Interviewer/Host (3:08)

Was the first psychedelic you ever took? Well, no, not a psychedelic.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (3:11)

Sorry, not a psychedelic. In full disclosure, when I was in high school, I took. And I don't recommend this. When I was in high school, I experimented with psychedelics and I did not have a good time. And I stopped. It was really not a good experience. And for years I was just almost disparaging of it. I was like, why would I ever go near this? But then a clinician and a clinical trial convinced me different. So I can summarize my experience with it by saying that it allowed me to forgive people that I felt had wronged me. And it allowed me to understand and have more compassion for myself and to feel more completely like as a bodily experience. Off the compound.

Interviewer/Host (3:56)

This is a compound that no one has bad experiences on. Is that true?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (4:00)

You can have a bad experience? Well, people with heart conditions have to be careful because it raises blood pressure and heart rate pretty dramatically. You can't be taking.

Interviewer/Host (4:08)

It's not like a bad trip drug.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (4:10)

It's hard to have a bad trip on ecstasy. And it's one of the reasons why it's a party drug. There have been some interesting things to clear up, actually, as a good opportunity to clear some things up, it was thought that it was neurotoxic that killed serotonin neurons. That was published in the journal Science, one of the premier journals. The same laboratory published that they had accidentally injected pure methamphetamine, not mdma, in those studies. And the study was retracted. But most people don't know that.

Interviewer/Host (4:41)

So it doesn't.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (4:42)

Very little evidence, if any, for neurotoxicity.

Interviewer/Host (4:45)

Any.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (4:46)

Very little evidence. Maybe not any, except in rodents. And that evidence is weak.

Interviewer/Host (4:51)

Okay.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (4:52)

The real issue is, are people getting pure mdma? Because a lot of times it's cut with methamphetamine, which is neurotoxic. And in addition to that, it does leave you feeling in a bit of a trough. Two or three days later, you feel a little low, and then you kind of bounce back out of that. And the interesting thing, too, you'll find this amusing, perhaps most people do, is that there have been studies of people that take either MDMA once, dozens of times or hundreds of times and explore the effects. And it turns out that you find very few negative effects. The population studied is super interesting. There are very few populations that you can study who've never done any drug besides mdma, and the population that's done that, and not all of them, but the population that was used in this study were Mormons.

Interviewer/Host (5:39)

Wow. So the Mormons were open to doing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (5:43)

It's not on the no fly list, apparently.

Interviewer/Host (5:46)

That's wild.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (5:47)

It's wild. I Learned that from Dr. Nolan Williams. He's a psychiatrist and neurologist from Stanford. On my podcast, I looked up the papers, and indeed, these are people from the Church of Latter Day Saints. Never drink, never take drugs, Never drink, don't take drugs. They don't use caffeine, because there are things used in combination with MDMA that can make it neurotoxic. So alcohol and MDMA together, if people take. You know, sometimes people will take MDMA and go. Go out dancing or something, and then they'll take another drug like ketamine. And the combination can be very toxic or even deadly. So, you know, and now there's fentanyl contamination, which is very deadly. So it's interesting for me, it really helped. It really helped. I'm so glad I participated in that trial. Things that were emotionally heavy just lift it, or I can still feel something about it, but it doesn't feel like it sticks around as long.

Interviewer/Host (6:37)

So it changed you 100% for the better?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (6:39)

Yeah. I won't say it changed 100% of me.

Interviewer/Host (6:41)

No, no. But you are a different person than you were before, and it has benefited you.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (6:46)

Absolutely.

Interviewer/Host (6:46)

That's great.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (6:47)

Absolutely. I wouldn't recommend kids do it, but in the right clinical hands, it's up for FDA approval soon. We'll see if it happens. It was up last year. It did not pass for two reasons. One, they didn't have a good control group. Like there's not a good control drug. And the other is some people did some not ethical things during the guidance of patients. And, you know, you need to have a guy that knows what they're doing and where they're really benevolent.

Interviewer/Host (7:14)

Because what does the guide do?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (7:16)

The guide usually will sit there with you. In the best case, you're in an eye mask and you're talking about what's coming up for you and what you're feeling.

Interviewer/Host (7:23)

Why with an eye mask?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (7:24)

Because if you're not in the eye mask, you can fall in love with anything you look at. I don't Mean, you'll fall, like, romantically fall in love, but you would. Let's say you were listening to. Well, I'm now listening lately to the Grateful Dead a little bit. So let's say you're listening to Grateful Dead. I love that song Ripple. I could listen to that on repeat and just kind of enter into the song. Go into the song, and you lose the opportunity to work through something. I see good therapeutic sessions with psychedelics or empathogens involve working through something hard. I see every single time it's been hard. But you feel enough support from the guide and from the medicine and the safety that you're in. You feel very safe on it.

Interviewer/Host (8:04)

Do you tell them in advance what you hope to work through?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (8:07)

Yeah. So all these trials are arranged where you do at least two discussion sessions prior. Then you do the actual medicine with a guide. Sometimes two guides present while in the eye mask. Sometimes you'll come out of the eye mask. You use the restroom or something. They'll write something down. You go back in. And then afterwards, the integration piece is really.

Interviewer/Host (8:25)

When you walk around, when you take the eye mask off and go to the bathroom, do you feel high? Do you feel different?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (8:31)

So at the peak of it, which is about 90 minutes in, they give you a booster. And then your pupils are as big as quarters, and you are like, you can still function. You can still go to the bathroom and use the bathroom, but you could not drive a car. You wouldn't let someone get near your texts or your email. I mean, you're blasted. You are in a very altered state.

Interviewer/Host (8:51)

Describe the feeling of it.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (8:54)

Your whole body feels like a tuning fork that's reverberating.

Interviewer/Host (9:00)

Is that a positive feeling or a negative feeling?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (9:01)

Yeah, it's almost like waves of. That's no doubt the serotonin. You can feel kind of waves of warmth and not too hot, not too cold going through your body. If you have a thought, like, let's say you were to think about someone you love, and you place some focus on it, that thought and the feeling would expand and eventually they would collide, kind of like in a lava lamp. And then the feeling would get even bigger than before. And it could just. And then at some point, you would reach the natural endpoint of that thought and emotion.

Interviewer/Host (9:31)

It does reach its own natural endpoint.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (9:34)

Yes. And so the guide is there to say, what are you thinking about? And you'd say, you know, it's crazy. I've lost so many people. It doesn't make any sense. Like, why? Like, it doesn't make any sense. Like, all these kids. Like, we weren't in the military. We weren't in the inner city. I mean, some of these kids. And you'd start to feel empathic about how a lot of life is just luck, good and bad luck. You would start to feel into what an amazing thing it was to know these people. And you could understand life energy in a way, like, we're here, kind of like Steve Jobs said. Right. You know, you're like a rainbow, and you have a chance to shine. And some people, that arc is shorter, and you come to terms with things in that way. But here's the key thing. In a talk therapy session, you're describing something, and emotions might come up. But in a empathogen therapy session, you're feeling those feelings times a hundred, and you have the opportunity to work through the feelings in real time. Let me give you an example. At one point during the session, the clinician said, I'm going to go use the bathroom, get something to eat, and I'll bring back something to eat if you want. It tends to kill your appetite. You can go in hungry. You're not eating for, like, a day and a half, and food's the last thing on your mind. And he stood in up and. And left. And I remember that moment. I felt the most profound sense of loneliness I've ever felt in my entire life. But, like, times a thousand.

Interviewer/Host (11:04)

Do you think it's because you feel like you're depending on this coach?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (11:09)

I don't know. I think I just felt so alone.

Interviewer/Host (11:11)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (11:12)

And then I remember thinking, when this is a great opportunity, and I sat there and I thought, huh? Like, loneliness comes and it goes. And then I watched it grow and then move through. And I could feel the process of it moving through. And so the next time, in real life, it's still real life, but not on the empathogen. I would feel lonely. I'd think, I could do this forever. I don't want to, but I could.

Interviewer/Host (11:45)

Do you remember everything from the experience?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (11:48)

Yes. Although there are moments where it's important to write things down or for the other person to write things down, there tends to be something to emerge thematically. I would say I'm not alone in this, that there's always one major takeaway and. And maybe some micro takeaways. You know, we have to remember that whether or not it's an antidepressant or it's MDMA or it's psilocybin, the goal is plasticity. It's not necessarily the Experience you have, and all of these compounds increase. These neuromodulators. Neuromodulators are dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, and epinephrine.

Interviewer/Host (12:22)

Plasticity. Does that mean getting to feel the feeling?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (12:28)

Yes. So inside of the session is like the flick of the first domino, but the plasticity actually occurs for weeks afterwards. So a very common experience I've had this experience is you have the session, you feel like you really get to some core conclusion, like you really are able to feel differently. You're able to embrace grief, you're able to come to clarity about hard things, and you're at peace with it. And then inevitably, two or three days or a week later, something happens and you get upset. And the first thought is always like, damn it, I thought I was better. But then you realize, wait, this is the opportunity. And you go back and you activate the same process without having to take the compound again, and you go, oh. So I would say it's like getting a thousand repetitions of talk therapy in one session. Now, there are issues with it in the sense that you can't try and tackle too much in there. You're not going to tackle an entire lifetime. And you also can't take it too often because it's depleting. I mean, that day is written off, the next day is written off. And there's also this big question. Is the experience that you have on these drugs, because that's what they are, is that really the thing, or is it what comes after? There are a lot of people now trying to design psychedelics that don't create any of these odd experiences. So that's mdma. Ketamine is also not a psychedelic. I've never done ketamine.

Interviewer/Host (13:55)

How are they different?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (13:56)

Ketamine is a dissociative anesthetic. It makes you feel out of body. People who've talked to me about it say that it's as if you lift out of your body, you're looking down at yourself and you can see things, good and bad. PCP and ketamine are very similar in structure and have a very similar function. Pencyclidine is, you know, they both block the same receptor. Like, it's. We used to hear about PCP being this wild drug, like in the 70s and 80s, right? This was a. Every other Chips episode was like they were going after PCP dealers or something.

Interviewer/Host (14:27)

Angel dust.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (14:28)

Angel dust, that's right. And then the classic psychedelics are LSD and psilocybin. And I was fortunate enough to be able to participate in a psilocybin trial. And I will say, and this is high dose psilocybin. So just to tell you what the research says, I've never microdosed. But the data on microdosing for depression are very unimpressive. The scientific data will counter that from their own experience. But that's what the data. Not a whole lot of effect. Psilocybin chemically looks a lot like serotonin. High dose psilocybin. So we're talking two grams to four grams. Four grams is like quote unquote, five is like heroic dose. This kind of level, two grams is typically two and a half is typically what's given clinically. Typically two sessions spaced by three weeks or so. Also therapy before, therapy during, therapy after.

Interviewer/Host (15:23)

Do you take it orally?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (15:24)

Yeah, it's usually ground up and you drink it. Oh, it tastes so awful to me. It's a very different experience than mdma. The way that it was described by a psychiatrist friend of mine is that it recedes the waterline on your unconscious mind so that you're down in your unconscious mind and everything becomes symbols. You see things in symbols and feeling. So you might like see an octopus and its tentacles will reflect different forms of seduction, for instance. You can interact with it and you know it's happening in your head. But there's a way in which it feels kind of movie. Like sometimes people will have hallucinations with their eyes open, but typically it's with the eye mask. I will say psilocybin for me personally, terrifying from start to finish. Terrifying demons, octopuses that want to eat me. Really, really challenging, Scary, sad, horrible.

Interviewer/Host (16:22)

After you did it the first time and you knew you were going to do it again in two weeks later, were you not looking forward to the second one?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (16:27)

Okay, so no, I was looking forward to it. And the reason is coming out of it. And then in the days following you feel like you have much better understanding of things that are hard and you feel light and clear. At least that was my experience.

Interviewer/Host (16:45)

So in the moment of doing the drug, it was harrowing, an ass kicking. But after it you felt like you.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (16:53)

Got something from it and it sticks.

Interviewer/Host (16:55)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (16:56)

Even though you know it involves doing several sessions, I would say it was among the scarier experiences of my life. And I've done some things. Yeah, I'm not the most advanced, I'm not Alex Honnold, but I did cage, exit, dive with great white sharks. Like I left the cage. I did that. That was scary. Psilocybin Was way scarier. Probably less dangerous, but way scarier. You need a guide with psilocybin. When I hear about people taking a couple grams of mushrooms and taking a walk in the woods, I could never do that. In fact, the last time I said to the therapist, I said, you know, I thought this was. We were going to hang out and listen to the Grateful Dead. And she was like, no, not when you work with me. But it was really good work. And on the second time I purged, I ended up feeling sick. And I thought it was perhaps from the psilocybin. And they encouraged me to vomit. And I was like, to get it out. And like, no, you're having a very strong bodily reaction to whatever you're thinking about. I'm like, I think it's the psilocybin. They're like, no. And it was interesting. I ended up purging, and I never throw up. I'm like, I hate throwing up. I've done it on a boat. I've done it, like, a couple times when I was a kid. I mean, I hate throwing up. And afterwards, I did it twice. I have to say I was like. Felt something came out of my body. So I will say I felt very good coming out of it. Now, I do want to emphasize again, these are clinical trials that. Where they're recruiting people either with major depression, not major depression, and you can end up in the control group. Right. I wasn't. And I have to say, after this last time, I don't want to do it again. And that's not because it was so terrible. It was because I don't feel like.

Interviewer/Host (18:41)

You know what it is.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (18:42)

I don't feel like there's any new lessons there for me. After the first one, I felt like, in my mind, I was telling myself, there's 15% more work to do. I don't know why. 15%. The second time I went in and I. I felt it kind of the heaviness coming in at the beginning. And I thought, I don't want to do this. And then I heard it sort of is like, you want to do this today or you want to do this another time? Like, let's get this over with. And I think people need to understand that the reason these compounds, if they work, work is because they dramatically increase the levels of these neuromodulators. That opens up plasticity. What kind of modulators in particular? Serotonin.

Interviewer/Host (19:19)

I see.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (19:20)

And that allows for plasticity. Remember, all recovery from depression or PTSD is about plasticity. And so the question is a very fundamental question in mental health, really, and in the psychedelic world and in being human, which is, is the psychedelic experience necessary to get the plasticity? I think there's so much learning that occurs in those states because they're so heightened. But I will say, and I'm not saying this as like a public disclaimer, but it's true. People with a predisposition to psychosis, schizophrenia, or with bipolar issues should not be taking psilocybin, lsd, mdma, and I don't know about ketamine, but probably not that either. I don't know what the deal is there because there have been instances where people have taken these compounds and it has triggered psychotic episodes that don't resolve or don't resolve quickly. And I could never imagine being in that state for longer than the four to six hours that it occurs. But I will say super powerful, and I feel grateful that I was able to participate.

Interviewer/Host (20:25)

Is there any reason to ever combine any of these drugs?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (20:31)

Polypharmacology, as they say, always exists. Well, interesting point before I answer that. So Robin Cardart Harris at UCSF is really, like, one of the world's experts on all this psychedelic research stuff. And I asked him, why are there so few studies of lsd, modern studies? And the answer is really funny. He said, well, they study it a bit in Switzerland, but in the United States, no one wants to stay that long with the person because it takes like 13 hours, and that's. That's a long day in the lab. Psilocybin is like four to eight hours in Switzerland, they're willing to work overtime. They get paid really well for overtime. So this shows the practicalities of science. Yeah. So the combination of the two is kind of interesting. I mean, this obviously has to be done in a medically safe way because of the increase in blood pressure that comes from both compounds. So that's serious. But the mdma psilocybin combination is being looked at because the MDMA is thought to take away some of the scariness of the psilocybin, literally to create a sense of safety and comfort. And mdma, because it's not a classic psychedelic, because it's an empathogen, may not have as potent an effect on brain plasticity as psilocybin. I mean, the studies on psilocybin and major depression are super impressive in my mind. I mean, some people go into complete remission from major depression.

Interviewer/Host (22:04)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (22:05)

Likewise for the studies of MDMA and PTSD, something like roughly 60% of people get significant relief and Many go into complete remission.

Interviewer/Host (22:15)

It's unbelievable.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (22:15)

It's unbelievable.

Interviewer/Host (22:16)

Those are incredible numbers.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (22:18)

Incredible numbers. And we're talking multiple clinical trials. And then of course, a clinical trial will come along which says, well, there wasn't significant effect compared to SSRIs. Keep in mind SSRI, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors are designed to increase serotonin to get you plasticity. No one ever thought that depression was because of too little serotonin. The idea was always to create plasticity. The problem is if people just take a compound and they don't do the intense work, to have the plasticity be in a certain direction doesn't mean anything. You can't expect anything could make it worse. Could make it worse. Because too much serotonin without a directed plasticity can lead to a sort of apathetic state, which is what a lot of people report on high doses of SSRIs. They lose their libido, they lose their appetite, they lose their drive. And then the other compounds that increase dopamine very dramatically and norepinephrine, like cocaine and amphetamine, those are highly addictive. And yet you have drugs like Adderall, which is basically amphetamine. It is amphetamine and a generation of kids that was raised on them. Not that it doesn't have its place.

Interviewer/Host (23:25)

But anyway, the MDMA is a lab made thing and the psilocybin is a natural material. Is there any difference in that way between natural and chemical?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (23:38)

I personally can feel the difference. I mean, they're different compounds. So it's a little tricky to answer in a straightforward way. But this gets to this larger thing about plants and plant medicine. I had a guest on the podcast, Chris McCurdy, who's an expert in plant alkaloids, and he studies Kratom, the leaf. And he said, you know, the Kratom leaf in Indonesia is used and creates a pretty balanced stimulation and relaxation. In the US they create Kratom products, which they take the Kratom leaf, isolate it or create synthetic Kratom. And it doesn't have any of the other plant alkaloids that balance it out. And as a consequence, it's almost as addictive as a lot of opioids. And this is why it's so controversial, because people will use Kratom to get off traditional opioids, but then people will.

Interviewer/Host (24:25)

It's legal Kratom, isn't it?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (24:26)

Yeah, it's in that, that feel free little blue bottle, that little energy drink. But people are also getting addicted to that. So now the new administration is trying to limit the use of Kratom products and create synthetics. Interestingly, McCurdy told me that the Coca Cola factory still imports the Coca plant, takes cocaine out of it. And I was like, where are all these? There's a building, I think it's somewhere in New Jersey where all the CO plant is going. He said, it's one of the most protected buildings in the world.

Interviewer/Host (24:56)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (24:56)

And he said, yes, indeed. Coca Cola had cocaine in it for many years. I didn't know this, but soft drinks were given out by pharmacists. So Coca Cola had cocaine in it, seven up, had lithium in it, seven ingredients to lift you up. This was the idea. Dr. Pepper had pepsin in it for your gut. It was supposed to be for gut health. And then maybe Pepsi had that as well. So plant product like psilocybin, the idea is that the balance between the alkaloids and the stimulation of the serotonin release, I mean, it is serotonin. It's very closely structured to serotonin. The psilocybin itself is, is different than like synthetic psilocybin. You do get the subjective experience that it's kind of earthy. Like you hallucinate for sure. Inside of the eye mask. Especially when your eyes are closed. The things that you see tend to be often they're geometric and things like that, but they tend to have a kind of organic quality. Whereas mdma, because it's not a hallucinogen nor is it a psychedelic, it's more of an empathogen, is more of a feeling of kind of warmth and electricity in the body. And yeah, it feels a little synthetic. It feels like you're a little bit plugged into a lava lamp. I mean, no one complains about the feeling, but it does not feel like a plant medicine. And I should say for thoroughness, I've never tried ayahuasca. I know a lot of people have that one. Ayahuasca kind of frightens me for reasons I don't quite understand. Nor have I tried ibogaine, which is the one that's gaining a lot of favor now and will probably be leading.

Interviewer/Host (26:40)

What is ibogaine?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (26:41)

Ibogaine is iboga. It's a 22 hour long psychedelic experience where with your eyes open, you see normally, eyes closed, you get, I'm told everyone who's taken this that I know tells me the same thing. You get high definition movie like images of past experiences.

Interviewer/Host (26:59)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (26:59)

But you have agency inside of those movies and then they switch like a cube from one slide to the next.

Interviewer/Host (27:05)

That's wild.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (27:06)

Former governor Rick Perry down in Texas, staunch Republican, has been a big proponent of ibogaine therapy. He's done it.

Interviewer/Host (27:13)

Really?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (27:14)

Yeah. For people who have challenges giving up alcohol or opioids who do ibogaine and you need to be heart rate monitored because it has some heart issues, et cetera. The number of people that never touch alcohol or opioids again after using ibogaine is really striking.

Interviewer/Host (27:35)

Really?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (27:35)

Yeah. And it's super impressive. And the studies are being done by Dr. Nolan Williams at Stanford. He's been imaging these veterans. You have to. It's illegal, so you have to go out of country to do it. All these things are illegal, by the way, I should say. MDMA is still Schedule 1, psilocybin, still Schedule 1, IBO is still Schedule 1. But it's very likely that all three of those will be moved to Schedule 2 soon, which means has some potential.

Interviewer/Host (27:57)

Medical application based on all the testing and the positive results.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (28:01)

Yeah, yeah. I think the only reason MDMA didn't make the cut last year with the FDA is that there was this impropriety at one of the. You know, it's very important at the beginning of a session that the person working with you say the words, there will be nothing sexual. There will be no violence. Those two things cannot exist in the session. I mean, it shouldn't exist in any therapy, but, you know, especially under conditions where somebody couldn't even run out of the room. Right. So unfortunately, there were some things that happened in, in one of the trials that shouldn't have happened. And now it looks like it will be looked at again and chances are it'll pass.

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Dr. Andrew Huberman (30:05)

So.

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Interviewer/Host (30:22)

Tell me about Yoga Nidra.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (30:24)

Oh, man. Now that's my drug. 2017, I went out to Florida to learn about trauma release from a guy named Ryan Suave, who's a very talented therapist and trauma release guy. And every day started with an hour of Yoga Nidra.

Interviewer/Host (30:45)

Was it a recording or did he perform it?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (30:47)

He talked or his wife talked.

Interviewer/Host (30:50)

So a live guided yoga Nitro.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (30:52)

Live guided Yoga Nidra. So lie on the mat, long exhale, breathing, body scan, some intentions, et cetera. And I found it to be remarkable because it seemed to recover the sleep that I wasn't getting the night before because there was jet lag and it was a stressful time and it was hard to sleep and it was humid down there in Florida and I did not participate in. I would have said if I did. Ryan runs a drug and alcohol recovery center down there with very high success rates where other people can't seem to get sober. They can get sober there and they would do nidro with them.

Interviewer/Host (31:27)

Had you ever done guided meditation before that?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (31:29)

A little bit. I read when I was 16. I was. Or 14. Excuse me. I was given the book, wherever you go, there you are. So I'd done some of the junk about Zinn stuff, not formally guided. No spirit rock experiences or anything.

Interviewer/Host (31:42)

I love that book.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (31:43)

Yeah, I love. Beautiful book.

Interviewer/Host (31:44)

What a great book.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (31:45)

Beautiful book, Beautifully written, beautiful paper. Beautiful. Yeah. I still think about the mountain meditation a lot. So when I left, I thought this Nidra thing is really amazing. And I asked Ryan about it and he said, yeah, you could do it for 30 minutes. And he put me in touch with some of these apps and recordings from Kamini Desai, who has a beautiful voice. I really liked her voice. And I would do nidra for like 30 minutes a day. And then about a year into doing the podcast, I realized that I wanted people to understand and appreciate Nidra. But I was challenged by the language. People think it involves movement and because it has intentions and some mystical language that's kind of a separator. So I took the risk of creating some Yoga Nidra scripts that don't have intentions or mystical language that are 10 minutes, 20 minutes or 30 minutes. And I called it non sleep deep rest.

Interviewer/Host (32:41)

Which is what it is.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (32:42)

Which is what it is. And those got many millions of views and listens and have done very well. Again, they're zero cost. They're out there. I did catch some heat from the Yoga Nidra community, you know, about cultural appropriation of thousands of year old things. And I, I Always come back saying the same thing, which is, I have tremendous respect for Nidra. I do think that the mystical language and the intentions serve as a separator. And my goal is just for people to use these incredible tools. So Nidra, to me, can be summarized the following way. It replenishes mental and physical vigor, but unlike a nap, it doesn't create sleep inertia. So you don't emerge from it groggy, you emerge energized. And unlike a nap, it helps you get better at sleeping as opposed to disrupting your sleep. Naps really mess up sleep, especially if they're too late in the day or too long. Nidra does the opposite. So I've been doing. Nidra did it this morning. I do. Yeah. Basically 30 minutes a day, at least five days a week, usually first thing in the day or. Or in the afternoon. And in the hardest, most stressful times of my life, I can confidently say that Nidra saved me.

Interviewer/Host (33:57)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (33:58)

Because if you're going through a stressful time, that cortisol spike is going to come in the middle of the night, you're going to wake up, and you're going to have a hard time falling back asleep. And the sleep deprivation makes everything worse. And Nidra, while not the same as sleep, really lets you deeply relax. And it's a beautiful skill. To me, it's as important as physical exercise. I love nidra. I love nsdr. I sound like people usually say this about psychedelics, but I'll say it about yoga. Nidra, nsdr I think that if everyone did yoga. Nidra, nsdr the world will be a much better place.

Interviewer/Host (34:34)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (34:35)

Because people would be so much more peaceful with themselves.

Interviewer/Host (34:37)

Yeah. It's a guided meditation. It's meditating without needing to learn to meditate.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (34:43)

Yeah. It provides just enough to listen to that you don't have to work hard to focus. And also deliberately trying to fall asleep is really tough. But trying to stay awake while relaxed is perfect for somebody who's a little stressed out or just wants to relax.

Interviewer/Host (35:03)

Tell me about caffeine.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (35:05)

Love caffeine. I have a very high caffeine tolerance. I drink so much caffeine, man. But then again, I can show you a picture of me at 3 years old in my Spider man pajamas on my grandfather's lap drinking Yerba Mate, which is a lot of caffeine. Caffeine increases the number of dopamine receptors you have, so your dopamine goes further. That's good. Caffeine doesn't raise cortisol, but it Extends the duration of increases mental clarity and physical vigor. It sharpens your focus. As long as you don't drink it too late in the day, doesn't mess up your sleep. It is a little bit of an appetite suppressant, especially if it's mate. But even coffee can think of very few reasons not to drink caffeine if you're an adult and you don't drink too much of it. I mean, I love caffeine. I think caffeine's one of the best inventions. And again, it's plant medicine. I mean, if you're taking synthetic caffeine pills, which I don't do, it's one thing. But if you're getting it from mate or getting it from coffee, I mean, you're getting it from some chocolate, green tea or green tea, like it's a plant medicine. 90% of the adult population of the world consumes caffeine every day. In fact, I think Michael Pollan did a book about caffeine where he came off caffeine. It's an experiment I never intend to try. And he. He said, you know, caffeine is one of the few drugs that we take just to feel normal. But I'll never forget my first cup of black coffee. I think I was probably, like 13, 14, and my friend Jim Thibault, he ran real skateboards. This guy Steve Ruge, was team major for Spitfire. They gave me a cup of black coffee and a styrofoam cup. I drank it and I was like, oh, I love this. It was like, this is how I'm meant to feel.

Interviewer/Host (36:55)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (36:56)

You know, some people drink alcohol and say that. I don't feel that way when I drink alcohol. I don't drink alcohol anymore. It's easy to quit for me. I haven't had a sip in ages. I just don't like it. But caffeine, oh, man, it gets the gears turning. I love it. Oh, and it helps with bowel motility, which, you know, provided it's not too much, is. Is good. You want things moving through.

Interviewer/Host (37:17)

Tell me about nicotine.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (37:19)

Nicotine doesn't cause cancer. Smoking, vaping, dipping, or snuffing causes cancer. But the nicotine compound's very interesting compound. Technically, it's a stimulant, but it also relaxes you at the same time.

Interviewer/Host (37:33)

So that's an interesting combination.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (37:35)

Very interesting combination. Unlike any other stimulant. Well, it works by increasing acetylcholine, another neuromodulator, increases, so it increases focus. Probably can help with plasticity, too. We Know that.

Interviewer/Host (37:50)

Does acetylcholine do anything in particular that others don't?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (37:53)

Increases focus.

Interviewer/Host (37:55)

That's what it does.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (37:56)

And it provides a window into neuroplasticity. You know, nicotine is known to be neuroprotective against Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. The problem is most people smoked to get it. And that is worse than not smoking.

Interviewer/Host (38:08)

Yeah. So the delivery method of the nicotine, if it's smoking, the smoking is the part that's toxic.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (38:15)

That's right. Or vaping. Yeah.

Interviewer/Host (38:16)

The nicotine is the part that's good.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (38:18)

That's right. So the one thing about nicotine, people need to be aware of two things. One, it increases blood pressure. So if you have high blood pressure, that's an issue. The other is that it is very habit forming in a way that caffeine is also habit. For me, most people who start continue. Some people who start soon are taking a lot. I know people that instead of taking one or two pouches of nicotine, they start with one or two, and pretty soon they're taking a canister a day.

Interviewer/Host (38:46)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (38:47)

Which for me would be unheard of. The other thing is it will make your voice a little bit more raspy, even if you're not smoking, because it will stimulate what's called the muscarinic receptors. And there are a bunch of muscles in your throat that have receptors for the nicotine. And when you're not using it, sometimes you'll feel like your voice is a little bit hoarse. And then you take more nicotine and it tends to smooth it out. These drugs are very diabolical. There have been cool studies. Get this. You'll find this interesting. Done with caffeine and with nicotine, where they give bees the option to go to different types of flowers, where they also get caffeine or nicotine from the flower. And basically all animals will work to get a caffeine or nicotine sensation. I want to say buzz, but that's like. That'd be bad pun. So these things are very reinforcing in nature in lots of species. We're not the only species that likes these things.

Interviewer/Host (39:42)

What have you learned about peptides?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (39:44)

Oh, man. Peptides are super cool. Peptides are little short chains of amino acids. So insulin's a peptide. There are a lot of peptides that you make naturally. We should be clear. But when we talk about peptides, we're generally talking about things that you take. I mean, the one that's super popular right now is all the GLP1s, the Manjaro and Ozempic and stuff. And people are now starting to microdose those because microdosing though seems to allow people to avoid some of the gastric distress and side effects. And it's a lot cheaper to microdose them than take the full dose. That said, some of those compounds have helped people who really struggled with their weight lose a lot of weight, but they lose muscle too, so they need to exercise. I've never tried Mounjaro or any GLP1 type peptides. The peptides that I've experimented with, I'll tell you one that I tried that did not work well for me, which is Sermarellin, which is a growth hormone secretagogue. You take it before sleep, it increases your deep sleep and it makes you release more growth hormone. It spiked my prostate specific antigen really dramatically. So I stopped after a very short while. But there's another one called Tessamorelin that seems to work very well that doesn't do that.

Interviewer/Host (40:52)

What does that one do?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (40:53)

It also increases growth hormone. One thing I've noticed though, and the reason I don't use any of these things regularly is that Tessamorelin increases my slow wave deep sleep dramatically, but it tends to nuke my REM sleep at the end of the night. There's a great peptide that I'm a huge fan of called Pinealin, which is thought to replenish the pinealocytes that make melatonin, which tend to deplete as we age. That will dramatically increase REM sleep. And sometimes I'm getting up to two and a half hours of REM sleep. I don't use it every night. Many people think you need to use every night. I think you can pulse with it every once in a while for a couple of nights and you still see the effect. That's pretty cool. And then the other peptides I think are interesting is, you know, BPC 1157 does seem to anecdotally increase wound healing time and recovery from exercise. It's pretty powerful anti inflammatory still. They're mostly animal studies, very few human studies. But it's a peptide normally made by the gut that's involved in healing. You know, years ago, like in World War I, if somebody would like had fingers cut off or blown off, they would put it in somebody's gut to keep the tissue alive. Yeah, I know, right? It's warm and you know, wow. Yeah. Wild, right? Yeah. Talk to surgeons sometimes about some of the crazy stuff that used to be done and you find an underlying mechanistic logic. So Maybe BPC is involved there. Well, I think some of the more interesting peptides coming out are things like SS31 to improve mitochondrial function. There's something called SLU which I haven't tried, which is a fat loss peptide, thymosin alpha people will take to improve immune system function. And then there's one which also I've never tried, which is GKU copper, which is in the longevity space epithelium to repair the DNA in cells. So stuff's getting pretty sophisticated. You're not going to find a lot of really good clinical trials on these. So a lot of it is just kind of anecdotal. But I think BPC157, provided you're willing to be experimental and you know that there aren't great clinical trials and you can get real. BPC is very interesting for people recovering from an injury. I think that for people that want growth hormone enhancement, I think Tessamorelin, as long as you're willing to cycle it for about eight weeks on a month off, I think Tessamorelin taken before sleep on an, you know, not having eaten for a couple hours is a probably a safer way to increase growth hormone as compared to taking growth hormone and a lot less expensive. Growth Hormone is like $1,500 a month and these other things are a little, little bit more subtle and certainly more affordable. But none of them are really like steroids or they're not hyper performance enhancers. They're stronger than most supplements, but they're not like a full press on the gas pedal. They're more of a nudge.

Interviewer/Host (43:37)

Have you ever taken either branched chain amino acids or natural amino acids?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (43:43)

Yeah. Despite the literature saying that branch chain amino acids are not useful after exercise, I find that I recover more quickly. So I'll take essential amino acids or branch chain amino acids.

Interviewer/Host (43:55)

What's the difference between them, do you know?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (43:56)

It's just the ratios of things like leucine, the different ones. I think what you really want is leucine after you train. So I'll take a scoop of branched chain amino acid or essential amino acid with some water in an element packet after I train. But then I also after resistance training is when I'll typically have some rice or some oatmeal or some bread, replenish my glycogen, some fruit, usually a lot of fruit. And then I'll have like a protein shake and then some protein. Like after I resistance train, I'm pretty darn hungry. I might not eat right away, but the next meal tends to last a While and it's got. I'm just trying to get as much stuff in there as possible to replenish and recover. In general I eat meat, fish, eggs, cheese, fruits and vegetables and not a lot of starches. But especially in the US where the starches seem like filled with crap. But if I have starches it's like rice, good sourdough bread or rye bread, like good. Not out of a plastic bag. Usually from a bakery. Definitely from a bakery. Maybe some oatmeal. And that tends to come after training when you're replenishing your glycogen. The branched chain amino acids are also great. Like if you're going to sleep in an hour and you don't want to eat something, but you worked out hard that day, maybe take some before sleep. Just you have a few more circulating while you sleep. But I'm not super strict about this stuff anymore. I eat so clean and I have for so long. I don't tend to eat breakfast. Sometimes at 9am or usually around 11am I'll have my first meal or protein shake or something like that. I think that over time you learn that as long as you're getting enough protein, enough fruits and vegetables to get that fiber. Because I do think fiber is important and I think the low sugar fermented foods like the sauerkraut, the kimchi, the kefir, the natto, the kombucha, that stuff, as long as it's low sugar and it needs to be refrigerated, that stuff is awesome. Like the more you can support your gut microbiome, the better you feel. I've just see that and every time and, and people sometimes tease me about it. But I've been taking, legitimately been taking AG1 once or twice a day since 2012. That's why people can come at me all day, Baba, I love that stuff.

Interviewer/Host (46:01)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (46:02)

And when I travel I'll do three or four packets a day. And I feel great. I feel great.

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Dr. Andrew Huberman (47:38)

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Interviewer/Host (47:45)

How does technology impact science?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (47:49)

Well, I mean, I came up in the age where bigger, faster computers made it that much easier. Like even just submitting papers, we used to have to print them out, do photo scan, all that, storing large image files. Because a lot of what we did was taking digital images of neuroanatomy using lasers like 2 photon microscopy, where you can image deep into the brain without having to make it. You know, you could even just thin the skull. You wouldn't even have to like cut into the skull or brain. I think when it comes to like medical technology, all the gamma knife stuff, for instance, non invasive control of brain activity using sound waves, so using ultrasound, using transcranial magnetic stimulation, like this stuff is awesome. The engineers are what make it happen. I think that engineers are really good at building tools. They're not so good at asking the best questions, you know, but that's why they have friends that are neuroscientists and psychologists. They're really good at asking questions. And then all the viral technologies, I'm not talking about to treat humans, I'm talking about. I mean, that's a separate issue that the viral technologies to like introduce genes into experiments, like gene therapies. Incredible.

Interviewer/Host (49:00)

Do the engineers come up with the idea and then the neurologists figure out how to use it, or do the neurologists ask the engineers for what they need?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (49:10)

Typically it's the latter. Like at Stanford, which is a very, very strong engineering school, the engineers are made aware that in Parkinson's there's this brain area and these neurons tend to deplete. And if you could just stimulate these three brain areas at this level non invasively and update it according to how the activity patterns change, they tend to collaborate in that way. I mean, Eddie Chang is also a bioengineer. You get these polymaths that are good at that. But in general, the engineers are really good at building stuff for which someone else knows the specific goal. Like neuralink is also taking on the challenge of neural augmentation. But they're also mostly clinical right now, trying to cure blindness, paralysis, et cetera.

Interviewer/Host (49:58)

What Are your thoughts on spiritual practice?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (50:03)

It's hard to emphasize how important that is for my life now. I mean, I always secretly prayed. Secretly because it like wasn't cool or. No, no, I think secretly because, you know, as a scientist we were taught that, you know, stuff in spirituality and is incompatible. I think over time I just allow myself to lean into prayer more and more. And I grew up in a split religion home. People had divergent feelings about religion and which religions and it was a whole thing.

Interviewer/Host (50:38)

Was there friction?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (50:40)

Not outright, but I think that there was. I could clearly detect a divergence in the value system. You know, one person felt religion and belief in God was so fundamental in the other, like did not feel that way. And feelings about the value systems for different religions and how those didn't were incompatible. And you know, because my parents divorced and remarried and we now have a really extensive family with adopted kids and all this stuff that. Not mine. But you know, what ended up happening was we ended up with a very international, very multi racial, very multi religious family, which is cool because it's more of a buffet. And then I have a security guy that works with me, his former tier one operator who's also a friend named Eddie Penny, who's a really incredible human. He was on Sean Ryan's podcast and he somewhat public facing and has talked about his experiences with faith in Jesus and getting sober and getting over some of the challenging things he experienced in his work and life. And he was the one that got me reading the Bible and he didn't force me to do it. He just wasn't even nudge me, he just kind of inspired. He inspired me. And you know, the more I learn, you know that this will raise some people's cortisol but I kind of don't think about it because for me the more I learn about Christianity and Judaism and the more Muslim people I get to know and the more that I pray and the more that I read the Bible, I'm reading both New Testament and Old Testament, the more that I'm like just amazed that I made it this far without it, like to the point where I'm like, I don't know who or what was looking out for me. I think I have a feeling, but I just can't believe I made it this far. Because I think that inside the human brain we have the capacity to go so many different directions. I don't care how good somebody is. It's not about the battle between good and evil in our heads. It's that life is so confusing. And then there are these roadmaps that come from science or that come from parenting or that come from how to be fit, how to eat, how to vote, how to, you know, like all this stuff. And as you've said before, Rick, you know, it's like so much of it is man made, humans made this stuff up, and humans are fallible, and humans have blind spots. It's part of being fallible. And humans are out of touch with their unconscious mind. That's why we call it an unconscious mind. And no matter how striving somebody is, you can't keep all that in clarity. And I feel like the Bible explains this. One arrives to those readings with all of that understood. And so what comes back to you are just things that you can really trust at least to explore. And I'll just say that the practice of prayer has completely transformed my life in ways that, yes, yoga nidra. Yes, exercise and eating right. Yes, amazing friendship. Yes, getting a PhD in neuroscience. Yes, the. But like, not even on the same scale. I pray every night before I go to sleep. If I fall asleep first, I get up out of bed at some point to use the bathroom. And after I use the bathroom, I get on my knees and I pray every single night. And it's become an act of discipline for me because, sure, there are nights when I don't want to do it. I tell them every single night without fail. And I'll tell you, I pray for others. I pray for clarity. I rarely pray for things for me, but for clarity and for others. And I'm always positively amazed at what comes out of those prayer practices. I'm just grateful to Eddie and I'm just going to keep doing it.

Interviewer/Host (54:51)

Yeah, it's amazing that such a great resource is so totally discounted.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (54:57)

Well, I think people assume that if you pray, it somehow means that you don't believe in reality, which is, like, makes no sense. And if you understand a little, just a smidge about the human brain or even just the visual system, like, we can't see tons of what's out there that other animals literally can see. We can't hear tons of what's out there. People go, well, okay, that's your eyes, that's your ears. What I'm saying is that our nervous system, which govern, that's our filter. Of course there are things that we can't see. It makes perfect sense. And even my father, who, you know, we talked about this a little bit on the podcast when he, when he came on, I said, you know, I believe in God. I really do. And he said, well, as a theoretical physicist, I can tell you that quantum mechanics is very hard for the human brain to comprehend, but I do. I know it's real. And he said, and I know that there are things in the universe that we can't comprehend with our logical mind, but that have to be real. We know this. And we started talking about the various scientists who were brilliant, who believed in God. And I just. I just don't see how it doesn't work. I'm just grateful that. That I came to the clarity that forming a relationship with God was important and makes sense. And I think that it sucks when you see people using religion to divide. That sucks. Like, it sucks. It's not what it's about. I also feel very loved and comforted by God. I feel encouraged.

Interviewer/Host (56:26)

Congratulations. It's a good discovery.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (56:29)

Yeah. Yeah.

Interviewer/Host (56:29)

I'm glad you have that.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (56:31)

Yeah. Yeah. That's the big one. More than any of the other stuff we talked about.

Interviewer/Host (56:35)

That's amazing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (56:36)

Yeah. Because life is a lot to bear, even with the best people in the best circumstances. I don't know. I mean, I'm not going to try and encourage anyone to do anything or believe anything. I never would. But I will say that if people have a kind of a. That little voice in their head like, yeah, like, I want to believe, or I. I think there's something there. Like, you know, don't be afraid to pull on that thread a little bit. You know, sometimes it's just like pulling on that thread and listening to what comes back. It's like, he's got you, you know.

Interviewer/Host (57:10)

How have the people that you know from your old academic life see your newfound mainstream connection to the world?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (57:18)

Oh, man. Well, God bless Eddie Chang, our friend, the chair of neurosurgery. I can't believe I've known him since I was seven. So little Eddie is now. He's taller than I am. He's like, probably like six. 2. God Bless Eddie Chang, Chair of neurosurgery and now member of the National Academy of Sciences of usa. One of only three neurosurgeons in the history of neurosurgery to be elected to the National Academy of Sciences. This is no small feat. God bless him because he's as good a scientist or physician as there is. He's legendary among neurosurgeons. Legendary. And he's been a great person to touch base with. And me ask, hey, like, what do you think of the messaging here? His wife wrote to me recently and said, just want to thank you. 80% of his daily practices besides brain surgery are from the podcast. And I said, well, you have to understand that for me, Eddie represents. He's like the Michael Jordan of our field. So I'm just. I feel lucky to know him, much less that he's my friend. He's been great. Others have been great. Many have been great. Many have been on my podcast. Mike Eisenberg at Stanford, Jeff Goldberg, like, so many people have been amazing. And then, of course, there are those that I think don't like the podcast either because they wish that they were talking about this stuff, or I think for many people in academia, not all, but I think for many people in academia, the ability to keep it shrouded by language and with awards and things, it was a way of maintaining prestige. That falls away when someone is, like, talking about it out there. When. When people can really understand what you do, it either makes what you do seem really, really cool or kind of like, oh, cool.

Interviewer/Host (59:08)

Demystifies it.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (59:09)

Demystifies it. Mystique. You know, my friends who. I have a number of friends who were in what they call Tier one Special operations, so these are like the guys that have to be ready on 24 hours notice. They're do super dangerous, super complicated stuff. And they'll tell you that, you know, a lot of the movies about special operations, seals and Green Berets and stuff that happened in the 2000s. One of the reasons that was complicated is it eroded some of the mystique. You know, prior to that, these were people who showed up in the middle of the night, did stuff and disappeared.

Interviewer/Host (59:40)

And we didn't even really know they existed.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (59:42)

That's right. Until that image of Obama and the other officials. I think it was Obama and Hillary and a few other people in that room on the night where they got Bin Laden. Until then, the whole thing about SEAL Team Six was very cloaked. Still, some people knew about it. There's a book about it, Rogue Warrior and stuff, but people didn't really talk about it after that. There was just a rash of these movies and those guys still doing incredible things, obviously. But what I've been told is that those movies actually made their job harder because before that, the mystique carries so much from the perspective of their enemies, from the perspective of the American public. We're not really supposed to know about that stuff. And so for scientists, a lot of it is supposed to be like this magic that no one can understand. And I think that the pandemic was really when the reputations of scientists as fallible. Like, they're not perfect. They make mistakes. That really became public knowledge that these are people making decisions and that the scientific process, well, it became public knowledge.

Interviewer/Host (60:49)

But I don't think it was admitted.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (60:51)

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. To this day, and this is a big part of Jay Bhattacharya's charter with the nih, to this day, I have close friends who are strong believers in science. These are people that without question took the vaccine. These are people that without question, are huge believers in science and the scientific process. They tell me that until NIH apologizes for some of the messaging during the pandemic, that they don't want to see another dime spent on science. These are people who use the practices. These are not anti vaxxers. So I'm sure there are some of those, too. But these are people who are like science tech junkies and they're angry. At first I thought, wait, how can this be? And they're like, it's because ultimately it's about honesty. It's about disclosure.

Interviewer/Host (61:46)

They feel like they're being made fools of.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (61:48)

Right? They either feel like they were tricked. Listen, to be totally fair, many of them feel that they made the right decision in following what the CDC or whatever said, but they don't like the way that it was implemented. And I feel like the scientific community doesn't understand this yet because it always gets couched as you either believed in masks, lockdowns, and vaccines or you didn't. But that's the more important crowd right now to really convince are the people who just don't trust science and government as institutions. That's where the real chasm is. And no one's talking about this. It always gets couched around the issue of masks or vaccines or lockdowns. And that stuff's super important to discuss. But the scientific community still hasn't realized why people are angry. It's not because they don't believe in science. It's because Americans don't like to be told what to do. We do not like it when the government interferes with our plans. Americans hate that. They hate it. And you had this community of people who just wouldn't message things in a way that made sense to a huge number of people, even the people who are super into vaccines. So it's interesting. And I think Jay understands this, and so he's very sensitive to this. I don't, because he was on my podcast and we talk from time to time, and I think he really does want to unify people around this because we need science, but we also need the discourse around science to be grounded in what it really is, what we really know and what we don't know. And I actually think if you tell people what we know and what we don't know, they're still going to make the same choices or similar choices. But people can feel authenticity and people can feel lack of authenticity.

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Interviewer/Host (65:13)

What makes a great teacher?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (65:15)

A great teacher is somebody that obviously has mastery of the material and can explain it clearly, but who also delights in the material as if they were a novice learning it for the first time while they're teaching it.

Interviewer/Host (65:29)

So enthusiasm.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (65:31)

It's enthusiasm, but I saw this. It was a course that I directed at Stanford for the medical students for a number of years called nBio206, which is neurobiology for medical students. And it was team taught. So I would do neural development and I would talk about the biophysics of the neuron and someone else would talk about some aspects of biophysics of the neuron and vision and hearing and all this stuff. And these were the best people for these subjects. And yet I would say about half of them would give lectures that were truly transformative. Like Anna Lemke came in. This is how I got to know Anna of author of Dopamine Nation. And she started talking about addiction and explaining it. And it was like she obviously has tremendous command of the material. This is her career. But then there were these moments where it's almost like she's realizing that the dopamine pathway involves pain and pleasure. So you're feeling her love of it while she's teaching it to you. Clearly, the best teachers are both teachers and students right alongside you.

Interviewer/Host (66:29)

Best teacher you've ever had.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (66:32)

Okay, best lecture of research materials. A guy named Eric Knudsen who studied brain plasticity for reasons I still don't understand. He's my colleague at Stanford. He's retired now for reasons I don't understand. Still the best lecturer. He takes you someplace else. He's this really tall, kind of Swedish, Paul Newman looking surfer guy, went to UC Santa Barbara. He's super mellow, plays volleyball, beach volleyball, kind of strides around. And then when he lectures, everything is so precise. No extra words, no extra language. And you walk out of those lectures and you're like, brain plasticity is the coolest thing ever. And that's the coolest lecture I ever heard. And I've heard him lecture 50 times. And every single time I'm blown away. Best teacher, Harry Carlisle, UC Santa Barbara. Teaching me the physiology of the neuron, neurotransmitters, mental disease, what it is. He was the first person to tell me. A whole class of us, like schizophrenia is probably a disruption in these neural circuits. It's not from bad parenting or depression, is probably a combination of things we don't quite understand and relate to neurotransmitters. But he used to do this thing where if he was explaining Parkinson's, he would shuffle. He would kind of act out the things where if he was explaining a seizure, he would shake. So he would physically embody the things he was teaching.

Interviewer/Host (68:08)

Which just made it more clear.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (68:10)

Yeah, it made it more clear and it provided this. This visceral sense of what it was. If he was teaching, like biophysics of the neuron, which frankly is pretty dry unless you think about biophysics of neurons. And that's really, really cool about sodium ions rushing in and stuff. And he would use sound effects, but he didn't do it to be theatrical.

Interviewer/Host (68:28)

Sound effects he made with his mouth.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (68:30)

Yeah, he'd go where he'd say, you know? And so unlike so many online lectures, he wasn't trying to impress us. He was not trying to impress us. And he was, like I said, he was this kind of mellow Quaker guy who had been in the Navy. He was punk. I worked in his lab.

Interviewer/Host (68:49)

He.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (68:50)

He would drink coffee and he would smoke cigarettes in the lab, and he would light the cigarettes in the Bunsen burner in the fume hood. And they'd come down the hall and they'd yell at him and they'd be like, harry, you can't smoke here. And he would just. And then he would go right back to doing it. He would go right back to doing it. He was super cool, but he was not trying to impress us when he taught. He was purely focused on us understanding how awesome the biology was. And when it came to the mental health stuff, for some reason, I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues. We had this guy in our town. They called him the sheep man. He had, like, a sheepskin vest, and he was schizophrenic, clearly, and he always was covering his ears and stuff. And my mom, who's a very compassionate person, used to pull over and give him stuff. I found out years later, by the way, just to give you a sense of who my mom is, that she had been housing a number of the different homeless people in Palo Alto and hotels for years without telling anyone, without telling any of us. So I've always had a sensitivity to people with mental health issues, and Harry had that sensitivity, too. This is why, you know, when he killed himself, it was like this guy lectured about depression. Like, is going on here. But, yeah, he was a phenomenal teacher. And my dad to this day will say, you know, you're so lucky you had a teacher like that. Yeah, because I was not that turned on to school. I was kind of. You know, I had my challenges in year one, and then I was kind of, like, thinking, maybe I'd go to Whitman up in Walla Walla. Maybe I'd become a journalist. Maybe I'd write. I don't know. I was kind of, like, floundering, and. And I take this guy's class, and I'm like, there wasn't even neuroscience back then. There was psychology and biology, and they had a biopsychology degree. And I was like, I want to be that guy. Yeah, I want to be that guy. And then when I went to work in his lab and he was. Taught me how to inject rats with Ecstasy, and then we were, like, doing experiments. And back then, don't do this, kids. But I smoked a cigarette or two, and then we drink coffee together. I was like, this is the best. And it felt a little bit the same way that skateboarding had to me. Even though that was now in the rear view, it felt. I was like, this is punk. Like, we just kind of do what we want and we're figuring things out. And I knew it was cool. I knew neuroscience was cool in the same way that the first time I saw someone, like, I don't know, do some slappy frontside grind or something on a curb. I was like, that is so cool. I just knew it. Like, I didn't care if people liked it because no one liked skateboarding back then. Yeah, it was like a niche thing. Yeah, he. He was spectacular.

Interviewer/Host (71:24)

Do you think that for the teachers who were great, you think everyone who was in that class would say, that was my favorite teacher.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (71:31)

He was very beloved.

Interviewer/Host (71:32)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (71:34)

I will say, in fairness, the hardest class I ever took, which was neural development from a guy named Ben Reese who had gone to UC Santa Barbara, but then he trained at Oxford, and apparently he came back from Oxford like, super proper and probably even had a British accent. Sorry, Ben. He was brutally difficult, and he had no sense of humor. I'm sure he has one at home. And he taught me neuroanatomy, and I really learned neuroanatomy. Like, he kicked our asses with neuroanatomy and neural development, which was the field I initially went into as a graduate student because of him. That course was hard.

Interviewer/Host (72:11)

In his case. It's not that it was fun or cool. He just was a great teacher.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (72:16)

It was the standard that he held us to. I mean, I didn't think I could do neuroanatomy the way he taught it in a lab. And with. I mean, to this day, like, I teach neuroanatomy to medical students. And my command of neuroanatomy and my ability to understand the nervous system in three dimensions stems from that course. And my ability to understand neural development and to marvel in what it takes to go from sperm and meets egg to a human comes from that course. And it's because I got to work with specimens and I got to understand it at a conceptual level and a practical level. And because both Ben Reese was, and probably still is, one tough son of a bitch, he was completely unforgiving. I think on one of my answers to a test, he wrote, not a brilliant response. And I was like, shit. So I went back to him and I said, what's it missing? And we parsed it. And he taught me to raise myself to a higher standard. And I think because he had gone to. Remember, UC Santa Barbara in the 80s and 90s was considered, quote, unquote, a party school. And it had some good departments and it had some really strong majors. Our friend Jack Johnson was there. He was in my class. He was a film major there. There's some really good teachers there. But it had this reputation of being kind of loosey goosey. And I think Ben, because he went there Then he went to Oxford, and he got a really formal training. He understood what being held to that really high standard could do for someone. And he applied that to everyone. He applied that to everyone. So he kicked my ass. And by time I got to graduate school, I mean, I can honestly say, like, I know a lot more neuroanatomy than a lot of, like, people that teach neuroanatomy.

Interviewer/Host (73:58)

Because of him.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (73:58)

Because of him.

Interviewer/Host (73:59)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (73:59)

And even. And years later, when I was in graduate school, I worked with one of the best neuroanatomists in the world, Ted Jones. He wrote the book A Thousand. It's like this tome of neuroanatomy where I talked to Eddie Chang, who's a neurosurgeon. And, yeah, like, I think. It's not that I can name every structure, although I can name a lot of structures. It's that when you get that deep into the material, kind of like a musician or a producer, a creative, I can rotate it in my mind, and I can see the pieces it's connected to in my mind's eye. And so I'm not looking at things in isolation going, oh, that's the centromedia nucleus.

Interviewer/Host (74:32)

That's what you memorize. You can see it.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (74:34)

That's right.

Interviewer/Host (74:34)

You can see the system.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (74:35)

That's right. I'm seeing processes. I'm seeing processes. And so when people talk about dopamine, I'm thinking about circuitry, and I'm thinking about the way that circuitry works, and I can see it in my head. And that's not because I'm special. It's because I spent a hell of a lot of time on it. I used to study for neuroanatomy by looking at a textbook page, looking down the microscope, snapping an image of it with my mind, drawing a picture of it after class. And then I would lie on my bed in my studio apartment, and I would fly through the circuit. And the moment I'd get to a structure I couldn't name, I'd look it up and I'd go back. And so I have an atlas in my head. And so it's not that I'm special. It's. I put hundreds, if not thousands of hours of work into it and then teaching it later. And it's because Ben Rees forced me to do that. He forced it down our throats, and he was unrelenting. He did not give a shit. If you thought your answer should have one more point. Knowing Ben, he'd probably dock you a point just for asking. He was tough he's tough.

Interviewer/Host (75:37)

How is it different learning something from a teacher versus learning it from a book?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (75:46)

I think learning from books requires that you teach yourself. You know, I did this solo episode on how best to study and learn. And the entire literature on how best to study and learn can be summarized by two sentences. The best way to study and learn is to self test on the knowledge. When you're not near the material, when you're away from the textbook, when you're away from the microscope, when you're away from the music, when you're away from the language class, just ask yourself, do I know how to say that? And if you don't, note what you don't know, because it turns out that all of learning is anti forgetting. All of learning is anti forgetting. They've done these beautiful experiments where they have people read the same passage one time, two times, three times, or four times. They had to. People either highlight, take notes, teach someone else, blah, blah, blah. Every iteration you can possibly imagine. And included in these experiments is a condition where people self test. If people self test on material a week after they learn the material, even if they realize they don't know some of the material, their maintenance of what they do know lasts many years. Otherwise the forgetting happens very quickly. It's kind of a duh. But when you think about most of learning is anti forgetting, it's just countering the forgetting process. You're like 99% of the way there.

Interviewer/Host (77:07)

Talk to me about education versus entertainment.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (77:13)

Good education is always going to require a bit of kind of teacher student friction. Like if you make things too easy for people, it becomes passive listening. They don't learn. You know, the conditions for rewiring stuff or plasticity is you need alertness, you need attention, you need a little bit of friction and then you need that reflection. Ideally self testing. You need people thinking about it later. And one of the best ways to get people to think about it later is to have a bit of like confusion or friction in there. Like you never artificially introduce like contradictions, but it's got to have a texture. I imagine a good song is the same. It can't just be like easy listening. Like nothing's worse than easy listening. You say easy listening like I'm afraid what will come up in YouTube, right? Like there's no texture to that. So good education involves inflection. And I don't do any of this consciously, but you know, you gotta sometimes raise your voice a little bit and you sometimes have to repeat yourself three times and, and you just Intuitively know.

Interviewer/Host (78:26)

When to do that.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (78:27)

Yeah. Because when I'm teaching, I'm teaching myself.

Interviewer/Host (78:31)

It's like you're listening to what you're saying and you repeat it because you need to hear it again.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (78:36)

I don't know if I'm hearing it, like, from the outside hearing it. If something's really important, I'm going to say it three times because it would feel wrong to move forward any faster. And it's funny because whenever. Because I do it every once in a while, I or somebody else will do an inflection or change something. When it's designed to have narrative or character in a way that it never works. It never works. I had a teacher in graduate school who could write with both hands, and he loved to impress us that he could write with both hands. And he was teaching neuroanatomy. Brilliant neuroanatomist. This was Ted Jones, brilliant neuroanatomist. But he would do this, and you could tell he was trying to impress us. And I love Ted. God bless him, you know, died of natural causes. But there was this. He had some issues around wanting to be seen as this scholar by everybody. He was from New Zealand, but he wanted people to think he was British. He had been a. He used to call it a pugilist. He was a boxer. When he was younger, he liked to fight. I'll never forget the day he was elected into the National Academy of Sciences. He came into class and he said, all my enemies must be dead because I'm now in the National Academy of Sciences. Who announces that they're in the National Academy? Come on. It was so stupid. It was so silly. This guy's brilliant. He didn't need to do it. So he would teach in a way that was so fluid that I think that for us, we were like, oh, like, this is not being a novice right alongside with us. So sometimes, like, if I'm teaching neural.

Interviewer/Host (80:09)

Development, it was almost like standoffish.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (80:11)

Yeah. I mean, I think when we go see a performance, we want to see virtuosity, but I think we also love seeing the energy being put into it.

Interviewer/Host (80:20)

The humanity.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (80:21)

The humanity. Right, the humanity. And I think that if it's just so easy, it's like, I might as well read a textbook. And I think this is what's. We oftentimes will just. Our response as a student is, oh, they're really smart, and that's over my head. Whereas if you can. If they can get into the friction of it, then they're right there alongside you. The other Thing is, there are these little tricks. There are some benevolent tricks that you play. If you're about to say something complicated or that requires a lot of attention, I'm about to give myself away here, you say, okay, so what I'm about to say next might seem complicated, but it's super simple. Anyone can understand it. If you say anyone can understand it, it cues the brain to, oh, shit, if I can't understand this, there must be something wrong with me.

Interviewer/Host (81:08)

That's great.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (81:08)

And then you've got people's attention, but you can't play with that too often.

Interviewer/Host (81:13)

Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (81:13)

So if it's complicated, you say, listen, this might seem common, but anyone can understand it. And then people go, oh, I better be able to understand it. You give it to them. And then you see, see, it's actually workload. It's tricky, but if you just. And so then you get people to kind of lock that into bookend in their mind. So those are kind of the tricks that you can play.

Interviewer/Host (81:32)

How'd you learn that?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (81:34)

I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I'm sure I picked it up from someone in the same way that when I do live shows, like we do these live shows and what's that like? Oh, man, that's so wild. Because I forget where I am for like two hours. I just start telling stories about science and teaching science. It was like 7,000 people. And you're in like. I'm not thinking, like I'm up on stage. I'm just in a total warp, you know. But I realized going back and watching a few of those to see what I can do better and. And worse that I. I've lifted things from a number of people in terms of stylistically.

Interviewer/Host (82:07)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (82:08)

And a lot of it comes from punk rock and a little bit of it comes from wrestling because. So I'm a big Social Distortion fan. And I'll never forget going to see Mike Ness play. I think it was at the Fillmore or something. And he does this thing where he does a wind up. Where he goes, is anyone here from Orange County? And it like people cheer, right? And then he goes, anyone here? Cal State Fullerton? People cheer. And he goes, well, I didn't go there, but down the street from there is a little porno shop. And when I was 15, you know, so he does a wind up. So when I'm doing public speaking things sometimes, like if I want to teach something and we're pretty far into it and I think I might be losing people a bit and I Want to engage more with the audience. I'll say something like, you know, have any of you ever experienced when you wake up first thing in the morning and you're still paralyzed from REM sleep, but you're wide awake? I'll say, if it's the case here, just, you know, like, raise your hand. I just kind of want to get a sense. And then I'll say, okay, those are all the pot smokers in the room. And then I'll talk about how cannabis can exacerbate this thing. So it's a wind up. So like, I borrow things from Mike Ness, right? Know, because I want to do crowd work, but I want people to understand. And so there's that one. And then the, the wrestling thing is, I don't do this. Sorry, I don't do this. But I noticed. Big rancid fan. There's no secret. And Lars Frederickson, rhythm guitar player for rancid vocals also, he's a huge wrestling fan. And he does this thing where he. Where he'll stand up and he'll put his hand to his ear and he'll lean to the crowd and he'll get them like working in. And it's. And it's so clearly from wrestling, right?

Interviewer/Host (83:51)

It's Hulk Hogan.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (83:52)

It's. Right. It's so clearly from wrestling and it works so well. And Lars is just like an awesome from. And he was wearing a lot of the same style clothing that Strummer was wearing, like those big, like almost like jumpsuits that it would say like Rebel Truce or something like spray painted on it. I don't do that. But when I'm there, I think about how can I engage with the crowd. And so I try and lean toward them and do things, but it's not theatrics. I'm really kind of trying to go through a rhythm because there's nothing more boring than just watching someone on stage talking and you have to follow every word without them bringing you in. And I don't have instruments because I'm not a musician and I don't have visuals. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, I love the live stuff. I think we'll probably do a live tour again when the book comes out next year. The book was supposed to come out this month.

Interviewer/Host (84:41)

Tell me about writing the book, man.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (84:45)

I'm a teacher. I talk, I draw. A lot of people don't know this, but I'm pretty serious about neuroanatomy drawing. And I used to post these on Instagram and I'M doing a lot of art with Tim and I also am doing illustrations for my book. But I mean, my voice and those pens are my instruments and I can write pretty well if it's a scientific paper. I can write a letter, I can write an email. But when I shifted back from podcasting to trying to write significant number of hours each day, man, my nervous system just, it was so tough. So then I tried to voice dictate and then what I found is as I would write more, I'd get more proficient at it and my podcasting would kind of suffer because I was too in my head. And so a lot of the reason why this book is taking so long is because a I want to include illustrations because I don't have another opportunity to put illustration. I think there's certain things people need to see. I can talk about the cortisol curve all day, but you see it once and I draw a little rainbow where the sun part is and you'll never forget it. At least that's my belief. It's coming along now because I know how to get myself into a free space and let it go. And I'm adding stuff and there's a lot more literature out there. But the process has been tough and you've been tremendously helpful in encouraging me to take the time that I need. But it's hard to do a full time podcast where you release one long episode every Monday. We have our essentials, our shorter episodes every Thursday, which are just the 30 minute cut down ones. Those don't take much work for me now, but a little bit and also write the book. And I'm also pretty active on social media. I mean, on Instagram I'm doing original content usually.

Interviewer/Host (86:35)

And how often do you post on Instagram?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (86:37)

I try and post once a day and sometimes those are clips, sometimes those are X posts that I then convert to those. But I pay attention to every aspect of the caption and I'll draw diagrams and talk to the camera and I really want it to be clear. I want people to learn. My criteria for putting something on the Internet is 90% of it has to be, at least in my mind, going to be of real value to people. So every once in a while I'll put something and just entertain myself a little bit.

Interviewer/Host (87:05)

But that's the exception. That's not the rule.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (87:07)

Yeah, I mean, I found there was a strawberry that was shaped like a heart and I put it in my Instagram stories and of course it got the most views of any friggin thing I'd put up ever. I was like, what the hell is wrong here? No, I really. I want to be the signal in the noise. I want to be the thing that people go, that's a little tricky, but, like, there's something there. Yeah. So I found it hard to write, but the book is done. It's just now I'm going back through and I'm adding stuff and I'm eliminating stuff, like real Rick Rubin style, getting to the essence. Getting to the essence. And I'm adding the drawings, and now I'm having fun with it. And I had to give myself permission to extend it that year. And I just. If it can be better, why wouldn't I make it better?

Interviewer/Host (87:46)

Once it's out, it's out forever. You might as well do whatever it takes for it to be the best it can be.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (87:51)

Yeah. But, yeah, writing is a bear, man. It's intense. You're, like, in a conversation with the audience, but in your head. What do you think is the hardest part about writing?

Interviewer/Host (88:01)

I guess finding the best words to explain the thing that you're imagining. Language doesn't seem up to the task of really explaining these very amorphous things. It's like describing smoke. It's really hard.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (88:20)

Totally. Especially since you live in the land of energetics and rhythm and. Yeah, it's tough.

Interviewer/Host (88:28)

What subjects are your listeners most interested in?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (88:33)

So on YouTube, it's always going to be muscle and fitness and fat loss. Those episodes, it's like we could put out one that was like, be Jack now or whatever. It's just muscle fitness and fat loss seem to be the thing. And of course, the algorithms are always changing. Last year, without any plan, we ended up bringing on a number of people who focused on menopause and women's health and kind of like women's specific biology for fitness seems to be really big, even though my audience is. I think we're probably about 55% male, 45% across platforms. That seems really big. The ones that surprised me, where I was like, whoa, I had no idea. We had Ethan Cross on. He's a psychologist at University of Michigan, talking about how to shut down chatter in one's head. He's done some beautiful experiments on this and teaching about how to quiet the noise. That's been interesting to see how people are curious about that. And I'm very interested these days in lymphatic system and herbs and adaptogens. I'm really into this now. I know it's offer me up as a target, and I Say, bring it.

Interviewer/Host (89:43)

Because it's what you're interested in.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (89:45)

I'm not trying to be at all aggressive, just interested in it. And if people are going to come at me, they got to be healthier than me. And a lot of my colleagues that are like, what is this? You know, I'm like, man, you need. You need some sunshine and a good. And a good steak and some strawberries and let's put you in a red light bed for. For a day. And, you know, like, I want to. I want to hug them because my colleagues, like Eddie Chang. Eddie Chang, he's like a 5am runner and a neurosurgeon, all that stuff. But he also. He has this understanding about Chinese medicine, and he thinks about this stuff. He thinks about energy and energy, because his whole world is about keeping his hands as these magical instruments to be able to do the hardest surgeries that no one else will do. He told me the other day about a surgery they did that no one else would touch. And he did it successfully. And I said, what's the hardest thing? He said, well, sometimes it's a tenth of a millimeter. Either has you giving them a massive brain bleed or getting this thing out and you get it out. And he's still got a family and kids and a world of good things and challenging things. And so he really understands about the channeling of energy. I mean, we talk about chi. I'm learning about chi from Eddie Chang.

Interviewer/Host (91:02)

Amazing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (91:02)

And he's not gonna bring that to his scientific discussions, but he understands, like, these cords of energy that run through us.

Interviewer/Host (91:09)

Maybe that's why he's better than everybody else.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (91:12)

I do think that's why he's better than everyone else. You know what's funny? He was like that when we were seven. We had our bird club. Oh, no. He's gonna kill me if I say that. All right, it's out. We had a bird club. There were two of us in the bird club. There was a third guy that we let in also, even though he.

Interviewer/Host (91:27)

What's a bird club?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (91:28)

So you had to know about really cool tropical birds to get considered to be in the bird club. And it's kind of interesting. He went on to study speech and language in the brain and epilepsy and a bunch of other things. And we were obsessed with talking birds and this, like, what he's devoted his profession to. And. And even back then, like, we would go look at these, like, African gray parrots or something, or these toucans. Toucans aren't particularly good talkers but the Minas and the African grays are. And Eddie, even at that age, he was like, that bird's looking at the other bird and thinking. And he would tell me, like, he could really tap into things other people couldn't tap into. It's wild, you know? And I think he. He has a gift and he works with the gift.

Interviewer/Host (92:15)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (92:15)

So when he's running, I'm like, are you running to slough off energy for your day or are you running to kind of build energy? He's like, well, I do it because it's healthy and it relieves stress, but I do it in a way that focuses my energy. So then he, like, scrubs up, goes in and.

Interviewer/Host (92:34)

Amazing.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (92:34)

Amazing.

Interviewer/Host (92:35)

What's some of the real world impact the pods had on listeners?

Dr. Andrew Huberman (92:40)

Well, humbly, I mean, I. I hear many people have quit drinking alcohol because of the alcohol episode, which I think to this day, again, humility aside, was the most popular podcast episode across all podcasts, all platforms in 2022 and 2023.

Interviewer/Host (92:55)

What's interest? That is this is a podcast speaking against something that people love.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:04)

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think I would say about half of the people that come to me and say, hey, your alcohol podcast changed my life.

Interviewer/Host (93:12)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:13)

Will say they stopped drinking and they didn't like drinking, but they didn't give themselves permission to stop drinking because they either thought wine was good for them or. Or because they felt they had to do it.

Interviewer/Host (93:23)

Social obligation.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:24)

Right. I would say a good number of people that say they stopped drinking because of that episode did so because they don't want cancer. They want to live longer, better sleep, better microbiome, and they just feel so much better.

Interviewer/Host (93:36)

Cancer, alcohol relationship, big time. Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:39)

5% of cancers are probably alcohol related.

Interviewer/Host (93:43)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:44)

5%.

Interviewer/Host (93:44)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (93:45)

Hard to attach the exact numbers, but that's. And then a study just came out recently that Stanford Medicine covered. I didn't cover because I haven't touched the topic in a while saying that even moderate drinking is detrimental, especially for women, breast cancers. And so I would say that episode, I think the morning sunlight piece, has been big. The physiological side, the double inhale, long exhale. I think breath work had been around and you had people like WIM and other people talking about it, but giving people a tool that they could use right away to calm down. And then I think the dopamine discussion was really big in terms of understanding, like, oh, it makes sense that I kind of burnt out on stuff and feel kind of this ennui. I think I need to reset. And then a Lot of it is just most people have never had someone speak to them like an intelligent person in a way that was designed to help them learn so they can do better and not charge them at the end.

Interviewer/Host (94:41)

You're never condescending to the audience.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (94:44)

Max Dillbrook said it, assume zero knowledge and infinite intelligence.

Interviewer/Host (94:49)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (94:49)

That's the way you teach.

Interviewer/Host (94:50)

Yeah.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (94:51)

And that was actually written on the whiteboard of the room across the hall from me when I started my lab and I had a big class at UC San Diego. Before I was at Stanford, I was at UC San Diego, and class went from 40 people. The next year, it was 100, then 200, 450 people. And I remember teaching those courses in the evening, and it was such a pleasure in large part because I could interact with the students. You know, evening courses, people interact very differently. And I'd bring my dog, and it was like. It was. It was fun. But every once in a while, I'll say, there are these episodes, like the grief episode or the episode I did in eating disorders. You know, for a guy who doesn't have an eating disorder, to give a tutorial on eating disorders and the literature and the treatments, I think for a lot of people was like, a little bit. Like, a lot of women especially were like, this guy's gonna talk to me about anorexia. Even though there are men with anorexia, it's mostly women. And I received only positive feedback on that. People saying, thank you. You approach this with a lot of sensitivity. And, you know, I have. I don't have an eating disorder, but I've known people that had. And so I purposely approach that one with silk gloves because it's a weird topic because it's a real disease. You know, the most deadly psychiatric condition is anorexia.

Interviewer/Host (96:02)

Wow.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (96:02)

The most deadly of all of them. And so. And it's also. It's a myth that it's because of social media or marketing the frequency of anorexia nervosa. True. Anorexia nervosa is the same now as it was in the 1600s.

Interviewer/Host (96:14)

Wow. What are some of the outer bounds of where you've gone on the podcast? Maybe further out than you would have thought you would have when you were starting.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (96:24)

You know, looking back, I'm surprised. I talked about Tonga Ali and Sheila G. And Maka Root. And, you know, it just goes to show how when you're starting and you're not paying any attention because you shouldn't to how people are going to perceive it, and you just want people to Learn and you think something's really cool and you've received benefit from it, and you want them to receive benefit from it too, and you don't have a financial stake in it. You just tell them. But looking back, I realized I was not because of the heat that it brought. Looking back, I'm just like, oh, my God, that was crazy. What were we thinking? If you asked me now, if someone came to me and said, hey, listen, I want to start a serious science health podcast, and I want to talk about neural circuits and endocrinology and the immune system, and I want people to get practices from it, I would tell them to take that stuff out because I'd be in my strategic mind. But you know what's really interesting is you could probably explain this better than I can. The things that I loved that I put into the podcast, even some of the outrageous things that I said, which I still am glad I said outrageous, because they were, like, kind of unconventional. No one attacked those, or if they did, it bounced right off. It's kind of interesting. I do think that when we really believe in something because we know it worked for us, the criticism doesn't last. It like ricochets off. But when it's not like that, it can get in. Martha Beck has this great visual. She said, all of your life, you're like a lighthouse, and you have to just think about your light sweeping around. And she said when you're public facing, especially if there's any kind of stain on the lighthouse, the stain being something that you're conflicted by or that you haven't resolved, that provides like a wedge of shadow, that's where critique enters. That's where you're vulnerable. And she said, you can never stop critique. But if your lighthouse is clean and she's not talking about your behavior, I mean, I think maybe that too, but, like, she's not talking about morals, what she's talking about, if there's something that you're like, conflicted by, you haven't really resolved, you're not clear on for yourself one way or the other, that's your work because that's where the attack vectors are. But if you're comfortable with where you are kind of like, I'm like, I love supplements. You don't have to take them, I don't care. I also take some prescription drugs. I also do a lot of behaviors, and guess what? I'll probably do more of some of those and less of them going forward. You can't get to me with it because it's just like there's no issue, right? In some ways it doesn't impede anything about the creative process or the teaching process. And it just moves forward. And I think that she's really onto something. And that's where personal work comes in. That's where deep dive personal work comes in. Of asking oneself like, what's unresolved inside? Because that's where I think we express cynicism when we shouldn't or we overly confident where we shouldn't be. I mean, that's. And I think that's like ongoing work. No one's perfect, certainly not me. I think that's where the work is. Temporal breath.

Interviewer/Host (99:52)

Technical round Tetragrammaton is a podcast.

Dr. Andrew Huberman (100:12)

Tetragrammaton is a website.

Interviewer/Host (100:15)

Tetragrammaton is a whole world of knowledge.

Narrator/Announcer (100:24)

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