How to Use Curiosity & Focus to Create a Joyful & Meaningful Life | Dr. Bernardo Huberman

Andrew Huberman 0:00 Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. (instrumental music plays) I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Dr. Bernardo Huberman. Dr. Bernardo Huberman is the vice president of next-gen systems at CableLabs. Prior to that, he was the director of the Social Computing Laboratory at Hewlett-Packard. And he is, as his name suggests, my father. Today we discuss various topics in science including relativity theory, chaos theory, and quantum computing. But I'd like to assure you that even if you have zero background in physics, computer science or mathematics, that entire discussion will be clear to you as to what those things are and even some of how they work. During today's discussion we also talk about a life of science, that is, what it is to spend one's life in curiosity, in trying to understand the universe around us and how to understand ourselves. Indeed today we also talk about neuroscience, how the brain works, and the different sorts of questions that I do believe everybody asks, whether you're a scientist or not. Questions like: Where do we come from? Is there a God? What is our use or purpose in the universe? And how is it that we can ponder these super high-level abstract questions about how we got here and what our purpose is and how things work at the quantum level, tiny, tiny bits of things that we can't even see, and at the same time to lead an everyday life that is meaningful and joyful? We talk about this in the context of understanding oneself, in relation to others, family, community, including scientific community and what it is like to come from a different country, my father immigrated from South America, what it was like to do science in the United States then and now, cultural differences, and of course we touch on some of our relationship as well. How could we not? I must say for me it was an immense pleasure and privilege to have this conversation, not just because Dr. Huberman is my father, but because I believe the knowledge and indeed some of the wisdom that he shares will be useful to everybody about what it is to carve one's own unique trajectory in terms of career and life, and at the same time how to savor the simple everyday things that make life so worth living.

Andrew Huberman 2:13 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 Helix Sleep. Helix Sleep makes mattresses and pillows that are customized to your unique sleep needs. Now I've spoken many times before on this and other podcasts about the fact that getting a great night's sleep is the foundation of mental health, physical health, and performance. Now the mattress you sleep on makes a huge difference in the quality of sleep that you get each night. How soft that mattress is or how firm it is, how breathable it is all play into your comfort and need to be tailored to your unique sleep needs. So if you go to the Helix website, you can take a brief two-minute quiz that asks you questions such as: Do you sleep on your back, your side, or your stomach? Do you tend to run hot or cold during the night? Things of that sort. Maybe you know the answers to those questions, maybe you don't. Either way, Helix will match you to the ideal mattress for you. For me, that turned out to be the Dusk mattress, D-U-S-K. I started sleeping on a Dusk mattress about three and a half years ago and it's been far and away the best sleep that I've ever had, so much so that when I travel to hotels and Airbnbs I find I don't sleep as well. I can't wait to get back to my Dusk mattress. So if you'd like to try Helix, you can go to helixsleep.com/huberman. Take that two-minute sleep quiz, and Helix will match you to a mattress that's customized for your unique sleep needs. Right now Helix is giving up to 25% off all mattress orders. Again, that's helixsleep.com/huberman to get up to 25% off. Today's episode is also brought to us by BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers professional therapy with a licensed therapist carried out entirely online. Now I've been doing weekly therapy for well over 30 years. Initially I didn't have a choice; it was a condition of being allowed to stay in high school. But pretty soon I realized that therapy is an extremely important component to overall health. In fact, I consider doing regular therapy just as important as getting regular exercise. Now there are essentially three things that great therapy provides. First, it provides a good rapport with somebody that you can really trust and talk to about any and all issues that concern you. Second of all, great therapy provides support in the form of emotional support, but also directed guidance, the dos and the not-to-dos. And third, expert therapy can help you arrive at useful insights that you would not have arrived at otherwise, insights that allow you to do better, not just in your emotional life and your relationship life, but also the relationship to yourself and your professional life and all sorts of career goals. With BetterHelp they make it very easy to find an expert therapist with whom you can really resonate with and provide you with these three benefits that I described. Also because BetterHelp is carried out entirely online, it's very time efficient and easy to fit into a busy schedule. So, if you'd like to try BetterHelp, go to betterhelp.com/huberman to get 10% off your first month. Again, that's betterhelp.com/huberman. And now for my discussion with Dr. Bernardo Huberman.

Andrew Huberman 5:08 Dr. Bernardo Huberman, welcome.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:11 Thank you, Andrew.

Andrew Huberman 5:12 And also great to see you, Dad.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:14 Same here.

Andrew Huberman 5:15 I guess no premonition would have foreseen this one.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:18 No.

Andrew Huberman 5:18 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:18 Absolutely not.

Andrew Huberman 5:21 And uh, people might notice today I'm drinking out of a mate gourd. Uh, in part in honor of, uh, my father's father who drank out of his loose leaf mate every morning, and my first sip of mate was taken on a, sitting in his lap when I was maybe four years old.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:35 Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 5:36 In my Spider-Man pajamas. In any event, let's talk about science. You're born in Argentina.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:44 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 5:45 As I recall, because once we had a conversation about it, you had a teacher, maybe it was in high school, who turned you on to physics which became your field of choice.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 5:56 Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 5:56 But prior to that...... were you interested in different subjects? I, I don't recall if you had an avid interest in academics or you just did it because you were supposed to, prior to that teacher. Then we'll talk about him.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 6:08 Yes, yes. I, I was always very interested in ideas and so on, and I... Science at that time was a bit vague, but I, I read a lot of philosophy. I was... I didn't understand much of what I read, but nevertheless I kept reading it. I was interested in psychology. Um, I was an avid reader. As a matter of fact, I embarrassed my father, or actually made him disappointed when for a birthday, I think I was 14 years old, I asked him to buy me the 12 volumes of Freud's writings.

Andrew Huberman 6:36 Really?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 6:36 And... Yeah, and he said, "What for?" So, uh... But I was very impressed with it. I've... Of course, I couldn't even understand half of what th- these books had in it, uh, in them. So, I was very interested in, in many things. And I must say to you that, uh, my interest in science, in particular physics, doesn't come from the standard thing that you see here in the United States mostly. Namely, I was not a whiz kid in math. Um, you know, I was not one of these people that can really do things very, very quickly and so on. But I was interested because I thought that physics was g- was gonna complement my, uh, attempt at understanding how the whole universe is put together. The philosophers were saying all sorts of things. I went to a very special school, uh, that I learned six years of Latin and so on, and I had to read things like Kant and, and, um, Cosmogonos and cosmogonies and so on that really didn't mean much to me. But suddenly, I started discovering that physics might be interesting, and I had a cousin, Hector, who was a physicist, a particle physicist already. I mean, he was living at that time in France. And so there was a little bit of that influence. But my, my interest was, uh, in, in things that had to do with fairly abstract ideas. Uh, I cannot believe that at one point or the other I was very good in, um, in geometry class, being able to prove theorems. I mean, the, the teacher would just say, "Let's prove this," and I was somehow able to reason through and come to, you know, some proofs. Um, so I, I think that I, I was very interested in ideas and, and not necessarily in the very concrete aspects of science at that time.

Andrew Huberman 8:06 Can I ask you a question about early schooling?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 8:08 So, if I remember correctly, you were born naturally left-handed.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:13 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 8:13 They forced you to learn wr-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:15 Correct.

Andrew Huberman 8:15 ... to write with your right hand.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:17 Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 8:17 You went to a very strict schools.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:19 Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 8:19 Like, like military levels of strictness.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:22 Almost, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 8:23 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:23 Uh, this is a very interesting type of education. They have it in France. It's called a lycee in France. And this is a very special school in Argentina, was actually founded in the 1500s by the Jesuits, and, uh, my father went to that school, uh, and so he wanted me to go there, and my brother went there too. And in six years of a very strict education, mostly humanistic, I learned Greek and learned Latin. I learned immense amounts of history, which I loved. Um, and there were other courses, you know, French and so on. In French, we had to memorize incredibly long poems that we had to recite.

Andrew Huberman 8:56 Do you still remember some of them?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 8:57 Some of them, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 8:57 Because sometimes early memories are embedded so deeply that-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 9:00 Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 9:00 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 9:00 And my brother and I sometimes tell each other some of the pieces of these poems. Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 9:04 I'll just say something right now, uh, to foreshadow what will likely happen several times throughout today's discussion, which is anytime that my father, um, is in the presence of his brother, my uncle, Carlos, um, they start laughing about jokes that they've been telling over and over back and forth with one another, uh, since they were a young kid. So, just the mere mention of his brother will bring a, a bit of a smile and a chuckle to-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 9:28 Right.

Andrew Huberman 9:28 ... to both of our, our faces.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 9:29 Yes, yes. So, uh, so I'd learned a lot of French, and also my parents decided, my mother mostly, that I had to learn French and English, and I went to Alliance Francaise, where for five years I went there. I was essentially the only boy in the class, which was very nice (laughs) in a way. And, uh, in order to graduate, I essentially, you know, had to be fluent in French. But in the special school I went to, the discipline was very strict, very strict.

Andrew Huberman 9:52 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 9:53 Um, you know, we were supposed to do things you don't do in the United States. The moment the, the teacher walks in, everybody stands up, and if you're s- late in standing up, you're just kicked out of the classroom and things of that sort.

Andrew Huberman 10:04 Wow.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 10:04 Uh, but it was a lovely, uh, experience in many ways when I reflect on it, because it gave me a humanistic education that has been incredibly useful in my career. Most people don't realize that. I mean, I tend to think of things in a very broad context, and it's because of the education I had.

Andrew Huberman 10:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 10:21 Okay, so... And I loved history of Rome, and, uh, I'd learned to recite things in Latin. Uh, and so it was very, very... I enjoyed that very, very much. My brother didn't actually, and so...

Andrew Huberman 10:32 Well, you two are very different.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 10:33 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 10:33 I have great, great adoration for, for Carlos, but you two are very different. And along those lines, I was just about to ask, um, or mention, and some of, uh, our Argentine and, uh, South American listeners generally and perhaps even European listeners might be shocked and perhaps disappointed to learn that you're one of the few Argentines that I know who doesn't care much for the game of football, soccer.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 10:57 No.

Andrew Huberman 10:58 It doesn't seem to concern you much at all.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 10:59 No, no. Uh, the, the reasons for that are, are sort of interesting, I think. I've reflected on that because my own wife likes to watch a soccer game. I mean, she's Danish, she likes the European, uh, tournaments. I didn't... I never liked mob behavior. I never liked, uh, this whole, uh, passionate involvement in these things. I kno-... I don't know why. I, I was never under-... you know, able to understand it, to the point that I never went to a soccer game till the week before I left for the United States. My brother insisted that I had to go to a soccer game, and, uh, this is sort of embarrassing, but I... At one point or the other, someone... you know, there was a good goal and so I stood up and said, "This is great." And it turned out I was on the wrong side of the audience, and all the (laughs) ... People got very, almost violent with me, you know? So I... Yeah, soccer to me is something that I watch but I, I'm not passionate about.

Andrew Huberman 11:50 Right.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 11:50 Yeah, I, I never really felt that it was that interesting. Although I... You know, I was in a rowing team. I, uh, I learned boxing. I did a lot of sports. But I kno-... I don't like that much of spectator sports, like tennis. I played tennis since I was a teenager.

Andrew Huberman 12:05 I'm not a-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:05 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:05 ... spectator sport fan either.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:07 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:07 The other day someone asked me what my favorite sports team is, you'll like this, and I, um, I said, "The Harlem Globetrotters," because they have, they're undefeated.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:14 Yeah, yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman 12:14 They have the best record. And that was actually the one professional sports team game you took me to when I was a kid. We'd always go see-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:21 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 12:21 ... the Globetrotters.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:21 Yes, unbelievable.

Andrew Huberman 12:22 They're undefeated.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:23 Yes, unbelievable.

Andrew Huberman 12:24 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:24 Yes, yes. Uh, my father took me to see them too. They're fantastic. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:28 I love it.

Andrew Huberman 12:29 So, your father was not a scientist.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:30 No.

Andrew Huberman 12:30 Your brother is not a scientist. Um, and you were fated, according to them, to join the family business. But then you had a teacher who exposed you to physics.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 12:41 To physics and to the notion of being authentic in what you want. There were two parts to it. He was a very interesting and tormented man, I felt. Uh, but he was very interesting. He would come into the class, most of the students, you know, really didn't care about what he was saying. And so, I was fascinated, not only by what he was saying but his whole personality. But I need to say something here that is important. Uh, I also was rather irresponsible. You see, I, I grew up in a, in a family, a well-to-do family, but I never thought how I was going to make a living. So it was easy to be interested in science or anything because, you know, it's, it's what you do. Uh, it's, you're, you're, you know, you're interested in culture, you read books, uh, you do things. But my father used to say, "What are you gonna do once you graduate? You don't wanna start teaching in elementary schools or something of that sort." My brother used to say, "If he does physics, I'll have to support him," because (laughs) yeah, he still says that.

Andrew Huberman 13:33 So scientists were considered poor?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 13:35 Poor, yeah, yeah. They couldn't get a job. I mean, science in Argentina... Argentina has a big tradition in medical sciences, I think two or three Nobel Prizes and so on. But in physics, they produce some very good physicists. One of them lives in the United States. I mean, he's very, very famous, Maldacena. And I haven't met him, but I know that he's one of the top people in the, in the field. But I, I just got into this because I was interested, it sound- sounded, you know, uh, fascinating and abstract and the ideas were so powerful. And I think, and, uh, you know, I reflected a lot on this, when you're psychologically ado- an adolescent, because my parents made me jump two grades, so I was much younger than my classmates, and that created a lot of problems for me. I mean, at a time when, you know, you're developing and so on, all the boys were talking about girls and so on. I still (laughs) was really into understanding why the excitement and so on, you know, I was very young. But, um, it gave me a sense of order. You know, reading a book about physics and understanding that there are laws that tell you how things work gave me a tremendous sense of order and power. So, uh, you know, everything else was a little bit in flow, and then the family and my own relationships with friends and girlfriends or whatever. And going back to science, it was just this sense of... and I still remember those days. It was very, very, um, soothing in a way.

Andrew Huberman 14:52 So it's like a touchstone?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 14:54 Yes, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 14:54 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 14:55 And I used to play-

Andrew Huberman 14:55 And at what grade were you expo-... uh, this teacher was-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 14:58 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 14:58 Was this, like, middle school, high school?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 15:00 Yeah, no, yeah. High school, yeah. I was, uh, 13 or 14 years old, yeah, yeah, when I finally... I started listening to this and I said, "Wow, this is impressive." Um, you know, "It's powerful." Uh, there, there is, there are ways to know what's true and what's not true, you know? There are, you know, you, you just don't speculate on things. Um, so, but most of the stuff I didn't really understand. Uh, then I had this cousin of mine, Hector, who was already gone, but I would go to his parents' house and there were his books, all these incredible books on quantum mechanics, relativity. And I would just take them home, and I didn't really comprehend a lot of the math, but somehow it seemed impressive. Uh, it was like looking into a mechanism or something. Uh, so, and I used to take them to school and one of my teachers once said, you know, "You seem too interested in this, but you don't understand this, so you need to, you need to learn it." And th- he was the one who started pushing me into this. Um, on the other hand, my family was saying, "You should become a lawyer." Just, you know, my brother and father.

Andrew Huberman 15:58 And that never interested you?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 16:00 No. I- it's interesting because now I'm very interested in aspects of constitutional law and so on when I hear about arguments against, you know, the Supreme Court and so on. I became very interested in law and economics later on, I mean, just to read about it. But what my father was talking about at the dining room table was all about strategies of, you know, getting, uh, something done half an hour before the opposition so you win a case. I mean, I was totally uninterested (laughs) in that.

Andrew Huberman 16:25 I'm sensing a bit of a theme, which is that, um, social dynamics and what other people do, regardless of whether or not they like it or it earns them a particular living, um, didn't capture you. Like, the, the idea that people and their, uh, groups and their, their ways of thinking and behaving, while th- uh, they may not bother you, it doesn't... it didn't captivate you the way that, like, it sounds like physics e- you know, made you think that there's something kind of bigger, that there's something, um, more universal.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 16:56 Right.

Andrew Huberman 16:56 Which indeed physics is, right?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 16:57 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 16:57 It's not... (laughs) It is, uh-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 16:58 Yeah. And I, and I-

Andrew Huberman 16:59 It explains most everything.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 17:00 Yes. And I, I-

Andrew Huberman 17:01 Most everything.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 17:02 Yes. And I also think that I was a bit of a loner. Um, it was very hard to find people that, uh, you know, child- I mean, children or young people that thought like me. So eventually I became p- part of a group. We were four or five guys that used to get together on Saturdays and, you know, go to the movies and so on, and then afterwards discuss, you know, whatever we were interested in and so on. I was, I was only 16 years old, you know, and de- deciding what to do with my life. Of all four of us, we committed. There were... some of them came from incredibly wealthy families, two of them. We committed to really be true to ourselves and pursue what we liked. But I was the only one. The other two ended up running the business of their parents. And one (laughs) of them essentially, I don't know what he did. I, I saw him years later. I...

Andrew Huberman 17:45 Money becomes a, a pretty, a bright beacon for a lot of people.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 17:49 Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 17:50 Yeah. I'm grateful to you that you never pushed me to go in any particular direction.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 17:55 Right.

Andrew Huberman 17:56 You pushed me to go... not go in particular directions, but never with respect to academic choices.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 18:02 Right.

Andrew Huberman 18:02 And in fact, I don't recall you telling me or Lara that... by the way, folks, that's my sister's name, um, that we had to do...... anything except attend our classes and do our best. But I never felt pushed to go into science.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 18:17 No.

Andrew Huberman 18:18 No.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 18:18 Although you, you had a little bit of a curiosity about it.

Andrew Huberman 18:22 Animals.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 18:23 Animals. And I remember I was going through a period in which I started getting convinced that there was very little to do in physics and I wanted to change. And one day on a bike ride, uh, I think I was carrying you on the back of my bike, bicycle, you were young. You asked me, "What, what is the unsolved problem?" And I said, "I don't think it's in physics, but it's the brain." And you said, "Okay, I'll go into that," you said. I'll never forget that.

Andrew Huberman 18:44 Mm-hmm. Well, it's interesting, um, I'm fascinated by human memory, as you know, I know you are as well, and I recall that story as well. I recall it slightly differently, but we're really closely aligned. Which is, uh, I remember you used to walk me to school in the morning.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 18:56 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 18:57 Um, and you would drop me off at the cut through to the path behind, uh, Gunn High School.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 19:02 Right.

Andrew Huberman 19:02 Uh, because that's ... I would pick up Kristen Harnett across the street, and you told me it would be better if I picked her up by myself and walked her to the end of the street-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 19:10 Right.

Andrew Huberman 19:10 ... which is, uh, where class was. You were teaching me chivalry. Um, and I remember asking you what you do. I was probably five or six year ... well, let's see, first grade, so it'd probably be somewhere around six or seven years old. I asked you what you do and you said, "Physics," and I, and I said, "W- well, what is that?" And you said, "Well, um, let me tell you the feeling it gives me instead." You said, "You know the night before your birthday?" And I said, "Yeah." And you said, "You know that feeling?" And I said, "Yeah." And you said, "Well, that's how I feel every day when I go to work."

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 19:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 19:45 And I remember, I'll never forget that. And I said, "What do you do?" And you said, "I'm a physicist." And I, and I said, "Well, then I'll be a physicist." And then I recall, so maybe we had the conversation twice, um, you saying, "Well, most of the big problems in physics are solved, so you should pick something perhaps a little less, uh, untread, like ..." uh, and I said, "Like what?" And you said, "Well, the brain is pretty interesting." And then I said-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 20:08 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 20:08 ... "Okay, I'll work on that."

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 20:09 Yeah. No, that's true.

Andrew Huberman 20:10 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 20:10 Uh, this issue of feeling like, uh, before your birthday is something I remember saying to you. I don't recall, uh, feeling that way every day. I do recall feeling like this when I had an idea and it finally worked out and we wrote a paper and so on. You know, it was an inc- incredibly exciting time. I- s- you know, well, you know about it. You've done it yourself now. And, uh, and so I, I wanted to convey that to you. It was very, very interesting and important to me that you understood that. Um, on the other hand, it made me feel very isolated as well, not only with you, with everybody. I mean, it's a, it's a very esoteric field. You know, you, you used to walk into the study, look at me, you know, writing equations and so on. And well, you'd say, "What's that?" You know, or ...

Andrew Huberman 20:47 I was thinking

Andrew Huberman 20:48 about your study, which was just a door down from my childhood bedroom.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 20:53 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:53 I still remember the way that your study smelled.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 20:56 Interesting.

Andrew Huberman 20:56 I can still smell it. I have an incredible sense of memory for certain things.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 21:00 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 21:00 I can still remember. But I remember how your books were aligned, where your stereo was placed, your photos, your photo of Einstein, uh, your photos of me and Laura and Mom. I remember, I remember all of it. Um, and the sofa that was just off, uh, behind it because you're a nap taker, like, uh, which I inherited from you. Um, but I remember that, yeah, you would spend a lot of time in that office and listening to classical music. Do, do you listen to music while you work or did you listen-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 21:28 All the time. All the time. Yeah. I, classical music for me is, uh, is something I discovered very young, very young. Uh, my parents also loved classical music, my brother too. And it's something that I, I, to me, has a tremendously emotional resonance with the way I, I feel. Sometimes it's background music. Sometimes I really listen very carefully. Um, it's something that I, yes, I've always had in my life and still have it. I mean, it's, uh, it's very, very important to me.

Andrew Huberman 21:53 But not many musicians in our family.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 21:55 No, unfortunately.

Andrew Huberman 21:57 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 21:57 Yeah. Although there is a very famous one.

Andrew Huberman 21:59 We've all tried.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:00 Huh?

Andrew Huberman 22:00 We've all tried.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:01 Yeah, yeah. You in particular.

Andrew Huberman 22:02 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:03 And we all failed.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:04 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:04 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:05 There is a very famous, uh, Huberman, the great violinist, Bronislav Huberman. I mean, there's a picture, I think I sent it to you. He and Einstein. He, um, he was one of the greatest violinists in the 1920s, '30s, and '40s, an incredibly interesting man. Uh, he's the founder of the Israel Philharmonic. And that's one of the reasons that the name Huberman is in some street, uh, in, in Israel that because of him, but I'm-

Andrew Huberman 22:27 Are we related to him?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:28 Unfortunately not. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:29 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:29 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 22:30 Which explains-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:31 I would like-

Andrew Huberman 22:31 ... the lack of musical prowess in our-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:33 Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:34 ... in our family. We all love music, but none of us are, are good musicians.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:37 No, right. Yes. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:38 Except, uh, my cousin Diego.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:40 Diego was, he has a perfect ear, so he can really do interesting thing.

Andrew Huberman 22:43 Yeah. Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:44 Yes. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:44 So, so going back to your, uh, childhood, this teacher.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 22:50 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 22:50 Right? So, I mean, what was it? You already had, uh, sort of seeded an interest in, in finding order, um, in things that made the world make sense. Um, what was the political situation in Argentina at that time?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:06 Quite horrible parts of it. I mean, there was a dictatorship that lasted for a long time, this Peron thing and so on. It was a, I mean, he was really a, a follower of Mussolini and people of that sort during World War II.

Andrew Huberman 23:16 So what did that mean like out in the streets? Like you grew up in the heart of Buenos Aires.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:20 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 23:20 But like, what did that mean in terms of ... I mean, was there poverty everywhere? Were people-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:24 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 23:24 I mean, was there violence? I mean-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:25 No, no, no.

Andrew Huberman 23:26 ... what does it spell out to you? Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:27 Well, it was a very, it was a very oppressive regime. I mean, you had to be careful what you talked about. You know, in my, in my family, like most of the, uh, that, in that social class, we had maids and a cook and so you had to be very careful what you said. Uh, you-

Andrew Huberman 23:40 Because they would run that information back?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:41 Oh, absolutely. And people, and, and your grandfather, my father, at one point or other was prevented from coming to visit me in the United States because he was classified as a communist because he did not join the Peronist party.

Andrew Huberman 23:52 Okay. For the record, we are not communists. (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:56 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 23:56 We're both big, big believers in capitalism-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 23:58 Yeah. I ... uh, sitting here- Libertarians, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:00 ... at this table.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:00 Yes. Yes.

Andrew Huberman 24:00 Right.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:01 So, no, and so it was terrible. It was a terrible time. It was a very oppressive time, um-

Andrew Huberman 24:05 But he wasn't a communist either.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:06 No, of course not. Of course, no, no.

Andrew Huberman 24:08 Right.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:08 He was on the other side. But the idea at that time, it was to be classified as such. Eventually, that information leaked to the, obviously, to the American authorities, so when he asked for a visa, they, they denied him. It was a very complicated story. I don't think we should waste time to know how it got eventually resolved through a friend of mine who was a priest, a, a Jesuit here in the United States. But the, the point being that during that time, it was a very... You had to be very careful the way you spoke, the way you said things.

Andrew Huberman 24:35 Hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:36 Uh, there was a dictatorship that was very much like the fascists in Italy, you know? And actually, that dictatorship lasted until a few years ago because as you know, perhaps you heard, the new president we have is one that actually ran against this whole ideology, Peronism and so on.

Andrew Huberman 24:50 Milei.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 24:51 Milei, yes. So, I was never... I was not political at all, but you had to be careful. Uh, but it was a funny, a funny time and when he was overthrown through a military revolution, you know, my parents were, you know, delighted and we... I remember the celebrations and so on, but that was considered the minority that was against him, you know? It was, it was a social class movement. The, the working class was behind Perón and what he promised and what he gave them. Uh, so that, but that, that eventually died. So, the, the real problem was that there was no real commitment to science as a, as an investment that a country should make. Yes, it was nice to have Nobel Prizes, and it's culturally good, but they didn't have the pragmatic notions that we have, see, in the United States of doing science means solving concrete problems.

Andrew Huberman 25:39 And, uh, this was in the 1950s?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 25:43 '60s too, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 25:43 Right. So, this was the, like, one of the biggest and fastest progressions of physics and its implementation in the US.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 25:52 Yeah, yes, right.

Andrew Huberman 25:52 So, were you hearing about that?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 25:53 Of course. I was following it all and I wanted to, uh, you know, I wanted to buy books about it and so on. I, uh, I had some conflicts with my father about spending money on books that he thought they were not gonna take me anywhere and so on. I mean, he was a very pragmatic lawyer. He didn't understand why I was doing these things. Uh, so yes, I was aware of everything and, uh, and actually, the university was very good. I entered the university, you had to choose what you wanted to do and after a tremendous crisis, personal crisis, I decided not to go into law or engineering, which was what the alternative my father offered and decided to study physics, and, um, I didn't regret it at all. Uh, it was very, it was a very impressive time, you know? I got a good education in physics.

Andrew Huberman 26:37 So-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 26:37 Little bit too abstract.

Andrew Huberman 26:38 So, this was experimental physics or theoretical physics?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 26:41 Both, both, both, both. I, I, in the lab, I was okay. I mean, I, I, I was better in, in, in classes on advanced... I took a lot of co- courses in advanced mathematics and calculus and beyond that and, you know, complex analysis and so on. It was, it was-

Andrew Huberman 26:55 So, turns out you were good at math after all.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 26:58 Good. Yes, I understand math. I'm not, I'm not a whiz. I mean, like many of my students have been. (laughs) I had guys that can do incredible things, you know, that I, I can do them, but slowly, okay? I understand. Yes, yes. Uh, so, but yeah, physics, yeah, is something that I, I, I, I knew how to be intuitive about it. I had already interesting ideas that perhaps didn't pan out, but yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:21 So, the teacher in high school?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 27:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:24 Were they the one that told you that there was a, like, a career in this thing?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 27:28 Yes. He said, you know, "You should devote yourself to this if you really care about it." He was a man that obviously, he, he was sort of tormented on many levels and so on.

Andrew Huberman 27:37 You say that because of the way he carried himself physically?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 27:39 Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. He walked... He was troubled and, but was interesting, intense man. I still remember his name was, uh... He was a philosopher. His name was Eggersland, which is a German name. And he started talking about, you know, discovering, you know, uh, Christianity and what it meant to him and what it is to be authentic and so on. So, and then I had a very large exposure to the great thinkers of the antiquity, the, you know, Roman and, and Greek. So it was all, to me, fascinating, interesting, um, you know? And, uh, it was good to have friends that I could discuss these things with.

Andrew Huberman 28:13 Do you think it's a disservice that nowadays in the United States, um, and even when I was growing up, but especially now, um, that we don't force kids to be exposed to all these topics? Like, we try and, um, track people into something early on. Actually, a recent guest told me that, uh, many, uh, schools are now just giving knowledge but not expecting, um, kids to do problem sets.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 28:35 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 28:36 Um, you know, teaching them about physical activity but not expecting them to do physical activity.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 28:40 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 28:41 Seriously. I mean-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 28:41 Well, that, that sounds a little bit funny.

Andrew Huberman 28:43 Yeah. Well, no, but that's... I mean, that is the direction that education-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 28:46 Yeah, yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman 28:46 ... in this country has gone.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 28:47 I was a visiting professor in France, actually, you, you live there because of that, uh, in Paris, and I discovered, you know, the French intellectual tradition is also very, very abstract compared to the American. I mean, the English and the Americans are the ones that took physics, and, and the Russians too, into a very, very practical realm and made progress that are very, very concrete, almost engineering-like.

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Dr. Bernardo Huberman 30:40 When I came to the United States, I must tell you, uh, I went to, uh, I came as a graduate student in University of Pennsyl-

Andrew Huberman 30:45 Yeah. Let's, let's talk about that.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 30:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:46 So, how did you end up getting into the United States as a graduate student?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 30:50 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 30:50 You applied?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 30:51 Yeah. I, I was f- graduating, and, uh, you know, the, the future looked rather gloomy. I, I had a girlfriend whose father was, uh, very wealthy and, and she said, "No problem, you're gonna work for my dad." And, you know, he had a factory or whatever.

Andrew Huberman 31:04 Why do I feel like that is not the kind of offer that you'll go for?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:07 No, no, not at all.

Andrew Huberman 31:08 You-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:08 Not at all.

Andrew Huberman 31:08 I've never known you to work for anyone except you.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:12 Yeah, in a way, you're right.

Andrew Huberman 31:13 I'm a bit the same.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:13 Yeah, yeah. So, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 31:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:15 I, I, I, just the idea of, you know, running a business was not ... I was, I was truly idealistic and irresponsible too. But I had a cousin who was already, you know, got his PhD in theoretical physics at univ- at Columbia University, was a professor, uh, in France, then Sweden, and so on. So, I, I felt that perhaps I should go to United States. And so I started applying to this, and my father was saying, y- "You know, I won't even help you with this." He didn't like, my parents didn't like it. Uh, you know, I was very close to my family in many ways. And, um, so I, I applied to many places. I remember being accepted at, at, um, I think it was Cornell, and I said, "Oh, New York. That's great." Till someone said to me, "You have to take a plane to go to real New York." You know?

Andrew Huberman 31:57 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:57 I mean, if that's not-

Andrew Huberman 31:58 He loved New York City.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 31:58 Yeah, if that's not for you...

Andrew Huberman 32:00 We both love New York City, right?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 32:00 So, in any event, I got it, I got it, this very, very nice, uh, fellowship to go to University of Pennsylvania, which is-

Andrew Huberman 32:05 Who was the fellowship from?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 32:06 Uh, the Navy, the United States Navy. Yeah. It's, I'm very grateful for that. Um, and I actually wrote that in my Ph- PhD thesis. You know, I was very grateful, and I think it was incredible that they were supporting that kind of research.

Andrew Huberman 32:18 They wanted to bring you to the US to build weapons?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 32:21 No, no, no, not at all. Not at all. I came to United States working for a Professor Bernstein, who just died at the age of 100 or 101. And, uh, no, but I was supported by the United States Navy. It was a fellowship at University of Pennsylvania. Um, but I remember, uh, in my first interview with some of the teachers, uh, Penn professors, there I am talking to them about the foundations of quantum mechanics, and the guy says to me, "Let me give, let me give you an interesting problem. You have a ping pong ball, but instead of being a classical ping pong ball, it's a quantum one. Could you tell me at what heights will it bounce?" I had no idea what to do. I had no sense that you could turn all this knowledge into something implementable, practical, and so on. So, it was quite a struggle the first year.

Andrew Huberman 33:01 So, you had theoretical understanding-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:03 Yes, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 33:04 ... not experimental understanding.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:05 Right, right, yes, or empirical and so on.

Andrew Huberman 33:07 So-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:07 I didn't know how to calculate things very well. Yeah, I didn't think I was-

Andrew Huberman 33:10 This is before being good at math?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:12 I was good, yeah, math, understanding the math. There's a difference thing between understanding math-

Andrew Huberman 33:15 Sure, implementing.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:16 Implementing and, you know, creating thing. Well, you learn that. I, I had four years of graduate school-

Andrew Huberman 33:21 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:22 ... and got my PhD in physics, so obviously, I, yeah, learned how to do it. But what I'm saying is that I had this very, very vague theoretical understanding of what the world worked, but not really a practical, you know, I didn't have it in, at my fingertips. That's what you learn when you go to graduate school, as you know yourself.

Andrew Huberman 33:39 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:39 Okay? So, that's-

Andrew Huberman 33:40 Yeah, it's one thing to learn about the brain as an undergraduate, but in graduate school is where I learned how to slice brains, stain brains-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:45 Right.

Andrew Huberman 33:46 ... trace connections, record from neurons.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:47 Right.

Andrew Huberman 33:47 And it's a whole other business-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:49 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 33:49 ... to get your hands dirty in the thing.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:50 Absolutely.

Andrew Huberman 33:51 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 33:51 Absolutely. And the same thing for me, yeah, uh, taking courses and discovering what you like and dislike. Um, I was a little bit bound to my professor because he was the one who gave me the fellowship, but I didn't like what he did, which was always very problematic, and he's-

Andrew Huberman 34:03 Did you have a good relationship?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:05 It was funny. He, he sort of became a s- tried to become my surrogate father. But on the other hand, intellectually, I always felt that the guy was not quite there. Uh, I mean, he was, he was very famous and so on, but-

Andrew Huberman 34:16 Sure. He's a member of the National Academy.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:18 He was not-

Andrew Huberman 34:19 Oh.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:19 ... but he was very famous, very famous. Uh, but I always felt that there was a lack of depth into what we were doing. It was not just him, it was just the solid state physics. Um, uh, there was a very famous, uh, you know Murray Gell-Mann who had total contempt for solid state physics. He used to call it squalid state physics, you know?

Andrew Huberman 34:36 Yeah. For those that don't know Murray Gell-Mann, we'll get to, uh, Murray later, uh, because I had the interesting experience of meeting him as a child. But he, um, uh, he discovered the quark, he won the Nobel Prize, in many ways is considered at least, at least as, um, a superb phy- physicist as Feynman, maybe better.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 34:55 Yeah. Lesser known-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:57 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 34:57 ... but among physicists, you know?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 34:58 Profound, profound.

Andrew Huberman 34:58 Would evoke great fear in everybody.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 35:01 Yes, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 35:01 We'll get to Murray in a little bit. So, did you enjoy graduate school?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 35:05 Yes, but it was incredibly hard, very hard the first year and so ... And, and also, personally, I was very lonely. Um, you know, I say I was transplanted into a whole different world. Philadelphia is not a city I would recommend to many people to live in. Uh, I escaped every weekend to New York, and my professor was always upset about that.

Andrew Huberman 35:22 And you went from being pretty well off financially to basically having no money.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 35:26 I had no money. I, I lived on-

Andrew Huberman 35:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 35:28 ... very little money as a matter of fact, yes. Uh, my parents, uh, my father felt that, "Okay, this is what you're gonna do. You're gonna survive on this." They paid for a ticket once a year to go back to visit, and it was incredibly nice and soothing to be back and to be taken care of and everything else, you know, the life in the family and then going back again to Philadelphia and the reality of just being a student. Unlike many people that, and foreign students, that were in, in, with me in other places, I did not enjoy ... I mean, it was quite an, a cultural adventure for me to meet people from all over the world and b- to learn what they ... I became very close to a Japanese postdoc, uh, very interesting man. But I was, I was quite miserable. And-

Andrew Huberman 36:10 So, this was in the mid-'60s?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:13 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 36:13 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:13 Yes, late '60s, yes, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:15 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:15 I did not like my life there at all.

Andrew Huberman 36:17 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:17 I mean, it's, uh, I, I lived for four years. I didn't have a single girlfriend or anything. I, you know, I dated and so on, but I, I, I just felt that I was transplanted into a, in- an environment that I didn't like.

Andrew Huberman 36:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:29 Okay? And that, that's the... Yeah, and on top of that, my, my conflict with my advisor were s- not serious because they were not overt, but they were there all the time, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:38 That can be tough. For those listening here, the relationship to your graduate advisor is, um, a potentially wonderful...... a, a potentially hazardous one because they, they exert enormous control over your future.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:49 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 36:49 Not just through letters of recommendation, but opportunities and, um, I got lucky in that sense.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:54 You were very lucky. Yes.

Andrew Huberman 36:55 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 36:56 My, my advisor was the kind of person that if you went out to dinner with him, he ordered for you. He told you what to eat.

Andrew Huberman 37:01 Are you kidding me?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 37:01 I'm not kidding. He was that kind of guy. He would take the whole group to a Chinese restaurant and before you said, "I don't like this," he just ordered. Uh, once he took me for a whole weekend to his summer house to finish a paper. The guy couldn't finish a paper and it was, uh, it was a mess. And he, and his daughter was there, uh, she was, uh, 16 or 17, and she said, "Are you two gonna talk physics?" I was gonna say, "No, let's go for a walk." He said, "That's all we're gonna do." But the physics consisted in him regurgitating whatever we were doing. Uh, I mean, I remember I was so miserable, looking at my watch saying, "How the heck do I get out of here?" I didn't have a car. So, I was sort of his prisoner for, from Friday to Sunday night. Um, so it was, it was, it was hard for me. Uh, I never-

Andrew Huberman 37:44 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 37:44 ... really felt that happy. On the other hand, I had no other options at that time. Okay? So, uh, but then as soon as I graduated, I, I got out, so.

Andrew Huberman 37:53 Mm-hmm. I was just thinking about how different your graduate school experience was-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 37:57 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 37:58 ... from mine. I, uh, you know, I delighted in my advisor, as you know.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 38:01 Yes, she was-

Andrew Huberman 38:02 She was amazing.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 38:02 ... fantastic people, yes.

Andrew Huberman 38:03 Yeah. I, I got lucky. And I, I got a lot of that from you, which was to, um, for those who don't know, I, I left a program at Berkeley, which everyone thought I was insane, insane to leave Berkeley to go to Davis. That was by choice, but I remember what you said, you said, uh, "How big is your incoming class at Davis?" Right? Because it, look, by all standard criteria, Berkeley is the better, uh, institution. Davis is great, but Berkeley's considered exceptionally strong. And I said, uh, "There are three of us." And you said, "Well, either you're making the best decision of your life or the worst mistake of your life."

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 38:36 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 38:36 And then I, I think you asked me what was driving the decision. I said, "Well, there's this person there. Her name is Barbara Chapman and she just seems to be working on things that if I don't work on these problems, I'm gonna regret it. And I can't imagine working on anything else." And you said, "Well, go for it." Which I really appreciate because, um, any, any parent, if I were a parent and my kid said, "I'm gonna leave Berkeley and go to Davis halfway through a PhD and start again," I think, uh, I probably would've baulked, so.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:04 Well, Barbara also played a, a very, very nice, supportive, emotional, uh, role in your life. I mean, it was obvious that she had tremendous preference for you.

Andrew Huberman 39:12 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:12 You were like her son in many ways.

Andrew Huberman 39:14 I smile and, uh, well up a little bit only because, well, she passed away young, but, um, she's just an amazing person. So, I feel very blessed for that. Um, that wasn't your experience, um, with your advisor. So,

Andrew Huberman 39:27 during that time, uh, I did wanna ask about this. I asked about it being the, the mid to late '60s because, um, that was the counterculture movement.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:34 Yes, yeah. Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 39:35 And, um, one thing that people should know about you, I'll just offer this up, is that in the entire time I've known you, which is a while now, um, you've been very clear, like you never had any interest in recreational drugs.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:50 No.

Andrew Huberman 39:50 Never did them.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:51 No.

Andrew Huberman 39:51 Even though that was super common then.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:53 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 39:53 I've never seen you have more than a glass of wine.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:56 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 39:57 You've never been drunk in your life.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 39:58 Never.

Andrew Huberman 39:59 And you don't like football despite being from Argentina. It's, I, it occurred to me on the drive over, like, like peer pressure is just not something that impacts you. You're not gonna do something because people around you are doing it.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 40:13 Well, no, you're absolutely right.

Andrew Huberman 40:14 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 40:14 I, I always felt this, uh, sense of, uh, uniqueness or whatever and, but I became very humble because of it. I'm not arrogant. It's not that I feel-

Andrew Huberman 40:22 No, I-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 40:22 ... that others, others are worse and so on. But yes, when I came to the United States, uh, there was something, uh, there was a decision I had to make, which is I remember explicitly thinking about it. It was the first time that I was beyond the control of my parents and family and the so- social environment in which I was in Argentina. So, you could do whatever you wanted. And I was not the only one who came. There were three or four brilliant, uh, mathematicians and physicists that came with me. And I saw them within a year just losing it all. They never gra- one of them never graduated. They got into drugs. They got... They moved to the Village in New York and they, they decided that that was the life they wanted to have. Problem is that, uh, you know, 10 years on, you know, what, what are you doing, right? I mean, you know, uh, being a, an o- getting to be an old hippie is not that interesting. Um, so I, I really had that notion at that time that I needed to be very disciplined and I had to internalize a set of values and to ask myself what I want and what I don't want. And so yes, indeed, I used to go to parties, to me, it was quite a surprise, uh, uh, you know, in New York, Philadelphia, you know, people smoking pot and all sorts of others incredible things, getting drunk and so on. Uh, it was something that I, you know, I would say, "No, thank you," and that was it, and I felt quite okay with it. Uh, and they... and I never felt the need to satisfy a group of people that were like this in order to be included.

Andrew Huberman 41:41 You know, there's only one person that I've ever met in my entire life, now that I'm 49 I can say things like now that I'm 49, who has never been drunk, never done drugs, um, basically has never really had a sip of alcohol except for once and that's Rick Rubin.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 41:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 41:55 My good friend who's-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 41:56 I like the meaning. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 41:57 Yeah, by all standards is, you know, probably the greatest music producer of all time across, you know, dozen, a dozen different genres.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:05 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 42:05 Right? Not just rock and roll-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:06 Right.

Andrew Huberman 42:06 ... but classical, country, all this. And I once asked Rick, um, you know, "You, you worked in music where, you know, drugs and alcohol are, are everywhere-"

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:15 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 42:15 "... or at least used to be." And he just said, "Yeah, it, it never really interested me. I could be around it but not participate."

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:22 And, and so th- the two of you are the only people I know that have ever had that, um, kind of relationship to what's going on around you where you don't feel pulled into it.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:32 I also didn't understand, I mean, for instance, the, the, the, the role of drugs and alcohol in young people, I was a graduate student, to a large extent plays a role of relaxation and, and, you know, getting rid of stress and anxiety and so on. To me, it was very interesting that people would actually come sometimes to my place and ask, you know, "Do you have something to smoke?" Or, uh, "Why?" "Because I'm nervous," or whatever. "Well, you know, deal with your..."... state of anxiety, but don't, you don't have to drink in order to do that.

Andrew Huberman 42:58 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 42:58 And I was always a little bit also concerned about my brain. I mean, I was afraid that these things would just take me over the edge and o- off the rails. So, I just, uh, but I think I was also, I need to, uh, say this, I was also rather judgmental of people who did it at that time. And it was a way, by being judgmental, by saying, "This is wrong," then I was able to stay on my, on my track. Okay?

Andrew Huberman 43:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 43:23 Today, I'm much more understanding. I mean, I hear people, and if that's what, you know, works for them, it's fine. Although, I still don't like it.

Andrew Huberman 43:28 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 43:29 Um, and it was even worse when we came to California because that, here, everything was going on, not just drugs and everything else. So, uh-

Andrew Huberman 43:36 Well, let's talk about that. Uh, but not that specifically right off the bat. So, you finished your PhD.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 43:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:42 You could have become, done a postdoc, become a professor.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 43:45 I was playing with that. I was playing with that. I, I wanted to go to, um... My, my dream was to go to Cambridge, uh, University in England, uh, not only because the, the, the Cavendish Laboratory was fantastic, there was a whole thing on DNA. I mean, uh, Crick was there and so on. So, I thought that perhaps I would just start, um, you know, inhaling some of those vapors.

Andrew Huberman 44:04 You wanted to get into biology?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:05 Well, I was interested.

Andrew Huberman 44:07 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:07 I mean, because, see, I read the famous book by Watson, you know, The Double Helix, and I, I couldn't sleep. I mean, I read it one night and said, "It's incredible what this guy did."

Andrew Huberman 44:14 Amazing book.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:14 Amazing book, yes. So, I said, "Well, the whole thing is becoming like physics. It's no longer all these complicated names and so on." I was-

Andrew Huberman 44:20 Well, it was crystallography which is, you know-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:22 Yeah. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 44:23 I mean, physics and chemistry are-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:24 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:24 ... so, so interdigitated.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:25 Crystallography's boring because you have... It's like botany, you have to learn all these, uh, crystals.

Andrew Huberman 44:29 (laughs) I'm just chuckling because the, the, uh, the spaghetti model folks are, uh, as we call them, the crystallographers, are probably covering their eyes right now. But, um, that's all right. They, they, they love what they do and thank goodness for them.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:41 No, no, of course.

Andrew Huberman 44:41 'Cause they design n- novel drug-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:43 ... pockets and receptors.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:44 Yeah, right, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 44:44 I mean, they're doing some cool stuff. Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 44:45 So, I thought that being at Cambridge was okay. I mean, you would, uh, suffer from, you know, not even heating in the rooms and so on. But then what happens was, I mean, you know, I, I met your mother, uh, and then, you know, she, she brought a little bit of reality into my life and said, "You know-"

Andrew Huberman 45:00 How so?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:01 Well, she said, "You know, it's time for you to graduate. Time." Because I was just staying there as a, you know, PhD student. You know, I was just ƒ (00:03:42) ine, you know? Okay, the money was a problem, but, you know, I, I got to live like this.

Andrew Huberman 45:12 You met mom in New York?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:13 I met your mother in New York, yes.

Andrew Huberman 45:15 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:15 And she, she was, she was... She had her, you know, feet on the ground and said, you know, "It's time for you to graduate," and so on. And then she actually was right. And so I, I decided to look for a job, and my tea- my professor wasn't necessarily letting me go. He wanted me to stay as a postdoc with him, which-

Andrew Huberman 45:30 Right.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:30 ... you know?

Andrew Huberman 45:30 This is something people don't often understand is that if a student or postdoc is very good, the advisors are de-incentivized to move them along to their job.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:42 Right.

Andrew Huberman 45:42 But it's a tricky game because you want the support of your advisor, but oftentimes-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:45 Right.

Andrew Huberman 45:45 ... your advisor, if you're very good-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:47 Right. Yes.

Andrew Huberman 45:47 ... they wanna keep you.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 45:47 Yes. Yeah. So, so, there, there was also another aspect at that time. By then, I started thinking that I wanted to live a much more comfortable life. I mean, I come from a family that lived a very comfortable life, and I wanted that very badly. And so I started, you know, looking for jobs and so on. My advisor was not too keen to, um, you know, tell me what to do. So instead of going... I, I could have gone for a postdoc at- to a couple of places, but I wanted to be a little more independent. And I discovered that there were research institutions like IBM and, and Xerox in the West Coast and so on, that were, you know, people could do science, you know, good science. And, you know, Bell Labs was the most famous one of all, uh-

Andrew Huberman 46:26 That was on the East Coast.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 46:27 ... in the East Coast. I went to Bell Labs for an interview and I felt that they were running that like a Russian internment camp almost.

Andrew Huberman 46:33 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 46:33 I mean, it was unbelievable. You were, they were, we were 10 of us and, you know, they, they took us around and people were taking notes of what you were saying and asking and so on telling us that was an elite place. It was an elite place.

Andrew Huberman 46:43 So East Coast?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 46:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 46:45 The East Coast institutions, I mean, it makes sense to me now why, having been raised in the Bay Area, um, that East Coast institutions are, and I are just never gonna mix because there's... Th- they love tradition.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 46:58 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:58 They love hierarchy and they love history, whereas the West Coast-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:03 Well-

Andrew Huberman 47:04 ... it's all about the startup, the IPO-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:06 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 47:06 ... what's this about what happened in the last three years and what's gonna happen in the next 10 years.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:10 Right. Well, on the other hand, there is something nice to be said about the European model of universities-

Andrew Huberman 47:14 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:15 ... in the sense that, uh, the biggest contrast, you say this, I remember, uh, I w- you know, when you gave... When professors gave a colloquium on Sunday, were wearing suit and tie at the University of Pennsylvania, an Ivy League school and so on. I came to Stanford, I went to the first colloquium and the students were coming in shorts with their dogs into the auditorium. I couldn't believe it. I mean, it was (laughs) it was such a, an incredible, you know, change, cultural change.

Andrew Huberman 47:38 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:39 In any event-

Andrew Huberman 47:39 But smart. Not smart, I mean-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:40 Oh, incredibly smart.

Andrew Huberman 47:41 Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 47:41 Incredibly smart, make no doubt about that. So, in any event, I, I discovered something which historically became incredibly important, although I, I was marginally involved in it, which was Xerox Corporation had invented a copier, decided that they were gonna get into the information age, and they decided to establish a new research center in Palo Alto, clo- next to Stanford, where they would recruit people that will work on this whole thing, computers and information and physics and so on. And I came in and the guys, you know, whoever interview me, they said, "Well, this is exactly uh the place for you." So, that's what I did. And the interesting thing was that while I was there doing, uh, what I thought was interesting things, there was a whole group of people, very small, that invented the personal computer. Steve Jobs saw it and built the first Mac out of the ALCO-

Andrew Huberman 48:26 This was, um, I had a classmate in high school, Becca Canara.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:30 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 48:31 Um, I remember 'cause she rode a Vespa to school.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:33 Yeah, her mother was involved-

Andrew Huberman 48:34 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:34 ... in that stuff.

Andrew Huberman 48:35 And her mom was involved in-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:36 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 48:36 ... in creating the, uh, it was Adele.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:39 Adele, yes.

Andrew Huberman 48:39 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:40 Adele Goldberg, yes.

Andrew Huberman 48:40 Adele Goldberg, in developing the, um-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:42 Smalltalk.

Andrew Huberman 48:42 ... the ability to move-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:44 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 48:44 ... um, what-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:44 Object-

Andrew Huberman 48:44 ... appeared to be pages on the screen.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 48:46 Object-oriented languages. I had no idea that was going on, I'll be honest with you. I mean, it was going on the second floor. They were all hippie-like. I mean, it was, it was a scandal of the life that they had there. It was the '70s and still, the Bay Area is not, was not what is now. I mean, everybody went to Reseris, uh, you know, uh, th- those... Take long lunches and there was a lot of stuff on drugs and so on.

Andrew Huberman 49:07 Yeah. Can I ask you a question about that? So, Xerox PARC is- was this incredible place.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:11 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:11 I remember going there when I was a kid to-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:13 Yes, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:13 ... to your lab. Actually, one of my earliest recollections was you took me into your and Jim Boyce's,

Andrew Huberman 49:19 um, uh-... experimental lab.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:21 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:22 You, um, you told me to pick a piece of fruit, there was a bowl of fruit. I picked a banana. You took out the banana, you peeled it, and you dipped it into liquid nitrogen.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:31 And throw.

Andrew Huberman 49:31 And then you told me to throw it on the ground, and we shattered the banana.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:34 (laughs) Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 49:34 And I thought that was, like, the coolest thing ever.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:36 Yeah, right.

Andrew Huberman 49:36 I remember that. So that was happening. But the, um, you mentioned the stuff that was happening about developing computer interfaces, and, um, that indeed Jobs borrowed or stole, um, mostly because PARC didn't protect the intellectual property well.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:51 Well, PARC did-

Andrew Huberman 49:51 I mean, they didn't do it illegally. I mean, he saw it-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:53 No, no, no.

Andrew Huberman 49:53 They, they basically gave it away.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:55 Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 49:55 They basically gave it away, right?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:56 Xerox was thinking-

Andrew Huberman 49:57 Yeah.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 49:57 ... that, you know, copiers were the future. That's it. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 50:00 But I also recall 'cause I overheard the conversations between you and Mom when I was a kid perhaps, um, that there were... It was pretty wild at PARC. Like, there was this whole, like, the room with the beanbags. People were taking LSD and other drugs.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:14 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 50:14 That wasn't your scene though.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:15 No, no, no.

Andrew Huberman 50:15 Okay.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:15 Not at all.

Andrew Huberman 50:16 Okay.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:16 I was in the physics lab, and we can talk later a little bit about it. Okay. Gene Boyce was a very, very interesting collaborator of mine and so on. We had a lot of fun, but not, not on that level. As a matter of fact, we were considered very square people-

Andrew Huberman 50:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:27 ... uh, you know, doing what we were doing. I mean, the- this is a group of people that were truly the... I mean, books have been written on, on this c- whole class of people that became really the embryo of what Silicon Valley became. Uh, they were brilliant people trying to do new things, Adele, the, uh, Alan Kay. There were many of them, but they-

Andrew Huberman 50:44 Did you ever want to get involved in that stuff?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 50:46 I used to see them as, as so... Uh, yeah, I'll tell you how I got (laughs) involved. The head of the group, Bob Taylor, a very charismatic man who was responsible for the development of the, uh, personal computing, he was the head of the computer science lab. He once heard that I played ping pong, so he started challenging me to ping pong. So we used to play ping pong, you know, and the conversations were so odd because I would say, "Oh, you do computer science. I have some mathematical problems. I would like some guys in your lab to help me." He said, "We are not, we are not the kind of computer scientists you imagine, like at IBM with a white coat, uh, fixing machines and solving math. We want to revolutionize the world. We want to change the way you think." He used to say that to me. And I sort of understood a little bit of it, but quite frankly, it seemed totally out of whatever I was doing.

Andrew Huberman 51:31 This is what when Marc Andreessen, um, founder of Netscape, et cetera, um, a16z now would, when he was sitting in the very seat you're sitting in, um, here he described as this notion of wild ducks.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 51:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:42 That at companies you have these people that are, you know, small groups of people that are really kind of wild and outrageous and really testing the outer limits-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 51:50 Yeah, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:50 ... of what's possible.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 51:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:51 Do you think they serve an i- uh, an important role?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 51:54 Tremendous. Tremendous. And I was a little bit of that in, in my field at that time. I was the first one to realize, uh, you know, that once I saw these machines, I could use them for doing things even in physics that no one could do. Uh, and, uh, the kinds of fields that I chose to work on were totally out of what people were doing at, at Xerox or IBM and so on. I think that these people are essential. Uh, now the question is what does a company or a university... What do they do with those ideas and so on?

Andrew Huberman 52:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 52:22 Xerox lost it completely. I mean, they showed them the stuff and there's a whole books that have been written about it.

Andrew Huberman 52:27 Well, one thing that I think I'm realizing now I inherited from you, um, consciously or unconsciously, is that, uh, well, I'm... I've been more of a risk taker with, uh, various aspects of my life than I probably should have been. But, um, that I've always enjoyed being near, um, people who are really pushing the boundary on something.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 52:49 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 52:49 Like my love of, like, skateboarding, but not just skateboarding, but our friend Danny Way jumping the Great Wall of China, building mega ramps in his yard. I knew I wasn't gonna do that-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 52:58 Mm-hmm. ... but there's something about being adjacent to people like that- Yes.

Andrew Huberman 53:02 ... that changes the way that you, that I've approached things that, um, were more, um, pedestrian (laughs) -

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:09 Right.

Andrew Huberman 53:09 ... to make them less pedestrian.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:11 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 53:11 You know, and, and maybe we'll return to this because, uh, um, you know, I think that being around people who are real mavericks and real iconoclasts can be very beneficial, but it doesn't mean that you have to jump in and do what they're doing.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:23 Right. Well, I, I, I decided at one point or another to take huge risks. And as a matter of fact, my first piece of work after I got my job at, at Xerox PARC, which was supposed to work on some solid state physics or whatever, was I had this notion, this fantasy of Einstein in the patent office. So I would start working on things that, uh, you know, were crazy. Uh, there was a, there's a whole notion in physics which is, you know, called tachyons, particles that are faster than the speed of light.

Andrew Huberman 53:49 How do you say it?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:50 Tachyons.

Andrew Huberman 53:50 Tachyons.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:51 It's from the word tacheos, which means fast, swift-

Andrew Huberman 53:53 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:54 Means particles that are faster than the speed of light, which is impossible.

Andrew Huberman 53:57 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:57 But some physicists were playing with that idea.

Andrew Huberman 53:59 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 53:59 Okay? And I became very interested in that. As a matter of fact, my first paper out of, uh, s- graduate school was on tachyons and I had the pride of getting the paper accepted in the top physics journal, and-

Andrew Huberman 54:12 It's Physics Review Letters?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 54:14 Uh, Physics Letters. Yes. Uh, yeah. And I remember my cousin Hector sending me a note or something (laughs) saying, "Well, now you s- I, now I see the road to perdition," he said. (laughs) But I was so proud of it. I, I really thought that I was doing something incredible. And it had nothing to do with the work I was doing on a daily basis. And I published several papers, uh, on things that were very important to me. Uh-

Andrew Huberman 54:35 Uh, you have a lot of single author papers.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 54:37 Yes, yes, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:38 This is something that, um, like, is, uh, i- is especially rare in biology, but you have a lot of single author papers.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 54:45 Yeah, yeah. I l- I, I was very proud of that. Yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 54:49 I'd like to take a quick break and thank one of our sponsors.... LMNT, element. Element is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, in the correct ratios but no sugar. We should all know that proper hydration is critical for optimal brain and body function. In fact, even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance to a considerable degree. It's also important that you're not just hydrated, but that you get adequate amounts of electrolytes in the right ratios. Drinking a packet of LMNT dissolved in water makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate amounts of hydration and electrolytes. To make sure that I'm getting proper amounts of both, 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'll also drink a packet of 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 losing water and electrolytes. There are a bunch of different great-tasting flavors of LMNT. I like the watermelon, I like the raspberry, I like the citrus. Basically, I like all of them. If you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim an LMNT sample pack with the purchase of any LMNT drink mix. Again, that's drink LMNT, spelled L-M-N-T, so it's drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free sample pack. 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 Wi-Fi 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.

Andrew Huberman 57:33 Can, can I ask you a question? Uh, it's a s- it's a slight departure, but it's something I've always wanted to ask you, um, and feel free to say no if it's not, um, like, something that could be done in, in a couple of minutes. Um, so many people hear Einstein's name, they think of the hair, they think of relativity. Um, is it possible to explain relativity in a way that, that the everyday person can get it a little bit better than they, they perhaps understand it now?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 58:01 Yes. I, I think, as a matter of fact, I learned not, uh, not long ago that Einstein himself wrote a popular book on relativity that seems to be very, very accessible. Okay, now, there are two aspects to relativity. I mean, there, there are two, two things that our brains were not made by evolution to understand intuitively. One is relativity, and the other one is quantum physics. We know, we have intuitions, like, you know, an animal, for instance, if you see a, a lion running after a zebra and so on, the lion can actually calculate intuitively, you know, the speed at which he can move and so on. We can do the same. But if you start thinking about what happens when you get to near the speed of light, we have no intuition whatsoever. Time almost stops. There are all sorts of co... complicated things. Lengths contract. I mean, it's this very complicated set of things, and that's why it's very hard to understand, although the math works. Then there is general relativity. That is even worse, because there is some kind of a warping of spacetime that is responsible for gravitation. But I'll go into that in a second. The other one is quantum physics. Our brains are not... not only are they not, eh, wired to understand the near the speed of light, because no one moves near the speed of light. I mean, we, we move at, at speeds that are fairly, fairly small, uh, compared to the speed of light, and quantum mechanics is at such a microscopic level that is below basically the level of a molecule. It's molecules, atoms, and inside the atom. So, it's very, very hard to visualize or even understand some of the very counterintuitive ideas like entanglement and also, you know. So, relativity can be understood in the sense that you can explain certain things, but people say, "Well, how can quantum mechanics work like that?" And then you have to get into the math. Okay? But the... I think that... I, I took a course, uh, a few years ago in general relativity, and, uh, I, I, I just-

Andrew Huberman 59:47 Just for fun?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 59:48 Yeah, yeah. I, I, I wanted to learn finally. It's profound, deep, and it, it makes you feel that this, this man, uh, Einstein, he had help from a lot of people, but still, it's, it's an incredible thing. I mean, you know, it, it's, it's on a level of Beethoven's, uh, symphonies and, and Mozart's piano concertos. I mean, it, it's something that comes into your head and you're able to do, you know, through a lot of struggle. I mean, it took me year... it took him years to do that. Okay? So, but it is profound. Uh, now the que- when you say can you explain, I mean, the, the point is Einstein one day discovered that if the speed of light is the speed of light, no matter how fast you move with respect to a beam of light, you're still moving at the speed of light. That means that the notion of simultaneity between two events is relative now. So, you and I might say, "Yes, now is 1:10," but if you are moving very fast with respect to me, instead of 1:10, you'll say something else, okay? Just because time for you and I are not synchronized. And that leads to all sorts of very interesting effects and practical effects too, because from there comes the idea that mass and energy are the same. From there, we- nuclear weapons came out of that. All sorts of very interesting things, you know? And, uh, today, you know, we can even detect, uh, gravitational waves that are coming from the almost the beginning of the universe. We can detect that because of those theories. They can calculate. So-It, it's profound, yes. I mean, Einstein, I think stands on, on... I mean, Newton too, by the way. I mean, and you know, Newton, Einstein, I think they are top people, you know? But it... They, they talk to God in a way, as they say. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:22 We'll get back to God, uh, a little bit later. Um, yeah, it seems to me that, um, even though it's very hard to grasp, it's worth asking, uh, for those of us that, that don't have an intuitive sense of, of relativity theory, that is starting to, you know, peer into these things a little bit, trying to understand them, do you think that it gives, um, one's mind an ability to, um, you know, to tap into, like, forms of, of cognition that we don't normally think about when, when we're looking at macro mechanics of, of the world around us? That objects fall down, not up and, you know, a helium balloon goes up, okay? And you can learn something about helium but, but it, it's all, um, it's all pretty straightforward with, with just a few simple bullet points. Uh, whereas when you get into quantum mechanics, it, it, um, yeah, it challenges the mind in a way that it really feels like for most people, there's a cliff and we just kinda go, "Okay." You know?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:02:16 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:16 And obviously, uh, um, there's trust there but, um, for people that are curious about understanding how the, the really tiny bits of the physical universe link up with the really big bits of the physical universe, um, where's the best place to start?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:02:30 Well, okay. You're asking a very, very interesting question, which is for most of us who are trained in physics, we learn how to calculate, we learn how to operate with these things. I, you know, I just got a patent on using quantum mechanics for communication and so on. But it is still the puzzle is why does it work the way it works? So, what I'm saying is you learn an operational way of doing the things operationally. I don't know what happens in your brain because I have ideas that come out of intuitions, not just formulas and equations. And yet, I don't necessarily think I understand deeply why these things are the way they are. They are the way they are, and there's no reason why they shouldn't be like that. Our brains, as I said before, you know, they are essentially, um, conformed to understand the macroscopic world, not high speeds and so on. So, physicists who work in general activity, I don't, can do incredible calculations, can you, tell you what a black hole collapsing into another hole, black hole would do, and, you know, they're using generativity things. And so, they, they can do it. Now, what it does to your brain that allows you to op- operationally work with these equations and solve it and have new ideas, it's something I don't understand.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:40 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:03:41 Namely, I, I... For instance, the example that I gave about quantum mechanics, that, that's a very simple one because I talk to a lot of people nowadays that work on this, is I can give you two dice, okay? You know, just dice. You can go to, uh, Mars and I stay here. The dice are, let's assume they are quantum mechanically entangled. I throw my dice, I see three, you got three. And we don't communicate. They're entangled because this is faster than the speed of light. I throw again, five, you get five. I do one, you get one. I mean, it's an amazing thing.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:10 What is the origin of the entanglement?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:04:12 It's, it's a property of quantum systems that they can get entangled, that's the word, and somehow what happens to your system affects mine, but doesn't affect it in the se- sense of signal. No signal. They're entangled. Now, let me, let me... Now, this becomes, uh, rather, uh-

Andrew Huberman 1:04:28 They're not entangled through other bits of the universe?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:04:30 No, no.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:30 They're totally independent?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:04:31 Totally independent, yes. They're entangled in the sense that quantum mechanically, they started like this. Okay, now there are ways... I mean, there are trivial things. There's a famous example of the socks. Okay, so you take a trip and, uh, you, you, you, you took a pair of socks. Let's assume that they are blue socks and so on, and then you open your bag and you, "Oh, I, I forgot one sock. So, this is my blue sock." So, you know that there is a blue sock at home. So, knowing that is a correlation, but it, that's trivial, right? I mean, we can do that with anything. In quantum mechanics, imagine that you look at a sock but the sock is changing colors all the time. So, now your observer is red, the other one is red. I observe it is green, the other one is green. Okay? Randomly.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:09 So, little bits of the universe are entangled?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:11 Well, some people and I, uh, a friend of mine who's a Buddhist claims that there is a whole religious or Buddhist way of saying that everything, it was entangled. Yes, originally, all atoms, all electrons, all elementary particles were entangled. Yes, because the universe started very, very tiny and everything was entangled. Okay, so you could imagine that the universe is entangled. So, what happens here affects the other. But it gets... The, the entanglement gets lost when perturbations and noise appears and so on. So, we are not today entangled with... I don't know. I mean, we don't think that we're entangled.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:42 Some people think that-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:43 Yes, yes, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:43 ... some people are entangled.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:44 Yes, yes, yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:45 Well, let's gets to, uh, maybe-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:46 But that's a whole... Yeah, that's-

Andrew Huberman 1:05:47 That's a whole thing.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:48 That's, uh, that's-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:49 That's poetry.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:49 That's poetry. Exactly. Um,

Andrew Huberman 1:05:53 there's another example that brings us to a, a very salient aspect of my childhood, which is, uh, chaos theory.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:05:59 Mm. Okay, yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:00 Right. So, um, I'll say it so you don't have to. You're one of the, the, uh, founders of chaos or certain a- uh, aspects of chaos theory. We'll talk about that. But, you know, um, for those of us that grew up in the '80s and '90s, I was born in '75, um, you know, who saw the movie Jurassic Park, you know, there, there's a, a moment in that movie where I think, uh, Jeff Goldblum is explaining, you know, uh, what, what is it? Um, chaos theory, and maybe it was the butterfly flapping its wings-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:06:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:28 ... in one location and impacting something someplace else.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:06:31 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:31 For the, the poets in the world, right?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:06:33 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:33 Um, that, that was a very, um, captivating example because I think the human brain can naturally understand that, you know, things around us, we can have an impact on them, and they can have-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:06:44 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:44 ... an impact on us. But that, um, the, the notion that, uh, a small insect, you know, thousands of kilometers away can impact something that's going on, um, more adjacent to us, it, it seems outrageous sci-fi. But, you know, the, the notion that one thing impacts another, impacts another, that's pretty straightforward, right? There's just a, a domino-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:08 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:08 ... a, a dominoing of the physical world.Chaos theory is different.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:12 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:13 Okay, could you explain chaos?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:15 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:16 And I'll just add one more thing just for context for you to, you know, these are the paints in the palette. Um, around the same time, I remember the book Chaos coming out and, and, um, where there was a lot of e- excitement around chaos and this was coming up. Um, uh, there was also a lot of discussion about fractals.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:33 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:34 The idea that when you zoom into things at a very, very small level, you start seeing some regularities. Now we know this about crystal structures, right?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:40 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:40 Like you put a drop of water under-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:41 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:41 ... a high-powered microscope, you're gonna see structure there. It's not random. The angles are, are very-

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:07:46 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:46 ... consistent, at least around certain nodes, et cetera. So, I think people love this idea that we have repeating, um, you know, r- repeating patterns and numbers in nature, that things at a distance can impact us more closely. Like, this is the kind of stuff that e- not, the non-physics brain can understand.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:08:04 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:04 And it does enchant, right? We sort of poked at poetry. I love poetry, you love poetry. Um, but I, I think it enchants because they, w- I think humans are naturally interested in how, you know, the, the randomness of life might not be as random as it appears. So, um, what is chaos?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:08:26 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:26 Where does it exist in our lives? Um, not emotional chaos, but, um, and what is the relationship between fractals and chaos, if any?

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:08:35 Okay, let me say first of all about why chaos is what it is, and it's not quantum. There is quantum stories and, and there's a quantum chaotic thing, field, but I won't go into that. Chaos is a very i- interesting idea, which is it, it flies against our intuitions. Since the times of Newton, we know that if you give me the position and the velocity of an initial particle, I can use Newton's equations of motion to tell you where that particle is gonna be anywhere.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:09:02 With an incredible precision. When we launch a rocket, we wanna go to the moon, we can calculate and predict exactly where the rocket is gonna be after so many hours, after so many days, and so on. Actually, we use the equations of motion to predict that trajectory, and it's a precise trajectory.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:17 This is how Elon was able to capture the rocket with the chopsticks recently.

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:09:20 I, um, something like that.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:22 (laughs)

Dr. Bernardo Huberman 1:09:22 So yeah, that's, that's, yeah. Okay, now the idea of chaos is, so that,