I Tried At-Home Ultrasound for My Brain : 1377

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: The Human Upgrade: Biohacking for Longevity & Performance

Host: Dave Asprey
Episode: I Tried At-Home Ultrasound for My Brain (#1377)
Guest: John Hacker, CEO of Zenbud
Date: December 9, 2025

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Episode Overview

This episode explores cutting-edge, non-invasive technology for direct neural intervention: at-home focused ultrasound stimulation of the vagus nerve. Host Dave Asprey is joined by John Hacker, CEO of Zenbud, to discuss the science and practical use of their device that leverages focused ultrasound to modulate the nervous system, aiming to reduce anxiety, improve resilience, and optimize performance and longevity. Together, they dive into neuroanatomy, current limitations of electrical stimulation devices, the link between physiological and psychological stress, the risks of technology hijacking nervous systems (think: social media and AI), and the hopeful horizon of empowering neurotechnology.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Biology of Stress and the Vagus Nerve

• Nervous System Basics:

  • John explains that most people are chronically in "sympathetic" (fight-or-flight) mode, which is both highly profitable for tech/social media companies and detrimental to health.
  • The vagus nerve is critical in toggling between sympathetic and parasympathetic (rest-and-digest) states.
  • Many stress-related conditions (anxiety, PTSD) are dysfunctions in the body's ability to exit fight-or-flight states.
  • “Very rarely is it a choice kind of thing in that moment when someone's anxious or stressed. …It matters so much more what your hardware is and what your software is doing at that moment.” —John Hacker [10:02]

• Practical Implications:

  • Chronic sympathetic dominance leads to burnout, poor recovery, and can affect mental health and lifespan.
  • Early childhood and genetic factors shape vagal tone and stress reactivity.

2. Limitations of Existing Technology & The Zenbud Solution

• Why Most Devices Don’t Work Well:

  • Electrical vagus nerve stimulators—both implantable and non-invasive—struggle with precision and efficacy, especially non-invasive versions (e.g., "tasers" for the neck, wrist-worn vibrators).
  • “Electricity does not like to penetrate the skin. It’s not precise. …You can’t find the vagus nerve and you can’t properly innervate it.”—John Hacker [21:45]

• Why Focused Ultrasound is Different:

  • Ultrasound, unlike electricity, can precisely target the nerve through the auricular branch in the ear—enabling direct, non-invasive neural stimulation.
  • The Zenbud device applies this principle, using simple, repeatable ear-based application.

• Results & User Experience:

  • Takes 3–5 minutes to feel a shift from stress (sympathetic) to calm (parasympathetic).
  • Supported by peer-reviewed research showing up to 78% anxiety remission.
  • “I put the Zenbud on when I was having that panic attack and it brought me back to center both times.”—John Hacker [26:19]

3. Adapting and Strengthening the System (Hebbian Learning)

• Training Vagal Tone:

  • Regular use is compared to "working out" the vagus nerve—daily stimulation helps long-term stress resilience even without the device.
  • “If you use the Zenbud consistently, we can strengthen that system over time so you have less required need of using it… it’ll apply even when you’re not stimulating.” —John Hacker [28:05]

• Best Time for Use:

  • Ideal before bed or in the morning; can also be used acutely in times of stress or pre-event to improve performance.

4. Tech, Society, and the Future of Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCI)

• Current Tech and Social Media Concerns:

  • Social media algorithms exploit and perpetuate sympathetic dominance, especially in untrained minds (children/teens).
  • Adults can build a “firewall” with conscious practice, but unregulated tech creates generational neurobiological vulnerabilities.
  • “Algorithmic content literally used as a gateway key to activate dopamine centers… and directly activate your sympathetic system to get you to keep watching.” —John Hacker [00:00/29:03]

• Philosophy and Ethical Concerns:

  • Deep dive into the future risks of invasive BCIs, AI mergers, and loss of cognitive liberty.
  • “No one should be able to control your state but you. Yes, including hackers.” —Dave Asprey [51:26]

• Non-Invasive Approaches as the “Non-Dark Path”:

  • Ultrasound approaches like Zenbud's allow for conscious control and removal, preserving autonomy.

5. Applications Beyond Stress: Longevity, Inflammation, Brain Health

• Potential Uses:

  • Vagus stimulation has links not only to stress modulation but also to inflammation and neuroprotection, with potential benefits for longevity, traumatic brain injury (TBI), and recovery.
  • Current research on TBI shows vagus stimulation may reduce damaging secondary brain inflammation.
  • “There does seem early… to be a neuroprotective effect of activating the vagus nerve when it comes to the brain in particular.” —John Hacker [37:57]

• Practicality, Cost & Access:

  • Zenbud device is under $400, requires no subscription, easy to use and maintain, making it accessible for daily biohacking.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Autonomy:

  • “It's not okay to control someone else's [consciousness] without their consent. Anyone who tries to do that sounds like they're an enemy of humanity." —Dave Asprey [00:24/54:35]

• On Stress:

  • “It’s not excessively being there [sympathetic] that’s bad. Being there without your consent and being unable to leave, that would be the problem.” —Dave Asprey [12:18]

• On Tech Addiction:

  • “We are engaging with our technology in a way that our brains are not adapted for, and we haven’t had time as a species to adapt.” —John Hacker [29:03]

• On the Future of BCI:

  • “There is a world in which… we can be logarithmic, just like the AIs are being logarithmic. It requires... a non-invasive BCI to start. But it doesn't require merging with [AI], because I think that is going to be interacting with them, maybe one or two nodes in the network, fine. But merging is the last thing you really want if you want to keep human consciousness relevant and in existence.” —John Hacker [53:07]

• Comic Relief:

  • “I might be psychologically addicted to making fun of Lane Norton.” —Dave Asprey [42:02]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

| Timestamp | Segment | |-----------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:00 | Impact of social media on sympathetic dominance; dopaminergic hijack | | 03:36 | Why brain upgrades/Kairos of consciousness and why Dave is intrigued by ultrasound | | 11:05 | Physiology of stress - most is not conscious choice | | 18:54 | Why Zenbud focused on the vagus nerve; John’s story and device origins | | 21:40 | Limitations of electric vagus nerve stimulators, precision of ultrasound | | 24:15 | Practical device use – exact spot, method, effect timeline | | 26:18 | First-hand use case for panic attack, clinical results | | 28:02 | Hebbian learning and training vagal tone – why consistent use strengthens regulation | | 29:03 | Societal stress, social media influence, tech adaptation failures | | 33:17 | Burnout from high-performing sympathetic state, importance of conscious state-switching | | 35:31 | Longevity, neuroinflammation, research gaps & directions | | 37:57 | TBI, secondary brain injury, preliminary neuroprotection findings | | 42:02 | Tech addiction (psychological vs physiological dependency), playful banter | | 48:26 | MedTech scandals, critical take on medical device industry | | 51:26 | Future BCIs: deep ethics, AI risk, non-invasive necessity, conscious autonomy | | 54:35 | Personal/cultural freedom: “enemy of humanity” |

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

• Zenbud’s Approach:
  Pioneers a more precise, affordable, and practical take on neural enhancement—empowering individuals without requiring implants or subscriptions.

• Empowerment through Science:
  Consistent neural training is as important as supplements, exercise, or diet for biohackers seeking resilience, focus, and long life.

• Ethical Tech:
  Autonomy over one’s consciousness and nervous system is the bedrock principle for the future of biohacking, especially as tech invades deeper.

• Accessible Upgrades:
  The new wave of biohacking brings foundational brain upgrades into daily life—democratizing access, not just for performance junkies but also for those with anxiety, PTSD, or seeking a stronger baseline.

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How to Try/Buy Zenbud

• Cost: $400 (no subscription; extra pads needed only for frequent users)
• Discount Code: DAVE15 at zenbud.health
• Use: 3–5 minutes daily; before bed, morning, or during acute stress

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“Ultimately I don’t have enough time to spend eight hours a day trying to extend my life… I want to have a happy, productive, fun, connected life.” —Dave Asprey [40:12]

Transcript

[John Hacker]

Most people are in the sympathetic or fight or flight state because it's profitable to put people there. If you're in fight or flight state, you're not thinking you're more likely to buy, more likely to just be a nice little consumer. And especially not social media and short form algorithm. Algorithmic content, which is literally used as a gateway key to activate dopamine centers in your mind and directly activate your sympathetic system to get you to keep watching.

[Dave Asprey]

But it's not okay to control someone else's without their consent. I don't want Sam Altman, I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, I don't want Bill Gates, I don't want any government person anywhere to say anything about what I do with my consciousness. And anyone who tries to do that sounds like they're an enemy of humanity.

[John Hacker]

You have the guards up, you've built up the firewall, so to speak. The thing is, children do not have the firewall. And if, especially if you're in an environment where you've never not been introduced to these things, you've never had a chance to build up the firewall.

[Dave Asprey]

How could you say you grow up with a completely as your brain is forming its concept of reality? I discovered when I started doing heart rate variability training many years ago that hundreds of times per day, without any conscious knowledge, my system was flipping into sympathetic mode. It was ptsd.

[John Hacker]

So a lot of times if you're in a high sympathetic state before you use it, it'll bring you to a parasympathetic state. We do have peer reviewed and published clinical work taking a look at things like anxiety and ptsd, and we see really, really strong results in both. We have like a 78% remission rate when it comes to anxiety.

[Dave Asprey]

Wow. Yeah.

[John Hacker]

Very high.

[Dave Asprey]

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[Dave Asprey]

You already know that upgrading the brain is one of the most important things you could possibly do. And I've been searching for the past 25 years everything you can do. I don't care if it's psychedelics, if it's nootropics, weird breath, work, meditation. One of the central pillars of biohacking is increase your consciousness and that includes intelligence and awareness. And that's why I wrote my most recent book about it. And one of the technologies that has me most intrigued is ultrasound. Now, you probably know ultrasound because that's how you look at babies in the womb. Or you might have had it during physical therapy, but. Oh, last year I used focused ultrasound to open up my blood brain barrier and allow stem cells directly into my hippocampus. That's amazing you can do that. But it turns out you can also at home, use ultrasound to directly stimulate parts of the nervous system. And this is different than monitoring your brain state. This is directly changing the state of your nervous system via an external factor. So this interview is with John Hacker, who's CEO of a company called Zenbud. And Zenbud is really interesting because they're the first and only device like this that works. It's very affordable, it doesn't require connection to the cloud, and it does what vagal nerve stimulators are supposed to do. Problem is, a lot of them don't actually do what they're supposed to do. So that's what we're going to talk about, your vagal nerve. And we're going to talk about how ultrasound, when it's used properly, can be a really important part of how your computer and AI interface with your brain in a way that's non invasive. I don't want things planted in my head, but I would like to be able to make better use of tech. So we'll talk about the far future sci fi kind of stuff, but we're going to talk about what's happening now with your vagus nerve, heart rate variability and all the stuff that you'd want if you don't like to be stressed all the time. John, welcome to the show.

[John Hacker]

I'm very glad to be here. Loved the intro. Dave, thank you so much.

[Dave Asprey]

You're welcome.

[John Hacker]

You gave a really great overview of everything. Like, I could probably just leave right now. I think you've already done everything.

[Dave Asprey]

We're done.

[John Hacker]

We're done. Short podcast there.

[Dave Asprey]

Now, you studied neuroscience and I want to get your take on this.

[John Hacker]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

I saw a study that said the bigger the butt, the bigger the brain.

[John Hacker]

Okay.

[Dave Asprey]

They were measuring the size of, of the muscle and the glutes and there's a direct correlation with brain volume and brain and glute volume. What's your take on that?

[John Hacker]

Well, it makes a lot of sense that if you're taking care of your body appropriately and thus perhaps have a bigger butt muscle wise, that you'd also would end up having a bigger brain, so to speak. It's something that I think it's really easy, especially I'm an engineer by training and it's something I find for a lot of engineers, it's very easy to ignore your body as a component because you're like, brain is everything. It's the intelligence and it's the decisions that you make that mean the most. But if you don't keep your body healthy, your brain will deteriorate. And if you keep your body healthy, your brain will do so much better. It's a hardware thing. It's like literally an operating system and a hardware thing.

[Dave Asprey]

Now I gotta ask you this. Go ahead. Because you're a neuro guy.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, I am a narrow guy.

[Dave Asprey]

When you're recalling things, you look off to the left. Yeah. Why?

[John Hacker]

That's a good question. So I think there's, there's a couple of different answers to it. One answer could be, hey, I'm either more right. Brain oriented. That is a very commonly given answer. As much as I'll say That that's a common answer. I don't know how much I believe in it, ironically enough, because I think there's a lot of. I would almost call them neuromyths is what I call them. And I think that might be one of them. It largely is habit oriented. More anything else. And when we're young, we're taught either eye contact when you're telling people things and when you're recalling things, you should look up. Because when you're at a test and you're taking that test, if you're looking to your left and down, well, you might be cheating on your neighbor. So I think that that actually is probably a larger portion of why I do that.

[Dave Asprey]

But because you were cheating off your neighbor.

[John Hacker]

Because I wasn't cheating off my neighbor.

[Dave Asprey]

And I'm not picking on you at all. I'm asking because I think you might know the answer. I came across a chart a long time ago and I was looking at neuroscience stuff and it looked at a map of basically 9 points in your visual field where you might look to activate different parts of the brain. And they had some good science behind it. And I've noticed for me, I look up into the left, like when I'm calculating something or when I'm coming up with it, you'll oftentimes see me do that. And it's funny because the people are like, I'm an FBI negotiated and some of them are good friends, but they'll say, oh, that is a sign of deception. But it's actually like for me, it's how I come up with complex things. It lives up here. So I just want to know what was going on in there.

[John Hacker]

Realistically, I don't think we have a really good answer for that. And there's good science on a lot of different things. Like this is something that I see very commonly is like you can end up doing some initial work. You can take samples of people that they're doing different things like looking up to the left or looking up to the right. I don't think that's really an indicator if someone's lying or not. For one thing, I also don't think that's necessarily an indicator that there's some part of your brain that's activating there because there's so much variability from person to person. Like what's the study that you would do to test for that from birth? You can't, because it's unethical to have someone in a box from birth. And that would be the ideal way to do it and there's a lot of things like that where you have to think about how the study would have been conducted.

[Dave Asprey]

That seems like that would just be an Amazon product at this point.

I saw [e-mail], it was right there. Ethics are such a slippery slope. I mean, if you're a big company like that, ethics don't really matter, right?

[John Hacker]

Well, I mean, a lot of times I think ethics end up getting ignored in the larger play because ethics are not considered logical, when indeed I honestly, I think ethics are highly logical if done right. And people will follow ethics that are based in a logical code of conduct and the societal code of conduct. But that's like a lot. That's like a whole. We could do a whole podcast on philosophy with that.

[Dave Asprey]

And philosophy and ethics is okay. We'll see. Can we stimulate ethics without people's consent? I'm kidding.

[John Hacker]

Well, that's social media today, very frankly, with you. Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, that's actually kind of dark.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Well, speaking of stress, what is the biggest thing that people get wrong when they talk about stress?

[John Hacker]

Oh, gosh, there's so many things you could choose. You're making me choose the only one thing here, Dave. Only one thing. Okay. That stress is somebody's choice, I think, is something that I see a lot with people that are less predisposed to be stressed and people that have more collected and calm with themselves. A lot of times they're going to say, you're choosing to be stressed out right now. You're choosing to be hyperactive right now. When in reality it's a brain state type of thing. And so body state kind of thing. There are definitely factors that you chose that led to that outcome. If you're not taking care of your body, it's more likely to lead to outcome. If you're not taking care of your mind, it's more likely to lead to that outcome. But very, very rarely is it a choice kind of thing in that moment when someone's anxious or stressed. And I see it a lot, especially like in the self hype motivation space. There's all this type of work on. You choose your mindset, you choose how you think. And that's part of, to an extent, there is a. You can shift your mindset by choosing, but it's so small and realistically it matters so much more what your hardware is and what your software is doing at that moment.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. And it's, in my world, at least 80% physiological.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

If your body is stressed and you don't know why Your brain will automatically make up a story. And then you think your brain caused it. And some of this while the body feels stress, which is how does that stress come into the brain? What nerve does that?

[John Hacker]

One of the nerves that really relates to the stress response is the vagus nerve. It's not the only one we can go into a little bit. But it's all part of your autonomic nervous system. So the system that's keeping you alive and keeping the things that you're not consciously thinking about activated, that's your autonomic nervous system. And it really has two main modes. You have the fight or flight, which is a sympathetic response, and then rest and digest, which is the parasympathetic response.

[Dave Asprey]

That's the bad guy. Because if you rest and digest, you're not grounded.

[John Hacker]

No, no. Rest and digest. Well, I have seen people that have been in too much of a rest and digest.

[Dave Asprey]

It happens.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, very much. It does. Like we typically. Most people are in the sympathetic or fight or flight state because it's profitable to put people there. If you're in fight or flight state, you're not thinking. You're more likely to buy. You're more likely to just be a nice little consumer.

[Dave Asprey]

It's also how you show up. If you play sports. Yeah. If you're getting shit done at work.

[John Hacker]

100.

[Dave Asprey]

So being in a sympathetic state isn't bad. No, it's not excessively there. Being there without your consent and being unable to leave. It would be the problem.

[John Hacker]

Yes. And that goes doubly for parasympathetic as well as sympathetic. It's both sides of this, both sides of it. You can't really stay there 100% of the time. And a lot of people are, at least from what I've seen, especially like in my generation, man. Like most people are in a constant sympathetic state. And it's. It's very sad.

[Dave Asprey]

It's sad. And also sympathetic is a high performance state.

[John Hacker]

It is.

[Dave Asprey]

Right. And so it's not a bad thing a lot. Because I don't want to be sympathetic. No, it's good. And the ability to be in a clean sympathetic state where you can focus, you're in control, you're able to execute, and all sorts of magic happens there. And the problem is if you're flipped into that all the time when you didn't mean to be there, not for a good cause, to get stuff done, but because something that seems outside your control just happened. And yeah, this is a really important episode for me because I discovered when I started doing heart rate variability training many years ago that hundreds of times per day without any conscious knowledge, my system was flipping into sympathetic mode. Yeah. It was ptsd. Right. And it took me a while to unpack that and to learn how to consciously control it. And I didn't understand back then the role of the vagus nerve and what was happening with me. So knowing that set of symptoms, what was happening my vagus nerve.

[John Hacker]

So a lot of times what is going to end up happening when you're flipping into a fight or flight state, which PTSD is a fight or flight state disorder that, that's its base consideration in the literature and a lot of times it is correlating to that fight or flight state. Things that shouldn't be correlated to that fight or flight state.

[Dave Asprey]

Exactly.

[John Hacker]

Because of some sort of pre existing trauma.

[Dave Asprey]

Usually for me it was, I was born with the cord trying to choke me to death. And coming into the world believing that there's something trying to kill you is not good for your nervous system.

[John Hacker]

No, it's not. It's not. Well, I mean, a lot, there's a lot of traumas that are before you even can really remember it. There's a lot of traumas that end up developing and they end up shaping a lot of your early years and eventually later years because they, they don't go away. And it's a lot easier to point to traumas that happen later on down the line when you're older because you're conscious for them.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. You remember them consciously anyway.

[John Hacker]

But there's a lot of traumas that you're not going to remember because you're too young to. And those will, they will screw up your parasympathetic and sympathetic system response and over time strengthen that sympathetic response to the point where you're always in it. And that's, that's not a good thing.

[Dave Asprey]

It's one of the reasons, if you're looking at longevity or happiness even, there's a table of early adverse events. Daniel Amen was on the show, a dear friend talking about that with me. So if you have these early things, they prime your system to go into inappropriate, not useful, sympathetic stress.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And you can't get out of it sometimes for a long time. And then there's also genetic factors. If you have genes that make you have more stress hormones, you're just kind of tweaking all the time and you think something's wrong with you, but there's nothing wrong with you. You just have hardware settings or software settings and they're all mediated by the vagus nerve at the very core. And yes, there are other things that.

[John Hacker]

Are part of it. Well, it's like if you take a look at a car or a computer, you can think of the vagus nerve almost like the graphics card. Right. It's one limitation. And if your graphics card isn't good, you're not going to be able to play any sort of high end games, you're not gonna be able to really perform. But you still need to have a good power supply still. You have a good cpu like all there. It's one piece of the whole. It's just a piece that a lot of people don't end up doing well with right now. And there's where there's actually not a lot of options to shift it at the moment.

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Why did you decide to focus on the vagus nerve?

[John Hacker]

I guess this gets a little bit into my personal story.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[John Hacker]

I grew up, when I was younger, I ended up developing some rather severe ocd, obsessive compulsive disorder. And it.

[Dave Asprey]

I really do. There we go.

[John Hacker]

There we go.

[Dave Asprey]

The OCD punch. We have to do it three times or it won't work.

[John Hacker]

Gosh.

I still have phantoms for OCD. Oh, yeah, it never really 100% goes away. But anyway, I had really terrible OCD. And that instilled in me, like, this mindset on how people operate. And it's like I always saw OCD as a chain holding me down. I still, to an extent, it's like, again, these type of things, they get better, but there's still phantoms of that chain that exist.

[Dave Asprey]

What does a phantom look like to you?

[John Hacker]

A phantom looks like my brain activating a certain circuit that's been dormant for a while. And for example, me taking a look at the door and thinking like, oh, I could tap that a couple more times if I really Wanted to. Wow. I don't. I choose not to. Which I know we were talking about choice earlier, but the reason why I have that choice is because I have upgraded my hardware system over time and I've upgraded my software system so I can now make that choice. Until you do that, it's not a choice. It really is. You're stuck there. And I didn't want to see anyone else ever have to go through that period. And that's what really brought me in how had me focus on this area. And the thing is, and this is something I see commonly, everyone has a story of either a loved one or themselves dealing with these type of sympathetic disorders, these anxiety, ptsd, even depression to an extent over time. And we saw this and we're like, we gotta do something about it. We had this cortex, we knew ultrasound really well. And we're like, we can do something about it perhaps with this vagus nerve. And we'd seen that. How familiar are you with the history of the vagus of vagus nerve stimulation, Dave?

[Dave Asprey]

I'm pretty familiar, but let's assume that our followers are not.

[John Hacker]

Okay, cool. Vagus nerve stimulation actually started with implantables and companies like Leva Nova or more recently actually Set point where they would have this little battery in your chest and they would have a neural cuff on the cervical or neck branch of the vagus nerve and they would chalk it consistently. And we saw great results for that for a number of different indications, including epilepsy. And over time there was this big effort to bring that into the non invasive realm pioneered by Electrichor, actually, which are these. It kind of looks like a taser, to be honest with you. And it is shocking you on the neck. And they attempt to do the same thing that the implantables did. The problem is the moment you went from invasive to non, invasive, you lost all the specificity and very frankly the efficacy.

[Dave Asprey]

So what you're saying is you can't really find the vagus nerve, you can't get the electricity to it, so it doesn't work.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, very frankly, like you do see some responses in the studies Electrichor has done, and I have a lot of respect for the attempt that they've made. But they were using. It's like using the wrong hardware to try to solve a problem. They're all playing in the same space. There's a ton of electrical vagus nerve stimulators out there, but they're all using outdated hardware to try to do the same thing. And it consistently has the same problem, which is that electricity does not like to penetrate the skin. It's not precise. And especially in the neck, you can't find the vagus nerve and you can't properly innervate it.

[Dave Asprey]

I do have to say I've tried most of the stimulators out there and sometimes you feel something. And the one that's worked best costs a few thousand dollars. It's a clinical grade one with a very fine thing. And a clinician goes around your face and finds little efferent parts of it. I think that one's particularly effective. But overall I've been underwhelmed with what I thought would happen from stimulated my vagus nerve. And then you came along with a very different set of tech than I know affects the brain because I've used different gear that opened up my blood brain barrier. So how did you know that ultrasound was going to do this?

[John Hacker]

So there was a body of research around ultrasound for activating action potentials in neurons, which means the neuron is sending a little bit of information along its chain. And that body of research actually extends back to the Fry brothers around World War II, way back in the day. That was when it was originally done once it was done once back in the day. And then it was kind of like left to fester for a while.

[Dave Asprey]

What did they do?

[John Hacker]

They actually got a neuron to activate when they introduced it to a certain level of ultrasound. And then more recently, out of the University of Arizona, I believe, Dr. William Jamie Tyler did some additional work with ultrasound and there's a couple others that also did some work there. And they found like, hey, this really can stimulate neurons non invasively both in the brain and around the body. And we saw that the vagus nerve was for non invasive vagus nerve stimulation. The non implantable ones, it wasn't matching up. So we took that ultrasound concept because we knew we could get really precise with it. And we used focused ultrasound to stimulate the vagus nerve in the auricular branch here in the ear. And we also believe that there's multiple reasons why we did that. One is the emotional story part of it, the emotional pain that our team has experienced and really wanted to bring relief to for ourselves and for people around the world. And another piece of it is very frankly the auricular branch of the vagus nerve is a great starting point for a non invasive system.

[Dave Asprey]

And that's in the basically inside bottom part of the ear canal or inside.

[John Hacker]

Top part, like simvaclancha region, like right here. So this is the crucifilix that little bridge right above that, that's the best innervation point. There are companies that will try to stimulate the earlobe or the inner ear and call it vagus nerve stimulation. In fact, there are companies that will vibrate on the wrist or do a little bit vibrating on the chest and call it vagus nerve stimulation. And it could be indirect.

[Dave Asprey]

VMs do calm the system. For sure.

[John Hacker]

They do, they do.

[Dave Asprey]

I like the Apollo. Like, I think that thing's great, technically. I don't know. Is there an afferent part of the vagus nerve in your wrist?

[John Hacker]

No.

[Dave Asprey]

So they're calming the whole system with vibrations. I. I'm a fan of that kind of attack.

[John Hacker]

I am, too.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. And it's. Strictly speaking, though, it isn't directly accessing the nerve.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[John Hacker]

That's why I've been. I've been trying to pioneer the use of direct vagus nerve stimulators versus other types of vagus nerve stimulators, because you can influence your system not through the vagus nerve. It's just the vagus nerve has become such a big concept right now that everyone's trying to get on the marketing hype, very frankly, which. Fair enough.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. So the best way to get to it is through the ear. And if you put enough electricity into it, it's going to hurt. And it's still hard to target. So you said, all right, we've seen something in World War II. We know it's. It's feasibly possible. So let's build this.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And what happens when people use ultrasound to simulate their vagus nerve? Like, what do they experience? What are the medical changes that they see?

[John Hacker]

So one of the things we'll see is it usually takes around three to five minutes for things to start kicking in.

[Dave Asprey]

I use mine for about five. Yeah, yeah.

[John Hacker]

It does vary between you. Some people, like, we see, like within one minute, they start to notice a pretty strong change. But for most of it is around that 3 to 5.

[Dave Asprey]

What's the change that people experience?

[John Hacker]

So a lot of times, if you're in a high sympathetic state before you use it, it'll bring you to a parasympathetic state, which I will. I'll be a little bit vulnerable here. And I'll bring up an example. Recently, I was at business of biohacking your event. It was great. I loved it. There was some other stuff going on, and I actually ended up having two panic attacks during that event.

[Dave Asprey]

It was a pretty stressful time for you.

[John Hacker]

Yes, very stressful time for me. I put the Zimbabwe on when I was having that panic attack and it brought me back to center both times. I mean, like, we still had to. You still have to address the underlying problem, but it really helped me move through it in that event. And that's just in of one example. We do have peer reviewed and published clinical work taking a look at things like anxiety and ptsd and we see really, really strong results in both. We had like a 78% remission rate when it comes to anxiety. Wow. Yeah. Very high.

[Dave Asprey]

And the, The Zenbud is 400 bucks.

[John Hacker]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

And you can use as many times as you want. You have to pay a monthly fee at all, right?

[John Hacker]

No, there's no monthly fee. We do suggest switching out the silicone pads every once in a while because.

[Dave Asprey]

Because they wear out.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, they do.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, so what's our code? I'm sure you're giving people a discount. I don't even.

[John Hacker]

It's. It should, it should be Dave 15.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay, cool. So use code Dave 15 at Zenbud.

[John Hacker]

Zenbud Health.

[Dave Asprey]

Zenbud Health. Zenbud Health. Yes. And so guys, I, I actually think this is worth your time. And this is about the cost of a massage or two. And it lasts a very long time. How many uses can you get before the silicone pads run out?

[John Hacker]

So typically we suggest using. We send each unit with around five silicone pads now, and that's going to last you more than a month by itself. Usually it can last. It can last you a bit longer if you. Depending on how often you're using it.

[Dave Asprey]

Saying each pad lasts for a month.

[John Hacker]

Each pad lasts for a week.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay.

[John Hacker]

Within five.

[Dave Asprey]

If you're using it every day for five minutes.

[John Hacker]

Yes, if you're using every day.

[Dave Asprey]

Got it. So people put this on if they're having a panic attack or just before bed or before anytime they want to be calm.

[John Hacker]

Yes. I mean, like we suggest you already know about Hebian learning, right?

[Dave Asprey]

About what?

[John Hacker]

Hebby and learning.

[Dave Asprey]

I think our listeners. Yes.

[John Hacker]

Okay, okay, I'll go through it. I'll go through it. So Hebbian learning is. And like this is the kind of thing that there's these logics in when it comes to biology that play across the body. The more you use the system, the stronger that system gets as an adaption mechanic. When with Hebbian learning, the more that you use that system, the stronger that system gets, especially when it comes to your nerve, your nervous system, to be exact. So the real base concept here is that if you use the Zenbud Consistently, as in daily. We consistently stimulate your vagus nerve directly. We can strengthen that system over time so you have less required need of using it on a daily basis. So you're. And it'll apply even when you're not stimulating.

[Dave Asprey]

So you're literally working out your vagus nerve with ultrasound so that it gets stronger so that you can self regulate without using the tech. That's why I think this is kind of an important piece of tech. Yeah. Why are people so tweaked? Like what's wrong with our vagus nerves?

[John Hacker]

There's a number of factors. I'll use Gen Z as an example here because I think it is the most tweaked generation yet. Gen Alpha being even more so. It's a problem that we're consistently seeing get worse as we introduce more technology into the equation. Ironic I think, because technology usually is used to help solve our problems for us, but our bodies are built as systems to really prioritize survival. And the more you move away from that, the more you end up having more problems with your system and body not being adapted. Because we haven't adapted to our lovely technology and environment yet. Realistically and especially not social media and short form algorithm. Algorithmic content, which is literally used as a gateway key to activate dopamine centers in your mind in dopamine centers in your mind and directly activate your sympathetic system to get you to keep watching. And I honestly think that that's one of the big reasons why we're so tweaked, why we're so anxious all the time, is that we are engaging with our technology in a way that our brains are not adapted for. And we haven't had time as a species to adapt to these wonderful technological marvels that we've built. And I expect that that will get even worse as we bring AI into the equation.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah. What could go wrong with AI and VR and the people who made the algorithms already? Yeah. Imagine.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

What I do notice though, I have learned a lot of conscious regulatory techniques. So I look at social media. It's not influencing my nervous system at all. It just doesn't do that. But it took me a while to train myself to do that.

[John Hacker]

You have the guards up, you've built up the firewall, so to speak. The thing is, children do not.

[Dave Asprey]

They can't do it.

[John Hacker]

Have the firewall.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah.

[John Hacker]

And if, especially if you're in an environment where you've never not been introduced to these things, you never had a chance to build up the firewall.

[Dave Asprey]

How could you? So you Grow up with a completely tweaked vagus nerve as your brain is forming its concept of reality.

[John Hacker]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

So you're much more likely to be anxious all the time. And it's not your fault and there's nothing wrong with you, but you have untrained hardware that you could have conscious control of or you could at least train up so that it will automatically regulate on point. Okay, so three to five minutes a day you do this. What's the best time of day to use a zenbud?

[John Hacker]

Depends on your schedule. I say before bed or in the morning. I use mine in the morning when I'm taking actually a cup of danger coffee usually. Nice little plug there, but it's true.

[Dave Asprey]

Doesn't coffee put you in sympathetic mode?

[John Hacker]

So caffeine will activate your body centers. But I usually find that when I use the zenbudd to train that system and I bring caffeine in, I have a much more measured caffeine high.

[Dave Asprey]

So danger coffee is a pre workout for your vagal nerve stimulation.

[John Hacker]

Yes, I would say that's accurate. I love it. I love it.

Yeah, no, I would 100% say so. And it's something I do. At the very least, I find it helps me get really into the zone. That combination really helps me get into the zone very quickly.

[Dave Asprey]

Can you use vagal nerve stimulation to enter a flow state?

[John Hacker]

I definitely do. So n of one? Yes. Do you use it to help enter a flow state?

[Dave Asprey]

Dave, I. Okay, I can enter a flow state pretty easily.

[John Hacker]

Fair enough.

[Dave Asprey]

So I haven't found it to be necessary.

[John Hacker]

I'm still working on that myself.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, but it also, the definition of a flow state is a little bit vague. And we know that acts of service put you in a flow state. And most of what I do, at least in my mind, is an act of service. So that helps public speaking, does it? Creative acts do it. And mostly writing and speaking. And so I think I've set my life up so that I'm quite often in a flow state just automatically. And when I'm not, it's not a problem. Because you really can't be in a flow state all the time.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, I think it's it's kind of like again, I think any state, when done, always is a problem, very frankly. Any brain state, any body state, like we were talking about before, you don't want to always be in parasympathetic. You don't want to always be in sympathetic. You don't always want to be a gamma, beta or alpha. You need variety because your body's meant to be adaptable.

[Dave Asprey]

It's conscious switching between the states is most important. One of the things that I'm running into the last nine months or so, I have been doing more in my businesses probably than ever before. And I've been in a sympathetic state of high performance almost Nonstop, sometimes like 12 hour days. And I'm working through people's lab work, doing advanced longevity stuff with unlimited life. And sometimes it's every hour for 12 hours. And it's so much fun. Like I'm enjoying it the whole time and I'm five time zones away from where I was before, but I'm totally handling it. And I just, I realized recently I ought to spend more time in parasympathetic. But none of this is stressful. It's just focus and joy and fun. But even that can burn you out.

[John Hacker]

I also find that 90% of ending up burnt out is you thinking you can get burnt out and thinking about being burnt out. Yeah, it's one of those anxiety things. If you're anxious about something, it's more likely to happen.

[Dave Asprey]

Mentally speaking, all we have to fear is fear itself.

[John Hacker]

Kind of getting to that point. But the thing is, Dave, I actually don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing for you because like, there's also so much variation from person to person. You've spent a long lot of time upgrading your hardware over time. That's been kind of your thing for.

[Dave Asprey]

My capacity is beyond anything I would have imagined. And I recognize that recovery is important. Fortunately, I know how to recover very quickly with tech and all that. But part of my recovery stack now is Zenbud, in addition to all of the light therapy and all the stuff I've written about forever. So if I didn't do those things, I don't think I could have this level of output that I do. And so we're moving 40 years as into Austin. Just found a new home for it. That's gorgeous. But that means training up a new team. And the same time I'm traveling to Dubai and we're going to Ecuador again with unlimited life. And so I have this incredible level of busyness, but it's all meaningful busyness and being able to say, all right, I don't have an hour to meditate right now, so I'm going to spend five minutes doing ultrasound stimulation on my vagus nerve. And then my system resets and I can go do more stuff. And it doesn't appear to be costing me anything.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, it's good what do you know.

[Dave Asprey]

About longevity and simulating the vagus nerve?

[John Hacker]

There's been a lot of work done with the vagus nerve and longevity over time. And I would say really the biggest core. And so this is one of the things with the vagus nerve because it can really help with state changes in state shifts is it's been researched for anything and everything. And there is some very valid connections especially to inflammation. That's a lot of the work done by the Feinstein Institute and Dr. Kevin Tracy, fascinating work with inflammation, which is a critical factor for longevity. Stress is very frankly a critical factor for longevity too. If you're constantly in a sympathetic state, you're going to wear your body out over time. You need to be. And so like this is part where you probably should try to get an hour or two in a day in parasympathetic state. Like as long as you hit an hour, I would say you're usually fine for recovery if you have a really good hardware system. But over time you will slowly wear your body down if you're constantly in sympathetic.

[Dave Asprey]

Yep. Even beneficial. Sympathetic.

[John Hacker]

Even beneficial. Well, I mean again, your body is meant to experience this wide range of existence. Like it's not built to be one thing. We're not robots, we're not like for example, Ari, and we're not meant to always be one thing and we're meant to be very adaptable. And so when you really force yourself into like always being one thing, that's, that's still not a good thing. You need. Variety is the spice of life, so to speak. But when it comes to longevity, very circuitous route to saying this, but essentially there's been a lot of research with the vagus nerve. So this is ironic. As someone that does a lot of vagus nerve work, I'm not confident in around 70% of the research that had been done with vagus nerve stimulation because most of it has been done with non invasive electrical VNs applied improperly. And then you take a look at a biomarker or you're taking a look at something that has high variability. And so you have an output where you can show a result on almost anything. And a lot of that stuff has been done with the vagus nerve and longevity too. There is a core research which is very good research that's been done and that's the type of stuff that I like to point to, especially the stuff with the invasive work and the new stuff we're coming out with with ultrasound VNs, peer reviewed studies, good clinical subject populace and Large in number is kind of required to really have something with substance. And I think there is something with substance with the vagus nerve, especially around inflammation, especially around stress and recovery. Because if you don't recover, you're going to wear out your body and that's, that's not going to be good for your longevity.

[Dave Asprey]

I think especially brain inflammation, you're going to see big results from that.

[John Hacker]

So this is something that we're working on. Oh, There you go. Dr. Kohler is our chief scientific officer. So her and I, she, we, we've been talking about and we actually have a collaboration in the works to take a look at TBI traumatic brain injury, particularly because there is. Does seem early, there does seem to be a neuroprotective effect of activating the vagus nerve when it comes to the brain in particular. And we believe in addition to the inflammatory effect, based on the state of literature in the space, it should be possible to prevent most of the secondary damage from tbi. Because most of the damage from TBI is secondary. It's not primary. Your primary damage is the initial contusion, the initial head injury. The secondary damage is the inflammation, the brain swelling over time.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, that's the real problem.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, it's like 90% of the problem. If we can deal with that, which again, we think we can with VNs, then that's going to really make the most impact for folks. And we do have some really good partners taking a look at that right now. And very frankly, they have told us they want to bring it all the way through the FDA because they're so passionate about the technology and about the results we're seeing.

[Dave Asprey]

So someone hit their head. Is there any harm of using the Zenbud right afterwards?

[John Hacker]

There shouldn't be. In fact, that's. So I got. Ironically, I had two concussions this year. I had two.

[Dave Asprey]

Oh, not this year. But you had two this year.

[John Hacker]

This year. Oh, yeah, right. A month away from each other, so not great. My first one was a car accident and the second one was a freak accident in a amusement park of all things. Wow. They had some broken equipment, which is lovely. Anyways, so I hit my head twice and both times my protocol, this is just same from my personal experience was creatine and zenbud and I usually did around 20, 30 minutes a day. Oh, and also these lovely blue light glasses. Like too dark? Like. No, legitimately your glasses saved me from so much terrible migraines because I still had to get some work done while I was going through the concussion but like it, that was my protocol and it worked really well for me. And the base science really works out. Like at some point, Dave, I'll bring you through the torture. We have this giant folder of all the literature and all the different indications that we're really taking a look at with VNs. At some point we'll go through it, Dave.

[Dave Asprey]

It's fascinating because anytime I can find something that is foundational, that affects hundreds of systems, that's what I want to do. Because ultimately I don't have enough time to spend eight hours a day trying to extend my life. I don't think that's a good use. I, I did that in my 20s when I first got into longevity. I'm like, this isn't a good exchange. I want to have a happy, productive, fun, connected life. So you've got to get the work done and you got to do it in a way that fits in your life. So that's why I make the least sexy supplement ever, which is Vitamin D and Minerals101. And they're not sexy, but they're foundational. Because if you don't have those, all the other expensive stuff doesn't work very well. So I'm like, I make those because they affect the most.

[John Hacker]

Yeah.

[Dave Asprey]

And creatine is also, I think, incredibly powerful. I would have probably added some natural forms of vitamin E, which there's studies for, as well as high dose oral progesterone. After you hit your head.

[John Hacker]

I will keep that in mind because I am a clumsy person. So I'm sure it will happen again.

[Dave Asprey]

All right, so does that mean the Zenbud doesn't work for helping you be less clumsy?

[John Hacker]

No, no, I've not seen any improvements with my clumsiness. For better or worse. It would be, it'd be great. But it's one of those things where I think it's just how my nervous system is.

[Dave Asprey]

Is there any risk of being addicted to Zenbud?

[John Hacker]

We haven't seen it. So I mean, like, I think there is a psychological risk of being addicted to anything. I don't think there's a physiological risk when it comes to vagus nerve stimulation in general. It's never been presented in literature with either the cervical devices when they're explanted for any reason, or with the non invasive devices, or with our device either. But very frankly, having relief on command is psychologically brain space extremely compelling.

[Dave Asprey]

Okay. I believe that you got me thinking like I might be psychologically addicted to making fun of Lane Norton. That's right, yeah. I think I should do some work on that.

[John Hacker]

You might need to, Dave.

[Dave Asprey]

You just have fun. It's like your battle of wits from the unarmed opponent who's angry because he was bullied in high school and needs a vagus nerve stimulator.

[John Hacker]

We should get one out to a man.

[Dave Asprey]

Well, he says the glasses are piss stained. I don't know what he would do to the zen buds, so I'm just kidding guys, if you're like, what's he talking about? Lane is a well known health troll who made a post about my pistain glasses, which is his words. And so I used his account name as a coupon code. Oh, sold more than $10,000 of extra glasses and I'm taking the profits and donating them to a charity to support people who are bullied in middle school because, well, I'm going to do it in his name. Is that an addiction? I think it might be.

[John Hacker]

Perhaps. I mean, especially like how often are you doing it? Would you say?

[Dave Asprey]

Every time he says something about me. I just have so much fun with him. I mean, I made fun of his mom and like I shouldn't be getting joy from this, but it's so funny. Like, it's like my inner child is.

[John Hacker]

Playing well, I think it's good to have like on a very serious note, I think it's good to have play with your inner child and like you kind of have to. Everyone has haters, period.

[Dave Asprey]

You're always the best ones though.

[John Hacker]

I do, I do see that, Dave, actually, I do see that you get some of the best haters. Everyone's going to have haters and you got to like have fun with it, otherwise you will to stress yourself out.

[Dave Asprey]

People get incredibly stressed from mean people on social media, all of whom as far as I can tell, are traumatized people. And so the amount of stress and missed sleep, especially in younger people, like if you're reacting to trolls, number one, you gotta do some work on yourself. And number two, you could put yourself back in a parasympathetic state. That would be a good thing to do.

[John Hacker]

I will say this too. We reward being well liked in our social media algorithms. We reward being highly agreeable in our social media algorithms or being highly disagreeable.

[Dave Asprey]

Right.

[John Hacker]

The thing is, for when consumers of content and for people that are very early in content production for these different platforms, and especially your folks have always been introduced to it, you're highly incentivized to be very nice and take care a lot about what people are clicking that heart button. So it doesn't surprise me that there's a lot of people that end up caring quite a bit about what other people think about them because we are training our next generations to do that. Very concerning from a societal perspective. I do think part of the reason why I do this is I think that being able to interact and have better control over our own nervous systems is one of the ways that we can start to liberate our consciousness. I think it's a crucial requirement if we're going to survive on the tech tree path we have right now.

[Dave Asprey]

Very well said. One of the reasons it's called biohacking is that hackers take control of systems.

[John Hacker]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

And they make their own systems when the existing ones are polluted. Like Linux, which is the operating system that most of the Internet runs on, was made by hackers who were pissed off that Microsoft wouldn't tell them what was going on in there. So biohackers were saying, well, this is my nervous system, it's my biology and I'm gonna deal with it what I want. And I'm gonna make it so resilient that even if you have dumb social media algorithms or EMFs or whatever else, I'm going to modify my resiliency so that I can handle it and I can make the life that I want. It's a. It requires some degree of knowledge and experience, but it's so worth it. And I am really excited because in the world of biohacking, a lot of it's been let's monitor and then first let's get knowledge and then let's do real time feedback, like the 40 years of Zen EEG stuff. And what we're doing now is how do we get the appropriate signal in at the right time to the right place in order to create the state we want. And this is interesting because if someone tweaks you out on social media, like, okay, maybe I need an extra session to get myself back to my normal state. And I think that is a gift because when you're doing that, it's actually a workout. It's not a reliance. It's not like taking, you know, an antidepressant or something. Because someone yelled at you on social media.

[John Hacker]

Gosh, I, I don't know how much we really should get into this year. But the whole antidepressant thing in general is concerning to me on a large scale.

[Dave Asprey]

It seems to be very bad for your mitochondria in recent studies.

[John Hacker]

It seems to be bad for your mitochondria. The meta analyses aren't Showing a signal as well, especially the more recent ones, which means that there is a world in which we very well may exist where these drugs that we've been giving people that have a litany of side effects may have not been doing anything. Wow.

[Dave Asprey]

Who would imagine that antidepressants and statins were way oversold and over prescribed by companies that have been fined more than a hundred billion dollars for lying and cheating and stealing. I can't imagine thought that.

[John Hacker]

Who would we. I don't know, man. I don't know who?

[Dave Asprey]

Well, so surprised.

[John Hacker]

Well, I mean, if you take a look at medtech in general, we. There's a very strong history in medtech of lying to people and trying to cover things up. I mean, take a look. Are you familiar with cobalt chromium implants? Right. Back in the day, we used to have these implants for hip implants. And then they came out with this really, really cool tech that was saying we can do metal, metal implants, cobalt and chromium, and it'll create its own little cushion. We don't do anything else there. It'll last long, it'll be better. And it caused mentallosis, massive mentallosis, which means that essentially it was disintegrating over time and spraying throughout the body. It was shearing off bit by bit and it was killing people. And they knew this. And then they didn't do anything for like 10 years. And they're like, it's. The eventual lawsuit will cost us less than just continuing to sell this product that we know is hurting people.

[Dave Asprey]

Yeah, it's. It's a dirty business. It doesn't have to be, but it is the way it's set up today.

[John Hacker]

Everything. So like this is something. Everything is a dirty business to an extent. You will always have bad players in any industry, but the fact of the matter is, is that we see a certain concentration of them in health in general. I will say on wellness side just as much as medical side, there's different problems on both sides. On wellness side, you have a bunch of people that end up pushing products that don't have any research behind them, and that's a problem. And then on medical side, you have people pushing products that sure have research on them, but also have this litany of side effects that they know about. And they're like, we can handle the lawsuit because it's going to make us more money. And then you end up having this collusion between insurance, between medtech companies. It's just, it's very silly, but it's kind of like a choose your poison situation.

[Dave Asprey]

I want to talk about the future. If you have the ability with the tech behind Zenbud to make an ultrasound signal and to be able to direct it where you want to go, you can activate parts of the brain.

[John Hacker]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

And what does that mean? If we want to maybe do what neuralink is doing, but not have stuff inserted in our skull?

[John Hacker]

I will start by pointing out a recent funding event because I think it's timely. Sam Altman brought in a Caltech engineer and funded Merge Labs to the tune of, I believe around 250 million.

[Dave Asprey]

That should be enough.

[John Hacker]

Yeah, should be enough. But the thing I actually dislike about the initiative, the thing I actually dislike about a lot of the field bcis right now is there is this assumption that we will be merging with artificial intelligence as the next stage to become logarithmic. Because very frankly AI is logarithmic, Dave. It is doubling capabilities around every two months now. And that window is shortening. It's a logarithmic curve. And as that continues to grow, we have to ask ourselves the question, is there going to be a cap to this curve? And realistically I think that the money is very least saying in the space there's not a cap. We're going to keep pushing and all these BCI companies are saying, okay, we're going to take this AI and we're going to slant it onto the end of the brain. We're going to have a communication matrix with artificial intelligence which is completely feasible and especially with. So we could talk about neuralink and invasive options and I'd be happy to, and I do have some concerns there. We can talk about the fact that you can do it completely non invasively with this ultrasound tech that seems more.

[Dave Asprey]

Biologically safe and yes, oh, 100%, yeah. Back in 2008 I co founded a company that was detecting inflammation, even non antibody mediated inflammation. Two different implant materials that were labeled safe in studies and we found there was a lot of problems. And then there's biofilms and then there's emfs and it just seems like a very poor idea. In addition, right now I don't get to control the algorithm for my social media. That's ridiculous that I don't. But that's how it is. So why would I ever want an AI system that I don't own and control that I didn't set up to have access to my brain? It seems like the dumbest thing on earth. Now does that mean I wouldn't take something like a deep seq which is the best performing AI right now that runs incredibly well on small hardware. And I wouldn't want one of those that's entirely mine. Yes, that's interesting, but I want zero ability for any other person or any signal to change that without me having the only keys to that.

[John Hacker]

The biggest thing is when we're talking about bcis, it has to be local.

Ideally would not cloud based and not interactable through Bluetooth or other cloud technologies. Because the moment you have that, you don't want your, your neural implant to be hacked.

[Dave Asprey]

I know what the first thing would happen is. Someone with the same seventh grade sense of humor as me would be like, I figured out how to use Bluetooth to give everyone in the room an orgasm all at the same time. And you just press the button over and over. This is not the world we want to live in. Right. No one should be able to control your state but you. Yes, including hackers. And I was a computer hacker, so I know the bad stuff and that's why no way on that stuff. However, if I have an ultrasound system that allows me to take it off when I don't want it and allows me to actually better interact with tech so I can do the things I want to do better, I'm not opposed to that philosophically.

[John Hacker]

Okay, we're going to get a little bit into deep future. This is not near future, this is going to be deeper future. There is a world in which with bidirectional brain computer interfaces that means you have both read, you can understand what's happening in your body and write, which means that you can shift what's happening in your body to not only interact with these consciousnesses that we're building artificial intelligence which by if it can trick people to thinking it's conscious, which it can, then by all means that we have available, it kind of is conscious already as opposed to interacting with these new consciousnesses that we're building which are not human. They do not act like humans, they simply mimic them. I think it's going to be a lot more interesting to expand our core consciousness capabilities. And I think it's completely feasible with the right interface, with the right team and the right time. I think we have a chance to shift the tech tree because right now I see the tech tree going a direction where human consciousness becomes obsolete. That's what I see. It's very cynical.

[Dave Asprey]

Human intelligence or human consciousness?

[John Hacker]

Human consciousness, not just human intelligence. Because I frankly believe that if we actually do like merge with AI, like what Sam Altman Startup is trying to do right now with Merge Labs, then you are going to end up having a loss of what makes us human over time. Especially the more merged you end up becoming. Because we think in a certain way and these AIs do not think like us. They think completely alien to how our brains work. There is another option where we can compete and where we can be logarithmic, just like the AIs are being logarithmic. It requires a very specific BCI. I think it frankly requires a non invasive BCI to start. But it doesn't require merging with DART and AI because I think that is going to be interacting with them. Maybe one or two nodes in the network. Fine. But merging is the last thing you really want if you want to keep human consciousness relevant and in existence.

[Dave Asprey]

Interesting. There are elements of consciousness that we access with psychedelics, with altered states work that it doesn't look like AI is going to be able to touch. And these are in, in my world, these are where we have an interface to the quantum reality that we all live in that we can't see.

[John Hacker]

Yes.

[Dave Asprey]

That's more accessible via human consciousness and altered states. And to my knowledge, no AI system is able to do that today. But who knows, Maybe they're using quantum processors.

[John Hacker]

Possibly.

[Dave Asprey]

I don't know. It's an interesting thought. I just want to be able to take it off. And I want no other person. I don't want Sam Altman, I don't want Mark Zuckerberg, I don't want Bill Gates, I don't want any government person anywhere to say anything about what I do with my consciousness. And anyone who tries to do that sounds like they're an enemy of humanity. Right. It said our cognitive freedom and liberty is fundamental and it's okay to enhance it, it's okay to change it, but it's not okay to control someone else's without their consent. And that's the problem. Even the algorithms on social media are without my consent. I still use it because it's useful, but I don't have the control that I should have for something that's become a public utility. But we get pretty deep into, you know, into philosophy and legal theories and, you know, consciousness land. But what I, I do want to make sure is that people who are thinking about getting the Zenbud understand you're, you're thinking the big thoughts. You have a foundational and fundamental tech for helping us have better working nervous systems today. Yes. And that the future of brain interfaces with tech doesn't have to be dark and I think the non invasive path is the non dark path and you have something that may become an important part of that. So thank you.

[John Hacker]

Thank you Dave. This has been a pleasure like very.

[Dave Asprey]

Frankly my pleasure as well guys. Zenbud health code Dave15 and it's going to cost you less than 400 bucks and you can use this and you will feel a difference. It's, it's remarkable. And I have a stack of stimulators at home and the only other one that I feel this kind of of effects from costs about $3,500 and only doctors can buy it but somehow one ended up in my living room. It's also hard to use and requires gel. So Zenbud is it's new, it's interesting and it's different than heart rate variability training, but it increases heart rate variability and it works out your nervous system. So zenbud health code Dave15 and thanks for listening. See you next time on the Human Human Upgrade Podcast.

[Narrator/Host Announcement]

The Human Upgrade, formerly Bulletproof Radio, was created and is hosted by Dave Asprey. The information contained in this podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended for the purposes of diagnosing, treating, curing, or preventing any disease. Before using any products referenced on the podcast, consult with your healthcare provider, carefully read all labels and heed all directions and cautions that accompany the product. Information found or received through the podcast should not be used in place of a consultation or advice from a healthcare provider. If you suspect you have a medical problem or should you have any healthcare questions, please promptly call or see your healthcare provider. This podcast, including Dave Asprey and the producers, disclaim responsibility for any possible adverse effects from the use of information contained herein. Opinions of guests are their own and this podcast does not endorse or accept responsibility for statements made by guests. This podcast does not make any representation, presentations or warranties about guest qualifications or credibility. This podcast may contain paid endorsements and advertisements for products or services. Individuals on this podcast may have a direct or indirect financial interest in products or services referred to herein. This podcast is owned by Bulletproof Media.