this up, I mean, like, really, really kind of different stuff. But I, I applaud his bravery in just, uh, you know, being out there, but he was an eccentric guy, and he told us in this class when I was there that, that it was very important to see faces-

   17. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:00

       Mm-hmm.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman26:00

       ... um, at least once a day.

   19. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:01

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman26:01

       Real faces. Not on a screen.

   21. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:03

       Yep.

   22. AHAndrew Huberman26:03

       This was before social media, but...

   23. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:05

       Yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman26:05

       Um, and that it was important at some point to leave your apartment and, and, like, see the barista and say hello and thank you and say- see people on the street and, um, and now, knowing what we know about these dedicated areas of the brain, like the fusiform face gyrus and Nancy Kanwisher's work and ab- about the- about these brain areas, like, we are hardwired for seeing faces and recognizing faces. Now, that alone doesn't mean that seeing faces is a requirement for being happy on a consistent basis, but I think they were onto something.

   25. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:34

       Yeah.

   26. AHAndrew Huberman26:34

       I th- I think Seth was onto something, even though he had some r- also just, like, completely crazy ideas. This idea doesn't seem crazy.

   27. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:41

       Yeah.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman26:41

       This has been my experience. Even though I spend a lot of time alone, if I go a few days without seeing a face-

   29. LSDr. Laurie Santos26:46

       Mm-hmm.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman26:47

       ... something happens inside that, that shifts the way my internal kind of, um, f- set point for wellbeing. And then you see somebody and it's like, it's, like, delightful, even if it's just a "Hello" kind of thing.
7. 32:16 – 33:47

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. LSDr. Laurie Santos32:16

   2. AHAndrew Huberman32:16

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8. 33:47 – 39:22

   Technology, Information, Social Interaction

   1. AHAndrew Huberman33:47

      If seeing faces, a- and I don't have evidence for this, but if Seth Roberts was right and, uh, what we're talking about here is clearly, um, based on existing data, if seeing faces somehow triggers the reward system in a healthy way that reinforces s- social connection thing, like fills the vessel-

   2. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:06

      Yeah.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman34:07

      ... that, like, we're connected because we no longer live in small, small village and tribe type formats-

   4. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:11

      Yeah.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman34:11

      ... most of us don't, anyway-

   6. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:13

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman34:14

      ... that if we plop down onto the couch and kind of, like, assume the classic C, C-shaped position of, uh-

   8. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:20

      (laughs)

   9. AHAndrew Huberman34:20

      ... somebody who's about to go on their phone and, and you can scroll and see faces-

   10. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:24

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman34:24

       ... you talked about that as a bit of, like, an artificial sweetener giving the illusion of some sort of nourishment, and then, you know, you see some stuff. You respond to stuff. You can see someone kind of dunk on somebody-

   12. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:34

       Mm-hmm.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman34:34

       ... maybe hear a joke, maybe make a joke and then go into your DMs and, like, read a few, check a few, and then, um, you basically got no real social connection.

   14. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:43

       Correct.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman34:44

       Um, you didn't have to move to do it, um, and in a lot of ways, this has parallels to the ease of, um, highly processed foods or something like that.

   16. LSDr. Laurie Santos34:54

       Yeah, yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman34:54

       And I think we're starting to understand this a bit through Jonathan Haidt's work and other people's work, uh, including your own, but I don't know that it's anything but really dangerous and bad. I don't want to sound-

   18. LSDr. Laurie Santos35:09

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman35:09

       ... alarmist, but I, I am really concerned that, um, certainly for the younger generation, but that if we don't have an intrinsic drive to go do something-

   20. LSDr. Laurie Santos35:20

       We stop doing it.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman35:20

       ... we stop doing it, and then the brain is pretty plastic throughout the entire life, especially for these low grade m- m- like, many times repeated behaviors. I mean, we could-

   22. LSDr. Laurie Santos35:30

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman35:30

       ... just slowly the, you know, it's like a dri- there's drift, and then we wonder why we don't feel so good.

   24. LSDr. Laurie Santos35:39

       Yeah. I mean, you know how the dopamine system works, right? Like, it has these mechanisms to crave stuff that's quick, quick hits, right? Our instant, you know, when we go on Reddit or go on Instagram and scroll through a feed, we're getting these kind of quick hits. Another thing that is rewarding is new information. You know, you're at Stanford College, Emile Zaki's done these lovely neuroscience studies that just finding out some interesting social information feels rewarding, and kind of for the first time, we've been able to separate the reward value that comes from interacting with live human people and faces and social rewarding information.... that comes at us quickly at this dopamine hit that we crave a lot, but we don't have the craving mechanisms for the in-real-life connection. And yeah, I think that's causing a lot of problems, and it means we're kind of building more tools to do just that. Uh, I had the musician, David Byrne, on, on my podcast, um, and-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman36:29

       Talking Heads, David Byrne?

   26. LSDr. Laurie Santos36:30

       Talking Heads, David Byrne-

   27. AHAndrew Huberman36:31

       Cool.

   28. LSDr. Laurie Santos36:31

       ... who cares a lot about these issues. He wrote this really cool article in, um, called Eliminating The Human, where he made the claim that pretty much every technological invention of the last 20 years has been, "You know, dealing with actual people is kind of friction-y, so let's just get rid of them." Right? We'll, you know, have Uber or Lyft or a car company where I don't have to talk to the driver. I just plug in to the phone. We don't have to have a conversation, we go away. Right? We have music and streaming mechanisms. I don't know, you're, and y- you're, Andrew, you're like a- my age, so you probably remember that you used to have to go into a record store to flip through CDs or tapes even, if you're old, really old school, to figure out music. And often when you do that, you'd run into humans or talk to the cashier guy, or somebody would see you flicking through like, "Oh, you like Talking Heads? I like Talking Heads." Now, we just go to an algorithm, right? From food delivery apps to kind of education, right? I have a online course where students don't have to sit in a real classroom with other students. They could watch it directly. So many of our technological innovations are assuming that what we wanna get rid of is the friction part. That's what we're kind of motivated to get rid of. But ultimately, we're getting rid of, like, the human in these interactions, and our primate brains are left, you know, with the, like, little NutraSweet dribbles of connection when what we really need is something in real life and in real time.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman37:46

       It's interesting because I think just but 10, 15 years ago, our knowledge of most all humans was based on in-real-life experience except for, I guess, famous humans, and then it was not in real life. Now, most people's knowledge about most humans is based on not-in-real-life interactions.

   30. LSDr. Laurie Santos38:07

       Yeah.
9. 39:22 – 42:16

   Loneliness, Youth, Technology

   1. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:22

   2. AHAndrew Huberman39:22

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:22

      I mean, the diabolical part is it's having a real consequence for our happiness. It's certainly having a real consequence for loneliness. You look at rates of loneliness in young people who've grown up with these technologies, and you see things like, you know, young people today report being lonely at rates of, like, 70, 75%. Right? More people are lonely, extremely lonely than not right now.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman39:41

      How do we rate loneliness? I'm not d-

   5. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:43

      Yeah.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman39:43

      I'm not dismissing what they're saying, but since they grew up that way, I'm n- this is sound very-

   7. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:47

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman39:47

      ... this r- uh, sounds very cross-generational-

   9. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:49

      I mean, I mean, you're-

   10. AHAndrew Huberman39:49

       ... judging, but, like, how do they know they're lonely?

   11. LSDr. Laurie Santos39:51

       I mean, your point is well taken, right? If anything, they grow up lonely, so if they're self-reporting being lonely now, it might be even worse than ... It might be kind of getting worse over time. Yeah, and so, I mean, this is all self-report data, right? So people, you know, on a scale of one to ten, how lonely are you feeling? But the fact that 75% of people are saying, "Yeah, I feel extremely lonely," that's sad. I mean-

   12. AHAndrew Huberman40:10

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LSDr. Laurie Santos40:11

       ... v- our primate ancestors, if they could look at us, would be like, "What have you done with your-"

   14. AHAndrew Huberman40:14

       Yeah.

   15. LSDr. Laurie Santos40:14

       "... these wonderful social brains?" Right? Like ... (laughs)

   16. AHAndrew Huberman40:15

       They were probably like, "I want to go hide behind that rock for a little bit, get a little bit of space." Uh, I'll never forget years ago when I, uh, uh ... There was this time when I worked with ferrets. I don't miss it, and, and, uh, they would have these huge litters, and there would ... They had these in these, um, pens. They ... The, um, the, the mom could climb up and get up on top there, and so she'd have these huge litters, and she'd kick the litter off at some point.

   17. LSDr. Laurie Santos40:36

       (laughs)

   18. AHAndrew Huberman40:36

       She'd go up there and sleep, and, um, and you'd go in there to take, to take out the moms, and, um, and, uh, they did n- ... That was the only time when they didn't want to be bothered, right? Because they-

   19. LSDr. Laurie Santos40:47

       (laughs) Yeah.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman40:47

       They loved, they loved to be held and things like that, but they did not want to be bothered because they just needed some peace 'cause they had like 16 ferret kits.

   21. LSDr. Laurie Santos40:54

       Yeah. And, and-

   22. AHAndrew Huberman40:55

       You know? Uh, so I think that nowadays, right, if, if there's a- if there's a lot of loneliness, um, and people that are growing up in these, uh, electronic formats f- report feeling lonely, and I believe them, then what it speaks to is a yearning. And to me, a yearning is a neurological drive, the same way that a room that's too warm, you wanna get to a cooler space.

   23. LSDr. Laurie Santos41:16

       Yeah.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman41:16

       If it's too cold, you wanna get to heat. So the loneliness speaks to an underlying yearning for something that they're not getting. I'm just stating the obvious. But i- it says that we're ... Or they are doing something that's inherently against the grain of their healthy neurology.

   25. LSDr. Laurie Santos41:32

       The problem is, I think y- ... What loneliness is a recognition of is you know you kinda don't like this state, but I'm not sure that loneliness is causing people to seek out more social connection. Or if it is, you're seeking out the thing that is the easiest, fastest social connection you can get, which-

   26. AHAndrew Huberman41:48

       So it's just like food, where-

   27. LSDr. Laurie Santos41:49

       Which we talk about as the NutraSweet, yeah.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman41:50

       ... we're not ... You're not craving vegetables because they were in a presumably in abundance at one time-

   29. LSDr. Laurie Santos41:55

       Yeah.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman41:55

       ... in our evolutionary history as opposed to meat or sweets or things like that.
10. 42:16 – 47:01

    Cravings, Sustainable Actions, Dopamine

    1. LSDr. Laurie Santos42:16

    2. AHAndrew Huberman42:16

       So w- what is the, the term, if there is one, um, or could you come up with one, I don't wanna put you on the spot, for a, um, a fundamental, um, desire that's healthy for us that we are not driven to pursue?... a, a resolution to. Like, like, like for everything else-

    3. LSDr. Laurie Santos42:36

       Yeah, yeah.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman42:36

       ... you know, there's like the hypothalamic circuits for the desire to mate, to seek warmth when it's cold, cold when it's, uh, you know, when it's too warm. Um, you know, we know what hunger is, right?

    5. LSDr. Laurie Santos42:46

       Right, right.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman42:46

       Um, but there must be something about the... I don't wanna get too technical here for, for those that are, are tracking this what, or, or not tracking this. What I'm trying to say is, you know, for so many of the, um, reward-punishment pathways in the human brain, it's you, you're trying to avoid-

    7. LSDr. Laurie Santos43:01

       Yeah.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman43:01

       ... the feelings of pain-

    9. LSDr. Laurie Santos43:02

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman43:02

        ... and move towards a feeling of either neutrality or pleasure.

    11. LSDr. Laurie Santos43:05

        Yep.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman43:05

        But here, you're talking about being in a, in a sort of place of low-level pain, being able to meet that pain with a truly low-level pleasure that then it doesn't mask the pain, but it, it fills the vessel just enough that then you drive yourself into a place of essentially more pain.

    13. LSDr. Laurie Santos43:21

        But I think that this is the kinda thing that happens when you have easy outs for all these cravings, right? I mean, take processed food, right? You know, you probably have a tr- a craving for certain nutritional requirements, right? You wanna get vitamins or healthy stuff, but that stuff's easy. It's frictionless, right? You know, I run to McDonald's and that's much faster than cooking up a really healthy vegetable-filled meal. I think the same thing happens with social connection, right? Like, you're a lonely person at your house sitting on the couch. You have this negative bodily state of you feel lonely. Maybe it kinda manifests as a craving, but what's the fastest thing for you to do? I'm gonna scroll through my friends' Instagram feeds, um, or I'm gonna get a kinda little mini hit of social connection that's not as nutritious. Honestly, I mean, not to dis our respective fields, but I actually think this is one reason that people love podcasts so much, right? It's a frictionless way to feel like you're part of this interesting conversation. But ultimately, it doesn't work as well as picking up the phone and calling a friend, connecting with someone in real life. I think we have too many outlets for things that kinda feel socially but don't give us social nutrition.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman44:21

        Mm-hmm.

    15. LSDr. Laurie Santos44:21

        And it's true. I mean, we should be honest, like really connecting with actual people in real life takes more friction than pulling out your phone and scrolling through your Instagram feed. It just does... Instagram feed doesn't work as well ultimately when it comes to what's really gonna end up being rewarding. And I think this is true for just like a lot of the way the reward system works. The things that we have craving for, that we seek out, that like, we have really strong mechanisms to go after, sometimes those things don't work to get us towards real likability. Um, you know, drugs of addiction are a real obvious answer to this, right? You know, if you, uh, have a, a kind of heroin problem, you're gonna really seek out that drug, but ultimately, it's not bringing you towards something. I mean, it will f- maybe feel good in the moment, but it's, you know... I know you're not NutraSweeti, but it's not getting you towards something that evolutionarily would be really awesome for your survival and reproductive success.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman45:07

        I try my best not to speak in tweets, which I guess they now call X posts, but, um, I've been saying a lot and I'll say it again now that I think one, everyone should beware any dopamine that is not preceded by effort in order-

    17. LSDr. Laurie Santos45:23

        Yeah.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman45:23

        ... to achieve it. Uh, in other words, any fast, high inflection of dopamine that does not require effort to achieve it is gonna put you in a trough and on a, you know, a metaphorical lever-pressing cycle that will drive your trough deeper and deeper over time.

    19. LSDr. Laurie Santos45:40

        Mm-hmm.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman45:40

        And that peak will just never go as high as it did or could again unless you take a period of abstinence from that behavior or substance and then introduce effort prior to a adaptive behavior to get the dopamine. The other thing is I've, um, fo- I like to think of addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure.

    21. LSDr. Laurie Santos46:04

        Mm-hmm.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman46:05

        Um, and I don't speak to enlightenment, but happiness or enlightenment seems like a progressive, um, broadening of the things that bring you pleasure. And I'm glad we're talking about reward circuitry because we know how to reset that reward circuitry, and it doesn't require these dopamine fasts, although that's one approach and I, that makes sense why people do it, but I think this notion of having to spend effort to engage in what we know is a hardwired source of reward, not just dopamine but other neurochemicals as well-

    23. LSDr. Laurie Santos46:31

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman46:31

        ... of course in the form of social connection. So this higher friction thing of having to call somebody or drive someplace or deal with traffic-

    25. LSDr. Laurie Santos46:40

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman46:40

        ... deal with traffic on the way home.

    27. LSDr. Laurie Santos46:42

        Yeah.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman46:43

        Well worth it if it was a good social interaction, but maybe it was a meh social interaction-

    29. LSDr. Laurie Santos46:47

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman46:47

        ... in which case you're like, "Oh, that was, that was a lot of driving today. I've now all this other stuff to do."
11. 47:01 – 57:22

    Social Connection & Predictions; Introverts & Extroverts

    1. AHAndrew Huberman47:01

       you know, I think, um, what you're bringing up is really important. How, how do we, um, introduce these behaviors? I'm not asking you to put it into a standardized protocol too much, but since we started with this issue of behaviors being a path to more happiness and social connection being the, uh, in real life social connection or by phone in real time, as you said, being one of the main paths to behavioral happiness, behaviorally derived happiness, excuse me, then what are the data on sort of the frequency of this? Does it vary for introverts versus extro- extroverts? This question's getting very long, but maybe we could define introverts and extroverts and then if you would, if you could give us some sense of, you know, how often should people seek out an in real life interaction?

    2. LSDr. Laurie Santos47:43

       Yeah. Probably way more than you think you should, right? We have good data on what people predict, which is that people predict social interaction is just not gonna be that fun. Um, it's not gonna be worth it, right? This seems to be a spot where our predictions about how good something's gonna be don't necessarily match how good it ultimately will gonna be, right? And I, I put it in the context of like other... The, the reverse of something like processed food where I think for a lot of people you predict this is gonna be amazing and you taste it you're like, "Now I feel kinda gross." And just like-

    3. AHAndrew Huberman48:09

       Processed food.

    4. LSDr. Laurie Santos48:10

       Processed food, right.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman48:11

       Yeah.

    6. LSDr. Laurie Santos48:11

       That's a case where your prediction is like, "Ooh, this is gonna be awesome," but your actual likability is like, "Uh, I feel kinda yucky." With social connection, I think we predict...... be all right, but maybe not that good. But when we get it, we feel really great. Um, the, the, the University of Chicago psychologist Nick Epley has this term he uses, undersociality, where he thinks we just kind of don't get the right reward benefit of social connection. Uh, uh, writ large, right? He talks about examples of, you know, expressing gratitude to people, giving somebody a compliment, even things like asking for help, right? All these domains where we can kind of connect with another person, we sort of is like, "Yeah, you may be net good if I was rating it on some scale." But it winds up being way better than we predict in all these contexts. Um, he does these studies where he has people, you know, predict how good something will be. You know, giving a gift to somebody brings... He's in Chicago, right? So they, he's like, "Here's a hot chocolate. How, how good will it feel to, like, you know, give that guy over there, a stranger, the hot chocolate?" And people say, "You know, I don't know, 3 out of 10." Then they do it, and then they feel, "Oh, it was more like a 6 out of 10. It was much more rewarding for me, the giver, than I thought." Same thing with compliments, expressing gratitude, calling a friend you haven't talked to in a long time, reaching out to somebody that you care about but you haven't connected with. All these spots are ones where our predictions are off. It's not the valence that's off. We know it'll be good, but we just don't realize how good. And his argument is that if we don't realize how good, then we never seek it out. So it's kind of the opposite of what you might think of as the processed food problem, where our prediction is like, "Oh my God, that cupcake's gonna be so good." We have all these mechanisms that are like, "Go get it, go get it." But then when we actually get it, we're like, "That wasn't as good as we thought." I think that the problem is that we have all these things that work, like the processed food, that interfere with social connection. Going on the Reddit feed, you know, plopping down and watching Netflix, just kind of being by yourself, right? There's all these alternative behaviors that we're predicting are gonna feel nice, but then we get there, they feel kinda yucky. They just, um... Yeah, this is a problem in the happiness space, where, you know, I know you talk a lot about the reward system. But the happiness space is one where the rewa- the cravings we have, the rewards we seek out, the predictions we're making about what feels good, we're often just really wrong with them. You know, on my podcast, we talk a lot about, like, our mind lies to us when it comes to our happiness, you know. We go for more money, we go for accolades, you know, we go for the quick dopamine hits without any work. But really, it's more like social connection. It's all these things that we kind of don't expect are gonna feel good, and so... I actually don't know what that means evolutionarily. Like, my theory is like, you didn't need to build in craving mechanisms, 'cause the things that really matter for our happiness we just kind of got for free in the evolutionary environment. But it means it's hard to go after them. You mentioned introverts and extroverts, and just to get back to your longer question, this is something that's been studied in them. So, so introverts versus extroverts is typically thought of as a personality distinction, often thought of as sort of something that's built in, although there's lots of evidence that over time, you can sort of change these things around. You could become a little bit more extroverted if you're introverted. Um, but introverts tend to value deeper, close conversations, one-on-one kinds of things, and a lot of alone time. They get a lot of benefit from alone time. Whereas extroverts tend to be more energized by being around other people, especially bigger crowds of people. Um, and so introverts tend to be a little bit more deliberate, a little bit more thoughtful, a little bit more, kinda wanna have my own personal chill time. Whereas extroverts tend to like people. And so you might think that everything I've just said applies to extroverts but not to introverts. Folks have gone out and tested this, and what they find is there is a big difference between introverts and extroverts. But it's in that prediction error. You know, extroverts predict, "Ah, social connection, be all right, not that great." Introverts predict, "It's gonna be terrible. (laughs) It's gonna be awkward. I'm gonna hate it." But when you actually force people, as in these studies, where you say, "Hey, $10 Starbucks gift card, you gotta talk to somebody," when you force the introverts to be social, what they wind up doing is self-reporting, you know, a level of happiness that's, like, better than they expected. So the problem seems to be that introverts have a prediction error. I'm gonna say this. You're gonna, we're, I promise you, 'cause I've said this on my podcast, tons of hate mail. Lots of comments will be like-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman52:05

       Or-

    8. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:05

       ... "Not me, not this introvert

    9. AHAndrew Huberman52:06

       Well, maybe they don't, they don't quite understand, so I wanna make sure that, um, it's crystal clear for people. Introverts anticipate a less than great or even eh, um, interaction, maybe even a negative interaction.

    10. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:18

        It's usually negative. Usually negative.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman52:19

        That mean, they anticipate a negative interaction. Um, you... So it's like saying, "We're gonna go to a restaurant, and the food here, like, is, is-"

    12. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:26

        It's gonna be terrible. Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman52:27

        "... it sucks." They go in, they have a decent to maybe a great interaction. So introverts are, are, um, positioned to derive more s- more pleasure from social interactions-

    14. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:39

        Than they expected.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman52:39

        ... than ex- extroverts who enter social situations thinking it's going to be great. They're, their anticipation-

    16. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:44

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman52:44

        ... is high, and therefore, they require a much bigger dopamine inflection-

    18. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:48

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman52:48

        ... um, in order to come away from that interaction saying it was great.

    20. LSDr. Laurie Santos52:51

        Although the one kind of update to the framework that you just presented that I'd add is that you said, you know, well, if you don't, you go to the restaurant, you predict it's gonna be not that good, and you go, and you're like, "Oh, it was all right." I think the problem with introverts is they so predict that social connection's gonna be awkward that they don't engage in it. And now this becomes a learning cycle, right? You predicted it was gonna be crappy. You never got any evidence, "Oh, maybe I was wrong," and so you keep doing that over time. And so I think that this can lead to cycles of loneliness in introverts. Um, and there are these lovely accounts of, like, introverts who try to become a little bit more extroverted. Uh, this lovely woman, Jessica Pan, on the show has this book called Sorry I'm Late, I Didn't Want to Come, uh, colon-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman53:31

        I, I love that title.

    22. LSDr. Laurie Santos53:31

        Colon-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman53:32

        I'm actually pretty social, but I'm late to everything-

    24. LSDr. Laurie Santos53:34

        Yeah. So like-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman53:34

        ... 'cause I'm an academic.

    26. LSDr. Laurie Santos53:35

        Yeah. Uh-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman53:35

        Noon means noon 10-

    28. LSDr. Laurie Santos53:36

        (laughs)

    29. AHAndrew Huberman53:36

        ... which means starting at 12:15, which means at 1:15 when this, when the lecture was supposed to end at 1:00-

    30. LSDr. Laurie Santos53:42

        (laughs)
12. 57:22 – 1:00:41

    Sponsors: Function & LMNT

    1. LSDr. Laurie Santos57:22

    2. AHAndrew Huberman57:22

       I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors, Function. I recently became a Function member after searching for the most comprehensive approach to lab testing. While I've long been a fan of blood testing, I really wanted to find a more in-depth program for analyzing blood, urine, and saliva to get a full picture of my heart health, my hormone status, my immune system regulation, my metabolic function, my vitamin and mineral status, and other critical areas of my overall health and vitality. Function not only provides testing of over 100 biomarkers key to physical and mental health, but it also analyzes these results and provides insights from top doctors on your results. For example, in one of my first tests with Function, I learned that I had too high levels of mercury in my blood. This was totally surprising to me. I had no idea prior to taking the test. Function not only helped me detect this, but offered medical doctor informed insights on how to best reduce those mercury levels, which included limiting my tuna consumption, because I had been eating a lot of tuna, while also making an effort to eat more leafy greens and supplementing with NAC, N-acetylcysteine, both of which can support glutathione production and detoxification, and worked to reduce my mercury levels. Comprehensive lab testing like this is so important for health, and while I've been doing it for years, I've always found it to be overly complicated and expensive. I've been so impressed by Function, both at the level of ease of use, that is getting the test done, as well as how comprehensive and how actionable the tests are, that I recently joined their advisory board, and I'm thrilled that they're sponsoring the podcast. If you'd like to try Function, go to functionhealth.com/huberman. Function currently has a wait list of over 250,000 people, but they're offering early access to Huberman Lab listeners. Again, that's functionhealth.com/huberman to get early access to Function. Today's episode is also brought to us by LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need, but nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all the cells in your body, especially your neurons, or your nerve cells. Drinking LMNT dissolved in water makes it extremely easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of hydration and electrolytes, I dissolve one packet of LMNT in about 16 to 32 ounces of water when I wake up in the morning, and I drink that basically first thing in the morning. I also drink LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and therefore losing a lot of water and electrolytes. They have a bunch of different great tasting flavors of LMNT. They have watermelon, citrus, et cetera. Frankly, I love them all. And now that we're in the winter months in the Northern Hemisphere, LMNT has their chocolate medley flavors back in stock. I really like the chocolate flavors, especially the chocolate mint when it's heated up. So you put it in hot water and that's a great way to replenish electrolytes and hydrate, especially when it's cold and dry outside, when hydration is especially critical. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with the purchase of any LMNT drink mix. Again, that's drinkelement.com/huberman to claim a free sample

13. 1:00:41 – 1:07:53

    Social Connection & Frequency; Tools: Fun; “Presence” & Technology

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:41

       pack. So you're talking about engaging in social connection in real time and perhaps even in- in real life.

    2. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:00:48

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:48

       Um, yes, in real life as well, with some effort to engage in it, which might just be built into modern living now, as one of the primary drivers for behavioral approaches to improve what we're calling happiness.... so could we say, and I know we don't wanna set up strict protocols around this, you know, make the effort to schedule in real time over the phone or Zoom or in real life interaction with somebody maybe once a week?

    4. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:01:20

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:20

       Minimum?

    6. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:01:21

       I think more than you're doing now. If you're not feeling so happy, add some in. And, and again, as you mentioned before, these are all kind of trade-offs, right? You don't wanna add so much in that now you're not sleeping or exercising or all that other stuff, but, like, one more interaction than you're getting now and check how it feels over time.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:37

       Given how busy people are, and given that we've established that some effort that's required to engage socially is going to be beneficial-

    8. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:01:46

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:46

       ... toward the reward and all this, and we're not trying to hack the dopamine system here folks. We're just trying to figure out what is going to be rewarding given that everyone has constraints on their time and everyone seems to have a device in their pocket that allows them to get the, um, the illusion of nourishment that leads to either same levels or less happiness overall. Um, you know, what's going to be most effective? And it seems to me, I was thinking about this during one of your answers, I was paying attention, but I was thinking about this, that my memory of prior social interactions as really great is a useful tool.

    10. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:02:21

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:22

        So for instance, one of my best memories of time with my girlfriend was driving back from her grandmother's house with the dog in the car, and we had no phone reception so we couldn't be interrupted by our devices.

    12. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:02:35

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:35

        She actually had some work to do so she was doing some work on her computer at one point. She may have taken a nap at one point, and the dog kept jumping back and forth between our laps. And that to me was like one of the best days ever.

    14. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:02:48

        Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:02:49

        Just ever. It was just an awesome day. Um, that memory occurred to me now, and I think could serve me well in thinking, okay, so like going on a road trip with somebody, but it was the, it was the lack of, um, kind of structure around it. It was just imposed on us. We had a drive to complete.

    16. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:06

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:06

        There was a dog in the car, there was some work to do. There was no phone reception. And of, you know, we've had many great interactions, but that would be the one that I'd highlight as like that was an awesome interaction for whatever reason.

    18. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:19

        Yeah. Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:20

        And so can one use memories of great social interaction as kind of a, um, as a compass for how to construct these, um, these social plans?

    20. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:30

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:30

        Um, because I think it can be a little bit, um, mystifying to people like, "Oh, how do I get this thing called happiness-"

    22. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:36

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:36

        "... by meeting up with a friend?" We enjoy hiking or something like that, but maybe that's not accessible and I don't want people to underthink or overthink it.

    24. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:43

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:43

        But to me it seems like, okay, like road trips, everyday things, we needed to go up there. There was some things to tend to. So like tending to life things-

    26. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:52

        Yeah. (laughs)

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:52

        ... life requirements together.

    28. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:03:53

        Yeah, I mean if you wanna ask yourself a question that can highlight good memories, I recommend the one that, uh, the journalist Catherine Price uses a lot. She does a lot of studies on fun. Ask yourself the question, what were three times that you just had the most fun? The last three times you would describe as, "Oh my God, that was the most fun." Right? And this is a helpful question because usually the answer, my guess is, at least two out of three, probably all three will have someone else in it. Like, there'll be... You'll have like another person involved or a dog sometimes some other-

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:21

        Oh, yeah.

    30. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:04:21

        ... agentive being, right?
14. 1:07:53 – 1:15:11

    Technology & Negative Effects; Tool: Senses & Grounding; Podcasts

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:53

    2. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:07:53

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:53

       Right?

    4. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:07:53

       I mean, the, the, when you loo- when you dive deep into the effects of having your phone around you, they're striking, es- especially in getting back to social connection, especially social connection. Liz Dunn has this paper where she, um, puts two people in a room, just kind of a waiting room together, and you either have your phone or you don't. You're, you're not allowed to look at it. It's just present. And she finds that there's 30% less smiling at the other people in the waiting room when your phones are present, 30% less. Um, I mean, I actually think of this when I think of the, you know, the loneliness crisis. You know, I walk, uh, I was a, a head of college on campus, which as a faculty member at Yale meant that I lived on campus with students. And you'd walk through the courtyard, and everybody's walking through the courtyard, but they're not looking at you. They're looking down at their phone, right? Um, just these, like, subtle interactions that we're missing because our phone is stealing us. That's the social case, but I think there's a real performance case too, right? If you wanna pay attention and learn something, if part of your brain is inhibiting that urge to look at all the interesting stuff on your phone, which we don't notice, um, then it's gonna be affecting your performance. Has good benefits too. There's this lovely, um, finding that people are buying less gum and less candy in checkout aisles now. Um, the, like, the national worldwide sale of gum has gone down, and it's gone down on the same slope as the iPhones have gone up. So as the number of iPhones in pockets goes up, sales of gum in checkout lines has gone down, and you can see why that is.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:13

       They're not looking around as much.

    6. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:09:14

       Nobody's looking (laughs) ... You're not looking like, "Ooh, that," you know, like, "Doublemint looks really good." You're staring at your phone and looking at your Instagram feed.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:19

       Soon the ads are gonna pop up on, uh-

    8. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:09:22

       (laughs)

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:22

       They'll know you're in the aisle 'cause they can know your proximity-

    10. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:09:24

        That's true.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:24

        ... to a lot of devices.

    12. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:09:25

        That's true, yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:26

        I have a friend who's a very accomplished songwriter and musician, um, and someone does his Instagram and other social media for him. He, he's not on there. And we met for dinner the other day, uh, with a couple other people, and I got there and I started telling him about something I had seen, uh, online. And he said, um, "I won't use..." I usually will do his voice, but I won't do his voice 'cause I don't wanna give it away. Uh, people might know who he is. Um, but he said, "I don't wanna talk about what's on-"

    14. LSDr. Laurie Santos1:09:56

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:57

        "... Instagram. In fact, I don't wanna talk on, about what's on the internet. Let's just have dinner." And I was, and at first I was kind of like-

Episode duration: 3:08:05