Copy of Human Intelligence is Declining at a RAPID Rate... | DSH #2030

Summary

Podcast Summary: Digital Social Hour — Copy of Human Intelligence is Declining at a RAPID Rate... | DSH #2030

Date: June 23, 2026
Host: Sean Kelly
Guest: Dr. Dave Rabin (Apollo Neuroscience)
Setting: Asprey’s Conference

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1. Episode Overview

This episode dives into the alarming trend of declining human intelligence, driven by technological overstimulation, stress, and changes in the way we learn and process information. Dr. Dave Rabin, a board-certified psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and co-founder of Apollo Neuro, dissects the mental health crisis, the biological and psychological impact of constant connectivity, the consequences for Generation Z, and new approaches to both healing trauma and optimizing human performance. The discussion is candid, scientifically grounded, and touches on topics like stress, supplement absorption, sleep, heart rate variability, educational decline, attention economy, generational trauma, and the promise of psychedelic therapy.

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2. Key Discussion Points and Insights

A. The Nervous System Overload & Modern Stress

• Technology & Overstimulation: Modern people, especially Gen Z, are bombarded by more sensory and informational input in half an hour of smartphone use than people in the 1950s received in a week ([03:45], [07:06], [29:07]).

• Chronic Stress: This constant input overstimulates and stresses the nervous system, leading to long-term health issues and poor supplement absorption.

  "Our nervous system is getting more signals in the first 30 minutes of the day when you wake up and look at your phone than it was getting in a week in the 1950s."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [07:06]

• Supplement Absorption & Stress: Most people are not aware that taking supplements (or even food) while in a stressed state dramatically decreases absorption because the body’s stress response deprioritizes gut activity ([05:10]).

  "Most people don’t realize they’re peeing and shitting out most of their supplements most of the time because they’re stressed when they’re taking them."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [05:10]

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B. The Apollo Neuro Approach

• Passive Recovery: Apollo Neuro’s wearable technology delivers soothing vibrations that activate the vagus nerve, increasing heart rate variability (HRV), improving sleep quality, and supporting the recovery state without user effort ([10:00]).

  "We are the first wearable technology that is fully closed loop... we intake data from the Apollo itself and from Oura ring, and we actually make use of that data automatically."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [11:12]

• Impact on Sleep: Apollo Neuro significantly improves total sleep and REM sleep, comparable to pharmaceutical solutions but without side effects ([11:12], [12:13]).

  "Using Apollo for as little as three hours a night... increases your total sleep time by on average 46 minutes per night in as little as one night. That's comparable to Ambien."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [12:13]

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C. Human Intelligence Decline & Gen Z

• First Generation in Regression: Gen Z is the first cohort in recorded history to score lower on standardized cognition, math, and reasoning tests than the prior generation. The culprit: early and constant exposure to smartphones and learning through screens ([31:53], [36:21]).

  "Gen Z is the first generation in human recorded history that has scored lower on the standardized cognitive measures... that's a real objective, empirical sign that we are a society in regression."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [36:21]

• Classroom Dynamics: Human-to-human teaching provides a safety signal to the brain, fostering learning; screens increase stress and reduce retention and deep understanding ([34:01]-[36:21]).

• Attention Crisis: The ability to sustain attention is decreasing; students and adults are losing the skill of focus because of the distractibility of digital environments. Attention is trainable, but little is being done to strengthen it in education ([41:00], [42:46]).

  "Attention is a muscle... Every time we notice where our attention has wandered and redirect it back to our goal, that’s a rep—like a bicep curl."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [43:28]

  "Our attention span is now like 6 to 12 seconds before it wanders."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [45:07]

• Systemic Consequences: Changing the structure of standardized testing to accommodate declining attention and reasoning, rather than addressing root causes, is called out as a societal failing ([41:13]-[42:08]).

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D. Physiology of Stress, Recovery & Performance

• HRV as a Biomarker: Heart rate variability predicts health, adaptability, and recovery. Higher HRV correlates with resilience and longevity; low HRV suggests greater disease risk and poorer recovery ([19:17]-[21:54]).

• Vagus Nerve Activity: The vagus nerve plays a central role in switching between stress and recovery. Training vagus nerve response—through breathing, touch, or Apollo device—modulates this balance ([19:17], [23:19]).

• Overtraining the "Yang": The constant push for production (Yang) without enough recovery (Yin) leads to burnout and poor health ([08:16]).

---

E. Generational Trauma & Psychedelics

• Epigenetic Inheritance: Trauma, whether mental or physical (like famine), modifies the “epigenetic code” and is passed down through generations—explaining why people today carry ancestral stress or metabolic patterns ([48:09]).

  "Trauma passes down through the epigenetic code for three or more generations in humans. In animals, we’ve seen it passed down for up to 14 generations."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [48:09]

• Psychedelics for Healing: Groundbreaking research with MDMA-assisted therapy shows that even epigenetic trauma can be reversed, not merely on a symptom level but at the gene expression level ([52:45]).

  "Within just 12 weeks, we see statistically significant remodeling of the epigenetic changes on the cortisol receptor to look more like pre-traumatized state."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [52:45]

• Impact: Healing trauma in one generation can break the cycle of inherited distress.

  "When you heal yourself and we heal our own trauma in our generation, we can actually shift the likelihood of passing those trauma changes on to the next generation. We stop the cycle."
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [54:29]

---

F. Policy, Education, and Hope

• Global Response: Australia is now leading in implementing psychedelic therapies, with hundreds of therapists trained, while the US lags due to regulatory barriers ([55:15]-[56:40]).
• Call to Action: Integrate proven neuroscience into schools, prioritize human-to-human learning, consciously train attention, and use technology to support—not erode—mental and physical health ([42:08], [44:57]).

---

3. Memorable Quotes

• On the impact of smartphones:
  “Post-smartphones it's probably closer to all of us [living in a fear state]... We’re never totally disconnected from work or other people anymore.”
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [29:02]

• On technology’s unintended consequences:
  “We created [Apollo] to create technology that heals humanity, because most of our technology unfortunately makes us sicker.”
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [57:34]

• On generational learning decline:
  "We need to fix that. That is a major problem. We are a society in regression.”
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [37:09]

• On healing and recovery:
  “You choosing is your exercising free will and your attention muscle.”
  — Dr. Dave Rabin [47:53]

---

4. Important Timestamps

• 03:45 / 07:06 / 29:07 — The nervous system is overloaded by modern technology, especially in the first moments after waking up.
• 05:10 - 06:46 — Stress dramatically impairs nutrient and supplement absorption.
• 10:00 - 12:43 — How Apollo Neuro’s wearable, in coordination with Oura Ring data, optimizes sleep and recovery.
• 19:17 - 23:01 — The predictive power of HRV, the importance of vagus nerve activity, and Apollo’s passive benefits.
• 31:53 / 36:21 — Gen Z’s cognitive regression and the connection to screen learning.
• 41:00 / 42:46 - 44:18 — The attention economy and urgent need to retrain focus as a “muscle.”
• 48:09 / 52:45 / 54:29 — Intergenerational trauma, epigenetics, and how psychedelic therapy can repair trauma memories on a genetic level.

---

5. Actionable Advice & Solutions

• Rethink Digital Habits: Limit passive screen time, use technology mindfully, and add routines for stress decompression (meditation, soothing music, Apollo device).
• Prioritize Human Interaction in Learning: Encourage traditional, mentor-based teaching and limit digital interfaces, especially for young learners.
• Attention Training: Treat focus like a muscle—practice sustained attention, notice distraction, and willfully redirect attention.
• Use Technology for Healing: Explore wearables/apps designed for nervous system regulation rather than endless stimulation.
• Monitor HRV & Recovery: Use recovery biometrics (like HRV) to guide behavior and optimize health, rather than only tracking activity/output.
• Advocate for Better Policies: Support science-based policy on education and mental health interventions, including safe, supervised psychedelic therapy.

---

6. Where to Find Dr. Dave Rabin and Apollo Neuro

• Personal site: [Apollo Clinic]
• Socials: DrDave IO / @rdavidrabin
• Book: ASimpleGuideToBeingAlive.com
• Apollo product: ApolloNeuro.com
• Free iPhone App: Search “Apollo Neuro” in the App Store; delivers passive vagus nerve activation via haptic vibration patterns.

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“So Apollo Neuro app in the app store. Check it out and get on the good vibes.”
— Dr. Dave Rabin [59:52]

---

This episode is essential listening for anyone concerned with the mental and cognitive health of this generation and the next, blending practical science and philosophy with actionable solutions for individuals and society.

Transcript

[Sean Kelly]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

It's getting more signals in the first 30 minutes of the day when you wake up and look at your phone than it was getting in a week of being alive in the 1950s. Gen Z is sign that we have seen as a real objective, empirical sign that we are a society in regression trauma passes down through the epigenic code for three or more generations in animals. We've seen it passed down for up to 14 generations.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Okay guys, we got Dr. Dave Rabin here from Apollo. We're at Asprey's conference here. He spoke twice, just tried out the Apollo and and what's new with you man?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Just enjoying myself, connecting with old friends. We have a one year old at home now, so I'm not getting out to as many conferences as I used to.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That makes sense.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So it's really nice to get back here. And I'm also launching my first book, which is really exciting.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, we got a show right here.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

10 years in the making of. 10 years career of work in studying chronic stress and psychedelic assisted therapy and the mechanisms of how we make meaning in the world.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Nice. We'll link that. Is it on Amazon when It comes on June 16th.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

This is the first imprint pre sale that's happening this week, so available on June 16th. And we have the first versions here.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Nice. Yeah, we'll include a link to that. You also got a collab with Quicksilver. Yep. What's that about?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So most people don't realize that when the body's learning anything new or taking in any. Any nutrients that it needs to be in a state that's receptive to what we're putting into it. So when you're digesting your food, we. We want the body to start salivating and secreting digestive juices and getting ready to absorb whatever we're putting in. Same with supplements. And most people don't realize that. Dr. Chris Shade from Quicksilver definitely gets the biology of this, which is why I respect him so much. And so we've been talking for the last couple years about creating technology protocols that prepare the body to receive supplements you put into it. Because people spend a lot of money on supplements. And the whole goal of supplements, when we take them is that as much of the supplement is bioavailable, meaning available to our bodies to use when we take it. For that to happen, it has to absorb through our mouth and through our digestive lining of our gut. And if we're in a stress state, our gut actually resists absorption because it's deprioritizing blood flow to the gut and to the absorption tracks. And so most people don't realize that they're, you know, peeing and shitting out most of their supplements most of the time because they're stressed when they're taking them. And all you have to do is, you know, throw Apollo vibes on your iPhone now or on your wearable, and within 15 minutes, your body's ready to receive your food or supplements you're putting in and your vagus nerve is activated, which increases resources to your digestive tract and then increases the absorption of whatever you put in dramatically.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's insane. I never connected the dots on stress and supplement absorption because I've had low vitamin D my whole life. And I keep upping the dose, but it's not going up my vitamin D levels. Yeah, so I'm at like 10,000 IU right now, and it's still low.

[Sean Kelly]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So it might, might be a stress thing, right?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

It can be part of it.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Because I'm pretty stressed. Yeah.

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I mean, most people are these days.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Who's not? Right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And we don't. Yeah. We often don't realize it. And part of what my book is about is just about how we. Our interaction with technology like smartphones is actually stimulating our stress response a lot more than we think it is. Because we don't realize how impactful the blue light is. And the constant scrolling and the constant bombardment of information overwhelms our stress response system. So even if consciously we say, oh, I should be feeling okay, I have no reason to be stressed out, our nervous system is still responding from a place of stress because it's getting more signals in the first 30 minutes of the day when you wake up and look at your phone than it was getting in a week of being alive in the 1950s.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Geez.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right? So think about, think about that. We're just constantly overstimulated. And overstimulation is also a trigger to the stress response system. So having. Doing anything we can to kind of ready the body, that's a productive state. It's a producing, focused state of the body. It's energy out, it's yang in the yin Yang metaphor. So when we talk about recovery, healing and absorption, it's less about forcing those things to happen and more about getting the body prepared into a state to receive, which is the opposite of producing.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Got it.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So that's yin. And so that's why we talk about this constant balance. We can't. That's burnout comes from too much production, too much Yang all the time and not enough yin, receiving recovery. And those have to be in balance or we burn out.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That makes sense. Yeah. Phones aren't going away, so you gotta be preventative but also recover too, Right?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Exactly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

We have to prioritize now our recovery time as. As much as we prioritize work, which means for many people, putting it on the schedule. And that's hard.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

You know, and really creep, like cutting out time. That is set aside specifically for what I would describe. What's happening in our nervous system is like vagus, nerve boosting activities. So it's like anything soothing, anything relaxing, anything that makes you feel good, feel joy, feel the opportunity to play, let your inner child out. Right. All of those kinds of things. Getting good night's sleep, winding down at night before sleep, like making sure. That those recovery routines are more strongly intact and prioritized is even more important because the demand on us for producing during the day is so much higher than it ever was.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I got to work on that because I stopped wearing my aura ring, actually, because it kept saying I was stressed like six, eight hours a day. It's giving me more stress thinking about it, but I need to spend more time recovering for sure.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So one of the things that's most interesting about stress trackers is exactly what you said, which is that so many people, usually 50% of people within the first six to 12 months after they have learned that their stressed out from the devices or they're not sleeping well from the devices, take the devices and throw them in a drawer because they're like, I already know this, so I don't necessarily, I don't want to keep tracking having my device remind me of how stressed out I am. My patients with PTSD and depression were experiencing the same thing and trackers are supposed to help. So I was interested, very interested in this and seeing that it wasn't leading to the behavior change that we thought and hoped it would lead to. And so when we built Apollo, which is, which you tried earlier, that I'm wearing the wearable that delivers vibration to the body, that increases vagus nerve activity using sound waves, we, we wanted to tie that in with the data that's coming in. Because if we can understand, for instance, from your aura ring what the state of your body is, then instead of you having to interpret the data and make behavior change, we can actually interpret that data for you using AI in the background and then process the data and then curate Apollo vibes that we send to your body automatically to boost your heart rate variability, your readiness, your energy. Rather than saying, oh, you're stressed out, do something about it, we can say, you're stressed out, you don't have to do anything. We're going to take that signal and send you vibes that calm you down. And that's actually how Apollo works. And so we are the first wearable technology that is fully closed loop, which means we intake data from the Apollo itself and from Oura ring, and we actually make use of that data automatically.

[Sean Kelly]

Oh really?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And we just published a study that trained that AI that we've been working on since 2020, which is one of the world's largest interventional sleep studies ever done. And it was enabled by both Covid that shut down all the sleep labs and then forced us to go to work with wearables for this study. So we worked with Aura because they were really excited about doing this kind of sleep research. And so we studied 950 people for three years between roughly 2020 and 2023. And we the study just came out two weeks ago, so it's very exciting. And we found out that if you wear Apollo to bed, gently increasing your vagus nerve, which you can also get the same benefits from slow deep breathing for five minutes or 10 minutes before bed, or soothing music and soothing ambiance. But using Apollo for as little as three hours a night, just wearing it, putting it on, not doing anything, increases your total sleep time by on average 46 minutes.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Per night in as little as one night. It's not just a lot. That's comparable to Ambien, really. Ambien is 30 to 60 minutes of sleep gain.

[Sean Kelly]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And it impairs deep and REM sleep and it has side effects. And Apollo increases total sleep time equivalent to Ambien. It also increases REM sleep, which increases your ability to remember what you've learned the day before. It increases your body's emotional mental recovery and memory organization. Because that's what happens during rem.

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last.

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

2026 McDonald's at FIFA World Cup 2026

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business I'm always trying to get the best outcome for the best price. So it's kind of crazy. I haven't looked at my life insurance in years. I don't even know if what I'm paying is competitive or if I have enough coverage with how things have changed. That's why I started looking into select quote. For over 40 years they've helped more than 2 million Americans secure over $700 billion in coverage. Their whole model is simple. They shop around to find you the right policy for your specific needs so you're not overpaying or undercovered. Their licensed agents work for you in as little as 15 minutes. They compare policies from top rated carriers to find something that fits your health and your budget and they do it for free. No medical exam, no problem. You could get same day coverage up to $2 million. And if you've got pre existing conditions, they've got options for that too. Get the right life insurance for you for less and Save more than [e-mail] Save more than 50% on term life [e-mail] that's SelectQuote.comDSH I started Ornod in

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

2013 and we make bike apparel. The best part of Shopify for me is our ability to run the business as essentially non technical people. We're able to admin everything on the back end, front end and sell things online easily. If Shopify were a bike accessory, I think it would actually be the bicycle. It's the thing that you do the thing on. We run the business on Shopify. Start your free trial on shopify.com I mean deep sleep are so important, when we take sedatives and hypnotics like benzos, opiates, Ambien, sleep drugs like that, they actually impair our brain's ability to enter the much deeper, more restorative sleep stages that are critical for us to actually feel good during the day. Right. So one of the most common misconceptions around sleep is that you're supposed to get eight to nine hours a night. That actually doesn't matter that much. What matters is that if you. Whatever percentage, whatever hours of sleep you get, that you're getting a high percentage of deep and REM sleep, because that's where all the restoration happens, the majority of it. And so, using technology and helping boost activity of the recovery system by helping wind people down before bed, people are able to enter deep and REM sleep stages more easily and stay there longer. And so your percentage of total sleep, that is REM and deep restorative sleep, goes up. And also you boost your sleep time significantly. And so people just feel so much more rested during the day, which means less reliance on coffee and stimulants, less reliance on alcohol and sedatives at night. And people are just functioning closer to their peak during the day because they're more recovered.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Just by being a little calmer, you got me sold. I'm definitely gonna get one. Plus you could bring it on the. On the go. I travel a lot, so I like that too.

[Sean Kelly]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Because I always struggle sleeping when I'm out. Hotels and stuff.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Great for sleeping at planes. Great for sleeping on hotel.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You can sleep on a plane. That's impressive.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. And you can set it to regulate your time zone in travel with and prevent jet lag. Because sometimes you need to stay awake on the plane or stay awake longer. Right, right. To be able to adjust to new time zone. And sometimes you need to sleep at different times to adjust to new time zone. But if you're not tired or you're tired when you should be awake to adjust, then your whole circadian sleep cycles get thrown off with the new time zone you're going to. And so Apollo can help you get extra sleep on the plane or stay awake longer without having to take drugs so that you can actually adjust to the new time zone more easily without so much jarring.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I'll need that when I go to London.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. It's been a game changer for travel for me.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, That's. That's awesome. Yeah. The eight hours of sleep, it's been drilled into everyone's heads. But I was talking to Naveen Jain Yesterday. He sleeps five hours a day, but he's getting 90 minutes of REM and 90 minutes of deep. Right, so it's enough, right?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Generally speaking, yeah. I mean, the, I mean, we usually think of trying to get at least six hours a night, but I think in the cases where people are getting a substantial amount of deep and REM in that way, like 90 minutes of each, that's pretty good. You know, he's, I've seen Naveen. He's probably, he's usually feeling pretty good.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

He looks good for his age.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Pretty good.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I mean, I think that's, that's more important. If you have to prioritize one thing, it's how much deep in REM sleep you're getting. Total sleep time is less important.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I gotta look at my eight sleep analytics and see what I'm hitting. That's important, right? Those two numbers and then hrv. You mentioned earlier, Y. You said this helps with HRV too, which is interesting because I, I bought a whole bike just to try to improve my hrv. Yeah, yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Well, so HRV is such an interesting biomarker right now. And it's easily one of the most important biomarkers of mental and overall physical health and performance that we have because studies have shown in the last 10 years that if you have a higher heart rate variability, which is the rate of change of your heartbeat over time, that you're more adaptable. So effectively, high heart rate variability means when stress comes, your heartbeat goes up quickly, you adapt to it, you meet the stress head on, and then the stress is gone. And then your heartbeat comes down quickly, you adjust back to recovery quickly. So you're able to switch dynamically very smoothly up and down to the environment. And when you have a low heart rate variability, that is an indicator that we are not well recovered. So our bodies struggle to switch on and then when we switch on, it's hard to turn off. And so that's what we see in PTSD and depression very commonly in people with chronic stress. HRV is really a biomarker for vagus nerve activity. So when you, when we talk about like the soothing sensations I was mentioning earlier, like Apollo, like soothing touch, like slow, deep breathing that increase vagus nerve activity reliably. When you increase vagus nerve activity, you slow the heartbeat. And when you slow the heartbeat, HRV goes up.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Got it.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And so you're. So, so you're. As you're increasing vagus nerve activity, your body's recovery is increasing. That's measured as heart Rate variability.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Okay.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Heart rate variability is not causal. It just helps to predict. When you have high vagus nerve activity, you're more likely to be more recovered, which means that all of the benefits of recovery you can then predict. So people are more likely to achieve peak performance regularly and consistently. You're less likely to get sick. You're more likely to recover from being sick, and you're more likely to have higher longevity and health span, live a long, healthy life, which is what we all want. Right. So now we actually have a biomarker for that. And when HRV is low, we know that people have an increased likelihood of getting sick when they're pushed to push into stress. They have a worse rate of dealing with stress consistently and performing at peak consistently. They're more likely to make mistakes. Mistakes. And they're less. They recover from illness less quickly. Right. They live less long. So this is a really exciting time for our field. And especially something that the athletic and elite, athletic and military world have brought into research that biohacking has jumped on, which is that HRV can predict a lot of these things that people are taking blood samples and these very invasive tests to study. We can look at HRV and get almost everything we need.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Which is amazing to predict where somebody's at in their health and recovery.

[McDonald's FIFA World Cup Advertisement Voice]

So.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And it's all based on vagus nerve activity, and we can adjust it by soothing and calming the body. So Apollo was a really incredible discovery from the University of Pittsburgh research we were doing, because up at that time, when we were in. When we launched it in 2020 and we discovered in 2016, nobody had ever successfully created a technology that increases heart rate variability and vagus nerve activity with zero effort. Normally you have to slow, deep breathe for five minutes, or you have to get a hug or hug yourself or do some kind of, like, yoga or soothing experience or put a vagus nerve stimulator on you that you have to hold to yourself. Right. And that takes effort and time. And most people won't do it. Even though it's helpful. People won't do it. So my patients wouldn't do it. So we just thought, well, what if we just use technology to automate this process for people? They can just strap something on and wear it. Would they do it? And they did. And so that ultimately became Apollo. And it's the very first technology in history to passively augment hrv.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Brilliant.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Which is really exciting. So it just helps us be more recovered more of the time, which. Who couldn't use that?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. All of Us? Yeah, because some people, I noticed that growing up, some people would get the same sickness, the same cold, but the other dude would be better the next day. And then some guy would take a week.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right, Exactly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. So I always wondered what that was.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

The biggest factor is vagus nerve activity, and we can train that. So that's what's really exciting is that the nervous system is highly trainable. And that was discovered over the last hundred years. But in particular, Eric Kandel's Nobel prize winning work in 2000, is one of the most famous neuropsychiatrists in history. He discovered that the nervous system is highly trainable around fear and safety states. And that fear and safety are our most meaningful inputs to not just us, but all, all mammals and likely all reptiles going back hundreds of millions of years. So when we understand that that is how we evolved and how our, like whatever else we think is on the top of our fancy human nervous system is working, that's at the core. And if we don't address that first, then our bodies, if they stay in a fear state, are not allowing recovery to even happen. Because if we're in a fear state, our bodies are believing that there's like a saber tooth tiger around the corner and we're not supposed to be. We didn't evolve to send resources to reproduction, digestion, immunity and sleep and rest. When an empathy and creativity. When our bodies think there's a saber tooth tie rig around the corner, we default to fight or flight. Which means all our blood flow is going to skip skeletal muscles, so there's almost no blood flow left over for recovery.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So by just doing the deep breathing, by doing the soothing touch, by throwing on your favorite songs more often, by using Apollo, you're increasing the safety signals to the body through the skin, through the ears, through your senses. And then that reminds the body effectively that it's safe enough to allocate resources to recovery. Then healing just starts to happen. So you're just unblocking a natural pathway rather than saying, I'm going to force this healing process to happen. It's a totally different mindset around healing, which is really how Eastern tribal traditions have done it for thousands of years, and they have.

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

car, I thought my insurance premium would

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Like if Fatween won the lottery. I've invested most of my winnings in chicken tenders because they're bomb. But bro, I bought a house and it's sick, bro. I'm thinking the floor is going to be all trampoline, bro. With the helipad on the roof. The contractor said it's structurally unsound, but they're just being babies. But switching to GEICO saved me hundreds.

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[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

It feels good to save some hard earned cash.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

It feels good to Geico. A much better track record at treating chronic mental illness than we do in western culture.

[Sean Kelly]

Wow.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

What percentage of people in your experience are living in a fear state?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

You'd say, I mean pre smartphones it might have been like 70 to 80%.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh, that high.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Oh, okay.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Post smartphones it's probably closer to all of us.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Just because there's so much incoming stimulation. Like think about what you were probably talking about with Chris Shade recently. Right? The idea that mental health, mental illness has skyrocketed in the last 10 to 15 years is not by chance. It's a factor of the having a supercomputer in your pocket that never disconnects you from stimulation to the environment. You're never totally disconnected from work or other people anymore. You're never totally disconnected from the news. Right. You're never. We used to just know what was going on in our, in ourselves, in our family and our immediate friend group, in our neighborhood community. Right, Right now we're aware of all of that and what's happening everywhere in the world at all times. That's a lot of information for us. Not. That doesn't even count the blue light you get from your phones, right? That doesn't count the. That's like, you know, as I mentioned earlier, we're getting as Many social signals in the first half hour of waking up from looking at your phone in that first half hour as we would used to get in a week of being alive in the 1950s. So you multiply that times how many half hours the average 20 to 45 year old individual is spending on their phones every single day. Now you're talking tens of times more input than somebody who's getting in a week of being alive in the 1950s. It's too much. Our bodies did not evolve to receive that much incoming information. So that's tricking our nervous system into thinking, wow, this is a lot like the fear center. The amygdala in our brains responds to too much, too loud, too fast and too much newness. Not just, not just survival threat. Survival threat is what it evolved to respond to. But it gets triggered by too much, too loud, too fast just the same, it doesn't know the difference.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So we have to train our minds to. This is what Jim Kwik talks about and many of their speakers here. How do you train your mind to remember how to filter out the incoming information with mindfulness focus techniques, meditation, breathing. All of those techniques start to help us filter and create the structure in the brain that actually filters out incoming useless information so that we're not constantly overwhelmed. And if we haven't trained in those techniques, we're just constantly overwhelmed all the time. And our nervous system shows it as decreased heart rate variability for sure. Decreased vagus nerve activity, feeling like crap all the time, burnout. Right. So all the good news is all of this is avoidable. We just need to update our understanding of how the nervous system works.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Absolutely. Do you think the bodies are going to adapt to all this? Because now you're seeing all this autism, this adhd. Do you think like the newer generations are adapting to this change in the technology?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I guess I think the newer generations are our biggest example of what we've done wrong and what we need to fix. So I don't know if you've seen, have you seen the, the testimony, the congressional testimony of that psychologist from Harvard who talked about how Gen Z is the first generation in history that has been been found to score lower on standardized tests of cognition and learning and math than the previous generation?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I didn't see that, but I'm not surprised actually.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So this, so this is really important to talk about because we have been on a pattern in human society in terms of even as many flaws as people find with our education system. Up until Gen Z, we were on a consistent pattern of of continuing to improve the cognitive abilities of humans every single generation. This means math skills, language skills, reasoning skills. Right. Some of the core skills that are required for thinking and existing as a functional human being. These skills are arguably some of the most important skills taught in school. And so schools were designed to teach these skills. And so over every generation we've seen a continuous improvement in the scores on tests of those skills. Until Gen Z. What happened with Gen Z? We introduced smartphones and we introduced smartphones to Gen Z often when they were very young and so they learned and they were integrated into schools for many Gen Z kids. And so screens, and when you learn from screens, you're not learning from a human. So you don't have the safety of the human to human teaching mentorship of kind of having your handheld through learning stuff, which safety also allocates resources to learning via the vagus nerve. Learning is shut down. Learning new things is completely, completely shut down when we're in a stressed state. That's why it's so hard to remember stuff when you're stressed.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Holy crap.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Because why would you want your body to allocate resources to learning when there could be a saber tooth tiger around the corner? Yeah, it's just that simple. So the body just says nope, no learning. I'm just, I just care about fight or flight. There could be a tiger even if there's no tiger. If we're overwhelmed, then we default to survival. That's what our nervous system evolved to do. This is again hundreds of millions of years old. So that nervous system hardwiring results in us basically again being in this chronic fear state that prevents the body from learning and absorbing new information. Not just the supplements and food we put into it, but even new information and making sure that information sticks. And so, and so when we expose kids to, to learning new information from screens and screens themselves are producing blue light and, and fast moving things that are changing. Often it's overstimulating to the nervous system.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

The WI fi too.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. And so people, all the stimulation. Right. And so people are, we're, we're expecting kids to learn, but the medium of the screen as the primary learning tool is increasing the stress state in the nervous system, which is antithetical to the system being receptive to learning. Right. And so now kids are not retaining the information that we're teaching them. After we spend hundreds of millions of dollars teaching a generation how to function and think and reason and understand basic math and language skills, they're learning that stuff in school. And then because their Body's in a stress state. They're not able to integrate it and maintain that knowledge for the long haul and then actually make it actionable in the real world. So they learn it, we lose most of it and forget it because it's memorized, it's not understood and it doesn't stick. And then we move on to the next thing and we graduate from all of the schooling and we don't actually retain the functionality that that schooling was aimed to, to bestow upon us. And so we feel a lot more unprepared for life because we learn, we spend most of our time learning in a neurologically unideal stress state. Does that make sense?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, it does. So the teachers said no phones in class were actually right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Everyone hated those teachers dealing no screens. Right. Like, or minimal screens, like learn on the computer like for an hour a day, not for like four hours a day. Right, right. That's a huge, huge difference. And yeah, and I, and I think just the other part of that I think is really important to talk about is the fact that Gen Z is the first generation in human recorded history that has scored lower on the standardized cognitive measures of reasoning and math and language is the first sign that we have seen as a real objective, empirical sign that we are a society in regression. We have never seen a current generation perform worse on these measures than a previous generation. We need to fix that.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, that's scary.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

That is a major problem and we need to correct and go back to prioritizing human to human learning rather than screened human learning because it's not working.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Well, now a lot of kids are learning on AI screens like on their computer. So you probably don't like that, right?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I mean, it's not about like or dislike, it's just about what works, Right? Like if we're going to spend, if we're going to invest a bunch of money as a society into an education system which is our tax dollars, this isn't just money that appears right. Like we bust our butts to then pay taxes and those taxes go to fund schools.

[McDonald's FIFA World Cup Advertisement Voice]

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Participating McDonald's for a limited time while supplies last. All rights reserve 2026 McDonald's at FIFA World Cup 2026 in business, I'm always

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[Dr. Dave Rabin]

be teaching our children who are going to be taking care of us when we're old and dying, right? We need and running society when we're old. Then we want those kids to have some skills that they remember how to use. We want them to have some reasoning and some knowledge and hopefully our tax dollars went to good use. Just like with absorbing your supplements, right? Like you pay a whole bunch of money for supplements. You don't want them to mostly be excreted as waste. For sure you want the stuff to get into the body. Same with learning and knowledge. So we just spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year as a society and maybe a billion dollars on education every year of a new generation. We need to make sure that that education is working. And if it's not working and sticking, then we're going to have a bunch of. We're literally training a bunch of adults, new adults to be unprepared for life because we're not giving them the skills they need to learn in a way that they can receive and integrate them into practice.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Does that make sense?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

It does. Yeah. I don't have too much faith in the public education system at the moment, but hopefully they could turn things around.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You know.

[Sean Kelly]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I'm looking into private. I don't even have kids yet, but if I were to send them and looking into private or something actionable.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I mean, I think honestly they're both at risk. And if. And I think like when you think about where you're sending your kids to school or how they're being educated, most of the importance is not even public or private. It's how much teacher student time do they get. How much screen time are they going to be given in school. Right, right. Because that increase in screen time seems to be the major thing that is correlated with this poor performance and poor learning.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Because it also affects attention. Right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Everything. Yeah, everything.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. I feel like a lot of people struggle with attention these days. Like staying locked in. Like I remember we had to take the SATS 4 hour test. I don't. I don't know if kids can do that. I hear they keep shortening it.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

They don't have the essay anymore.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah, no, they changed a lot of it.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

It's like, you know, we're not, we're not. People aren't scoring as well in the old way. So we're gonna change the way we measure them rather than fix the.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right. They make it easier and easier.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. It doesn't really make sense. Like you can't just keep changing the goalposts. Right. Goalposts should stay the same or increase.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I think it should get harder over time.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah, exactly. Right. If we're supposed to be on a trend of getting smarter over time and increasing our educational systems quality and how well we teach and learn than by understanding the science of learning, which has been well understood. Right. Like Eric Kendel won the Nobel Prize in 2000. That means his work on this was completed 20, at least 20 years before. And it's 20. 26. It's 20 years. 26 years after he won the Nobel Prize and we still haven't figured out how to take what we proclaimed was one of the world's greatest discoveries ever about how learning and memory works and put it into practice. We're still that far behind.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right. So that's the part that really needs to be fixed is. And that's why I wrote this book is to make it easier to understand how to what we can learn from these tremendous discoveries in science and then how to translate them into practice, starting with education in the school system and just give. Be better at optimizing the state of the body for what we're asking people to do. Right. If we want people to learn to concentrate. We have to teach them how to focus for extended periods of time. You can't just throw people into a room and say, concentrate on this thing that really bores you without teaching them how to do it. That's silly.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right. So attention is a huge part of that because attention is our most important skill, which is also one of the major topics of the book that we don't teach properly. And it's a muscle. So by learning to train your attention, you're not born with a certain amount of attention. It's a. Attention is like something you can grow over time, and attention control is a muscle that we can bodybuild over time. And so the more that we train attention control by noticing where our attention is and then simply redirecting it back to our goal, then every time we notice where our attention has wandered and redirected back, which is basic mindfulness, all of a sudden we do a rep. That's a rep. That's like a bicep rep.

[SelectQuote Advertisement Voice]

Right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

My attention has wandered. Oh, let's bring it back to the goal. Right. You've just done a rep, and now you're increasing the strength of the wiring of your attention muscle, which makes it easier to focus next time. But we're not asking people to do that. We're saying we're not teaching that properly at all. And we're just saying, here, take this screen. When you notice your attention's wander, just swipe. Just scroll.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Scrolling.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. That is not the solution. That is distraction from learning attention control. So we have to get back to remembering that, like, attention is our chief muscle and it is that we should be training our whole lives. And it is actually our. It's like the gateway of our consciousness. So anything that we give our attention to is allowed to come inside into us and it becomes part of us. So where we put our attention couldn't be more important.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And that dictates everything that follows.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah. Jim Kwik actually says we're in an attention economy now, not intelligence economy.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's how important it's become. Absolutely crazy.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. And I talk about that in the book, in the dopamine economy chapter about. About how we have created a capitalism has incentivized a. In. In many ways, perversely, a attention economy state where our attention has become something that has a price value on it that corporations have a reason to buy and advertise for. And that's the commodity, right?

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

100%. Yeah. I've seen. I don't know if this is true. But our attention span is shorter than a goldfish now, have you seen that?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I don't know if it's shorter than a goldfish, but it's very short.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

It's like probably the average person's attention span is like 6 to 12 seconds before they wander.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's nuts. Right?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

So, but, but the good news is all it takes is noticing when your attention's wandered and bringing it back to the goal. And you're, every time you do that, you're strengthening your attention. Every time you let your attention wander and swipe or scroll or distract yourself and not come back to the goal, then your muscle starts to fatigue and become weak. Your attention muscle weakens. Right. So we don't, we don't. We just want to make sure that we're intentional about how we're thinking how we use our attention and realizing how important this muscle really is. Because as we train it, we can actually start to understand how to take more control over our lives. We can start to understand how to optimize healing, optimize recovery, and just feel better generally day to day. Because attention control allows us to filter incoming information. So when you're overwhelmed, when you're stressed, when you feel like you have a million things going on that seem out of your control and you don't know what to do, that's the time your attention muscle comes in and you can be like, wow, I can self regulate anxiety. Right. I can make my mood better at will. I can improve my energy at will. Those are all human abilities we're born with the ability to do. Why we haven't taught them to people. That's a whole lot beats me, right? But I think that's why now that we know that western science, science explains these attention training techniques that have been thousands of years old from Eastern and tribal medicine. This must be integrated into education. And it doesn't have. You don't have to be taught this in school. You can learn at any time. But just by realizing that it exists. But the. But it needs to be integrated into schools because it's so much easier to teach kids how to do this when they're young than to teach them to distract or numb themselves, to dress to stress.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, yeah. When I'm working at home, I, I have to put my phone in another room because otherwise I'm picking it up every two minutes.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

You know what I mean?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

I just can't control it.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I have to keep my phone on. Do not disturb with the face all day. All Day.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, I'm on D and D all day.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And that's a. And that's a really simple way to start to regulate. Right. People think. People often think, oh, it's gonna be so hard. It's not that hard. It's just about being intentional. So just by putting your smartphone into do not disturb mode, as one example, then rather than the phone's vibration or ringing steering our attention, we decide when we want to look at it. Right. And if we're deciding when we want to look at it, then we can say, oh, I'm going to check it once an hour. I'm not going to look at it every time it bangs or dings. And so then rather than the phone controlling our attention and where it is at any given time with its notifications, we choose. That's a huge difference.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Right. You choosing is your exercising free will and your attention muscle.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Absolutely. Let's end off with trauma and psychedelics. So people throw around this term generational trauma. I'm sure you've heard it all the time. Is that actually possible, to have trauma inherited from your parents or grandparents?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. So the studies show in humans that we have evidence that trauma passes down through the epigenic code, which is the code on top of the DNA that regulates stress response genes and regulates the way our cells function. And that can get passed down in humans, we've seen for three or more generations.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And in animals, we've seen it passed down for up to 14 generations. So when you think about trauma in a modern neuroscience sense, we should not be thinking about it on just the basis of what I've experienced in my life, which is often enough. But our bodies store information about meaning that our parents and our grandparents and beyond have experienced in their own lives. So one of the best examples of this is that in our ancestors who experienced famine or food austerity, like low, like for extended periods of time, that they. Their bodies realizing that there wasn't as much food around. This is our, you know, our ancestors from multiple generations back when they experienced food austerity or. Or famine for extended periods, their bodies said there might not be enough food around. So for me and for future generations, I'm going to change the epigenetic code to remember there might not be food around, and I'm going to decrease metabolic rate. So that is an adaptive epigenetic stress response. That's really important in times where there's not enough food around for extended periods. Now go. And that gets passed down to multiple generations, because if our grandparents had Trouble getting enough food for extended periods then in the past, that would be likely to also impact their children and their children's children. So they pass down the epigenetic code that is marked on the metabolic genes that say, decrease the speed of metabolism, store more nutrients, keep it for longer, make the nutrients last longer. When we are now in a phase of food surplus. So the same people that inherited these gene changes around slowing metabolism in times of famine are now have endless food. Anytime you want healthy or unhealthy, it's all available all the time. The same, the same genes are gene changes are still existing in those people that are decreasing metabolic speed and rate. So they are more likely to develop obesity, metabolic disorder, type 2 diabetes, all of those kinds of issues. Because their metabolic system is not prepared for food surplus, it's prepared for famine. Right. So they're storing, they're in a, in a conservation state where they're not burning off as much of the food because they're the first generation to experience food surplus right from coming from famine. So that is a way that trauma gets passed down over time. That actually exists with mental and emotional trauma as well.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Interesting.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And that was discovered about 20 or 30 years ago in some really groundbreaking work by Dr. Rachel Yehuda. I also go into great detail about this in the book because I think it's one of the most interesting discoveries of the last 20, 30 years in neuroscience. And that what's really exciting is that we now know we could actually fix it. So thanks to psychedelic assisted therapy, we've been working with people with severe PTSD with maps and other researchers. And we published a paper in 20, this is 2021 in Frontiers in Psychiatry, which is the first study looking at the epigenetic shifts on cortisol receptors. So one of the major stress response genes before and after MDMA assisted therapy in people with severe PTSD who are known to have trauma induced changes to their cortisol receptor gene. And when we looked at those people, we were able to see that when people go through just three doses of MDMA assisted therapy and over 12 weeks in the MAPS protocol. So 42 hours of therapy over 12 weeks, but it's a condensed period. It's not medicine for life. That's all the treatment they're doing that within just 12 weeks, we see statistically significant remodeling of the epigenetic changes on the cortisol receptor to look more like they were in a pre traumatized state.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Wow.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And the symptoms correlate with that. So as we see more epigenetic remodeling, more effectively repair of the damage that trauma did to the cortisol receptor. We now can see that that can be remodeled and repaired over time. So the memory of trauma that's stored not just in our neurons, but also all the way down to our epigenetic code can actually be shifted. And that's where the core memories of trauma seem to be stored. That's where it gets passed down. We don't just need to relearn stuff superficially. Oh, I'm safe. Okay, great. What's stored in your DNA, on your DNA, Right. What does that remember? And that seems to be what really matters. And when we start to. And this was a really exciting study because it was the first time in this field that we understood that we can use tools like psychedelic assisted therapy to actually reverse trauma memory recorded on the DNA. Trauma was never known to be really, like, reversible before on the level of the memory stored in the cells. We knew it was repairable on a symptom level from the early MDMA and psychedelic work, but we didn't know that you could actually rewrite the epigenetic memory. So that is really cool, because when you. That shows us that when you heal yourself and we heal our own trauma in our generation, we can actually shift the likelihood of passing those. Those trauma changes onto the next generation. Right. So healing yourself really does matter because we prevent the passing down of those same pathological shifts onto the next generation. We stop the cycle.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's massive.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Of intergenerational trauma. Right. It's. We can stop it in our generation. Like, how incredible.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's crazy. So there's a possibility our grandkids will have way less trauma than us, hopefully.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah. That's the goal. That's the dream.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Because I know Trump's trying to legalize it right now. Rogan.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

So if that happens, that'd be massive.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

Yeah, yeah. It's a major thing that the. That the federal government has passed that example or, you know, written that executive order, because hopefully they actually follow through with it. But the scheduling of the psychedelic medicines is DEA Schedule 1 from the 1970s Controlled Substances act with Richard Nixon is the single reason why there's been almost like no to minimal psychedelic research controlled in the U.S. over the last 50 years.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Right.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And so we. The rescheduling of these medicines allows the scientific community an opportunity to now have access to these as research tools and then start to actually develop the training protocols and the treatment plans and work with doctors to be able to start to create and understand how to deliver these at scale to an entire community of tens of millions of people nationwide that are struggling with severe mental illness. We now have the ability, as the DEA reschedules this, to start to get this into these people's hands. And we haven't had that. And now Australia's already ahead of us. Tanya Zhejiang in Australia has taken. You know, she's. Her team already reviewed all the same studies that we reviewed here, most of which were done in the United States. I was just on a panel with her yesterday here, and it's very exciting because she was able to show those studies to the us to the Australian government, and they re. Their scientists reviewed it and they're like, oh, this data is really good. And it is good. The US Government, the fda was just like, so confused and. And, you know, given a ton of propaganda about these medicines, and they were not looking at it from an unbiased perspective. The Australian government just looked at this data and they're like, oh, these are really good studies. And they are. And when they actually look at them objectively, they said, we need to integrate this into our mental health system immediately.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And They've already trained 700 therapists and treated over a thousand patients. Wow. With newly trained therapists in the Australian ecosystem with psilocybin and mdma.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Amazing.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And we are still. We still only have ketamine here in the US and ketamine is great, but we need to have more access to more of these tools in the toolbox for mental health, and we need more people trained to be able to deliver them. Because, again, there's like, easily 40 to 100 million people in the United States that could benefit from these treatments for sure that are currently not able to get them.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Hope we could get there. I never met a hippie that was a mean person. You know what I mean? They're just all positive. The boomers were onto something.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

I've met some mean hippies.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Really?

[Sean Kelly]

Wow.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

That's surprising. Whenever I meet them, they're like, smiling.

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

And I get what you're saying. No, most of them are pretty laid back.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Yeah, for sure. Well, how can people watching this get some Apollo, get more interested in what you're doing, get the book and all that. Where can people find you?

[Dr. Dave Rabin]

You can find me at Apollo Clinic, which is my personal professional website. Also drdave IO on socials, rdavidraben. And you can find the book at A Simple guide to being alive.com and you can find [e-mail] if you have a iPhone we have a special free version, a light version of the app where after we started to see these incredible clinical trials results come in, We've had now 17 completed clinical trials of a pilot Apollo. It's the most studied wearable technology and across over 2000 research subjects. And so my wife and I run Apollo as like a mom and pop shop. And we created it to create technology that heals humanity because most of our technology unfortunately makes us sicker, right? And so we released last year a very special free version of Apollo that we spent three years hacking the iPhone to use the haptic engine to deliver Apollo's clinically proven bass vibrations through the iPhone. Haptic engine. So now you can download Apollo Neuro on your iPhone. The app and the wearable works with Android and iPhone. But we have a special app for iPhone now that is free. So anyone can turn their iPhone into a device that can send signals to your body that within minutes increase your vagus nerve activity, increase your heart rate variability, and actually helped to heal the body. Your iPhone can now heal you. Never thought I'd hear that for free, right? Think about that kind of technological invention that we can use technology to heal us. We can use the same technologies in our pockets to start to nudge the body to states that favor and promote healing. We've just chosen not to use it for that. So we created the first example of this. We made it so everyone can try it and, and now it's shareable. So you can finally, for the first time share good vibes via your iPhone with anybody else who has an iPhone for free. And these vibration patterns actually heal your body. It's the first nervous system, science based nervous system, sorry, neuroscience upgrade for your iPhone that's available to everyone. So Apollo Neuro app in the app store. Check it out and get on the good vibes.

[Podcast Host / Interviewer]

Awesome. Check out the links, guys. See ya. Thanks for watching all the way to the end, guys. It means a lot. Please click here if you want to watch the next episode and please subscribe to the show. It helps us get more guests and helps grow the brand.