Scott Galloway on Huberman Lab: How a code guides young men

1. 0:00 – 2:45

   Scott Galloway

   1. SGScott Galloway0:00

      And this is the goal. The goal is no, because you're gonna get nos. And then I'm gonna call you after you've made the approach. You're gonna text me, "I did an approach." "Did you get a no?" "Yeah, I got a no." That's exactly the point. That's the goal. 'Cause everyone you admire, everyone you think has killed it, the only thing I can guarantee you is there were a ton of nos in getting to one of the top 10 podcasts in the world, getting to a person as a partner who's higher character and hotter than you, getting to make more money than you would have ever guessed that person would have made. The only thing that got them there was the willingness and the endurance to re- to anticipate no.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman0:36

      [Instrumental music] Welcome to the Huberman Lab Podcast, where we discuss science and science-based tools for everyday life. I'm Andrew Huberman, and I'm a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine. My guest today is Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway is a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business and one of the world's leading public educators on intelligent life design, including finances, relationships, and as today's conversation also covers, on the sociopolitical landscape. Today we mainly talk about masculinity and what men, young and old, and everything in between, are facing today in terms of their roles to take in work, in relationships, and their health. And today, we don't just review the data. You'll hear statistics, so Scott is very grounded in quantitative data, which is important, but he also shares several clear, actionable steps that you can take daily to ensure that you're making progress in work and relationships and finances. We also get into a bit of debate, or more, about things like alcohol, the benevolence or lack thereof of Big Tech and social media, and we talk a lot about the male-female dynamics in terms of the consequences of single-mom homes and divorce, but just generally male-female dynamics. So while today's episode does include a lot of exploration of different topics that frankly I didn't anticipate, it's also very proactive. Scott delineates the things that you can do and frankly should do each day. These aren't just lists or hacks, but effective tools that come from knowledge, data, his deep thinking, and that reflect the landscape we are in now. I'm very grateful that Scott took the time for this conversation. You'll see that we agree on many things. We disagree on several. He's a very deep thinker, extremely smart, obviously. He also cares about people. That comes through over and over again, and he's extremely generous today on your behalf with indeed tough love knowledge. 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, today's episode does include sponsors. And now for my discussion

2. 2:45 – 6:16

   Mentoring Young Men

   1. AHAndrew Huberman2:45

      with Scott Galloway. Scott Galloway, welcome.

   2. SGScott Galloway2:48

      Thanks, man. It's good to see you. Actually, I was nervous driving over here. I, I, I, I like you and respect you, and I was thinking-- I was trying to figure out why I was nervous, and I really wanna, I wanna do well today, and the last time I had this feeling was when I was going to do Rich Roll's podcast. I really like, like you, I really like and respect Rich, and I remember thinking, I had that same feeling. I wanted to do well. Anyways, good to be here.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman3:11

      Oh, man. Well, great to have you here.

   4. SGScott Galloway3:12

      Despite my nerves.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman3:12

      It's funny you say that 'cause, um, you know, I was coming here and I was thinking, "Yeah, I look up to Scott." Like I-

   6. SGScott Galloway3:17

      Oh, thanks

   7. AHAndrew Huberman3:17

      ... respect him, and we've had one conversation prior to this that ended up being quite extended conversation and, um, I told Rob right before coming in here, our producer, I'm super fired up to-

   8. SGScott Galloway3:27

      Thanks, man

   9. AHAndrew Huberman3:28

      ... to learn from you and-

   10. SGScott Galloway3:29

       Good

   11. AHAndrew Huberman3:29

       ... just sit down and chat with you. So I actually am gonna do something differently this podcast than any other podcast, which is the question I'm about to ask-

   12. SGScott Galloway3:37

       Mm-hmm

   13. AHAndrew Huberman3:38

       ... or the kind of thing I'm about to pose, I normally would do off camera.

   14. SGScott Galloway3:41

       Okay.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman3:41

       I'm gonna do it on camera, which is coming in here today, it occurred to me that we as a-- How old are you?

   16. SGScott Galloway3:48

       I'm gonna be sixty-two in November.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman3:49

       Sixty-two. You look great, man.

   18. SGScott Galloway3:51

       Thanks, man.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman3:51

       I can share what you're doing if we get the time, um, fitness-wise. Uh, I'm fifty, and the risk we run into, I realize, is that when I was sixteen, twenty, thirty, et cetera, yes, I wanted knowledge-

   20. SGScott Galloway4:05

       Mm-hmm

   21. AHAndrew Huberman4:06

       ... maybe even wisdom from elders, but I also knew with certainty that they didn't understand a thing about what it was like to be that age at that time. So I realized that as much as we might think we know, we don't know what it's like to be sixteen, twenty-five, thirty, forty-year-old men, and we'll also talk about women today-

   22. SGScott Galloway4:26

       Mm-hmm

   23. AHAndrew Huberman4:26

       ... but probably mostly men, in twenty twenty-six. And so how do we reconcile that in a discussion like this? I just wanted to ask you, how do you think about that? Because so much of your content and what you're teaching out there is about timeless truths, but there's also a lot of things that are happening now, not just pain points, but maybe opportunities that, I don't know, h-how do you think about do we really know? Like, how, how should we pass along information in a way that's truly useful to people? 'Cause that's what obviously we both want this to be about.

   24. SGScott Galloway4:58

       Well, just what you said, uh, you can't, you can't re- fully relate to a sixteen if you're not sixteen years old and know what they're going through. And when, you know, you, you guys are skateboarders, and when I was sixteen, I got home, and it was either watch cartoons until my mom got home, or it was take risks and go out and find friends and, and do things. And now there's so much temptation at home between Big Tech and having a casino in your pocket, a Netflix in your pocket, and porn in your pocket. It's just hard to relate to what they go through. I think the first thing is just acknowledging, you know, you don't know what you don't know, and then turning to data, 'cause there are people who look at the data. And I try to counter my biases or my, you know, my uninformed thesis with data. And, uh, so I try to find good people, good research, and inform it. Also, it helps I have fifteen and eighteen-year-old sons. I ask them a lot. I observe them a lot. I hang out with them a lot. And you start to pick up on stuff. But I think the first is just being open to people pushing back and recognizing, unfortunately, every once in a while in the comment, when someone points something out and going, if it really hurts and it's upsetting, it's usually 'cause they're rightAnd they found some soft tissue and they've pressed on it. So, and I try to be open to learning and, and, you know, just acknowledging

3. 6:16 – 13:37

   Positive Masculinity Defined

   1. SGScott Galloway6:16

      when I, I got it wrong.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman6:18

      What do you think are the could be three, could be five, could be 10 things that all males should strive to check the boxes on in order to have a good life, not just to, you know, be great in some particular role, but like what are, what are the macronutrients in your opinion of becoming a healthy, happy, fulfilled male?

   3. SGScott Galloway6:42

      I think every person, not just every man, needs a code. And that is you're going to be faced with hundreds of decisions each day, and you want to make, generally speaking, a higher proportion of good decisions than the peer group, right? So what helps is a code. Some people get that code from religion, the military, their really strong family connections. I actually got my first kind of code from my first job. I worked at Morgan Stanley. There was just a certain level of professionalism. I got code from sports at UCLA. But I wonder, there's so many lost men right now, I wonder if masculinity can be a code or some sort of aspirational form of masculinity where people born as males might have an easier time leaning in. And I should also say that I don't think masculinity or femininity are sequestered to people born as males or females. I'm drawn to men who are more feminine as friends. My close friends kind of take care of me and are more nurturing. But I think for young men, if they feel like they can lean into some positive masculine attributes, that it could serve as a code. So I loosely break it down into three very reductive qualities. And that is the first is to be a provider. I'm not talking about the way the world is, but the way the world should be. I think every young man should have a plan and have an assumption that at some point he will have to be the economic lead or provider for his family. Sometimes that means getting out of the way of your partner who's better at that whole money thing. Sometimes it means providing more domestic or emotional support and labor if your partner is accelerating economically. When my partner had a kid, she was working at Goldman Sachs. She was making more money than me. I was a new academic at NYU. I was making $160,000 living in New York, which may sound like a lot of money, but it wasn't. And she was making substantially more. So I tried to pick up slack and provide more labor at home and take charge of our finances. But I think at the outset, trying to find a plan to be economically relevant in a capitalist society is really important. Because whether we like to admit it or not, a male from a self-esteem standpoint, from a sexual currency standpoint, from the esteem of the tribe or the society, is going to be disproportionately evaluated based on your economic viability. So from an early age, try and have a plan. You may not have to stick to that plan. I'm not saying you got to go to Harvard and go to work at Goldman Sachs, but maybe you're going to go to trade school, learn how to install energy efficient HVAC, but you just need a plan to be moving towards something. The second is protector. If you think about the most masculine jobs, fireman, cop, military, the notion is you develop skills and strengths such that you can protect others. And the most, if you will, manly, masculine, satisfied I ever feel is a night when I feel as if my family feels protected. The kids are asleep. My partner feels loved and supported. And I've been able to, hopefully through partnership, through economic viability, been able to provide a warm, comfortable life for them so they can focus on the things that are important to them. And I think unfortunately, a lot of men that we should look up to, whether it's the president, I apologize for getting political, or the wealthiest man in the world who are naturally going to be seen as male role models, they seem to have skipped the protection part. That the whole shooting match, the whole reason you make money, that's the means, but the ends is such that you can protect others. I find that's the most rewarding thing in the world. And then finally, procreator. And that is, I think we need to stop demonizing young men's desire for relationships and sexual desires. I think a young man wanting to have sex can be a tremendous motivator to be a better man. It's like fire. It can be incredibly destructive, but if you put it in a steel casing with spark plugs, it can create tremendous progress. And the story I use is that I was at the Raleigh Hotel in Miami, and I saw a very attractive woman. And it was the middle of the day, and without the benefit of alcohol, I didn't have the confidence to approach her. But I promised myself I was going to approach her. And then I went out to get my car from the valet and was sitting in the car. And I'm like, God, you're such a fucking wimp. So I ran back in, went up to her and said, hi, I'm Scott. Where are you from? Anyways, long story short, 18 months later, our son's middle name is born was Raleigh. And I didn't look at her, Andrew, and think I'd really like lower rates on auto insurance. I looked at her and thought I'd really like to have sex with her. And I think young men's desire for relationships and sex, if channeled correctly, makes you want to be a better man. Have a kindness practice. Demonstrate excellence. Shower for God's sakes. Work out. Have a plan. Have resilience. Have perseverance. Demonstrate excellence. So in sum, provider, protector, procreator. Where I think I missed it in the book, and I'd love your response because I'm open to criticism here, is one, that's what worked for me. And I think a lot of younger people, there's different forms of masculinity that don't necessarily involve being economically secure or finding a mate. And also, the component I've really missed is service. And I think a great, great kind of one question or proxy for masculinity in terms of what you do every day is, are you optimizing for attention or service, right? And then the litmus test that Richard Reeves kind of gave me, who's sort of my Yoda on this stuff, is this notion of surplus value. That some men are born males, but they die never having become men. It's not about a religious ceremony, an age, or some sort of experience or ritual. It's about at some point, can you honestly look in the mirror and sayI add surplus value. I create more tax revenue and jobs than I absorb. Everyone absorbs tax revenue if you're in America. I listen to more people complain than I complain, right? I love more people than love me, and I didn't get that. I don't think I really became a man well into my 40s because I was always-- I took a capitalist approach to relationships. I always wanted more. I wanted a girlfriend that was better to me than I was to her. I wanted a job where I was getting paid more maybe than I was contributing. And then what you realize as you get older is the whole shooting match is to, to create surplus value, provide, be a better friend, be a better partner. There's no way my kids will ever be able to return as much as I've invested in them. I mean, we have these... You know, the Hallmark Channel and insurance commercials will tell me that I'll have these moments, and I get those, but my kids are never up at 2:00 a.m. worried about me. They just aren't, right? I'm, I'm spending a ton-- I always say to them, "You're adding negative value. Just be clear. You go to these amazing schools, all these talented people, negative value. Me and your mom, we are constantly investing in you. It'd be impossible for you to pay us back." What I figured out is that's the whole shooting match, is I'm fin-finally, Andrew, finally at a place of surplus value. I apologize for the word salad. Pr-provider, protector, procreator, um, are you, are you, uh, optimizing for service, not attention? And do you-- can you really say that you

4. 13:37 – 16:33

   Sponsors: David & Wealthfront

   1. SGScott Galloway13:37

      add surplus value?

   2. AHAndrew Huberman13:39

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5. 16:33 – 26:34

   Men & Goals, Role Models, Technology; Relationships

   1. AHAndrew Huberman16:33

      episode description. I love all that. I don't have anything to add. I do have, uh, two questions and one reflection. The reflection is that what you started with, that every day you're making decisions all day long, and you want more of those to be good decisions than bad decisions relative to your peers. I think that's a, a terrific way to think about striving, and I've never heard it posed that way, so I really just wanna bold, underline, and highlight that for everyone. For the eighth-grader, for the twelfth-grader, for the college junior, the forty-year-old man, make better decisions than the average around you. The problem I have, I guess I do have one-

   2. SGScott Galloway17:16

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman17:17

      One caveat here is, um, that most people won't remember this, but that show Jerry Springer-

   4. SGScott Galloway17:21

      Mm-hmm

   5. AHAndrew Huberman17:21

      ... I think was so popular because people like to focus on all the people doing worse than them-

   6. SGScott Galloway17:25

      Yeah

   7. AHAndrew Huberman17:25

      ... 'cause it makes it easy to stay right where you're at.

   8. SGScott Galloway17:27

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman17:27

      So who are the comparison points that one can keep in mind as they strive to make these better decisions each day? Because I think that first statement you made is touching into some serious wisdom. So who is the comparison point, and how do you keep that framed? Because you study markets, you understand markets. What's the market comparison point in this make more better decisions than worse ones relative to the average as you progress through your day?

   10. SGScott Galloway17:53

       I think it's really important to-- I mean, you're talking a little bit about role models and references. And so first off, one myth I think we need to dispel is that success equals exploitation. There's a very unhealthy zeitgeist, especially from the far left, that anyone who's very successful is exploiting othersAnd I think we need to puncture that narrative and say, "You should strive to be successful." And success might mean certain things for other people. I didn't grow up with money, so for me, success for most of my life was trying to get economic security. I, I was... Anxiety plagued my mom and I, economic anxiety, and it was like a ghost following us around telling us we weren't worthy. So my role models were always people who'd figured out economic success, and people have to pick their own role models. I always thought masculinity was getting back in someone's face who wasn't gi-- didn't give me the respect I thought I deserved. I was that asshole that when someone cut me off in traffic, felt like I needed to speed up and cut them off, that if the Delta ticket counter representative wasn't kind to me or was busy, I would get back in their face. It's like, "Well, do you realize I'm a 1K member?" And then, you know, a decent reference point is just men you admire, and they're everywhere, that perhaps don't... can take blows. They realize someone might be having a bad day. But you said something that, that inspired a thought in that what I just outlined is pretty meta, you know, kind of themes that sometimes aren't that actionable. So I just wanna bring it down one level. As we were talking about off mic, I try and mentor two or three young men at any given time, and these are young men that quite frankly need mentoring. Uh, they're struggling. Most of them might be still living at home. You know, they're not-- These aren't people who went to Brown and are working at Goldman Sachs. And so some, just some more tactical things that I think serve as a reference point for how you succeed or how you make progress. The first thing I do, the first hack is I say, "Unlock your phone, and I'm gonna look at it." And there's a little bit of nervousness, so what I do to loosen them up or lubricate it is I say, "Okay, let me tell you two things. First is I gamble. I don't gamble on FanDuel. I gamble with options. I know it's stupid. I know I'm gonna lose money over the long term. I'm a smart guy. I love markets, but that dopamine hit I get is too seductive, so I sell calls and, and, and puts. Uh, I consume porn." That's sort of not... It, that's not a... That's an embarrassing thing to say at sixty-one, but yeah, I still consume porn. But I tell them that, and it lubricates or it, it, it makes them more comfortable. I open their phone. Everyone has an advantage. Most young men who are not excelling, if you will, by traditional Western capitalist standards, their advantage is capital, specifically their human capital. They have time. And within about five to seven minutes, I can find eight hours of time from TikTok, from X, from porn, from gambling sites, from YouTube. I'm like, "We're gonna find eight hours. You tell me where, where we're gonna reduce this eight hours, and next week I'm gonna check, and we're gonna reallocate that capital into three things. The first is we're gonna get really fucking strong." I just think the best antidepressant is moving weights, building some bulk, or running far. I've, I've jokingly said every man under the age of thirty should aspire to be able to walk into any room and know if shit got real, they could kill and eat everybody or outrun them. Like, there's different forms of fitness. You can be fast, you can be flexible, you can be strong, but there's no excuse. The male form is blessed with, you know, more bone density, double twitch muscle, all the things you talk about, this incredible substance that pours over it called testosterone. You're gonna look back when you're my age and think, "Why wasn't I just fast, sleek, a monster, just strong?" So we're gonna work out at least three times a week. The second thing is we gotta make some money, and I want you to make money outside your house. You know, I don't care if you're a Lyft driver, TaskRabbit, or Panera's hiring people at eighteen bucks an hour, and only one out of ten that accept a job actually ow up-- show up the first day. So if you make... If you really make the effort, you can make decent money. And the great thing about getting a taste for the flesh of money is you start learning how to make more money. If you wanna make a lot of money, unless you're smart enough to be born to rich parents, start off by making a little bit of money, and you'll start to figure out capitalism, right? And the final thing is, at least three times a month, we're gonna put ourselves in a group setting where we are trying to ch-achieve something great in the agency of others, a nonprofit, a church group, a sports league, a writing club. And then the second phase of that is we're gonna do something what I call is the approach. "Hey, hey man, do you wanna go watch the Jets game?" Right? An expression of friendship. And then if you're really comfortable, an expression of romantic interest while making them feel safe. "Would you like to grab a coffee sometime?" And this is the goal. The goal is no, because you're gonna get nos. And then I'm gonna call you after you've made the approach. You're gonna text me, "I did an approach." "Did you get a no?" "Yeah, I got a no." That's exactly the point. That's the goal. 'Cause everyone you admire, everyone you think has killed it, the only thing I can guarantee you is there were a shit ton of nos in getting to one of the top ten podcasts in the world, getting to a person as a partner who's higher character and hotter than you, getting to make more money than you would've ever guessed that person would've made. The only thing that got them there was the willingness and the endurance to r- to anticipate no. And unfortunately, Big Tech is setting up an algorithm that convinces you that a frictionless life is a good life and that you never need to endure no. And what you end up with is a lack of skills to, to per-persevere, to realize you're okay. And that's what I ask the kids the next day. "Are you okay?" "Yeah, I'm bummed out." "But you're okay." If a man under the age of thirty works out three times a week, works thirty hours a week outside of the house, right, and is volunteering, that immediately puts him in the top eight percent of all young men. And I apologize for the word salad here, but something I hate is the incel movement. Involuntarily celibate, right? Throughout history, ninety-nine percent of men have been involuntarily celibate for most of their lives. There's few things young men would rather be doing than having sex. Only forty percent of men have reproduced throughout history, eighty percent of women. So no man has a birthright to reproduce. In the West, it's actually now seventy-five percent, so young men have more agency than they ever have. Now, if you do those things, right-Just those three things, work outside of the house, work out, have a kindness practice, uh, volunteer in the service of others, you're immediately gonna put yourself in the top decile of young men. And if you're in the top decile of young men, I can guarantee you, over time, you will become voluntarily incelibate, which is awesome, because you'll establish a relationship, and young men under the age of 30, a lot of the research shows, benefit more from a relationship than women, yet only one in three men under the age of 30 is in a relationship, whereas two in three women are in a relationship. And you think, "Well, Scott, that's mathematically impossible." It's not, because women are dating older because they want more economically and emotionally viable men. So I'll circle back to the more tactical recommendations. Get fit, start making some money, have a plan, and start doing things in the agency of others. I think the ultimate hack for depression, or if you're feeling bad about yourself, is to start helping others, and to always keep in mind, and this is the hard part, that the Antichrist of your progress as a young man, the devil, the fucking enemy, the villain here, the Bond villain with trillions of dollars, is Big Tech. They are trying to figure out with AI a million times a second how to convince you to spend one more second a day on your phone sequestered from your relationships because they're a shareholder value. Forty percent of the S&P is 10 companies whose sole mission is to monetize your time. And unfortunately, they're not, they're not bad people, but what they're doing has resulted in a small group, a cohort of men... It's not small. Millions of men who are evolving into a new species of asocial, asexual males, who wake up at the age of 30 thinking they've had a frictionless life, living at home, obese, anxious and depressed, having never developed the skills that they need to do well professionally, personally. So Big Tech is not your friend. If you do not figure out how to modulate Big Tech products, whether it's Instagram or YouTube, you are falling into a trap of eventually being sequestered and not developing the skills to establish the most important thing in life, and that is relationships.

6. 26:34 – 31:53

   Elon Musk; Big Tech

   1. AHAndrew Huberman26:35

      Two questions about Big Tech, and I'll just push back a little bit-

   2. SGScott Galloway26:38

      Sure.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman26:39

      -on the Big Tech thing, uh, not because I'm afraid of Big Tech. I did grow up in Silicon Valley, so I, I-

   4. SGScott Galloway26:44

      Well, and you're at Stanford.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman26:45

      Yeah, and variably have a different relationship to it.

   6. SGScott Galloway26:47

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman26:47

      And I, I, I'm not, um, name-dropping. I happen to be close with some of the people that r- run these companies or in number, you know, two or number four slots or, you know, in some cases who run the companies. One who I've never met, who I'll just raise first, um, is who you referred to earlier, the richest man in the world is Elon Musk.

   8. SGScott Galloway27:04

      Yep.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman27:04

      And I was frankly a little bit surprised that you, um, called him out when discussing the importance of being a protector.

   10. SGScott Galloway27:13

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman27:13

       I understand the political side. What-- Let's just-

   12. SGScott Galloway27:16

       Yep.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman27:16

       -for the moment, we'll just set Trump aside, um, very polarizing figure. Happy to go there if you want, but I know your stance on him. But the, the mention of Elon in, as a non-protector surprised me.

   14. SGScott Galloway27:27

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman27:28

       Because I think of Elon as somebody who seems to love his children very much. Uh, he's organized family differently than most-

   16. SGScott Galloway27:35

       Mm-hmm.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman27:36

       -but he certainly has the capacity to take care of them, who is committed to big projects.

   18. SGScott Galloway27:41

       Mm-hmm.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman27:41

       I mean, a, a superhuman level of, of output in terms of just Neuralink, the field that I'm closest to-

   20. SGScott Galloway27:46

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman27:46

       -right? Uh, phenomenal progress, and that's just one of the SpaceX, Neuralink, Tesla, X, et cetera. So I'm just curious what, um, motivated that.

   22. SGScott Galloway27:55

       Sure.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman27:55

       Do you... That, um, makes you, uh, because I don't see him as a non-protector.

   24. SGScott Galloway28:02

       Yep.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman28:02

       I, I don't know that I see him as a protector of a particular kind in his personal life, but I don't have access to that. But in terms of his motivation to pr- protect our species-

   26. SGScott Galloway28:11

       Yep.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman28:11

       -I personally believe his desire to get to Mars is a genuine one-

   28. SGScott Galloway28:15

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman28:16

       -to have an option, uh, for humanity. So I see him as a protector, and I'll probably piss off a lot of people by saying this, but that doesn't mean I universally adopt everything he says and does. But I see him as kind of an awesome figure in our history who's like, "Let's get to Mars in case this Earth thing doesn't work out, and also let's get to Mars 'cause it's awesome."

   30. SGScott Galloway28:35

       I think that's an entirely fair viewpoint, and you're adding nuance to it. So let's talk about Elon Musk. If I had a red button that I could push and get rid of all of Big Tech or Elon Musk, somehow he could float away like a Gabriel Garcia Marquez, uh, uh, character and not die, but just not, not have happened, I wouldn't press the button. I think Big Tech and Elon Musk are net goods for the world. We're gonna get to EVs. We're gonna get to Mars faster because of Elon Musk. He inspired the EV race, which is good for the world. The problem is with the word net, and as it relates to masculinity and as a role model for young men, he's probably one of the best role models in terms of being super aggressive, taking risks, ignoring the noise, and just being laser-like focused, telling an amazing story, garnering capital. I mean, there's just no getting around it. The guy's just an inspiration. I think the whole shooting match is if you become the richest man in the world, I think you move to protection. I would argue that he's not a great role model and that he has not done a great job of convincing younger men that protection and taking care of others... I think the way he acquits himself online by punching down. When he says something mean about somebody, and I know this and I'm fine 'cause I have, I have money and I'm not dependent upon any one person's opinion of me, but if he says something negative about you and calls you names, his hundred and twenty million followers come for you. And I think as a general rule, and this is true for everybody, but especially for men, you never punch down. You just don't. Anyone... I'm, I'm openly, I make personal attacks on people. This is technically a personal attack on Elon Musk. To call someone not, not, not good f- a, a good role model, that's a personal attack. But I never make personal attacks of anyone who isn'tMarkedly more powerful than me. And I find that a lot of these people, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have no problem punching down. So again, it goes back to this. Is he a net good for the world? I acknowledge the point, and I would even argue, yeah, he is. But that doesn't-- he should also be held accountable for his blessings. I can't stand the fact that he shitposts America and the government. If you look at the most successful companies in the world, they're littered up and down the coast we're on right now, whether it's Qualcomm in San Diego, SpaceX and Snap here, head north to Salesforce and Meta and Google. Keep going, you hit Amazon and Microsoft, and then it stops once you get to the Canadian border. And then you have to go all the way up to Lululemon to find a multi-billion dollar company. Come back down to where you teach at UC San Diego and those great companies, and it stops, and you gotta go another seven thousand kilometers to get to Mercado Libre in Buenos Aires. There's something about America that creates unbelievable opportunity that creates the wealthiest men in the world, and I find that these tech brothers have a total lack of appreciation for the sacrifices and the system built in America and are the first to shitpost the government and complain about regulation and things getting in the way. I find that especially obnoxious. But let me acknowledge the point. I think on the whole, Elon Musk and Big Tech are a net good for the world, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hold them accountable and ask, "Why would you do these things when you're so

7. 31:53 – 43:33

   Varying Role Models, Flaws; Criticism, Big Tech & Incendiary Content

   1. SGScott Galloway31:53

      blessed?"

   2. AHAndrew Huberman31:55

      So this gets to the heart of something that I think is extremely important, which is we're living in the age of everything pretty much being public about public figures.

   3. SGScott Galloway32:07

      Yeah.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman32:07

      Not everything, but-

   5. SGScott Galloway32:08

      A lot

   6. AHAndrew Huberman32:08

      ... many more facets of their lives than ever before in history, in part because they share many more facets of their lives. It's not just that stuff gets unearthed. It's like they're talking about their company. They're also in the role of arguing with their ex on, sometimes online. You know, you see that. Their kids sometimes will, will be a parent who they are. You know, it's interesting, my, my dad, uh, was first generation immigrant who came here, became a scientist, and he, he's from Argentina, and he, along these lines, he always said it was funny to him that when you would go to somebody's office in the United States, a professor or a-

   7. SGScott Galloway32:42

      Mm-hmm

   8. AHAndrew Huberman32:42

      ... businessman or something, the picture of his family was facing out.

   9. SGScott Galloway32:45

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman32:46

       He said, "That was so weird." He said, "In Argentina, your picture of your wife and your kids-"

   11. SGScott Galloway32:50

       You look at 'em

   12. AHAndrew Huberman32:50

       ... "and your, and your dog, we're facing in. That's yours. You don't share that with a person coming to your office." Like, who would do that?

   13. SGScott Galloway32:55

       Right.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman32:55

       This oversharing thing, if it, when you look back, is a, kind of a, a, a longstanding theme in, in American business, and it, it shows up even more so, of course, online. So to me, this, this idea of, okay, Elon, for instance, but very different, um, role model figure, someone that I consider a close friend, Jocko Willink.

   15. SGScott Galloway33:15

       Mm-hmm.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman33:15

       Incredibly impressive, true warrior.

   17. SGScott Galloway33:18

       Yeah. [chuckles]

   18. AHAndrew Huberman33:18

       Great dad, great husband. I know his family. A amazing human being in so many ways, and he's kinda like the tough football coach that a lot of guys didn't have, that young guys-

   19. SGScott Galloway33:28

       Yeah

   20. AHAndrew Huberman33:28

       ... I think that's one of the reasons people gravitate towards him. You don't wonder whether or not he really can do what he says you ought to do because he does it every day-

   21. SGScott Galloway33:35

       Yeah

   22. AHAndrew Huberman33:35

       ... and he posts it on his watch. So Jocko's a really good example of somebody that people admire, and I consider Jocko one example.

   23. SGScott Galloway33:42

       Mm-hmm.

   24. AHAndrew Huberman33:42

       So why not look at public figures-

   25. SGScott Galloway33:45

       Mm-hmm

   26. AHAndrew Huberman33:45

       ... you and perhaps even me, for instance, and just look at it, these people as a buffet of options to adopt certain traits but not others, be doing great things, and assuming that the other things they're doing aren't, you know, truly atrocious, right?

   27. SGScott Galloway33:58

       Mm-hmm.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman33:58

       I mean, criminal, atrocious, you know. I don't know that we're asking the people who are role models, leaders, business leaders, who I don't think we're placing a reasonable expectation on them. I don't say this for any personal reasons. I, I've known I'm re- replete with flaws for a [chuckles] very long time, so I don't claim to not have them, never have. But then young guys are, might be thinking, "Well, I have to be perfect too. And if I'm not perfect and I don't have 150 million followers, I better have a fraternity of people to protect me." This is the kind of the underlying current that I think has driven the toxic end of the, hate the word, the manosphere.

   29. SGScott Galloway34:37

       Mm-hmm.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman34:37

       I hate it because it's become too mish-mashy.
8. 43:33 – 44:57

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. SGScott Galloway43:33

      our imperfections.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman43:35

      As many of you know, I've been taking AG1 for nearly fifteen years now. I discovered it way back in two thousand and twelve, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking it, and the reason I still take it, is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. It combines vitamins, minerals, prebiotics, probiotics, and adaptogens into a single scoop that's easy to drink, and it tastes great. It's designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy, and it does so by helping to fill any gaps you might have in your daily nutrition. Now, of course, everyone should strive to eat nutritious whole foods. I certainly do that every day. But I'm often asked, if you could take just one supplement, what would that supplement be? And my answer is always AG1, because it has just been oh-so-critical to supporting all aspects of my physical health, mental health, and performance. I know this from my own experience with AG1, and I continually hear this from other people who use AG1 daily. If you would like to try AG1, you can go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a special offer. For a limited time, AG1 is giving away six free travel packs of AG1 and a bottle of vitamin D3K2 with your subscription. Again, that's drinkag1 with the numeral one dot com slash huberman to get six free travel packs and a bottle of vitamin D3K2

9. 44:57 – 53:39

   Fear, Dating & Rejection, Relationship Dynamics

   1. AHAndrew Huberman44:57

      with your subscription. I disagree, um, vehemently with one point, which is that I'm more influential than you are. You're incredibly influential. In fact, a, a, a, an ex-girlfriend's sister w- uh, who went to NYU asked me if I knew who you were. I said, "Of course." And, and she said, her words, "For our generation, Scott is like a father to us." It's like we... And she happens to be in venture capital, but, um, so maybe there's a finance link there too, and I-- but I pressed on that a little bit and, and just asked, and, and she said, "Yeah, you know, like we, we look up to him. We listen to him. He's, he's very paternal to us." So I thought you might appreciate that, um-

   2. SGScott Galloway45:32

      I do appreciate that. Although I would have, I'd appreciate-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman45:34

      Coming from a woman as well.

   4. SGScott Galloway45:35

      I'd appreciate it more if she'd said older brother.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman45:37

      [laughs]

   6. SGScott Galloway45:37

      I'm very con-conscious of my age now, but-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman45:40

      Are you? Really?

   8. SGScott Galloway45:41

      Oh, 100%. Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman45:42

      You're in your 60s. You're super fit. You got two healthy boys. You're in a happy relationship. You got huge reach.

   10. SGScott Galloway45:48

       Going on.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman45:48

       You, I imagine your bank accounts are fine, and you're trying to-- and you're actively, uh, engaged in service. Uh, I-- in my eyes, you're doing great.

   12. SGScott Galloway45:56

       I appreciate that, but I'd, I'd rather be doing-- I'd rather be in this spot at 40, at 41, not 61. I'm very, I'm very self-conscious about my age. But I just wanna go back to something I think that gets in the way of success and has been a huge unlock for me is, is I mean, it's not, but your fear, your fear of criticism. If you're gonna be successful, you're gonna face criticism. Starting a business is subjecting yourself to public failure. I wanna go back to something you said about approaching women and guys being afraid to be that guy. I think some of that is a little bit exaggerated.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman46:32

       Mm-hmm.

   14. SGScott Galloway46:32

       And that most women, if you are respectful, the vast majority of women, if you're respectful and approach a woman at a bar, "Hi, how are you?" And she's not interested, you're gonna be fine, and you're both gonna be fine. And just as I think there's two myths that are damaging to the mating market, which is really upsetting to me. One, that men think that all women are looking to, or a lot of women are looking to embarrass them, and they might get canceled professionally. If you're respectful to a woman and approach her and make her feel safe, and then if she's not interested, politely exit, you're gonna be fine, and so is she. And I don't buy that your career, you're taking your career in your hands. I think that's just bullshit and an excuse to be an incel. I just don't buy it. And two, what really has been an enormous unlock for me is I believe in my atheism. I believe at some point I'm gonna look into my kids' eyes and know our relationship is coming to an end. I was fucking their age. You got a bunch of young dudes in here who look like former Abercrombie & Fitch models.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman47:25

       [laughs]

   16. SGScott Galloway47:26

       I remember... They look like they're twenty-five. They're probably thirty-five. It was yesterday I was their age, which means just in an instant I'm gonna be again at that moment where I know I don't have much time left. And in a hundred years, no one's gonna give a shit what I said or thought or did or the mistakes I made. And embracing that and accepting that has given me so much courage, right, to start businesses, to make dumb investments that might be crazy, to tell, to tell men in my life finally that I love them or I'm impressed with them. When I was their age, I had this weird sense of masculinity that if I said, "Oh, dude, look how handsome this dude is," that it took away from my prestige somehow, that I couldn't tell people they were impressive. I couldn't tell a woman, "God, I'm just crazy about you, and I'm, I would give anything to spend more time with you," 'cause I was worried that she wouldn't return my affection, and I would be just too hurt, and I had to be cool and, like, not need her or not... All this bullshit that got in the way of me really having a good life. And what I realized is every failure I've had, people go, "Oh, his business went bankrupt. Okay." And then they go back to thinking about themselves. So everyone you're worried about really doesn't give a shit about you. And by the way, the dude that's not very good-looking and is with a ridiculously, like, high-character, hot woman is one of two things: has rich parents or twoOr two, is willing to endure rejection. So I, I just don't buy, I, you know... Eh- eh- that myth of the man risking his personal and professional reputation, I don't think that's true. On the other side, the myth I hate, I don't know if you've seen this. On TikTok, a lot of women are saying, "I don't date because the risks of being unalived," which I guess is the woke version of saying murdered-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman49:12

       I think it's 'cause on social media platforms, if you say murder or suicide-

   18. SGScott Galloway49:16

       Oh, it goes right down?

   19. AHAndrew Huberman49:17

       They, they... I don't know if it actually does, but it's this idea that, yeah, that it's gonna be, uh, ranked down.

   20. SGScott Galloway49:22

       Here's the data. Okay, if uh, 2,500 women a year are murdered by men. That's way too many. It's a huge problem. Sexual assault is a bigger problem. The majority of women who are murdered are murdered by someone they know. So the reality is a small number of women are murdered on dates with strangers. It just doesn't happen that often. And 40,000 men a year kill themselves. So if you go on a date with a man, the man is 16 times more likely to go home and hurt himself than hurt you. So what I would say to men is make the approach, take the risk, and as long as you're respectful, you're gonna be fine and so is she, and you are not taking your professional or personal reputation into your hands. And what I would say to women is if you go on a date with a guy that you met on an app, there's all sorts of digital breadcrumbs, and it's a lot... You, you are... And I can statistically prove this. The ride over in Uber, the Uber, was a lot more dangerous than the date itself, and you are more likely to die of choking during dinner than to be hurt by that man. So what, what I hate is that there's all this inflammatory content being boosted on online media that's getting in the way of the most rewarding thing in life, and that is to find someone who you are physically attracted to, who you sync up with spiritually, and you decide to build a life together. And not enough of that is happening. We're in a sex recession, right? And online is making it worse. The dating apps have an incentive in you finding a bigger, better deal, and the genders have done an amazing job of convincing each other it's the other's fault. And I think one of the big foci that need to be really, um, pay more attention to is what I call renewal of alliances. I'd love to see a renewal of alliances between us and our great allies in Europe. Renewal of allies who are moderates. I know nothing about you. I just don't... I just can't believe you're an extremist on the left or the right. I just don't-

   21. AHAndrew Huberman51:14

       Bullseye.

   22. SGScott Galloway51:15

       There needs to be a renewal of alliances between what I'll call moderate lefties like me and moderate conservatives that are everywhere. Look, we're all Americans, but the most important alliance that needs renew-renewal is the greatest alliance in history, hands down, and it's the alliance between men and women. The integration of female and male energy, the ability to find someone you wanna procreate with, to build something together, that is the most rewarding thing in life, and I can prove it's key to the species' progress and existence. And men and women have been taught not to trust each other and to blame each other. I hate the fucking manosphere, and I hate the, quite frankly, some of the reactionary notion on the left where it's misandry cosplaying as social commentary. There's a lot of bullshit misandry online where you're assuming every young man is a predator and, quite frankly, that every billionaire is evil or that every white person is racist, but the alliance between men and women needs to be reformed. It's the greatest alliance in history, and online it's teaching men to blame women for their problems. No, women's ascent saved our ass. Women in the factory in World War II is the reason we won the war in four years, not in seven. Women going into the workforce in the '70s and '80s and protections of their rights for fair pay is the reason we're not a second-tier power to China right now. If women hadn't ascended, we'd be really squarely and duly fucked, right? And their ascent is in no way inversely correlated or correlated to men's descent. Men have to stop that bullshit. An immigrant didn't take your job. He made it such that you could have lower rent, a meal for a reasonable price, and have someone take care of your mother when she's older. And at the same time, if you're having romantic problems, it's not her fault. Women are ascending, and naturally they have higher standards 'cause they're no longer economically dependent upon men, which should be a motivator for men to level up, not to start blaming women. And all this shit is being totally inflamed and taken totally out of proportion by online because it creates more tension, it's interesting, it's novel, and it creates more Nissan ads. But I, I'm trying to figure out [chuckles] what is the economic incentive to try and figure out a way to get more men and women appreciating the other gender beyond just the basics, right? How do we renew that

10. 53:39 – 1:06:03

    Social Media Impacts on Kids; Regulation

    1. SGScott Galloway53:39

       alliance?

    2. AHAndrew Huberman53:41

       I love that statement. I saw somewhere, of all places, on X. You know, every once in a while you encounter something that really sticks with you. Every once in a while there's a gem that just falls through, really makes you think. And I don't know who this person was. Might've been an account with one follower. And it landed in front of me and it said, "The way you destroy a society is to get the men and women to hate each other."

    3. SGScott Galloway54:02

       Interesting.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman54:02

       And as a biologist, first and foremost, I thought, "Well, that makes perfect sense." Right? If you wanna eradicate a, a population of any species, you get the, the males and the females to start hating each other. Not just because they don't mate, but because you throw off the mating dynamics in a way that then can create infighting among the males. We see that, too. Infighting among the women. Although, I don't know, I, I think that there's a lot to explore around this sort of what the standard is that we're holding the opposite sex to. It's an interesting question. I, I, I can't say I've really evolved my thinking around this enough to, to maybe dive into it, but I know you've thought about this. I think a lot of males hide behind this notion that they have to be everything. They have to be tall. They have to be rich. They have to be jacked. They have to be kind. They have to be... You know, hopefully the, everyone's kind. But-

    5. SGScott Galloway54:52

       Mm-hmm

    6. AHAndrew Huberman54:52

       ... you know what I mean, that they, uh, they can't say the wrong thing even once. You know? So they're hiding behind that.And if they go out and look, they'll get plenty of evidence for that.

    7. SGScott Galloway55:00

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman55:01

       Right? No men, no protectors, no this. Actually, I, I brought... I, I did something I rarely do, um, which is I brought my phone into this-

    9. SGScott Galloway55:08

       Yeah

    10. AHAndrew Huberman55:08

        ... because right before I came in here, a woman that I've known for 20 years wrote and asked me if I would t- ask you a question.

    11. SGScott Galloway55:14

        Wow.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman55:14

        And it's directly related to this, so I'm gonna do this.

    13. SGScott Galloway55:16

        Okay.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman55:16

        Of course, I'm not gonna say who this person is. And she said, 'cause I'd mentioned that I'm speaking to you today, and she said, "Please tell Scott that I'd personally like to thank him for his efforts encouraging men to embrace their duties as protectors, providers, and generally just being accountable. Because we have a serious shortage among hetero dudes," she lives in San Francisco, "particularly in the Bay Area." And I said, "Will do, but can you tell me what you mean by accountable? Serious question, I wanna make sure I'm specific." She said, "When I say accountability, I'm referring to the fact that many times in romantic relationships, men seem to want to avoid feelings of shame and guilt to such a degree that they often respond to their partner's feelings towards them without empathy or accountability. I find that here in," okay, San Francisco, there are many women in San Francisco. I don't think I outed her here. "Or perhaps all major US metros, chivalry is dead. Men are afraid to assert their desires because they don't want the obligation that it might entail." Interesting. "They give up when something requires internal growth or leveling up. They shy away from acting protective of their partners in favor of egalitarian dynamics, which is flawed since men's clear... since men clearly have more physical strength." Oh my God, this goes on and on.

    15. SGScott Galloway56:26

        Mm-hmm.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman56:27

        This is almost overwhelming me, but I think I'm, you know, can grapple with it. Oh, thank you. I swear I didn't plant this. She said, "None, none of this has ever applied to you, in case you're serious." Thank you for that one, by the way. She says, "They're wimpy. They avoid relationships that require work and responsibility because they don't want to feel inadequate. They avoid difficult conversations and repair because they don't want to feel shame or guilt. They avoid asking for anything explicitly because they don't want to feel obligated, or complimenting a woman, or giving her flowers or romance. They're all scared to do it. It's so odd." Anyway, that's it. [laughs]

    17. SGScott Galloway57:01

        That's all, huh?

    18. AHAndrew Huberman57:02

        Okay. So I, I'm reading-- I'm hearing that second part for the first time-

    19. SGScott Galloway57:05

        Right

    20. AHAndrew Huberman57:05

        ... the long part. And I have to say, if I were a 25-year-old guy now-

    21. SGScott Galloway57:10

        Yeah

    22. AHAndrew Huberman57:10

        ... I'd be like, "Whoa."

    23. SGScott Galloway57:12

        Right.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman57:12

        That's a lot. Okay. There's something there. They want me to bring flowers, be romantic, be affectionate.

    25. SGScott Galloway57:19

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman57:19

        Clearly, there's a, there's a reference towards being sexually proactive there.

    27. SGScott Galloway57:24

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman57:24

        And yet assume responsibility, level up, be empathic. You know, I'm not trying to defend or, or attack this person who's, um, close to in my life, but that's a lot. That's a, that's a, that's a tall building right there to scale for a guy who's trying to figure out how to work out three times [chuckles] a week at all point.

    29. SGScott Galloway57:44

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman57:44

        Anyway, I thought I'd share that and just get your reflections.
11. 1:06:03 – 1:14:03

    Phone, Dopamine & Pseudo-OCD; Solutions

    1. SGScott Galloway1:06:03

       fast.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:04

       One thing that, um, [lip smacks] I don't think I've emphasized enough on this podcast, this and, uh, certainly not this, but other episodes as well, is, um, a kind of reframe around the dopamine and phones. I'm not trying to correct you here, but I think it might be helpful for this discussion and for people listening to, um... We need to move our minds away from the idea that the phone is providing these dopamine hits because it's not. The behavior with social media, but phones generally-

    3. SGScott Galloway1:06:32

       Mm-hmm

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:32

       ... is a lot more akin to true clinical grade obsessive compulsive disorder.

    5. SGScott Galloway1:06:38

       Hmm.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:39

       Colleagues of mine that work on obsessive compulsive disorder, I just wanna give a shout-out to the, the pioneer of this field was a woman I, I just adored, uh, Judith Rapoport. She passed away recently. People can look up her obit. There's a really nice one in The Times. Identified the brain structures associated with this thing that we call OCD, right? Hand washing, scratching, hair pulling, you know, all the var- variations of it. What defines obsessive compulsive disorder is that the engagement in the behaviorThe c- the compulsion doesn't relieve the obsession. So to call someone OCD because they need everything perfect, but then when it's perfect, they're like, "Okay, I can relax," that's not OCD. OCD is when you engage in a compulsive behavior over and over again, and all it does is serve to reinforce the obsession.

    7. SGScott Galloway1:07:22

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:23

       That, to me, more closely mimics what I see in terms of phone use-

    9. SGScott Galloway1:07:27

       Mm-hmm

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:28

        ... than the idea that it's like, "No way, this amazing thing on the phone." That comes every once in a while, but after you've spent a day or so on social media or on YouTube, we are all engaging in a much more passive, slow degradation kinda way that I'm sure impacts the dopamine pathway. In fact, OCD is directly tied to the dopamine pathway, so I'm not divorcing it from dopamine. But I think if we started to look at our relationship to the phone as more of an induced obsessive compulsive disorder-

    11. SGScott Galloway1:07:56

        Mm-hmm

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:57

        ... than an addiction, I actually think that's one of the potential ways out. Not just con- because words matter and concepts matter, but because I think in order to get out of that loop, you have to see yourself from the outside, and you have to realize that you're being hijacked. I think right now there's just so much incentive for being on it, for being in the bathroom [laughs] you know, looking at the phone.

    13. SGScott Galloway1:08:18

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:18

        Look, I'm not addicted to my phone, but I will tell you, there are days when I feel like I pick up that thing even though I don't want to.

    15. SGScott Galloway1:08:25

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:27

        And that's different than addiction. I know what addiction feels like. That's not addiction. That's happening just reflexively. Like w- people aren't even thinking about it. The lack of awareness is, is just not there. So, you know, forgive me for going on this, on this tangent, but as you're saying everything today, I'm trying to think solutions. And, and I, I know Mark. I actually am, am friendly with Mark, so-

    17. SGScott Galloway1:08:47

        Mm-hmm

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:47

        ... I think they care. I do think they care. I think they've created something so big that it's very hard to, to navigate and keep up with shareholders and all this stuff, but I would love to see the world's relationship to their phones and social media change so that it is more in our individual control-

    19. SGScott Galloway1:09:04

        Mm-hmm

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:04

        ... more, uh, benevolent.

    21. SGScott Galloway1:09:05

        But that's against their economic interest, and they'll fight that tooth and nail.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:08

        But n- I wonder, I wonder if there is a way to incentivize that.

    23. SGScott Galloway1:09:12

        Well, let's talk about that. So-

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:09:14

        I'm trying to think of solutions. Yeah.

    25. SGScott Galloway1:09:15

        So let's move to solutions. Um, one, antitrust. I don't think, I don't think, uh, Meta should've ever been allowed to buy Instagram. I think their ability, their scale of data suppresses any formidable competitor. Two-thirds of all social media now goes to one company. And with a lack of competition, there's really no oxygen for a company that might say, "We're not gonna allow 18-year-olds on here. Any content that's incendiary, anything that looks like it's been weaponized by bots or might be from a bad foreign actor, we're not gonna allow it." I think there's a lot of parents and a lot of people who would like to be on that platform. The game's over. They've won. I, I don't think Google should've been allowed to buy YouTube. And people say, "Well, they're great companies." If YouTube was divested from Google, the next day Goog- uh, YouTube would decide to start a basic search algorithm, and Google would start another video platform, and we'd have two competitors, and there'd be lower rents on labor and on advertisers. Competition is an amazing thing. These companies are a set of distinct monopolies that extract rents from labor, from the consumer, and from the wellbeing of America. So antitrust. Senator Klobuchar's done great work here. Basically, she says, "I'm overrun." She's like, "I got a staff of 60 people. There are 200 lawyers hired by Meta and Facebook who are doing nothing but getting in the way of anything to do with antitrust and giving money to people who will delay and obfuscate anything around antitrust." Two, removal of Section 230 for algorithmically elevated content. Their basic premise is, "We're not in the... We're not a media company. We're just a platform. We're just putting stuff on a board." Well, okay, but if you decide this content gets more views, they elevate it. They make the decision to elevate it, and sometimes the content they elevate is not good for the mental health of America. It tears at the fabric of America. I think if you al- algorithmically elevate content, you should be the subject to the same liability as, say, News Corp. When News Corp and Fox told its on-air anchors to repeat a lie that they knew was a lie, that Smartmatic voting machines had been weaponized by Hugo Chávez, and they knew it was a lie, and then Smartmatic sues them and says, "You caused us economic harm," they had to pay $750 million fine. What happened on Fox was a dumpster fire compared to the nuclear mushroom cloud of what happened on Facebook that day. But these nascent platforms, which in 1997 we were trying to give them running room, those protections are in place for tech platforms that are not in place for media companies. So if you algorithmically elevate content, you are now a media company. You should be subject to the same liability as every other media company. And then finally, three, age gate this shit. The downside of Instagram and YouTube for 15-year-olds is way greater than the upside, and people who say to me, "Scott, this is about parenting," that's a tell for they don't have kids. This is [chuckles] where they get their homework. And my colleague at NYU, Adam Alter, who also has an appointment at the psychology department, said, "When you take kids off of screens totally, it actually is more damaging to their mental health because they're ostracized from all social activity." So, and what's happened, the greatest uptick in school scores in recent history is when they do what my buddy Jonathan Haidt suggests do, these schools do, and they ban their phones. So I think there are common sense solutions that keep a lot of the good stuff these companies do while recognizing, well, maybe a 14-year-old shouldn't be spending seven hours a day on TikTok or Instagram while his or her single mother is at work and can't police it. So I think there are common sense solutions and a meeting of the minds here, but everything I propose, they will spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to get in the way of and make sure it never happens again.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:56

        I really appreciate your answer. I, I like to think that they are listening, especially in the wake of these recent lawsuits, um, where they had to pay out, granted, a drop in the ocean compared to their total revenue, but those were very public cases. And maybe I'm overly optimistic. I, I, I like to think that-They care enough to pay attention. I mean, look, many of those guys, it's mostly guys running those companies now. YouTube used to be a woman, but now almost all of them are run by guys. They have kids. I can guarantee their kids don't spend a ton of time on their phones. That they're- They send them to schools where they're not allowed to be on screens. Right. They're doing their job. We're not doing ours. I don't even kind of resent them. I think Mark Zuckerberg has been especially damaging, but they're doing their job. Capitalist society has to have for-profit companies that, within the bounds of law, make a lot of money. Look, you can't, you can't have a navy, you can't have innovation, you can't have, you know, it, it... parks unless you have the tax revenue to support this shit. So we need our thoroughbreds to run. They're great companies, but there's basic common sense regulation that should be applied that they've managed to delay and obfuscate, and ensure it

12. 1:14:03 – 1:15:14

    Sponsor: Function

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:03

       never happens to them. I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, Function. Function provides over 160 advanced lab tests to give you a clear snapshot of your bodily health. This snapshot gives insights into your heart health, hormone health, autoimmune function, nutrient levels, and much more. They've also recently added access to advanced MRI and CT scans. Function not only provides testing of over 160 biomarkers key to your physical and mental health, it also analyzes these results and provides recommendations for improving your health from top doctors. For example, in a recent test with Function, I learned that some of my blood lipids were slightly out of range. As a result, I decided to start supplementing with nattokinase, which can naturally help reduce LDL cholesterol, and it did. In a follow-up test, I could confirm that this strategy worked. My blood lipids are now back where I want them, in range. Comprehensive lab testing of the sort that Function offers is so important for health. And while I've been doing it for years, it's always been overly complicated and expensive. But now with Function, it's extremely easy and affordable. To learn more, visit functionhealth.com/huberman and use the code Huberman for a $50

13. 1:15:14 – 1:23:08

    Naval Academy & Lifestyle Protocols, Mandatory National Service

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:14

       credit towards your membership. Glad you mentioned the Navy. Recently, I wa- was invited out to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, and it was, it, it had the privilege of giving a talk to 4,000 midshipmen, which includes both young men and women. Yep. It was an amazing experience. I bet. I'll tell you this. A, a guy who's been a, a guest on this podcast was the one that organized this, Coleman Ruiz, has amazing life story. He's not particularly public facing, but amazing story, um, of his own life. Um, and okay, so you go there, and all these young men and women are, of course, in their, you know, cadet fatigues and- Mm-hmm ... going about. They live two to a dorm room. Um, they do PT, physical activity, every morning at 5:00 a.m. Lunch was the most incredible experience. You walk into a dining hall with thousands of men and women, tons of noise. Mm-hmm. A bell goes off, everyone's quiet, everyone sits down. A bell goes off, everyone starts eating. Fifteen minutes later, bell goes off, everyone stands up and walks out. Everyone has to play, play a sport competitively. Everyone there is forbidden from using their phone- Mm-hmm ... most all of the day and night. One member of this dorm room might be studying while their roommate is sleeping. Every single question was about how to be a better human being physically, mentally, emotionally. Um, and this visit was right in the, like, early days of the, the recent, uh, war with Iran, so they had a lot to worry about, and they're very close to all these things. A young woman came up to me and told me that she's part of the, uh, you know, the, the space program now. Mm-hmm. The military space program. Amazing. Like, just a complete contrast to everything that we're talking about. And I thought to myself, like, "Goodness," like, "These people, young people like this still exist." Yeah. All firm handshakes, all eye contact, and by the way, every color you could possibly imagine. Yeah. Every color you could possibly imagine. You know? Um, every stature, e- you could possibly imagine. Every income class. Yeah. Every income class. I would ask people, "Where are you from?" You know, part of the meet and greet. The problem was they were like, you know, my problem is I actually wanna know about- Mm-hmm ... uh, what, where people are from, what their name is, what they're interested in, that it can just take days, right? But it was incredible, and I thought to myself, "Okay, there's hope." Like, we, we came out of there, our team was like, "Yeah," like, "There's hope." Okay, it's associated with the military. I'm sure people will, will scratch at that point. But, like, thank God that these kids and this thing that we call the Navy exists. Mm-hmm. Because it gives... It was so inspiring. I... It made me level up as a 50-year-old man who thinks he's got his shit mostly together, emphasis on mostly. I was like, "Whoa, I gotta, like, step it up." Now, probably their only, quote unquote, "flaw" was I did a poll. There were a lot of questions about nicotine. Mm-hmm. And I asked approximately what percentage of the room takes nicotine every day, and I would say about 20 to 30% of the hands in the room went up. Hmm. Nicotine is in major use in young people. Are they using the, I forget what it's called, patches? The, the oral nicotine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which by the way, don't cause cancer, but yes, it's very addictive, rai- raises blood pressure and, you know, I, I'm not encouraging people to do it. But this brings me around to a separate point. I just wanted to kind of paint that picture, but to a separate point, you and I have never had a public argument, nor are we going to now, about alcohol or about cannabis. Mm-hmm. But you and I share somewhat different views on- Yeah ... on alcohol. Yeah. I've been very, uh, vocal, um- Mm-hmm ... and perhaps our most popular episode ever- Mm-hmm ... was the episode on alcohol. Mm-hmm. I didn't foresee that, but, um, and the deal is zero is better than any if we're strictly looking at health. Yep. Two per week is probably fine. Yep. If you're gonna drink more, you should probably do a bunch of other things to reduce inflammation and offset it and get good sleep and et cetera, et cetera. Mm-hmm. I'm not telling people what to do. They should just know what they're doing. Mm-hmm. You've made the argument quite aptly that alcohol can be an important social lubricant for- Mm-hmm ... young and older people- Mm-hmm ... so that they can socialize and have a life. Mm-hmm. I worry that if young people now drink more, they're gonna end up drinking alone.They're gonna end up-

    2. SGScott Galloway1:19:17

       Mm

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:18

       ... masturbating to porn more alone.

    4. SGScott Galloway1:19:20

       Mm-hmm.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:21

       They're gonna end up with more hangovers after all their alone behavior.

    6. SGScott Galloway1:19:25

       Mm-hmm.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:25

       I think what you've argued for is the notion of healthy fraternity, healthy dating, and socializing. You've mentioned bars a couple times.

    8. SGScott Galloway1:19:36

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:36

       Alcohol as something that can bring people together in a positive way.

    10. SGScott Galloway1:19:40

        Mm-hmm.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:40

        Um, if you don't mind, if you could elaborate on that, and maybe I'll just toss out cannabis as, as another one because-

    12. SGScott Galloway1:19:46

        Mm-hmm

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:46

        ... cannabis has problems and I, I'll acknowledge benefits of its own.

    14. SGScott Galloway1:19:50

        So I wanna go to the first thing. First is, uh, I wanna talk, just touch on Navy. I went to Annapolis when I was 17, and it was 'cause my dad was looking to get out of paying for college and decided I should go to Annapolis, and he took me, and we did a tour. And it, it... You know, we weren't very sophisticated, and [chuckles] it became so clear so fast that I was totally unqualified for Annapolis. Like, the kids, the average SAT... These are s- These are the finest young men and women in the world, and, and, uh, also we... you have to get a recommendation from a senator, and it was just so ridiculous that we were even there. I was just not of that quality and that standard, but my dad was in the Royal Navy and decided, "Go to Annapolis because we don't have to pay for it." Anyways, but that was the last time I was at Annapolis. But if I could have one policy... So I'm advising a lot of Democrats running for president, which is, like, 40 of them right now, who all claim they're not running. They're all running. If you call me and, and say you're really interested in my viewpoint, it means you want my money and you're running for president, and I just say, "Look, that's fine. Come on the podcast, and I'll write you a check." If I could have one policy, one blanket, if I had a magic wand, one policy, it'd be mandatory national service. If you look at the lowest levels of young adult depression in the West, it's two countries. It's Israel and Singapore. And despite all the existential threats facing Israel, uh, they... What do, what does mana- mandatory national service do? It gives you the sense that you're serving the agency of something bigger than yourself. It gives you purpose. You're handling dangerous equipment. It's the great equalizer. You don't care that this gay kid is totally different than you. You, you respond to his or her character and competence. 'Cause if you're getting fired on, you don't give a shit how rich their father is. All you wanna know is, is this person good at what they do? And you put people's lives in your hands, and they put their life in your hands, and you're serving in the, in the agency of something bigger than yourself. I spent time with an IDF battalion, uh, um, in Israel and had the same kind of experience it sounds like you had at Annapolis. These are young, beautiful, fit people, outside all day, meeting friends, mentors, and mates. In Singapore, the president there, who's arguably one of the greatest leaders of the last century, said, "This is the most religiously diverse society in the world. We're gonna have ethnic violence. There'll be a strong man who will weaponize this diversity and get people to turn against each other, so we need a different religion, and it's gonna be the flag, and we need to, we need to get people praying to the flag again." And if you look at the great legislation in America in the '60s and '70s, which was probably the most productive, unified time in America, it's because many of our elected leaders had all served in the same p- uniform, and they saw themselves as Americans before they saw themselves as Republicans or Democrats. And I'm not just saying military service, senior care, donating time at a no-kill animal shelter, being a smokejumper. There's a lot of ways to serve. But I think young Americans would benefit so enormously from getting outside of their own circle and seeing just how wonderful America and Americans are and, and having a chance... And not only that, people say, "Well, it's easy for you to say. You've aged out." I can tell you as a father of boys, if we set it up well and invested in it, I think they would really enjoy a rotation through different parts of America and different opportunities to serve. So the one thing I would do, going back to Annapolis and the IDF and what they do in Singapore, is mandatory

14. 1:23:08 – 1:33:43

    Alcohol Phones & Professional Considerations

    1. SGScott Galloway1:23:08

       national service. On drinking, first, my acknowledgement, as relates to the intake of any substance, if it's Andrew Huberman or Scott Galloway, defer to Andrew Huberman's advice. [chuckles] I just wanna say that upfront. You just have the qualifications and the domain expertise here. I think, personally, the risk to a 25-year-old liver are dwarfed by the risks of social isolation, and I worry that with 40% fewer pubs now post-COVID in Britain and a lack of mating and a lack of c- of connection, that the data I've seen, and correct me if I'm wrong, that 95% of people are able to integrate alcohol and drugs into their life without serious consequences. If you have a history of addiction, if you, uh, for whatever reason, don't enjoy it, then by all means, avoid it. If people are telling you that you're having an issue or a problem, or it's getting in the way of your work life, or you're one of those people that gets violent or mean under the influence, then for God's sakes, tone it down. But what I ask people is to look back on their younger days and say, "What is the most important thing in your life?" Relationships, friendships, finding someone to mate with. And I ask them, "Did alcohol play a role?" You know, it's not easy to come in and lean in for a kiss without a glass of wine. Or let me put it this way. It is easier with a glass of wine. It's a lot of fun. I smoked a lot of pot, and I drank a lot of alcohol in my 20s and in college, and it created a lot of wonderful bonding moments. And so what I'm saying, it, there's a balance and a trade-off, and what I would suggest is that everyone needs to make their own decision. But what scares me is the anti-alcohol movement and remote work has led to a level of isolation and fewer moments where people can bond, where people are willing to take a risk and go up to a strange person and say, "Hey, what's going on?" So I worry that the anti-alcohol movement, what I see among young people is that while they've demonized alcohol, it's not that they're not getting high. They're just doing a shit ton of drugs. And the thing I don't like about many of these drugs is that they're more solo activity or small group activity. I think alcohol is a group of people I like to think... meeting new strangers. Whereas when I was in college, all the dudes who were doing cocaine, where it was 'cause they had no sexual currency, and they would sequester a woman who liked cocaine and go into a bathroom.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:25:23

       That's creepy as fuck.

    3. SGScott Galloway1:25:24

       Totally creepy as fuck. And eventually everyone's like, "If a dude's into cocaine, it means he has no game." I find with people when they do drugs, it's a small group of people, and they sequester, and it's isolating, whereas with alcohol, and to a certain extent with marijuana, I found it's more social and more bonding. So absolutely be cognizant of your addiction history. Absolutely be mindful of that or any other substance you're addicted to. But I believe, and I've said this, and I've said this on Bill Maher a bunch, and I've gotten some shit, but I think there's some truth here. I think young people need to drink more, go out, and make a series of bad decisions that might pay off. I don't think there's anything wrong with some alcohol. I, I, I worry that the risks of loneliness far outweigh the risks of alcohol, and that alcohol has been demonized as something that if you take one trip of alco- drink of alcohol, you're gonna get cancer or you're gonna become an addict, and I don't think the data's there to support that.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:19

       I really appreciate the candid, um, expression of where you stand. I agree that isolation is worse than alcohol, and it's compounded by alcohol, so to make that p- uh, point clear. I went to UC Santa Barbara. We majored in drinking.

    5. SGScott Galloway1:26:33

       Speaking of alcohol. [laughs]

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:34

       It was like it was part of the general education.

    7. SGScott Galloway1:26:35

       I remember they had sand in the dorms. I'm like, "Why didn't I go to school here?"

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:38

       [chuckles] Well, you know, it did select for alcoholism if people had that predisposition, and you had to be disciplined to get your work done. You know, my messaging around alcohol was, um, i- it was intended to land in three places. One, people who don't like drinking but felt that they had to got a great reason to not drink.

    9. SGScott Galloway1:26:58

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:26:59

        Many, many people wrote to me and said, "Thank you. I always feel like garbage after drinking."

    11. SGScott Galloway1:27:02

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:02

        "I don't wanna drink. Now I understand why, why I feel like garbage." It's not that I was casting it toward a particular age group, but there are many people who hit their 40s or 50s, and they're like, "God, I'm aging fast, and I look like shit, and I sleep like shit, and my workouts are no good," and you might be drinking too much, right?

    13. SGScott Galloway1:27:20

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:21

        And then there are the optimizers. There are people that are really just going for maximum vitality, not just longevity, but maximum vitality, which is, to me, one of the most important things. In any case, people should do as they wish but know what they're doing, provided they're not harming anyone else. There's one thing that I wanna kind of, you know, lump in with this discussion about alcohol-

    15. SGScott Galloway1:27:42

        Mm-hmm

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:42

        ... and your statement, which on the top contour I totally agree with. Go out, drink, and make a few bad decisions and probably some good ones, but, uh-

    17. SGScott Galloway1:27:49

        Bad-ish

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:49

        ... bad-ish, right. So this is the thing, phones.

    19. SGScott Galloway1:27:53

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:27:53

        Somebody says the wrong thing, they loosen up too much. Now it's not a problem. Three years ago, you might be sitting in front of HR.

    21. SGScott Galloway1:28:02

        Mm-hmm.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:02

        You might, your classmates might isolate you, right? You were in a fraternity.

    23. SGScott Galloway1:28:06

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:06

        I wasn't in a fraternity. I grew up in the fraternity of skateboarding, punk rock music-

    25. SGScott Galloway1:28:09

        Mm-hmm

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:09

        ... and just the fraternity of Y chromosomes.

    27. SGScott Galloway1:28:11

        Mm-hmm.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:12

        Guys drink, they start saying stupid shit. With phones around, stupid shit is recorded. When stupid shit is recorded, it can be very harmful.

    29. SGScott Galloway1:28:20

        Mm-hmm.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:21

        And when you're drinking, you make less filtered decisions about what to say-
15. 1:33:43 – 1:37:16

    Drinking Age; Cannabis, THC

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:43

       with other students, less of an issue, right?

    2. SGScott Galloway1:33:45

       Well, let me, let me propose something to get your reaction. I think they should study and, and thoughtfully consider lowering the drinking age back to eighteen. I live in the UK. I can see by your face where this is going. I live in the UK.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:56

       Military, drinking age eighteen. I mean, I like some of the things that-

    4. SGScott Galloway1:33:59

       Well, if you're in the military, you can drink under the age of twenty-one because the idea is that if you're gonna die for your country, you should be able... You're adult enough to order a drink. So-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:34:06

       At least the logic is there.

    6. SGScott Galloway1:34:07

       That makes sense, right?

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:34:08

       Yeah.

    8. SGScott Galloway1:34:08

       But in the UK, if you're with an adult at a meal, you can order a beer at seventeen, and even without an adult at the age of eighteen in a pub, you can order a beer. And when my son comes home, he doesn't do it as often as I would like, but when my son comes home on the weekends from boarding school, I like to take him to a local pub, and we have a beer. And I found out that after one beer, he's more inclined to tell me a little bit about what's going on with him. And as a father, all you really want, you just really want conversation with your kids. You wanna know what's going on with them. And so he doesn't get drunk. He d- he's not into alcohol. He listens to you. He listens to other people. He's very wary of it. But I find that easing young men and young women into alcohol as opposed to twenty-one, and then they kinda go... I don't know. I wonder if, I wonder if we should be lowering the drinking age, and the reason we raised it was Mothers Against Drunk Driving were very effective and very on point because of all the young people who were dying in automobile accidents.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:02

       I remember that era.

    10. SGScott Galloway1:35:03

        I think it's gone way down because of Uber and because of airbags, so I'm proposing, would it make sense to do a study on whether you'd have more social connection and perhaps less alcoholism later in life-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:16

        Mm-hmm

    12. SGScott Galloway1:35:16

        ... if you let kids ease into it at the age of eighteen. And if they can be drafted, we're now trying to get, you know, the administration is proposing they be drafted, so if a kid can be drafted, shouldn't he or she have the judgment to know when they can order a beer or not?

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:29

        All great arguments. I didn't know we were gonna end up with beers.

    14. SGScott Galloway1:35:31

        Well, I mean, you talked about cannabis.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:33

        Yeah.

    16. SGScott Galloway1:35:33

        I wanna get your view.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:34

        Yeah.

    18. SGScott Galloway1:35:34

        I smoked a shit ton of pot in college. I could make a bong out of any household item.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:39

        [laughs]

    20. SGScott Galloway1:35:40

        I learned every line from Planet of the Apes.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:41

        You know how to make a pipe out of an apple? That's a very nine-

    22. SGScott Galloway1:35:43

        Oh, that's, that's-

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:44

        That's like a '90s trick.

    24. SGScott Galloway1:35:45

        Dude, that's, that's sophomore.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:46

        Okay, all right.

    26. SGScott Galloway1:35:47

        I can, I can, I can go much better than that. Anyways, but then twenty-two, got a job at Morgan Stanley, got very focused on getting my shit together, and I basically didn't smoke for twenty or twenty-five years. Now, I have trouble sleeping. I have trouble winding my brain down, and I take edibles. I do edibles probably twice a week. If I'm amped or think I'm gonna have a tough time sleeping, I'll take a five milligram edible, the stuff that takes you down. I forget which one that is, and it's been an enhancement to my life, but I'm reading a lot of stuff about potential psychosis or whatever.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:17

        Not for you. You're, like, the psychosis predisposition doesn't apply. You would already know. You'd be psychotic by now.

    28. SGScott Galloway1:36:22

        There you go. [laughs]

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:36:23

        Yeah. Yeah.

    30. SGScott Galloway1:36:23

        Or I just haven't acknowledged it, but it's been accretive to my life. I really enjoy THC, and I, I do it packaged, so I know where it's come, come from. I like edibles 'cause I like the dosing of it, but I would argue that THC is, um, something... When my mom had stomach cancer, um, I was living with her, and the only thing that worked for her nausea was marijuana, and I, I found myself literally, Andrew, on the streets of downtown Las Vegas trying to score marijuana 'cause I was too scared to travel with it, and this was twenty-- July of 2004, and I thought, "Jesus Christ, here I am on a street corner in this weird place in Vegas trying to score marijuana for my mom who has stomach cancer." So, you know, I, I, I think there's some benefits to... Well, I'll stop there, but THC usage, I enjoy. I think it's been

16. 1:37:16 – 1:38:36

    Sponsor: LMNT

    1. SGScott Galloway1:37:16

       additive to my life.I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, LMNT. LMNT is an electrolyte drink that has everything you need and nothing you don't. That means the electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, all in the correct ratios, but no sugar. Proper hydration is critical for brain and body function. Even a slight degree of dehydration can diminish your cognitive and physical performance. It's also important that you get adequate electrolytes. The electrolytes, sodium, magnesium, and potassium, are vital for the functioning of all cells in your body, especially your neurons or your nerve cells. Drinking LMNT makes it very easy to ensure that you're getting adequate hydration and adequate electrolytes. My days tend to start really fast, meaning I have to jump right into work or right into exercise. So to make sure that I'm hydrated and I have sufficient electrolytes, when I first wake up in the morning, I drink sixteen to thirty-two ounces of water with an LMNT packet dissolved in it. I also drink LMNT dissolved in water during any kind of physical exercise that I'm doing, especially on hot days when I'm sweating a lot and losing water and electrolytes. LMNT has a bunch of great-tasting flavors. In fact, I love them all. I love the watermelon, the raspberry, the citrus, and I really love the lemonade flavor. So if you'd like to try LMNT, you can go to drinklmnt.com/huberman to claim a free LMNT sample pack with any purchase. Again, that's drinklmnt.com/huberman

17. 1:38:36 – 1:46:14

    Cannabis; Porn, Addiction

    1. SGScott Galloway1:38:36

       to claim a free sample pack.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:38

       Yeah, I think with THC, it's highly individual. Uh, young males in particular who have a predisposition, genetic predisposition to psychosis-

    3. SGScott Galloway1:38:46

       Mm-hmm.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:46

       or bipolar disorder need to be really careful-

    5. SGScott Galloway1:38:49

       Yeah.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:49

       especially with high concentration THC, not just the edibles, but they do need to be careful. I think that, um, young, again, mostly young men who are challenged with, um, apathy, obesity, self-loathing, porn, masturbation addiction shouldn't be using THC. I think high agency, that seems to be the term nowadays, right? It work-- The, the, the guys that you mentor, you know, a year in who are, um, working out three times a week and they're-- they have a goal and they're hopefully seeking or in a relationship, they have a different self-view of themselves and, um, yeah, I, I don't see why that couldn't be a part of their week. Uh, it'll nuke their REM sleep, [chuckles] you know. To be specific, if they come off, their dreams are gonna be wild because they'll get more REM sleep. But creatives, there are a number of creatives who can use it, uh, appropriately to increase focus, get them out of anxiety, or get them to cope with anxiety, and then there are just as many people that take it and it makes them incredibly anxious.

    7. SGScott Galloway1:39:47

       Mm-hmm.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:48

       So I think it's, it's sort of on what backdrop.

    9. SGScott Galloway1:39:50

       Mm-hmm.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:50

        And I think the alcohol thing also is on what backdrop. If somebody's overweight, not working out, you know, a, a, a guy in their twenties or thirties that's dealing with... Let's just paint a picture here. He's, like, playing video games. He's not, like, morbidly obese or anything, but he's, like, kind of overweight-

    11. SGScott Galloway1:40:06

        He's out of shape. Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:40:06

        and he's kind of feels like shit. He shouldn't be drinking and smoking weed.

    13. SGScott Galloway1:40:09

        There you go.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:40:09

        He should be going to the gym and get himself in shape and then maybe have a couple beers a week with his buddies. So the context really matters.

    15. SGScott Galloway1:40:15

        Well, I would argue never do substances alone.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:40:18

        Mm-hmm.

    17. SGScott Galloway1:40:18

        And, and during the week, try not to do substances if you gotta be on point the next day, that it's something to be-- you know, it's a recreation. The thing I'm curious to get your take on is one of the things I'm working with some young men on i- is, um, I think the most under-researched addiction is porn, and my fear is that... I mean, if you look at what-- Again, I go back to Big Tech. Big Tech's trying to convince young men why go through the pecking order and the effort of trying to develop a friend group when you have Reddit and Discord? Why go through the bullshit of putting on a tie and trying to go into the office and make a good living and navigate the corporate world when you think you can make money trading stocks or crypto on Robinhood or Coinbase? And why would you go through the effort, the expense, the potential rejection of trying to have a kindness practice, look good, work out, endure rejection, all the expenditures of going out and trying to get a date when you have lifelike porn? And I'll use myself as an example. When I was at UCLA, I graduated from UCLA with a two point two seven GPA, which isn't easy 'cause it means you almost... I, I failed nine classes, right? And I still graduated. And by the way, talk about a different age. We're both children of University of California, UC San Diego. Talk about how blessed we are. Talk about how just what winds, hurricane-like winds we had in our sails to prosperity. When I applied to UCLA, admissions rate was seventy-four percent, now it's nine. Graduated with a two point two seven. You know what happened? Berkeley let me into graduate school with a two point two seven GPA. But anyways, back to UCLA. One of my motivators for going on campus was that I w-- there was a non-zero probability that I might meet a woman, establish contact with her, see my buddies, maybe get her to a fraternity party or get her to go on a date with me, and maybe at some point be physical with her. That was an enormous motivator for me. If I had lifelike porn on my phone, on my computer screen twenty-four by seven, I don't know if I would've been as motivated to go on campus as much, and I-- there was little margin for error in terms of going on campus a few less times. And I worry that that mojo, that desire to quite frankly go out and make your own bad porn is being reduced so much with lifelike porn that men aren't evolving into risk-taking, aggressive in a positive way men who are motivated to dress well, to work out, to approach strange women, to go through... I mean, it is hard. It is hard to find a partner. And what I say to these men is, "Welcome to the fucking work week. It's been hard forever. That's the whole point." Women are choosier than men, and there's a reason, right? We're trying to spread our seed to the four corners of the earth. They put up a much finer screen to pick the smartest, fastest, and strongest seed, and that's the reason why our kids are gonna be smarter and taller than us. That's the way of the world. But when you reduce that desire, it's gonna get in the way of not only you finding a mate, but developing the skills to be successful in all other parts of your life. So back to the basic premise, I wonder and worry if porn is the most under-researched addiction and the damage it's having on young men becauseWhat I see amongst my colleagues, and I'd be curious if... I actually spoke to a really thoughtful woman about this who's an addiction professor at Stanford. I'm sure you know her. I forget her name.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:34

        Anna Lembke.

    19. SGScott Galloway1:43:35

        Anna Lembke.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:35

        Yeah, she runs our dual diagnosis addiction-

    21. SGScott Galloway1:43:37

        Fantastic

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:37

        ... amazing woman, amazing human being.

    23. SGScott Galloway1:43:39

        Immediately when we got off the podcast, said to me, "If your marijuana ever becomes a problem, just call me." And she was sincere. [chuckles]

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:45

        That's totally-

    25. SGScott Galloway1:43:46

        And I'm like-

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:46

        That's totally Anna

    27. SGScott Galloway1:43:47

        ... "Do you sense it?" And immediately I'm like-

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:48

        She's the real deal

    29. SGScott Galloway1:43:49

        ... I'm like, "Do you sense it's a problem?" [laughs] I'm like, "Hold me, Anna." Anyways, but I don't think there's enough really good research out there on porn because I don't think people wanna be known as the porn professor, and so I worry that we really don't know the impact. And what I see anecdotally is that I see a lot of young men who don't have that healthy fire 'cause they think that they can just... They think, oh f- it's like in the, in the last 20 years, the guys who didn't have their own game or didn't wanna be that successful, they would go to some low income country and basically become sexpats. This has become, I think, a much broader version of that, that rather than level up, you'd rather just sit home and get a reasonable facsimile of a relationship or sex with porn. I wonder if that is more damaging than, than people, than, uh, people estimate right now.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:44:40

        Yeah, it's a, a really important topic, and it's one that people contact me about all the time. Your analogy of what's happening with porn to sexpats, we should probably explain what's... E- expats are people that leave the United States. I'm not sure everyone's gonna follow that one, and, uh, sexpats are the, it's a, this community of people that what they, I think they go to Southeast Asia or something-
18. 1:46:14 – 1:56:25

    Anger; Testosterone; Aspirational Masculinity, Toxic Femininity

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:14

       fundamental wiring. The two, the two circuits in the brain that really crank out dopamine.

    2. SGScott Galloway1:46:19

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:19

       Okay? Circuits for reproduction-

    4. SGScott Galloway1:46:21

       Mm-hmm

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:22

       ... sex-

    6. SGScott Galloway1:46:22

       Mm-hmm

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:23

       ... and anger.

    8. SGScott Galloway1:46:24

       Hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:24

       There's this incredible study by a very, uh, controversial guy named Robert Heath in the 1960s. He was a, a neurosurgeon who would stimulate different areas of the brain and, um, unfortunately, he was, um, into conversion therapy. So, you know, he appropriately got run out of science for trying to make gay people straight by stimulating certain areas of the brain.

    10. SGScott Galloway1:46:42

        Yeah, good luck with that.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:46:42

        Yeah. He was kind of a piece of shit person, but again, let's look at what he did separate from that. Immediately people are like, "I don't care about his data." But he gave people with electrodes in their brain, in certain studies, the option to stimulate anywhere they wanted. They could stimulate and get sexual arousal. They could get laughter. They could feel drunk. All the things we're talking about, really. They could feel soothing of the sort that their mother was holding them. The area that they chose to stimulate the most is in the central midline nucleus of the thalamus, an area that my lab has spent a lot of time on in other situations, and they would just lever press and lever press and lever press for the feeling of mild frustration and anger.

    12. SGScott Galloway1:47:18

        Hmm.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:47:18

        Because the arousal associated with it is its own reinforcement. As a student of mine who's now hopefully soon to be a faculty member, I won't name the university, but she has an offer from a phenomenal university. Her name is Lindsay Salay, and she's worked on this i- in a very, very mechanistic way. When we're angry, when we're frustrated, the link to the dopamine circuitry is just pounded out. We just all day long. And what's amazing is it doesn't attenuate. There's no threshold for anger. The more angry you get, the more frustrated you get, the more arousal you feel from that-

    14. SGScott Galloway1:47:52

        Mm-hmm

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:47:52

        ... you never satiate. There's no post-coital bliss. There's no, my belly is so full I feel like I'm going to, going to explode.

    16. SGScott Galloway1:47:59

        Hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:00

        And so this gets to the social media thing, too. That's the circuit that I worry about, and I think that's the circuit that, yes, I think tech, Big Tech has tapped into whether they want to or not, and I think that that's the one we really have to be careful of. And, um, and I've experienced it myself. I think I actually, in this moment, am experiencing a little bit of it, like that kind of arousal of like, yes-

    18. SGScott Galloway1:48:18

        Mm-hmm

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:18

        ... the, the forward center of mass that we feel. But when it's fuck them, like fuck the Republicans and, you know, or fuck the left or the extreme wo- I mean, that's... People are just high all day long on their own anger and frustration, and I think we just see it everywhere. And I, and I raise my hand. I'm sure I'm guilty of this at times, too.

    20. SGScott Galloway1:48:36

        Yeah, that's illuminating 'cause I correlate my anger to a pathway to feeling depressed. I struggle with anger and depression, and it usually starts as something triggers me, I get really angry, and then I feel like my blood turns to some sort of corrosive acid, and it just wears me down.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:54

        That's adrenaline.

    22. SGScott Galloway1:48:55

        And I'm just repleted, I'm just depleted for two or three days. So I was... I, I have a practice around trying to calm my anger, but just hearing you say that occasionally on one of my podcasts, when I see something that's inherently wrong and I point it out or injust, I do feel like a rush, like I'm being a leader or a baller or pointing something out.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:15

        Well, you are. It's, I mean, I will say, you know, testosterone-

    24. SGScott Galloway1:49:19

        Mm-hmm

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:19

        ... conversation we've had a little bit before offline, at the level of the brain, it makes effort feel good.

    26. SGScott Galloway1:49:24

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:25

        Anyway, I don't, I don't wanna go o-off on a too much of a tangent, but I'd like your thoughts about howTestosterone can be leveraged for good versus bad, and maybe even, I don't know that we put everyone on testosterone. I'm not suggesting that. It can nuke your fertility if you don't do other things to offset it. So, uh, kids, be careful. But what are your thoughts on testosterone and just sort of proactive male behavior, testosterone in adults, older generations taking testosterone?

    28. SGScott Galloway1:49:53

        Well, I'm one of them. I'm on T therapy, and I do it because I quite frankly wanna feel younger. It makes me stronger in the gym, better erections, even weird things like my skin. The way I would describe T therapy is it just kind of took me back three or five years to, in the gym. So I'm an advocate for it. I'm, you should do it under the guidance of a doctor, which I'm doing, but I'm a fan of it. And I think you've done really interesting work about hormone replacement therapy. I've listened to a lot of your work on it. The argument around testosterone and masculinity, I think, is a really important one in the political spectrum because to the far right's credit, they recognized the problem with young men before anybody else. The problem is they conflate masculinity with coarseness and cruelty, and their solution was to take non-whites and women back to the '50s.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:38

        Some of them. I, I'm not trying to protect them, but I would say, uh, you know, I don't know his political leanings, but my friend Jocko Willink has daughters. He's not that guy you just described.

    30. SGScott Galloway1:50:48

        No, I'm talking about the far right.
19. 1:56:25 – 2:04:43

    Advocating for Young Men, Economic Opportunity, Gerontocracy

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:56:25

       mesh that we're talking about.

    2. SGScott Galloway1:56:26

       Yeah, the only way you get there is with data. So from 1945 to 2000, America registered a third of the world's economic growth, a third of its prosperity with only five percent of the population. So we had six X the growth of the rest of the world, right? And within that six X, the majority of that prosperity was sequestered to the one-third of the population that were white, male, and heterosexual. It was just a lot harder to participate in that uplift if you weren't in that group.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:56:52

       Mm-hmm.

    4. SGScott Galloway1:56:53

       So men of my generation, born with my sexual orientation, skin color, and gender arguably had fifteen to eighteen X the winds in their sails. The question is, should a young man now pay the price for my privilege?

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:07

       Mm-hmm.

    6. SGScott Galloway1:57:07

       And I understand the gag reflex when I start talking or advocating for men because they look at me and they said, "You had an unfair advantage." Hundred percent guilty as charged. But now a young man who is four times as likely to kill himself, three times as likely to be addicted, twelve times as likely to be incarcerated, and men of my generation aren't stepping up and providing the mentorship or voting for the programs that might take a little bit of money away from my generation to support all young people and bring them up, and most of the programs and policies I advocate for would, would advocate for all young people. The average seven-year-old is seventy-two percent wealthier than the seven-year-old forty years ago. The twenty-five-year-old is twenty-four percent less wealthy, and then every day it's speed balled with a hundred and ten notifications telling them that they're failing. And what do you know? They're the most obese, depressed, and anxious generation we've had in a long time. And there really isn't an honest conversation. A-and I've said this on stage, and it gets some pushback. I'll say, I think women make better managers. I think that they are more emotionally in touch with other people. They have higher EQ. I think they'll probably make better doctors and lawyers. I think their attention to detail, genetically or, or anthropologically, whatever you wanna call it, their bedside manner, and there's more women in both law school and medical school now, especially medical school. If I say that, women are better managers, will make better doctors, nodding. Everyone, everyone... The women agree, and the guys will look around and go nod, right? If I say, men on average make better entrepreneurs, and that's not to say that women shouldn't be offered the same opportunities, and they haven't been, right? Ninety-five percent of the capital has been not only allocated to men, but the majority of it has been allocated by men who went to one or two schools, Harvard and Stanford. There's a, "I don't feel safe around you."

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:58:49

       Who doesn't feel safe around you?

    8. SGScott Galloway1:58:51

       It's fine to say women are... make better X, Y, and Z.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:58:53

       Mm-hmm.

    10. SGScott Galloway1:58:54

        To say men are better at anything-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:58:56

        Well, if you said it on X-

    12. SGScott Galloway1:58:56

        Better combat soldiers

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:58:58

        ... I mean, let's be honest, if you said it on X, everyone would be like, "Cool. Entr- males make better entrepreneurs." If you said it in a room-- I mean, I, again, I don't wanna make this political, but we can't w- you know, we can't avoid this. You know, if you said it among a more right l- center to l- right-leaning crowd-

    14. SGScott Galloway1:59:14

        Yeah

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:59:15

        ... I think you'd probably get less pushback also from women.

    16. SGScott Galloway1:59:17

        I think that's fair.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:59:18

        I'm not saying it's who you're hanging out with, you know?

    18. SGScott Galloway1:59:20

        Yeah. No, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a fair point.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:59:21

        I, I barely hang out with anybody, so I've got a very small world, but-

    20. SGScott Galloway1:59:24

        Well, but to your point, if you go to the Democratic national website, d-dnc.org, and they changed this, but I talked about this a lot on CNN, left-leaning website. They, they said they have a page saying who we serve, and they outlined sixteen special interest groups: veterans, the disabled, Black Americans, Native Americans, seniors. And I added it up, and it was seventy-four percent of the population. And when you say you're advocating for seventy-four percent of the population, you're not advocating for seventy-four percent, you're discriminating against twenty-six percent. And basically, the only people they didn't mention were young men. So I understand the notion that men have had so much disproportionate advantage that there needs to be a catch-up period, but I would argue it's gone a little bit overboard. Our school system K through twelve, I would argue, is biased against boys. A boy is twice as likely to be suspended on a behavior-adjusted basis as a girl. A Black boy, five times as likely. Seventy to eighty percent of K through twelve teachers are women. Who do people naturally advocate for? The people that remind them of themselves at that age. Seven in ten high school valedictorians are girls. It's now sixty forty female male in college. And so the bottom line is we level the playing field and there's a little bit of bias, and women have totally blown by men. Fine. More power to them. But what do we do now that young men just, quite frankly, don't have obvious paths to prosperity, and young people aren't as economically prosperous relative as they used to be, and young men are disproportionately evaluated in society, especially in the mating market, on their economic viability? And I get a ton of pushback saying, "No, I'm just looking for an emotionally in touch male." I think that is such bullshit.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:01

        Oh, it's total bullshit.

    22. SGScott Galloway2:01:02

        There's still economic hypergamy. Educational hypergamy has leveled out. There's a lot of people who, women who will marry a guy who didn't go to college or w- th-there, e-educational hypergamy has vastly reduced. But in cities where women makes, make as much as men, so there's an equality, if you find a couple, twice as many couples, the male earns more money than the woman. Economic hypergamy is still in absolutely full, full force. So if we don't figure out a wayTo level up all young people economically such that there's more paths for economic viability for young men, I think it's just gonna tear at our society. We're gonna have a lower birth rates, fewer people to support the very expensive programs which make up forty percent of our government spending now on people over the age of sixty-five, and we're gonna have real issues. And people say, "Well, that's repackaged violence, that men are more violent." I'm like, "No, it's just the reality." If you look at every unstable, violent society in history, it always has one thing at the core of it, and that is a group of young men with a lack of economic or romantic opportunities. I don't care if it's Weimar Germany or some of the most unstable places in the Middle East or Africa. When you have the most dangerous person in the world is a young man who is lonely and broke, and we are producing way too many of them. And by the way, I don't think the remedy here is affirmative action for men. I just think that's too politicized. But we have to stop transferring wealth from people their age to people my age. Why the hell are we transferring every year one point three trillion dollars from a generation that is the most anxious, depressed, and obese in American history to the wealthiest generation in the history of the planet called Social Security? That's a third rail in politics. I'm not suggesting anyone should die in poverty. Should you and I get Social Security?

    23. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:44

        No.

    24. SGScott Galloway2:02:44

        No.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:45

        I don't need it. No, I don't need it.

    26. SGScott Galloway2:02:45

        [chuckles] I mean-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:46

        I don't need it

    28. SGScott Galloway2:02:46

        ... probably a third, a, a third of seniors really don't need Social Security. But you get near that, you can't get elected, right? Forty percent of all government spending is going to people over the age of sixty-five. It's gonna be fifty percent within ten years. We spend more money on ICE than we spend on children. I mean, it's just, there's-- My generation, I don't even think of us, I'm h- I'm on the edge of Gen X, baby boomer. The best way to describe my generation would be the vampire generation. We were never drafted into war. We never really had to serve. And what has my economic complexion been in America? Unprecedented prosperity, but the lowest taxes in, in modern history. So a lot of these solutions I just think are common sense. We need to do away... Social Security tax, right? Six percent up to a hundred sixty thousand. So a kid working for me making a hundred and fifty or a hundred and sixty K, good living, they pay nine thousand dollars. I make a lot more than that. I pay nine thousand dollars because it tops out at a hundred and sixty grand. Why does that make any sense? Who-- Two biggest tax deductions, mortgage interest rate and capital gains. Who owns homes and stocks? People our age. Who rents and makes their money from current income? All the dudes in this office, the young kids, right? We are literally transferring trillions of dollars from young people to old people, and we wonder why young men feel anxious when they are dispr- But seventy-five percent of women say economic viability is key to a mate. It's only twenty-five percent of men. Women still look at men as economic providers. And so you have this entire generation of young men who feel like they have no purpose, no on-ramps to the middle class, and are being evaluated on a set of criteria that get harder and harder for them each year, and then this, like, unbelievable set of expectations that they're taught they should have, 'cause it seems like everyone else is making a million dollars selling ETH, or is in amazing shape, or has a ridiculously hot boyfriend or girlfriend, and has artist passes to Coachella. So i-i-it'd be shocking if they weren't depressed and obese.

20. 2:04:43 – 2:10:30

    Generation Gaps, Retirement, "Vampire" Generation

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:04:45

       Wow. Um, the analogy that comes to mind is, uh, academic science. You know, uh, there's-- I used to joke, uh, you, you know, the advantage of having a dad who was a scientist who was also a little bit irreverent, uh, was that I grew up around an understanding of how academics works and, and, uh, early on I thought, okay, as much as I love my colleagues, like, a lot of them need to retire. They just need to go.

    2. SGScott Galloway2:05:08

       Hundred percent.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:05:09

       And the reason they need to go is because they were having three, four, two to four, uh, NIH grants, like million dollar a year grants, and, and that itself isn't a problem except that there wasn't enough money for young investigators, and so fields die, and science dies. They don't retire. And so-

    4. SGScott Galloway2:05:23

       Yeah

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:05:24

       ... it was very interesting. Right before the Trump administration came in, I started logging into these NIH hearings, and, and I think our previous NIH director, and I will go on record in saying, and our current NIH director, Jay Bhattacharya, both very good directors in different ways trying to do important different things. And you'll notice the budget was not cut under Jay, and IDC for the academics out there was not cut. But an interesting problem was outed at the kind of end of Carolyn's role at NIH, the former director, and it was the following. Someone said, "What is the deal? Why are people living longer and young people are killing themselves? And we have all these mental health issues, mostly among men, but also young, among young women." And she said, "It is true that we've been very successful in medicine at getting people sixty-five and older to live much, much longer, to treat late stage diabetes, to treat cancer, to treat, uh..." We don't have cures for these things, but we've extended life for the older generation and to a large degree, the quality of life, especially if they're willing to get sunlight, exercise, probably not drink alcohol at that age or drink a lot less, not smoke. People are living longer and longer and longer, and tons of research money is being poured into this. There's this enormous gap where many of the problems that are most important to young people to thrive in every way, not just health, but mental health, et cetera, they're just not even being studied. So there's this top weighting of age and of seniority clearly in what you're describing, but also in the science and that, that we're funding, and that clearly, clearly harms young people because no one's studying porn addiction in a serious way at scale. Nobody's studying social media addiction in a serious way at scale. I think what Jonathan's done is fantastic, and others are now getting involved in this. But, you know, it, it's a problem if you look at the numbers as serious as cancer for people who are, you know, in their fifties and older. And actually, cancers and diabetes and, and, uh, deaths of despair, as our previous, uh, you know, surgeon general pointed out, uh, are among the greatest killers of young people. So we've totally lost perspective in many ways.

    6. SGScott Galloway2:07:32

       Agreed.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:07:32

       I don't know what to do about Social Security. That's your domain, not mine. But I vote very strongly forWhat they do in Japan, force scientists to retire. I'm gonna earn some hate from my colleagues, but anyway, force them to retire at sixty-five. They still collect a salary and, uh, and in many cases, a, a pension if they're state-funded schools. They still have healthcare. Their kids still probably went to college partially for free, the inside ball of these schools that you and I work at, right?

    8. SGScott Galloway2:07:58

       Mm-hmm.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman2:07:58

       This whole network.

    10. SGScott Galloway2:07:59

        And they got in.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman2:07:59

        And, and they got in. And so let them retire. Let them keep their office. I don't-- I do believe there's a lot of wisdom in the older generations, but I was quite happy to-

    12. SGScott Galloway2:08:11

        There, there was your land acknowledgment.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:12

        [chuckles]

    14. SGScott Galloway2:08:12

        Let me, let me go on-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:13

        Oh, well, well, I just wanna say there were senior faculty members like Lubert Stryer, I'll just call these people out, who wrote the book Biochemistry, and even they were so-

    16. SGScott Galloway2:08:20

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:20

        Lubert retired, closed his lab. He made a bunch of money at Affymetrix, the gene chip company.

    18. SGScott Galloway2:08:25

        Mm-hmm.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:25

        And he used to come around to the lab and go, "Hey, what are you guys working on?" He would talk to the students and give them amazing ideas. I think that generational wisdom passed down is great. Guess what he wasn't doing? Consuming grant dollars, consuming square footage on campus. He was shedding knowledge for free because the system had taken care of him.

    20. SGScott Galloway2:08:39

        Yeah. He's, he's a Yoda, but he's an outlier.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:41

        He's a Yoda. Yeah.

    22. SGScott Galloway2:08:42

        So you work at Stanford, one of the finest faculties ever assembled. NYU has an outst-- at the business school, we have an outstanding faculty. I would argue one of the best in the world, not because it's our fault, but because every great faculty member loves the idea of coming and spending four, eight, ten years in New York and living in SoHo.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman2:08:58

        Yeah, it's pretty good.

    24. SGScott Galloway2:08:59

        That's our advantage. "Hey, come here. We'll give you free housing. You and your wife, your kids are out of the house. Come teach accounting here." We get amazing faculty. A third should be out put on a fucking ice floe. They get to a point where they darn adding as much value. They were the bomb on gap one accounting in nineteen eighty-eight. They get tenure, and they won't leave, and they leave feet first. And the result is young people who could bring a certain creativity, a new way of looking at things, there's no room for them to come up. And I wanna go back to the notion of vampire generation. We talk about sunlight, being social, eating well, sleeping well, all the keys, right? I would argue the number one predictor of longevity is one thing, money. China's gone from an average life expectancy of forty-seven to seventy-seven in sixty years as their wealth has gone up. You're in the bottom decile, I believe, of income, you live twelve years less long than someone in the upper decile, right? It's about money. And all we have done is not only suck money from young to old, we have sucked life because we are so selfish and so unwilling to pay it forward. Old people elect even older people to vote themselves more money, and what they are doing, maybe unwittingly, but they are doing it, is they are robbing life and happiness from young people and transferring it to old people. There not only needs to be term limits. Washington, D.C., the people allocating capital has become a, become a cross between The Golden Girls and The Land of the Walking Dead. Enough already. We have totally robbed not only money, we have robbed life and health from young people because money in our society

21. 2:10:30 – 2:18:48

    Bet on Unremarkable, Universities & Vocations; Gerontocracy

    1. SGScott Galloway2:10:30

       is health.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman2:10:31

       How do we create financial incentives inside of uniqueness? I think that's what makes the United States great because I saw social media that way, but I will say that's because it worked out that way for me. I love learning. I love teaching. I flipped on a camera, and I started the podcast with that guy sitting over there, and it worked out great.

    3. SGScott Galloway2:10:48

       The way I would describe the transition that's been bad for America is that... The way I would describe it is that back when I was growing up, America had a commitment to and even loved the unremarkable. I was remarkably unremarkable, and I'm not-- that's not a humble brag. I got eleven hundred and thirty on the SAT at a three point one GPA. We didn't have any money, but this is what I got. I got assisted lunch, right? And the great state of California used to send coupons to my house. They were the same color as the kids would buy in school, so I wouldn't be embarrassed, right? I got Pell Grants. I got accepted to UCLA on appeal, seventy-four percent admissions rate. I got... I was one of the twenty-six percent that didn't get in, and I was in Solomon Sheldon, came home really upset one day and said, "Is this my life?" I was always told I was funny. I wanted to be a doctor. And my mom said, "Well, is there an appeal process?" And I remember the day the admissions director called me and said, "You're not qualified, but you're a son of California, and we're gonna give you a shot."

    4. AHAndrew Huberman2:11:47

       Son of California.

    5. SGScott Galloway2:11:48

       Son of California.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman2:11:48

       Imagine that. Yeah.

    7. SGScott Galloway2:11:49

       What a great statement.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman2:11:49

       Yeah.

    9. SGScott Galloway2:11:50

       I get, I get emotional just thinking about it. And then I got, as I said, I got into Berkeley, and this is a, this is a brag and a flex, but I'm gonna make it. I've given twenty million bucks back to the University of California in the last five years.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:01

        Awesome.

    11. SGScott Galloway2:12:02

        So it's worked out for all of us. America isn't about identifying a super class of rich kids and the freakishly remarkable. It's about betting on unremarkable kids. So this is what we need to do. We need-- If you're a university and you have more than a billion dollar endowment and you're not growing your freshman class faster than population, you're a hedge fund with classes, and you should lose your tax-free status. If a twenty percent of your degrees aren't for non-traditional de-- non-traditional things such as nursing or specialty construction or vocational programming, you don't get access to tax-free money. Uh, in, in my opinion, mandatory national service. I think there's a ton of things we need to do. I think we should tax the shit out of private schools and reinvest that in public schools. We need to disassociate house property taxes from the quality of the schools. Think about the disadvantage. Kids... The average public school spends fifteen thousand dollars a year on a kid. The kid, uh, schools in poor areas, nine thousand. The average private school spends seventy-two thousand dollars a year per student. So if you're fortunate enough to go to a private school, like my kids, we're spending eight hundred and fifty grand on them, and some kids were spending a hundred and twenty grand, and you want that kid to compete against another kid to get into an elite university? And we all tell ourselves this myth now that, "Oh, with AI, the college doesn't matter." It's never been more important. And if you had a drug that can make it twice as likely that you get married, half as likely that you kill yourself, three times as likely that you become a millionaire, ten times as likely that you run for office, four times as likely that you become an officer in the militaryThree times less likely that you become obese. Would you hoard that drug? And then when someone gets into the, the working environment or the, or the economy, would you create a tax policy that just transfers money from you to the wealthiest generation in the world? There's just so many basic common sense solution around higher ed and K through 12 that we come up with all these reasons. We use terms like network effects or globalization or tech, and it's nothing but thinly veiled bullshit to transfer more money. The bottom ninety-nine percent in young people are just nutrition for older people. And it's just, it, to me it's fairly obvious. They're just common sense solutions. And higher ed has become unfortunately an, an emblematic of the rejection LVMH-ing of America, where you either, at the age of eighteen have to be freakishly remarkable. Are you captain of your lacrosse team and building wells in Africa? Then fine, come on in and we'll put you on a glide path to potentially being a billionaire or president. But say you're unremarkable, sorry, you're shit out of luck. Maybe, maybe you can build a data center somewhere and maybe get into the middle class. And by the way, we don't even have an apprentice culture in this environment. So many parents feel so shamed when their kid doesn't get into elite university. Eleven percent of LinkedIn profiles in Germany and the UK say apprentice. It's three percent here because parents feel shamed if their kid doesn't get into an elite university. We need to dramatically expand vocational programming, freshman classes, and stop this insane transfer of wealth and health from young people to old people. And higher ed, unfortunately, our industry is at the tip of the spear of fomenting this rejectionist bullshit culture where we've identified we're the arbiters of success. You know who gets into Stanford and NYU? Two cohorts, the children of rich people, you're seventy-seven times more likely to get into elite university if you're in the top one percent household, or the freakishly remarkable. And here's the thing, I can prove to us all mathematically that ninety-nine percent of our children are not in the top one percent. America loved the unremarkable when I was a kid. It no-- it's fallen out of love with the unremarkable. Is America about identifying a super class to become billionaires, or is it about planting as many seeds as possible? Because no one can be the arbiter of greatness at eighteen. No one was gonna see me at eighteen and go, "Someday you might have an impact and you'll be wealthy." No one would've known that. And we've decided, no, we're about the children of rich people, and we're about the freakishly remarkable, and everybody else, in my opinion, hopefully, hopefully gets to the middle class. But if you don't, there's Big Tech waiting there to addict you. There's a tax policy that might impoverish you. I think that young people... People, people say about young people, they're entitled. I think they're entitled to be enraged. I can't imagine the rage they must feel right now, that, that they look up, they look sideways, and they see all this prosperity, and they look at my generation and see the benefits we've accrued, and we wanna spend two billion doll- two trillion dollars a year on their credit card. We spend seven trillion dollars a year. We take in five trillion, and that two trillion is all going, that incremental two trillion is all going to seniors. I'm in the club doing rails of ketamine and champagne, and the closest a young person gets is they get to throw their credit card in, and I'll keep swiping it. I mean, it is literally morally corrupt what we are doing in terms of deficit spending and how we are prioritizing our budget. Our budget reflects our values, and our values are all fucked up and have said, "Let's party," right? The baby boomers, "Let's party like there's no tomorrow, and the old-- and the young people, well, they're gonna have to clean up the house, and the garage is on fire, and the dogs are gonna be pregnant, but that's their problem 'cause I'll be dead by then." Th-this generation, my generation, for some reason, does not feel the same obligation to pay it forward or back and create infrastructure and investments for young people. And it's, it, to me, it feels fairly obvious, and the solutions are fairly common sense. But we'll have thoughtful conversations, and Social Security will be a third rail, and we'll have thoughtful reasons for why when I sell my business, the first ten million dollars should be tax-free. The last business I sold, first ten million bucks is tax-free. What the actual fuck? They say, "Well, Scott, entrepreneurs are more productive. We, we, we wanna unleash our productivity, our most product..." I had no idea what tax po- people don't start businesses because of tax policy. Did you know what the ta- did you know about twelve oh two? If you sell this business, the first ten million bucks is tax-free if it's a, I think it's a C corp. That's not why people start businesses.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman2:17:51

        No.

    13. SGScott Galloway2:17:51

        But every day there are new tax policies that do one thing, transfer money from those dudes to us. More me than you, 'cause you're ten years younger than me. It needs to stop. There's basic tax policy, basic health and human services policy, right? Why on earth, you're a doctor, for God's sakes, we spend thirteen thousand dollars per individual for more obesity, more anxiety, more depression than every other G6 nation? We should absolutely have nationalized socialized healthcare. The bottom ninety-nine percent, again, are just a fucking body bag of nutrition for the top one percent. Monetizing healthcare, I'll put that to you. I absolutely think we need single-payer socialized medicine right now. I think it is indefensible, the healthcare in this country. Forty percent, for-- I apologize, I'm going off script here. Forty percent of households, medical or dental debt. You don't have kids. Do you realize how, what kind of shame you would feel as a father if your sixteen-year-old girl gets a screaming toothache and you have to go into debt to get her a root canal, and that hangs

22. 2:18:48 – 2:25:33

    Aging; Paying it Forward & Male Mentorship

    1. SGScott Galloway2:18:48

       over you for the next two or three years? The thirty-

    2. AHAndrew Huberman2:18:50

       Well, I'm all for robbing it from Social Security, 'cause I like that idea. The moment you say, you know, nationalized healthcare, I think, "Oh, boy, here we go again." But I like the idea of, of robbing it from Social Security. I'm, I'm not talking about taking old people and turning them out to pasture and letting them wander the streets, you know, mumbling to themselves. I do think that taking care of the older generation is important, but I do think we are a very top-heavy culture, and maybe because I want to, I consider you Gen X as opposed to Boomer.

    3. SGScott Galloway2:19:15

       I appreciate that.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman2:19:16

       Um, I really do. And actually, it raised a question for me. Feel free to, um, say pass, you don't wanna answer. But earlier you said you, you're somewhat, um, I don't know, bashful or, or you have this issue around your age. Like I-- my friend Kelly Starrett, who's a, you know, PhD in physiology, amazing trainer and stuff, he said the best thing about turning fifty when I was turning fifty, he's like, "You're gonna be among the best in shape for your dec- for your decade." And I think, I mean, look, you, you look great for a forty-year-old. Like, you're, you're killing it. You know, you're fit, all this stuff. So but I wonder, is this kinda shame around it because your peer group kinda sucks in the way that you're describing, or is this actually about age? 'Cause to me, one of the mo- one of thebest things is to feel like your friends, your people, the people you associate with are awesome. And your generation, I loved... I think Gen X is an incredible generation. As this conversation continues, I'm thinking more and more about the responsibility and both the failures and the opportunities to, to remedy things for the next generation. That's how we started this conversation. So two questions there. First of all, is that what that's about? Like, your peers kinda suck, and you don't wanna be a part of it? 'Cause I consider you Gen X, and I'm not just trying to, what do the kids say, glaze you here. You're winning on every dimension, and you got two health- what sounds like healthy, productive boys. Like, y- like you got it all, man. Like

    5. SGScott Galloway2:20:32

       I think a lot of it comes down to very just base things, and that is a fear of death. I mean, I'm not a f- a f- I'm a f- I'm afraid of getting old and being unhealthy. I don't mind the death part. Also, just a fear of just wanting to feel young and vigorous and masculine and feel like that's slipping away from me. Biology's undefeated, so I think I'm a little bit youth obsessed and a little bit ageist, so I think I have a, just a fear of aging. Um, but just, just the call-out about paying it forward and the call-out to your, to your... I know a lot of young men and a lot of successful men listen to this podcast. Like, I think my generation, on a lot of levels, we're talking about tax policy, but men aren't stepping up with respect to young men. If you look at the single point of failure, if you were to reverse engineer when a boy comes off the tracks, it's when he loses a male role model through either death, divorce, or abandonment. When a boy loses a male role model, and 90% of the time, a single-parent home is headed by a woman, as mine was, at that moment, he becomes more likely to be incarcerated than graduate from college, and men aren't stepping up. There's three times as many women applying to be Big Sisters in New York as there are men applying to be Big Brothers, and some of it is a taboo that men are concerned or self-conscious about expressing an interest to get involved in a boy's life because of sexual abuse from the Catholic Church and Michael Jackson and the rest. But there are a ton of men out there in their 30s, I think you have a bunch of them working with you, that may or may not have kids of their own. You don't have to be CEO of Goldman Sachs. You don't have to degree in, uh, have a degree in adolescent psychiatry. You just have to be a good man trying to live a virtuous life. And as someone who mentors young men, I can tell you it is so easy to add value, just showing an interest, answering basic questions. This is a question I literally got now six weeks ago from a young man I'm mentoring. "I'm on this new diet. I'm just drinking pineapple juice and creatine." Okay. [chuckles] I don't have a medical degree, and I can tell you that's wrong.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:38

       Mm-hmm.

    7. SGScott Galloway2:22:38

       Another question I got eight weeks ago, "I saw this amazing thing. I'm moving to Alaska, Scott." "What are you, you're moving to Al-" "I saw this amazing thing on National Geographic. I've decided I wanna move to Alaska." "You have a good job, and your mom is sick, right?" "Yeah." "Why are you moving to Alaska? You're gonna quit your job and move to..." If you just ask basic questions, you add value to these young men's lives.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:56

       Mm-hmm.

    9. SGScott Galloway2:22:57

       Just real basic stuff. "Well, I'm feeling depressed." "Did you get outside? Are you working out?" There needs to be a societal g- zeitgeist that the moment a young man doesn't have men in his life, that the, the tribe moves in and injects young men into their life. And I would... The call-out to men is, you know... There's this, there's this great quote in one of the Paul West Anderson movies, Magnolia, where the guy says, "I have love to give. I just don't know where to give it. I just don't know where to put it." And such a wonderful statement. I think there's so many men out there that have real, uh, uh... Like, I think some of the most rewarding types of love is to give fraternal and paternal love. My purpose, my thing in life is to try and prepare my men for others, prepare my boys for others. That's my job. It gives me purpose. I think there's so many men out there that could offer so much fraternal and paternal love to a young man or a boy, and they don't do it, either 'cause they're too lazy or they're not stepping up, or they w- they're worried that people will suspect them of something. And there's so much need, and this is what you do. You find a single mother in your workplace and say, "Going to a game. Does your son wanna join me or join me and my boys? Does your son wanna hang out?" Washing your car, going to a game, whatever it is, that is the e-... In my opinion, that is the easiest solve that doesn't involve the government right now. But the bottom line is, men of our age aren't stepping up, and I couch it in masculinity. You take care of yourself. That's the first circle. You affix your own oxygen mask. You can't get, can't take care of other people unless you're economically and emotionally somewhat viable. You take care of your family, you take care of extended family, you take care of your community, but the ultimate expression of masculinity is to get involved in the life of a child that isn't yours, and not enough men are doing it. Even really successful men, they're not stepping up. They're not helping young men. And the easiest thing to do, the most... And it's so rewarding. I can't tell you, it makes me feel... And I don't do enough of it, but I do mentor young men. It's just so easy to add value. They make such stupid fucking decisions. My job with my sons is to be their prefrontal cortex. "No, you have to wear shoes to school. I, I, I know this is right. Wear shoes to school." So anyways, the call-out y- if we want better men, we have to be better men. I don't think you can really hit the pinnacle of what it means to be successful in masculinity unless you're involved in the life of a child that isn't yours. We have the most single-parent homes of any nation in the world. We used to be number two to Sweden. We passed them two years ago. But that's what I would call... I constantly talk about government fixes 'cause I'm a lefty. The, the easiest societal fix is, quite frankly,

23. 2:25:33 – 2:33:13

    Seeking Mentors, Young Men; Acknowledgments

    1. SGScott Galloway2:25:33

       is just male mentorship.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman2:25:34

       Yes, yes, and yes. Totally agree. I, I was very proactive in going out and seeking them. One feature of that, that I just wonder if we can kind of, um, superimpose a bu- or, you know, uh, or superimpose some solutions on top of, would be a better way to put it, is, for instance, the... I, I had no interest in playing football, but kept getting hurt skateboarding, so I learned how to weight lift and make my body stronger from the football coach, who was this amazing guy who wrote the original script for Mr. Mom that a, that-

    3. SGScott Galloway2:26:03

       Mm-hmm

    4. AHAndrew Huberman2:26:03

       ... you know, he wrote a play, Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home, that became Mr. Mom. He's like big buff guy, his wife, Daryl-

    5. SGScott Galloway2:26:07

       Michael Keaton, Teri Garr

    6. AHAndrew Huberman2:26:09

       ... Daryl, right. That's right. But-

    7. SGScott Galloway2:26:09

       Yeah

    8. AHAndrew Huberman2:26:09

       ... so people will say he didn't write that, butThis guy Bob Peters was like a physical specimen, and he also played the piano, and he raised these kids, and his wife dared him. She said, in the se- early '70s, she said, "You couldn't do what I do." And so that was how the whole thing came to... He realized, "You're right. It's really, really tough." So, um, I went to him for, for working out advice, but not for other sources of advice. I went to, uh, different men for different sources of mentorship. It'll become clear what I'm saying here in a moment. My academic advisor, my PhD advisor, was an incredible woman, so I was mentored by women, too, but that's characteristic of academia.

    9. SGScott Galloway2:26:44

       Was your father very involved in your life?

    10. AHAndrew Huberman2:26:46

        He, he was. I mean, we had... My parents split up at a, at a, you know, at, at a, in adolescence, and so we had our, you know, our challenges over the years. Over time, you know, my dad being a scientist, first generation immigrant, he-

Episode duration: 2:35:51