Joe Rogan Experience #2195 - Andrew Huberman

Narrator 0:00 (drumbeats) Joe Rogan podcast, check it out. The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day, Joe Rogan podcast by night. All day. (rock music plays)

Joe Rogan 0:12 All right, we're good. Mr. Huberman, how are you, sir? Good to see you. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 0:15 Good to see you. Good to see you.

Joe Rogan 0:16 So, what were you just saying about dog breeds that... Like, we were talking about Carl, like the little bulldog breeds have more mastiff than wolf?

Andrew Huberman 0:24 Yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 0:25 So, mastiff is a different thing?

Andrew Huberman 0:27 Well, so-

Joe Rogan 0:28 Don't they all come from wolves?

Andrew Huberman 0:29 Yeah, they all originate from wolves, but then dog selection has been twofold. Mainly for phenotype, like morphology, the shape we call it, and then temperament, right? So, there's this chart I... Uh, might be a little hard to find online, um, about the dosing of wolf versus mastiff genetics, essentially. And there's a bunch of other things woven into dog genetics. First of all, cool point, dogs are among, I don't know if they are the most, maybe whales are the most, but they are among the greatest variation in body size within a given species. You think of Chihuahua and Great Dane-

Joe Rogan 1:05 Right, right.

Andrew Huberman 1:05 ... and it looks like it's dosing of the genes controlling IGF-1.

Joe Rogan 1:10 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 1:10 Which makes sense.

Joe Rogan 1:11 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:11 A growth hormone.

Joe Rogan 1:11 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:11 But kinda wild, right? Like, you-

Joe Rogan 1:13 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 1:13 ... we got some big humans and some smaller humans, but not-

Joe Rogan 1:16 Not like dogs.

Andrew Huberman 1:16 Not like dogs, and then-

Joe Rogan 1:17 Chihuahuas-

Andrew Huberman 1:18 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18 ... and then what are those enormous, uh, shepherd dogs? Those, um, what are those ones, those insane dogs they use to fight off wolves? What the fuck are those things called? Those gigantic hairy things? You know what I'm talking about? Uh... We've talked about them before.

Andrew Huberman 1:34 The-

Joe Rogan 1:34 They're terrifying-looking dogs. Yeah, the-

Andrew Huberman 1:36 Yeah, I mean, just the-

Joe Rogan 1:37 What's it called? It's that but it doesn't show on camera.

Andrew Huberman 1:39 Oh, my goodness.

Joe Rogan 1:39 Oh, yeah, those things.

Andrew Huberman 1:40 Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:40 What the fuck is that thing?

Andrew Huberman 1:42 Right. Right.

Joe Rogan 1:42 What is that called again? It doesn't say. I don't know. It doesn't say. It's just like- But we've, we've seen it before. ... yeah. (laughs) D- doesn't it say the name of the dog? I don't know why it's not saying it.

Andrew Huberman 1:57 (laughs) Hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:57 Well, find the name of those dogs- Maybe we can get it. ... 'cause there's... Brian Callen knows all this shit.

Andrew Huberman 2:05 Right, so I have a colleague at Stanford, Sue McConnell, who-

Joe Rogan 2:08 Joso? Joso dogs? No, that's not it. There's a name for them, though. Oh, Tibetan mastiff.

Andrew Huberman 2:16 Tibetan mastiff.

Joe Rogan 2:17 Right. Yeah, they're really furry and they're, like, 250 pounds. Look at that puppy. (laughs) At seven weeks old. That's so crazy.

Andrew Huberman 2:26 I wonder how many they have in a litter.

Joe Rogan 2:28 Uh, h- how could they have very many? H- there-

Andrew Huberman 2:29 Yeah, it's gotta be just a few.

Joe Rogan 2:31 Poor l- poor mama.

Andrew Huberman 2:33 So, uh, this colleague at Stanford, Sue McConnell, she's won best in show at some of the big events for, uh, pulis. Um, she breeds horses and she's into that whole-

Joe Rogan 2:42 What's a puli?

Andrew Huberman 2:43 The pulis are the ones that look like Rastafarian dogs. You know, their eyes are covered?

Joe Rogan 2:47 Ah.

Andrew Huberman 2:47 Oh, they're, they're amazing. They're amazing. And, um, she had this chart on her door. I was going to meet with her about something. She handles a lot of undergraduate education at Stanford, and I see this chart. And the chart essentially shows the dosing of kind of the original wolf line genes versus more mastiff-heavy genetic background. And there are a lot of breeds on this chart, but it essentially shows up in the following way. The dogs that are more sight and scent, right? And with longer snouts.

Joe Rogan 3:16 Like a shepherd.

Andrew Huberman 3:17 Like a shepherd, have more heavy- dosing of the wolf gene still in them. Then you get to the shorter snout, kind of snub-nosed like the French bulldog, the English bulldog, and some mastiff breeds, pugs, right? And the, the amount of wolf in them is, like, nil to none. And then what's happ-

Joe Rogan 3:34 But, but wait, wait a minute, but they all start off as wolves.

Andrew Huberman 3:36 So, they s- have some genes that relate to the wolf origin, origin lineage, right? But over time, they've been bred. For instance, the English bulldog, what-

Joe Rogan 3:44 Right, but, but all dogs originally come from wolves.

Andrew Huberman 3:46 Yes.

Joe Rogan 3:47 All of them.

Andrew Huberman 3:47 That's my understanding as well.

Joe Rogan 3:48 Even mastiffs?

Andrew Huberman 3:48 That's right. That's my understanding. But then as they were cross-bred with different dogs, right? So, for instance, like, the English bulldog, that line came from the crossing of essentially pug, like, s- short snout, right?

Joe Rogan 4:01 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 4:01 But with mastiff, with mastiffs or with dogs with heavy mastiff genetic dosing. Why? Well, the idea was the short snout gives them a, a good lever for holding onto things, right? And the mastiff genes lead to, and we know this for sure, both the droopiness of the face. It also relates to less, uh, presence of pain receptors in the front of the body.

Joe Rogan 4:22 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 4:23 Okay, so if you've ever had a bulldog where, you know, their feet can be really sensitive, but their face, you can hold onto those jowls. My bulldog, Costello, would go picking up stuff at the beach and he'd occasionally get a fish hook in his mouth and it looks super painful, and he's like, "Ugh." You know? So, not, not very many pain sensors in the face. They have a-

Joe Rogan 4:37 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 4:37 ... they have a disruption and, or mutation in the gene that controls the elasticity of skin. That's why they have the droopiness. And they are, uh, brachycephalic, short snout. That's why they're not very good breathers.

Joe Rogan 4:49 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 4:49 And they essentially have sleep apnea. That's why they have a bunch of problems.

Joe Rogan 4:51 Right.

Andrew Huberman 4:51 Okay.

Joe Rogan 4:51 They snore like a motherfucker.

Andrew Huberman 4:53 R- they do s- they do snore a lot.

Joe Rogan 4:54 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 4:54 I can attest.

Joe Rogan 4:55 (laughs) Like Carl does.

Andrew Huberman 4:56 It's crazy. And, and so what were dogs being selected for? Well, unless you're showing dogs, dogs were selected for the kind of work they were capable of doing. Like, sheepdogs are great herders, this kind of thing. But when people essentially designed, bred up and cross-bred to get the English bulldog or the Old English bulldog, which doesn't have as much of an underbite. So, I had an Old English bulldog. So, whereas the English bulldog is elbows out.

Joe Rogan 5:21 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 5:21 So, inward rotation, the thing we're all supposed to not do, and under-right. The Old English bulldog looks like this. And that-

Joe Rogan 5:27 It looks more like a pit bull.

Andrew Huberman 5:29 Looks more like a pit bull. And they were originally used for bull-baiting, for grabbing onto the nose of the bull, getting the bull super aggressive, and then being able to let go and get called off and coming back to their, uh, to their protector. And then basically, then it was for, it was to rile up the bull.

Joe Rogan 5:43 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 5:43 Right? For bullfighting. So, you can still find some of this stuff online. Um, you can find some old descriptions. In some cases, even some old videos. But of course, now bull-baiting with dogs is not allowed, right? Dog fighting everybody looks down on. But then if you start asking about the toy breeds, what were the toy breeds, quote-unquote, designed for or bred for? They were basically designed to sit next to you. Some of them will-... seek out, you know, like the terrier breeds will find vermin, right? They'll go find-

Joe Rogan 6:08 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 6:09 ... rats. They're, they're really good ratters, actually.

Joe Rogan 6:10 Yeah, Jack Russells are great at that.

Andrew Huberman 6:12 Jack Russells are great ratters. The, um, the West Highland terriers, the Westies, um, the Cairn terriers, they're always ... They're really great hunters, uh, l- for little things, right? And the amazing thing is that when you start looking at the different breeds, it was basically humans selecting on the basis of mostly behavior and phenotype shape, and thinking, "Oh, like I want a smaller dog that will just sit near me," or, "I want a small dog that will s- that will, like, kill rats and sit near me." "No, I want a big dog that's gonna guard." So you start breeding for pain tolerance-

Joe Rogan 6:41 Hm.

Andrew Huberman 6:41 ... start breeding for loyalty and aggression. And, um, a guy that I think was on your podcast a long time ago, uh, Sam Sheridan?

Joe Rogan 6:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 6:49 Yeah. In The Fighter's Heart, there's a great chapter where he talks about, uh, I think it's dog fighting in the Philippines. And he talks about how brutal that sport is, which indeed it is. But he talks about the love between the owner and the dog can predict ... And the, and of course, the dog and the owner, it's reciprocal, one presumes that the strength of that relationship predicts how hard the dog will fight for the owner. And he uses this as kind of a parallel construction for why, and you tell me if this is true or not, that many of the fatalities in boxing were the consequence of sure, 15-round as opposed to 12-round fights, but also when the corner man or the coach was the parent.

Joe Rogan 7:28 Ooh.

Andrew Huberman 7:28 And so, and so that it gets into this very complicated psychology. I actually (click) think that's a really terrific book, um, because I think it, it speaks to a lot of really interesting aspects of bonding between humans, bonding in that case between animals and humans, and of course, dog fighting, uh, like ... I don't know if there are many things that people look down upon as much as they l- look down upon dog fighting.

Joe Rogan 7:49 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 7:49 But he speaks to the relationship between the dog and the owner as a loving one, which was super surprising to me.

Joe Rogan 7:54 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 7:54 Anyway, um, that's a bit of a tangent. But, um, I don't know, maybe it's possible to find that chart. I don't wanna send you on a, on a-

Joe Rogan 7:59 No.

Andrew Huberman 7:59 ... ridiculous expedition. But if you just say, so genes-

Narrator 8:02 We got a simple one.

Joe Rogan 8:03 It's a set.

Andrew Huberman 8:03 That's a simple one. Okay. Um-

Joe Rogan 8:06 Just gotta circle back and follow, but-

Andrew Huberman 8:06 This one, the one I'm thinking about is a vertical one, um, uh, that was in Science magazine-

Narrator 8:11 I'll try it.

Andrew Huberman 8:12 ... uh, or Scientific American.

Narrator 8:13 Let me, let me check. One second.

Andrew Huberman 8:14 Um, but it's wild. Um, again, I don't wanna send you on a, on an expedition that has us paused. But ... (click)

Narrator 8:24 Uh, yeah, it's still kinda the same thing.

Andrew Huberman 8:26 Yeah, sorry about that.

Narrator 8:27 Sorry.

Joe Rogan 8:28 No worries. But it's just we get an, a rough understanding of it all.

Andrew Huberman 8:31 Yeah. So w- so now when I see like, okay, like a collie, like I see a collie down there. I think long snout, so probably has a better nose than a, than a mastiff breed.

Joe Rogan 8:39 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 8:39 Um, are the ... You can ask an owner how good is their vision. Are they a sight hound or a scent hound? And of course, that they're both. But some dogs like ... I'm really interested now in part because of you and Cam Hanes and others about dogs that hunt or go on hunts. And like the coonhound breeds are amazing.

Joe Rogan 8:55 Yeah, they use their-

Andrew Huberman 8:56 And I've always wanted a redbone coonhound.

Joe Rogan 8:57 Their ears waft up smell. That's why they're so long.

Andrew Huberman 9:01 I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 9:02 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 9:02 I didn't know that.

Joe Rogan 9:02 Yeah, the reason why they have those long floppy ears is as they're running, their ears are wafting up smell, and it gives them a better sense of, uh, the, the, the chase.

Andrew Huberman 9:12 Oh, amazing.

Joe Rogan 9:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 9:13 I r- I read, um, this, uh, incredible description of why dog scent and sense of smell is so much better than ours. There's a guy named Noam Sobel who's been on my podcast, uh, he- he's over in Israel, who claims that human olfaction is just as good as dog olfaction. But how do they, how do they outdo us? The frequency of sniffs and this is really cool. You know those little notches on the side of the nose? Like, our nostrils look more or less symmetric?

Joe Rogan 9:38 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 9:39 They have those little notches. They create, they create little vortices for the dogs so that the scents stick around. They're actually getting longer exposure to a scent. So when they ... (sniffing) They're getting something like 10 or 20X the exposure to the scent in the olfactory bulb and are able to assess both directionality. They can do right nostril, left r- nostril. They can sense odor plumes to steer in one direction or another. But Noam has done these crazy experiments when he was back at Berkeley where he had people's hands mitted, eyes covered, so they can't sense touch, they can't see. Everything's covered. And they can follow a scent of chocolate buried seven inches below the ground.

Joe Rogan 10:18 What? People can?

Andrew Huberman 10:19 Yes.

Joe Rogan 10:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 10:19 And you can see this. This you can find. If you say, uh, uh, tracking ... Sorry, Jamie. (laughs) My goal wasn't to come here and send you on these, um-

Joe Rogan 10:25 These people have a nose like Ari Shaffir?

Andrew Huberman 10:27 Uh, d- (laughs) Oh, boy.

Narrator 10:29 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 10:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:30 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 10:30 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 10:31 Or Adrien Brody?

Andrew Huberman 10:32 Oh, my. Oh, my. Um, if you say, uh, kinda Berkeley chocolate, uh, tracking, uh, Sobel or something like that, it should come up. So he would do these aerial views of these people tracking these scents on the ground, and it turns out people are really good at this. They can track a scent, um, yeah. And if you-

Joe Rogan 10:49 Sniffers show that humans can track scents and that two nostrils are better than one. Okay.

Andrew Huberman 10:55 So if you, but if you go Images, I think you'll probably-

Joe Rogan 10:58 Chocolate scent through the grass.

Andrew Huberman 10:59 Yeah, if you go Images, and then I'll lay off the, the Google-

Joe Rogan 11:03 They will track scents.

Andrew Huberman 11:05 So if you go to Images, uh, damn it, and you just say, uh, Berkeley. Just say ... There it is.

Narrator 11:13 Okay.

Andrew Huberman 11:13 Right. So they compared the tracking of a scent hound, of a, of a bloodhound to human tracking of a scent buried, uh, in the case of the se- uh, the bloodhound, it wasn't buried.

Joe Rogan 11:23 So that person, what do they have, a mask on?

Andrew Huberman 11:24 Yeah, they got a mask on. Their hands are covered with thick gloves. They can only use ... The on- the only thing exposed are their nostrils.

Joe Rogan 11:31 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 11:31 And they're ... But that line, that yellow line is not a line with a bunch of chocolate on it. It's buried below the surface. I always thought it was above, and then when I talked to Noam, he said, "No, no, they buried the chocolate scent." And people were able to track it like a, like a hunting dog tracks a pheasant.

Joe Rogan 11:45 Well, how do they bury it if it's grass?

Andrew Huberman 11:48 I think they cut a trench and then they covered it up.

Joe Rogan 11:50 Oh. Wow.

Andrew Huberman 11:54 So he insists that this thing you see in all the textbooks, which is that humans have, you know, like, one- 1/1000 or something of the number of-

Joe Rogan 12:03 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:03 ... olfactory receptors. That's, that's total bullshit.

Joe Rogan 12:05 Really?

Andrew Huberman 12:06 Total bullshit. In fact, our friend, who, by the way, wanted me to say hello, Rick Rubin, turned to a good friend of mine who's the chair of neurosurgery of a major depart- medical school department, not Stanford, I promise, and said, "What percentage of the things in medical textbooks ... " Okay, this is Rick asking this chair of neurosurgery, okay?

Joe Rogan 12:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 12:23 ... what percentage of things that you find in medical textbooks, basic and advanced, do you think are false based on your un- understanding of what we actually know now, compared to when the textbooks were written? And he said, "50%." And then he s- and then Rick said, and, yep, and then Rick said-

Joe Rogan 12:41 Oh. (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 12:41 I, I know. I was wide-eyed too. And then Rick said, "And what is the extent of impact on treatment of patients, modern day?" And his answer was one word, "Incalculable."

Joe Rogan 12:52 Oh, my God. 50%'s wrong?

Andrew Huberman 12:55 50%. In currently used medical textbooks. Meaning, that the literature has been updated with new understanding, new scientific papers, but it has not yet been incorporated into the medical education.

Joe Rogan 13:05 But, but let me, let me say something, 'cause I know that bears have insane senses of smell that are many times stronger than a bloodhound's, and, uh, famously can smell people from 100, 200 yards away. Like, th- there's gotta be levels to it, and d- d- the, I just can't imagine that a bloodhound doesn't have a better sense of smell than a person.

Andrew Huberman 13:32 Right. So they absolutely have a better sense of smell i- in, uh, under the definition that they use it, they use the same number of receptors differently. In other words, the resolution of your vision and a mouse's vision is dramatically different. The resolution of your vision is very s- sharp at the fovea towards the center of your eye, and actually, towards the periphery you could, anyone can just do this. You wiggle your fingers out here in the periphery and you can't see any detail, right?

Joe Rogan 13:57 Right.

Andrew Huberman 13:57 As you move that forward, you can see detail. Okay? So, and that's because the density of pixels, so to speak, in the retina is much, much higher near the fovea, near the center, than it is at the periphery. Okay? So, what he's saying, what Noam Sobol's laboratory has found, and others have found, is that the number of pixels, the, the, the, the potential for olfactory resolution in humans and in bloodhounds is essentially the same. This is his argument. But the bloodhounds sniff much more, so it's the equivalent of having their eyes open much more, right, in the exam-

Joe Rogan 14:28 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 14:28 ... um, so to speak. They have these vortices that are created by the, uh, structure of their, of their nose and nostrils, so they have longer exposure. And in the case of the bear, for instance, I don't know how many olfactory receptors they have relative to a human or a bloodhound, but that the, um, the bear is likely spending a lot more time and can pull more air perhaps, we, I don't know, but is using the, the mechanical aspects of the olfactory system differently. In fact, and here's, uh, now I'm recalling the experiment that led to this conclusion that humans have exceptional olfaction, which is that there's a particular compound that when introduced to a swimming pool people can detect a difference in the smell of the water at a dilution that is outrageously s- uh, outrageously small.

Joe Rogan 15:11 Like skunk spray.

Andrew Huberman 15:12 Like skunk spray. Um, forgive me, because I'm not remembering the name of the chemical, but he said you can essentially add a drop of this to a, a swimming pool and then people can smell the difference between the water.

Joe Rogan 15:22 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 15:23 And so what, his argument is not that humans are walking around sensing all these smells consciously as well as a bloodhound or as well as a bear, but that we have a tremendous capacity for olfaction that, you know, that the chocolate tracking ex- experiment exemplifies, but it requires some removal of our most dominant sense, vision-

Joe Rogan 15:43 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 15:43 ... and hearing, our second most dominant sense, and in that case, tactile d- um, uh, orientation as well. And so the idea is that, you know, we have an amazing olfactory apparatus. In fact, he, he makes the argument, and there's evidence for the fact that as soon as people meet and, y- they've done these beautiful experiments, people meet, they shake hands, and you know what the next thing they do? They tend to, uh, within about a minute, they wipe the scent of the other person on their face typically. I guess I wasn't paying attention. I was-

Joe Rogan 16:07 And they don't realize it?

Andrew Huberman 16:09 People don't realize this. And he's done-

Joe Rogan 16:10 They just do it-

Andrew Huberman 16:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 16:10 ... subconsciously?

Andrew Huberman 16:11 Yeah.

Narrator 16:11 Mercaptan, I think is, uh-

Joe Rogan 16:13 Mercaptans, th- also known as thiol, how do you say that? Thiols?

Andrew Huberman 16:18 Uh, where is it? I'm guessing thiols.

Joe Rogan 16:19 Sulfur-containing organic compounds with a strong unpleasant owner. They are colorless, yellows, liquids, it can be flammable. Mercaptans are found in nature and in living organisms as a waste product of, of metabolism and in oil and gas. They are also present in certain foods such as some nuts and cheese and in decaying organic matter in marshes.

Andrew Huberman 16:39 Right. So we're probably sensitive to the odors that, that matter.

Joe Rogan 16:42 That can kill us.

Andrew Huberman 16:43 That can kill us. He also has this idea that I think, uh, uh, is starting to take hold in real data, that we are constantly sensing our own o- odor plumes. That we are, you know, that we, we smell ourselves a lot of times per day.

Joe Rogan 16:55 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 16:55 That's actually very normal behavior.

Joe Rogan 16:56 Right.

Andrew Huberman 16:57 You know, there are all sorts of ways people do that that nobody talks about. But pe-

Joe Rogan 16:59 Yeah, you like check a sniff.

Andrew Huberman 17:00 People check their sniff.

Joe Rogan 17:01 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:02 And it's a, it's an indication of hormone status, immune status. When you have babies or puppies like, you know, you're looking at like, oh, is it good poop or a bad poop, you know? You're also peing at people, some people will smell the poop. I'm, I'm not a, a proponent of that. But we're constantly sensing the scent and taste of, for instance, our partner's saliva, right? Uh, uh, actually, an ex-girlfriend of mine wrote to me recently, uh, I don't know what this question represented, but she said, um, "Do you think that when you become unattracted to somebody, the, um, the taste of their mouth, um, becomes bad to you or the other way around?"

Joe Rogan 17:34 When you become unattracted to them?

Andrew Huberman 17:34 Unattracted. I guess she might've been dating somebody and like maybe they'd fallen out of favor and she was kind of no- not attracted and she was sort of noting that, um-

Joe Rogan 17:42 The taste of their mouths is different.

Andrew Huberman 17:43 ... that their mouth no longer like, it n- it tasted kind of aversive now as opposed to before.

Joe Rogan 17:47 I bet that's in your mind.

Andrew Huberman 17:49 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 17:50 I bet you don't like them anymore, 'cause if you're really in love with someone you don't even care if they have bad breath. You, you still wanna-

Andrew Huberman 17:56 That's true too.

Joe Rogan 17:56 ... kiss them.

Andrew Huberman 17:56 That's true too.

Joe Rogan 17:57 'Cause you just love them. You don't care.

Andrew Huberman 17:58 That's true too.

Joe Rogan 17:59 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 17:59 That's true too. Um...

Joe Rogan 18:00 Yeah, you don't care if they smell. You don't care. You just, you love them. But if you, if they're gross and then they smell, you're like, "Ugh."

Andrew Huberman 18:06 Right.

Joe Rogan 18:07 "You fucking stinky asshole."

Andrew Huberman 18:08 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 18:08 (laughs) This, this is a, a mule deer skull.So, you know, this is, uh, not as extreme as an elk, but you get a look at the internal-

Andrew Huberman 18:19 Okay.

Joe Rogan 18:19 ... if you look inside of that, and you see.

Andrew Huberman 18:21 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:21 'Cause they can wind you from 100 m- yards away-

Andrew Huberman 18:25 It's on here.

Joe Rogan 18:25 ... easy.

Andrew Huberman 18:25 So, see this spongy stuff? I don't know if they can see it on video. There's this spongy stuff there.

Joe Rogan 18:29 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 18:30 That's something called the cribriform plate. The cribriform plate is a bunch of Swiss cheese-like thin bone, and the olfactory neurons, which basically sit, like, right behind your, the back of your nostrils, they, uh, they send axons, their little wire-like connections, back into the brain. And when somebody gets hit hard on the head, that cribriform bl- plate shears it, and that's why people become anosmic, they lose their sense of smell.

Joe Rogan 18:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:52 Now, the-

Joe Rogan 18:52 Look at that fic- picture.

Andrew Huberman 18:54 There it is.

Joe Rogan 18:54 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 18:54 Now, what's amazing about the olfactory neurons is that they are among the very few neurons in the human and other mammalian nervous system that regenerates throughout the lifespan. So, there's a little area of your hippocampus where there's some neurons that everyone makes a big deal of that, frankly, don't do a lot to regenerate throughout the lifespan, so-called neurogenesis, new neurons. But the olfactory neurons, even though they're a central nervous system neuron, just your like retinal neuron or your cerebral cortex, they can regenerate throughout the entire lifespan, and they do. Every time someone takes a head hit or there's some, you know, shearing off of these accents, uh, axons, excuse me, um, they regenerate. Now, under conditions like, uh, we saw this a lot, uh, during COVID where people were complaining about loss of smell.

Joe Rogan 19:35 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 19:36 Um, we see this when people age. Some people are thinking that loss of smell may be a correlate, not the cause, but obviously, but a correlate of age-related cognitive decline, dementia and Alzheimer's, things like that. Um, there are a few things. Actually, I think I recommended it to a couple of friends of ours. Now, this, there's very little data on this, but I will say, and I'll, I'll catch heat for this, but these days I catch heat anyway, so I don't care. There are good data, in my opinion, small amount of data, but let's call it decent enough data to explore, that alpha-lipoic acid at 600 milligrams per day during the time when you're starting to lose your smell might rescue some of that smell. Bec- by res-

Joe Rogan 20:16 So if someone's getting COVID and they start to lose their sense of smell, if they-

Andrew Huberman 20:20 Or any viral infection where they are losing the sense of smell.

Joe Rogan 20:23 What other viral infections cause a loss of sense of smell?

Andrew Huberman 20:26 Well, anything that clogs the sinuses, certainly, but, um, there are influenza viruses that do this. Now, I know as we're saying this that some people are gonna say... uh, in fact, Noam Sobel told me that he felt that the data about alpha-lipoic acid were kind of on the weak side. But when people are losing their sense of smell and taste, it's really scary. I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, you kind of feel like so much of pleasure in life, unbeknownst to us, is-

Joe Rogan 20:48 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 20:48 ... emerges with-

Joe Rogan 20:49 Especially with food.

Andrew Huberman 20:49 Oh, I'll never forget when I got a viral infection and I took... and I lost my sense of smell. And I ate a handful of blueberries, which I love, and it just tasted like bags of water.

Joe Rogan 20:59 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 20:59 I was like, I was like, "Oh, goodness." Like, I, I don't... there are worse things in life.

Joe Rogan 21:02 Was it COVID that you l- lost your smell with?

Andrew Huberman 21:04 It was, it was. And I did the smell training, which has also been shown to work. Because these olfactory neurons, this is amazing, their survival is activity dependent. They require electrical activity driven by sniffing and smelling. It is true that the behavioral tool of taking a lemon and (sniffs) really just, like, getting it close to that nostril and just really trying to get whatever little whiff of lemon you can, and then taking, you know, your coffee and (sniffs) getting that little whiff of coffee, whatever little remnants of smell that you can get in there has been shown to improve the survival and eventually the durability of not just the olfactory neurons, but scent. In other words, the behavioral training works. There are... the alpha-lipoic acid thing is debated. The thing about alpha-lipoic acid is diabetics and people with blood sugar issues probably shouldn't take it. It can kind of reduce blood sugar a little bit. But when I had that happen, lost my sense of smell, I was like, "Listen, I, I don't... I want my smell back." So I took 600 milligrams of alpha-lipoic acid, and I was doing the, the scent training. I was like, sniffing lemon, sniffing coffee, sniffing Parmesan cheese, sniffing anything that was pungent that I could recognize. And my smell came back-

Joe Rogan 22:08 Is it-

Andrew Huberman 22:08 ... in a couple of days, but then again, I don't know, 'cause I didn't run the control experiment-

Joe Rogan 22:11 Right.

Andrew Huberman 22:11 ... whet- whether or not it would've come back anyway.

Joe Rogan 22:13 Is it only positive smells? Or what about if you use smelling salts or something, like, really intense?

Andrew Huberman 22:18 Ooh. Well, smelling salts I've never used, but-

Joe Rogan 22:20 Uh-oh.

Andrew Huberman 22:21 ... but, but I-

Joe Rogan 22:21 Well, well, guess what?

Andrew Huberman 22:22 Do we have some?

Joe Rogan 22:23 We've got some right here.

Andrew Huberman 22:24 I'd be willing to try.

Joe Rogan 22:25 Give it a check. Go ahead and get it, Jamie.

Andrew Huberman 22:26 Are they legal?

Joe Rogan 22:26 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:26 Before I do something illegal.

Joe Rogan 22:28 100%.

Andrew Huberman 22:28 Okay.

Joe Rogan 22:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 22:28 All right.

Joe Rogan 22:29 Yeah, these are totally legal.

Andrew Huberman 22:30 All right, I'll give it a shot.

Joe Rogan 22:31 Uh, these are the one... this is Ahh.

Andrew Huberman 22:32 (laughs) Jamie's laughing.

Joe Rogan 22:34 This is, uh, Jujimufu, uh-

Andrew Huberman 22:36 Oh, my.

Joe Rogan 22:36 ... who was a, a real athletic freak-

Andrew Huberman 22:38 Okay.

Joe Rogan 22:38 ... who, who uses these. We... I don't know him, but, uh, shout out to him-

Andrew Huberman 22:42 Okay.

Joe Rogan 22:42 ... because this is the strongest shit we have ever-

Andrew Huberman 22:44 Wait, wha-

Joe Rogan 22:44 ... tried.

Andrew Huberman 22:45 I will just-

Joe Rogan 22:46 This one's sealed too, so this is a-

Andrew Huberman 22:47 Okay, I'll just do a li- I'll just try a little bit.

Joe Rogan 22:49 Oh, you're gonna get all up in there.

Andrew Huberman 22:51 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 22:51 Come on now, Jamie.

Andrew Huberman 22:51 This is like the cold plunge.

Joe Rogan 22:52 This is, uh-

Andrew Huberman 22:53 Um, I got a funny story about the cold plunge to tell you later, but, uh, uh, that relates to you. But-

Joe Rogan 22:57 Well, we'll get to that in a moment.

Andrew Huberman 22:58 Yeah, we'll get t- yeah.

Joe Rogan 22:59 But you're about to get your mind blown here, son.

Andrew Huberman 23:01 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 23:01 So this stuff is so strong that it's sealed in this bag.

Andrew Huberman 23:04 Wait, wait, is it gonna kill my olfactory neurons?

Joe Rogan 23:06 No, you'll be fine. It's, uh, so strong that even though it's sealed in this bag, like, I have to rip this bag open, and, uh-

Andrew Huberman 23:13 Oh, my.

Joe Rogan 23:14 Goddamn, my hands are slippery. Got a knife? Um, okay. It's so strong that I've broken the seal of this bag just slightly. Look, it's still kind of sealed.

Andrew Huberman 23:26 Yep.

Joe Rogan 23:27 Look, you could smell it through the bag. So let'... just try the Noam Sobel. Give a sniff. Just give a sniff.

Andrew Huberman 23:33 Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:34 Right?

Andrew Huberman 23:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:34 Okay. This bag is still sealed. I haven't even cut the bag yet.

Andrew Huberman 23:37 So, so as somebody who had a laboratory with chemicals in it for a long time, now we w- we run clinical trials on humans, but, so no more chemicals in my lab.

Joe Rogan 23:44 Okay, now take a sniff.

Andrew Huberman 23:45 You learn just to waft it.

Joe Rogan 23:47 It's still sealed.

Andrew Huberman 23:47 You learn to n-

Joe Rogan 23:48 The bottle, the bottle is sealed.

Andrew Huberman 23:49 Oh, oh, it's not even out of the thing.

Joe Rogan 23:49 No.

Andrew Huberman 23:50 Oh.

Joe Rogan 23:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah. The bottle's still sealed. Oh, this is just the beginning.

Andrew Huberman 23:54 You know when you go to a park-

Joe Rogan 23:55 Get his fa-

Andrew Huberman 23:55 ... and you go into a public bathroom at a park that has a pool?

Joe Rogan 23:58 His hands are shaking. He's getting nervous.

Andrew Huberman 23:59 Yeah, I'm getting nervous.

Joe Rogan 24:00 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 24:01 You know, I'm no Elon Musk, but I saw what happens when people do substances on this, uh...

Joe Rogan 24:04 Oh, look, that was legal in the state of California.

Andrew Huberman 24:07 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:08 And I think everybody's getting a lot o- little out of hand.

Narrator 24:10 Oh.

Joe Rogan 24:11 Yeah, you got in trouble for that.

Andrew Huberman 24:12 You're like, "We're down here in Texas," so.

Joe Rogan 24:14 Okay. Now, again, this is totally legal. Now, what you're gonna do here is take this.

Andrew Huberman 24:19 Isn't it amazing that the word legal when said fast sounds like illegal?

Joe Rogan 24:23 Yeah. Legal.

Andrew Huberman 24:24 ... (laughs) and then you go-

Joe Rogan 24:24 Il-

Andrew Huberman 24:24 "Wait, what did you say?"

Joe Rogan 24:26 Illegal. It's totally illegal. Eh.

Andrew Huberman 24:27 And vice versa, right?

Joe Rogan 24:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 24:29 All right. So what do I do?

Joe Rogan 24:30 Uh, unscrew the cap.

Andrew Huberman 24:31 Oh, look, it's my initials.

Joe Rogan 24:33 Ah. Unscrew the cap.

Andrew Huberman 24:35 All right.

Joe Rogan 24:35 Put it about six inches from your nose, take a big sniff. Get in there.

Andrew Huberman 24:39 All right. (sniffs) Oh.

Joe Rogan 24:41 Yeah, baby.

Andrew Huberman 24:42 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:42 Let's go.

Andrew Huberman 24:44 Boom.

Joe Rogan 24:44 Now imagine if you had COVID.

Andrew Huberman 24:46 Wait, wait. Wait, hold on. Let me just kind of experience that for a second.

Joe Rogan 24:49 Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Take it in.

Andrew Huberman 24:50 (sniffs) Well, you know what's interesting?

Joe Rogan 24:51 I'm gonna have to take some of that too, or, or it wouldn't be fair.

Andrew Huberman 24:52 (exhales) You know what's interesting? (blowing)

Joe Rogan 24:56 Here we go.

Andrew Huberman 24:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 24:58 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 24:58 Oh, man.

Joe Rogan 24:58 The fresh ones are so powerful.

Andrew Huberman 25:01 I c- I can feel it in my eye because the sinuses run.

Joe Rogan 25:03 Oh. Now I would imagine if you had COVID... You can smell it over there, huh? I imagine if you had COVID and you lost your sense of smell, like th- this might be the key to getting it back.

Andrew Huberman 25:14 As long as it's not killing olfactory neurons.

Joe Rogan 25:16 I don't think it's killing it. You can smell everything after it. I mean-

Andrew Huberman 25:19 That's true.

Joe Rogan 25:19 ... my own... I'm, I'm obviously biased.

Andrew Huberman 25:22 So-

Joe Rogan 25:22 'Cause, 'cause I like that thrill for whatever reason. We have 'em in the green room.

Andrew Huberman 25:24 I actually enjoyed that. Thank you.

Joe Rogan 25:26 We have 'em in the green room at the mothership.

Andrew Huberman 25:27 So you, you prompted me to take several new experiences-

Joe Rogan 25:30 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 25:30 ... uh-

Joe Rogan 25:30 Oh.

Andrew Huberman 25:31 ... that we can talk about. Um, but one other thing before I forget. Um, I know I, I go down these, like, nerdy rabbit holes here. But when I did the smelling salts a moment ago, I s- I sniffed with both nostrils, but it came in mainly through my left nostril.

Joe Rogan 25:45 Right.

Andrew Huberman 25:46 And so I asked Noam Sobel, "What's the deal with this left nostril/right nostril stuff?" You know, you have the, the yogis, the switching of their nostril things.

Joe Rogan 25:53 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 25:53 Here's what's wild. This is so wild. It turns out that every two hours or so, the dominant breathing nostril switches. Now-

Joe Rogan 26:05 Really?

Andrew Huberman 26:05 Now, that could be interesting or that could not be interesting, right? There are a lot of things in biology that happen, but, like, what- what is the meaning? Turns out, it's a direct reflection of a shift in your so-called autonomic nervous system from parasympathetic dominant to sympathetic dominant, meaning from more relaxed to more alert. And this is happening periodically throughout the day, like a seesaw and during sleep.

Joe Rogan 26:25 Huh.

Andrew Huberman 26:26 So this whole thing with the yogis of, you know, breathe through one nostril or the other nostril, look, it's, it... The olfactory bulbs, there's a lot of crossing over of information at later stages and even some early stages once the information gets to the brain. So that whole thing is probably a little bit, like, weak sauce. But this idea that you're breathing easier through one nostril or the other is reflecting an underlying brain state and body state, that is absolutely true, he tells me.

Joe Rogan 26:52 Wow.

Andrew Huberman 26:52 And, um, and the last thing is you said, "Why would bears or bloodhounds have such better smell?" Well, in the case of a bear, the size of the olfactory bulbs and the amount of brain real estate devoted to processing that information is much more.

Joe Rogan 27:06 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 27:06 So we have a huge visual cortex. Most of our brain, frankly, is devoted to vision and to movement. Whereas, you know, the, the brain of a, uh, let me think of, like, a turtle. It's mostly movement. They have very little cerebral cortex. Maybe that's not the best example. But certainly in a scent hound, the olfactory bulbs are much bigger than they are in a sight hound, and both of those have olfactory bulbs that are much, much bigger than Jamie's bulldog over there. Th- those guys sniff all the time. They're... But they're mostly snorting, trying to get scents in. Their smell, sense of smell, is much, much worse than Marshall's, than your dog.

Joe Rogan 27:40 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 27:40 Because Marshall's a retriever?

Joe Rogan 27:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 27:42 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 27:43 That makes sense 'cause he can smell his ball. Like, if I throw his ball and he misses it, he just starts doing a circle, and then he finds it with his smell, which is crazy.

Andrew Huberman 27:53 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 27:53 Smells his ball. You know?

Andrew Huberman 27:55 Yeah. Yeah. I mean, incredible. So, so what Noam is saying is not that humans have smell that is as good, but that when you push the conditions, you can reveal a heightened sense of smell that most people don't think humans have. Now, as I say this, there are a lot of people out there, and it's usually women who are like, "Oh, no, I can smell everything. I can smell the subtlest difference." And so it might be something related to maternal behavior.

Joe Rogan 28:17 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 28:17 It might be something related to estrogen. It might be something in the Y chromosome that suppresses that. We don't know. But some people are very olfactory. They can smell when somebody's not feeling right or when they're not feeling right.

Joe Rogan 28:29 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 28:29 But it's absolutely the case that we're constantly taking the chemicals off other people through shaking hands, through hugging, rubbing them on ourselves, analyzing our own smells unconsciously.

Joe Rogan 28:38 I always say that I can smell bullshit.

Andrew Huberman 28:41 (laughs) You probably can.

Joe Rogan 28:42 But I don't know if I really can smell it. But when someone's lying, I feel like there's a smell.

Andrew Huberman 28:47 It, th- there could be the stress. It could be a certain...

Joe Rogan 28:50 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 28:50 You know, we talk about stress as one thing, but stress is the dosing of different levels of cortisol, epinephrine. People that are pathological liars, they can probably do it without evoking those things. Then you have things like pupil size. Bigger the pupils, more arousal, right? The more stressed somebody is.

Joe Rogan 29:04 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 29:04 Right? We know this, right? That's why, like, if somebody takes a stimulant-

Joe Rogan 29:08 There's a-

Andrew Huberman 29:08 ... their pupils will get huge.

Joe Rogan 29:09 There's a thing that people do when they're full of shit where they're anticipating your response in a different way. Like when someone's telling the truth, like, "If you tell me the truth, you seem r- relaxed-"

Andrew Huberman 29:21 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 29:21 "... to my response." Like, "You're telling me..."

Andrew Huberman 29:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 29:23 Even if it's something that you're not proud of, "You're telling me the truth. This is the thing." When someone's lying, it's almost like they're waiting to see how you buy it.

Andrew Huberman 29:33 So that it's like their defenses are up. They're-

Joe Rogan 29:35 They're s-

Andrew Huberman 29:35 They counterpunch quicker.

Joe Rogan 29:36 They're, well, they're selling it. They're, they, they say it, and they're like, "Does he buy it?" Like, you feel the, "Does he buy it?" And like, ooh, you're full of shit.

Andrew Huberman 29:44 Oh, interesting. So-

Joe Rogan 29:45 You know what I'm saying?

Andrew Huberman 29:45 L- let me think about this. So you are able to sense the, their anticipation of your response. It's like they've got, uh, queued up some counter, uh, some, uh, evaluating where you're g- uh, whether you're going yes, no, or maybe.

Joe Rogan 30:02 Yeah, but it's not reliable. Like, I, I just be, to, to be completely honest, I've been bullshitted before. But it... I think I'm better at it than most, and I think maybe that's 'cause I've had more conversations with people than most people have. But, uh, it's not 100%. Sometimes people are full of shit and you don't... You're not sure, or you have your defenses down.

Andrew Huberman 30:21 I mean, I've been badly, badly manipulated before.

Joe Rogan 30:23 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 30:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:24 It happens.

Andrew Huberman 30:24 Yeah, yeah. (laughs) It happens.

Joe Rogan 30:25 Yeah, especially if you like someone. You know, that's part of the problem. You don't want them to be full of shit.

Andrew Huberman 30:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 30:30 You know?

Andrew Huberman 30:30 And some of the best manipulators, certainly in my experience, are people that have really...... figured out the combination lock of the things that-

Joe Rogan 30:38 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:38 ... like that I have felt deprived of and they come in and-

Joe Rogan 30:41 Sure.

Andrew Huberman 30:41 And those tend to be unique things, right, that you can't get uh- anywhere.

Joe Rogan 30:44 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:45 You know, and boy, uh, somebody said that, uh, to me recently, like there are certain categories of humans that I just, I can't be seduced by. I'm not talking about just sexual seduction, right?

Joe Rogan 30:54 Right. Right. Right.

Andrew Huberman 30:56 But, you know, um, you know, I'm saying that y- I just can't be seduced by.

Joe Rogan 30:58 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 30:59 Um, and then there are... Some people are just, are able to get past that force field.

Joe Rogan 31:03 Right.

Andrew Huberman 31:03 And so m- I consider myself pretty good at threat sensing, except in that domain.

Joe Rogan 31:07 Right.

Andrew Huberman 31:07 Where like my threat sensing is like the equivalent of a, of a stuffed animal.

Joe Rogan 31:12 My friend Tony always says that erotic and psychotic are so close to each other that, you know, like, the, it crosses over back and forth.

Andrew Huberman 31:20 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 31:20 And I think there's something to that too, that some of the craziest people are also some of the sexiest people for some weird reason. Like you, you wanna be with them even though you know they're dangerous. Like, they're crazy. Like, there's some weird thing going on there. Almost like you want wild kids 'cause wild kids could survive better.

Andrew Huberman 31:39 Oh, that's an interesting one.

Joe Rogan 31:41 You know what I'm saying?

Andrew Huberman 31:42 Yeah. I mean, I think that the, uh... Well, I'm r- listening to a really good book that a really smart person suggested to me, um, called Five Types of People That Will Ruin Your Life.

Joe Rogan 31:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 31:52 And, um, and I only wish I had read it years ago. And h- here's the main takeaway, that there are about 10% of people out there, um, and it cuts across all the standard labels of like narcissist and borderline and all that. Like they, they include some of that, but they, they depart from that, and they just focus on what... Uh, this is a guy who's a psychologist. It's written by a guy who's a psychologist. He's worked a lot in conflict resolution over the years, i- uh, courtroom type stuff, et cetera. And he says in this 10% of people, they are high conflict people, but within, they like conflict. They feed off it. They like drama. They like conflict. They like creating it. But within that category, it's pretty evenly divided, he claims, between women and men, and then there's a further division where about half of them play passive and victim but are highly manipulative. They use other people to try and-

Joe Rogan 32:42 Mm-hmm. Of course.

Andrew Huberman 32:42 ... you know, basically harm.

Joe Rogan 32:43 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 32:43 And then the other 5% are very like aggressive and abrasive. And so he has this great set of protocols, I love protocols, that are essentially like don't move in with, marry, or get engaged to, or have a child with somebody in the first year. And this cuts in both directions. Just don't make that agreement-

Joe Rogan 33:02 Right.

Andrew Huberman 33:02 ... in year one as well as for any behavior that kinda cues those senses, gets your Spidey senses up like you were describing, ask yourself, would 90% or more of people do that behavior? And if it's a no, like you have to pause. In other words, what he's saying in this book is that most people are actually pretty healthy but that most of the woes of the world are created by about 10% of people, which he calls these high conflict people, but they don't always come out high conflict like screaming and yelling.

Joe Rogan 33:32 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 33:32 They're often very tactical and manipulative and very vindictive. Um, they'll leverage victimhood. They'll leverage a, a lot of different things and again cuts across men and women equally, he claims, and th- Again, I don't know the data behind this book, but the book itself just feels like a very useful thing that everybody (laughs) should know about. So I'm enjoying reading this book going, "Oh my God, I wish I had this book years ago." Plus, I'm realizing like, oh yeah, like we always hear this, like most of our problems come from a very small set of people and things.

Joe Rogan 34:00 And most of society's problems.

Andrew Huberman 34:01 Yeah. And so who are these people?

Joe Rogan 34:02 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 34:02 So we tend to call them narcissists or sociopaths or psycho, you know, but those labels, while very useful in the clinic, I think have been overused in the general public. And like we're not clinicians.

Joe Rogan 34:12 Right.

Andrew Huberman 34:12 We're not diagnosing anybody. And so, but difficult people that can ruin your life abound, but it turns out it's only about tw- 10%. So, and it has some very specific protocols of how to deal with the people who are more outwardly aggressive versus play a victim, et cetera.

Joe Rogan 34:28 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 34:28 Very useful book. I, I think it's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:30 God, it sucks that you have to think that way though.

Andrew Huberman 34:32 Um-

Joe Rogan 34:32 Can't you just enjoy someone?

Andrew Huberman 34:34 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 34:34 Enjoy their company.

Andrew Huberman 34:34 If they're in the, if they're in the 90%.

Joe Rogan 34:36 Yeah, but that's the problem.

Andrew Huberman 34:37 Right. But he, yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:37 You could zig when you should have zagged.

Andrew Huberman 34:39 And get-

Joe Rogan 34:39 And you run into a ten percenter.

Andrew Huberman 34:41 Take a year.

Joe Rogan 34:41 (laughs) Yeah. But a year is a long time though.

Andrew Huberman 34:44 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:44 Also, people can learn like what you tolerate and don't tolerate and hide certain types of behavior from you.

Andrew Huberman 34:51 Yes.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 34:51 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 34:51 Which could be a real issue.

Andrew Huberman 34:52 Oh, I've definitely experienced that, and it's, um... And again, I think we are often, um, you mentioned that the relationship between, uh, erotic and manipulative and crazy or just erotic and crazy. I think there's also that when we finally receive these sorts of, I don't know, love or affection, it's not always sex. It's not always sexual, right?

Joe Rogan 35:12 Right.

Andrew Huberman 35:12 Like somebody like, I don't know, like rubbing your feet or paying, you know, paying a little extra attention to what you say or something. For some people, that's intoxicating.

Joe Rogan 35:20 It's a lot of it is paying attention to you.

Andrew Huberman 35:22 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:22 A lot of it is like listening to what you have to say or asking you questions about your thoughts and your feelings, which a lot of people are unaccustomed to, and that's intoxicating to people because a lot of people just wanna talk about themselves. So when someone wants to talk about you and really is asking questions about your feelings, you know, that can kinda manipulate you in a weird way.

Andrew Huberman 35:40 Yeah. It almost feels like a, like a parental type of care that we're probably wired to look for.

Joe Rogan 35:45 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 35:46 I mean, I always marvel at this and also just kinda shake my head and go, "Why? Why did God design us this way?" But, uh, you know, the, the circuitry in our brain that creates infant-child attachment is the same circuitry that is repurposed for all other relationships in adulthood. It's not like you get your like, your childhood attachment stuff, and then you go, okay, well, you know, you're like 15, 16. You're moving on in the world. You're hitting puberty. You're starting to date a bit, whatever. Now, let's like work with a different set of mechanics, a different set of algorithms.

Joe Rogan 36:18 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:18 No. It's the same set of algorithms repurposed.

Joe Rogan 36:20 Mmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:20 We know this based on the studies of infant-child atta- uh, infant-parent attachment and on the basis, or infant caretaker, and on the basis of studies of romantic love. It's the same circuitry.

Joe Rogan 36:32 Mmm.

Andrew Huberman 36:33 So y- you're using a-... a- a set of algorithms and circuitry that were designed for one thing in a very different context.

Joe Rogan 36:41 That's interesting, and it's probably makes sense why a lot of men with, like, very overbearing mothers seek overbearing wives. You know?

Andrew Huberman 36:49 Yeah. I...

Joe Rogan 36:50 That-

Andrew Huberman 36:52 You know, I, uh, I've learned so much recently about just how it is that, you know, we can, um, lose our- our- our vision of, like, other people. Right? Like, we... and I think this- this thing that we hear, like manipulation, it often sounds like, "Oh, it's like really, like, tactical. Someone's rubbing their hands."

Joe Rogan 37:11 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:11 I think the really tricky part about it is I do think that most people in the world are just, like, doing their best to feel safe, to get- to get their needs met.

Joe Rogan 37:17 Right.

Andrew Huberman 37:17 I think there are very few evil people.

Joe Rogan 37:19 Right.

Andrew Huberman 37:21 But in this sort of pattern of repurposing childhood attachment patterns, and then people bringing that forward into their adult attachment patterns, I think what ends up happening is that, you know, people, quote unquote, "trying to get their needs met," oftentimes, like the worst ones... sometimes it's called trauma bonding, but they kind of go lock and key. Or somebody identifies somebody that's really healthy, and they're like, "Them, I'm gonna latch onto them because, like, they're healthy. And- and they can..." And you say, well, the healthy person should be able to spot all the landmines. But if somebody is able to really tap into, like, something you didn't have or something that just feels like oxygen-

Joe Rogan 37:53 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 37:54 ... right? Goodness gracious, like, you could be the smartest w- most, you know, well-acclimated person with the best parents or whatever upbringing, which most people aren't, but, you know, some people do have that and still fall kind of, you know, into this, uh, fog that is like, gosh, like, you wanna be with this person, but it's- but it doesn't feel good, you know, that- that mishmash.

Joe Rogan 38:15 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 38:15 And I think the thing I've learned cl- clearly is that when you feel that trepidation, run, don't walk.

Joe Rogan 38:23 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 38:23 Like- like, it's not... Like-

Joe Rogan 38:24 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 38:24 ... the- the gray zone is actually the thing to just exit fast.

Joe Rogan 38:28 Right.

Andrew Huberman 38:28 Gray doesn't mean, like, hover and check it out-

Joe Rogan 38:31 It's like-

Andrew Huberman 38:31 ... and, like, run some experiments here.

Joe Rogan 38:32 ... a ticking bomb.

Andrew Huberman 38:33 Get out.

Joe Rogan 38:35 Tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick, tick.

Andrew Huberman 38:35 Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.

Joe Rogan 38:36 Run.

Andrew Huberman 38:36 Just run.

Joe Rogan 38:37 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 38:37 Just run.

Joe Rogan 38:38 It's also, I think, there's some people that are very sheltered, and they've been well taken care of, and they're not accustomed to manipulative people-

Andrew Huberman 38:45 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:45 ... and they're not accustomed to dangerous people.

Andrew Huberman 38:48 Right.

Joe Rogan 38:48 And so they don't... I've- I've seen that before-

Andrew Huberman 38:50 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 38:51 ... both with, uh, m- people choosing the wrong friends and people choosing the wrong partners.

Andrew Huberman 38:55 Yeah, that certainly hasn't been my pattern. Um, not that I had the hardest upbringing. But it was easy- I would say easier than some, harder than others. But I always had great friends, great friendships. But my threat sensing, um, it wasn't always great in romantic relationships for sure. I've also had some great relationships. I think what tends to happen is that if we're very busy, we have this tendency to f- to be easily manipulated by certain things that are unusual that we... just that really feel like extra oxygen to us-

Joe Rogan 39:24 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 39:24 ... or just feel so nourishing. And 'cause I think people always or will often all, uh, default to sex. Like, it's all about sex. Depending on who you are, like, sex is either more or less readily available to you, right? Like, I think that for some people, it's nurturing, like to... a certain form of nurturing. And then there's also this thing of we know how to survive certain things so they don't feel as dangerous. So, people who've had, like, very, um, you know, uh, overbearing or- or ch- complicated childhoods or abusive childhoods, sometimes they're set to perceive danger at way too high a threshold.

Joe Rogan 39:56 Right.

Andrew Huberman 39:56 Right? So th- their perception of what's dangerous-

Joe Rogan 39:59 Right.

Andrew Huberman 39:59 ... is, like, way too high. And so they walk into even still dangerous situations, but they don't think of them as dangerous. And they're like, "Oh, I can navigate this." They're good at navigating difficult people, or they're good at navigating, you know, borderline people or something like that.

Joe Rogan 40:13 I think it's also exciting, which is part of the problem, that people like excitement. And if you have a boring life and a life that doesn't have a lot of stimulation in it, and then you find someone, even if they're bad for you, but they're exciting, there's some- some conflict, some something. There's- there's fights and breakups and then makeups, which are exciting, you know? And so then you get locked into this stimulation pattern, which is... or I've seen that multiple times with people. It's a real problem.

Andrew Huberman 40:42 Do you think it's more of a problem with people that, um, like excitement and adventure and are super curious but like excitement and adventure? So I'm thinking comics. I'm thinking, um, people who like high-intensity sports, that they seek relationships that are higher intensity. Because, you know, I- I've received great advice from people like Rick, who have said, "You know, your relationship should be a sanctuary. That should be where peace is." You know? And actually, I don't pay a lot of attention to Instagram kind of little mottos and things. But someone sent me one that, uh, I was like, "Yes, that feels so true," which is that men eventually settle where they feel peace.

Joe Rogan 41:21 Yeah, I think that's probably the healthiest way to do it. But I think people like... like I said, that I think people like stimulation. And I don't think a lot of people are stimulated by their day-to-day existence. I think they're bored. I think a lot of people are just, like, trudging along every day. And then when someone comes along that makes you excited in your life, you know, where it's someone who's just a little wilder, a little crazier, or maybe some lady who's got a bunch of tattoos. Like, look at her, you know? Like, whoa. You know, people get excited by people that are a little bit dangerous because-

Andrew Huberman 41:53 Yeah, this idea that anything could... like- like, anything could happen. They- they could do anything.

Joe Rogan 41:57 Well, they're risky. They're risky people, you know? Someone's got tattoos on their hands. Like, Jesus, what is she doing? You know?

Andrew Huberman 42:02 Yeah, you and I both have a lot of tattoos, but-

Joe Rogan 42:04 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:04 ... we keep... I've kept it... intentionally kept it off the- the hands and neck and face.

Joe Rogan 42:06 I've thought about doing my hands. But it's, uh... the face is a real problem. Like, that's a little wacky.

Andrew Huberman 42:12 I think-

Joe Rogan 42:12 But I have a lot of friends. Like, Jelly Roll's a good friend of mine. He's got tattoos all over his face. Post Malone, good friend of mine.

Andrew Huberman 42:17 I think if you were a musician-

Joe Rogan 42:18 Tattoos all... he's got a bunch of written shit all over his face. Yeah, I mean, uh, they're the nicest people. The thing about, like, Jelly Roll and Post is, like, once you talk to them, once you're talking to them, you don't th- see the tattoos anymore. You just see the human.

Andrew Huberman 42:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:31 You know? And it's just like... th- them wearing a shirt. It's like no... it's nothing.

Andrew Huberman 42:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 42:34 You know? It's normal.

Andrew Huberman 42:35 And things have changed a lot. Like, I was born in '75, right? So I'm-... heading towards 50 quick.

Joe Rogan 42:40 Back then-

Andrew Huberman 42:40 Ye-

Joe Rogan 42:40 ... tattoos on the face was crazy.

Andrew Huberman 42:42 Oh.

Joe Rogan 42:42 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:42 My, my, one of my childhood heroes, and somehow by the grace of God, he's become a close friend of mine, is Tim Armstrong, lead singer from Rancid. He has a tattoo of a spiderweb on his head-

Joe Rogan 42:52 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 42:52 ... and a spider on his neck. And I remember seeing him when I was a kid at a show, and being like-

Joe Rogan 42:55 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 42:55 ... "That dude's scary." And Lars Fredrikson from Rancid says "skunks" on his forehead.

Joe Rogan 43:00 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 43:00 They're super nice guys. I mean, they're-

Joe Rogan 43:02 Travis Barker's a super nice guy.

Andrew Huberman 43:04 Travis, yeah, Tim-

Joe Rogan 43:05 His whole head is fucking tattooed.

Andrew Huberman 43:05 Yeah, Tim and Travis do the transplants. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:07 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:07 Tim and Travis do transplants. And, like, you see those guys, and you're like, "Whoa." But now I think it's shifted a little bit.

Joe Rogan 43:12 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:12 But back then, I remember thinking, like, "That's gnarly. That's a tough guy."

Joe Rogan 43:16 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:16 You know? And certainly Lars is a tough guy, and Tim too. But the, you know... I remember seeing it, like, you only saw it on bikers and, like-

Joe Rogan 43:23 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 43:23 ... gnarly punk rockers.

Joe Rogan 43:24 People that had checked out of society, completely.

Andrew Huberman 43:27 A Mohawk used to be-

Joe Rogan 43:28 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:28 ... you're not getting a job.

Joe Rogan 43:29 Right. Yeah. Now it's normal.

Andrew Huberman 43:30 A nose ring used to... Remember when a nose ring or an eyebrow ring-

Joe Rogan 43:33 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:33 ... covered... You'd go into Starbucks and the person would have it covered up. You know, like-

Joe Rogan 43:36 Oh, like a Band-Aid?

Andrew Huberman 43:36 ... because they weren't all- they weren't allowed to have it.

Joe Rogan 43:38 Right, right, right.

Andrew Huberman 43:39 It w-

Joe Rogan 43:40 Now it's like a prerequisite.

Andrew Huberman 43:40 Yeah. Now I see medical students with, with eyebrow rings and nose rings and stuff.

Joe Rogan 43:43 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 43:43 So things have definitely changed.

Joe Rogan 43:45 Yeah. We're a more, a little bit more open-minded of decorations, but y- it's o- i- it is a thing though that you're taking a giant-ass chance by tattooing your hands.

Andrew Huberman 43:54 Well, a friend of mine who's a, admittedly is a psychologist said, "You know, tattoos are largely an expression of what you feel on the inside put to the outside." And I was like, "That sounds good." Yeah. It's like it's-

Joe Rogan 44:04 Sort of.

Andrew Huberman 44:04 Yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 44:05 I don't know. It's just art.

Andrew Huberman 44:07 Hmm.

Joe Rogan 44:07 It's... I like art. I like art on my walls. I like art on my st- arms. I like art.

Andrew Huberman 44:13 There's some Rogan tattoos out there. I saw a Lex Fridman face tattoo.

Joe Rogan 44:16 There's a bunch of Lex Fridman face tattoos.

Andrew Huberman 44:18 That's so good.

Joe Rogan 44:19 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 44:19 So good. He just had a birthday. Oh, you did too. Happy birthday.

Joe Rogan 44:22 Thank you very much.

Andrew Huberman 44:23 And Lex, happy birthday. Uh-

Joe Rogan 44:24 Yeah, there's a lot of... That's the weirdest one is tattoos of, of people's faces on your body forever. And there's... I don't know how many of them are me. There's thousands of them. Thou- I mean, I- I used to post them on Instagram all the time, but then I thought I was encouraging people to get my face tattooed so that they can... So I'd put it up on my Instagram. But it's kinda crazy.

Andrew Huberman 44:43 Th- there might be some reward loop circuitry going on there, but-

Joe Rogan 44:46 100%.

Andrew Huberman 44:47 But-

Joe Rogan 44:47 Before I forget this, can I ask you this?

Andrew Huberman 44:49 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 44:49 The people that are into this, um, smelling salt stuff, th- they're powerlifters, and they take a big sniff of that stuff before they lift weights. Why would that help them?

Andrew Huberman 44:58 Adrenaline.

Joe Rogan 44:58 Adrenaline?

Andrew Huberman 44:59 Yeah. So, couple of more things about olfaction. And by the way, I love this stuff. This is so wild, 'cause it's the most primitive part of our brain and nervous system. We were chemical sensors before we were light sensors.

Joe Rogan 45:11 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 45:12 Right? We were sensing chemical environments. "Is this a, a safe chemical environment?"

Joe Rogan 45:15 Right.

Andrew Huberman 45:15 And we evolved from that.

Joe Rogan 45:16 Right.

Andrew Huberman 45:17 We know that, for instance, memories that are associated with smell, like the... People will say, "The smell of my grandmother's kitchen," or, "Somebody's hands, my grandfather's hands," that, those memories stick with us longer than anything, because the olfactory bulb has a direct line to a couple of structures in the brain. We ha- so we have an olfactory bulb, which is the main thing for smell. Then there's something called the accessory olfactory bulb. It sort of divides into primitive smells that are like, ugh, aversive, get away quick. Those tend to go through a really fast line, through the olf- accessory olfactory bulb, takes us straight to the amygdala, to the piriform cortex that says, "Move your body and face in, away from that." Like, I didn't sit there and (sniffs) -

Joe Rogan 45:53 Right, right, right.

Andrew Huberman 45:53 ... on those smelling salts. It's like, boom, get away.

Joe Rogan 45:55 Right.

Andrew Huberman 45:56 It's, it's like a reflex.

Joe Rogan 45:56 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 45:56 It's like in fish, there's this thing called the Mauthner neuron, where you touch on one side of the body. What does the fish do? Goes the opposite direction.

Joe Rogan 46:03 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:03 Big, huge neuron. Hardwired circuit.

Joe Rogan 46:06 Well, they have those lateral lines that detects-

Andrew Huberman 46:08 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 46:08 ... scen- sounds and things and vibrations in the water.

Andrew Huberman 46:11 They're sensing, electrosensing at a distance.

Joe Rogan 46:13 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 46:13 And it... These Mauthner neurons are incredible. You touch, boom. The fish heads the opposite direction. Doesn't go like, "Oh, are you another friendly fish? You want a mate?"

Joe Rogan 46:20 Right.

Andrew Huberman 46:20 They go, "I'm out of here. Oh," and then they check you out.

Joe Rogan 46:23 Right.

Andrew Huberman 46:23 Right? And is... So it's a reflex for safety. The olfactory system has these two pathways, the olfactory bulb for kind of like, "Oh, is this Black Rifle coffee?" You know? And then there's the smelling salt one that goes to the olf- uh, the accessory olfactory bulb straight to the amygdala, which is associated with threat detection and other things, straight to the piriform cortex, and then to a motor circuit. Boom. Turn the head the other way, get out, exhale. Don't inhale more.

Joe Rogan 46:45 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 46:46 Aversive. Okay? So, the thing about smell is that, you know, it's got these very hardwired components. Okay? And they're set up for either appetitive, like, "Hmm, let me explore more, sniff in more," versus avers- a- as opposed to aversive behaviors, like, "Get, get me the hell away."

Joe Rogan 47:04 Mm.

Andrew Huberman 47:05 And the- these brain areas are among the more ancient brain areas. Now when I say ancient, people nowadays start picking apart at like, "Well, it's not just limbic and cortex. The cortex is part of limbic." That's all true. But if you look at our brains and you look at the brains of a, like a turtle or even a snake, all the stuff we're talking about right here are all... They're not exactly the same, but they're all present. When you get to humans, what you really add is a lot of cerebral cortex for the th- thinking and association stuff. Like, you know, "I've been here before, so I'm a little bit less, you know, uh, like s- looking around as much as I did last time." Like, things that, you know, not... Context-dependent learning.

Joe Rogan 47:42 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 47:42 Context-dependent stuff. Whereas all the highly reflexive stuff is gonna be hardwired circuitry you find in every animal, every person. And you need to divide things into three w- uh, three different responses in humans, okay? In order to survive. Yum, I'm gonna move toward it. Yuck, I'm gonna move away. And meh. There's basically only three motor responses to anything: yum, yuck, or meh. Now there's a, there's a matter of degrees. Like you might see somebody you really like, you wanna... I don't know, Joey Diaz or something. You know? You see them and like you wanna run over to see them. Right? So there's an appetitive circuit moves you towards it. See something that's a little odd, you might pause, "I don't know what that is." Or something aversive, like something happens in the, in the parking lot and you're like, "I'm getting the hell out of here." So the brain, as complex as it is, needs to divide things into one of three different motor responses: forward, pause, or retreat. Okay? I was playing with Jamie's dog out there before and I was like, "Can I..." I couldn't get him to back up. That's what's kind of cool about the bulldog.

Joe Rogan 48:33 Right.

Andrew Huberman 48:33 You charge him and he just goes. I'm like 20 times his size, but he's just like...

Joe Rogan 48:38 But he's also never-

Andrew Huberman 48:39 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:39 ... experienced anybody being mean to him.

Andrew Huberman 48:41 Yeah, how could you?

Joe Rogan 48:41 So every... Except a l- few dogs-

Andrew Huberman 48:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:43 ... apparently. But most of his experiences are play.

Andrew Huberman 48:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:46 Like he knows-

Andrew Huberman 48:47 Right.

Joe Rogan 48:47 ... he could just run up to you and bite you-

Andrew Huberman 48:48 Ri-

Joe Rogan 48:48 ... and you'll play with him.

Andrew Huberman 48:49 Right. So you said about why the-

Joe Rogan 48:51 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 48:51 ... the smelling salts and adrenaline. So here's the deal.... when we have this aversive response, the move away, the yuck response, get me away-

Joe Rogan 48:59 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 48:59 ... there's then a parallel response in the brain and body of the release of epinephrine, adrenaline, it's the same thing. Sorry for the dual naming.

Joe Rogan 49:07 Epinephrine and adrenaline are the same thing?

Andrew Huberman 49:09 Same thing. Long, complicated, boring history as to why it's named two things. Noradrenaline, norepinephrine, same, same molecule.

Joe Rogan 49:16 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 49:16 So, so let's just call it adrenaline for the sake of simplicity. Adrenaline is released from the adrenals in the body, and it's released from a area in the brain called the locus coeruleus, which sends out a bunch of little wires, axons, to sprinkler the brain with adrenaline. And both systems work in parallel. So when you smell something aversive, it goes inhale, "Ugh." Okay, olfactory, certain olfactory neurons cue that to the accessory olfactory bulb, bam, straight to the amygdala. Amygdala sends a signal, brah, down to the, to the adrenals atop, uh, the kidneys. They release adrenaline. Sends a, uh, believe it or not, a signal up to locus coeruleus. It sprinklers the brain with adrenaline. And you just had, within a couple hundred milliseconds, you just got a parallel adrenaline response in brain and body that allows you to do what more easily? Move. To move.

Joe Rogan 50:06 Hmm.

Andrew Huberman 50:07 Now you're ready for motion. You're ready for movement. In fact, I'm sure if you put that under the deepest sleeper's nose in the middle of the night, they're gonna wake up-

Joe Rogan 50:14 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 50:15 ... like, like a, you know, like a gunshot went off.

Joe Rogan 50:17 They used to give it to boxers when they got hurt in the corner. They'd give them smelling salts-

Andrew Huberman 50:21 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:21 ... and wake them up.

Andrew Huberman 50:22 Yeah, 'cause one of the best, uh, uh, painkillers is adrenaline.

Joe Rogan 50:25 Hmm, that makes sense.

Andrew Huberman 50:26 'Cause when you've been hit hard before-

Joe Rogan 50:28 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 50:28 ... isn't amazing how little it hurts when it happens and how much it hurts later?

Joe Rogan 50:31 Yeah, it's kinda crazy.

Andrew Huberman 50:32 It's crazy. I mean, there-

Joe Rogan 50:33 That's the thing that's weird about fights. Like, while they're happening, your shins are getting battered, things are getting hurt, and you don't, you don't really feel much.

Andrew Huberman 50:40 Yeah, adrenaline.

Joe Rogan 50:41 Unless you get kicked hard in the body.

Andrew Huberman 50:43 Right. To-

Joe Rogan 50:43 The liver shots, doesn't matter how much adrenaline you have pumping, there's something about getting hit in the liver. The liver, when you get hit, like, right here, if you get kicked or punched right here, it's a crazy feeling. It just shuts everything off. It's real weird. Your body just shuts off.

Andrew Huberman 51:00 I've seen these, uh, images of, like, uh, somebody just, like, melt. It looks like they melt-

Joe Rogan 51:04 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 51:04 ... they're sto- And it looks like they take a few paces and they're, like, ready to counterpunch or something-

Joe Rogan 51:08 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 51:08 ... and then it hits slowly. I don't know-

Joe Rogan 51:10 Well, some shots go away. So, like, some pain, like if you get punched in the gut, and you're, you know, you're, you're tidying up in anticipation, it still hurts, it hurts, but then you move a little bit and then you're okay again. But the liver is the opposite. The liver, you get hit, and then there's this, like, sharp pain and a delay, and then, ah, everything just shuts off. It's very wei- It's very hard to fake an- that you're fine and move away. You see, like, telltale signs, like one thing guys will do all the time when they get hit in the liver, they drop their right arm down, and they pin it to their body. So maybe they're fighting like this, they're moving, and they whacked in the liver, and you see them do like that and they're still moving, but they can't help it. They have their arm pres- because they know one more shot there and they're fucked. And so they barely can keep a poker face and move around, but there's telltale signs that you see that are just instinctive. You see them just drop their hand. And a lot of times guys will use that to set them up with a head kick. So, like, they'll hit you a bunch of... A good example of that is I- Islam Makhachev and, uh, Alexander Volkanovski. He hit him with a left kick to the body multiple times in that fight and then fired off one to the head and knocked him out.

Andrew Huberman 52:20 So it's like they're just hiding. This is like slow, deep pain.

Joe Rogan 52:22 You just see the leg come up, and it's very hard to recog- There's a kick called the question mark kick, and it's called a question mark kick because in TaeKwonDo we used to call it a fake front kick roundhouse kick. And what it is is you're lifting the knee up as if you're kicking to the body in a straight line, and then you whip it over and go like that and turn it into a roundhouse kick. Pull up, uh, Glaube Feitosa. Glaube Feitosa was the best at it, so much so that a lot of people started calling it the Brazilian kick, because this guy was a K-1 champion who had the most flexible hips and the craziest question mark kick. And he would literally bring it up and down-

Andrew Huberman 53:03 Pshew.

Joe Rogan 53:03 ... over the guard. So your hands would be up this, like you think your hands are protecting your head. He would bring it up around, like this, and drop it down on your head and knock people out.

Andrew Huberman 53:12 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 53:12 It's so wild, 'cause to this day I don't know anybody who can kick as good as him with that kick. Um, like to this day he has the f- the best highlight re- There's a lot of people that are really good at that kick, but Glaube had a very unusual flexibility of his hips. Watch this. Look at this. Well, that's-

Andrew Huberman 53:31 Ooh.

Joe Rogan 53:31 ... just a regular one, but he's got some of them that go over the... This is some of his highlights. Like look at that. See how he does that? See how it just goes up and around?

Andrew Huberman 53:40 It almost looks like a, it almost looks like his knee just kind of-

Joe Rogan 53:42 Yeah, watch this, watch this. He's gonna do it in slow motion. Watch the whip of it. Look at that. That's so-

Andrew Huberman 53:47 Crazy.

Joe Rogan 53:48 ... crazy. So you don't even know it's... Look how he will just whip it down. And it's just, there's a lot of people that are good with that, but he was the best at it. I mean, the best. It was just weird to see how he could do it. It's-

Andrew Huberman 54:02 I'm al- I'm always amazed how people can kick standing so closely.

Joe Rogan 54:06 Oh, yeah.

Andrew Huberman 54:07 Right?

Joe Rogan 54:07 G- Well, Glaube was... It's just flexibility of the hips. It's leg dexterity. But the way he could do it, man, it's just, he h- The finest question mark kick of all time. I mean, here he's knocking out Semmy Schilt who was seven feet tall with it. I mean, it was bizarre to watch that kind of flexibility, and also bizarre that no one else seems to have really kinda captured that technique as well as he did. And Glaube used to fight, I mean, this was like K-1. There was, Israel Adesanya had a really good one too and still has a really good one. Look at this one. Whap. But that's a little bit more straightforward. I mean, that's like straight to the chin, and it's a beautiful kick, but the way Glaube used to do it, it would go over the top and down. See that? Like that is so crazy.

Andrew Huberman 54:51 Amazing.

Joe Rogan 54:52 I can't do that. I've been throwing kicks my whole life. I can't throw it like that.

Andrew Huberman 54:56 I'm always watching their eyes-And, uh, these fighters' eyes. And it's amazing to me, like, uh, years ago I saw a Mayweather fight. And, um, it was obviously on pay-per-view, and, um, and he was just getting paid for sure, right? That was his thing. But, um, it was always amazing to me in the slow-mo like where he would slip punches by like centimeters.

Joe Rogan 55:18 Mm-hmm.

Andrew Huberman 55:18 It made me think that like his depth perception and the depth perception of fighters must, uh, successful fighters must just be exquisite. Because I mean like slipping at that distance with just a chin movement?

Joe Rogan 55:29 That's one thing, but it's also pattern recognition. You've been doing it so many times and you know. So, uh, really good fighters, one of the things that you'll see is they don't just charge out in the first round. The first round is like a feeling out process. So you're, you're downloading a lot of data points. You're downloading foot movement. And a lot of guys watch tape and they download it from that, but then you don't really know until you're in there with the person. So they're downloading positions, they're downloading what a guy does. Like if you, if you pivot to the left, does he move forward? Does he move back? Does he throw the left hook? Does he throw the right hand? What does he do? And how good is he at closing distance? Does he try to fire from where he's at or does he skip forward and fire? Does he give any telltale signs? Does he telegraph? So there's a lot of things that a fighter looks for. Mayweather had some of the best counter-punchers in the history of the fucking sport. He was so good at like staying in the pocket, so he was an elusive guy-

Andrew Huberman 56:29 There.

Joe Rogan 56:29 Yeah. Insane.

Andrew Huberman 56:30 Oh, there's he's slipping, right?

Joe Rogan 56:30 Pattern recognition. Pattern recognition. So he knows that left hook is coming, and so look how straight he throws that right hand. See how straight he threw that? So Canelo is throwing these big wide punches, and Floyd is just cutting him off at the path and then moving his head out of the line of those hooks that come his way.

Andrew Huberman 56:50 So do you think, um, it's conscious? Uh, uh, you know, I'm, I'm obsessed with this notion of unconscious genius, like you know like different domains of super high performance where the people don't exactly know how they do it, but they do it. And-

Joe Rogan 57:04 Well, you know how you do it, but you've also done it so many times in the gym and in fights that it's second nature, so you're not thinking of it as you're doing it. One of the things about countering people is, uh, and, uh, I used to when I was in my prime when I was fighting all the time, I would throw kicks and they would land before I even knew I was gonna do it. Because someone would do something, and as they would do something, I instinctively knew because of pattern recognition there's gonna be an opening. Like say if some guy lifts his left leg, if he's standing with his left leg forward, and he lifts his left leg and he's coming towards me with his left leg, I know that he's balancing on that right leg and that the left leg is coming this way. And if I spin and catch him, I can catch him as his momentum is going this way and I'll catch him that way (fingers snapping) and it'll double the power of the punch or the kick. And so-

Andrew Huberman 57:53 Did somebody teach it to you? 'Cause there, there's like a conscious awareness of how you do it. I guess what I'm... yeah, I think this notion of pattern recognition is, it's interesting 'cause earlier we were talking about pattern recognition for finding people who are lying, right? You have this pattern recognition thing that, you know, you're not saying it's perfect-

Joe Rogan 58:07 Right.

Andrew Huberman 58:07 ... but like you can sense something.

Joe Rogan 58:09 There's things.

Andrew Huberman 58:09 There's things.

Joe Rogan 58:09 Yeah.

Andrew Huberman 58:10 And so it's a combination of things that we aren't always aware of. That's the unconscious part of the unconscious genius thing that I'm referring to. And so there's this idea like our brains are pattern-recognition/prediction machines, and so do you think... Like in other words, two questions. Was, do you think Mayweather was ever pulled aside and said, "Listen, pay attention to their left shoulder and keep your eye on his right eye"? I'm just making-

Joe Rogan 58:30 100%.

Andrew Huberman 58:31 Okay.

Joe Rogan 58:32 100%.

Andrew Huberman 58:32 And were you ever told, "Hey, if his left leg comes up, that means he's balancing-"

Joe Rogan 58:36 Yes.

Andrew Huberman 58:36 "... on his right, so you need to prepare a counterattack or an attack." So d- were you-

Joe Rogan 58:40 Well, that's where drills come in.

Andrew Huberman 58:41 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 58:42 Okay? So you do drills, and you do drills constantly. And one of the things that May- Mayweather's father was a great fighter. Mayweather's father fought Sugar Ray Leonard back in the 1970s when Sugar Ray was in his prime and gave him a hell of a fight. And, and his brother, uh, or his uncle rather, his uncle Roger was, uh, Roger Mayweather, the Black Mamba, he was a great fighter. So he grew up as a child around some of the best boxers in the world. And so he was constantly seeing the successful motions that they did and constantly seeing them exploit weaknesses in other fighters and then constantly sparring. So in sparring, you're not just spar- you're not just fighting when you're sparring, but you're just sort of downloading data. You're downloading data points for a real fight. And then you're doing drills where a guy will, you know, some guys they'll do it with mitts where they'll throw a hand at you and they'll slip and c- and counter. Here, let me show you this. Uh, this guy, Ilia Topuria. And Ilia Topuria is, uh, one of the absolute best fighters in the world. He's the current UFC, um, featherweight champion, and the dude is just fucking phenomenal. But when you, and, and one other thing that's phenomenal about him is his technique. His technique is, is perfect. There's like no fat in his technique. There's no wasted movement. So when an opportunity presents itself, everything is so fast because the technique is so streamlined. But like look at how he hits the pads. And when you watch how he hits the pads, and Mayweather is a great example of that as well. Did I send it to you? Uh-huh. No? It didn't go through? No. I totally sent it. Hold on. It says I sent it. Is it on Instagram? No. I, yeah, it's on Instagram. Okay. I sent it to you though, uh, on a text message. I think it hit... Really? Yeah. I sent it twice. I got it. I got it. You got it? Okay. Um, Ilia Topuria, like I said, um, one of the, some of the best hands in the sport, current UFC featherweight champion and knocked out Volkanovski who was maybe the greatest of all time. Watch him hit the punches. Look at this. See how he's moving his head when the guy throws punches, just slipping just slightly?

Andrew Huberman 1:00:54 It's like total economy of movement.

Joe Rogan 1:00:56 And the speed, man. Oh. The fucking speed of that. Look at the hand. Look at the hand speed.Fucking incredible. I mean, if you know how difficult that is to do-

Andrew Huberman 1:01:08 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 ... and do it that fast. Give me that ha- sound again. Let me hear this. (punching sounds) (grunting) I mean, these are like five, six punches a second.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:16 Yeah. It almost-

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 I mean-

Andrew Huberman 1:01:17 ... sounds li- it almost looks like it's sped up by-

Joe Rogan 1:01:18 Right.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:19 ... one, one and a half times, 1.75.

Joe Rogan 1:01:20 But it's not. (punching sounds)

Andrew Huberman 1:01:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:01:21 And just phenomenal technique. (punching sounds) But see how those pu- it's like they're, they're not even talking.

Andrew Huberman 1:01:31 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:01:31 So when he's s- throwing the mitts at his head to get him to duck, there are no- there's no communication. He just sees that hand coming towards him and he's ducking. He sees this hand coming towards him and he's ducking. It's all, like, slight slips away. And it's slight motions, which is all you need to get away from a punch, right?

Andrew Huberman 1:01:48 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:48 You just ... You don't wanna move too far or you're wasting a lot of energy and you can't counterattack. Y- One of the best things about Floyd and one of the most brilliant things about him, he's one of the most elusive fighters of all time, but he didn't move around. He stood right in front of you and you couldn't fucking hit him. That's true mastery of space and true mastery of technique. I mean, he was ... He's ... In my opinion, he's the best boxer that's ever lived.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:11 Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm not qualified to, to, to rank people, but I, I watched when he was making that ascent towards ... It ended up being 50 and 0.

Joe Rogan 1:02:18 He just fought last weekend.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:19 Did he?

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 This weekend. Yeah. He fought a, um ... He fought a match against John Gotti's grandson, which is crazy.

Andrew Huberman 1:02:26 That's scary for a lot of reasons.

Joe Rogan 1:02:27 Yeah, for a lot of reasons. Right? But this is the second time they fought. The first time they fought, it ended in a brawl. Like, a, like a bunch of people jumped in the ring. It was crazy because they stopped the fight because they were talking too much shit to each other and holding onto each other too much. So the referee stopped the fight for whatever reason. I don't know. And then this fight was even crazy too because the referee was ... The first referee was terrible. And the, the referee called Floyd ... Said Floyd Mayweather hit him behind the head. A- absolutely incorrect call. Floyd threw a right hand and it caught him on the side of the head, and the referee claimed that it was behind the head. So Floyd fired the referee in the middle of the bout. They s- He stops the bout. He's like, "Get the fuck outta here. Get out of here."

Andrew Huberman 1:03:09 'Cause he's the promoter also.

Joe Rogan 1:03:10 Well, I guess.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:11 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:11 I mean, also it's Floyd Mayweather. Like, what's the referee gonna do? "Fuck you"?

Andrew Huberman 1:03:15 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:15 You know, "I'm gonna stop the fight"? Like, h- he, uh ... Also they're in Mexico City, like, you could get killed. Like, "Just get out of the ring, buddy." So Floyd throws this punch and he's 100% correct. The punch landed the side of the head, it's a right hook, it's a perfect punch. And the, the referee was saying, "Watch the back of the head." He's like, "What the fuck are you talking about? That wasn't the back of the head." And so he kicks the guy out. And they bring in a different referee, who finishes the fight. It was, it was insanity.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:40 And Floyd won.

Joe Rogan 1:03:42 It was an exhibition.

Andrew Huberman 1:03:43 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:03:43 It's kind of a bullshit money grab, honestly. So this is w- You see the punch? That's the-

Andrew Huberman 1:03:47 Oh, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 ... punch right there. It's just a right hook so he's saying back of the head. Like, so Floyd's like, "Get the fuck outta here. Just get outta here. Fuck you. Get outta here." He's like, "Get the fuck outta here." And if anybody's qualified to say, "Get outta here," it's fucking Floyd Mayweather, the best boxer of all time. He's 100% correct. That referee made a giant, stupid error. He's like, "Get outta here. Get outta here." (laughs) He's like, "Get outta the fucking ring."

Andrew Huberman 1:04:10 This is his d- This is his domain.

Joe Rogan 1:04:11 Yeah. It's ... And he's right. Everybody watching it is right. No one thinks it's a bad punch. If you ... So let's see it again. We can see it one more time. It's a counter right hand. W- let's do it in ... We can see it in slow motion. So he throws the punch, boom. It's just a perfect-

Andrew Huberman 1:04:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:26 ... right hook. It's a perfect right hook. It ... What it does is, is a punch that goes over the top of the guard and catches him in the exposed area o- of the head. It's a perfect punch. And for the referee to interfere there ... And also, it's like ... It's literally like someone who probably doesn't know how to box at all telling the greatest boxer of all time that what he's doing is wrong, which is just bananas.

Andrew Huberman 1:04:46 It's crazy.

Joe Rogan 1:04:47 So he got rid of the guy in the middle of the fight. But he's still doing these bouts-

Andrew Huberman 1:04:50 Amazing.

Joe Rogan 1:04:50 ... at 46 years old, still boxing these young ki- ... Again, this y- uh, y- ... John Gotti III who is a, uh, a very good up-and-coming MMA fighter. So, uh, you know, he has all the weapons, take-downs, submissions, kicks, all that jazz. But he's choosing to fight Floyd in a boxing fight just for money, just like Conor McGregor did. It's really a trick. He gets these people to box with him. They have no business boxing with him. And he's making millions and millions of dollars doing this way after his competitive career is over.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:21 Oh.

Joe Rogan 1:05:21 Which is-

Andrew Huberman 1:05:21 I guess he's earned that right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:22 Hey, man.

Andrew Huberman 1:05:23 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:23 He's a genius. He really is a genius. He's a genius in figuring out a way to keep making money. And one of the reasons why people watch him fight is not because he's like Mike Tyson, just goes out and destroys people. They like watching him fight because they hate him-

Andrew Huberman 1:05:36 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 ... 'cause he talks so much shit and he's like, "Look at my million dollar watch. Look at my fucking jet. Look at my house. Look at this." He's, like, constantly showing you all these things that he has. Like, he'll lay out watches in a hotel w- bed. Like, uh, "This is, uh, a million dollars worth of watches. This watch goes for $2 million." And then like, "This is my small watch that I take sometimes, but I wanna show you ... When I show up, I bring out the big boy." And he brings out this watch that's covered in diamonds. It's like fucking $5 million. And so you hate him. People-

Andrew Huberman 1:06:02 He cr-

Joe Rogan 1:06:02 ... hate him.

Andrew Huberman 1:06:02 He creates envy.

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 Yes. Yeah, he creates envy. And you want him to lose, but he's not gonna. He's not gonna. He's t- He's so good. But the other thing is discipline, right? You don't ... He's not just this cocky guy who's, like, really good at boxing. He also has incredible discipline. Like, doesn't party-

Andrew Huberman 1:06:17 I've seen clips of him running in the middle of the night.

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 Yeah. He would go to a nightclub with everybody else, be drinking water. Everybody's partying, having a good time. Floyd would leave the nightclub at 2:00 AM, have his bodyguards drive the car, and he would run in front of the car for hours. Run home, 2:00 in the morning. Run five, six miles. And did it all the time. Just always di- He was always fit, always in shape. Never got fat, never got lazy. Always was ready. And so never really experienced decline. And then decided at a certain point in time, like after the Conor McGregor fight, "Okay, I'm done. Done. Did it all. Beat everybody. Un- undefeated. Bye."... and now he just has these, these demonstration fights, where they're, they're weird little exhibitions where he's just beating people up that have no business in the ring with him. And one of 'em, he was walking around with a fucking, a card, a ring card. He took it from the ring card girl and he started dancing around. So, he's like-

Andrew Huberman 1:07:13 He's enjoying life.

Joe Rogan 1:07:14 ... under no threat whatsoever.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:16 Yeah. He's enjoying life. Well, people like to be angry. Um, I'm always calling to mind a study... I'll keep this really brief, but there's a famous study by a guy named Robert Heath, who was a neurosurgeon, and he put a bunch of stimulating electrodes into the brain of some humans getting neurosurgery, and he offered them the opportunity to stimulate any area they wanted. And he stimulates some areas, and they'd feel happy or giddy or drunk or sexual arousal, whatever. You know, the one area that all... There were only three subjects, but for human neurosurgery, that's not a terrible subject number. The area that all three of them preferred vastly over the other areas to be stimulated evoked the sense of anger and frustration.

Joe Rogan 1:07:55 Really?

Andrew Huberman 1:07:55 Yeah. People like to be angry.

Joe Rogan 1:07:57 Which is why Twitter is so popular.

Andrew Huberman 1:07:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:00 (laughs)

Andrew Huberman 1:08:00 And to some extent Instagram and... I don't know. Does, I don't know-

Joe Rogan 1:08:02 Sure, but Twitter is the one the most, because it's mostly just talking, or mostly just text. Instagram is photographs, and s- you could just... I, I don't comment on people's pho- very, very rarely. I might have commented on photos 12 times in my life. You know, just a friend, like, "That's awesome. Way to go." Something nice.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:19 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:08:19 But, uh, I don't even read comments. But I look at pictures. I go, "Oh, that's cool. Oh, look at that video, that's fucking crazy." I'll give it a little tap, double-tap, give you a little heart, give you a little love and then move on ab- about my day. But in Twitter, I'm constantly just engaging with people's thoughts and arguments and debates. And that's why I think Twitter's the most d- addictive of all the social media platforms, in terms of engagement, but not as addictive as TikTok in terms of, um, it compels you to continue to watch. I wanna keep going with this, but I have to pee so bad. I j- I did the sauna before we got here-

Andrew Huberman 1:08:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:50 ... and I drank 64 liters of water, so.

Andrew Huberman 1:08:52 Easy. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:08:52 Or 64, uh, ounces, rather. All right, we'll be right back. We were, uh, at people like to get angry, and you were saying that you, uh, had, uh, another urge to take another sniff of these smelling salts.

Andrew Huberman 1:09:03 So, so I'm observing something interesting about the smelling salts. Like, it definitely, like,