Andrew Huberman: Focus, Controversy, Politics, and Relationships | Lex Fridman Podcast #435

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   Introduction

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:00

      Hardship will show you who your real friends are. That's for sure. Could you read the quote once more? "Don't eat with people you wouldn't starve with." The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman. His fifth time on the podcast. He is the host of the Huberman Lab Podcast, and is an amazing scientist, teacher, human being, and someone I'm grateful to be able to call a close friend. Also, he has a book coming out next year that you should pre-order now, called Protocols: An Operating Manual for the Human Body. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in description. And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Huberman.

2. 0:50 – 7:48

   Quitting and evolving

   1. AHAndrew Huberman0:50

      You think there's ever gonna be a day when you walk away from podcasting? Definitely. I mean, I came up within, and then on the periphery of skateboard culture. And for the record, I was not a great skateboarder. I always have to say that, 'cause skateboarders are relentless if you call something you didn't do or whatever. I mean, I could do a few things and I loved the community, and I still have a lot of friends in that community. Jim Thiebaud at Deluxe. You can look him up. He's kind of the man behind the whole scene. I know Tony Hawk, Danny Way, all these guys. I got to see them come up and get big and stay big in many cases. Start huge companies like Danny and Collin McCausland, or DC. Some people have a long life in something, some don't. But one thing I observed and learned a lot from in skateboarding, at the level of observing the skateboarders and then the ones that started companies, and then what I also observed in science, and still observe, is you do it for a while, you do it at the highest possible level for you, and then at some point you pivot and you start supporting the young talent coming in. In fact, the greatest scientists, people like Richard Axel, Catherine Dulac, there are many other labs in neuroscience. Karl Deisseroth. They're not just known for doing great science, they're known for mentoring some of the best scientists that then go on to start their own labs. And I think in podcasting, I am very fortunate I got in, in a fairly early wave, not the earliest wave, but thanks to your suggestion of doing a podcast, fairly early wave. Mm-hmm. And I'll continue to go as long as it feels right, and I feel like I'm doing good in the world and providing good. But I'm already starting to scout talent. My company that I started with Rob Moore, SciCom Media, there's a couple other guys in there too. Mike Blaback, our photographer, Ian Mackay, Chris Rea, Martin Fobes. We are a company that produces podcasts. Right now that's Huberman Lab Podcast, but we're launching a new podcast, Perform, with Dr. Andy Galpin. Nice. And we wanna do more of that kind of thing, finding really great talent, highly qualified people, credentialed people. And I've got a new, um, kind of obsession with scouring the internet looking for the young talent in science, in health, and related fields. And so will there be a final episode of the HLP? Yeah, I mean, Bullet Buster Cancer aside, you know, (laughs) someday I'll, there'll be the very last, "And thank you for your interest in science," and I'll clip out. Yeah, I love the idea of walking away and not be dramatic about it. Right. When it feels right you can leave and you can come back whenever the fuck you want. Right. Uh, Jon Stewart did this well with The Daily Show. I think that was during the 2016 election when everybody wanted him to stay on and he just walked away. Dave Chappelle for different reasons, walked away. Disappeared, came back. Gave away so much money, didn't care. And then came back and was doing like standup in the park, in the middle of nowhere. Genius. You have Khabib who, undefeated, walks away at the very top of, of a sport. Is he coming back? No, he's done. Or at least we don't know. Yeah. Right, we don't know. I don't know if he knows. Yeah, bears everywhere are worried. (laughs) Yeah, I think, you know, it's, um, it's always a call, you know, you know, the last few years have been tremendous growth. We launched in January 2021, and even this last year, 2024, has been huge growth, (laughs) you know, in all sorts of ways. It's been wild. And we have some short form content planned, es- 30 minute shorter episodes that really distill down the critical elements. We're also thinking about moving to other venues besides podcasting. So there's always the thought and the discussion. But when it comes to like when to hang up your cleats, you know, it's like there just comes a natural time where you can do more to mentor the next generation coming in than focusing on self. And so there will come a time for that. And I think it's critical. I mean, again, I saw this in skateboarding, like Danny and Collin, and Danny's brother Damon started DC with Ken Block, the driver who unfortunately passed away a little while ago, rally car driver. And they eventually sold it, I think, to Quicksilver or something like that. But they're all phenomenal talents in their respective areas. But they brought in the next, you know, the next line of amazing riders for the Plan B thing, you know, Paul Rodriguez. For skateboarders, they know who this is. Now in, in science, there are scientists like Feynman for instance. I don't know if anyone can name one of his mentor offspring. So there are scientists who are phenomenal, like beyond world class, right? Multi-generational world class, who don't make good mentors. I'm not saying he wasn't a good mentor, but that's not what he's known for. And then there are scientists who are known for being excellent scientists and, and great mentors. And I think there's no higher, um, celebration to be had at the end of one's career if you can look back and be like, "Hey, I put some really important knowledge into the world. People made use of that knowledge." And guess what? You spawned all these other...... scientific offspring, or sport offspring, or podcast offspring. I mean, I, in some ways we look to Rogan and to some of the other earlier podcasts as like they, you know, they paved the way. Rhonda Patrick, first science podcast out there. So, you know, it, eventually, the baton passes, but fortunately right now everybody's active and it, and it feels really good.

   2. LFLex Fridman6:31

      Yeah. Well, you're talking about the healthy way to do it, but there's also, uh, a different kinda way where you have, uh, somebody like, uh, Grisha Grigori Perelman, the mathematician who refused to accept the Fields Medal. So he's one of the greatest living mathematicians, and he just walked away from mathematics-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman6:48

      Is that right?

   4. LFLex Fridman6:48

      ... and rejected the Fields Medal.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman6:50

      What did he do after he left mathematics?

   6. LFLex Fridman6:52

      Life. Private. 100%.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman6:55

      I respect that.

   8. LFLex Fridman6:56

      He's become essentially a recluse. There's these photos of him looking very broke.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman7:02

      Mm.

   10. LFLex Fridman7:02

       Like he could use the money. He, he turned away the money, he turned away everything. You know, there's th- there's ... You just have to listen to the inner voice, you have to listen to yourself and make the decisions that don't make any sense for the rest of the world and make sense to you.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman7:16

       I mean, Bob Dylan didn't show up to pick up his Nobel Peace Prize. That's punk.

   12. LFLex Fridman7:20

       Yeah.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman7:20

       Yeah.

   14. LFLex Fridman7:20

       Yeah.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman7:21

       He probably grew in notoriety for that. You know, maybe he just doesn't like going in Sweden, but it seemed like it would be a fun trip. I think they do it in a nice time of year, but hey, that's his right. He earned that right.

   16. LFLex Fridman7:33

       I think the best artists aren't doing it for the prize, they aren't doing it for the fame or the money, they're doing it because they love the art.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman7:39

       Yeah, that's the, the Rick Rubin thing. You gotta verb it through, download your inner thing. I don't think we've talked about this, but

3. 7:48 – 10:21

   How to focus and think deeply

   1. AHAndrew Huberman7:48

      this obsession that I have about how Rick has this way of being very, very still in his body, but keeping his mind very active, um, as a practice. Went and spent some time with him in Italy last June, and, uh, we would tread water in his pool in the morning and listen to A History of Rock and Roll and 100 Songs.

   2. LFLex Fridman8:11

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman8:12

      Um, amazing podcast, by the way.

   4. LFLex Fridman8:14

      Mm-hmm. It is.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman8:14

      Yeah. And, um, and then he would spend a fair amount of time during the day, you know, in this kind of meditative state where his mind is very active, body very still. And then Karl Deisseroth, when he came on my podcast, talked about how he forces himself to sit still and think in complete sentences late at night after his kids go to sleep. And, you know, there's a state of mind, rapid eye movement sleep, where your body is completely paralyzed and the mind is extremely active, and people credit rapid eye movement sleep with some of the more elaborate, emotion-filled dreams and the source of many ideas. And there are other examples. Einstein, people described him as taking walks around the Princeton campus then pausing, and would ask him what was going on, and the idea that his mind was continuing to churn forward at a high rate. Um, so, you know, this is far from controlled studies, but, yeah, we're talking about some incredible minds and creatives who have a practice of stilling the body while keeping the mind deliberately very active, very similar to rapid eye movement sleep. And then there are a lot of people who also report, you know, great ideas coming to them in the shower, while running. So it can be the opposite as well where the b- body is very active and the, and the mind is perhaps more on kind of like a default mode network, not really focusing on any one specific thing.

   6. LFLex Fridman9:36

      You know, interesting, there's a, there's a bunch of physicists and mathematicians I've talked to, they talk about sleep deprivation and going crazy hours through the night obsessively pursuing a thing, and then the solution to the problem comes when they finally get rest.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman9:52

      Right. And th- and we know, we just did this six episode special series on sleep with Matt Walker, we know that when you deprive yourself of sleep and then you get sleep, you get a rebound in rapid eye movement sleep, you get a higher percentage of rapid eye movement sleep. And Matt talks about this in the podcast, and he did an episode on sleep and, uh, creativity, sleep and memory, and rapid eye movement sleep comes up multiple times in that series.

4. 10:21 – 20:34

   Cannabis drama

   1. AHAndrew Huberman10:21

      Um, there's also some very interesting stuff about cannabis withdrawal and rapid eye movement sleep. People who are coming off cannabis often will suffer from, uh, insomnia, but when they finally do start sleeping, they like dream like crazy. Um, cannabis is a very controversial topic right now.

   2. LFLex Fridman10:36

      Oh, yeah. I saw that.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman10:37

      Yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman10:37

      What happened? There's a bunch of drama around the episode you did on cannabis.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman10:42

      Yeah. We did a episode about cannabis, talked about the health benefits and the potential risks, right?

   6. LFLex Fridman10:48

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman10:48

      It's, it's neither here nor there. Um, depends on the person, depends on the age, depends on genetic background, a number of other things. Um, we published that episode well over a year ago and it had no issues online, so to speak. And then a clip of it was put to X, where, you know, the real action (laughs) occurs, as you know, your favorite bot. Um-

   8. LFLex Fridman11:13

      Yeah.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman11:14

      Yeah. The, the, the four-ounce gloves as opposed to the 16-ounce gloves, um, that is X versus Instagram, or YouTube. There was, um, kind of an immediate dog pile from a few people in the cannabis research field. Um-

   10. LFLex Fridman11:30

       The PhDs and MDs, yeah.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman11:32

       There were people on our side, there were people not on our side. I mean, you know. The, the statement that got things riled up the most was this notion that, uh, for certain individuals, there's a high potential for inducing psychosis with high THC containing cannabis. For certain individuals, not all. Um, that sparked some issues. Um, there was really a split. You know, you see this in different fields. It ... There was one person in particular who came out swinging, with language that i- in my opinion is not like of the sort that you would use at a university, uh, venue. Um-... especially among colleagues. But that's fine, you know, we're all grownups.

   12. LFLex Fridman12:18

       Well, for me, from my perspective, it was, uh, strangely rude. And it had an air of, like, elitism-

   13. AHAndrew Huberman12:26

       Hmm.

   14. LFLex Fridman12:27

       ... that, to me, uh, was at the source of the problem, uh, during COVID, that led to the distrust of science, and the, the popularization of disrespecting science-

   15. AHAndrew Huberman12:40

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LFLex Fridman12:40

       ... because so many scientists spoke with an arrogance and a douchebaggery that I wish we would have a little bit less of.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman12:47

       Yeah, it's tough because most academics don't understand that people outside the university system are, um, they don't, they're not familiar with, like, the inner workings of science, and, um, and the culture. And so, you have to be very careful how you present when you're a university professor. Um, and when, yeah, so, you know, he came out swinging at some, you know, a four-letter word type language, and he was obviously upset about. So, I simply said what I would say anywhere, which was, "Hey, look, yeah, come on the podcast. Let's chat. And, um, why don't you give your, tell me where I'm wrong and let's discuss." And, and fortunately, he agreed. And initially he said, "Well, no, how can I be sure you're not going to misrepresent me?" And so, I said, we got on a D- DM, then, then an email, then eventually a phone call, and just said, "Hey, listen, like, you're welcome to record the whole conversation. We've never done a gotcha on my podcast. And let's just get to the heart of the matter. I think this, this little controversy is perfect, um, kindling for, for a really great discussion." And, um, and he had some other conditions that we worked out. And, and I, and I felt like, cool, like, he's really interested. Alhe- you get a very different person on the phone than you do on Twitter. I will say he's been very collegial, and that conversation is on the schedule. I said, "We'll fly you out, we'll put you up." He said, no, he wants to fly himself. He really wants to make sure that there's like kind of a space between... Um, I think some of the perception of science and health podcasts in the academic community is that it's all designed to sell something. No, we run ads so it can be free to everyone else.

   18. LFLex Fridman14:19

       Yeah.

   19. AHAndrew Huberman14:20

       But, I think, look, in the end, um, he agreed, and I'm excited for the conversation. It was interesting because in the wake of that little exchange, there's been a bunch of press from traditional press about cannabis has now surpassed alcohol in man- in many, um, cultures, as, uh, within the United States, as, when I say cultures, I mean demographics, uh, in the United States as the, as the drug of choice. Um, there have been people highlighting the issues of potential psychosis in high THC containing. And so, it's kind of interesting to see how traditional media is sort of on board certain elements that, you know, I put forward. And I think there's some controversy as to whether or not the different strains, the indicas and sativas are, are biologically different, et cetera. So, we'll get down into the weeds, pun intended-

   20. LFLex Fridman15:09

       Hmm.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman15:10

       ... during that one, and I'm excited. It's the first time that we've responded to a, a direct criticism online about, um, scientific content in a way that really promoted like, oh, here, the idea of inviting a particular guest. And so it's great. Let's get a guest who, um, is expert in cannabis. I, I believe, I could be wrong about this, but he's a behavioral neuroscientist. It's a slightly different training, but look, he seems highly credentialed. It'll be fun. And we, you know, we welcome that kind of exchange.

   22. LFLex Fridman15:39

       I deeply-

   23. AHAndrew Huberman15:40

       And I'm not being diplomatic, I'm just saying like, it's cool, like, he's coming on-

   24. LFLex Fridman15:42

       No, you-

   25. AHAndrew Huberman15:43

       ... you know, and he was friendly on the phone, right? Like, he literally came out online and was like, basically, like, kind of like F you, like, F this and F you. But you get someone on the phone and it's like, "Hey, how's it going?" And they're like, "Oh, yeah, well, you know, I t-" there was an immediate apology of like, "Hey, listen, I came out, normally I'm like, not like that, but online." You know? (laughs)

   26. LFLex Fridman16:00

       Oh, yeah?

   27. AHAndrew Huberman16:00

       You get a different-

   28. LFLex Fridman16:01

       Oh, yeah? Okay, listen-

   29. AHAndrew Huberman16:02

       Yeah. So it's a little bit like, it's a little bit like jujitsu, right? People say all sorts of things, I guess, but if they, if you're like, "All right, well, let's go," then it's probably a different story, you know?

   30. LFLex Fridman16:10

       It's not like jujitsu, 'cause in jujitsu people don't talk shit 'cause they know what the consequences are.
5. 20:34 – 31:01

   Jungian shadow

   1. LFLex Fridman20:34

      it back.

   2. AHAndrew Huberman20:35

      Uh...

   3. LFLex Fridman20:35

      You said that your conversation with James Hollis-

   4. AHAndrew Huberman20:38

      Oh.

   5. LFLex Fridman20:38

      ... a Jungian psychoanalyst had a big impact on you. What do you mean?

   6. AHAndrew Huberman20:42

      James Hollis is a 84-year-old Jungian psychoanalyst who's written 17 books, including Under Saturn's Shadow, which is on the healing and trauma of men. The eating, Eden Project, excuse me, which is about relationships and creating a life. I discovered James Hollis in an online lecture that was recorded, I think, in San Diego. It's on YouTube, the audio is terrible, called Creating a Life. And this was somewhere in the 2011 to 2015 span, I can't remember. And I was on my way to Europe, and I called my girlfriend at the time, it's like, "I just found the most incredible lecture I've ever heard." And I, he talks about the shadow. He talks about your developmental upbringing, and how you either align with or go 180 degrees off your parents' tendencies and values in certain areas. He talked about the specific questions to ask of oneself at different stages of life to live a full life. So, it's always been a dream of mine to meet him and to record a podcast. And he wasn't able to travel, so our team went out to DC, sat down with him. We rarely do that nowadays. People come to our studio. And he came in, he had had some surgeries recently, and he kind of came in with some assistance from a, you know, a cane, and then sat down, and just, just blew my mind. It, from start to finish, he didn't miss a syllable. And every sentence that he spoke was like a quotable sentence of, with real potency and actionable items. I think one of the things that was most striking to me was how he said, "When we take ourselves out of stimulus and response, and we just force ourselves to spend some time in the quiet of our thoughts while walking or while seated or while lying down," doesn't have to be meditation, but it could be, "that we access our unconscious mind in ways that reveals to us who we really are and what we really want." And that if we do that practice repeatedly, 10 minutes a day here, 15 minutes a day there, that we start to really touch into our unique gifts and the things that make us each us, and the directions we need to take. But that so often, we just stay in stimulus response. We just do, do, do, do, do, which is great. We have to be productive. Um, but we miss those, um, important messages. And interestingly, he also put forward this idea of, what is this? Like, get up, shut up, suit up.

   7. LFLex Fridman23:16

      Yeah.

   8. AHAndrew Huberman23:17

      (laughs) Something like that.

   9. LFLex Fridman23:17

      Mm-hmm.

   10. AHAndrew Huberman23:17

       Like, get out of bed, suit up, and shut up, and get to work.

   11. LFLex Fridman23:21

       Mm-hmm.

   12. AHAndrew Huberman23:21

       He also has that in him, kind of a Goggins type mindset.

   13. LFLex Fridman23:25

       So be able to, to turn off all this self-reflection and self-analysis, and just get shit done.

   14. AHAndrew Huberman23:30

       Get shit done, but then also take dedicated time and stop, and just let stuff geyser to the surface from the unconscious mind. And he quotes Shakespeare, and he quotes Jung, and he quotes everybody through history with, with incredible accuracy. And, um, and, and exactly the way, (laughs) uh, needed to drive home a point. But that conversation to me was one that I really felt like, okay, you know, if I don't wake up tomorrow for whatever reason, that one's in the can, and I feel really great about it. It's a, to me, it's the most important, um, guest recording we've ever done. Um, in particular because he has wisdom, and while I hope he lives to be 204, chances are he's got another, what? 20, 30 years with us, hopefully more. But I really, really wanted to capture that information and get it out there. So I'm very, very proud of that one. Um, uh, and he's the kind of guy that anyone listens to him, young, old, male, female, whatever-And you're gonna get something of value. What do you think about this idea of the shadow? That, uh, the good and the bad that we repress, that hides from plain sight when we analyze ourselves, that's there? Do you think there's, like, an ocean that we, we don't have direct access to? Yes. Yeah. We... Jung said it, we have all things inside of us, and we do, and some people are more in touch with those than others. And some people, it's repressed. I mean, does that mean that we could all be, you know, horrible people or marvelous people, um, benevolent people? Perhaps. I think that, um, thankfully, more often than not, people lean away from the, like, violent and, um, harmful parts of their, their shadow. But I think spending time thinking about, you know, one's shadow, shadows, is super important. How, how, how else are we going to grow? Otherwise, you know, we have these unconscious blind spots of, of denial, or, um, repression, or whatever, you know, the psychiatrists tell us. But yet, it clearly exists within all of us. I mean, we have neural circuits for rage. We all do. We have neural circuits for altruism. Um, and no one's born without these things. In some people, they're atrophied, in some people, they're hypertrophied. But I've... Looking inward and, and recognizing what's there is key. Or positive things like creativity. Maybe that's what Rick Rubin is accessing when he goes silent. Yeah. Silent body, active mind. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. What is it for you? What, what place do you go to that generates ideas, that helps you generate ideas? I have a lot of new practices around this. I mean, I'm alwa- always exploring for protocols. Yeah. I have to. Mm-hmm. It's like in my nature. Um, when, when I went and spent time with Rick, I, I tried to adopt his practice of staying very still and just letting stuff, you know, come to the surface, or the Deisserothian way of formulating complete sentences and m- while being still in the body. What I have found works better is what my good friend Tim Armstrong does to write music. He writes music every day. He's a music producer, he's obviously a singer and guitar player for Rancid. Um, and he's helped dozens and dozens and dozens of female pop artists and punk rock artists write great songs. And many of the famous songs that you've heard from other artists, Tim helped them write. Tim wakes up sometimes in the middle of the night, and what he does is he'll start drawing or painting. So what he's done, and Joni Mitchell talks about this too, you find some creative outlet that's kind of, like, 15 degrees off center from your main creative outlet, and you do that thing. So for me, that's drawing. I like doing anatomical drawings, neuroscience-based drawing, drawing neurons, that kind of thing. And if I do that for a little while, it... My mind starts churning on the, the nervous system and biology, and then I come up with areas I'd like to explore for the podcast, ways I'd like to address certain topics. Right now, I'm very interested in autonomic control. A beautiful paper came out that shows that anyone can learn to control their pupil sizes (laughs) and without changing luminance through a biofeedback mechanism. Um, and that gives them auton- control over their so-called automatic autonomic nervous system. And I've been looking at what the circuitry is, and it's, it's beautiful. So I'll draw the circuitry that we know underlies autonomic function, and as I'm doing that, I'm thinking, "Oh, like, what about autonomic control and those people that supposedly can control their pupil size?" Then you go in and there's a paper published in Nature Press, one of the Nature journals, and there's a recent paper on this. Like, "Oh, cool," and then we talk about this. Mm-hmm. And then how could this be put into a kind of a post, or how could this... You know, so doing things that are about 15 degrees off center from your main thing is a great way to access, I believe, the, the circuits for, in Tim's case, painting goes to songwriting. I think for Joni Mitchell, that was also the case, right? I think it was drawing and painting to singing and songwriting. For Rick, I don't know what it is. Maybe it's listening to podcasts. I don't know. That, that's his business. Do you have anything that you like to focus on that allows you then an easier transition into your main creative work? No, I really like to focus on emptiness and silence. Mm-hmm. So I pick the dragon you have to slay, so whatever the problem I have to work on, and then just sit there and stare at it. (laughs) I love how fucking linear you are. (laughs) And I just... And if there's no... If you're tired, I'll just sit. Mm-hmm. I believe in the, in the power of just waiting. And usually, I'll stop being tired, or their energy rises from somewhere, or an idea pops from somewhere, but there needs to be a silence and an emptiness. It's an empty room, just me and the dragon, and we wait. That's it. Like, if it's a... Usually with programming, you're thinking about a particular design, like, "How do I design this thing to solve this problem?" Mm-hmm. Any cognitive enhancers? I've got a... Quite the gallery in front of me. (laughs) Oh, that's right, yeah. Sh- should we walk through this? Yeah, uh- This is not... This is not a, a sales thing. It's just, um... I tend to do this bounce back and forth. Your refrigerator just happened to have a lot of different choices. (laughs) So, water. This is all my refrigerator has

   15. NANarrator29:57

       (laughs)

   16. AHAndrew Huberman29:57

       I know, right? There's no food in there. There's water. There's LMNT, which they now have canned. Yeah, yeah. And yes, they're a podcast sponsor for both of us, but that's not why I cracked one of these open. I like them provided they're, they're cold. And that's, by the way, my least fla- favorite flavor, as I was saying. That's, that's the reason it's still left in the fridge. The cherry one is really good, though. The black cherry- It's good. There's a orange one. Yeah. I pushed the, um, sled this morning, and pulled the sled from my workout at the gym, and, and it was hot today here in Austin, so. Um, some salt is good. And then Mateina yerba mate, zero sugar. Full confession, I helped develop this. I'm a partial owner, but I love yerba mate. Half Argentine, been drinking...... mate since I was a little kid. There's actually a photo somewhere on the internet when I'm like three, sitting on my grandfather's lap, sipping mate out the gourd. And then this you might find interesting. This is, uh, just a little bit of coffee with a scoop of... Bryan Johnson gave me cocoa, just like pure unsweetened cocoa.

   17. LFLex Fridman30:52

       Mm-hmm.

   18. AHAndrew Huberman30:52

       So I put that in chocolate and I like it.

   19. LFLex Fridman30:54

       Just for the taste?

   20. AHAndrew Huberman30:55

       Well, it actually nukes my appetite. And since I'm... We're not going out to dinner tonight until later, I figure that's good.

6. 31:01 – 34:04

   Supplements

   1. AHAndrew Huberman31:01

      Yeah, Bryan's an interesting one, right? He's really pushing this, this thing.

   2. LFLex Fridman31:04

      The optimization of everything.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman31:05

      Yeah. Although, he just hurt his ankle. He posted a photo that he hurt his ankle so now he's injecting BPC, body protection compound, 157, which many, many people are taking by the way. I did an episode on peptides.

   4. LFLex Fridman31:16

      Mm-hmm.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman31:16

      I should just say, you know, BPC 157, one of the known effects in animal models is angiogenesis, like development of new vasculature, which can be great in some context, but also if you have a tumor, you don't really wanna vascularize (laughs) that tumor anymore. So I worry about people taking BPC 157 continually. But, um... And there's very little human data. I think there's like one study and it's a lousy one. So a lot of animal data. Some of the peptides are interesting, however. There's one that I've experimented with a little bit called pinealin, which, um, I find... Even if I've just taken it twice a week before sleep, then it times... It seems to do something to the circadian timekeeping mechanism because then on other days when I don't take it, I get unbelievably tired at that time that normally I would do the injection. These are things that I'll experiment with for a couple of weeks and then typically stop, maybe try something else. But I stay out of, um, things that really stimulate any of like, uh, major hormone pathways, um, when it comes to peptides.

   6. LFLex Fridman32:18

      That's actually a really good question of, how do you experiment? Like, how long do you try a thing to figure out if it works for you?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman32:24

      Well, I'm very sensitive to these things, so I... And I have been doing a lot of things for a long time, so if I add something in, it's always one thing at a time. And I notice right away if it does not make me feel good. Like, there's a lot of excitement about some of the so-called growth hormone secretagogues, ipamorelin, tesamorelin, sermorelin. Um, I've experimented a little bit with those in the past and they nuked my rapid eye movement sleep by giving me a lot of deep sleep, which doesn't feel good to me, but other people like them. I also just g- generally try and avoid taking peptides that tap into these hormone pathways because you can run into all sorts of issues, but some people take them safely. But usually after about four, five days, I know if I like something or I don't, and then I move on. But I am not super adventurous with these things. I know people that will take cocktails of peptides with multiple things, they'll try anything. That's not me, and I do blood work. Um, but also I'm, you know... I'm mainly reading papers and podcasting, and, um, I'm teaching a course next spring at Stanford, I'm gonna do a big undergraduate course. Um, so I'm trying to develop that course and things like that. So, um, I don't need to lift more weight or run further than I already do, which is not that much weight or- or far as it is.

   8. LFLex Fridman33:40

      Right, you're not going to the Olympics, you're not trying to-

   9. AHAndrew Huberman33:42

      No.

   10. LFLex Fridman33:42

       ... truly maximize-

   11. AHAndrew Huberman33:44

       No.

   12. LFLex Fridman33:44

       ... some aspect of your performance.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman33:45

       No, and I'm not... And I'm not trying to get down below whatever, you know, 7% body fat or something. I don't- I don't have those kinds of goals. So hydration, electrolytes, caffeine in the form of mate, and then this coffee thing. And then- and then here's, uh, one that I think I brought out for discussion. This is a piece of Nicorette. They're not a sponsor. Um,

7. 34:04 – 38:27

   Nicotine

   1. AHAndrew Huberman34:04

      nicotine is an interesting compound. It will raise blood pressure, and it, um, is probably not safe for everybody. But, you know, the... Nicotine is gaining in popularity like crazy, mainly these, um, pouches that people put in their lip. Not... We're not talking about, um, smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing. You know, my interest in nicotine started... This was in 2010. I was visiting Columbia Medical School, and I was in the office of the great neurobiologist Richard Axel, won the Nobel Prize, co-recipient with Linda Buck for the, um, discovery of the molecular basis of olfaction. Brilliant guy. He's probably in his late 70s now. Probably, yeah. And he kept popping Nicorette in his mouth.

   2. LFLex Fridman34:47

      Mm-hmm.

   3. AHAndrew Huberman34:48

      And I was like, "What's this about?" And he said, "Oh, well..." This was just anecdote, right? But he said... But he said this, he said, "Oh, you know, it protects against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's." I said, "It does?" And he goes, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." I don't know if he was kidding or not, he's known for making jokes. And then he said that when he used to smoke, it really helped his focus and creativity, but then he quit smoking 'cause he didn't want lung cancer, and he found that he couldn't focus as well, so he would choose Nicorette. So occasionally, like right now, we'll each... I do a half a piece. But I'm not Russian, so I'm a little... You know.

   4. LFLex Fridman35:16

      (laughs)

   5. AHAndrew Huberman35:16

      Yeah. Did you just pop the whole thing in your mouth?

   6. LFLex Fridman35:18

      Mm-hmm.

   7. AHAndrew Huberman35:18

      So I'll do a couple milligrams every now and again. And it definitely sharpens the mind on an empty stomach, in particular, but you fast all day. You're still doing one meal a day?

   8. LFLex Fridman35:27

      One meal a day.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman35:28

      Yeah.

   10. LFLex Fridman35:28

       Yeah, I did a nicotine pouch with Rogan at dinner.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman35:32

       Oh, I-

   12. LFLex Fridman35:32

       And I got high.

   13. AHAndrew Huberman35:33

       Yeah, that's a lot. That's like usually six or eight milligrams. I know people that get a canister of Zyn, take one a day. Pretty soon they're taking a canister a day, so you have to be very careful. I will only allow myself two pieces of Nicorette total per week. And you will notice that, you know, in the day after you use it, you know, sometimes your- your throat will feel a little bit like- like a little spasmy, like you might wanna cough once or twice.

   14. LFLex Fridman36:00

       Mm-hmm.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman36:01

       And so, you know, if you're a singer, you're a podcaster or something, you have to do long podcasts, you want to just be mindful of it. But yeah, you're supposed to kind of like keep it in your cheek and... Now here we go.

   16. LFLex Fridman36:10

       But it did make me intensely focused-

   17. AHAndrew Huberman36:13

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LFLex Fridman36:14

       ... in a way that was a little bit scary 'cause, um...

   19. AHAndrew Huberman36:16

       The nucleus basalis is in the... You know, in basal forebrain. Nucleus has cholinergic neurons that radiate out axons, little wires that release acetylcholine into the neocortex and elsewhere. And when you focus on one particular topic matter or one particular area of your visual field or listening to something and focusing visually-We know that there's a- an elaboration of the amount of acetylcholine released there, and it binds to nicotinic acetylcholine receptor sites there. So it's a kind of an intentional modulation, um, by a- acetylcholine. So you're getting a, with nicotine, you're getting a exogenous or artificial heightening of that circuitry.

   20. LFLex Fridman36:58

       And, uh, the time I had Tucker Carlson on the podcast, he told me that apparently it, uh, helps him, as he said publicly, uh, keep his, um, love life vibrant.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman37:10

       Really? It causes vasoconstriction.

   22. LFLex Fridman37:12

       Well, he literally said it makes his dick really hard. He said that publicly also.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman37:16

       Okay, well, as little as I want to think about Tucker Carlson's-

   24. LFLex Fridman37:19

       Trust me...

   25. AHAndrew Huberman37:20

       ... um, sex life, um-

   26. LFLex Fridman37:21

       (laughs)

   27. AHAndrew Huberman37:21

       No disrespect. Uh, the major effect of nicotine on the vasculature, my understanding is that it causes vasoconstriction, not vasodilation. Drugs like Cialis, tadalafil, Viagra, et cetera are vasodilators. They allow more blood flow. Um, i- uh, nicotine does the opposite, less blood flow to the periphery, but provided dosages are kept low, and I- I don't recommend people use it frequently or at all. And I don't recommend young people use it, you know, um, you know, 25 and younger. Brain's very plastic at that time. And, um, and certainly smoking, dipping, vaping, and snuffing aren't good because you're gonna run into- you'll run into trouble, uh, for other reasons. But in any case, um, well, and even there, vaping is a controversial topic. Sa- probably safer than smoking but has its own issues, and I said something like that, (laughs) and boy, did I catch a lot of heat for that. You can't say anything as a health science educator and not piss somebody off. You know, it just depends on where the- the center of mass is and how far outside that you are.

8. 38:27 – 40:14

   Caffeine

   1. AHAndrew Huberman38:27

   2. LFLex Fridman38:27

      For me, the caffeine is the main thing, and actually it's- it's a really big part of my life. And one of the things you recommend, that people wait a bit in the morning-

   3. AHAndrew Huberman38:37

      Oh yeah.

   4. LFLex Fridman38:37

      ... to consume caffeine.

   5. AHAndrew Huberman38:39

      If they experience a crash in the afternoon. That, this is one of the misconceptions I, um, I regret (laughs) maybe even discussing it. For people that crash in the afternoon, oftentimes if they delay their caffeine by 60 and 90 minutes in the morning, they will offset some of that. But if you eat a lunch that's too big or you didn't sleep well the night before, you're not gonna avoid that afternoon crash. But I'll wake up sometimes and go straight to hydration caffeine, especially if I'm gonna work out. Here's a weird one. If I exercise before 8:30 AM, especially if I start exercising when I'm a little bit tired, I get energy that lasts all day. If I wait until my peak of energy, which is mid-morning, 10:00 AM, 11:00 AM, and I start exercising then, I'm basically exhausted all afternoon. And I don't understand why. I mean, it depends on the intensity of the workout. But so I like to be done, showered, and heading into work by 9:00 AM, but I don't always meet that mark.

   6. LFLex Fridman39:41

      So you're saying it doesn't affect your energy if you start out with exercising?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman39:45

      I think you can get energy and wake yourself up with exercise if you start early, and it- and then that fuels you all day long. I think that if you wait until you're feeling at your best-

   8. LFLex Fridman39:54

      Mm-hmm.

   9. AHAndrew Huberman39:56

      ... to train, sometimes that's detrimental because then in the afternoon when you're doing, like, the work we get paid for, like research podcasting, et cetera, then oftentimes, you know, your- your brain isn't firing as well.

   10. LFLex Fridman40:08

       That's interesting. I haven't really rigorously tried that, wake up and just start running or lifting.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman40:13

       This is the Jocko thing.

9. 40:14 – 57:16

   Math gaffe

   1. AHAndrew Huberman40:14

      And then there's this phenomenon called entrainment, where if you force yourself to exercise or eat or socialize or view bright light at a certain time of day for three to seven days in a row, pretty soon there's an anticipatory circuit that gets generated. This is why anyone, in theory, can become a morning person to some degree or another. And this is also a beautiful example of why you wake up before your alarm clock goes off. You know, people wake up and all of a sudden it goes off. It wasn't 'cause it clicked. It's because you have this in- incredible timekeeping mechanism that exists in sleep. And there's some papers that have been published in the last couple of years, Nature Neuroscience and elsewhere, showing that people can answer math problems in their sleep. Simple math problems, but math problems nonetheless.

   2. LFLex Fridman41:00

      (laughs)

   3. AHAndrew Huberman41:01

      (laughs) This does not mean that if you ask your partner a question in sleep that they're gonna re- answer accurately.

   4. LFLex Fridman41:06

      Like, they might screw up the whole, um, uh, cumulative probability of 20%-

   5. AHAndrew Huberman41:12

      (laughs)

   6. LFLex Fridman41:12

      ... across multiple months?

   7. AHAndrew Huberman41:13

      All right, listen.

   8. LFLex Fridman41:14

      What happened?

   9. AHAndrew Huberman41:15

      What happened? Here's the deal. A few years back, I did a four-and-a-half-hour, after editing, four-and-a-half-hour episode on male and female fertility.

   10. LFLex Fridman41:23

       Mm-hmm.

   11. AHAndrew Huberman41:24

       Um, the entire recording took 11 hours, and at one point during the... And- and by the way, I'm very proud of that episode. There's, many couples have written to me and said they now have children as a consequence of that episode. And my first question is, "What were you doing during the episode?"

   12. LFLex Fridman41:41

       (laughs)

   13. AHAndrew Huberman41:42

       But in all seriousness, um...

   14. LFLex Fridman41:43

       We should say that it's four-and-a-half hours.

   15. AHAndrew Huberman41:46

       Yeah.

   16. LFLex Fridman41:47

       And for people, and they should listen to the episode. You're, it's extremely technical episode.

   17. AHAndrew Huberman41:53

       Yeah.

   18. LFLex Fridman41:53

       Like, you're non-stop dropping facts and- and referencing huge number of papers. It's, must be exhausting. I don't understand how you can possibly ............................

   19. AHAndrew Huberman42:00

       It talks about sperm health, spermatogenesis. It talks about the ovulatory cycle. It talks about things people can do that are- that are considered absolutely supported by science. It talks about some of the things kind of out on the edge a little bit that are a little bit more experimental. It talks about IVF, it talks about ICSI, it talks about, um, all of that. It talks about frequency of pregnancy as a function of age, et cetera. Um, but there's this one portion there in the podcast where I'm talking about the, uh, probability of a successful pregnancy as a function of age. And (laughs) so there was a clip that was cut in which I was describing cumulative probability...And by the way, we've published cumulative probability histograms in many of my laboratory's papers, including one that was a Nature article in 2018. So, we run these all the time. And yes, I know the difference between independent and cumulative probability. (laughs) Okay? That's like, I do. Um, the way the clip was cut, and what I stated unfortunately combined to a, like a pretty great gaffe.

   20. LFLex Fridman43:03

       Mm-hmm.

   21. AHAndrew Huberman43:03

       Where I say, "You're just adding percen-..." I said, "You're just adding percentages, 20, I mean, 20 to 120%." And then I made a kind of m- unfortunately, my humor isn't always so good, and I made a joke. I said, um, "120%, but that's a different thing altogether."

   22. LFLex Fridman43:18

       Mm-hmm.

   23. AHAndrew Huberman43:18

       What I should've said was, um, "That's impossible."

   24. LFLex Fridman43:23

       (laughs) .

   25. AHAndrew Huberman43:23

       You know? And, "Here, here's how it actually works." But then the, the, it continues where I then describe the cumulative probability histogram, uh, for, um, successful pregnancy. But somewhere in the early portion, I, I misstated something, right? I made a math error, um, which implied I didn't understand the difference between independent and cumulative probability.

   26. LFLex Fridman43:43

       Mm-hmm.

   27. AHAndrew Huberman43:43

       Which I do. And it got picked up and, and run, and people had a really good laugh with that one, at my expense. And so what I did in response to it was, rather than just say everything I just said now, I said, I just came out online and said, "Hey, folks. In an episode dated this on fertility, I made a math error. Here is the formula for cumulative probability of a successful pregnancy at that age. Here's the graph, here's the..." You know? And, and I- I offered it as a teaching moment-

   28. LFLex Fridman44:14

       Mm-hmm.

   29. AHAndrew Huberman44:14

       ... in two ways. One, for people to understand cumulative probability. It was sort of interesting, too, a number of people had come out critiquing the gaffe. Also, um, like, Balaji and folks came out pointing out that they didn't understand cumulative probability. (laughs)

   30. LFLex Fridman44:26

       (laughs)
10. 57:16 – 1:04:13

    2024 presidential elections

    1. AHAndrew Huberman57:16

       like, you know, polarization is, it's so frustrating. If there's one thing that's discouraging to me as, as I get older each year, I'm like, "Wow, are we ever gonna get out of this, like, polarization?" Speaking of which, how are you gonna vote for the presidential election? (laughs)

    2. LFLex Fridman57:33

       Uh, I'm, I'm still trying to figure out how to interview the people involved and do it well.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman57:37

       What do you think the role of podcasts is gonna be in this year's election?

    4. LFLex Fridman57:42

       I would love, uh, long form conversations to happen with the, um, with the candidates. I think it's gonna be huge. I would love Trump to go on Rogan. I would... (sighs) I'm embarrassed to say this, but I would love to, honestly would love to see Joe Biden go on Joe Rogan also.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman58:00

       I would imagine that both would go on, but separately.

    6. LFLex Fridman58:03

       Separately, I think is...

    7. AHAndrew Huberman58:04

       Yeah.

    8. LFLex Fridman58:04

       I think a debate, I mean, Joe does debates, but I think Joe at his best is one-on-one conversation, really intimate. Um, I, (sighs) I just wish that Joe Biden would actually do long form conversations.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman58:17

       I thought he had done a... Wasn't he... I think it was on, uh, Jay Shetty's podcast.

    10. LFLex Fridman58:21

        He did Jay Shetty. He did, he did a few, but when I mean long form, I mean, um, really long form, like two, three hours and more relaxed. It was much more orchestrated. Because what happens when it's, the interview's a little bit too short, it becomes into this generic, uh, political type of, uh, NBC, CNN type of interview. You get a s- set of questions, and you don't get to really feel the human, expose the human to the light in it, the full, we talked about the shadow, the good, the bad, and the ugly. So, I think there's something magical about two, three, four hours.

    11. AHAndrew Huberman58:56

        Mm-hmm.

    12. LFLex Fridman58:58

        But it doesn't have to be that long, but it has to have that feeling to it, where there's not people standing around and everybody's nervous. And you're going to be, uh, strictly sticking to the question-answer type of feel, but just shooting shit, which Rogan is the best by far in the world at that.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman59:16

        Yeah, he's... I, I don't think people really appreciate how skilled he is at what he does. And the number, I mean, the three or four podcasts per week, press- plus the UFC announcing, plus comedy tours and stadiums, plus, um, you know, doing comedy shows in the, the middle of the week, plus, you know, husband and a father and a friend and jujitsu. The guy's got, I think, superhuman levels of output. I, I agree that long form conversation is a whole other business, and I think that people want and deserve to know the people that are, uh, running for office at a, in a different way and to really get to know them. Um, well, listen. You know, I, I guess you c-... I mean, is it clear that he's gonna do jail time or maybe he gets away with a fine?

    14. LFLex Fridman1:00:07

        No, I don't think... I'm... Part of this-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:08

        'Cause I was gonna say, I mean, does that mean you're gonna be podcasting from-

    16. LFLex Fridman1:00:11

        In prison, yeah.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:12

        ... from the jail?

    18. LFLex Fridman1:00:12

        We're going to... In fact, I'm going to figure out how to commit a crime so I can get in prison with him.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:18

        Please don't. Please don't.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:00:19

        Well, that's...

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:19

        Yeah.

    22. LFLex Fridman1:00:19

        I'm sure they have visitors, right?

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:22

        That just doesn't feel an authentic way to get the interview, but yeah, I understand. (laughs) You wouldn't be able to wear that suit. You'd be wearing a different suit.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:00:29

        That's true.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:30

        Yeah.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:00:31

        It's true.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:00:31

        Um, it's gonna be interesting and, and you do... uh, I'm not just saying this 'cause you're my friend, but you would do a marvelous job. I think you should sit down with all of them separately (laughs) to keep it civil and, um, and see what, what happens.Here's one thing that I found really interesting in this whole political landscape. When I'm in Los Angeles, I often get invited to these, like, they're not dinners, but gatherings where, you know, a local, um, you know, bunch of podcasters will come together, but a lot of people from the entertainment industry, big agencies, big tech, like, big, big tech. Many of the people who've been on this podcast. And they'll host a discussion or a debate. And what you find, if you look around the room and you talk to people, is that about half the people in the room are very left-leaning and very outspoken about that. And they'll tell you exactly who they want to see in the, uh, win the presidential race. And the other half will tell you that they're for the other side. A lot of people that people assume are on one side of the aisle or the other are on the exact opposite side. Now, some people are very open about who th- who they're for, but it's been very interesting to see how, um, when you get people one-on-one, they're like telling you they want X candidate to win, or Y candidate to win. And sometimes I'm like, "Really? I can't believe it." Like, "You?"

    28. LFLex Fridman1:01:52

        Mm-hmm.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:01:52

        They're like, "Yep." And so it's what people think about, um, people's political leanings is often exactly wrong. And, and that's been eye-opening for me. And I've seen that, um, in university campuses, too. And, and so it's, it's gonna be really, really interesting to see what happens in, in November.

    30. LFLex Fridman1:02:13

        In addition to that, as you said, most people are close to the center, despite what Twitter makes it seem like. Most people, whether they're center-left or center-right, they're kind of close to the center.
11. 1:04:13 – 1:12:58

    Great white sharks

    1. LFLex Fridman1:04:13

    2. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:13

       I realize everything we bring up on the screen is, like, really depressing, like the soccer player getting killed.

    3. LFLex Fridman1:04:20

       (laughs)

    4. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:21

       Can we bring up something happy?

    5. LFLex Fridman1:04:23

       Uh, sure. Let's go to, uh, Nature As Metal Instagram.

    6. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:26

       Those are pretty intense.

    7. LFLex Fridman1:04:28

       (laughs)

    8. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:28

       We actually did a collaborative post on a, on a shark thing.

    9. LFLex Fridman1:04:31

       Really?

    10. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:32

        Yeah.

    11. LFLex Fridman1:04:32

        What kind of shark thing?

    12. AHAndrew Huberman1:04:33

        So, to generate the fear VR stimulus for my lab in 20... Was it... Yeah, 2016. We went down to Guadalupe Island off the coast of Mexico, me and a guy named Michael Muller, who's a very famous, um, portrait photographer, but also takes photos of sharks. And we used 360 video to build VR of great white sharks. Brought it back to the lab, we published that study in Current Biology. In 2017, went back down there, um, and that was the year that I exited the cage. They lower the cage with a crane, and that year, I exited the cage. I had a whole mess with, uh, air failure the day before. I was breathing from a hookah line while in the cage. I had no scuba on, divers were out. The thing got boa constricted up and I had an air failure, and I had to actually share air and it was a whole mess. Story for another time. But the next day, because I didn't want to get PTSD, and it was pretty scary, the next day I cage exited, um, with some other divers. And, and it turns out with these great white sharks, i- in Guadalupe, the, the water's very clear and you can swim toward them and then they'll, they'll veer off you if you swim toward them. Otherwise, they see you as prey. Well, in the evening, you've brought all the cages up and you're, uh, hopefully all alive, and we were hanging out fishing for tuna. Uh, we had a, uh, one of the, the crew on board had, um, a l- a line in the water and was fishing for tuna for dinner, and a shark took the tuna off the line.

    13. LFLex Fridman1:06:04

        Mm-hmm.

    14. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:05

        And it's a, it's a very dramatic take, and you can see the, the just absolute size of these great white sharks. The, the waters there are filled with them. That's the one. Oh, but, uh, so this video-

    15. LFLex Fridman1:06:16

        Yeah.

    16. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:16

        ... just the Neuralink link, was shot by Matt MacDougall, who is the, um, head neurosurgeon at Neuralink. There it is. It takes the... Now, believe it or not, it looks like it missed, like it didn't get the fish. It actually just cut that thing like a band saw. So I'm up on the deck with Matt.

    17. LFLex Fridman1:06:32

        Oh my God.

    18. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:32

        Yeah. And so when you look at it from the side, you, you really get a sense of this... of the, the girth of this friggin' thing. So as it comes up, if you pa-

    19. LFLex Fridman1:06:43

        Look at that.

    20. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:43

        Look at the size of that thing.

    21. LFLex Fridman1:06:44

        It's crushing power.

    22. AHAndrew Huberman1:06:44

        And they move through the water with such speed. Just a couple... Y- so when you're in the cage and the cage is lowered down below the surface-... they're going around. You're not allowed to chum the water there. Some people do it. Um, but, and then, when you cage exit, they're like, "Well, what are you doing out here?" And then, you know, they, you swim toward them, they veer off. But what's interesting is that if you look at how they move through the water-

    23. LFLex Fridman1:07:07

        Mm-hmm.

    24. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:07

        ... all it takes for one of these great white sharks, when it sees a tuna or something it wants to eat, is like two flicks of the tail. (whooshing sounds) And (whoosh) becomes like a missile.

    25. LFLex Fridman1:07:16

        Mm-hmm.

    26. AHAndrew Huberman1:07:16

        It's just unbelievable economy of effort. And Ocean Ramsey, who is, in my opinion, the greatest of all cage exit shark divers, this woman who dove with enormous great white sharks, she really understands their behavior, when they're aggressive, when they're not gonna be aggressive. She and her husband, Juan, I believe his name is, do, they understand how the tiger sharks differ from the great white sharks. We were down there basically, like not understanding any of this. We never should have been there. And actually, the air failure the day before, plus cage exiting the next day, I told myself after coming up from the cage exit, "That's it. I'm no longer taking risks with my life. I want to live." Got back across the border, um, a couple days later, and I was like, "That's it. I- I don't take risks with my life any longer." But yeah, McDougal, Matt McDougal shot that video, and then it went, quote unquote, "viral" through, uh, Nature Is Metal. We passed them that video.

    27. LFLex Fridman1:08:07

        I actually, uh, I saw a video where an instructor was explaining how to behave with a shark in the water, and that you don't wanna be swimming away because then you're acting like a prey.

    28. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:18

        That's right.

    29. LFLex Fridman1:08:18

        And then you wanna be acting like a predator by looking at it and swimming towards it.

    30. AHAndrew Huberman1:08:22

        Swim right towards them, and they'll bank off.
12. 1:12:58 – 1:27:59

    Ayahuasca & psychedelics

    1. AHAndrew Huberman1:12:58

       It's like, maybe this is actually a good time to bring up, um, your ayahuasca journey. I've never done ayahuasca, um, but I'm curious about it. I'm also curious about ibogaine, iboga, um. But you told me that you did ayahuasca, and that for you, it wasn't the dark scary ride that it is for everybody else.

    2. LFLex Fridman1:13:19

       Yeah, it was an incredible experience for me. Uh, I did it twice actually.

    3. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:22

       And have you done high dose psilocybin?

    4. LFLex Fridman1:13:24

       Never, no.

    5. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:25

       Yeah.

    6. LFLex Fridman1:13:25

       I just did-

    7. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:26

       Yeah.

    8. LFLex Fridman1:13:26

       ... small dose psilocybin a couple of times.

    9. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:28

       Yeah.

    10. LFLex Fridman1:13:28

        So I was, you know, nervous about it. I was very-

    11. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:31

        Yeah, understandably so.

    12. LFLex Fridman1:13:32

        ... scared.

    13. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:32

        I've done high dose psilocybin, it's terrifying, but I've always gotten something very useful out of it.

    14. LFLex Fridman1:13:37

        So I mean, I was nervous about, like, whatever demons might hide in the shadow, in the Jungian shadow. Like, I was, I was nervous. But, yeah, I think it turns out... I don't know what the lesson is to draw from that, but my experience was-

    15. AHAndrew Huberman1:13:50

        Be born Russian.

    16. LFLex Fridman1:13:52

        It must, must be the Russian thing. I mean, there's also something to the jungle. There... It strips away all the bullshit of life, and you're just there. I, I forgot the outside civilization exists, I forgot time because, like, when you don't have your phone, you don't have meetings, or calls, or whatever, you, you lose a sense of time. The sun comes up, and the sun comes down.

    17. AHAndrew Huberman1:14:14

        That's the, the fundamental biological timer. You know, every mammalian species has a short wavelength, so you think, like, blue UV type, but, like, absorbing cone, and a longer wavelength absorbing cone. And the... And it does this interesting subtraction to designate when it's morning and evening, because when the sun is low in the sky, you've got short wavelength and long wavelength light. Like, when you look at a sunrise, it's got blues and yellows, orange and yellows. You look in the evening, reds, orange, and, and blues. And in the middle of the day, it's, uh, like full spectrum light. Now, it's always full spectrum light, but because of some atmospheric elements, and because of the low solar angle, you... Like, that, that difference between the, the different wavelengths of light is, is the fundamental signal that the neurons in your eye pay attention to, and, and signal to your circadian timekeeping mechanism. Like, we are... At the core of our brain, in the suprachiasmatic nucleus, we are, we are, like, wired to be entrained to the rising and setting of the sun.

    18. LFLex Fridman1:15:10

        Mm-hmm.

    19. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:10

        Like, that's the biological timer, which makes perfect sense because, you know, obviously as the planets, um, as the planets spin and revolve.

    20. LFLex Fridman1:15:18

        I also wonder, like, how that is affected by the... You know, in the rainforest, the sun is not visible often, so you're under the cover of, of the trees.

    21. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:27

        Right.

    22. LFLex Fridman1:15:27

        So maybe that affects (overlapping)

    23. AHAndrew Huberman1:15:28

        Well, there are social rhythms, there are feeding rhythms. Sometimes in, in terms of some species will signal the timing of activity of other species, and, um, but yeah, getting out from the canopy is, is critical. Of course, even under the canopy during the daytime, there's far more photons than at night. You know, this is always what I'm telling people to get sunlight in their eyes in the morning and in the evening. People say, "There's no light, no sunlight this time of year." Like, it... Go outside on a really overcast day, it's far brighter than it is at night, right? So, um, there's still lots of sunlight even if you can't see the sun as an object. But I, I love, um, time perception shifts, and you mentioned that in the jungle, it's linked to the rising and setting of the sun. You also mentioned that on ayahuasca, you zoomed out from, from the earth.

    24. LFLex Fridman1:16:13

        Mm-hmm.

    25. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:13

        These are like, to me, the most interesting aspects of having a human brain as opposed to another brain.

    26. LFLex Fridman1:16:18

        Mm-hmm.

    27. AHAndrew Huberman1:16:19

        Of course, I've only ever had a human brain, but which is that you can consciously set your t- uh, time domain window. Like, you can... We can be focused here, or we can be focused on all of Austin, or we could be focused on the entire planet. You can make those choices consciously, but in the time domain, it's, it's hard. Like, different activities bring us into fine slicing or more, or more broad binning of time, depending on what we're doing, programming, or exercising, or researching, or podcasting. But, um, just how unbelievably, um, fluid the human brain is in terms of its... Uh, the aperture of, of the time-space window of our cognition and of our experience. And I, I feel like this is perhaps one of the more valuable tools that we have access to that we don't really leverage as much as we should, which is when things are really hard, you need to zoom out and see it as one element within your whole lifespan, and that there's more to come. Um, you know, I mean, people commit suicide because they can't see beyond the time domain they're in, or they think it's gonna go on forever. Um, when we're happy, we, we rarely think this is gonna last forever, but, uh... Which is an interesting contrast in its own right. But I think that psychedelics, while I have very little experience with them, I h- I have some, and, and it sounds like they're just a very interesting window into the, the different apertures.

    28. LFLex Fridman1:17:43

        Well, how to surf that wave is probably a skill. Uh, one of the things I was prepared for, and I think this is important, is not to resist.

    29. AHAndrew Huberman1:17:51

        Mm-hmm.

    30. LFLex Fridman1:17:52

        I think... I understand what it means to resist a thing, a powerful wave, and it's not going to be good, so you have to be able to surf it, so I was ready for that, to relax through it. And maybe because I'm quite good at that from knowing how to relax in all kinds of disciplines, p- uh, playing piano and, uh, guitar when I was super young, and then through jujitsu, knowing the value of relaxation, and through all kinds of sports, just to be able to relax the body fully and just accept whatever happens to you. That process is probably why it was a very positive experience for me.

Episode duration: 1:47:18