Twyla Tharp on Huberman Lab: Why discipline beats ritual

1. 0:00 – 3:28

   Twyla Tharp

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      You have a reputation for having risen early and gotten to the gym by 5:00 AM for two hours, day in after day out. Tell us about that ritual, and, uh, do you still enjoy it?

   2. TTTwyla Tharp0:12

      It's not a ritual, and I never enjoyed it. It's a reality, and, uh, you do it because you need an instrument that you can challenge. Just set the mechanism for the day you're gonna have to do it. It's kind of boring, and it's kind of loathsome.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman0:29

      Could you give us a bit of insight into your inner dialogue around days when you don't want to go? Is there a self-talk, or have you learned to push aside the, the voice that says, "Maybe not today"?

   4. TTTwyla Tharp0:40

      It's simple. I- if you don't work when you don't wanna work, you're not gonna be able to work when you do wanna work.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman0:49

      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 Twyla Tharp. Twyla Tharp is a world-renowned dancer and choreographer. Her onstage and film works easily place her not just in the top 1% of all choreographers of all time, but also among the top tier of all creative artists past and present. I knew I wanted to host Twyla on this podcast after listening to her book, The Creative Habit, where she spells out how to build a schedule, habits, and routines that make your best creative expressions come to life. What I love about it is it's direct and it's action-oriented. There's nothing mystical about it. She explains in her book how even for people that have just one hour a day to write or sing or draw or paint or whatever to get the most from that time in terms of creative output. Then as I learned more about her, I was also super impressed that even in her 60s, by the way she's 84 now, she could deadlift more than 200 pounds, which is more than twice her body weight, bench-press her body weight for three clean repetitions, and was taking up boxing to keep her movement and reflexes sharp. As you'll see today, she is a phenom, and it comes by way of hard work. She is still in the gym every single morning at 5:00 AM for two full hours. Today we discuss how to build self-discipline in and around your creative mind, and we discuss movement as a language. There's this new idea emerging in neuroscience that bodily movement, then music, and then speech is how humans came to communicate with each other. We discuss that and how movement can help us process and explain our emotions and our ideas. We also discuss Twyla's life growing up on a farm and how that shaped her mindset about work and community, and we also talk about what it means to have and express your unique creativity and how to evolve your sense of taste. Oh yeah, and we also discuss telepathy. You'll notice the rapport between Twyla and I is very different than is typical for other Huberman Lab Podcasts I've done. She is a real firecracker, and we had a ton of fun exploring and challenging ideas, mostly her challenging me. It was a true honor and pleasure to learn from such a virtuoso of the arts and frankly of life, and as you'll soon learn, we can all learn a lot from Twyla. 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 with Twyla Tharp.

2. 3:28 – 6:22

   Focus & Creative Work, Tool: “Spine” of Creative Work

   1. AHAndrew Huberman3:28

      Twyla Tharp, welcome.

   2. TTTwyla Tharp3:30

      Thank you.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman3:31

      Huge fan. Huge, huge fan, and love, love, love your book-

   4. TTTwyla Tharp3:37

      Thank you.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman3:38

      ... The Creative Habit. It's just an incredible book, and it's taught me so much, and I want to talk about that today, but I want to talk about a bunch of things. Let's start with what a spine is. I think this is such an important component of the book, and this concept of a spine, and the way I think about this is that many, many people feel they might have something inside them that they want to put into the world. They want to access their creativity, or they're creative, and there's so much information out there about how to go about that. But this notion of a spine is really critical, because it keeps us on track. Otherwise, it can be a wandering in the desert. Suddenly you're swimming in the ocean. Suddenly the phone, you get a text, and please explain what a spine is and why this is such a vital concept for anyone that wants to create anything.

   6. TTTwyla Tharp4:35

      Spine means focus. Spine means concentration. If you think about it, uh, geometrically, spine is the center both laterally and vertically. So if we're talking physically, you have a right and a left side. You have a top, and you have a bottom, and these elements are connected through the center, right? So, uh, they have to be coordinated. You simply cannot function if your right side is going one way or in the- and your left side's going this other way, you're going nowhere. So you have to move off your center. In terms of how you organize information, there's also a center to it. It's like, okay, over here you have this and this, and you can transfer what you understand from this arena to inform this side, but it has to pass through a common point, and that common point is the center. And until you feel that, or want anyone working either physically or, let's just use the word very broadly and generically, artistically, until you know where you are grounded, where you feel the most confident, that you are what you said. You're at sea. You could be going this way, that way. Unless you know how to navigate from the stars, which few people do anymore, you're screwed.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman6:02

      So, when I think about a spine in a, like a scientific paper, I was taught there can only really be one major conclusion, maybe two, but one major conclusion of any paper, even though the data set probably points to 50 different things that are potentially interesting. In terms of a podcast or a movie

3. 6:22 – 11:57

   Creator & Audience Dynamic; Intention, Finances

   1. AHAndrew Huberman6:22

      or a book, it's sometimes not obvious to the reader or to the listener, or to the observer, what the spine is. But my understanding is that the creator has to understand what the spine is going into it. So, could you give a couple of examples from your own work and maybe, if they come to mind, a couple of examples from visual arts or movies or something where it's clear to the creator what the spine is, but it might not be entirely clear to the person watching or consuming the content?

   2. TTTwyla Tharp6:55

      I am a great fan of Agatha Christie and Jonathan K- K- Karak, okay? And the reason why is because from the get-go, you know there is one conclusion, but that their job is to keep you away from that conclusion for as long as possible.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman7:17

      Who did the crime.

   4. TTTwyla Tharp7:18

      Who did the crime. Who's the killer? Who, what, what? What is the crime, for starters? And they'll delay as long as they can in their singular, you know, style, definite, uh, modes. I- I mean, Agatha Christie has, her format is practically that of a sonnet. I'm, I'm sure you could actually count words, and I've never seen a study that show along, okay, she's gonna do red herring number one X words in, and this is where she's gonna throw in the extra crime to push the tension up to get it to go to here. But we all know we're playing the same game. Uh, I think that anyone who is successful in communicating to other people gains their trust, gains their confidence that you're not gonna screw them.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman8:07

      How much do you think it's important to get into the audience's mind about what they want, or is the spine coming from the, solely from the creator? Is it, is it about y- the creator's relationship to the work, or are you thinking about what the audience wants and what they need?

   6. TTTwyla Tharp8:23

      The question about a audience and intention is a, is sort of sensitive one, because it's, okay, are you manipulating the audience and are you there just to take advantage of them? Or, at the other extreme of that spectrum, are you doing it because you're in an ivory tower and you're off here doing your own investigations? And maybe they connect, maybe they don't. Who cares, right?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman8:47

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TTTwyla Tharp8:47

      Those are the two extremes. Total manipulation of audience, total disregard of audience. And depending on who I'm working for or with, I do both.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman8:58

      To me, it seems like it's one of the toughest things as a creator to both wanna honor your audience's wishes, but you also have to have something that you want to communicate, and ... Y- we never know how things are gonna land. But for somebody who wants to create something, maybe we could orient them toward their own spine, like, or to the o- the spine of the work. What, whe- where does that start?

   10. TTTwyla Tharp9:22

       Well, I think that, uh, w- the word intention, which is, you know, r- w- so vague these days, uh, but why are you doing this? What is your purpose in doing it? What's your interest? Why do you wanna do this? What's, what's in it for you? Are you to learn? Are you ... Uh, is this a contract sign? Do you have an obligation to be successful to a producer who's investing a lot of money and that's a given going in? That's gonna determine a range of possibilities f- for you, right? And unfortunately, the bottom line controls a lot of this issue, at least for me, it's given if I've signed a contract to deliver a specific result, that's what I'm doing. It doesn't matter what I want. It's do I get that accomplished or not? It's, in a way, a kind of sacred bond, okay? You honor your contracts. On the other hand, if I am not in a singular position of earning any money, I can do anything I want, or anything, not that I want, but anything that I think is important, okay? So, how do you determine the parameters of important? Because that helps with intention. In the olden days, which dates as in before 1979 ... Anything before '79 is the olden days. I- in the olden days, that would include the '60s, we did things because we wanted to change the direction the Earth rotated. End of story. Good luck.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman11:05

       Tell me more about that.

   12. TTTwyla Tharp11:06

       It simply meant that whoever the practitioner was, was completely exposed. Everything. Say you're a painter. You're completely exposed to everything everybody is doing, and you see another way of going about it, and you do that. Everybody is plugged into that same mechanism, and if they swerve into your area, you shift again. You have to continuously be altering perception as an artist. That notion does not seem so relevant these days, perhaps.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman11:41

       Why do you think that is?

   14. TTTwyla Tharp11:42

       Because, uh, you could live cheaper. (laughs) In the '60s, you could live very cheap. Now, you cannot live very cheaply a- as a, as an artistic force. You're paying bills, lots of bills.

4. 11:57 – 15:59

   Early vs Late Works, Learning & Selectivity throughout Career

   1. TTTwyla Tharp11:57

   2. AHAndrew Huberman11:57

      I've long thought that the best work that people do is at the beginning when they don't have any feedback yet and they're just being themselves. It's hard to stay connected to that early...... energy of, uh, just being one's- oneself without the notion of contracts and feedback and per- you know, perception of feedback. Do you think it's important?

   3. TTTwyla Tharp12:20

      I've never been of the persuasion that my understanding was the greatest when I knew nothing as when I knew more.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman12:28

      Mm-hmm.

   5. TTTwyla Tharp12:29

      I've always been of the persuasion that the more you know, the bigger your challenge. If one looks at lives, uh, of artists, uh, for example, Beethoven. Take Beethoven early work, take Beethoven late work, very different, different challenges. Um, w- there's argument to be made depending on your particular set, uh, of the coherency of the classicism of the earlier quartets as opposed to the late quartets and the total disillusion that he was able to accomplish at the end of his career, totally taking the sound world apart, uh, that he could only actually do because he was deaf. He had developed, uh, r- re- m- during the course, unfortunately, of a very long time, decades, the awareness that he was losing his hearing, and by the end, he genuinely basically was completely deaf, which forced him into his own world, and there he looked at himself across the ages. So in a piece like think of the Diabelli, uh, which is w- the last thing he wrote for keyboard after the sonatas, and he actually had started the Diabelli 15, maybe even... I'm forgetting my details here, but 15 years earlier than when he came back to complete it, and he got bored with it initially because to a younger composer, it wasn't challenging enough. When he came back to it later, he had a humility about him that said, "That theme, which I used to poo-poo because it's like, you're kidding." (singing) Up. (singing) Up, down. It's a D. Cut it in half. (singing) Drop it back down. (singing) And he's going, "What?" And he later, he comes back and he says, "Right. Not stupid, simple. I could never have written anything that simple or that useful." And he finished it, and it's arguably the greatest set of keyboard variations in the entire repertoire. Which do you want? The earlier Beethoven? The Beethoven who has passed way through many different works, a mass, an opera, many quartets, and returns to it with this new information to look at it again?

   6. AHAndrew Huberman15:12

      Fascinating. There's something about the more you know, the bigger y- your challenge, but-

   7. TTTwyla Tharp15:17

      Totally.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman15:18

      ... i- if I may, from what you just said, maybe also the bigger the opportunity.

   9. TTTwyla Tharp15:23

      Totally. But the more kind of distracting it is and the harder it is to focus. Part of that's physical, uh, m- but part of it is also that there are- are many more options available, uh, with accomplishment, if you will, but you have to be selective about what you have available to you to work with. In the earlier phase, you'll take (laughs) what you can get, and now if you take what you can get, you will be very wildly distracted by everything.

5. 15:59 – 19:09

   Sponsors: Our Place & Eight Sleep

   1. TTTwyla Tharp15:59

   2. AHAndrew Huberman15:59

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6. 19:09 – 21:48

   “Cubby-Holing”, Career Change & Reputation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman19:09

      Recently, I listened to a conversation between my good friend Rick Rubin, who we were talking about earlier, he's a big fan of yours. You inspired his book and he wanted me to tell you that.

   2. TTTwyla Tharp19:20

      Thank you.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman19:20

      And he was speaking with, uh, Gwyneth Paltrow-

   4. TTTwyla Tharp19:24

      Uh-huh.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman19:24

      ... who's a, you know, of course an actress and a, um, has done incredible things in health and wellness business, et cetera, and she said something very interesting. She said, "People generally like to keep you where they found you." And it's an interesting statement, uh, that I think taps into something th- again, that as a creator or as a consumer of creative content feels very true. That we encounter somebody, like, somebody goes to one of your dances, or we see a great movie with Gary Oldman in it or something. You see a Basquiat for the first time, and it either impacts you or it doesn't, but if it does, there's this tendency to wanna keep that person and the work they do in that place. It's like we- we think we own the creator in some way, and the work, in- in this very naive and selfish way. Do you think that that creates a real problem for anyone that's trying to put things into the world? Because y- as you stated, with time, the creator gains knowledge, you evolve your craft, but your fan base, the people that love you, they love you for something that you're not really any longer. You're evolving.

   6. TTTwyla Tharp20:37

      The Somewhere Over the Rainbow Syndrome, right?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman20:39

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TTTwyla Tharp20:40

      Uh, Garland always was asked for one song, or, uh, Elvis, uh, John. Anyone is always asked for their hit, because everyone wants to touch upon that which seems to somehow be their greatest accomplishment. Um, it's aggravating. I mean, obviously, it's called cubbyholing, um, and you, uh, for the person doing the work, w- there are artists who work serially, right? Who w- work in series and who make incremental changes, and they kind of have, in a way, a stab at the best of all possible worlds. But there are others who feel that, "Okay, you got that. I gotta go over here." Uh, and that's because in a way, they're right, because if you wanna constantly be gain- it's a game. You wanna be gaining the attention, you do it by change. You don't do it by reinforcing. That just creates a comfort zone, and it can build a reputation, it can build a career that- it- it- it gives you more and more of what you expect, uh, but for the person who's making the work, that can kind of

7. 21:48 – 27:42

   Creator Community & Selectivity; Success & Useful Failure

   1. TTTwyla Tharp21:48

      be deadly.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman21:49

      Did you know Jean-Michel Basquiat? You-

   3. TTTwyla Tharp21:51

      No.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman21:51

      Okay.

   5. TTTwyla Tharp21:52

      Uh, a different generation. I- I knew the painters, the downtown painters in the '60s.

   6. AHAndrew Huberman21:59

      Could you give me some examples of-

   7. TTTwyla Tharp22:00

      Oh, you wanna know the famous names.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman22:02

      No, I don't wanna know the names.

   9. TTTwyla Tharp22:04

      I'm teasing.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman22:04

       I- I just have a question about-

   11. TTTwyla Tharp22:05

       Tony Smith, Frank Stella-

   12. AHAndrew Huberman22:07

       Great.

   13. TTTwyla Tharp22:07

       Motherwell.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman22:08

       Okay. I- the reason I ask is- is-

   15. TTTwyla Tharp22:10

       Ad Reinhardt.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman22:11

       The reason I- I ask is that, um, earlier you were saying that there's a time, or there was a time when a given field, everyone knew each other and what they were doing. And, uh, I like Basquiat's. I'm not, like, obsessed with them or anything. Uh, there's a wonderful scene in the movie Basquiat with him and Benicio del Toro, or the actor playing him and Benicio del Toro about this notion of fame. We'll put a link to it in the caption so people can see it. And s- it's just a wonderful example of how people will love you, then they'll hate you for how you change, then they'll love you for how you were, and then w- and it's- and it's a h- hilarious and- and, um, again, for a consumer of content, it's- it's perhaps even more interesting than somebody who's a creative. But, uh, the point being that nowadays, I feel like there's so much stuff out there, art and music and dance, and Instagram puts it all on, you know, smorgasbord display for us, and it's kind of harder to know where one sits in a community of creators. And so to what extent do you think that being surrounded by other creators, like visual artists or other dancers, uh, then versus now, was- w- was or is useful?

   17. TTTwyla Tharp23:25

       Yeah. Uh, the early era, also age is a factor here. I was very young. I was just out of college. Um, and, uh, I felt very much the student. Uh, it's a different deal now, and it's a different kind of responsibility. And the work's gonna be different.... in the early era, went to see absolutely everything. Now, I go to see absolutely nothing. Uh, and it is partially a matter of time, but more importantly, it's an awareness that you want to feel isolated, in a way, because you are. And that's the truth. So you need to operate from a truthful place. Um, and when you talk about this plethora of information that is out there, I do try to inform myself to some degree about different areas of culture, uh, but I do it through a media perspective, because that's how the consumer is receiving it. Consumer is not at the individual exhibition or at the individual performance. They're getting it through media. So in looking at it through media, I already have a double perspective on it. I have the artist's perspective, but I have the journalist’s, for lack of a better word, we'll call it podcasting journalism. Will we be forgiven? Thank you.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman24:54

       Sure. I, pod- podcasting's a weird thing we could talk about later, what it is and what it isn't.

   19. TTTwyla Tharp24:58

       Okay.

   20. AHAndrew Huberman24:58

       But yeah. Yeah.

   21. TTTwyla Tharp24:58

       We'll wait 'til the, this is off to discuss that, right?

   22. AHAndrew Huberman25:01

       Sure.

   23. TTTwyla Tharp25:01

       But the, uh, the challenge for me becomes, okay, in all of this swirl of stuff, what do you believe?

   24. AHAndrew Huberman25:08

       Mm-hmm.

   25. TTTwyla Tharp25:09

       Forget who. You can't believe anyone. But what, what can you believe? What is really grounded, uh, in a way that's productive? Um, and, uh, in thinking ... I, you know, I've just come off of, you'll forgive me for diverging here for a moment, two really hard years of working. Uh, a 60th anniversary tour, uh, that, uh, was a very big culmination of a long, long working process, um, which put a lot on the line and which was unfortunately very successful, because success is much harder to follow than failure. So here you said, "Okay, babe, you've done it all. Now what?" And so where do you go? And you don't go around asking other people for the answer to your question. One has to find a way of rerouting without abandoning who you are and what you believe in order to just make change, really. How does that work? So it's an extremely, um, attenuated place to be. Not many people make it this far. Not many people are looking at their 61st year of work, right? So that's like, "Okay, so show us." Well, maybe I don't want to. (laughs) Maybe I will. Who knows?

   26. AHAndrew Huberman26:36

       You said that, um, coming off of a success is much more challenging than come off, coming off of a failure. I think that will surprise a number of people, uh, because people, myself included, probably feel like when you do well, you get the confidence that you can do well again. There's that also. Whereas when you fail, like, ugh, like ...

   27. TTTwyla Tharp26:56

       You could do that again, too.

   28. AHAndrew Huberman26:58

       (laughs) Do you tell your dancers that?

   29. TTTwyla Tharp27:00

       No, because my dancers don't fail.

   30. AHAndrew Huberman27:03

       Hm.
8. 27:42 – 32:36

   Work Process, Schedule; Selecting Dancers, Supporting the Arts, Expectations

   1. TTTwyla Tharp27:42

      bad.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman27:42

      Let's go back to your, your dancers and, and how you put them through, uh, the paces, so to speak, because I think it also frames up this notion of rituals very, uh, very nicely. For the uninformed, like myself, give us an example of your day and a day in the studio, the top contour of that.

   3. TTTwyla Tharp28:02

      It depends on where you are in this wonderful word called process. If you are, uh, at the beginning, it's all more fluid, um, and while the one key ingredient, uh, I have always found to doing work is you gotta be able to do a schedule. You gotta be able to tell people what time they're coming and what shoes to bring. Okay? That's already actually made a lot of choices for you. Uh, and that's, that I think is a good thing. I mean, there's no point in just saying, "Oh, we'll work whenever you get here, and you know, bring whatever." Uh, whatever is not my favorite word. So choices get made, uh, and a schedule gets done. And ordinarily, uh, it, again, it depends on what the project is, but, uh, if it's let's just give as much range here as possible, if it's, uh, me making a new piece, I will set a schedule. Dancers come in. They will have done class themselves. They will come warm, okay? That is not a part of my day. I have my own work to do in preparing for that rehearsal, but in, in also maintaining my own physical instrument to the degree that I can, because the more I can bring into the studio, the more I can give them and the more I can expect them to bring in. So I have a tandem path going on here with the dancers, and we meet up, we join, um, and I usually will come with a certain preset sense of-... where we're going with this thing, and then see how it actually works in real time and real space, which is a very, um, useful and tough mistress. Uh, and eliminates a lot of fantasy very quickly.

   4. AHAndrew Huberman30:03

      Who decides who gets to work with you?

   5. TTTwyla Tharp30:05

      I do. Well, that's actually not true. In a way, they do. The dancers that, uh, I work with, I obviously audition, but I also screen from the perspective of, "Who wants to work with me?"

   6. AHAndrew Huberman30:20

      Mm-hmm.

   7. TTTwyla Tharp30:20

      Who's gonna come and say, "Yeah, I'll go through that wall. Is that what we're doing? I'll go through the wall." And you wanna know that you have that in the room. You're not gonna ask them to go through the wall all the time, but, you know, if it seemed like it was an approach that was gonna be useful, you've gotta know that that commitment is really solid. And that's best indicated by their desire. Not your finding them totally appropriate, but their desire.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman30:45

      Are most dancers, uh, living with the understanding that it's going to be very, very long hours and probably very little pay for a while?

   9. TTTwyla Tharp30:54

      For sure very little pay and forever.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman30:58

       Wild world.

   11. TTTwyla Tharp31:00

       Crazy. Crazy, and to my way of thinking, not acceptable, because, you know, I'm all in favor of the folks who do the work and the training to accomplish physically, and I don't make a clear distinction between either folks who are in business or athletes. To me, it is all the same enterprise. But dancers have nowhere near the, uh, possibility of, uh, earning a living that a great athlete has. Not even sort of kind of in the ballpark. Not even in the parking lot. Not even on the highway to the ball game. How did this happen, and why does it continue?

   12. AHAndrew Huberman31:42

       It raises interesting questions, uh, how we support the arts or don't support the arts, I think.

   13. TTTwyla Tharp31:47

       Are we taking over your show for the next two and a half years?

   14. AHAndrew Huberman31:50

       Mm-hmm. If, if, if we must, you know that. (laughs)

   15. TTTwyla Tharp31:52

       Oh, okay.

   16. AHAndrew Huberman31:53

       This conversation no doubt will draw some additional attention to dance, but the, the larger issue of, of, you know, people being able to make it in the arts as, not just as a, as a luxury, but as a, like, critical piece of culture and life. I mean, I love beautiful things. I love beautiful dogs, most all dogs are beautiful, um, even the bulldogs. Uh, but I love beautiful things, and it, and it enriches life in more ways than just feeling delighted. I think there's immense carryover from, uh, the arts to other areas of, of culture, and, uh, so we could make an economic argument about that. But s- part of the reason you're here, but d- just sort of return to the, this business of, of, of ritual,

9. 32:36 – 36:22

   Successful Performance; Beauty, Arts Compensation

   1. AHAndrew Huberman32:36

      yeah.

   2. TTTwyla Tharp32:36

      Can I interrupt you before you go there?

   3. AHAndrew Huberman32:38

      Yeah.

   4. TTTwyla Tharp32:38

      'Cause I'd like to take up two things.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman32:40

      Mm-hmm.

   6. TTTwyla Tharp32:40

      One is the notion of the reality being that when we do a successful performance, I measure it by, did that audience leave in a better frame of mind than it came in with? In other words, we provide a service.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman32:57

      Mm-hmm.

   8. TTTwyla Tharp32:57

      And we provide a service that gives them a sense of optimism, uh, yay, verily, I might even go to joy, uh, to the belief that they ha- that they too occupy this body that does these phenomenal things, and thank you, Lord, okay?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman33:14

      Mm-hmm.

   10. TTTwyla Tharp33:14

       That's a service.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman33:15

       Mm-hmm.

   12. TTTwyla Tharp33:16

       I think dancers should be paid more for that service, and that it needs to be acknowledged. The other point that I wanna bring up is you've used it twice now, I didn't stop you the first word, beauty. What is this?

   13. AHAndrew Huberman33:31

       It could be something I see or hear that, um, it stirs a, some set of emotions in me that carries forward. Uh, and what you just said a moment ago about the audience leaves in a different state, I mean, it's, the word that came to mind was, like, it's, like, really great therapy. But it's, in some sense, it's better than that, because, um, m- I was also thinking that perhaps in the top 10 of all my favorite memories are s- several live performances that I, which I was the observer. It's like those things really stick with us, and I think they change us in, in, in meaningful ways, especially when we're in the audience with other people, not just watching on a, on a screen. They can be transformative, for sure.

   14. TTTwyla Tharp34:17

       And in a live audience becomes, of course, a whole nother thing about cost and, and e- e- ex- expenditures, but that it confirms that y- that not only do you feel a new righteousness for yourself by a performance, but that you sense others do as well. And that creates a community, uh, bonding, and you know, okay, football games, you know, everybody is very rowdy about it. Uh, most performances, people are not, but that doesn't mean that it still doesn't take that hold of people who are experiencing the same thing in real time. We tend to dismiss that which is familiar.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman34:57

       Mm-hmm.

   16. TTTwyla Tharp34:59

       And that, that sense is actually not all that familiar, but it feels very intimate, and it is. Uh, but it actually is quite rare, and the rarer a piece of art, and I will call a performance a piece of art, is, the more value it has, and the more that is compensated for culturally and economically. There should be a price point on beauty, let's put it that way.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman35:26

       Mm-hmm. Well, there is for everything else.

   18. TTTwyla Tharp35:28

       Well, I know.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman35:28

       Yeah. You know, there, there is a price point for beauty in terms of people could say, "Well, the sunrise is free," and the sunrise is beautiful, but seeing it in certain locations costs a lot more money than seeing it in other locations, that's for sure.

   20. TTTwyla Tharp35:39

       Right, and that, that brings up another thing, because in a way, it's a kind of horrible thinking to go, "Yeah, it's a privilege. You know what? You can't pay me. You can't buy me."I don't have a price. And that, I'm sure, is one of the things in great dancers who are certainly not paid, as I've said before, and I'll say at least 300,000 times more, commensurate with a great athlete. That is probably one, uh, and I've never actually s- uh, I've never brought it up directly with a great dancer, how much is it your own sense of independence and liberty that makes you the artist that you are?

10. 36:22 – 43:18

    Mikhail Baryshnikov, Ballet & Invention; Philip Glass, Minimalism

    1. TTTwyla Tharp36:22

    2. AHAndrew Huberman36:22

       I think the name that most people probably associate with dance is probably Baryshnikov. If they don't know a- much about dance, they know that name or it, they, it's familiar to them. What was it about Mikhail Baryshnikov that sort of had him break through the common consciousness that way?

    3. TTTwyla Tharp36:39

       First of all, Misha, uh, more these days, actually, is remembered by younger generations from his later cultural input, i.e. Sex and the City than he is as a classical ballet artist. All right? Let's just start there.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman36:56

       'Cause he showed up in Sex and the City as a-

    5. TTTwyla Tharp36:58

       Yeah.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman36:58

       ... as a character. (laughs)

    7. TTTwyla Tharp37:00

       Yes.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman37:01

       Show business is a funny thing.

    9. TTTwyla Tharp37:01

       And, and that, and that's, and that's how he is often recognized by younger audiences, younger, you know, folk. Uh, what was he in the beginning? He was ... Actually there was a cellist, then there was Nureyev, and then Misha. He, uh, uh, politically he came across the line. It was Russia, America. He chose America. He's our hero. Plus which, he was gorgeous. He's unquestionably, in my opinion, in that era, the possessor of a technique that was a culmination of the 20th century and that will never be matched. And to see him work at the barre, or to see him in the, um, absolute interior realm of what the classical ballet was, was an unbelievable privilege. But not many people saw that. Not many people saw him at the barre, uh, which is where you build your, your chops. Okay? He also was capable of taking those chops and expanding on them, breaking through their boundaries, trying it this way, do it that way, but utilizing the power that he had from that simple classical base to take it outward. Lots of inventiveness in that regard. And the guy was gorgeous. What can I tell you?

    10. AHAndrew Huberman38:31

        His, his looks made a difference.

    11. TTTwyla Tharp38:32

        And what does that mean? But what does that mean? It means a wide-ranging interest that you feel includes you, as you the spectator. You feel he's including you in his wideness of vision. Where does that come from? From the intellect, from his musicality, from his training, from his personality, uh, from his cultural breeding, Latvian. Uh, and it is a singular commodification, one of my favorite words. It drives people up the walls when I use that word in relation to the arts of performing. Um, but he was very, very, very astute in many different areas starting from, uh, an athletic ability through to a poetic sensibility.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman39:28

        It's interesting you said that because, uh, he was attractive that people felt that they were a part of it in a way that was not typical.

    13. TTTwyla Tharp39:37

        We all, we all want to be godly. We all want to be a part of the sublime. Few can give us that.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman39:45

        So when they say, you know, artists or, uh, include dancers, I've just broadly speaking, artists are p- are like portals. Is that what you mean?

    15. TTTwyla Tharp39:53

        I would accept that.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman39:55

        Years ago, I went to a Philip Glass concert at UC Berkeley. I'll be honest, I didn't understand it. I left there in a different state, mostly of confusion, um, that people were willing to pay for that. I'm sorry if I'm insulting any Philip Glass fans, but, uh, this is my podcast, I'm gonna be very direct.

    17. TTTwyla Tharp40:19

        Okay.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman40:20

        I was told I maybe hadn't seen the right Philip Glass concert. I was very confused.

    19. TTTwyla Tharp40:26

        Why?

    20. AHAndrew Huberman40:27

        Uh, you know, I'm not a musician. I'm not, um ... But when I like something, I, I know I like it and I tend to really like it. But it w- it's rare for me to encounter something that's like, it just felt like, um, it felt extremely experimental at every, at every part of it. And I c- and I couldn't tell whether or not people were telling themselves that they liked it because it was him, or whether they really liked it.

    21. TTTwyla Tharp40:56

        What year is this that you went to this concert?

    22. AHAndrew Huberman40:58

        Uh, gosh, this must have been 2000 and ...

    23. TTTwyla Tharp41:03

        Oh. Yeah, okay.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman41:03

        ... eight? 2007? 2008?

    25. TTTwyla Tharp41:05

        That's very late. Okay?

    26. AHAndrew Huberman41:07

        Mm-hmm.

    27. TTTwyla Tharp41:07

        So Phil obviously has been working, uh, since the '60s and I've done one major collaboration with Phil and one recent collaboration. Um, and, uh, in the beginning, uh, the audience for minimalism, right? Uh, like Riley Glass, uh, came gradually and so when the initial piece called In The Upper Room was done, uh, it had a power and a force that involved also discovery. Now, the later piece, which is called Slack Tide, uh, Phil's a known commodity and was addressed slightly differently. Uh, rather than, I mean, you know, Phil ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, yup, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba, be, ba, ba, ba, ba, ba is percussive. The lyric element has been reduced. Okay? And-You're a sensitive soul. (laughs) You think of the word beauty, and that does not mean total elimination, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It means inclusion. Uh, and so the later Glass work was done in conjunction with a Chicago percussion group called Third Coast wh- who Phil's worked with a lot, and who he trusts to do iterations, if you will, on the work. And we iterated with a flute. Flutes don't do this. (hands clapping)

    28. AHAndrew Huberman42:36

        Mm-hmm.

    29. TTTwyla Tharp42:36

        Flutes do this. So, we put a stream on top of that. That's i- i- in the music. I mean, iterations are a study in and of themselves, right? What makes something different from and yet still the same as? Good luck with that one. Uh, but that w- that w- was the different range. I dare say, if you go and look at... Because Third Coast is, uh, produced a recording of this work, you listen to Slack Tide and then tell me your response to Glass. But, but basically, Minimalism took, uh, the lyric element, uh, and reduced it to just the temporal passage in time.

11. 43:18 – 47:05

    Knowledge vs Instinct, Taste; Avant Garde; Classical Training

    1. TTTwyla Tharp43:18

    2. AHAndrew Huberman43:18

       What's interesting, because of all the concerts I've seen, this one still sticks with me as, like, a stimulus to learn more. Because one thing that I'm totally fascinated by and perplexed by is that, with the exception of comedy, the more one learns about something, the artist, what went into the art, the dance, what went into it, typically, the more one likes that piece or that genre. Like, the more I, I learn about something then the m- then I can listen to it with a different ear. I can watch it, with it with a different eye. Comedy's the exception. If it's not funny, learning about the origins of the joke don't make it any funnier. Learning about the comedian d- doesn't make it funnier. It just, it sort of just, like, falls further and further.

    3. TTTwyla Tharp44:02

       See, I think that's true of your other art forms too. I think you're confusing, forgive me, knowledge with instinct. I mean, i- instinctively you're responding to the humor, but instinctively, uh, a, a piece of art, uh, can, can reach you, but you can be baffled by it. But we don't like confusion, so we might call that something we should learn about before we can acknowledge liking it.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman44:24

       Mm-hmm.

    5. TTTwyla Tharp44:25

       Uh, that's one of the things that is, I think, really difficult, and something I think a lot about, which is, uh, not only protecting but r- r- refining instinct.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman44:36

       Tell me more about that. Uh, does taste-

    7. TTTwyla Tharp44:37

       I know, it's fascinating, isn't it? I can't tell you about it, 'cause I could be writing a book.

    8. AHAndrew Huberman44:42

       Oh. Well, Rick Rubin, um, who I feel, even though you haven't met yet, you share a certain kinship with, talks about taste all the time, about this, you know, i- a sense of taste and trusting your own sense of taste-

    9. TTTwyla Tharp44:55

       Right, right.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman44:55

        ... as a consumer and as a creator-

    11. TTTwyla Tharp44:57

        Right.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman44:57

        ... is so key. That's why I brought up the Philip Glass thing, because I'm not writing off Glass on the basis of one, one concert. But I, I didn't walk out of there thinking like, "Maybe I'm an idiot. Maybe I didn't get it." I thought... And I didn't think, "They're all idiots." I just thought, "I guess I'm just different, because everyone else h- here seems to really love this, and this is, like... I, just doesn't hit me right." It's like, uh, I don't like sardines.

    13. TTTwyla Tharp45:22

        (laughs)

    14. AHAndrew Huberman45:23

        Never liked sardines. You give me a hundred sardines, I'm gonna hate them a hundred times more than the first sardine, I promise, 'cause I've eaten a hundred sardines. It's just... But I don't care that I don't like sardines. I just, I'm, I'm over it. I was over it from the first sardine.

    15. TTTwyla Tharp45:35

        Right. Uh, Phil's on the cusp of the avant-garde. The avant-garde is a smug place to be, and can be very aggravating, and can also be not that bright and very indulgent. There might have been some sense of that to it. The avant-garde can confuse itself with originality and vice versa.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman46:05

        Do you think it's important for dancers to be classically trained before they get into other forms?

    17. TTTwyla Tharp46:11

        To be classically trained? Absolutely. You wanna be a musician and not understand the circle of fifths, the harmonies of construction of all music? No. Ballet is a format for th- the human body moving in space that has evolved over many centuries, and has got a head start on us. And if you wanna learn about how you move, you might as well try and jump a little further forward by studying ballet. I don't care, ultimately, if your arabesque, which is one leg behind, one leg under, right? If your arabesque is aligned in a perfectly classical manner, unless it's a perfectly classical ballet. But I do care you have that gear and you can reference it in terms of, "Where's the leg gonna move from, and does it get to that point? Can it stop right on its center or not?" That's what ballet can do.

12. 47:05 – 52:13

    Kirov Ballet, Kids, Uniformity; Body Types

    1. TTTwyla Tharp47:06

    2. AHAndrew Huberman47:06

       If there's a proper way for a movement to be done, the limb, the, every element within the limb has to move from point A to point B in a certain trajectory, and people come in different sizes and shapes, and you've got multiple dancers on stage, how do you reconcile that?

    3. TTTwyla Tharp47:25

       You don't. Uh, and the word is properly, properly. What, what is proper? Uh, (sighs) I had the experience of, uh, of working with the Kirov, uh, in Saint Petersburg, and I went to their school. And, uh, the children are lined up, and they are exact replicas, and they have a huge selection mechanism throughout the country for picking d-... those 10 or 12 kids that are gonna be in there of whatever age, um, and I saw one group of little, little boys, uh, l- less than eight years old. There were probably eight or nine of them in their little black shorts, their little white shirts. And, uh, I just came in briefly, and they were being, you know, th- as they do, it's a part of the tradition and it's wonderful. Uh, they're being very respectful, and it was like, "Oh, come in and you will sit here," and they will continue, and then w- we're getting moved to the next class. And one little boy came out and said, "No, no, no. We wanna do more." So we went back, and they started jumping out of sequence, because a ballet class is very carefully constructed to warm up the body and also to develop the training. So you're working both laterally and in depth in every technique class. They d- went out of sequence so the boys could jump, which is usually not done till the very end of class. And this little guy had real what we call ballon. He could go up and he could like, for moments, just, it seems like he's able to suspend. He knew he had that.

    4. AHAndrew Huberman49:05

       He could fly.

    5. TTTwyla Tharp49:05

       And he knew I wouldn't see that at the barre, so he wanted to-

    6. AHAndrew Huberman49:09

       Mm-hmm.

    7. TTTwyla Tharp49:09

       But-

    8. AHAndrew Huberman49:09

       Mm-hmm.

    9. TTTwyla Tharp49:09

       ... he was what we call pronated. His feet were hyperextended to the outside, so he's not going straight up through the metatarsal. He's going up through the outside of the leg. And, uh, you know, I pulled the teacher out and I said, "You know, that kid's phenomenally talented." And he said, "Yeah, we know." Uh, and I said, "But he's pronated." He said, "But y- we know that too, but we have eight other ones." Like, we, if he doesn't figure that out, he's out, and we'll bring in another one. And this can be the difference between a child who grows into an adult with a career and life and one who's lost, so parents are very protective of trying to get this opportunity for their kids, and it's heartbreaking. And the way they are trained is they are wrenched into these positions, and I saw in an older class of young girls, uh, an arabesque, and one leg was not slightly behind. The teacher came and literally pinned the leg behind with one arm and drew the shoulder out this way, literally pushed her, and then released her. And that's how they teach. You think that's gonna happen in America? I don't think so. And that's what it takes to create a line of people who at the barre hit exactly the same arabesque. It's both a thing of extraordinary beauty and a thing of incredible lack of choice, because that arabesque is gonna be set for life in that one angular demarcation, right? And, you know, heaven knows here in the West, we like to encourage all kinds of wanderings around, which is hard to get through the head of a child who's been trained in this way, to stay within those parameters. And it says something also, obviously, about the political situation, right? Those kids don't have a lot of choice. They toe the line.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman51:06

        So, is the goal to get that uniformity?

    11. TTTwyla Tharp51:09

        Absolutely. Uh, and- and it's a th- I mean, i- i- for a person who works sometimes to what's called unison, there are times when you want n- n- I don't do it that often. It's a lot of work, and I don't like what it says about democracy. (laughs) But if you need to have unison, you want unison. And that means an exact agreement on time and space. Now, your other question about well, what about different body types and so forth, I can accommodate that, uh, because I can gain my unison from the center. What we're talking about, the ballet here, it gains it from the periphery, from the exterior point, from the broad reach. I'll accept my broad reach is not gonna be actually-

    12. AHAndrew Huberman51:56

        Mm-hmm.

    13. TTTwyla Tharp51:56

        ... in uniform. But my center is gonna be, and I'll make that com- I- uh, it's a compromise of sorts. It's not really a compromise. It's an agreement. I'll make that definition because I want them to work from an interior purpose, and the visuals of it are your problem.

13. 52:13 – 53:36

    Sponsor: AG1

    1. AHAndrew Huberman52:13

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14. 53:36 – 1:00:18

    Movement, Body Frequency, Power

    1. AHAndrew Huberman53:36

       I'm gonna ask a couple of questions in the frame of biology-

    2. TTTwyla Tharp53:39

       Okay.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman53:40

       ... that I think, um, I'm hoping i- you- you might find interesting, but I- you certainly have the information that I'm seeking here. First off, uh, y- you may know this, uh, but if you don't, th- there's a great Nobel Prize-winning physiologist, his name was Sherrington, and he said, "The final common path is movement," that basically-... the movement of an organism, especially mammals, is- is really what the nervous system is constructed for. And, you know, more modern theories are that, you know, movement came, then dance came, then song, then language. You know, but that- that movement is the foundation of- of everything as it relates to evolution of a species, finding mates, finding food-

    4. TTTwyla Tharp54:26

       Can I interrupt you?

    5. AHAndrew Huberman54:27

       Please.

    6. TTTwyla Tharp54:28

       It is even more basic because movement is the first thing we're gonna do, and you don't make any sound until you can move parts of you. You don't feed yourself until you can move that hand. You don't write anything, language, music, or nada without movement. Why do we therefore stick movement way down here under the bottom of our cultural heap as somehow shameful or what? What is it with the aspect of dance that makes it a less kind of revered format than sculpture or painting or music? A secondary handmaiden to the arts? Really?

    7. AHAndrew Huberman55:11

       Well, I certainly appreciate movement, and I know that, um... And I like to think that people's obsession with athleticism in some sense reflects that too.

    8. TTTwyla Tharp55:19

       Totally.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman55:20

       I've been wanting to ask you this question for a very long time, uh, since I heard your book, even though it's not about the creative process. And- and here goes. Uh, I'm gonna keep this as brief as possible, um, just to give the- the raw materials for- for your, uh, response. So, the motor neurons, the neurons that control movement. Uh, they control movement of the trunk, they control movement of the fine digits of the fingers, uh, that are the fingers. The digits as we call them in science, right? Nerd speak. The wrists, everything. So we say from proximal to distal, like from center out. There's this incredible thing that's been discovered over the last 20 years or so, which is that the molecular identities of the neurons that control the movement of my trunk and your trunk forward and back and side to side are exactly the same as the neurons that control undulation in a fish. The neurons that control the movement of the proximal limbs, like the upper arms and the thighs, are m- molecularly identical to the neurons that exist to control fin movement in fish, and that what evolved was progressively more and more motor neurons so that we as old world primates can manipulate the fine digits in... Like so. Okay, so that's fine. That just tells you that there's this kind of primitive to more evolved structure of neurons that control movement from center out. What's fascinating to me is that while I'm sure there are people who can move their trunk at very high frequency, you know, undulate very- at high frequency, that's a hard thing to do. That- that generally has to be learned. Like, I can move my trunk slowly from side to side, but it's hard to move it very fast from side to side. But I can move my fingers very fast. And so there's- there's basically a frequency map from the center out on the body. So now when I look at the way people move, I think, because I'm a neuroscientist and I have this knowledge in my head, like, they're- they're communicating frequency, and frequency in the visual, in photon space gives you very interesting... You know, wave, we have wavelength. We have also frequency. Like, we- we... In sound, you have high, low and high pitches, low to high pitch, and in other domains you also have this. And so to me, uh, first of all, I'd love your thoughts on this. I'm not, I'm not asking for validation of a theory. This is just is what it is. I didn't come up with this. But I wonder whether or not consciously or unconsciously when you've choreographed dance, whether or not you're making music with movement in a way that maps onto this idea of a frequency map from center out. Maybe? In part? No?

    10. TTTwyla Tharp58:09

        Sweetness, my love. Did we not discuss already much earlier the importance and, um, specicifity, specificity, specificicity-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman58:20

        (laughs)

    12. TTTwyla Tharp58:20

        ... of center? Now, what you're saying about the different rates of the tendrils, the neurons-

    13. AHAndrew Huberman58:29

        Yeah, the- the-

    14. TTTwyla Tharp58:30

        ... the cellular-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman58:31

        Yeah, the neurons-

    16. TTTwyla Tharp58:31

        ... massacre.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman58:32

        ... that control the- the trunk versus the upper arms versus the- the-

    18. TTTwyla Tharp58:35

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman58:35

        ... the digits.

    20. TTTwyla Tharp58:36

        That this- this is, this has got m- more, uh, choice, can make more choice than this can make.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman58:42

        Mm-hmm.

    22. TTTwyla Tharp58:43

        Do I think about the parts of the body as the... Sometimes. In other words, the legs can be working at one rate of speed, say half time, of what the, uh, the arm is doing, and they'll be on the same metronomic base, but they'll be operating at a different speed. Certainly, I would think of that. Uh, would I think about power, uh, that sometimes, uh, you can isolate through the center and there'll be, like, a huge impact from the top but that the body, the lower body will be fluid? Sometimes. I mean, I've ripped off Tai chi forever. It's okay. Uh, so we're doing Tai chi and suddenly, yep, cha, boing, and then we're back into it, right? Uh, so it's, like, just, like, a jolt goes through it, and I suppose that's a change in your neurological construct. I mean, what interests me in what you're saying is a part of the nightmare of my life, which is dance has difficulty, and one of the reasons it has difficulty in being registered by m- many people in our culture is that it doesn't have easy access to being documented and recorded in the way that music does or language does. What you're saying, I've argued for many years, should be a way of documenting movement that people could read, and then they could read a dance, and then they would feel grounded in that tradition and understanding of that tradition. They could under- they could study that tradition. That's not now possible.

15. 1:00:18 – 1:04:15

    Creative Process, Spine; Idea, Habit

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:18

       I'd like to talk about the creative process a bit in a way that-... perhaps people can, you know, structure, uh, some of their own creative pursuits. At what point do you know the spine?

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:00:31

       The beginning and the end.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:33

       Okay.

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:00:33

       Okay. What do I mean? Uh, in the beginning, uh, you hope for it, uh, and you have a little taste of it, or you wouldn't be able to... I wouldn't be able to start, uh, without the tiniest little indication there's something there that's actually gonna hook in and that's gonna allow me to start building. And this is where process becomes very reassuring. You start building the wall. You're just mixing the mortar and putting the brick in, mixing the mortar, putting the bricks, and the wall grows, and it- it develops all of this stuff happening. And you're just doing the mortar and the brick, and it's very not menacing and extraordinarily rewarding in the place you want to live. But you can't 'cause you gotta finish the work and let it go. A dismal moment.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:17

       Maybe we put this into example. Let's say I want to write a- a short story. I realize you're a choreographer and not a writing instructor, but we- we say, like, what's the... Would you s- and then you say... Well, someone says that they want to write stories or books. So, what's the spine? Right?

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:01:32

       Well- well, the first thing is, what's the idea?

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:35

       Mm-hmm.

    8. TTTwyla Tharp1:01:35

       The first thing is where- where is the- uh, where's the story? I mean, some writers have to know the end before they can start at the beginning. Others want nothing to do with the end until they've at least reached the middle because they want the work to find itself. Uh, that all is... you know, that's a part of the privilege of being a writer and the pain of being a writer. Um, but the, uh, uh, construct of starting, sometimes, it's simply habit and discipline. Um, and, uh, you are gonna go in, and you are going to start at, let's say, 6:45 every morning, and you're gonna give yourself... You've only got an hour and a half. Okay? I'm not talking about you're a professional writer. I'm talking about you're a person, uh, who maybe wants to become a professional writer, but who's got at least one other job and maybe two and probably a kid to deal with. An hour and a half is a lot of time for- in that life. So, starting, you gotta start with something. And either there's an idea that you're- that you really are, uh, energized by. Or just, you know, you start writing something, get something on the page, and bit by bit, it becomes a habit. And maybe that habit evolves, and maybe it doesn't. And maybe you give it up, and maybe you find that you... then you get an idea. You find something you keep returning to, and it pulls you. It- it hypnotizes you. Uh, y- it makes you want to follow it, see where it will go to, see how it will develop. And then, at a certain point, it's done. It's- it's played out. Uh, maybe you can guide that so that it becomes more exciting, and you learn how to build as you're going along. And you learn how to direct it so that it's gonna get to either a surprising end where it has to end, and the reader's gonna say, "I should have seen that." Or you're going to say, "I should have seen that." Or you're gonna go, "No way. You're a liar. I'm not gonna buy this book."

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:37

       But the showing up at 6:45 consistently is the- is the- is the- the bricklaying that's essential?

    10. TTTwyla Tharp1:03:44

        Y- yeah. Because it allows you to think that you could be a writer.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:49

        Sort of living into a- a- a delusion that could be a reality.

    12. TTTwyla Tharp1:03:55

        Could be.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:56

        Yeah. Y-

    14. TTTwyla Tharp1:03:57

        And maybe it's not a delusion because maybe what you start to write, immediately, is a very interesting sentence or two.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:05

        Some days. Maybe it-

    16. TTTwyla Tharp1:04:07

        Some days. Y- yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:08

        Yeah.

    18. TTTwyla Tharp1:04:08

        You can't expect a good time every day. You might want to quote me on that.

16. 1:04:15 – 1:12:16

    Rituals, Gym, Discipline; Farming, Quaker & Community; Communication

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:15

       You have a reputation for having, uh, risen early and gotten to the gym by 5:00 AM for two hours, eating three hard-boiled eggs post-workout, day in after day out, for a very long time. Uh, tell us about that ritual. And, uh, do you still enjoy it?

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:04:35

       It's not a ritual, and I never enjoyed it. It's a reality, and, uh, you do it because you need an instrument that you can challenge. A- and in order to challenge something, you gotta know how it stands. I mean, I could challenge, you wouldn't want me to, the centering of this, but I can only do it if it's already grounded. Then I can try to throw it off. You can't just throw things off. They've gotta be set before you can throw them off, right? So, that is used... Just set the mechanism for the day you're gonna have to do it. It's kind of boring, and it's kind of loathsome. I would rather go to the gym than brush my teeth. I'll tell you that.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:17

       Could you give us a bit of insight into your inner dialogue around days when you don't want to go? Is there a self-talk, or have you learned to push aside the- the voice that says, "Maybe not today"?

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:05:28

       Yeah. No, no, no, no. Uh, it's simple. I- if you don't work when you don't want to work, you're not gonna be able to work when you do want to work. End of story.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:42

       Were you always like this?

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:05:45

       What do you mean, "Like this?" (laughs)

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:46

       I didn't mean that in that sense.

    8. TTTwyla Tharp1:05:48

       You did.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:48

       And you know I didn't.

    10. TTTwyla Tharp1:05:49

        I don't.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:49

        You know I didn't.

    12. TTTwyla Tharp1:05:50

        Yeah, I don't.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:50

        You know I didn't. I meant were- have you always been this disciplined and had this, uh, this, uh, clear view of the necessity for hard work?

    14. TTTwyla Tharp1:06:00

        My mother was an extraordinary force in anybody's life. She happened to be in mine. Okay? I was trained as a very young child to practice. Uh, whether... Uh, anything, everything had to be practice, and it had to be scheduled to be practiced, and time is limited. And you don't waste it.... and you work very hard, and you try to maximize that period of time, because otherwise, you're being wasteful. And while I said I'm from San Berdoo, I am, but I'm not. I am from the Midwest. I was born in Indiana, um, ah, and left when I was eight. Uh, but up until that point, I had the extraordinary good fortune of being on my grandparents' farm, uh, for long stretches of time without my parents. And these farms were in, uh, Amish territory and the family's Quaker. And the land was the land, period. There was no electricity. There were no phones. There was plant the seed, grow the seed, kill the hogs, ring the check- chicken's neck, and you work or you don't eat.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:12

        Yeah, the Midwest sensibility is something to behold. I have a lot of friends in the Midwest. There's a real decency out there in terms of how people communicate with one another, what they do and don't know, and there's a real thing to farmers.

    16. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:25

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:26

        Uh, at Stanford, uh, when I was a postdoc, there was a MD PhD student in the laboratory. She had grown up on a mushroom farm, not the psilocybin mushrooms, the kind you eat and don't hallucinate, on a mushroom farm in rural Pennsylvania, and her work ethic, and this is at Stanford School of Medicine where people are very driven, not just on average, but-

    18. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:48

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:50

        ... her work ethic was unbelievable.

    20. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:52

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:53

        And her cheerfulness about it-

    22. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:54

        Yes.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:55

        ... was also unbelievable.

    24. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:56

        Yes. (laughs)

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:56

        It was spectacular.

    26. TTTwyla Tharp1:07:58

        The delight, in fact.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:59

        Yeah, yeah. She had a bike accident on-

    28. TTTwyla Tharp1:08:01

        Oh.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:02

        A few people will know who this is. She had a horrible bike accident on campus, knocked out all her teeth. Someone had stepped out in front of her wi- uh, she was back in the laboratory with falsies in and working, I think, within, like, 48 hours.

    30. TTTwyla Tharp1:08:15

        Holy shit.
17. 1:12:16 – 1:18:11

    Communication, Signaling & Distance; Feeling Emotion

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:16

       Um, this brings us back to the notion of a center, believe it or not. Fish have lateral lines. They sense the electrical fields of other fish and other things near them. Um-I mean, there's many, many examples from the animal kingdom of, you know, like the platypus with its, uh, electric... It... People call it an electric sensing bill, but it sends out these electrical fields, so then it can detect things in its environment, 'cause its vision is very poor.

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:12:45

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:45

       Um, somebody once said, uh, Ed Yong, the writer, said, uh, that so many animals rely on smell. We sort of smell with our eyes, which sounds crazy, but we use our eyes the way that other animals use their noses, and that gives you an insight into how they use their noses. But most animals have a sense of how close or far other members of their species and other things are. We tend not to think about that unless you live in a big open space and you get on the New York subway, and, like, suddenly you're like, "Whoa, this is pretty, you know, this is different." Um, but we have these... We don't really have a lateral line, but we have remnants of things that are similar. There are beautiful studies showing that if you look for, in an experimental context, magneto reception in the human brain, people perform above chance. In other words, we can detect magnetic fields. People are gonna think I'm crazy, but this was published in Science magazine.

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:13:42

       Oh, no, no.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:43

       Yeah, we can sense electric fields. We sort of have to train ourselves to do it, and perhaps some people are just naturally leaning that way. So there absolutely i- is n- when I say energetic, neural communication across space that isn't just words, sounds, sound waves, and vision, uh, photons. So there's stuff happening at a distance and smell. I think we, we vastly, uh, you know, underestimate the extent to which pheromones and odors of people who are upset or s- you know, there's studies showing that human tears af- affect hormones and o- people around them.

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:14:20

       You need to have a 16-year-old boy around you when it comes to the sensitivity to smell and perfumes being sold commercially these days.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:29

       (laughs) Oh my goodness.

    8. TTTwyla Tharp1:14:31

       Yeah, but the thing about distance is something that I'm very, very interested in. I mean, the awareness is mostly visual for dancers, uh, and it's usually established again in class. If you have a crow- crowded class, you, the distance can be, uh, the next one would be out here from this point.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:52

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TTTwyla Tharp1:14:53

        But a really crowded class, the distance might be out here, in which case you're gonna be angling yourself to the diagonal so you're able to get full, full reach, which is going to impact on design, right? Uh, but there are also ways, and it's very demanding actually, and it requires a lot of trust on everybody's part, where I can get dancers to work very close together, and that has a real visual impact, and it becomes a physical sensation w- of the person watching. It can become an anx- "Oh, don't step on that. She's gonna get stepped on," and it, it, you know, um, there I'm kind of using it crassly, and but it, it's interesting to push people in, uh, into what's called one another's space, uh, and, uh, be able to condense the amount of area that people feel comfortable in or require, which could be a very good thing, culturally speaking, 'cause we got less and less space.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:53

        Yeah, it's interesting that the, this notion of communication across space, if we could just continue down this path a bit. Last year, I had the great honor really to do a lecture about music and the brain with Renée Fleming, the, the, the great opera singer. And we got onto this topic of the fact that, that opera singers will capture an emotion. They're using their diaphragm in a very particular way, getting a certain frequency of vibration in their body, obviously using air, you know, shaping the air as it leaves their, their lungs to, to sing, and how maybe that's actually impacting the same sets of neurons in the audience, but they're not singing 'cause it's kind of an interesting idea that we're, you're feeling the emotion-

    12. TTTwyla Tharp1:16:37

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:37

        ... of the singer because your, your phrenic nerve, the nerve-

    14. TTTwyla Tharp1:16:40

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:40

        ... that controls the diaphragm, it might be vibrating at a similar frequency.

    16. TTTwyla Tharp1:16:43

        Yeah, absolutely.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:44

        It sort of gets back to this, like, more, I don't wanna call them primitive, but more fundamental aspects of language-

    18. TTTwyla Tharp1:16:50

        Yes.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:50

        ... and communication.

    20. TTTwyla Tharp1:16:51

        Yes.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:52

        I wonder with dance and perhaps with athleticism too, like, on a football field, when we see somebody move or people move in a certain way, whether or not they're... We don't realize it perhaps, but that there's almost the illusion that we're moving like that.

    22. TTTwyla Tharp1:17:07

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:07

        Like, we're accessing... This is, this idea of a portals, like artist portals, that we're, we're actually sensing at some level what it would be like to move like that, and of course I can't.

    24. TTTwyla Tharp1:17:18

        Absolutely. I mean, you know, these ocular glasses, right, that you believe that you're projecting yourself into that item up there and actually feeling it. Hello, right?

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:31

        Mm-hmm.

    26. TTTwyla Tharp1:17:32

        That must be what is, is working, what's creating that illusion. You're not really inside that item, but you feel and believe as though you are.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:41

        Yeah, I've done a VR where it's, uh, you think you're in a different body. It's-

    28. TTTwyla Tharp1:17:45

        Right.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:46

        ... really weird and kinda cool. You get-

    30. TTTwyla Tharp1:17:48

        Yeah, I guess so. I, I-
18. 1:18:11 – 1:21:41

    Boxing, Strength Training

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:11

       Yeah, you boxed.

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:18:12

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:13

       With Teddy Atlas as your trainer.

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:18:14

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:15

       We have some friends of Teddy Atlas around here.

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:18:17

       Yes.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:18

       Uh, what motivated that?

    8. TTTwyla Tharp1:18:19

       I was in my early 40s, and, uh, the Olympics were in L.A., and I was making a new piece, and I wanted to compete. Uh, but there are no competitions for what I do. I mean, a dancer's range is much more than, uh, an, an athlete's. Not to the same degree in specialization, but across the board there's speed, flexibility, uh-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:18:42

       Mm-hmm.

    10. TTTwyla Tharp1:18:42

        ... you know, maneuverability in air, uh, coordination, flexibility. Dancers got all of these components to a very high degree. So no events for, um, me at the Olympics. Uh, but I could make a piece that would be highly athletic, and I wanted to be in the very best possible shape I could be in. Uh, so, uh, I decided, uh, that the training that was involved in a boxer being in shape, uh, was more extreme than what I was doing with my dancing regimen. Uh, and that the, you know, the rope coordination, the stamina being involved, the power coming off the punch, the, uh, grounding of the body so that you had a punch, uh, the willingness to take the blow in exchange for the unwillingness to go down. You would not go down. "You're not going down." And we don't do that in dance, so I figured, "Well, I'll go where they do do that." So Teddy, we, we were running steps backwards. This is a very good thing. I mean, you know, uh, and, uh, shadow boxing, it's a great, great training format.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:56

        Yeah, I agree. Uh, um, you know, as a neuroscientist, I have to put a call out against sparring for anyone who's not trying to make it a profession, and maybe even for those that are, that's their choice. But, um, but speed bag work, and, um, th- the vi- the visual coordination that's involved is also incredible. Near, far, but also just switching from peripheral to central vision is ... I, I imagine it, it improves the brain in many, many ways-

    12. TTTwyla Tharp1:20:20

        Yes.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:20

        ... except for the getting hit in the head part.

    14. TTTwyla Tharp1:20:22

        Well, probably.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:24

        Yeah. And you're also well-known for being quite strong. Tell us about your deadlift, uh, record.

    16. TTTwyla Tharp1:20:29

        Well, I mean, you know, uh, it's, it, I, I was training with, uh, in a real weight gym with competitive weightlifters, uh, and w- was very serious, uh, from the time I was probably in my 50s until mid 60s, say, um, and that you were nobody in that gym if you didn't do your body weight for three on the bench. I mean, you know, what are you in here for, right?

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:54

        Mm-hmm.

    18. TTTwyla Tharp1:20:55

        So, it had that kind of, uh, r- requirement to it, uh, which is very encouraging if you want to lift heavy weight. Uh, and also snap the pneumonia, right? Which is like, okay. I actually never did that. But the jolt of pulling more weight off the ground than you really can do or you have ever done really does sound- send a rush through the body that is unique.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:23

        Mm-hmm. And wh- what was your personal record?

    20. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:25

        227.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:26

        227 deadlift?

    22. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:27

        Yup.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:28

        Awesome.

    24. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:29

        Well, I don't know about that. I mean-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:31

        Nah, it's just awesome.

    26. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:31

        ... you just do it day in, day out.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:32

        It's awesome.

    28. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:32

        And I wasn't tr- uh, you know, you can't train day in, day out. But training rigorously and continuously for probably eight or 10 years, yeah.

19. 1:21:41 – 1:23:01

    Sponsors: LMNT

    1. TTTwyla Tharp1:21:41

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:41

       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 16 to 32 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 to claim a free sample pack.

20. 1:23:01 – 1:29:09

    Ballet Barre Work, Fundamentals

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:01

       Several times, you've mentioned the barre.

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:23:03

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:03

       Um, I think most of us understand there's a bar along the wall with a mirror sometimes behind it, et cetera. C- uh, what ... For the uninformed, like, for me, um, what is, what is barre work really about, and what ... And could you give us an example of a few ... I mean, is it designed to improve flexibility? Is it for ... Uh, what, what is this notion of the barre?

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:23:25

       All of the above. A barre is c- a set regimen of exercises that are developed to strengthen, uh, the s- structure of the body to basically approach the jumps, to gain height in the air for the men. For the women, if they're working on pointe, the strength in the legs and the torso to be able to support that weight in the little area down here. Uh, and so it's developed essentially from ... Uh, barres evolved, but basically their format is brilliantly designed, uh, and begins with, uh, usually plie, uh, which the terminology is French, which means to fold. So you're folding the body in the plie. You're folding, you're going down, and the positions are first, second, third.... fourth, and fifth. Okay? First, you have a actually one center that comes off of here and here, or you're off to this side, or you're off to that side. But if you're working very rigorously, you're working to develop that single center in first. Second is a much more evolved kind of higher muscular kind of situation, where it's being supported from the torso and the leg muscles more than from the feet. The third position is never used, because third looks like a bad fifth, so it's just been eliminated, which is kinda too bad, because I u- I actually do use third. Uh, but not if I think it's in a moment where it could be judgmentally determined, actually, it was an uncrossed fifth. Oh, dear. Uh, but in any case, so third weight is somewhere between openly distributed and crossed through a single center between the two legs, okay? This is the fourth-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:25:21

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:25:21

       ... right? And the fifth, that fourth is closed, so that it's just a reduced, even higher center. Okay? In these positions, first, second, usually not third, first, second, fourth, and fifth, plié. First, to bend, to fold. Uh, next, tendre, to stretch, to reach out from that base. Not so far as you're gonna fall, but far enough so that you have to evolve and occupy a little bit more space each time you do it. And you will go first from the tendu to a plié, to a tendu to a plié, and then tendu to a straight leg, which by drawing in, you're pulling the center even higher. And so therefore, it comes later in the series of exercises. They are designed to evolve, right? Uh, after the, uh, the stretches comes the ronde de jambe, one of the few exercises, actually, that's circular. Most of ballet comes from fencing. It's very linear. It's the attack, it's the retreat. But it doesn't have a whole lot of that going on, unless somebody's gotten very ambition, fl-flamboyant with their fencing styles. Could be, I don't know. But in any case, ronde de jambe is the circling of the leg from a full fourth forward, all the way to an open second, all the way to a full fourth back. All the way back to your second, all the way back to your fourth forward, and down, full rotation. Both sides, by the way. You're always reversing. Even the ones that are in a symmetrical position, you still reverse right and left, because as I'm sure you're well aware, right and left occupy your body all the time, and are constantly arguing with one another. We have an interior conflict going on that makes almost anything else in life impossible. But so we have right and left, which we're always trying to balance, okay? After ronde de jambe, you can have petit battement, which is little throws, little throws. So from your fifth or from your first, you're reaching quickly out, little darting movements, right? Then you can have frappé, which is to beat, frappé. Uh, and so from the ankle, it'll be a flexed foot that extends, boom, and boom. And all of this is about developing relevé, to lift, to relevé, right? Uh, up to the metatarsal as high as you can get, pulling up through all of this, relevé. And this develops the strength that you need to jump, because from the plié down, you're gonna drive up. And the more power you have down here, the more you can get up. That little extra eighth of an inch counts, okay? Uh, so frappé, after frappé is grand battement, the big battement, the big throw all the way up and down. But not all the way up, changing the angle of the hip so that the rotation is going to alter the line. Holding the hip straight through, up, e, up, e, up, either through fourth or through second, or through arabesque and back. Those are the fundamentals. Now, if you're Merce Cunningham, you can operate in all of the interstices through all of that, but you still have the regulation of the body's map, and that's what ballet has already done.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:28:59

       Amazing.

    8. TTTwyla Tharp1:29:00

       Not amazing, just very highly evolved in terms of how to control movement in terms of strengthening and developing the body.

21. 1:29:09 – 1:35:42

    Body’s Knowledge, Honoring the Body, Kids & Movement

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:29:09

       Did the people that developed this, um, care about the underlying physiology, or they just... And I'm not saying they should, but it seems like an incredible intuition, at least, that they came up with it.

    2. TTTwyla Tharp1:29:24

       You'll forgive me for saying something stupid like this. The body is very smart. And one of my problems has always been, what knows what first? Okay? Does the body already get it, brain, and we're trying to educate you? Or is it brain telling body what to do? In the case of the classical technique, I think it's actually the body that feels that it could get a little higher if only its rotation were a little more open, so it urges that, ugh, that ugh, sth. I don't think brain is going, "Well, you know what? If you actually could open that leg out, you'd go higher." And you're going, "Brain, I don't know about that. What does that mean?" You don't know what it means.... the body knows what that means.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:11

       I've heard it said, you know, i- we think that we're a brain with a body, but perhaps we were a body with... that later got a brain. (laughs)

    4. TTTwyla Tharp1:30:18

       There are certain sophisticated movements, r- uh, rhythms and so forth. I mean, for example, g- a great composer's a great mathematician, right?

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:25

       Mm-hmm.

    6. TTTwyla Tharp1:30:26

       Um, and the indications and, um, the divisions of time, um, uh, I would accept as coming, you know, particularly because of how you see the notation and how the, um, note can be subdivided. It's a very visual thing. Once you're into the eye, you're into the brain. I mean, you know, it's like... do you know what I'm saying?

Episode duration: 2:29:51