The Mental Frame & Specific Daily Actions to Succeed | Andy Stumpf

1. 0:00 – 3:09

   Andy Stumpf

   1. ASAndy Stumpf0:00

      Pick the choice as often as possible that is slightly more difficult. To me, it's the small stuff that nobody sees that makes the biggest difference in the world. Everybody knows the harder choice versus the easier choice. Everybody, to include myself, will look externally and say, "What do I need to do?" I know what I need to do, and so do they. They need to do the thing, that even if it's microscopic, that they wanna do less more often than they do the thing that they wanna do more. That, over time, is the juice.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman0:34

      [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 Andy Stumpf, a retired Navy SEAL and subsequently a member of the Red Bull High Performance Team, where he was a wingsuiter, where they literally get into what some people call squirrel suits and fly. He set two world records wingsuiting, but today's discussion is not really prompted by his career in the military, nor his wingsuiting, although it does impact the discussion. Today's discussion was prompted by my reading of Andy's recent book called Drownproof. Now, there are a lot of books out there by former Navy SEALs, but upon reading it, I realized that this was a special book, and that Andy's experience and the lessons he shares, and most importantly the tools he shares, are both unique and indeed important for everyone to hear. For instance, he describes a tool in there that I now use every single week, which has allowed me and many other people, and I'm certain you, to separate out issues of concern versus issues of impact, meaning to allow you to actually be able to impact, perhaps not control, but certainly have an impact on certain things while ignoring the issues in life that distract you, that pull you into drama, and that can numb you out, and that essentially waste your life. Today, you'll learn what that exercise is and how to implement it in your life. You'll also learn a lot of other simple tools about how to take the slightly harder road in certain moments versus the easier road. You'll also learn from Andy about the most difficult things that he encountered in life and how he navigated them. And no, those weren't in the military, nor wingsuiting. It actually comes from his personal life, which he shares very candidly. And finally, we have a very serious, and in many ways, somewhat emotional discussion about suicide and mental health more generally. I do hope that that discussion will benefit all of you. I'm certainly, we are certainly, I should say, very open to your input. That discussion, of course, raises more questions than it provides answers, but I think we can all agree that this is an extremely important and timely topic. The frequency of suicide is increasing significantly in all communities. So for reasons related to the range and the nature of the specific topics that we discuss today, you're in for a very special episode. Thank you, Andy Stumpf. 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.

2. 3:09 – 4:06

   Protocols Book

   1. AHAndrew Huberman3:09

      All right, my book is finally ready for release. Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body is coming out in three months. It's my first book, and I've been working on it for many years now, and it's really a reflection of decades of research and experience that came even prior to starting the book. My goal for this book is that it serves as an easy-to-use manual for dealing with any number of different pain points or performance goals that you might have in terms of mental health, physical health, and performance. It covers the science and most effective protocols for sleep, nutrition, exercise, focused learning and neuroplasticity, stress management, and much more. I'm super excited to share it with all of you. The launch date is September 15th. You can learn more about it or pre-order by going to protocolsbook.com. It's also available on amazon.com, and I'm super excited that Protocols is finally ready for release. And as always, thank you for your interest in science. And now for my discussion with Andy Stumpf.

3. 4:06 – 10:14

   Nagging Thoughts, Tool: Determine Influence vs Concern

   1. AHAndrew Huberman4:06

      Andy Stumpf, welcome.

   2. ASAndy Stumpf4:07

      Thank you for having me.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman4:09

      I read your book, Drownproof, recently.

   4. ASAndy Stumpf4:11

      Which makes me nervous, by the way. Telling you that before we start. [laughs]

   5. AHAndrew Huberman4:14

      Listen, I've read a, a lot of books, including a lot of the, quote-unquote, "SEAL books." It's awesome. I'll mention a few of the reasons why it's awesome, but I'll let people read it for themselves. But just to really get right to it, one of the practices that you describe in the book is something that I decided to do right away, and I've been doing every week since I listened to it. Now granted, I just listened to the book a few weeks ago.

   6. ASAndy Stumpf4:37

      Yep.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman4:37

      So that means twice, but I've found it to be tremendously useful, not just during the exercise, but in the days that follow. And it's really, uh, remapped a lot of, uh, what I would call my unhealthy tendencies and given me much more sense of agency, and my days are, are just going so much better.

   8. ASAndy Stumpf4:56

      Yes.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman4:56

      In fact, I was on time today for the first time in my life. Um-

   10. ASAndy Stumpf4:58

       Influence versus concern?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman4:59

       Yes.

   12. ASAndy Stumpf4:59

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman5:00

       So could you describe this-

   14. ASAndy Stumpf5:01

       [laughs]

   15. AHAndrew Huberman5:01

       ... uh, simple exercise? Because I'll, I'll tell you, having, having done it, it is immensely powerful.

   16. ASAndy Stumpf5:06

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman5:06

       I only wish I had learned about it, like, in junior high school.

   18. ASAndy Stumpf5:11

       Story of my life. Yeah. Uh, so first off, not my creation. This is something ... I don't remember, and I think I said this multiple times in the book, because I wanna be very clear that, of basically taking ownership over nothing in that book, because they're not my unique ideas. They were things that were taught to me that I'm trying to pass forward. So I don't remember exactly where I first saw this, but the way it was first, uh, positioned to me was your circle or sphere of influence, which is very small, and your sphere of concern, which for most people, to include myself, is very large. So if it was the size of this table, that would be your concern. The influence would be the size of a pin drop on the table. And the exercise is actually really simple. Take a standard piece of paper, draw a line down the middle. Concern on one side, influence on the other, and you just take the time to write down the things that are occupying your waking hours. I don't know if you're anything like me. I try not to set an alarm unless I have something really pressing that day. But if I do wake up and my brain does a revolution, I have to get out of bed because otherwise I'm staring at the ceiling in the bedroom. And [laughs] if I have really sticky things in the morning, I'll t- I'll usually do this about once a month or once every six months now, but almost every time, that thought will be on the left-hand side of the column. It's just a concern. Why is it preventing me from going back to sleep? Why can't I let go of it? And it's social media, the world that we all live in. It's things you can't control. It's just all the stuff that you spend your energy and effort focusing on. And then you go to the other side of that paper, and I'm still yet to find more than one thing that you can write down, and that's the direct influence that you have. And all you really can write on that is yourself. Now, you can, you can tranche that out and say your thought process, the way you speak to yourself, the way you plan your day, the way you manage your time, but all that goes back into things you can actually directly control, which leads you to the realization or leads me to the realization that I have no control over what happens to me in my life, but I have absolute and complete and total control over how I respond to it, and I think that speaks to the agency piece. And it helps me, especially when I have those sticky thoughts, it helps me at least take a step back. I'm not gonna say I'm perfect and I can put down a lot of the things that I'm concerned with, but it will identify for me a healthy or an unhealthy attachment to those things, and it does help me cross back over to, okay, I understand that this is scary or concerning, but being scared or concerned about it doesn't impact outcome. Everything on the right-hand side of the paper does. So that's what it does for me. Man, you wanna talk about developing some more efficiencies? It's a great tool.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman7:52

       Yeah.

   20. ASAndy Stumpf7:52

       It's startling how much is gonna be on the left-

   21. AHAndrew Huberman7:54

       Mm-hmm

   22. ASAndy Stumpf7:54

       ... and how little is gonna be on the right.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman7:56

       Yeah, it's been a game changer for me because, and maybe I misinterpreted the exercise a little bit because on the, uh, right-hand side of the, uh, the page, I've been listing out the things that I can control and the things that I can do with my time. And-

   24. ASAndy Stumpf8:10

       But that still goes back to you're-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman8:11

       Yeah

   26. ASAndy Stumpf8:11

       ... controlling the management of your time.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman8:13

       Right. Okay.

   28. ASAndy Stumpf8:13

       That's totally fine. And with all these tools, I don't think there is a wrong answer.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman8:16

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ASAndy Stumpf8:17

       If it has the impact that you're looking for, again, you could titrate all that back up to you controlling yourself and what you do with your time. I think it's perfect.
4. 10:14 – 17:01

   Social Media, Screen Time Discipline

   1. AHAndrew Huberman10:14

      We're about the same age. So late 40s for you-

   2. ASAndy Stumpf10:16

      Yep

   3. AHAndrew Huberman10:16

      ... 50 for me. I was thinking about this in light of this concern versus influence-

   4. ASAndy Stumpf10:21

      Mm-hmm

   5. AHAndrew Huberman10:21

      ... exercise, which is, you know, they, they created these, like, 10 and 20- and 30-year high school reunion things, I, I think, for the reason that you have the choice to go back and learn about what people are doing and who's still married, who's still alive, who's thriving, or what- whatever.

   6. ASAndy Stumpf10:38

      Yeah.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman10:38

      Whatever the reason is, we have these things called reunions. But with social media, there's this opportunity to be constantly aware of everybody you grew up with, them of you, uh, people you knew five years ago in a job that you no longer think about. So I, I feel like that, that left column now has grown tremendously, regardless of somebody's age. The opportunity to be aware of so many more things, not just distant in other countries and other, other issues entirely, but, like, our past lives are very much, like, anchored to us now, unless we really literally draw that line and, and, and sever from all that stuff. 'Cause, like, as much as I wish the best for all my classmates and all these people in graduate school and whatever, like-

   8. ASAndy Stumpf11:18

      Yeah

   9. AHAndrew Huberman11:18

      ... it, it really, a lot of it, uh, should not occupy one's mind. Do you ever wonder whether social media itself is making it harder to do this exercise?

   10. ASAndy Stumpf11:27

       I think it could be. Do you know who Chad Wright is?

   11. AHAndrew Huberman11:30

       Yes. I know of him, and we've corresponded a little bit.

   12. ASAndy Stumpf11:33

       [sighs] He is hilarious.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman11:35

       You want to... We should probably describe, uh-

   14. ASAndy Stumpf11:37

       He does the same type of stuff that Goggins does.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman11:39

       Mm-hmm.

   16. ASAndy Stumpf11:39

       He's an endurance athlete.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman11:41

       Long red beard.

   18. ASAndy Stumpf11:42

       I call him the Forrest Gump of the SEAL teams to his face, so I'm comfortable saying it. He's amazing. I've had him on the show a couple times. Uh, knew him when we were in the teams together. And he came on the show, on my show in November. And I don't know how we started talking about it, but it was this conversation around screen time. It's like, "All right, bud, let's pull the phones out. Let's see what we got." It, phew, it's, it's not awesome. I think it was four and a half hours. So we decided that in January of this year, we're gonna try to drive our screen time per day to under an hour for total phone usage. I think phone calls we were able to strip out of that. I think the closest he got was about 90 minutes, and then the last week of January for me, I got mine down to 30 minutes. Now, for clarity, I was still doing a lot of the stuff that I was doing on my phone, but I forced it over to my laptop, which was a really interesting experience because it's way less sticky on that platform.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman12:31

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

   20. ASAndy Stumpf12:31

       So Instagram on your laptop sucks. It, it, it's not intuitive. The things that you would normally just do with your thumb, they don't exist, so you end up closing your laptop up. So I'd get on there, post what I wanted to, and then just leave. My mental health was better in January than it had been in a long time. So I 100% think that social media is not only designed to suck up as much as that left-hand portion of your list as possible, but again, it, it's, it's optional. I mean, you create content. You have a massive platform. I create content. We can easily tell ourselves we have to exist on these platforms, which to a degree we do. The question I ask myself is, "Is the platform working for me, or am I working for it?" And that's the healthy relationship. And I think actually that goes right back to that exercise. Am I targeting what I do with my time and being efficient with it and then moving on, or am I just getting stuck into this thumb scroll of death, which is right before bed. I've heard you say it's the best time to have electronic device light. [laughs]

   21. AHAndrew Huberman13:32

       Yeah, real bright in a dark room.

   22. ASAndy Stumpf13:34

       Right before bed, right?

   23. AHAndrew Huberman13:35

       If, if you really wanna maximize-

   24. ASAndy Stumpf13:37

       [laughs]

   25. AHAndrew Huberman13:37

       ... make sure you do it first thing in the morning, too, and don't get outside and look at the sun. You know?

   26. ASAndy Stumpf13:42

       But it's so sticky. I'm telling you, when I hopped over to my laptop, at first I couldn't even figure out how to post a picture.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman13:49

       Mm.

   28. ASAndy Stumpf13:49

       And it's so clunky-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman13:51

       Mm-hmm

   30. ASAndy Stumpf13:51

       ... and so not intuitive that you don't wanna play with it.
5. 17:01 – 20:11

   Sponsors: Our Place & Wealthfront

   1. ASAndy Stumpf17:01

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   2. AHAndrew Huberman18:34

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6. 20:11 – 27:38

   Social Media Addiction, Young Adults, Rebellion, Alcohol

   1. AHAndrew Huberman20:11

      I've got a theory that I'm just gonna share- Please ... that I've been thinking about a lot lately, having just spent some time with, let's just say, one of the major providers of online content. It's not a social media platform. So I have this theory that unlike being drunk or doing drugs of any kind, opioids or, or, or amphetamines or something where people exit the state of, of intoxication and, and they realize like, "Oh my God, like that was a huge waste of my time, my life. I made these mistakes," et cetera, being on social media is different because there's this awareness that we're on there and we probably sh- could or should be doing something else often. And I have this theory that it's the perfect addiction because it's what I would call low resolution enough that it doesn't occupy all of your mind. Like when people are really intoxicated, they're not thinking about the fact that they shouldn't be intoxicated. That's the state they're trying to achieve. Mm-hmm. This is a state that people come out of and report. There are data on this. They go, "Yeah, it didn't feel good being on there for the last 45 minutes or 30 minutes," or, "I feel like I wasted a lot of time." So they're aware of that even while they're doing it. Very unusual for addictions, right? Yeah. Most addictions fall into the category of trying to erase the sense of time, lose themselves in the activity, forget the trauma if you think it's trauma related, just forget everything else and just be in this moment. Gamblers will say this, right? It's that zone they, they crave so much. This is different. Doesn't feel really good. You're aware that you're not supposed to be doing it quite like that or that much. So I actually think it's, it's the, quote unquote, "ultimate addiction" because it's low resolution enough that your brain circuits can get attached to it and keep doing it while you're monitoring yourself, and yet you can run these two tracks at the same time, so you're not getting absorbed and coming out of it and going, "Oh my God, I didn't study for my final exam. Oh my goodness, I didn't pick up the kids from school." It's just low resolution enough that you can still kind of tend to the, the kids, kind of be in a conversation, sort of be on the Zoom, sort of like, and- Kind of still be driving your car ... like your life doesn't totally fall apart. Exactly. [laughs] And so in some ways because it's not so extreme, I think that's actually one of the problems. The other problem is, of course, our brains can but are not really designed to be split into these, you know, two different activities for, for terribly long. It's not just an inability to multitask. I actually think that low resolution thing is t- y- you can kind of do it while you're doing other things. Yeah. So I'm just... This is something that I actually want some laboratories to look at. Um- Where does that lead if left unchecked? Well, for you and for me, the consequences are different and probably less immediate because we've already built our careers. Mm-hmm. There's the social detriment, you know, relationships to family and stuff that undoubtedly suffer somewhat, right? But they're doing it too, right? So there's that. I do worry, now I really sound like I'm in my 50s, like about the younger generation because I don't know whether I would've been able to escape this tunnel- Yeah ... had these devices been around. So I think that otherwise incredible accomplishments and human beings and careers and families and everything in between, art and music is literally not going to be made. I fear this much more than I fear AI, to be honest. Yeah, I... Much, much more- Yeah ... in terms of taking away jobs and taking away careers. I think that because it's, it's... I'll tell you this, I am confident that it is way, way worse than the, than the, quote-unquote, "opioid crisis" which was already terrible. I think we're gonna be okay. So I have three- Mm-hmm ... data points which happen to be my children. Mm-hmm. So almost 18, almost 21, almost 23. My middle son has got it dialed. He's going to college in Bozeman. I think he's getting ready to start his junior year in mechanical engineering. He's doing an internship at a quantum computing laboratory. I don't know what that means. He tries to tell me. I'm like, he... Just talk to my wife. [laughs] It's super cool stuff. He made a robotic hand. Of course, the first way he tested it was a middle finger, which I deeply, deeply appreciate. He is your son. 100%. He exists on social media. Mm-hmm. He downloads the app once per week, spends an hour on it, erases it, because it's the pendulum going the other direction for him. Mm-hmm. My oldest keeps it on his phone but uses it very sporadically, and it's almost, at least, so it, uh, the middle one's gonna be 21, the other one's gonna be 23. My oldest now is almost at the point, and I think his peer group is almost at the point a little bit of mocking people who spend- Mm-hmm ... you know what I mean? It's almost now, it's almost, almost on the other side like, oh

   2. ASAndy Stumpf24:43

      You're one of those, even though they were raised with electronic devices in their hand. My daughter, on the other hand, surgically connected to her hand and is constantly consuming. So I think she will get there as well too, because when I can kinda pull her out of that digital world or we go places that have less than optimal cell coverage intentionally, and somehow the Wi-Fi doesn't show up 'cause dad unplugs the router, be like, "Oh, there's no Wi-Fi at the house. That sucks," she can see the light. But my other two, as they've gotten a little bit older, they have, they have seen it and found it on their own. And I, I think we're gonna be okay-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman25:17

      Mm-hmm

   4. ASAndy Stumpf25:17

      ... because I think that generation now is really viewing these platforms with a little bit more of a wary eye.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman25:25

      Mm-hmm.

   6. ASAndy Stumpf25:25

      And I don't know why, but my middle son was the first one. He just was like, "Nope, this is what I do. I'm on there for an hour." It's 100% for memes for him, and then he just deletes the thing.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman25:35

      Great.

   8. ASAndy Stumpf25:36

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman25:36

      No, I'm, I'm, I'm very reassured by, by what you just said. I mean-

   10. ASAndy Stumpf25:39

       That's a data point of three, though.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman25:40

       Mm-hmm.

   12. ASAndy Stumpf25:40

       So [laughs]

   13. AHAndrew Huberman25:41

       Well, it's interesting because-

   14. ASAndy Stumpf25:42

       It's all I got

   15. AHAndrew Huberman25:42

       ... the data on, for instance, um, smoking in teens. Like, when we were growing up-

   16. ASAndy Stumpf25:47

       Mm-hmm

   17. AHAndrew Huberman25:47

       ... a lot of people smoked, young people smoked. Y- you know, the-

   18. ASAndy Stumpf25:49

       Had to be your first act of rebellion

   19. AHAndrew Huberman25:51

       ... there were all these campaigns to try and get young people to quit smoking, and they did not work. It's gonna give you lung cancers.

   20. ASAndy Stumpf25:56

       Yeah.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman25:57

       This is your lungs after smoking. None of that worked. What worked was the ad campaign that had these old white dudes cackling and talking about all the money they were gonna make on these young kids smoking.

   22. ASAndy Stumpf26:09

       [laughs]

   23. AHAndrew Huberman26:09

       So the rebellion of youth, if you leverage it against the big industry platforms-

   24. ASAndy Stumpf26:13

       Yeah

   25. AHAndrew Huberman26:13

       ... no one likes to be manipulated, but when kids realize and teens realize that they're being manipulated, they'll push back in a way that can be really good for them, which is a little bit of what, what we're hearing here. So the, so, you know, um-

   26. ASAndy Stumpf26:25

       As a parent, I can tell you they push back in ways super hard.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman26:30

       Yeah.

   28. ASAndy Stumpf26:30

       Maybe almost pendulum the other way.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman26:31

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ASAndy Stumpf26:31

       I tell you what they're also pushing back on in my all three of their generation, alcohol consumption. Damn. Don't get me wrong, they... There's a time and place for everything.
7. 27:38 – 36:07

   Alcohol & Social Experiences; Cannabis; Ice Bath

   1. AHAndrew Huberman27:38

      This is not a question I ever thought I would ask on this podcast as somebody who did an episode on alcohol that got some reach and got people rethinking whether or not they wanted to drink. And I should just quickly say, the major response to that was one of three different, um, types. One was, "I don't like drinking and now I can justify not drinking." There were a lot of people-

   2. ASAndy Stumpf27:57

      Mm-hmm

   3. AHAndrew Huberman27:57

      ... who felt that they had to drink, and now they had justification not to. Other people who said, "Wow, I didn't realize that, you know, it can increase breast cancer risk," or, you know, "We have cancers in our family," and that's a real thing. It's, you know, class one carcinogen-

   4. ASAndy Stumpf28:08

      Mm-hmm

   5. AHAndrew Huberman28:08

      ... et cetera. And then the third category, like, you know, "I wish you hadn't told me this information. I really enjoyed drinking and now my friends don't wanna drink with me." Fair, and I don't tell people what to do, and I, you know, et cetera. But I have to ask, do you think that your kids and their generation are possibly missing out by virtue of, you know, not drinking at all?

   6. ASAndy Stumpf28:29

      That's a fantastic question. I mean, it is a social lubricant-

   7. AHAndrew Huberman28:32

      Mm-hmm

   8. ASAndy Stumpf28:33

      ... for a degree. I was probably, and still am, antisocial in large crowds. Is there an aspect of that where it legitimately helped me not necessarily feel more comfortable, but maybe get out of my own way when I was younger? Yes. Did it lead to some bad decisions along the way? Yes. Did bad decisions and those consequences shape the human being that I would become along the way? Yes. I don't know where it, it, where it lands. I do think that there is a chance that yes, they are missing out on I'm not, maybe not formative life experiences, but important life experiences.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman29:14

      Well, I think the, the camera phones are a big concern with drinking now because-

   10. ASAndy Stumpf29:18

       Yeah

   11. AHAndrew Huberman29:18

       ... people are so worried about becoming, uh, less inhibited and maybe not even saying or doing the wrong thing, but even s- things as trivial as like, look, not everyone is an awesome dancer. They can get filmed, they can get posted, they can get teased. There's social shame.

   12. ASAndy Stumpf29:31

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman29:31

       The other problem is that many, many people are awesome at certain things, and those are the things that tend to be high amplitude also. And so people feel like they, you know, if they're gonna be seen online, they have to be in some i- in-

   14. ASAndy Stumpf29:43

       Yeah

   15. AHAndrew Huberman29:43

       ... impressive form. So I don't really know. I, I do worry about the cannabis thing because I'm not anti-cannabis, but I do think given a couple drinks a week versus smoking weed in terms of, like, the, the overall risk-benefit-

   16. ASAndy Stumpf29:58

       Yeah

   17. AHAndrew Huberman29:58

       ... alcohol seems less risky to me. But the, the can-

   18. ASAndy Stumpf30:01

       Really?

   19. AHAndrew Huberman30:01

       Yeah, I think so. I mean, look, there are high, high performers and people-

   20. ASAndy Stumpf30:04

       Yeah

   21. AHAndrew Huberman30:04

       ... who can use cannabis and they're, like, not a problem. Young males in particular who have a predisposition to psychosis or bipolar disorder-

   22. ASAndy Stumpf30:13

       Yeah

   23. AHAndrew Huberman30:13

       ... some of them smoke high-potency weed or even low-potency weed, and they never come back from the psychotic episode. I know a lot of examples of that, and that's in the data now. So alcohol, yeah, you can drive off a cliff, you can run somebody over, you can say or do something really, really stupid, but assuming those things don't happen, the, the immediate risks and long-term consequences of, like, having, having a couple beers or a couple drinks or maybe even a few more, try to get home safe, you don't say or do anything stupid-

   24. ASAndy Stumpf30:45

       Yeah

   25. AHAndrew Huberman30:45

       ... like- You're not gonna make yourself psychotic.

   26. ASAndy Stumpf30:47

       I'm kind of in the same boat that you are. I'm not here to tell people how to live their life. I do think that they should pay attention to the risk versus reward. You know, live your life how you want. Your choices are gonna have potential consequences, and some of those can be pretty big. There's some things I deeply regret about my expressions of being a human being when I was drinking when I was younger, and there are some things that I feel like my life would be completely different without-

   27. AHAndrew Huberman31:10

       Mm-hmm

   28. ASAndy Stumpf31:10

       ... and that I would never wanna give those experiences back.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman31:12

       Mm-hmm.

   30. ASAndy Stumpf31:13

       I don't know how you table that, though. [laughs] This is a fascinating cover [laughs] I mean-
8. 36:07 – 41:47

   Skydiving, Wingsuit Flying

   1. AHAndrew Huberman36:07

      All right. Um-

   2. ASAndy Stumpf36:09

      [laughs]

   3. AHAndrew Huberman36:09

      Taking from the guy who jumps out of, uh, or off of mountains in a, in a squirrel suit, let's talk about the squirrel suit.

   4. ASAndy Stumpf36:13

      Sure.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman36:14

      And why in the world anyone who values their life, seriously though-

   6. ASAndy Stumpf36:17

      Yeah, no, I get it

   7. AHAndrew Huberman36:18

      ... um, would do this. And is there an off-ramp? Is there a parachute in, uh, when you learn how to do this?

   8. ASAndy Stumpf36:25

      Yep.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman36:25

      How hard is it to learn, and what's the juice there?

   10. ASAndy Stumpf36:28

       Okay, a lot of questions there. Okay. It's funny. A lot of people call them squirrel suits. It's just a wingsuit. Squirrel is actually a manufacturer of one of the suits. Fantastic branding. They happen to be the suit that I jump. So essentially it is a human body turning into a nylon wing. That's really all it is. It's nylon. It's some neoprene around the wrists so you have a little bit of flexibility in the wrist. They're really actually advancing the leading edge technology with the fabrics. Just, I mean, it's crazy to look, I don't know the name of the program, but you're looking at all of these Images from the side of, of wind angles and how the suits, they're looking to reduce drag. Um, and it's more than just the rigidity of your body. So at least the suits that I jumped are modern suits. They are ram-air inflated. So there is an outer layer on both sides, an upper layer let's say for the, your back, and an under layer for your belly. In between, it's much like a canopy. There's ribbed fabric with portholes, and on the front and back of the wing, as you give it air speed, either exiting an airplane that's already in flight, it's... Most skydiving airplanes are probably doing 80 to 120 miles an hour. Or in the BASE jumping world, and this is where it can get spicy, is you have no airflow for about the first four seconds because-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman37:42

       BASE jumping, for those that don't know, is-

   12. ASAndy Stumpf37:44

       Fixed ob- call it a fixed object

   13. AHAndrew Huberman37:45

       Y-

   14. ASAndy Stumpf37:45

       Building, antenna, span, or Earth is what the acronym stands for. You're probably not gonna do it off of buildings 'cause it's, it, you need time to get the suit actually flying. But it's a different experience because if you jump out of an airplane, those ram air inlets fill up. Your suit is, it's pressurized. You can feel it, and you can already fly your suit. You can flip over. You can actually- I've gotten above aircraft many time. You can basically translate that horizontal lift into power and go above them shortly. You're gonna come back down, um, otherwise you'll stall the suit, and it starts waffling down. But in the BASE jumping world, it's a zero airspeed exit. So for the first about zero to four seconds, you don't have any air filling up the ram air inlets. So if you don't go off in the right body position or if you go head low and are scorpionic, or head high and then you pitch through that, and there is terrain below you, that's how a lot of people die. But the suit itself is, is basically that. It's, uh, there's wings. There's a large wing between your leg, a wing underneath your arm on both the left and right-hand side, and they come in a variety of sizes. So learning it is... [sighs] It's simple, not easy. First off, skydive before you throw a wingsuit on in the skydiving world. I think I had 3,000 jumps before I put a wingsuit on the first time.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman38:57

       Is it important that people do different types of skydiving? Uh, by the way, I'm not versed in skydiving.

   16. ASAndy Stumpf39:02

       Yeah.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman39:02

       So, uh, what, what's the most basic type of... L- l- I, I assume a tandem jump, then you start doing individual jumps.

   18. ASAndy Stumpf39:07

       Some people go... Uh, like I went right to... The first time I did a skydive, I had an instructor holding onto me from, for both sides until my parachute deployed.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman39:14

       Mm-hmm.

   20. ASAndy Stumpf39:14

       It's a very structured program that most modern drop zones will have. A lot of people will do a tandem first, which I recommend. If you're un, if you've never done it, and you're uncertain about whether or not you would like it, I, I think there's two really good options. One is a tandem, but if even that idea makes you a little bit uncertain, there's now enough wind tunnels around-

   21. AHAndrew Huberman39:34

       Mm-hmm

   22. ASAndy Stumpf39:34

       ... commercial wind tunnels. There's down in, there's Oceanside Wind Tunnel. There's one in LA. There's one in San Diego. They're all over the place. I was just in Virginia Beach. There's one in Virginia Beach. So it simulates the sensation of falling through the air in an environment where you don't have to wear a parachute. You don't have to ride an airplane. You literally hop in there. They can hold onto you, and it feels like skydiving.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman39:54

       Sounds like fun.

   24. ASAndy Stumpf39:54

       It's leveled up what people can do in the air 'cause it's this contained environment where you can see if you're moving a millimeter. The number of jumps [chuckles] I have had where you get out, you jump out into the air, where your only reference is another person that's moving around, and you get... You are sliding all over the place. Like, "Fuck you. You were sliding all over the place." Neither of you know 'cause your reference is the Earth just flying around.

   25. AHAndrew Huberman40:15

       Yeah.

   26. ASAndy Stumpf40:15

       And then you get in the wind tunnel, and you're both up against the glass.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman40:17

       Yeah.

   28. ASAndy Stumpf40:17

       You're like, "Oh, we both suck." So makes it a little bit more difficult. The most basic type of skydiving would be just exiting the plane in flight, falling with your belly to the, oriented towards the ground, and deploying your parachute on time. Skydiving is two parachutes, main parachute and reserve. Reserve is packed by an FAA rigger, and I believe it's... Uh, for one period of time, it was 90 days in between pack jobs. I think it's six months in between pack jobs now. But full, they open it up, the reserve. They open the parachute up. They inspect it. They make sure that the canopy is good, the lines are good, um, the automatic activation devices, which are computers sensing, uh, fall rate, barometric pressure with a firing criteria, which will fire your reserve for you if you do nothing, which has hundreds of documented saves, by the way-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman41:01

       Hmm

   30. ASAndy Stumpf41:01

       ... um, for an unconscious jump or whatever it may be, or somebody, as crazy as it is to say, somebody falling through the air forgetting to look at their altimeter 'cause they're having so much fun. It happens. So Cypresses or, uh, Vigils or just AADs, automatic activation devices, have saved hundreds of lives. So that reserve parachute is packed by a rigger. Most civilian jumpers will pack their own main parachute. It takes five minutes for an experienced jumper, maybe 20 minutes for somebody who is learning. And you can go do... I think the most jumps I've ever done in a day was probably 30. That was at, at a, at a, an event called a Boogie where it's just as fast as you can go, and you're just jumping, jumping, jumping. On an average day for me when I lived in San Diego would be six to eight jumps.

9. 41:47 – 43:06

   Sponsor: AG1

   1. AHAndrew Huberman41:47

      I'd like to take a quick break and acknowledge our sponsor, AG1. AG1 is a vitamin mineral probiotic drink that also includes prebiotics and adaptogens. I discovered AG1 way back in 2012, long before I ever had a podcast, and I've been taking it every day since. The reason I started taking AG1 and the reason I still take it every day is because AG1 is, to my knowledge, the highest quality and most comprehensive of the foundational nutritional supplements on the market. AG1 is designed to support things like gut health, immune health, and overall energy, and it does so by helping to fill any gaps that you might have in your daily nutrition. I get asked pretty much all the time, "If I could only take one supplement, what should that supplement be?" And my answer is always AG1. It has just been so helpful for supporting all aspects of physical health, mental health, and performance. 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 a free bottle of their new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 product. Omega-3 and coenzyme Q10 are known to support cardiovascular health, cellular health and energy generally, brain health, and much more. I personally take them both every day. Again, go to drinkag1.com/huberman to get a free bottle of the new omega-3 coenzyme Q10 with your first AG1 subscription.

10. 43:06 – 55:25

    Skydiving, BASE Jumping, Wingsuit Flying; Navy

    1. AHAndrew Huberman43:06

       For somebody's first non-tandem jump, how high is the plane off the ground?

    2. ASAndy Stumpf43:10

       13,000 is about average. 13 AGL. So if you're learning in Colorado or another Rocky Mountain state, you might only get 12 AGL because you might be up to 16 to 18,000 feet.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman43:24

       Mm-hmm.

    4. ASAndy Stumpf43:24

       But there's flying with your belly oriented to the Earth. There's people who like to do it vertically, either feet down or head down, people who fly on their back. There are formation jumps where they'll get a bunch of people together. I think the world record is hundreds of people linked up in free fall. You can watch it from the ground. It's crazy to see. They'll have eight aircraft, and you just see these just people bombing out of the back.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman43:47

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf43:48

       And they'll make these snowflake configurations, and people are just sitting there on the ground, watching either naked eye or with, uh, with binoculars. And then at break-off altitude, everybody's tracking away, and then all these canopies open up, and then on landing it gets a little bit wild. So it can get as much as you want, and then, um, wingsuiting is just a part of that. But you can jump a, a smaller wingsuit. So if... The suits I ended up jumping had a lot of fabric because I wanted to have a nice glide ratio, and I wanted to be able to extend the amount of time in the air. You can get suits with a smaller wing, which give you more maneuverability, and you learn in those and then get a little bit bigger, a little bit bigger and bigger and bigger. So as safely as possible, graduating your way towards those larger suits that can have more consequence. Uh, you can end up on your back in the wingsuits in flat spins, and I've seen people... They, you can get out of it. You need to get out of it quickly, but we're talking fully blown, uh, red eyes when they get to the ground from centrifugal force, and [claps hands] pretty quick too. That's the skydiving world, two parachutes. The BASE jumping world is you're now down to one parachute that is packed very similar to a reserve, but it's packed now by the jumper who is doing the BASE jumping. And the reason for that is you are generally very close to the ground at an altitude where a reserve isn't gonna save you, because it does take a couple hundred feet for a reserve to open up. And, um, in the US, there's one place to legally do it 24/7, 365. It's the Perrine Bridge up in, uh, Twin Falls, which is where I learned. It's, you know, the legality aspect is if people pursue to go that, they wanna go that way, um, do your research because there's some cities that had some problems with it, so they made it a felony, which will change your life if you wanna test gravity [chuckles] off of a building. I don't know if the capital F is necessarily worth it. Vegas and New York are two good examples of that. Um, most people start off at that bridge. Uh, and then an antenna is, of course, exactly that, radio antennas. And there are other countries in the world where that is legal to do, and a lot of times people will travel. Uh, buildings, you can get permission, uh, depending, um... I know one of your guys worked with Red Bull, not for Red Bull. He clarified for us. Shockingly enough, if you write a large check, things that were once illegal can become legal for short periods of time.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman46:03

       [chuckles]

    8. ASAndy Stumpf46:03

       So they will get permission to go off of buildings. Or you can go to Dubai, where for I think it was a year they had this huge just l- it was fully just set up for legal BASE jumping off one of the top floors of one of those skyscrapers, which is unbelievable. And then Earth, which is obviously that, and cliffs. Um, my first, uh, BASE jump off of a, a, actually it was from the bridge. I have... Actually, I have done an antenna. Buildings, not many buildings. But my first jump, uh, off the Earth was Monte Brento in Italy, which you jump, open your canopy, land, walk across the street, and there's an Italian espresso just waiting for you.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman46:45

       Perfect.

    10. ASAndy Stumpf46:46

        It's, it's basically heaven. And then we stayed there for two and a half weeks and went into Lauterbrunnen in Switzerland. But I had been skydiving and flying a wingsuit, then I had to learn how to BASE jump, and then at some point you have to combine those two. So one day you have to go from never having pushed off of a cliff in a wingsuit and having time flying it in the air to kind of bridging that gap where now you have this first four seconds that you have to deal with where the suit, the suit feels really sloppy. It doesn't feel rigid, and you can't really do anything until it powers up and you can pull away. So that's kind of the activities. The why I can't answer for anybody other than myself, but the why for me actually had nothing to do with the activity itself. And it is dangerous. There are some people who try to romanticize the danger of that, and if people wanna part- participate in things because they're dangerous and that's how they wanna define themself, I leave that to you. Um, just, you know, be aware of the potential consequences you might get yourself into. For me, I got into that about three years after I got out of the Navy, and I didn't realize what it was I enjoyed so much, but it was the mental reset associated with that. Um, at about one minute out on a helicopter, for me, and I can only speak for me, your entire, you know, w- talking about time, your entire circle of concern goes away. Completely gone. And there are very few times in my life where I've ever been able to get into that head space, but it might be the most powerful head space I've ever been able to arrive into, and my ability to find my way there lasted for months afterwards.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman48:30

        Mm-hmm.

    12. ASAndy Stumpf48:30

        Because overseas, yeah, they ask you to do some, some bizarre stuff, but you also likely at some point in your [coughs] in your career will have a family, maybe your first house, whatever it is, and like, fuck, the washing machine just broke. And you're dealing with real-life stuff. Did I, did I write enough checks before I left? The, before the digital age. Did I write enough checks before I left to make sure that the rent was already paid? Like, these are the things you're thinking about, just normal everyday life, an argument with your spouse, your kids, the holidays you may have missed, all that stuff. You get on a helicopter, and you start heading towards an objective, and all that stuff starts to go away. And at about, for me, about the one-minute and in until it e- lands or you're stepping off, it becomes this focus on The next three seconds of your life is the only thing I was capable of thinking about, and that is such a beautiful place. God, you wanna talk about the ability to perform and not feel like you're necessarily tr- you're not trying to force it, you're just... It, it, there's books been written about the flow state-

    13. AHAndrew Huberman49:32

        Mm-hmm

    14. ASAndy Stumpf49:32

        ... for lack of a better term. Incredibly impactful, and I didn't realize how much I needed that, and I didn't realize how much that job was providing for me until it was gone. And then the static of everyday life just is overwhelming. Skydiving, I guess you could get that or maybe I got that when I first started, but after a few thousand jumps, about everything that's go- going to go wrong, you're gonna have your first cutaway, you're gonna have a mou- you know what I mean? You're gonna deal with your gear, your reserve is gonna open. And so that, that really narrowed focus, it actually starts opening back up. The BASE jumping world, I remember the first time I was w- the guy who taught me, he's like, "All right. Just climb over the edge of the rail here," and you're s- looking at 486 feet. You test the wind by spitting, and if you can, if it drifts past a certain point, you're good to go. [laughs] So you can track your spit to where you are going to deck if you don't pull your parachute. Now, on the first one, he's holding onto the pilot chute so it rips it off for you, so you don't have to worry about it. But you wanna talk about that, shh, right back-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman50:36

        Mm

    16. ASAndy Stumpf50:36

        ... into that space, holy cow. That's what BASE jumping was for me. I had some of the, the deepest conversations with my friends on the four-hour hikes that would lead to a 90-second jump, and two weeks of those 90-second jumps, I could get myself into such a more dialed head space for six months and be better at business, better at, you know, a more patient father, a more patient husband. That's, that to me is why.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman51:04

        Mm-hmm.

    18. ASAndy Stumpf51:05

        And at some point, it, probably due to the death of my friends, and I had found other activities that had started to provide that, it crossed the metric for me where the risk was no longer wor- worth the reward. I, I have been skydiving since 1999. I could take five years off and go jump out of an airplane, and I'd be fine. But I can't do that in the BASE jumping world. The currency and competency piece is so important. And then when I moved to Montana, my access to the drop zones and the ability to maintain currency and competency in that wingsuit really decreased. So it got to a place where it just, it wasn't worth the risk. Skydiving's still a bunch of fun, but I found other activities that I could kinda lose myself in, maybe not to the same, I don't think to the same degree. I, I, [laughs] it's hard to describe zipping up in that suit with a maximal heart rate, to the point where you're looking over at your buddy who's like, "Hey, can, are you hearing my heart too? 'Cause it's pretty loud." It's about the, you know what I mean? Like, that thrush in your ears. [laughs]

    19. AHAndrew Huberman52:05

        That's informative, uh, to hear that your heart was maxed out because I wondered if y- you know, if adrenaline was low, if it was high.

    20. ASAndy Stumpf52:13

        Terrified.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman52:13

        You know, if something had, had happened systematically over the years in the Teams where your adrenaline was set too low, you need to crank it above a certain threshold. Sounds like you were right where any rational person would be, which was-

    22. ASAndy Stumpf52:24

        Yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman52:24

        ... terrified.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf52:25

        'Cause at some point, you grab your little tail wing, and you make a little nice little teepee with it, and you get your toes to the edge, and you check all your stuff, and then you are just looking out into the abyss. And you have to make yourself rock forward past the point of no return, that if you change your mind, whoopsies, that doesn't work anymore. And then you need to have maximal human performance for about the next four seconds of your life-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman52:50

        Mm-hmm

    26. ASAndy Stumpf52:51

        ... if you want your life to continue. So if you're not scared in that environment, I would recommend you stop that activity immediately 'cause you're not paying attention. It was terrifying, and that's probably why I liked it so much. It was awesome. Don't get me wrong.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman53:06

        Mm-hmm.

    28. ASAndy Stumpf53:07

        Ripping down a mountain in Switzerland six feet off the ground, almost playing tag with your shadow, and then turning around and, like, carving through trees, amazing.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman53:14

        So you're actually pretty low to the ground, just going very, very fast-

    30. ASAndy Stumpf53:17

        If you want to be
11. 55:25 – 1:03:04

    Danger & Fear, Wingsuit Flying Risk, Death

    1. AHAndrew Huberman55:25

       Would your, uh, would your parents say that this, this is a window into the young Andy Stumpf, or n- or is this a, a departure or an e- an evolution, devolution, evolution? [laughs]

    2. ASAndy Stumpf55:36

       [laughs] I don't know if they would've called that one. I don't think... I, I don't know if I would've called that activity, if I would've said this one was gonna be interesting to me.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman55:46

       Let me ask you this.

    4. ASAndy Stumpf55:47

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman55:47

       When you were a kid, I'm not recommending anyone do this.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf55:50

       [laughs]

    7. AHAndrew Huberman55:50

       But when you were a kid, and your, and your guy friends, uh, someone found one of the larger firecrackers available, were you the kid that would hold it after it was lit until the last second and then throw it? 'Cause I knew that kid, but it wasn't me.

    8. ASAndy Stumpf56:03

       Does he still have both hands?

    9. AHAndrew Huberman56:04

       Uh, yes. But the... He was a great skateboarder, by the way.

    10. ASAndy Stumpf56:07

        Yeah.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman56:07

        Became a pro skateboarder right out of high school. Uh, moved on to other things eventually. I think those things were correlated, right? I mean, he used to do big railings. Like, he had a very, very good relationship with confronting fear. There was another kid in our crew who would've been around the corner the moment the thing came out. Okay? I was neither of those kids.

    12. ASAndy Stumpf56:23

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman56:24

        Right? And then there's a distribution in the middle.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf56:26

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman56:27

        Where were you?

    16. ASAndy Stumpf56:28

        My answer's not gonna make sense to you, because holding it that long sounds dangerous. [laughs]

    17. AHAndrew Huberman56:34

        [laughs] It is dangerous, but z- but wingsuit- but-

    18. ASAndy Stumpf56:36

        I know. That's what I'm saying. It's not gonna make sense. That sounds dangerous-

    19. AHAndrew Huberman56:38

        Uh-huh

    20. ASAndy Stumpf56:39

        ... but just for the sake of danger, which somebody could 100% say-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman56:42

        Yep

    22. ASAndy Stumpf56:42

        ... about BASE jumping as well. But I don't know if holding onto, say, an M80 and wondering, you know, how long you can, provides for you that mental... I mean, I'm talking about your canopy opens, you land, you're laying in a fucking meadow in Switzerland on your back, like, at a sense of ease and peace.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman57:05

        Mm-hmm.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf57:05

        I don't think you're getting that from an M80.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman57:07

        No. The reason I ask is that, you know, there are a lot of questions that the scientist in me wants to know about, you know-

    26. ASAndy Stumpf57:12

        Yeah

    27. AHAndrew Huberman57:12

        ... resetting of adrenaline set points, and you know, and because people can become desensitized to-

    28. ASAndy Stumpf57:17

        For sure

    29. AHAndrew Huberman57:17

        ... to, um, high-risk, high-consequence type situations. Um-

    30. ASAndy Stumpf57:21

        You see that in the wingsuiting community. I would say specifically-
12. 1:03:04 – 1:12:16

    Divorce, Imperfection; Parenting Kids in Divorce

    1. ASAndy Stumpf1:03:04

       some stuff.

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:04

       You talk very openly in, in the book, I mean, to the extent, you don't reveal specifics-

    3. ASAndy Stumpf1:03:09

       Yeah

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:03:10

       ... but about the, the challenges of, of, uh, of that, the ending of that first marriage. You-

    5. ASAndy Stumpf1:03:15

       Hardest thing I've ever done in my life. People think that being a SEAL is hard, and it is. Um, but a lot of that is truncated with, hey, we're gonna go overseas for this short period of time, and time away, and it can be physiologically and psychologically challenging. But once you're in that community, I didn't encounter anything. The military never asked me to do anything that, that got me to a place where I was judging or asking myself what type of person I was or if I was a good enough person to be able to continue going forward with anybody other than just myself. Like, those questions I wasn't asking myself in the military. At the lowest points of a nearly two-year divorce process that was very contentious, and quite frankly, the reason I n- I don't go into details is I have built a larger, or a platform, and my ex-wife doesn't have one, and that's the fairest way to be about it.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:06

       I totally respect that.

    7. ASAndy Stumpf1:04:08

       If people wanna go talk with her, oh, trust me, I know the story you're gonna get. Enjoy it. Believe what you wanna believe. I always tell people, "If you hear bad stuff about me, please believe it."

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:16

       That's what you tell them?

    9. ASAndy Stumpf1:04:17

       Yeah. I mean, why not? It, it, I am certainly not everybody's cup of tea. There's no way to please everybody ever.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:27

        Amen to that.

    11. ASAndy Stumpf1:04:27

        So if somebody is out there who wants to run me through the mud, cool. Just believe every word that you're told if you want to. But if you wanna get the real spit, come hang out with me for a bit and maybe compare and contrast those two things. But if you don't wanna do that, cool.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:43

        Yeah.

    13. ASAndy Stumpf1:04:43

        That's on you. It took every tool that I wrote about in that book to get through that circle of influence, circle of concern, all the things that I was worried about, what can I do today, breaking time down into the shortest chunks humanly possible, controlling how I talk to myself. It was absolutely soul-crushing, and 10 out of 10 do not recommend. [laughs]

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:05

        Yeah.

    15. ASAndy Stumpf1:05:05

        Zero stars on TripAdvisor.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:07

        Yeah, that portion of the book, um, stopped me, I have to say, and, and I, uh, th- there were other parts of the book that, that paused me where I was like, "Whoa, I didn't expect this coming," and, you know, and I take notes on-

    17. ASAndy Stumpf1:05:18

        Yeah

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:18

        ... what I listen to. I also read the hard copy. I should have mentioned that earlier. I like to do both. It's really helpful for me. Uh, I think maybe other people would benefit from that as well. But that segment where you said, "This is the hardest thing I'd ever been through," and it was, as you put it again, soul-crushing.

    19. ASAndy Stumpf1:05:33

        Yeah.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:33

        And what I gathered was, and I certainly can say I've experienced this before in a different context, that when other people's narratives start to, y- the, the boundaries between other people's narratives and, and your narratives, and then, and in your case, kids were being affected, which is-

    21. ASAndy Stumpf1:05:49

        Yeah

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:05:49

        ... um, which is huge. As a child of a, a, divorced parents, I think it's also probably gotta be somewhat different. You, you, I mean, you talk very kindly of your own parents. Your story of, of, of your relationship to your mom and-

    23. ASAndy Stumpf1:06:01

        Yeah

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:01

        ... her passing, which we can also get to, that also stopped me, also got me to call my mom.

    25. ASAndy Stumpf1:06:06

        [laughs]

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:06

        Um, so she'll thank you, right? I called my mom. You know, I'm, well, you know, Tim, and, you know, and, and-

    27. ASAndy Stumpf1:06:12

        You never know how much you have left

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:13

        ... yeah, you never know how much time you have left. But what inspired you to talk about that in particular? I know you're not one of these guys, and, you know, I don't wanna say team guys in particular, but n- you're not one of these guys who wants to paint a perfect picture of himself.

    29. ASAndy Stumpf1:06:27

        Yeah.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:28

        But talking about how a contentious divorce came close to, you know, y- brought you really close to your edge-
13. 1:12:16 – 1:13:55

    Sponsor: Function

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:17

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14. 1:13:55 – 1:19:38

    Parents' Divorce

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:55

       Wow. Well, I, I will say, um, as the description of your, your final moments with your mom led me to call my mom, I wasn't being facetious. It really did, you know. The description of the divorce process and the challenges that go there that, you know, I don't want to make this about my story, resonated in certain ways. I grew up in a very high-conflict divorce. What you just said now, uh, I'm on good terms with my dad, but I, you know, I'm familiar with being the son who wants to be protective of his mom but still loves his dad and being caught in the middle.

    2. ASAndy Stumpf1:14:26

       And I would think about those, too. How could you not? With all three of my kids, how... And I have this conversation with, with my wife now, who honestly is the only reason that I think I pulled out of that, was the recognition and seeing from somebody else, like, "Hey, just so you know, like, I know you're going through it, but this person sees something in you that is worth..." I mean, I dedicated the book to my kids and to my wife for that reason. But we'll talk about this now because sometimes it's like, "Why? Why would they say that?" or, "Why would they do that?" And she's like, "Listen, that's always gonna be their mom." I'm like, "Yep, got it. Totally nailed it. I understand now." And it re-centers and-

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:03

       Mm-hmm

    4. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:03

       ... like, okay, doesn't make it any easier to deal with, but I understand.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:07

       Sons and fathers have a certain dynamic, and, um, mothers and sons have a certain dynamic.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:12

       And of course, and mothers and daughters.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:13

       And mothers and daughters and fathers. I only know my own experience.

    8. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:15

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:15

       I do have a sister, so I... There's a parallel exper- There's a control experiment. She wouldn't appreciate me calling her the control experiment, but, um-

    10. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:22

        Did you realize in your parents' divorce that it was going bad before it did, before they got divorced?

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:27

        Definitely. Um, and listen, I've done a lot of work with both of my parents to-

    12. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:31

        Mm-hmm

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:31

        ... uh, we're on great terms now. I can truly say that. My dad was on this podcast. I know you've had, uh, conversations with your dad publicly. My dad and I are quite close. You know, and I, I now look at it differently. I, I, I'm living in a state of gratitude these days, where I basically am like, "Okay, they gave me life."

    14. ASAndy Stumpf1:15:46

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:46

        That's huge. Like, you, you, you can't realize that when you're younger 'cause you're like, you know, "F my life," [laughs] you know, at times. But they gave me life, so there's that. They gave me so many opportunities. And then the hardship of those years, I had my own story and version of it, but recently, just because of some evolutions in my personal life, which are all good, I'm like, "I'm gonna put myself in my dad's... try and put myself in my dad's frame, where he was, what he was trying to do in his career and in his personal life, and then my mom's frame." I confess it's a little harder to do that because my dad and I are both male-

    16. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:19

        Yep

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:19

        ... and there's always gonna be that, but my mom and I were still at home, and he was living elsewhere. So I, I've tried to really work through it in those ways, and I keep coming back to this place where I, I... now I go, "Oh my God, that must have been so hard for them."

    18. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:33

        [laughs]

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:33

        Like, not for me. Like, I, I mean, I have years of understanding of how hard it was for me.

    20. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:37

        Yeah.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:37

        I go, for them, I'm like, holy shit. Like, that's gotta be so tough. I w- I mean, I was really hard on my dad.

    22. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:43

        How old were you when you realized your parents were just people doing the best they could?

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:47

        Yesterday. No, I'm just kidding.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:48

        No, but that, I mean-

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:49

        No, I... No, I...

    26. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:50

        For a long time-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:51

        Yeah

    28. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:51

        ... in life as kids, though-

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:53

        Yeah

    30. ASAndy Stumpf1:16:53

        ... your parents are, what they say, gospel.
15. 1:19:38 – 1:30:58

    Long-Term Flow State, Focus, Adrenaline; Time Perception

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:38

       about the wingsuit and the 9-volt battery a little bit more because you talked about the state that you were in, not just during, but in the six months or so afterwards.

    2. ASAndy Stumpf1:19:45

       It was after.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:47

       So That's not gonna be the long tail of adrenaline, I'm guessing. I don't think you were walking around for six months, like, amped on life completely.

    4. ASAndy Stumpf1:19:55

       Oh, no, the opposite.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:55

       You said you were able to dial in.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf1:19:57

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:19:57

       Could you talk a little bit more about that? Did you ever ta- take some time to think about, like, "What is this?" And did you get that after a gun fight? Did you get that after, uh, you know, a funeral? Uh, you've gone to more than your fair share of those. Like, what do you think is going on there?

    8. ASAndy Stumpf1:20:13

       It was the opposite of walking around adrenalized. Uh, people oftentimes have asked me, you know, "What does it feel like to be an adrenaline junkie?" And I'd say, "I don't know. I don't feel like I am one." I might participate in some things that from the outside would be viewed as people seeking adrenaline, but I don't, I don't like that hyperadrenalized feeling where-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:20:33

       Mm-hmm

    10. ASAndy Stumpf1:20:35

        ... you know, well, and it could be different for anybody and everybody, whether it's a, the tasting copper in your mouth or the heart rate or the, you know, feeling your hair. I don't, I don't like that sensation, and that's not what I felt on the edge. I just was scared shitless, quite frankly. It's not an adrenaline, and it would be the opposite of walking around feeling like that. I would describe it as feeling settled or anchored.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:00

        Mm.

    12. ASAndy Stumpf1:21:00

        And the ability to just [exhales] sit into it and think clear. It's, it's like having a stereo dial and the static, and you're just twisting it down. And then the BS of life co- and it comes back up, and it comes back up, and it comes back up, and you go on another one of those trips, or I, I should say. I would go on another one of those trips, and it would, it would dial it down. After a gun fight, Go- it's not like the movies. Most of the time it is so fast, but it's such a rote decision.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:32

        But it's high adrenaline, presumably.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf1:21:35

        Mm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:21:35

        Moderate?

    16. ASAndy Stumpf1:21:37

        I think it would depend on how much time you had to make a call. I mean, it, most of it is, or, and many times, a, a broad example, come around a corner, binary threat or not threat. There's not a whole lot of time to get ramped... I mean, you gotta make a decision right there. I think maybe afterwards you might get an adrenaline dump, or it, it might catch up with you. A- and I, and I don't, I can't really think of any... Anytime I've thought about an adrenaline dump or I've seen it, it's, people actually kinda melt a little bit, the far side of that, where they're just-

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:22:08

        Mm-hmm

    18. ASAndy Stumpf1:22:09

        ... their performance degrades, for sure. They're on the other side of the bell curve of performance. I didn't see anybody experiencing that, or maybe they were doing that when we were on a helicopter or vehicle on the way out. Not that much adrenaline. And again, it, it's just not as much time as movies and TV shows make it out. It's just not that, it's not that sexy. When you got back, I would say, for myself, you know, if the, if the optic of time starts coming in at about the one minute out, I would say as you were to get back, and i- and I would say for most guys it's more of a routine, but taking gear off a certain way. Hang it up. Uniform off. Shower. Food. I think you find that settling spot once the guys come back together, generally communally over a meal or back in your hut, whatever. Your team, you know, we would usually have it separated by team. I think you would find your way to that settled space as well, too. So similar. I don't know if it was as powerful, though.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:03

        Let me ask it slightly differently. Coming back from a wingsuit jump, and it went well.

    20. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:08

        Mm-hmm.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:08

        Everybody lived [chuckles] including you. Maybe learned a few things. Maybe some errors you were able to correct, which is also learning.

    22. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:15

        Mm.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:15

        But you, you feel good about it. How do you sleep that night?

    24. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:18

        Oh, so good.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:19

        Mm.

    26. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:20

        Yeah.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:20

        Mm-hmm.

    28. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:21

        Yeah, probably better sleep. Um, let me see. I'm trying to think about sleep. God, y- I mean, you're going out so repetitively. Yeah, I mean, guys are... [snaps fingers] Z- well, it was an unhealthy reliance upon Ambien. Is that sleep or hallucinating? [laughs]

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:23:39

        I mean, Ambien can induce, um, some amnesia. Uh, but, you know, it, it has its place, but I, it's not, it's not the first line of attack. I, you know, I, I know SEAL team guys li- liked Ambien. I think nowadays they're using things less, um-

    30. ASAndy Stumpf1:23:52

        It's what they had available.
16. 1:30:58 – 1:37:11

    Toilet Paper, Shortcuts, Tool: Do the Slightly Harder Choice

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:30:58

       from your book, but before we do that, I feel like we're obligated to talk about toilet paper.

    2. ASAndy Stumpf1:31:01

       [laughs] The number of pictures I have received via email of people taking pictures of their kids' bathrooms and, and basically saying, "I thought I was the only one." [laughs]

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:14

       Yeah. So we're... All right, this is really seeming like an inside joke now for those that read Andy's, but you got... All right. We, we will get back to time perception-

    4. ASAndy Stumpf1:31:22

       Oh, God

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:22

       ... navigating the e- the everyday and the hard things in life. I won't forget. We'll spin that plate in the background.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf1:31:26

       Yeah.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:26

       It's spinning. The toilet paper section, yes, it made me laugh. It also made me think about the little things I do each day and the little, tiny, itty-bitty shortcuts that I'm taking and how those ratchet up. So tell us about toilet paper.

    8. ASAndy Stumpf1:31:41

       It always takes longer to do it wrong, is the bottom line, and we all are tempted with these shortcuts. So-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:31:46

       That's the mantra we have to remember

    10. ASAndy Stumpf1:31:48

        ... my children, their bathroom, if there was gonna be an Ebola outbreak in the US, it might start there. I don't know anything about Ebola, but I feel like It might start there. So as with most bathrooms, there's toilet paper rolls, and my kids when they finish a toilet paper roll, instead of popping it off the holder, taking it, and going and getting a new one, they go get a new one and they sit it right there. So it's like empty toilet paper roll up against the wall. You would think that when this one is done, they would take them both, but instead they do this. So there's two against the wall, and then the other roll goes here. [laughs] Now, I can't use this one 'cause this is open, but when this roll is done, you would think that they wouldn't create a pyramid, which historically from my understanding of math isn't great to balance things on. But they will make a pyramid and then put this up here, and inevitably this roll goes forward, hits the ground behind the toilet, and then they start screaming from the bathroom, "I need toilet paper, Dad," to which I respond, "You got yourself there. You can figure it out on your own." [laughs]

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:01

        This is all of your kids?

    12. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:03

        Yeah.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:04

        Yeah.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:04

        For sure.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:04

        Okay.

    16. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:05

        Yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:05

        And they're all your kids.

    18. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:07

        Yeah.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:07

        All right.

    20. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:08

        I just-

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:08

        I'm not, I'm not really saying anything there. [laughs] I'm just-

    22. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:11

        I'm just... And so the point in all of this is, if you don't wanna be somebody screaming for a toilet paper roll, it actually takes less time to go, and when you're out of toilet paper, disconnect it, throw it away on the way, and bring another one in. It's the same thing as laundry. Do your laundry. I'm not perfect at this by any stretch, but do your laundry, fold your laundry, put it away. That always takes less time than do your laundry in a pile, then you're in a pinch and you're looking for your T-shirt, whatever shirt you wanna wear.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:33:43

        And I own a lot of black clothing.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf1:33:44

        Oh, my God. I do, too. It's all blues, blacks, and an occasional red. The red ones are easy to find in that particular cohort. But otherwise, you're in there to- and it's, the stuff's inside out, so you don't know if it's got the right logo. There's socks coming out of the sleeves. Five X the amount of time that would take you, as opposed to just wash your laundry, dry it, fold it, put it away. I have tried to express this message to my children to the limits of my vocabulary. I went into my daughter's bathroom before we came up here. There was three rolls of toilet paper. Two of them were empty and wedged on the side, and the third one was vertical, and I just closed the door and walked away, pretend like it didn't happen. They don't, they don't listen to me. It always takes longer to do it wrong, and those are the little shortcuts that we all take.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:34:29

        Mm-hmm.

    26. ASAndy Stumpf1:34:29

        We tell ourselves, "I'll do it later," or, "I, I, I don't have time to do it right now." You... We all have the same amount of time. It's where you're allocating your time. Do it upfront, and I assure you... What, the McRaven speech about making your bed, the number of parents that probably thought that was life-changing was just amazing. Like, yes, somebody else is telling my kid to make the bed. It's not actually about that. It's about having the discipline to do the little things, and it is way better at the end of the night when you're tired to come back to a bed that is made and ready for you to hop into than having to, well, not most people would do this, but make it first and then get into it. But it just gets worse and worse and worse, and in the end it will take you longer to correct for that than the individual action of just doing it right the first time.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:11

        What's your advice with respect to this?

    28. ASAndy Stumpf1:35:15

        [sighs] I mean, I can give you the advice, but I also don't follow it all the time either. Every, every single decision that you have in front of you in your life will have a slightly easier and a slightly harder choice. Make the slightly harder one more often than the slightly easier one. And the thing I liked a lot about McRaven's messaging around the bed is that it started your day with an ac- a small act of discipline that could seem meaningless, but then what if you pair another small one with that, and then another small one with that? I think that can really h- set you up for success in your day. And yes, at the end of the day, boom, your bed's ready to go and you can hop back into it. It just feels better to get into a made bed.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:35:52

        It took me a while to realize that most of the people that I could tell were really squared away in their jobs, and because I happen to know their personal lives too, also their personal lives, they're pretty tidy people.

    30. ASAndy Stumpf1:36:06

        Yeah.
17. 1:37:11 – 1:48:00

    Micro-Discipline, Doing the Harder Thing, Tenacity & Super-Agers

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:37:11

       interesting. Earlier we were talking about social pressure and, um, alcohol and social media. You know, it, it's interesting to me that there seems to be some degree of social pressure to not do the slightly harder thing. You know, like what we're-

    2. ASAndy Stumpf1:37:27

       Hmm

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:37:27

       ... what we're describing now, I, I never get into, uh, thinking about what the comments would be, but I'd, I'd be willing to bet one pinky that a fair number of people are either thinking or commenting directly, "Yeah, like, that's really neurotic. Like, loosen up."

    4. ASAndy Stumpf1:37:43

       Yeah.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:37:43

       Like, like-

    6. ASAndy Stumpf1:37:43

       Take a picture of your fucking room and send it to me.

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:37:45

       Yeah. [laughs]

    8. ASAndy Stumpf1:37:45

       I bet it looks like shit. [laughs]

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:37:47

       Exactly. My dad's first generation immigrant from S- South America, and, and I'll ne- never forget when, uh, in, it was in the mid-'90s, he probably took me to a movie in an attempt to repair our relationship, and eventually it worked. Dad, we're doing great.

    10. ASAndy Stumpf1:38:00

        [laughs]

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:00

        Talked to him today. I called him today. We're on such good terms. It feels good to be able to say it. And I'll never forget, we were At the movies, and there were these people walking by, and they were wearing kind of like, um, baggy sweats and flip-flops or something. And he stopped me, and he's a very orderly guy, and he said, "See that? That's the beginning of the end."

    12. ASAndy Stumpf1:38:19

        [laughs]

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:20

        And I said, "What do you mean?" And he said, "I come from a third-world country. When people start going to the movies in their pajamas, it's the beginning of the end." And I thought, "Man, this is like, c- you couldn't be more out..." He's... I- I actually think he's right. What he was talking about is that the, the, when the social pressure is not sufficient to, like, keep people feeling as if they need to show up as if they're in public.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf1:38:43

        Yeah.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:38:43

        Right? And he might've been a bit extreme, but, you know, when, when that social pressure isn't there, then the social pressure eventually erodes around what people can say, what they can do. And then I do think that era of kind of Jerry Springer daytime television, where people would watch people who were way more screwed up than them so they could feel a lot less screwed up.

    16. ASAndy Stumpf1:39:01

        What's that called? Sch- schadenfreude, when you take pleasure in other people's pain?

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:05

        Yeah. Well, I think that there's, that's, that's the word for it, for sure. Th- but I think this is s- kind of adjacent to that, where it's, it's like giving yourself license to not feel that bad because, like, like either they're just so neurotic that I don't want anything to do with that kind of world where everything's right angles or, like, well, at least I'm not in-

    18. ASAndy Stumpf1:39:24

        Yeah

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:24

        ... total squalor. And this is where I think that, you know, we hear so much about, oh, everyone's presenting them best self, the, their best selves on social media. Also a problem to seem perfect-

    20. ASAndy Stumpf1:39:33

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:33

        ... because no one's perfect. But I do think that there is this drift where we go, well, like, it's not gonna crush my life, the toilet paper thing. Like, if it were gonna cost me my relationship or, you know, my allowance, you know, your kids [laughs] might think about it differently, right?

    22. ASAndy Stumpf1:39:46

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:46

        But so I think, but what I got from your book, this, this section of your book, is that it's because the consequences are so small at the individual level, but the upside is so big-

    24. ASAndy Stumpf1:39:58

        Yes

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:39:59

        ... it, it, when you, you know, collect these things together, that the real incentive to do the slightly harder thing is there.

    26. ASAndy Stumpf1:40:06

        I mean, the toilet paper's not gonna cost you your life. If it does, I'm gonna need a case study on how that happened, 'cause I'm fascinated at this point. But what if it, the, we'll call it what it is, either the lack of discipline or the laziness in the moment changes the trajectory of your life? Because you apply that to everything in your life. Because that's how you start your day and how you end your day. I get it. People... [laughs] I could, I'll take a picture of my room and send it out. Guess what? It's not hospital corners on the bed, and there's probably something in the corner. I'm not saying that I'm perfect in this, b- but it's not being neurotic. It's doing the work that nobody sees. And for the people who com- you know, say, "Oh, that's, you know, that seems too neurotic for me," like, let's, let's have a cup of coffee. Where do you wanna be in your life, and where are you at in that journey? I would l- I'm fascinated by... And that, and, and like we were saying, internet's the best, worst thing. People can find this conversation and then critique us to death and say that we're being neurotic. But I'd also love to connect with somebody and say, "Listen, why do you have your, an allergic reaction to that particular statement? Is it because perhaps you're living it? And if you are, let's talk about the potential impact that it's having." Because again, I didn't create this. I'm passing along, you know, one of the mantras in the team is how you do anything is how you do everything. But there's so many stupid small things that you do specifically in training that have nothing to do with anything except doing the stupid small thing. That, that's it. I mean, w- you know, this, the, uh, two-mile swim. You have a KA-BAR knife in one of your hands and a CO2 cartridge in another, and you're wearing your life jacket. And we are, like, got a jeweler's loupe out, looking at the, you know, the little, uh, twist-in section of the CO2 cartridge. God help you if I find a grain of sand or a fleck of rust. Guess what? The jacket's still gonna function even if both of those things still exist. Because it actually has nothing to do with the knurling of the CO2 cartridge and everything to do with I told you to have nothing in this to make sure it was basically brand new because you have to follow the procedure. Because the procedure is what's gonna save your life. Can you, even when you're exhausted and you don't want to and you have limited time, do what I told you to do because of the impact that it'll have? I mean, that exists in that community everywhere. So it's not me. I'm just telling you. The most successful people that I have encountered are not becoming successful in chaos. Now, of course, there will be an, uh, somebody that can point to something and say, "Well, what about this person?" And I'm not saying that there's not a, what do they call it, a white elephant or a black elephant, whatever it may be. Does that scale? No, it doesn't. So if you're trying [laughs] to replicate that, "Oh, they did it through chaos, so I'm going to as well," live your life however you want to, but maybe you and I aren't being neurotic. Maybe we're just trying to help.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:02

        Yeah. Uh, you said even when exhausted and limited, uh, in time. Those are the two times when these little, I guess I used to think about them as extras. I'm trying to start thinking about them as foundational. That's when they become really tough.

    28. ASAndy Stumpf1:43:17

        It's when they matter the most, though.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:43:19

        Mm.

    30. ASAndy Stumpf1:43:19

        Because if you, I mean, [laughs] it's like this toilet paper roll weighs 2,000 pounds. There's no way I can get it to the garbage, I'm just tired. That's exactly, like, the days you don't wanna work out, those are the most important days. Even if you do less, the mental victory there, in my mind at least, and I'm not an expert in any of this, far outweighs any of the physical aspect. It's the fact that you did and you didn't want to. If you stack that up over a lifetime, you're gonna blow people away with what you can com- un- can accomplish.
18. 1:48:00 – 1:49:12

    Sponsor: Joovv

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:48:00

       I would like to take a quick break and acknowledge one of our sponsors, Joovv. Joovv makes medical-grade red light therapy devices. Now, if there's one thing that I have consistently emphasized on this podcast, it is the incredible impact that light can have on our biology and our health. Now, in addition to sunlight, which I've talked about a lot on this podcast, red light, near-infrared, and infrared light have been specifically shown to have positive effects on improving numerous aspects of cellular and organ health. These include faster muscle recovery, improved skin health, wound healing, improvements in acne, reduced pain and inflammation, improved mitochondrial function, and even improvements in vision. Nowadays, there are a lot of red light devices out there, but what sets Joovv lights apart and why they're my preferred red light therapy device is that they use clinically proven wavelengths, meaning they use the specific wavelengths of red light, near-infrared, and infrared light in combination to trigger the optimal cellular adaptations. Personally, I use the Joovv whole body panel about three to four times a week, usually for about 10 to 20 minutes per session, and I use the Joovv handheld light both at home and when I travel. If you would like to try Joovv, they're offering up to $400 off select products for listeners of this podcast.

19. 1:49:12 – 2:00:45

    Physical & Mental Pain, Discussing Pain; Dogs

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:49:12

       To learn more, visit Joovv, spelled J-O-O-V-V, .com/huberman. Again, that's J-O-O-V-V .com/huberman. I seem to be referencing your book a lot, but there's a great story in your book about, um, some inten- intestinal distress that, that is not, uh- Is that what we're calling it? [laughs] Yeah. That is not of the, just the, the diarrhea, constipation type, but, but, like, you described it as the worst pain- Yeah ... you'd ever experienced, which when most people hear s- a statement like that, they go, "Okay. Well, what pain have you experienced?" Well- A touch ... turn- turns out you've also been shot. Yeah. Um, turns out, uh, y- your, you know, your, your job selection process involved a, a fair amount of sh- of, of immediate and long-term pain processes under, you know, uh, limited sleep a- and so on. So we, we can check the box easily for you, like understands pain, and then this was the worst pain. What do you think about this notion, maybe I heard this from Chad Wright, that when you vocalize about how hard something is, that you make it more real? I was wondering if in that moment where you're in the hospital, I don't want to give it all away, it's, it's a great chapter actually, uh, and you're dealing with this worst pain of your life, not from being shot, but from the other thing-

    2. ASAndy Stumpf1:50:22

       Yep

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:22

       ... that were you just cursing? Were you quietly cursing in your head? Do you think that we can make our physical pain and just challenges in general worse by talking about them? Or do you think holding it in makes it worse?

    4. ASAndy Stumpf1:50:36

       I don't think you could make it worse by talking about it. I think if people were open and honest about, let's just say pain in general, whether that is internal or external, I think what they would be shocked to find is they're generally surrounded by people willing to do anything they can to help relieve that pain. So I think you could probably make it much better.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:50:54

       Mm-hmm.

    6. ASAndy Stumpf1:50:55

       For anybody who thinks that I might have stuff figured out or I'm an intelligent person, here's a story for you. Here's how stupid I am. So I was doing a podcast when I fir- felt the first little shift in my stomach. I had took a sip of coffee. I was like, "Huh, that's weird." And I thought it was a gas bubble. My wife was teaching a jujitsu seminar at the time. We were just south of Salt Lake City. So I got done with that. I couldn't really stand up straight, but it was the open mat portion, so throw the gi on, go roll for 90 minutes. Couldn't, definitely could not stand up straight after that, so I was just slouching in a chair, you know, to try to hide it from my wife, who had at that point started looking over at me. And she was like, "What's going on?" I'm like, "I just got a stomachache. It's not that big of a deal." And we were gonna drive from Salt Lake City back to, uh, Kalispell, Montana, where I live, which should take a day. And she was saying, "Hey, let's get you some, like, you know, gas medicine or something like that." And she wanted to go to In-N-Out. We don't have any In-N-Outs in Montana. For people who live around In-N-Outs, I'm here to tell you it's a really big thing to people who don't live around them. I don't know why. I was raised-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:52:01

       In-N-Out's pretty darn good.

    8. ASAndy Stumpf1:52:02

       Yeah, I'm, I was raised by them-

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:52:03

       Mm-hmm

    10. ASAndy Stumpf1:52:04

        ... or around them, so to me, not that big of a deal. I'll grab one when I can, but also not gonna totally detour off to go get one. So she goes and gets her, you know, Double-Double, whatever it is, pulls into the Walgreens. I'm in the passenger seat at this point. She, first off, she tricks me. I drove her to the In-N-Out. She's like, "Just let me drive." I'm like, "Fine." We get to the Walgreens. I'm in a good amount of pain at this point. She goes inside to get Gas-X pills or whatever. She comes out. I am upside down in my seat trying to relieve the gas bubble 'cause that's what I thought it was, so my head was down by where you keep your feet. I didn't let her know. I was... So she comes back into the car and is like, "What are you doing just fully inverted in the car?" I'm like, "I'm fine. Just, you know, I was just trying to see if I could get the gas bubble to dislodge." And she asked me, "What do you wanna do? Do you need to go to the hospital?" I'm like, "I think we're gonna be okay. Just start driving home. We'll be going through Salt Lake, so we'll get to a higher level of care if it gets worse." She got onto the phone, Googled the nearest hospital, and drove me straight there. So that's how smart I am when it comes to pain. I wasn't verbalizing w- how bad it was, and it wasn't, it was incrementally getting worse, but that's an example of, A, I 100% don't have anything figured out. That's how dumb I am. And, B, keeping it to myself didn't help much, but she knew me well enough that it was time to go. I was able to walk into the emergency room, and then I ended up laying on the emergency room floor, mostly 'cause it was cool, and I, I was starting to sweat at that point. They bring me in and, uh, did a bunch of imaging. I had an intestinal blockage which required emergency surgery the next day. The most painful portion of that, though, was about six hours when they gave me this fluid that you drink to constrict all of your intestines that they generally give to elderly people who haven't shit in weeks. So what I ended up having is I had a loop of scar tissue on the inside wall of my stomach that a piece of intestines had gone through, and it cinched.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:53:54

        Mm.

    12. ASAndy Stumpf1:53:55

        So that particular red juice of death was the single most consistent pain that I have ever been in. S- athletic sweat through all my clothing. Uh, my sister and I have a genetic blood abnormality where I don't process opiates the same way as people do, so morphine to me doesn't even do anything. I did not know that until I got to the emergency room in Baghdad after being shot, and I kept asking for more morphine, and the guy pulled out a chart and said, "This is what you weigh. This is your dosage. You are now at the threshold. If we give you more, your heart's gonna stop." So they stopped the morphine, put me on Dilaudid, barely touching the pain at the maximum dosage of Dilaudid, but that was the worst pain I have ever been in. And it's funny that you ask about talking about it or not. My sister is a nurse. She's been in healthcare for quite some time, and they had just gone on vacation, and my wife wanted to get ahold of them. And I'm like, "Whatever you do, do not call them and ruin their vacation." What she was trying to do was understand what she needed to say to the staff so she could talk to them in their language because the dosages they were gi- it just wasn't doing anything, and I think to a degree they thought I was, uh, like, seeking meds, even though I think the athletic sweat might have been a little bit of a tell [laughs] and the fact that I'm, like, writhing, and the doctor's coming. I'm like, "I don't care what it is. Cut it out right now. We can just do sur-"

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:55:25

        Mm-hmm.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf1:55:25

        He's like, "Oh, we gotta do imagery, and you gotta do paperwork." I'm like, "Sign my name. Like, let's just do the, uh, knock me out and cut this out of my body right now. I don't even care what's left." But I didn't even wanna share that with my sister because I didn't want to ruin her experience with her family in another country, and that didn't make anything better. Shortly after that, right after I told my wife not to call her, she went outside and called her, and then I got switched over to the ICU, where they hit me with ketamine, and that did the trick, almost to the point where they almost, they almost pushed me into the K-hole, and I didn't like that at all. I could hear the, uh, hairs on the inside of my ears starting to move around, and it was a dead quiet room, and I remember saying to my wife, "Can you hear it? It's so loud in here." And she's like, "It is completely and utterly silent," right at the lip, to the point where I told the doctor, "Please, no more ketamine, regardless of what it takes." But then they went and did the surgery. All of that to say, the more open and honest I was, the better it got. In that time where I was trying to not share that or not talk about the pain, it was still just as real for me, but there was no benefit in being quiet like that. And I think that that's something that people can, in my life, and I'm not sure yours, every time I verbalized pain or grief or struggle surrounded by people willing to help out, why not talk about it? What's the potential downside, if you look at it purely from a physical perspective, was me suffering for a few more hours because I'm an idiot. [laughs]

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:01

        Well, I totally agree that when it's real pain, it's important to share. Also, uh, God bless your, your wife for not listening to you around this particular issue.

    16. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:13

        She's got me figured out.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:14

        Yeah.

    18. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:14

        It's everything up to a point, she's like, "Nope, I'm, we're gonna, we're gonna go ahead and take the wheel from here." [laughs]

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:18

        Yeah. Well, it's like I, in, uh, uh, before we came in here, we were talking about dogs. Uh, we'll get back, but, you know, having owned a bulldog mastiff, you realize that they hide their pain. Like, he-

    20. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:27

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:28

        ... w- you know, ran out to, uh, you know, two... They don't have knees, right? But ran out two, uh, ACLs, right? I mean, he was his own worst enemy, but he would never quit on me either. So it's like-

    22. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:39

        Yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:39

        ... you kinda have to know that about bulldogs, right? So there's enough, uh, bulldog in you. Uh, you have a dachshund.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:45

        Yes.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:45

        A wiener dog. I know that they're very, very smart-

    26. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:48

        Yeah

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:48

        ... and they're kinda mischievous.

    28. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:49

        Yeah.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:57:50

        Right? But they're, they're loyal. Are they like, um-

    30. ASAndy Stumpf1:57:52

        Incr-
20. 2:00:45 – 2:11:52

    Self-Talk, Isolation, Alcohol

    1. ASAndy Stumpf2:00:45

       [laughs]

    2. AHAndrew Huberman2:00:45

       Man, we could go down the, the l- the conceptual, uh, rabbit hole of, uh, of dog breeds, but we won't, because we left an important plate spinning that I wanna return to.

    3. ASAndy Stumpf2:00:55

       What'd we leave?

    4. AHAndrew Huberman2:00:56

       This notion of time perception-

    5. ASAndy Stumpf2:00:58

       Hmm

    6. AHAndrew Huberman2:00:58

       ... to navigate everyday life more effectively, and time perception, uh, to navigate the real, really hard stuff. Your community, by virtue of the work that you guys did and do, loses a lot of people. Relative to other professions, there's a-

    7. ASAndy Stumpf2:01:17

       Yeah

    8. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:17

       ... there's a high fatality rate relative to other professions. But in the larger outside world now, uh, you know, we are seeing much more suicide, to just be real blunt.

    9. ASAndy Stumpf2:01:29

       Yeah.

    10. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:29

        Walking in here today, we were talking to one of our team members here, not SEAL team members, but, uh, editors that, you know, somebody, uh, a real, um, uh, a real luminary in the, the, the skateboarding world, you know. Cause of death still unclear, but, you know, like, there's yet another example of somebody highly accomplished, family, et cetera. I have a colleague who recently, um, sadly took his own life. Like, this just happens across domains, right?

    11. ASAndy Stumpf2:01:55

        Yeah.

    12. AHAndrew Huberman2:01:56

        And it's not just men. It's women too, but it does seem to be higher among men, uh, these days. You know, it raises some really complicated but I think important questions around what is going through people's minds that would lead to, them to think that it was or should be the end of the line for them, for themselves. Goes against every bit of adaptive evolutionary biology. It goes against all religious doctrine at, in terms of what's adaptive. So it, you know, there's no straightforward answer to this. But- Earlier we were talking about, before we were recording, perhaps people get into a tunnel of the idea that the way they feel in a given moment is the way it's gonna be forever. So as two guys sitting here who are not in that state to-

    13. ASAndy Stumpf2:02:40

        Yeah

    14. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:40

        ... kind of wonder about that is, is, uh, we can only speculate. But what do you think, based on what you've observed, and you're welcome to share if you like this, from your book, you talk about Dave.

    15. ASAndy Stumpf2:02:52

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman2:02:52

        Is there any understanding of, of what's going on for people in the, in the days, weeks, months, moments leading up to, uh, those decisions that, you know, maybe we can do some good here, and help people identify if they are starting to enter that it's always going to feel like this mode?

    17. ASAndy Stumpf2:03:10

        Man, there have been so many conversations about this, and there are so many programs that exist to try to help, I'll- I'll say guys, because that's the community that I came from with this. The Green Beret community has now lost more people to suicide than combat operations since 2001.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman2:03:28

        What?

    19. ASAndy Stumpf2:03:29

        Yep. I don't know where the SEAL community is with that, but I bet you they're close. The numbers will eclipse, for sure. So it is an issue. It, it is an unavoidable issue. Every situation is different to a degree, but they share some similarities. The, so in speaking specifically of the SEAL teams, I mean, there's the biggest similarity, right? They came from that community, and they probably had some semblance of shared experiences, whether that be deployments, time away from family, the psychological and physiological stresses of the job. But it doesn't seem to impact everybody equally either. Everybody's experiences differ. You could be in a room, I was gonna say with six people, but it's unlikely you'll be in a room with six people just because, uh, we don't generally have that many people, and we try to solve issues with as few as possible. But let's say four. I have no understanding why the same shared experience, although maybe viewed from a slightly different angle, in totality could break somebody, but not the other three, or why everybody has a different volume of, you know, somebody's got this much volume versus this much versus a thimble. And I don't, I don't understand why those experiences seem to break some people, or in my opinion, I think they can, if you put the work in, make you an even better version of yourself. And I also think that you can pour some of the stuff out or drill a hole in the bottom and work through these things. Dave being the example. Uh, the things that stick out would be... And again, this is me, this is me speaking. I can't speak for Dave. There was a huge delta, I think, between how he thought of himself and how other people thought of him. And in most of the funerals that I've gone to that involve suicide, the number one question is, "Why? Why didn't somebody reach out for help?" Or, and maybe they did, because you don't, you know, you don't, I mean, I guess you could look at their electronic device, or maybe it was a face-to-face. It's hard to say. But the difference in what Dave left behind. He left behind some journals. And I think that there are pros and cons. If you are in a place where you have the opportunity to read somebody's, what they have left behind and not, you may not wanna know. It may make it more difficult, because I've also seen people attach a, a very immense amount of grief because they either think that what was written and left behind was specifically about them, or they, "Oh, man, I was there and I could have," you know, the could've, would've, should've, which is all hypothetical and doesn't change the fact that it had already happened. But I've seen people deeply, deeply struggle with that. So that, that would be the negative. The pro could be perhaps, I don't know, closure. So it really depends on the person. Choose wisely, as somebody who has, uh, experienced that. Um, my experience is it was a combination of both. I, I felt a deeper level of understanding, but also a deep sense I wish I would've done more. The internal struggles and self-talk and monologue, I couldn't read it without crying. And I don't think he realized how highly other people thought of him. The gap between the two is just unbelievable. He, he, and not everybody is, he was isolated at the time. There was alcohol involved, to the best of my knowledge. Which unfortunately, e- especially in the community that I come from, those two things are pretty often tied, not always, but often tied, alcohol and that decision as well. And the stats are pretty well back about, you know, the alcohol being a, you could speak to this, you know, the central nervous system depressant. You know, it's not like, "Yay, I'm feeling the best I've ever felt." It generally will spiral you in the other direction. But when I look at Dave, he was and is to this day what I would consider to be the standard for a team guy. And what I loved about him so much is that not only did he expect that standard from other people, but he held it himself. And actually, more than that. I think I would say he held himself to a higher standard than he would hold other people to. If you met his standard, you were gonna get two thumbs up. Probably not a pat on the back, but you were gonna get two thumbs up, and you were gonna know you did a good job. [laughs] If you did not meet his standard, which I tested many times, you were very specifically told where you're deficient in life and as a human being. [laughs] And he, God, he had a tongue like a whip. He was awesome. And, uh, I think at the end, and this is me speaking for him a little bit, I think he arrived at a place Where he couldn't live with the reality that he couldn't hold himself to the standard that he had expected from other people, and I think it destroyed him. But I don't know if he shared that with anybody. I don't think so. Some of the last people that he spoke with knew that he was struggling for sure. He, he had an alcohol addiction issue for sure. And for clarity, I mean, that's... Dave would be pissed actually if I didn't mention that 'cause he would never tolerate anybody else beating around the bush. He legitimately had an, an issue with alcohol, as some people do from that community. They knew that he was struggling. He's the only guy I know who did multiple treatments of... I have zero experience in psychedelics, but from listening to people talk about ayahuasca and ibogaine, rides that don't seem to be a very good time, and oftentimes will instantaneously change the relationship they have with substances, whether it's opiates or alcohol. Not that you would never drink again, but their, their relationship with it just shifts. They're like, "You know what? Ugh, I don't even have the desire to do so." 72 hours later, 96 hours later. And it's not like he just tried it once. He would go back. He would even facilitate treatment for other people. But it wasn't working for him, but he wasn't, he wasn't sharing that. And that isolation and loneliness and that difference between that standard and what he was able to do got him to that place where he put a gun in his mouth, you know, alone, isolated at his family home in Florida. And when everybody showed up at the funeral, it's like, what could we, what could we have done more? And that, that happens at every... Nobody's at a funeral saying, "Ah, did everything I could." Never have heard that, by the way. They're just, "God, I nailed it." I'm like, really? Exhibit A would, like, none of us nailed it. We all fucked up. Or did we do the best that we could, and it's something that we can't stop? I don't know. I'm have, I've started to have pretty deep conversations with friends around, from that community around what can be done. I don't think, uh, an absolutionist approach is good. I think driving to zero is possible becau- is impossible because it's a, it's a, an affliction that strikes all of humanity. A reductionist approach I think is helpful, but at this point, I don't know what else can be done. I mean, millions of dollars advocated towards these type of programs. Things like Ambio, you know, just south of the border, or what Marcus and Amber Capone are doing with vets, which are largely an interface to that. And there's portals and people, and I'm on some of these groups where e- even the inkling y- somebody is in trouble or you need help, like, people are, they're trying to get stuff done, getting connected. People are getting on airplanes. And I was with mutual friend DJ, I think it was last week, and one of his new guys who had become a team leader, who had gotten out, just killed himself. And both... And we, we sat there with faces like this, with things that are un- that we don't know what to say in between us. I don't know. I don't know what's going on there.

21. 2:11:52 – 2:21:36

    Top Performers, Suicide; Ibogaine; Military, Trauma

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:11:53

       Yeah, well, I certainly don't know either. I think that, um, if we can borrow anything useful from other areas of, uh, mental health and neuroscience, 'cause it, I think ultimately this is a brain issue.

    2. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:08

       Mm-hmm.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:09

       Right? I don't think it's, like, a gut health issue, although that could impact it, right? I might be wrong.

    4. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:13

       Could be corollary. I mean-

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:13

       Right, could be. Yeah. I mean, the, it could be. But, uh, but I think it's a, a thought process that leads to a decision that, you know-

    6. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:19

       Yeah

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:19

       ... and that's in the brain. So if we were to just take, like, start at ground truths, not to try and make this reductionist, we'd say maybe suicidality is not one thing. Just like we know that you can get a fever from a lot of things.

    8. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:32

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:33

       I don't wanna say no one is immune, because I do think that fortunately it's, you know, not everybody, but maybe everyone has the potential to go there, and there's certain buffers that we're not aware of.

    10. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:43

        You might come out of the box immune to it, but I think either something psychologically or physiologically can happen that maybe could open a door that-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:51

        Mm

    12. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:51

        ... had started off closed.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:52

        Mm-hmm.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf2:12:54

        That's a guess.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman2:12:55

        In all these instances that are leaping to mind of unfortunately real-life suicides, every single one of the people, um, was a very high performer at one point.

    16. ASAndy Stumpf2:13:04

        Mm-hmm.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:04

        Highly, very highly regarded-

    18. ASAndy Stumpf2:13:06

        Yeah

    19. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:06

        ... revered, et cetera. And so I, I think you've really, um, touched on something important, which is that this notion of, like, it's lonely at the top, there, there's... It's true that there's, people are busy. You know, there's not, the general public is not so concerned about, you know, winners and their plight, you know? But when you hear about something like this, you know, um, you realize that it, people can be quite lonely, and perhaps as the number of true peers that somebody has, because they're in a leadership position over already ultra-high performers-

    20. ASAndy Stumpf2:13:38

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:38

        ... the need to impress, the need to not have their, their image shattered is, it goes up and up and up and up. There might be something there. I think there's certainly important work to be done, but there aren't real data, I don't think, on the number of people who were kind of veering in this direction, but somebody reached out.

    22. ASAndy Stumpf2:13:55

        Yeah.

    23. AHAndrew Huberman2:13:56

        And then they're six months later saying, "Hey, thanks, you know, I, you know, you really helped me back when," and maybe they weren't right at that edge.

    24. ASAndy Stumpf2:14:01

        Yeah.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman2:14:01

        So we don't have data on what worked to keep people away from this edge either. So it's a really tough problem. But, you know, tough problems are tractable.

    26. ASAndy Stumpf2:14:11

        Yeah, I worry less about the guys who are able to verbalize what they're going through. It's the ones who are more quiet. You know, you talk about, you know, lonely at the top. Dave, I left Dave's military career largely out of it. He originally wanted to go to Development Group and didn't make it through the screening process, I think largely more due to a, uh, personality conflict with one of the instructors, which totally happens. You get on somebody's radar, you might have to come back through. But he ended up going to another JSOC command That works at an incredibly high level, very less known, oftentimes by yourself in adversarial countries. And he crushed it there, I think for like 10 years. I mean, he's like the top performer of performers. And then they contracted him to come back and teach guys in their own very long selection course. What I didn't realize is how much he was struggling just holding up that image, though. A part of their selection course occurs out in Las Vegas. He had more than one incident where he thought his career was gonna be over 'cause he went out and got shit-faced and got arrested. They work so independently and individually so often, nobody even realized he had gotten in trouble until his security clearance came back around and it popped on his security clearance, which then, you know, leads to a whole variety of other things. But that happened to him while he was active, and then after, while he was out. But if you were to look at the guy, you'd, you mean, you'd say to him, "How do I match your career exactly? What exactly are you doing to be able to do what it is that you're doing?" Man, behind the curtain, holy shit, just suffering. You could see it in the writing, just in the, the shape and texture of the words. You could, you could see it degrading towards the end. It's gnarly.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman2:16:16

        And look, I'm not one of these people that thinks everyone should just go do ibogaine, which is not a recreational-

    28. ASAndy Stumpf2:16:20

        I tried it

    29. AHAndrew Huberman2:16:21

        ... experience. You know? Right. But I was gonna say, the fact that he did-

    30. ASAndy Stumpf2:16:23

        Yeah
22. 2:21:36 – 2:28:57

    Trauma & Healing, Exploring Other Possibilities, Control

    1. AHAndrew Huberman2:21:36

       Yeah, and the, um, the sort of hyper proclivity for alcohol might have been related to that. I mean, we can do a just so story, but what you're saying, you know, it, it ratchets together in, in a logical way. And of course, everything we're talking about wicks out to the, the world at large. I mean, checking in on people is no small thing.

    2. ASAndy Stumpf2:21:57

       Yeah.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman2:21:57

       You know, I, I, like, a few years ago, I talked about how, like, you know, I have this group of, like, people will just, like, check in in the morning, and it seemed... People are like, "Oh, well, that's like... It's supposed to be the health act." It's like, I don't know. There's one guy in my, in my crew that, like, he's, he's like every single morning, if we don't hear from him by 8:00 AM-

    4. ASAndy Stumpf2:22:12

       [laughs]

    5. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:12

       ... we're like, "He's dead." You know? [laughs]

    6. ASAndy Stumpf2:22:14

       [laughs]

    7. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:14

       Like, you know. And then, like, 8:15, he's like, "Sorry I'm late, guys."

    8. ASAndy Stumpf2:22:17

       Yeah.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:17

       And, you know, just by virtue of that group, he sends out-

    10. ASAndy Stumpf2:22:19

        Yeah

    11. AHAndrew Huberman2:22:19

        ... his, you know, he sends around a little Bible passage, sometimes, like, a wish for the day for folks. Everyone checks in. It's like, it's a real thing. Like, it's a real thing, and it's not just that I would be worried about him. I hon- honestly, I'd be worried about me if, if he, he didn't send that. Now, is it, am I completely dependent on it? No. But those small things, back to this notion of small things, they can really matter. They can, they can really make the difference. I don't know. My mind goes to all these places, and maybe I've, uh, spent, uh, more than my fair share of time with, uh, uh, our mutual friend Eddie Penny, where I, I actually think, and, and forgive me 'cause I'm a scientist, but these days, I talk very openly. I actually think that evil forces can hijack people's minds. I know it sounds crazy. It sounds like conspiracy, but I believe that inside of our minds, we have a susceptibility to positive messaging-

    12. ASAndy Stumpf2:23:03

        Mm-hmm

    13. AHAndrew Huberman2:23:03

        ... and we have a susceptibility to evil messaging, and it can come in in different forms. And I think bad forces can work through us, and they tend to come through the places of shame. They come through the things that we don't want to acknowledge. They're like... The way it was described to me by someone far smarter than me is it's like a lighthouse that's, you know, spinning its, um, its illumination, and then there's like, there's, like, some, like, dirt on the, on the lighthouse, and it casts this, like, shard of a shadow, and that's where s- stuff comes in and gets us. And if we can kinda see that stuff and really acknowledge it, that's kinda what the real trauma proc- trauma healing process is about.

    14. ASAndy Stumpf2:23:41

        Mm-hmm.

    15. AHAndrew Huberman2:23:41

        And once you own it, it's very different. Things can't get to you the same way. Now, I'm speaking in, like, riddles and metaphors here, so it-

    16. ASAndy Stumpf2:23:48

        Yeah

    17. AHAndrew Huberman2:23:48

        ... and so I wanna be careful 'cause I'm a scientist. I believe in biology. But I think that hopefully conversations like these will start to open up the, the thought and maybe in the dialogue around this 'cause I think the mental health community, but really the general public needs to start thinking about this-

    18. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:01

        Yeah

    19. AHAndrew Huberman2:24:01

        ... in a real way because the numbers, as you mentioned, the SEAL teams and sp- other special operations communities are staggering. But it's growing, I mean, and on and on, and I don't believe anyone is completely immune, just given the, the, the examples. These are people who had, quote-unquote, "everything going for them"-

    20. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:18

        Yeah

    21. AHAndrew Huberman2:24:18

        ... and then some. So God willing-

    22. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:21

        I, I, yeah

    23. AHAndrew Huberman2:24:21

        ... this will have some positive impact, you know?

    24. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:23

        I think it's important that somebody like yourself as a scientist is open to other non-scientific answers or possibilities at least because we clearly don't have it figured all out yet, and I'm not a scientist, but I'm pretty sure scientists don't know everything, regardless of how some of them might like to tell you that they do.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman2:24:45

        They definitely do not know everything.

    26. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:47

        And if we don't know everything-

    27. AHAndrew Huberman2:24:49

        Mm

    28. ASAndy Stumpf2:24:49

        ... maybe let's just keep it open to possibilities because in that journey, hopefully one day we will figure out everything. But if we lose a bunch of people along the way because we were unwilling to at least even table a conversation about something maybe outside of the science realm, I don't think it's worth knowing everything.

Episode duration: 2:55:10