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Bridget Todd
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Bridget Todd
There Are no Girls on the Internet is a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. I'm Bridget Todd and this is There Are no Girls on the Internet Dr. Peter Attia, celebr longevity Dr. Frequent Joe Rogan, podcast guest and podcaster in his own right, is in hot water at CBS after appearing in the Epstein Files. Here's what happened just three days after CBS announced him as a contributor under Bari Weiss's new leadership, as part of their grand plan to replace seasoned journalists with a popular network of podcasters and personalities as contributors, the Department of Justice released a trove of documents from Epstein Files. And right there in black and white was a friendly and salacious correspondence between Adia and convicted sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein. In one particularly crude response, Aria wrote, quote, pussy is indeed low carb. Still awaiting results on gluten content, though. Yuck. So now CBS is taking down some of this content, even though CBS leader Bari Weiss doesn't want to fire him because of, quote, cancel culture. Adia was not the only health and wellness guru that CBS brought on board. Dr. Andrew Huberman is still there as a CBS contributor. And if you want to understand how we got to a place where mainstream institutions are platforming guys like this and why they keep getting caught off guard when it blows up in their faces, you need to understand the Andrew Huberman Playbook. Two years ago, when a bombshell story about Huberman's personal life broke, producer Mike and I did a deep dive into Huberman's flashy public profile and how wellness culture, specifically wellness culture aimed toward men, is used to consolidate power. And I want to revisit that conversation today because Adia's firing is not a fluke. It's the inevitable result of a pipeline we've been following. So let's dig in. Welcome to our podcast There Are no Girls on the Internet, where we explore the intersection of technology, social media, the Internet and identity. So this is me doing my best impression of one of my favorite podcasters, Michael Hobbs. Mike, what do you know about Andrew Huberman?
Mike
Well, I'll do my best, Peter, and as far as I know, I don't know a whole lot about him. But he's a podcaster, a theater scientist of some sort, and he seems to have a pretty big following in the, like, health lifestyle space.
Bridget Todd
That's pretty spot on. So Angie Huberman is a neuroscientist. He has a very popular podcast. It's one of the most popular podcasts in the world. He currently is a professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford University's School of Medicine. Ever heard of it?
Mike
Yeah, little old college called Stanford university.
Bridget Todd
So since 2021 he has hosted a extremely popular health and science focused podcast called Huberman Lab that is basically all about biohacking your life, your health, and your relationships buttressed by science. He has the third most popular podcast in the United States on Spotify. And at least at one time his podcast was the most followed on Apple. He has 5.1 million YouTube subscribers and his Instagram account has like 5.5 million people. A lot of people swear by his life advice. All different kinds of people listen to his podcast. I don't want to make it seem like it's just men, but it has really especially taken off with men. I have heard Huberman called goop for men.
Mike
Goop as in like slimy gunk Goop.
Bridget Todd
As in the lifestyle brand brought to us by Gwyneth Paltrow. But instead of telling women to like drink $55 smoothies or whatever, or like.
Mike
Insert some crystals or insert some crystals.
Bridget Todd
Into their vagina, it's for men. So the reason why we're talking about Andrew Huberman is because he is in the zeitgeist right now. After this very long, very well written, very well researched New York Mag article just dropped. Doing this deep dive into his personal life and his relationships with women. Now, I'm not even going to pretend to not be biased here. I live for a long read in New York Mag. Or the cut specifically. Like, we are fans of New York Mag in this house, if there's ever a long read in New York Mag, you know that's going to be the kind of piece that everyone is talking about for a week. And the Huberman article is no exception.
Mike
Yeah, it's such a well written article. It reads like literature. Like there were so many sentences that I read. I was like, that's an amazing sentence. Such a nice read.
Bridget Todd
And so for folks who are listening who have not read it, I do want to give the caveat that it's very long. I listened to the article and that took about an hour. Like New York Mag has the option to have someone read it. That took about an hour. Reading it took a while. So, like it is a long read, but I thought it was worth it. And the piece has kind of invited scrutiny not just into Andrew Huberman's personal life, but his professional work as a scientist and a podcaster too, Mike. And you are a scientist.
Mike
That's right.
Bridget Todd
And you are a man also.
Mike
Right.
Bridget Todd
So I thought that you actually might be a good person to talk to about this. Like I said, should say up front that you have not deeply studied Huberman's science or his body of work, but you generally, like, have a sense of what is and is not okay or ethical in the eyes of science. Correct?
Mike
Yeah. Or at least I. It's something that I spend a lot of time thinking about and reading about. And, you know, who ultimately gets to say what. What is right and ethical is kind of an existential question. But, yeah, those are things that I think about and feel like I have a good basis to evaluate things.
Bridget Todd
So initially I actually wasn't even going to get into this on the show because, you know, at first I was sort of seeing a lot of people's reactions to the piece and I thought people were saying, like, oh, this is just frivolous. This is about his dating life, whatever, whatever. And I was like, oh, we. I'm interested in this, but we shouldn't talk about it on the podcast. But it kind of was a little bit of a bug in my brain. And after reading the article, I noticed that I was thinking about it quite a lot and I was sort of trying to put it in context with this current political and social and media moment that we're in, where we have the rise of people like rfk. Like, I do think we're in this sort of, I don't know, pseudo science moment with men. You know, a lot of times when we're talking about medical misinformation, we're talking about women, but I think we talk a lot less about how we see it moving with men. And I thought this, this article just really kind of got me thinking about that. And it also spoke to something I've been noticing as this trend in podcasting for a while, like white guy tech or science podcaster who sort of talks to other white guy science or tech podcaster and thus enjoy this kind of like self sustaining vibe as we are trustworthy white men of science and technology and knowledge. And you should listen to us, we're very learned men. And I really do see Huberman as fitting within that, even though I do think that he kind of enjoyed maybe a more elevated position within that circle. I know that he's the kind of podcaster who is friendly with folks like Joe Rogan. He goes on Rogan's show all the time. Tim Ferriss, who, if you don't know who that is, he's another very, very popular kind of lifestyle entrepreneur, guru, podcaster. And Lex Friedman, who is the number one tech podcaster in the world, who, in researching for this episode, I realized sometime between last night and maybe four months ago when I did a podcast episode about him, he blocked me on Twitter.
Mike
Oh, man. How's that make you feel, Bridget?
Bridget Todd
Honestly, confused, because I. I went and checked. We have. I have never tweeted at him. I barely tweet. And I. I did a search, and I was like, yeah, I've never mentioned him on Twitter. I have mentioned him on the podcast quite a few times. And so I have a difficult time imagining that Lex Friedman is listening to this podcast. But, you know, maybe he heard what I had to say about his show and didn't like it and was like, let me just block her. Just.
Mike
Yeah.
Bridget Todd
You know, preemptively.
Mike
Yeah. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So maybe he just, like, did not want to hear it.
Bridget Todd
Lex, if you're listening, I'm sorry I made fun of your podcast. Anyway, I think we're kind of seeing Huberman's status as, like, a learned public man. And the way that we think about that status that is typically occupied by a certain type of white man, I think we're sort of seeing that unravel a little bit now with this piece. We're seeing people kind of peek behind the curtain of that.
Mike
Yeah, that New York Mag piece certainly made it seem so. Right. They. And they made the point specifically, sort of like the point that you just made, that it's. It's not just, like, look at the messy details of this person's life, but really connects with his public Persona and, I guess, brand that. That he is serving up to people.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. And I guess I would posit that that is why any of this matters, why anybody should care. People might be thinking, well, why should I care how this podcaster treats women in his personal life? I am not particularly interested in Andrew Huberman's personal or romantic life. I will, in this episode, get into some of what the article says about his relationships with women. So folks have that context to understand, like, why we're talking about this at all. But the reason that I'm interested in talking about him is because there is a ton of overlap in Huberman's podcasting and sort of public science Work, for lack of a better phrase, and technology and like popular attitudes that tech leaders hold. A lot of people in tech are listening to his show Huberman Lab and using that to guide their own thinking. This absolutely makes sense in a culture where you have this mix of productivity hacks that bleed over into, like, lifestyle or health hacks like keto and intermittent fasting and pills and potions and powders and quick fixes that promise quick success. Now, this is just my opinion as a casual observer of all of this. I do think there is, like, a thread of fat phobia or like, ableism in this. This idea that being physically fit is akin to also being professionally successful and thus being the happiest and best version of yourself, the version of yourself that has the healthiest and most full relationships. It sounds like this is a mindset that says all of that starts with being physically fit, physiologically fit, healthy.
Mike
Yeah, I think you're right. And I think that is an idea that's been repackaged and resold many times over the past several hundred years, even before then, probably. Right. Like the idea that physical health is tightly linked with spiritual health and virtue. That's. That's an idea that grifters have been lucratively promoting for a long time.
Bridget Todd
So Huberman himself is, like, really jacked. And I can't help but think that that plays into all of this as a writer. Maria Alex beach put it on Twitter. He's the prototype of the American beefy male, which we don't associate with scientists. The dissonance between how he looks and what he knows is compelling. He gathers our communal preoccupation with health, body, self care, anti aging, longevity, with our respect for those with wisdom and knowledge enchanted. We're easy to hustle. Essentially. He's the worst of us.
Mike
That description from Maria Alex beach, it makes me think of beast from the Marvel movies. Like a big jacked beast of a man who's also a nerdy scientist.
Bridget Todd
It's a type. So Huberman is like the main guy of what's known as biohacking, or trying to shift or improve your physiology and nervous system to function better. Now, on its face, this is not a bad thing, like, inherently. And in fact, I would actually argue that women are kind of the OG Biohackers. Like, I remember back when a lot of the tech bros were skipping meals and instead drinking that drink, Soylent, which a lot of women were like, oh, you mean slim fast. It was basically a degendered slim fast that your mom maybe drank in the 80s, you know, so I think biohacking is something that I associate with women that has kind of been rebranded as for masculine men.
Mike
Yeah, that. I think rebranded is a good way to put it because it's a term that I think is primarily used to market things. And yeah, the idea that it's, you know, I hadn't thought about this, but originally was more associated with women. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, even back in the early 20th century, women were talking about the timing of menstrual cycles to avoid unintended pregnancies and speculating about a pill that might someday allow women to avoid them altogether. Right, like biohacking.
Bridget Todd
Exactly. But the biohacking space has kind of been taken up by a real masculine energy, which, again, I think makes sense in this social media climate where people are always talking about, you know, high value men and low value men. There is a ton of overlap between the biohacking space and just a real toxic brand of masculinity. But in general, I think that men have kind of been an untapped market when it comes to stuff like lifestyle and diet advice. As women, I can tell you we are. We have been inundated by that kind of junk since we were children. So we have a good sense of it. There's a lot of it out there that is directed toward us. I think that men, it's just a different market and maybe a little bit of an untapped market when it comes to lifestyle and diet advice specifically for men. So when someone like Huberman comes along and has this different vibe of lifestyle and diet advice for men, one that sort of gives the perception as being rooted in science, not just toxic masculinity, of course it takes off. Huberman emerges in 2021 as this kind of kinder, gentlier, less bro y version of biohacking. However, as Jonathan Jerry, science communicator with the Office of Science and Society at McGill University, puts it, Huberman presents the same kind of stuff, just in a less bro y, less masculine package. Jerry writes, even though his podcast is firmly rooted in the masculine space of body optimization that has grabbed hold of large swaths of the tech sector. Huberman is a lot less bro y than his fellow influencers. There's a real gentleness and care to his delivery. The packaging is less aggressive, but the content does not stray far from Silicon Valley's love affair with the tweaking of healthy human biology. And to add to that, I'll just say it. In my opinion, I think a lot of Men in this space might just have issues with women. I think a lot of them maybe don't respect women that much. I think they maybe don't see women as equals. I think they maybe don't really value what women have to say, how women think. And so I think in that context, both professionally and maybe personally, it maybe does kind of matter how somebody like Andrew Huberman treats women. Like, to me, as you said, this is so much more than a, look how messy this guy's personal life is, let's all gawk at it story. It's a story that maybe answers some of the very long held criticisms of Andrew Huberman's podcast. Like that he barely features any women experts, for one. And it poses questions about what happens when people who have expertise in one area of study kind of dine out on that and make it seem like they know what they're talking about when it comes to everything. And on top of that, the dangers of building your life around the advice of somebody who the article suggests we may not even really know. So if you don't listen to Huberman's podcast, you might not know this, but lots and lots and lots of people deeply subscribe to Huberman's life advice. There's a term for it on TikTok, a Huberman husband, a man who follows Huberman's life advice. And that advice, like, has them getting up before sunrise, has them waiting 90 minutes before having their first coffee of the day, you know, has them getting like a specific kind of low angle sunlight and doing a high intensity workout and an ice bath in the morning and all of this stuff. So if all of these people are building their identities around this guy's guidance, which they absolutely are, I do think looking into how he thinks about women is worthwhile. Like, I don't think that's a frivolous, clickbait dive into someone's personal life. That is really unfair, necessarily.
Mike
Yeah, I think that's a fair point. I think anybody who positions themselves to a wide public audience as a person who has the answer right, like, who has wisdom that should be followed, that other people should shape their lives around, I think it's absolutely appropriate to scrutinize their words, their message, and the extent to which their personal values live up to what they are publicly espousing.
Bridget Todd
So there have been a lot of popular tech voices who disagree with you. Lex Friedman, for one, says that probing into Andrew Huberman's personal life is an invasion of privacy and essentially a hit job, which, you know, I don't know, like, I can sort of see what they're saying in some regards. But I would point to the fact that Huberman's podcast is in part about having healthy relationships and emotional intelligence. So, like, if you build an entire big platform around how people should listen to you about how to have healthy relationships and a healthy emotionality, maybe looking into how you have built relationships and how you show up emotionally is fair game. Like on this podcast that I host, I intentionally almost never talk about my personal relationships on the podcast. So guess what? Like, nobody's digging into my personal relationship history because I'm not saying, listen to me. When it comes to personal relationships, it never comes up. So, like, I do kind of feel like if you build an entire platform that is about listening to you and modeling after what you say, it does seem kind of fair to me to look into it. And if you don't want people looking into it, you don't have to build that kind of platform. Let's take a quick break.
Mike
Foreign.
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Bridget Todd
We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're looking to get to the campground.
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Bridget Todd
How are you getting a signal out here?
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Bridget Todd
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
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Mike
No.
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Bridget Todd
And we're back. And I guess I would say that beyond his dating life, this piece is really looking at the values of this person who has risen to be one of the country's biggest pop scientists, who specifically has become a guru to others. So like, if this person is a guru to millions of people, it matters if this person is also a liar, it matters if this person is also a grifter. Here's how the New York Mag piece puts it. Huberman sells a dream of control down to the cellular level. But something has gone wrong. In the midst of immense fame, a chasm has opened between the podcaster preaching dopaminergic restraint and a man with newfound wealth, with access to a world unseen by most professors. The problem with the man who is always working on himself is that he may also be working on you. Dun dun dun so let's get into exactly what is in this article. The majority of this piece, and the messiest bits, frankly, are about his chaotic romantic life. Basically, Huberman is accused of dating at least six women at the same time, all while giving the women the impression that they are monogamous. He maintains this via a very elaborate system of deception and lies. The women are all kind of like him. They're all very health conscious. They're all described as the kind of people who are really particular about what they put in their body. So because they were all told that they were exclusive with Huberman, they all had unprotected sex with him, not being told that he was also having unprotected sex with a lot of other women at the same time. You know, these women were living this kind of intentional lifestyle that he preaches on the show. And here is Andrew, in my opinion, kind of sabotaging that by depriving them of the ability to make health choices for their own bodies through deception. Like, I don't think that is a frivolous thing for anybody to be doing, let alone a scientist whose whole thing is, you should be really mindful about what you put in your body. Unless that thing you're putting in your body is me.
Mike
Yeah. Earlier on you asked about ethics and you know, it's complicated thing to. For anyone to know what is ethical or not, but it's also like not that complicated in some ways. And if you want a big bright red warning flag that an ethical boundary is being crossed, just keep an eye out for deception. Right. Like if there's deception happening, you should really question whether what's going on is ethical. Yeah. So that's, that's like. That feels like a pretty strong line here that that has been crossed.
Bridget Todd
Well, according to these women in this article, there was a lot of deception going on. Let's get into it. Basically, he was not treating these women with respect, to say the least. So here's a couple of bits from the article that really drive that point home. It is suggested that he may have given at least one of these women an STD, HPV. Specifically, in 2021, one woman tested positive for a high risk form of HPV, one of the variants linked to cervical cancer. I had never tested positive, she says, and had been tested regularly for 10 years. A spokesperson for Huberman says he has never tested positive for hpv. According to the cdc, there is currently no approved test for HPV in men. When the woman brought this up, she says that Andrew told her that you could contract HPV from many things. I'm sure he did say that.
Mike
Yeah.
Bridget Todd
Maybe you got it from a toilet seat, baby. I don't know.
Mike
Yeah, I don't know what you do.
Bridget Todd
So there's one woman who has kids from a previous relationship, and she says that Huberman fixated on this and that it's something they thought about a lot. At one point, she says that he told her that being in a relationship with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. Apparently, things only got worse when they moved in together. Sarah was, in fact, changing. She felt herself getting smaller, constantly appeasing. She apologized again and again and again. I have been selfish, childish, and confused, she said. As a result, I need your protection. A spokesperson for Huberman denies Sarah's accounts of their fights, denies that his rage intensified with cohabitation, denies that he fixated on Sarah's decision to have children with another man, and denies that he said that being with her was like bobbing for apples in feces. Which, side note, if somebody that I am in a romantic relationship with ever tells me that being with me is like bobbing for apples and feces, I have every bit of information I need about how this person feels about me. There is no other piece of clarifying information or context that is needed for me to understand how they feel and what's going on.
Mike
It's also such a strange phrase. Like, I have to imagine that it was said in anger. Like, he was probably pretty mad when he said that. It's not sort of thing you say when you're feeling great.
Bridget Todd
You think he said it as, like, pillow talk, a sweet whisper?
Mike
I don't. I think he probably said it when he was mad. But to be so mad to say something like that and then use the term feces. There are so many other words in the English language that align more with, like, emotions of anger and rage than feces. So it's like this weird artificial layer of, like, restraint or scientific jargon to, like, put a clean face on just really saying a terrible thing to a woman.
Bridget Todd
Well, when asked about that comment, a spokesperson for huberman said, quote, Dr. Huberman is very much in control of his emotions, which, if there's ever a situation in my life where a spokesperson has to be telling the public that Bridget Todd is very in control of her emotions, I don't want to know what's going on, Wolf.
Mike
Yeah, let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Bridget Todd
So apparently Huber was actively undergoing IVF with this woman while also maintaining other relationships behind her Back a point that he doesn't even really disagree with. He disputes that they were trying to start a family together, but his spokesperson clarified that they did not want to try for a baby together. That he, quote, decided to create embryos by ivf. I don't know how that is different than intending to start a family with her. I guess that specific point is important to him in some way. I don't know how that. It's like, that claim is not really in dispute, but it's important to him to be like, oh, we didn't want a baby. We were just doing ivf.
Mike
There seems to be some weird feelings around children going on with that whole story around that woman. The idea that a major source of friction in their relationship was that he disapproved of her decision to have kids with a different man before they ever met. That just feels kind of weird.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. So if you've ever been played by a player, this next one is going to sound real familiar to you. Huberman relied on pretty sexist and misogynistic tropes about women being crazy to keep the women from finding out about each other. So the piece reads. Whenever Sarah had suspicions about Andrew's interaction with another woman, he had a particular way of talking about the woman in question. She says he said the women were stalkers, alcoholics, and compulsive liars. He told her that one woman tore out her hair with chunks of flesh attached to it. A story like that's got to be true. He told her a story about a woman who fabricated a story about a dead baby to, quote, entrap him. A spokesperson for Huberman denies the account of the denigration of women and the dead baby story and says that the hair story was taken out of context. So curious to know the actual. Like, what is that story in context?
Mike
You know how women are always ripping their hair out with chunks of their own flesh. You know how women are.
Bridget Todd
Bitches be crazy. Bitches be tearing out shunts of hair.
Mike
With flesh attached, literally, just like raving lunatics all the time.
Bridget Todd
Most of the time, Sarah believed him. The women were probably crazy. He was a celebrity. He had to be careful. So this is something that I have learned from, like, not to. Not to try to be, like, a relationship guru. But any man who tells you that, like, oh, there's just a bunch of crazy women in my orbit, every. All the women around me are crazy, that man is a liar. Like, that man is not telling the truth. That man is a liar. That is like, one of my, like, Deeply held red flags in life. Because even if that were true, what's going on with you, that you just are the kind of person who, like all these crazy women just flock to you? Like that isn't that even. Even if that was true, which it almost. Which I think it's. It almost never is. Even that is not great.
Mike
It only holds up if one has a worldview that all women are crazy. Right. It's not that I have created this social dynamic where I'm surrounded by crazy women. Just all women are crazy and they can't help but be attracted to me. You know how I am. So that's where we're at. I'm just surrounded by all these crazy women. That's. That's the way that that makes sense.
Bridget Todd
Yes, I am. I am the healthy, normal, normal one. And all these women, you know how women are. This reminds me so much of a story from my personal life involving friends where there was a friend breakup and between a man and a woman. And the woman, her account was, like, very specific. She had so many details. He did XYZ to me. He did this offense. This offense on that day, this offense. And then his account was like, she was crazy. Like, that was like. That was the whole. Like, she had a dossier of his specific wrongdoings. And he was just like, she crazy. So this is another pretty common thing, I think. Huberman apparently had a type. He went after these dynamic, assertive, confident women. And then he wanted these women to be kind of submissive to him. The piece reads, multiple women recall him saying he preferred the kind of relationship in which the woman was monogamous, but the man was not. He told me, says Mary, that what he wanted was a woman who was submissive, who he could slap on the ass in public, and who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home. A spokesperson for Huberman denies this. Also. I feel for this poor spokesperson who was like, Dr. Huberman never said he wanted a woman who would be crawling on the floor for him when he got home.
Mike
I am curious about the spokesperson because they're quoted so many times in this article. And. But, I mean, I don't have the sense. I guess I don't really know how big his operation is. But, like, I kind of get the sense that a lot of these guys don't have, like, huge PR teams. So, like, who is this spokesperson? What were they doing before they woke up to find themselves in this maelstrom of allegations to deny?
Bridget Todd
Well, not responding in real time. I can tell you that because the person who wrote this article for New York Magic says that they gave Huberman's team two days to read the full thing and respond to any of the allegations. And they basically, like, this is what they got. So, you know, curious to me, too. So one other thing to note about the way that he treats the women is that he juggled them in this way that is kind of weirdly, almost impressive. Here's one passage. There was a day in Texas when, after Sarah left his hotel, Andrew slept with Mary and texted Eve. They found days in which he would text nearly identical pictures of himself to two of them at the same time. They realized that the day before he had moved in with Sarah and Berkeley, he had slept with Mary, and he also had been with her in December 2023, the weekend before, Sarah caught him on the couch with a sixth woman. They realized on March 21, 2021, a day of admittedly impressive logistical jujitsu. While Sarah was in Berkeley, Andrew had flown Mary from Texas to LA to stay with him in Topanga. While Mary was there visiting from thousands of miles away, he left her with his dog, Costello. He drove to a coffee shop where he met Eve. They had a serious talk about their relationship. They thought they were in a good place. He wanted to make it work. Phone died. He texted Mary, who was waiting back at the place in Topanga. And later to Eve, thank you for being so next level gorgeous and sexy. My God, this sounds stressful.
Mike
It does. And it truly is impressive to balance all of this and make it all work. I think the most shocking thing in this is that he, like, he flew this woman from Texas to LA to be with him, left her to watch his dog so he could go meet up with another woman. Did not have sex with that woman. Just had a very long, serious talk about their relationship.
Bridget Todd
Have you ever seen that episode of Seinfeld where George wants to get. He's dating two women, and he's trying to, like, get them both to, like, break it off because it's too much work and neither of them will do it. And so he's just trying to, like, balance these two relationships. And he finds himself being like, oh, I thought, like, I'm seeing Godspell with one and going ice skating with the other. And Jerry's like, which is which? And he's like, does it matter? That's what I feel like is going on here. It would be so much easier to just be honest with all of them. Be like, listen, I'm dating all of you. Either you're down with it or you're not. Like the maintaining the deception and the ruse sounds like it is so stressful that I cannot imagine it is more satisfying than this being like openly, ethically non monogamous with all of them. Yeah, that's true.
Mike
He's a famous, smart, good looking, wealthy guy. If he just wanted to have a bunch of open relationships with hot women, he could probably accomplish that, right?
Bridget Todd
I think so. But that's what I'm saying. Like, I don't. I think that he could have that if you wanted that easily. I don't think he wants that. I don't think. I don't think it's about that. I think that it's about control and feeling like I am a. I am like a optimized smart guy who was able to stay one step ahead of all of these women. Which side? No, he fucking wasn't. But like, I think that's part of it. I think the control and the deception is part of it. Because he could easily have that if you wanted that. I also think, like, and this just is like what I've seen from being in relationships. I do think there's a kind of person who likes the idea of having open relationships with people where everybody is on the up and up and knows what's going on while simultaneously liking the idea of like settling down, starting a family, doing ivf. Like, he wouldn't be the first person who maybe has conflicted desires at the same time. Like, that's not that. That's not like difficult for me to imagine.
Mike
That makes a lot of sense. And you know, in, in his mind, he's smart enough to have it all. Right. Like, yeah, the idea that we all have conflicting desires, want a lot of things, but have to make trade offs because you can't have it all. It is seductive to think that maybe you could have it all. All you need to do is be sufficiently good at lying.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. And like, again, I think this is all part of his, the, the ethos that he preaches that you can hack yourself. There's some sort of like, way to gamify life in this way you can gamify life that you can have a series of fulfilling sexual and romantic relationships with a bunch of women and also settle down and have that woman be, be monogamous to you and like have your kid. I think that he's. I think that, I don't think that the way that he is treating these women is completely removed from the ethos that he preaches on the show. I think they are connected. And that is why it is interesting to dive into how these women do say that he showed up. So these women all found out about each other through Instagram, which again, I don't want to sound like I'm giving romantic advice, but some advice I do have is that if you are someone who is like, living foul, I guess I'll say you can't have Instagram. If you are someone who is like, like doing something in a relationship that you know you're not supposed to be doing, you can't have an iPad. You can't have it. You can't have Instagram. You need to be really careful about how you show up digitally because that's how they get you.
Mike
Wait, you can't have an iPad if.
Bridget Todd
You are a serial cheater. IPads, like, you know, you're texting on your phone, some setting is tripped that you forgot about and there's. Now it's on the iPad, that's back at your apartment. I'm just saying, like, if you are someone who is showing up in relationships in a certain kind of way and people don't and the other person is not aware of that, and that is a deception that you are trying to, like, juggle and maintain, technology is something you have to be extra special careful about. And it sounds like he was not extra special careful about it.
Mike
Listeners, thank you for joining us on how to cover your tracks with Bridget Todd.
Bridget Todd
I mean, this is just like, it's 2024. If you're going to be, if you're going to be doing it, like, also Huberman, I feel like no one is better at navigating Instagram than women, right? Like, I have told my friends, like, oh, I want to find so and so. They've got them pulled up in a minute. They're like, curious. Here's everybody he's ever known. Here's everything about him. He went to Cabo last week. Like, here's his aunt. Like, I think that Huberman thought he was smarter than all of these women. And nobody is smarter than a group of like, confident, poised, self assured women who are good at Instagram. Nobody is smarter. Like, I don't care how many degrees you have, I don't care if you're at Stanford. You are not smarter than a group of women who have Instagram.
Mike
Not gonna argue. Feeling a little intimidated, frankly.
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I'll, I'll find out stuff about you, Mike. You better watch out. So basically, one of these women noticed that another woman was like, constantly watching her Instagram story. But Never commenting and just, like, lurking. She realized that this woman also was followed by Dr. Huberman. And so eventually, she just DM'd her and said, is there anything that you'd rather ask me directly? Which I think that is such a baller move. And I just think it goes to show, like, he tried to put all this, like, sexist, misogynistic junk in these women's heads to keep them thinking that, like, all of the other women were just, like, jealous stalkers, and it didn't work. These women all join a group chat together. They start comparing timelines. That's when they realize, oh, he's playing all of us. The piece actually ends on kind of a sweet note. These women all become friends. They have a very active group chat, which, again, it just goes to show, like, if you're gonna pull this shit, don't pull it with a bunch of smart, confident women. They'll just get to the bottom of it together and join forces. And then, like, you will be a forever running joke. In their group chat forever. The women in. They have. They have this active group chat to this day. They send pictures of each other's pets to each other, and they use the reply that they say that Andrew would use whenever they would send him racy pics, which is.
Mike
Yeah, it's. The article does end in a really surprising way. It's like this group of women became friends, and they're all doing fine. Which I think makes this story a little bit different than some others where it's, like, powerful, influential man, you know, has problems with women. Right. When those stories break, often there's some kind of, like, allegations of abuse of some kind, or there's, like, a lawsuit of some kind. It doesn't sound like these women are seeking any kind of, like, restitution or really anything there. It just seems like they were more than happy to talk to this reporter.
Bridget Todd
And that's something that I want to talk about, because if I were to say the thing that the. So what of this article, I think these women are trying to say this person that millions of people have held up as a guru. His. The values that he preaches on the show are not the values that he lives by in his actual life. Like, I would say that it's a bit subtle, but I think that's the. So what of the inclusion of all of these details about his romantic life is that Huberman is somebody who preaches a really specific, like, life routine and mindset built around personal discipline and being really mindful of all the different Kinds of things that you let into your life that spike dopamine from coffee to booze. Like, the piece points out that he seems to show disdain for anybody who drinks even a small amount. But in his personal life, he's maybe not practicing a lot of the kind of personal discipline around things that spike his dopamine. In this case, relationships. Like one of the women says that he told her that he thought he was a love addict. So you have this guru preaching an ethos around being mindful about what you let into your physical orbit, while also like binging on women and relationships and not being forthcoming about it. That kind of makes his whole body of advice. I guess it kind of calls it into question.
Mike
Yeah. And I mean, we can even zoom out another level from Huberman in particular to just like gurus in general. It's a pretty well worn trope, almost a cliche, that, you know, some guru who has the answer, who is preaching restraint and control is sleeping with a bunch of women who follow his advice.
Bridget Todd
Tale as old as time. So this is how he's alleged to have treated women that he is romantically and sexually involved with in the piece. But, and this is something I don't feel like has gotten enough attention, this kind of casual lack of respect for women seems to bleed over into his professional life as well. There is this anecdote where he reached out to a woman scientist about collaborating together. They set a time to meet. Huberman doesn't show. This is a real theme in the piece. Huberman, like making plans with men and women and then just flaking and people saying like, he's totally unreliable. So the scientist emails him after he cancels on their. Their time to meet and says, well, I guess you're not serious about collaborating together. Which again, I respect that. Like, if somebody last minute canceling on somebody who is like, pretty busy and pretty, like, has a pretty full schedule, I could understand why she was like, yeah, I guess you don't really feel seriously about working together. Andrew Cuberman clearly felt some type of a way about this rather than just let it go. He and another male scientist, Stanford trained psychiatrist Paul Conti, did an episode of Huberman's podcast about aggressive drive in which Huberman makes this woman whose time he wasted the poster child for toxic aggression in the workplace. He tells the story of her emailing him and saying, I guess you aren't serious about working together and says so to me. Huberman said on the podcast, that seems like an example of somebody who has a, well, strong, aggressive drive. And when Disappointed lashes back or is passive. There's some way in which this person doesn't feel good enough, no matter what this person has achieved. So then there is a sense of the need and right to over control. Sure, said Huberman. So now we're going to work together. Right. So I'm exerting significant control over you. Right. And then maybe he's not aware of it. In this case, Andrew said it was a she. So this woman explained Conti, based entirely on Andrew's description of two emails, had allowed her unhealthy quote, excess aggression to be eclipsing the generative drive. She required that Andrew bow down before her in service of the ego because she did not feel good about herself. This conversation extends for an extraordinary nine minutes. Both men egging each other on diagnosis. After diagnoses salient. Perhaps for reasons other than those the two identify, we learn that this woman lacks gratitude, generative drive and happiness. She suffers from envy, low pleasure drive, and general unhappiness. It would appear at a distance to be an elaborate fantasy of an insane woman built upon a single behavior. At some point in time, a woman decided she did not want to work with a man who didn't show up. Like, where does this dude get off?
Mike
It's worth pointing out, following that, that story, that his expertise is in vision. Right. Like he's a neuroscience about vision. So talking about drives, like the pleasure drive, aggressive drive, these are not areas of his expertise. And you know, they're actually closer to my expertise. And a lot of that stuff is, is often like just so stories, right. Like it's kind of sounds like a common sense idea. You make up a story that fits this concept that you've introduced. So yeah, it all makes sense.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. And the just so story is that can you believe a woman talked to me like that? Andrew Huberman. Like, I think this guy got that email from this woman scientist and I think it stung more because it came from a woman and he's somebody who doesn't respect women. So he had to like use his massive platform to speculate on her like low pleasure drive and stuff and how she like needed him to sacrifice his ego and crawl to her and blah, blah, blah, bow down. Like, it really is so misogynistic and sexist. And I think it really feeds back into the way that these women were saying that he treated them as well.
Mike
I'm also not confident that this colleague exists or that any of that actually happened. I mean, we have no evidence that it did other than him saying so. It feels Very much like a story that somebody might make up to make.
Bridget Todd
To like prop themselves up to talk about how everybody else is less than and all those less than happen to be women.
Mike
It fits.
Bridget Todd
More after a quick break.
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We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're looking to get to the campground.
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Mike
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Bridget Todd
Let's get right back into it. Another big piece of this that I want to make sure is not overshadowed, because this piece is largely, but not entirely about his romantic issues, is how his character reflects on the work that he puts out on the podcast. Which is maybe not great. The New York Mag piece gets into this writing Huberman specialty lies in a narrow field vision system wiring how comfortable one feels with the science propagated on Huberman Lab depends entirely on how much leeway one is willing to give a man who expounds for multiple hours a week on subjects well outside of his area of expertise. His detractors note that Huberman extrapolates wildly from limited animal studies, posit certainty where there is ambiguity, and stumbles when he veers too far from his narrow realm of study. But even they will tend to admit that the podcast is an expansive, free, or as he puts it, zero cost compendium of human knowledge. There are quack guests, but these are greatly outnumbered by profound, complex, patient, and often moving descriptions of biological process. So this entire thing has really shined a light on his financial relationship with supplement companies, namely Athletic Greens, which is now called AG1, which is a big sponsor of his podcast. He is also their scientific advisor. I don't know what that means. Mike, do you have any idea?
Mike
Yeah, that's a reasonable thing for people to be a, you know, scientific advisor to this or that. I. I'm not going to dig him for that. That's reasonable. I mean, fair. There is a bit of a potential conflict of interest, like when he promotes the product on the show. Do his listeners know that if they decide to buy it gets into some more ethical gray area there. But just being a scientific advisor, that's a reasonable thing.
Bridget Todd
Okay, well, we'll get into that. So I should say, big caveat. I am a podcaster. If you listen to this podcast, we obviously, you know, we do ads, we do ads, we do ads. Nobody would accuse us of not doing ads. So I'm not really in a position where I can fault people for taking money to keep the good folks who help make their show paid and, like, keep the show going. However, if you are a scientist and your entire show is about your expertise as a scientist, I do think there was a different thing where maybe there should be a little bit more scrutiny over exactly what you were saying, like how you were using your position as a scientist to hawk things, especially something that is maybe a bunk product. AG1 is kind of maybe a not so good product in that it makes a lot of big claims that have dubious backing. Here's what the New York Mag article says about Huberman's relationship with AG1. On every episode of his zero cost podcast, Huberman gives a lengthy endorsement of a powder formerly known as athletic greens, now known as AG1. It's one thing to hear athletic greens promoted by Joe Rogan. It is perhaps another to hear someone who sells himself as a Stanford University scientist just back from the lab proclaim that this $79 a month powder quote covers all your foundational nutritional needs in an industry not known for its integrity. AG1 is, according to writer and professional debunker Derek Burrs, one of the most egregious players in the space. So I will say, as a podcaster, one of my pet peeves is podcasters who are like, we make this podcast for free. No, if you have ads you really don't like. If you have. If you are a podcaster who supports your work via ads, listeners are not listening to that show for free. They are kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads. And so I really hate that claim that, like, it's a free podcast. I'm making this content for you for free. If you have ads, you're really not. That's really just not true.
Mike
Yeah. And it's a good system, right? The listeners don't have to pay money. The ads support the show. You know, they pay us a small amount to make the show.
Bridget Todd
I feel like listeners probably. I feel like there are listeners out there who maybe don't think it's a great system. People are always like, I hate your ads. Fair.
Mike
But, you know, they, you know, the ads Them, I don't know. I also don't love listening to ads, but it's kind of the system we got. There's some others out there love to, you know, talk more about it. But I guess the point I'm trying to make is that ads aren't inherently harmful, but where it does get dubious is when it's these health supplements that are sold as having, like, health properties that just really are not backed up by evidence. And it really betrays a lack of concern for listeners, I think. And as a scientist, for a scientist to shill for nutritional supplements that do not have strong evidence backing, in fact, have a dubious, dubious evidence behind them. And my understanding is that what's actually in AG1 is a proprietary blend, so people don't even know. But for a scientist to back that, it casts a doubt over everything else they say, or at least it should. Right. Like, apparently that is the standard of evidence that they need to support a claim. Right. And so that same standard. Does that same low standard of evidence apply to all of the scientific claims that he's making on his show? One would assume it probably does.
Bridget Todd
So, yeah.
Mike
It just really. I personally think that for a scientist to promote dubious nutritional supplements just undercuts everything else they might have to say about any other topic.
Bridget Todd
Well, one of my favorite science podcasters, Wendy Zuckerman of the Science vs podcast, which I love the piece, quotes a time when she kind of like, called Huberman out on this. She pointed out that her podcast would never endorse a product with such a dubious science behind it. And Huberman said, that's the good news about podcasts. People can choose which podcast they want to listen to.
Mike
Yeah. And that makes it clear right there. Makes it crystal clear how he sees this. His scientific integrity was being publicly called into question, which is like the worst thing that could happen to a scientist. And he responds by pointing to the popularity of his podcast. Right. He doesn't even address it. He's just like, well, you know, people like my show. So I guess that makes it right.
Bridget Todd
I mean, to me, it's like being like, you know what it is, Wendy? I'm trying to get paid. So I should say, I don't know a ton Personally about AG1. I read a couple of really good articles that make a lot of good points about. About AG1. We'll put it in the show notes. One of them is by Jonathan Jerry, that science communicator from McGill University we quoted earlier. He did a really great deep dive. We'll put in the show notes about how dubious AG1 is. And the entire supplements industry is, you know, it's pretty much unregulated. And you might be thinking, well, supplements might not work or they might not do what they say they're going to do, but it couldn't hurt. Right. Well, using your credentials as a scientist to point people who are looking for quick ways to optimize their health down the road to supplements is not without risk, as dietary supplements are not regulated as strictly as pharmaceutical drugs and can routinely contain ingredients not listed on the bottle or not contain the main ingredient listed at all, which has been replaced by a cheaper lookalike. Supplements derived by herbs can cause all sorts of harm, including toxicity to the liver. A recent paper highlights rising cases of liver injury caused by these products.
Mike
And even outside of, like, liver injury or the supplements being toxic in some way, which hopefully is pretty rare, I think much more commonly, people get harmed by thinking that they are protecting themselves in some way, when in fact they're not. Right. Like, I think it's an idea that by having a healthy immune system, people will be protected against Covid, which is true. But then I think that can, in a lot of cases, show up where people will take supplements that they think are supercharging their immune system in some way and then decline to get the COVID vaccine, which is actually demonstrated conclusively by evidence to reduce the chance of harm. So there's. I think there's a lot of opportunity cost that comes from this widespread promotion of supplements that don't work.
Bridget Todd
Yes. And, like, if you have $80 a month to spend toward a health intervention, if you're putting that toward the thing that doesn't work over the thing that maybe does work and has been demonstrated by science to work, that is a problem. If he, if he is a scientist, is encouraging you to do that. I do think that's a problem. And I think especially in the podcast space, like, as a podcaster, you do have a different relationship to your audience. You know, I think that, like, it is an intimacy medium. It is a medium where people are hearing you in an intimate way in your earbuds. So listeners, they might really have a trust relationship with you. Like, I think a lot of people really trust Huberman. Jerry, that science communicator from McGill makes it really clear that a scientist using the medium of podcasting to build trust in people, the vast majority of whom are not scientists themselves, only to lead them to a path of supplements, and that personally enrich Andrew Huberman just really isn't Cool. Like, it's not like we're talking about Joe Rogan, who also hawks AG1. We're talking about a Stanford scientist. As Jerry writes, inside the walls of academia, there are guardrails on a podcast. However, anything goes. And the credibility of academia goes a long way to lend authority to supplement endorsements.
Mike
Yeah, it's absolutely true. It's unfortunate.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. I mean, the piece by Jerry really is like. He basically is like, I'm disappointed to see somebody who is such a gifted science communicator and like, does have a very good body of work in his specific lane, kind of selling that short for a check from the supplement industry. That is so shady and so not transparent and using science to do that. So, like, it's not like these people are calling him a fraud. They're saying the opposite. Because you are somebody who knows what they're doing and is very gifted. It is that much more disappointing to see you lowering yourself to this.
Mike
Yeah, absolutely. I have not reviewed his work in any sort of detail, but I looked through where he's publishing. He's publishing in like, top tier journals like Nature and Neuroscience, like this.
Bridget Todd
That's.
Mike
You don't get published there if you're doing bad work. So clearly he's a talented scientist. Clearly he's very charismatic and persuasive and able to speak to lots of people. And so it is disappointing to see somebody with those talents just use it for personal enrichment at the expense of the people who are trusting them.
Bridget Todd
So there have been a lot of accusations that his podcast is full of pseudoscience. Like, he uses all the right kind of sciencey sounding jargon for claims that are maybe dubiously backed up by science. I am not a scientist, so I don't really feel able to say. And Mike, as you were saying, like, you have not actually, like, studied his body of work, right?
Mike
Yeah, that's right. I just kind of reviewed where he was publishing, but I didn't click into anything because that's not an area that I really have the expertise to even evaluate.
Bridget Todd
So let's hear from somebody who does have the expertise to evaluate, and that is Dr. Andrea Love, an immunologist and a microbiologist who has been like, she has been debunking Huberman's bad science for a long time on her sub stack. She is not a Johnny Come lately who is jumping on the bandwagon. She has been here for a while. I get this, like, folks should follow her substack and follow her on Twitter. I get the sense that she is somebody who has been like, being like, huberman sucks. Huberman sucks for a long time. And now everybody is like, finally on her side. And she's like, now it is my time to shine. There is no better feeling. Dr. Andrea Love, I hope you are, like, basking in this because when somebody, when people, when the general public finally crosses over and sees what you see, that's how I always felt about Ellen. By the way, I was an Ellen truther for a very long time. When the public finally got there, I was like, yes, let the hate flow through your veins, man.
Mike
I remember that. That was like, I can't remember a time when I saw you so happy.
Bridget Todd
Thank you. So in a piece that Dr. Love wrote for Slate called so should you trust Andrew Huberman? She really breaks it down. She writes, in reality, his podcast is focused on pseudoscience. He often makes claims that appear scientific but lack evidence, plausibility and validity. Pseudoscience presents unsubstantiated conclusions, but it can be incredibly hard to distinguish from conclusive evidence. It contains grains of truth, but those grains of truth are exaggerated beyond the point of usefulness and even so far as to lead away from the truth. Huberman fills his podcast with confident displays of pseudoscience topped with the appeal to authority he garners by regularly repeating his academic credentials to gain your trust.
Mike
Wow, that sounds so similar to the way we talk about conspiracy theories.
Bridget Todd
I was thinking the same thing. So she basically accuses Huberman of not carefully or fully citing studies and data to make prescriptive recommendations for lifestyle changes. He cherry picks weak or irrelevant studies while discarding larger and more robust studies that demonstrate something different. If you're not conducting research or regularly dissecting scientific studies, this might not be obvious, but to scientists it is. And that's something else that I think is interesting here, is that I bet that listening to his show or hearing somebody parrot what he says, if you are a scientist or a doctor, is probably frustrating as hell. You and I were talking about this off mic, Mike. Weird thing to say about what exactly you think is going on here, right? So after doing all my research for this episode, I have totally changed my mind. I go back to this episode that we did early in Tangodi's history with Afoma Uzoma, who was formerly of Pinterest. She developed the platform's first ever medical misinformation policy. And in our conversation, she told me that it's really not that deep. Like a lot of the people who push medical misinformation are just scammers Right. They're just using fear or whatever or like junk science to get people to give them money for whatever scam, supplement or scam course they're selling or whatever. And I think I'm kind of coming around to the fact that maybe Huberman is like a little bit of a scammer. Like, like, maybe it's not like, like maybe it's not that deep. He is just like a snake oil salesman who gets rich from selling snake oil. So he is using his scientific credentials to boost that snake oil.
Mike
Yeah, I agree. I think that's a big piece of it here, right? Like, it's not in dispute that he is aggressively promoting supplements that do not have evidence based to demonstrate their effectiveness. And he's getting richer off that. Right. That's like literally, you know, I guess it's not literally, but it is a direct analogy to selling snake oil. Yeah, Good old fashioned scammer. I do think that he's a little bit more interesting or different than a lot of your garden variety scammers just because he's so much more educated and is like a bona fide scientist making scientific contributions and seems to be a very introspective person. So, like, I'm just so fascinated. The story he tells himself to justify selling that snake oil.
Bridget Todd
Well, Andrew Huberman's whole thing is like a storytelling exercise about himself, like a myth making exercise about himself. Like the sort of story that he tells about himself is that he was a troubled kid. His parents handled his divorce in a way that left him neglected and like unparented. His parents kind of dispute that, but whatever. And that he was sent to sort of a facility for troubled youth. And that talk therapy is what saved him. And he wanted to dedicate his life to like, helping others because of that. And he got into Stanford despite the fact that he was this like, troubled youth who was like, essentially unparented. The piece says what does seem certain is that in adolescence, Andrew became a regular consumer of talk therapy. In therapy, one learns to tell stories about one's experience. A story one could tell is, I overcame immense odds to be where I am. Another is the son of a Stanford professor, born at Stanford Hospital, grows up to be a Stanford professor. Like, I do think that he maybe is somebody who, like we all do in certain, in certain effects, but, like, gets down on the story that he tells himself, and that story sort of becomes the truth. And so maybe the story that he tells himself, like the story that I tell myself when I have to do ad reads is like, if I didn't do these ad reads, the people who make my podcast would not be able to be paid, I would not be able to be paid, the show would not be able to go on. Right. And so that's the story I tell myself when I'm doing ad reads for our sponsors, all of whom I love and respect very much. But I think, like, that's the story that I have to tell myself to feel okay about doing these ad reads. Even though nobody likes ads. I think it's different when you are a scientist telling yourself a story that makes it okay to. To use your credentials as a scientist to maybe lead people into things that are risky.
Mike
Yeah. Especially when you are publicly preaching introspection and discipline and accountability. Those all seem like virtues that maybe he should take a deeper look at.
Bridget Todd
Yeah, this is. I'm kind of going off script here, but like you were saying, how the popular guru who doesn't take their own advice and is not living the values that they preach in public, that is such a well worn thing that it's almost a cliche at this point. I wonder what it is that about Huberman that makes it so hard to see this well worn trope playing out in Before Our Eyes. Because I think that's in part kind of what's going on here with Huberman. But it's so interesting to me how people are like, but he's a scientist, but he's introspective. But he's very thoughtful. He's different. Maybe it's just the power of marketing. The power how people really want to believe that what he's doing is so much different than the doctor Oz is of the world because of the way he packages it so effectively as being different.
Mike
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I haven't listened to his podcast, but you know, in the research for doing this, you know, I read a couple articles that were talking about it and all of them mentioned when he's interviewing guests or speaking in public, you know, it's characterized by humility and kindness and compassion. And I could imagine that all of those would be things that would disarm a audience and make them feel like the person could be trusted. Right. And feel more connected to them. Like, humility is super powerful.
Bridget Todd
But even that reminds me of the way these women say that he used that same kind of language to control them. You know, that's sort of like. Like at one point when one of the women realizes that he cheated on her, he texts her like something along the lines of I hear you and I'M willing to hear you for as long as you need. Which again, it's almost like therapy speak to get away with bad behavior. And I wonder if that's part of it. Like using a certain kind of disarming language and disarming presentation and disarming, you know, vibe to really effectively trick people into trusting you and to trick them into not seeing what is so obviously in front of their own eyes or happening in their own ears. Like, I don't. It's like, some of this stuff is not in dispute. It's not in dispute that he takes money from supplement companies. It is not in dispute that supplement companies are notoriously not transparent and rely on junk science, if any science at all. Those things are not in dispute. So the fact that people are like, no, he would never. Like, he would not dispute that that is what's happening.
Mike
Yeah, it's a good question. What is it about him that makes people like him and want to follow his advice? But clearly he's done very well at it. And I think it is an important question for us all to consider.
Bridget Todd
I think part of it's gotta be that he's hot.
Mike
Probably helps.
Bridget Todd
Yeah, like, he's like jacked. He has glasses. Like, I don't know, Like, I think he's someone that maybe a lot of the male listeners in his audience want to see themselves in. Like, who would not want to be like, oh, yeah, I'm like jacked, ripped guy who has glasses but is also a scientist and like, can maybe juggle women in an unethical way. Like, I think that men are identifying with him in a certain way and that is maybe making it hard for them to see what is happening so plainly right out and open.
Mike
Yeah, it's a good point. Yeah. There's a lot of ways in which the life he's leading feels aspirational.
Bridget Todd
I completely agree. So Dr. Andrea Love, her piece just makes him sound like a good old fashioned scammer. Again, I will link to it in the show notes. You should definitely read it. So she points out that he is somebody who uses dubious science to put people off of accepted medical interventions like fluoride or vaccines, even when there is broad medical consensus about it, in service of suggesting an alternative that he has a financial stake in. So Dr. Love says that Huberman uses false balance, the fallacy that equal and opposite sides always exist. Take his thoughts on fluoride. While fluoride has been used for decades to prevent dental disease, Huberman gives the impression that there is an ongoing debate among experts about its use and reasons for his listeners to be careful about how much fluoride containing tap water they consume. During his oral health podcast episode, Huberman undermines consensus data on fluoride, endorses fluoride free toothpastes, as well as a yerba mate tea company that uses fluoride free water and which he is a business partner of, and cites a dentist who spreads fear about fluoride as his expert reference. Huberman positions this for his listeners as information to make the best decision. As though we all need to be carefully thinking about our fluoride levels.
Mike
Yeah, again, cherry picking here. It sounds like he cherry picked particular expert who has an ax to grind about fluoride while ignoring the vast majority of dentists who are in consensus that that fluoride is positive thing to promote oral health.
Bridget Todd
And when we were talking about his cold and flu episode where he was talking about how he doesn't always get the flu shot because it is not effective unless the shot protects from that exact strain of flu going around that year, which is not totally accurate, you were like, well why would he do that? You know, what does he have to gain in discrediting vaccines? And again, if you believe Dr. Andrea Love, it comes down to those supplements that he sells. Having a paid sponsor is not a disqualifier in and of itself. She writes, but when your financial conflicts of interest seem to dictate your content, it should be. After dismissing legitimate data in the flu episode, his lengthy quote science backed discussion to prevent colds and flu boiled down to an extended commercial for taking supplements. So all of me has me wondering, which I think is the point of the New York mag piece, why do we look to anybody for their life advice? Like, why do we make people into gurus in the first place? It does not surprise me that Huberman really got famous. Famous in the 2021 era of COVID You know, we were all sort of alone and disconnected and looking for some solution or some antidote to that. We weren't sleeping well, you weren't eating well. Maybe like the vibes were terrible. So in a lot of way I think the public, we were just like easy marks during that time.
Mike
Yep. Just a bunch of dupes with money.
Bridget Todd
Yeah. Looking for a quick fix.
Mike
Yep. Rubes looking for a solution.
Bridget Todd
And you, you and I kind of talked about this off mic, but it's one of the reasons why, like life advice content, like I'm not somebody who really, unless I'm really in a having a dark time of desperation, like I'm not Someone who listens to lifestyle or life advice podcasts. I don't like career advice podcasts. I just don't like this idea that one person has a one size fits all solution. This is my opinion. I don't think life works that way. I think people are really complex. People have very complex motivations and desires and needs and hang ups. I don't see how a stranger could speak to that in any way that is effective. I'm not saying, I don't. Not saying that anybody should like. Because you're a bad person if you listen to that. I just feel like anybody who is like wearing a blazer and crossing their arms and being like, I have the answer, something in me automatically is like.
Mike
Suspect of that I 100% agree. Yeah. Anybody who says that they have the answer, huge red flag. And I'm somebody who loves learning from people. There are so many smart people in the world who have insight, who have wisdom, who talk about interesting philosophical and ethical questions that help me understand the world and help me decide how to live my life. But I feel like there's a very fine line where that crosses over into solutions. And therefore, you should do xyz. You should buy this supplement. You should adopt my patented life routine. Once they start hawking a specific solution, that red flag gets a little bit higher. And then when that solution is something that you can buy, it's time for me to walk away.
Bridget Todd
You've lost me.
Mike
You've lost me.
Bridget Todd
Let's take a quick break.
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We're lost. I'm gonna pull over and ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're looking to get to the campground.
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Bridget Todd
How are you getting a signal out here?
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Bridget Todd
Actually, can you point us in the direction of a T Mobile store?
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Bridget Todd
And we're back. I think we're kind of in a golden age of the snake oil salesman who can use digital mediums like podcasts or social media to demonstrate that they have it all figured out that they had the kind of life that is aspirational that you would want to live. It's basically how MLMs operate of like my Life looks dope as hell on Instagram. Don't you want to live like I do? If you buy this thing, you can. And so I think that we're kind of in a golden era of coaches and lifestyle gurus and wellness people and people selling courses just like. And I'm not saying all of those are bug, because I certainly don't know. But, like, I think that we're in an era where people are looking for a solution to the way that things feel right now. And there's always going to be somebody willing to take their money offering that solution. And we got to be extra careful about who and why we elevate to that platform.
Mike
I think you're absolutely right. And I think that really intersects with the fact that he is a scientist and that, you know, speaking from science is part of his brand on the podcast. You know, he's somebody who looks really good on videos, looks good on Instagram, is good at managing social media, can build this following leads this like, aspirational, cool looking life which makes people want to emulate him. And if he's, you know, giving advice, it's reasonable to think that, oh, if I take that advice, my life could look like his. So the things that he's saying must be true because his life looks pretty good. He's healthy, he's wealthy, he's sleeping with a bunch of women. But that's so different from how evidence gets evaluated in science. You look at evidence, you look at multiple studies. Do they agree, do they disagree? Look across the balance of all of the evidence to reach conclusions based on the evidence that's there in a transparent evaluation of the methods that were used to create those conclusions. It's much more boring than an Instagram reel or a YouTube video. But that's how scientific conclusions get reached. And I think that's maybe why it's so easy and feels so dangerous for people who have scientific authority due to their institutional positions and just take that over to Instagram and popular culture to start dispensing advice that is not within their area of expertise.
Bridget Todd
Yes. And I think that, like, that's the real scandal that I think the piece is trying to highlight. The scandal is not to me, like how he treated women badly in his personal life. It is that he enjoys this pedestal of, like, men of science and knowledge and enjoys all of the respect that comes with that, while also behaving in ways that are like, really small and like, maybe unethical and maybe like anti science. Like he wasn't trying to unlock the science of all of us living our best lives, like maybe he was a little bit, but it sounds like it was also an enterprise to personally enrich himself, get and control women and have fame. Like I said, small. That's not a super respectable, you know, man of science behavior. That is like small man driven by desire and vice behavior.
Mike
Yeah, I mean, if you were to, you know, take a stoic approach to it, one should be leading a virtuous life and none of those things sound very virtuous.
Bridget Todd
Ultimately nobody likes to pursue vice and hedonism and, you know, desire more than your girl right here. So like, I'm not, I'm not judging, but, but to, to create an entire platform around the importance of discipline and avoiding this and avoiding that while you are privately courting your version of those things yourself. Like, I don't think he's somebody who was like preaching, not drinking and then drinking alcohol, but he is somebody who preaches like, avoid dopamine and then like clearly has these like dopamine driven relationships with women that are very chaotic based on lies. Like, I think that's the scandal. The writer Justin Murphy put it really beautifully on Twitter. He writes, the Huberman story is not altogether trivial. The smartest men in every generation of Western history have generally converged on the idea that knowledge and cultivation involve a certain conquest of the appetites. Obviously, men who are successful economically and socially are free to indulge their appetites and often do. The story is not surprising or informative. If you already had Huberman pegged as playing primarily an economic and social game, the story is surprising and damning. If you saw him as playing a game of knowledge and cultivation. It is not therefore a totally vacuous story, as many seem to be saying. In the eyes of any classically educated observer, it is a precipitous fall in the stock price of rationalist, materialist, utilitarian frameworks for living. For many people, Huberman was not just a purveyor of useful information, but an image of wisdom, an image of a cultivated man. No longer, obviously, except for the most naive, you can know everything there is to know about the body and have all the followers in the world and not exceed the wisdom of the average 25 year old man. The scandal of the story is not Huberman's immorality, which is common and generic. The scandal is ethical. Someone who is famous for having tremendous knowledge of how to live does not himself live in a beautiful way.
Mike
Common and generic. That's gotta sting.
Bridget Todd
Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the disconnect that like people want to see Huberman as this learned man of science and knowledge and cultivation, which is so high minded and like elevated in reality. He's trying to get a check and get his dick wet. Like that. Like that is like generic and small minded. I could tell you a thousand other men I know who are the same way trying to get the same shit. It's not like I'm not trying to demonize him for it, but let's call it what it is. And like I think from the article that is like, like plainly what it is. And I guess ultimately the question is like, does this matter? Here's where the New York Mag piece leaves it. There is an argument to be made that it does not matter how a helpful podcaster conducts himself outside of the studio. A man unable to constrain his urges may still preach dopaminergic control to others. Morning sun still remains salutary. The physiological sigh employed by this writer many times in the writing of this essay continues to affect calm. That's one of his trademark tactics is a specific side that's supposed to calm you down. The large and growing distance between Andrew Huberman and the man he continues to be may not even matter to those who buy questionable products he has recommended and from which he will materially benefit, or listeners who imagined a man in a white coat at work in Palo Alto. The people who definitively find the space between fantasy and reality to be a problem are women who fell for a podcaster who professed deep, sustained concern for their personal growth, and who, in his skyrocketing influence, continued to project an image of earnest self discovery. It is here, in the false belief of two minds in synchronicity and exploration, that deception leads to harm they fear it will lead to. More so yeah, what a piece. Beautifully written. And I think that's kind of the so what? These women are just raising the alarm that this guy who is trafficking offices, his scientific credentials, is maybe actually not who he says he is and the public should know if he's going to be a guru, there should be some transparency around that.
Mike
Yeah, you know, anybody who stands up and says I have the answer, it is reasonable to inspect how they live their life.
Bridget Todd
More after a quick break, Let's get right back into it. So a lot of Huberman supporters are really digging in and defending him. Maybe those are just the loudest ones. Maybe people who were like casual listeners of his podcast are like, eh, I don't know, like that article seemed fair. Who cares? It is so Interesting, really, because, you know, I wonder if a lot of the people who listen to Huberman really identified with him or maybe his lifestyle was like, really aspirational to them. And so when he is being called out in this way, maybe they feel personally threatened and that is why they are coming to his defense so specifically. Like, Lex Friedman was, like, he is a personal friend of mine. And this is a hitch up. Again, I was not able to read Lex Friedman's entire statement because he has me blocked. But this idea that because you are a listener of his podcast or even like Lex, like you know him personally, that you would know the intimacies of his, like, romantic life and how he shows up sexually and romantically. Like, I have plenty of close friends and I don't know the ins and outs of how they get down sexually and romantically. And I would never, I would never pretend that I did. Right. Like, I find it really interesting how many people are so loudly coming to his defense. Like, I follow and enjoy plenty of podcasters that I don't personally know. There is not one of them that I can think of that I would read. Like a long, critical, deep dive into their work and their history and their values that I wouldn't come away thinking like, oh, maybe they had a few points to see. People summarily dismissing this as a hit job to defend Huberman, like, he is someone they know. And it's interesting how this has become this kind of of culture wars thing where it's like, oh, they're just attacking him for no reason. And I'm not even gonna lie, like, it's all bunk, right? And so like, they're not even engaging with the pieces of the article that are not about his romantic life. Right. Like the way that he talked about that colleague of his that was a woman, that's not about his romantic life. His relationship with AG1 and supplements, that's not about his romantic life. Like the questions about his own myth making and his background, that's not about his romantic life are those not questions that need answers and deserve scrutiny for somebody who is bolstering themselves as a public guru?
Mike
Yeah, it's not surprising that it has sort of been framed and is being talked about as yet another culture war of us versus them. I think another lens that we can look at it is earlier we made an analogy to conspiracy theories where his scientific rationale behind this or that solution is often like cherry picked. It'll be like a germ of truth in there, but then build this elaborate just so story around it. That it sounds like in a lot of cases leads to the conclusion that you should buy some product that he's selling. And similarly here, his followers, I suspect a lot of them are true believers. When confronted with a critical piece like this New York Mag article, just reject it. Right. The same way that when you present somebody who believes in a conspiracy theory with evidence that refutes that conspiracy, they will in most cases just double down and the conflicting evidence is somehow reinterpreted in a way that makes them believe in the conspiracy even more strongly. It feels like there's something similar going on here as well.
Bridget Todd
Well, I can tell you who a lot of his defenders are saying is behind this hit piece. Big Pharma. Big Pharma doesn't like that Andrew Huberman is preaching the powers of meditation and sunlight and ice baths and supplements. They want us all hooked on the Big Pharma machine. And that's why New York Mag is like writing this, like, well researched, well written takedown of his life.
Mike
Yeah, they're just a. They're just a front for Big Pharma. I'm no big fan of the pharmaceutical industry. They do lots of, like, pretty shady, harmful stuff, no question. But in this case, yes, dismissing this piece as a hit piece by Big Pharma, I feel like George Soros is just like one step away in that causal chain of dismissive logic.
Bridget Todd
Oh, totally. And side note, like, I feel like whenever, like this is a hit piece, an attack job by Big Pharma, whenever that is the go to line of defense. It really tells me a lot about the audience that, that the person has cultivated. Because that was the same thing that they used to defend Joe Rogan. When people like me were pointing out his use of misinformation in the podcast space, they were like, oh, like he isn't down with the COVID vaccine. He's interested in alternatives to curb Covid. So Big Pharma had to take him down. I feel like that tells me so much about the audience that you have cultivated and what they are about and what they value, what they don't value.
Mike
Yeah, because it's not just listen to me. I have the answer. It's also, don't listen to anybody else. They're trying to deceive you.
Bridget Todd
And anybody who says anything critical about what this person is saying, they're not just wrong, they are like in the pocket of Big Pharma. Again, it's that total conspiratorial thinking that it's like they don't just have a difference of Opinion. It's like a nefarious plot. So in the fallout of all of this, people are really trying to come for the person who wrote the article, who is New York mag writer Carrie Hawley, who. I love Carrie's writing. Like, if you ever see a deep dive written by Carrie, go ahead and click it immediately. One of those writers that if anybody ever calls me and is like, I'm fact checking a piece by Kerry Howley, I'd like to ask you a few questions. I will be very concerned.
Mike
Yeah. But can confirm it is so well written. It was like, a joy to read. Even, like, setting the content aside, just the. The. The prose, the writing, it was refreshing. It was really nice.
Bridget Todd
Yeah, totally agreed. So I hate to see Carrie being attacked in this way. Uh, Huberman retained the crisis PR firm called Scale Strategy. Fun fact. Scale Strategy is brought to us by one of the guys who handled the disastrous WeWork IPO and was fired soon after. So one of the folks who might be on Huberman's crisis PR campaign to navigate the fallout of this article, something else I have seen is that a lot of his loudest defenders are saying, well, if Huberman has been juggling hot women this effectively, it means that the methods that he preaches on the podcast must be effective. Like, he's really, like, a masculine guy. Like, they're applauding what he has been accused of doing, and that makes him more likable in their eyes. And that is what I mean. Like, that's the thing that I think that we're not coming right out and saying directly. I think that casual misogyny and sexism and gaslighting women and demanding submission of women, I think all of this stuff isn't something that the audience that he has cultivated is at all bothered by. In fact, quite the opposite. I think to them, this is a feature, not a bug. I think that they like this. I think that, like, the way he is accused of treating these women is not removed from the content that he makes on the podcast. I think it's all one big, intricate quilt, and I think it's all related.
Mike
Yeah. And the fact that they aren't more bothered by the deception that is at the very root of it is worrisome and unfortunate. You know, people can have different ideas about what dating and relationships and life should look like, but I feel like most people that I know in my personal life, even people who, like, have different political and social views than me, most people agree that deception is bad and you shouldn't use it. And it feels like there's something going on where public figures get a pass on that, that people would not allow peers or acquaintances in their everyday life.
Bridget Todd
Oh my gosh. I mean, I would argue that we are kind of in a golden era of scammers where people are willing to close their eyes to the way that the people that they follow, the people that they have upheld as aspirational, they are very willing to close their eyes to the way that those people are moving right in front of their faces in a way that is deceptive. Like, this is a weird analogy, but there's this young black Mormon trad wife influencer who is really famous for making videos of her, like, baking in ball gowns to show off how much money she has, like shopping and blah, blah, blah. And I got into an argument on Threads with somebody, another black woman, about this and she was like, people are hating on her because they hate to see a black woman live a life of luxury. And like, that's what she's doing. And she's like being a good mom and people just hate to see that when it's a black woman. And I was like, well, I'm a black woman and I don't hate to see that. But this woman is a content creator. The whole thing is like artifice to make her money. This is just how she lives her life. It's by nature performative. So, like, I wasn't like getting down on this woman, but I was just saying, like, let's be honest, that this woman is a content creator. She is setting up a tripod and lighting and wearing a specific outfit to do something performative to make money. That's just what it is. And you would have thought that I called this woman a bad name. She was like, how dare you say that? And I was like, it's obviously performative. I don't even think that the woman in the videos would be like, oh, this is a realistic depiction of my life as someone who makes, makes food for my kids. Like, I just couldn't believe that an adult would be so willing to play into the scam that is so obviously unfolding in front of her. Not to say this woman is scamming, but I was surprised to see an adult unwilling or unable to, to call this what it was, a money making enterprise. Do you know what I'm saying?
Mike
I do. Yeah.
Bridget Todd
Like, why was it so important to her that this woman be deemed authentic and not performative? What is lost if you acknowledge the obvious truth that this is a performance to make money?
Mike
Yeah, it's A good question and maybe one for another episode. So, Bridget, I know that you like this story. Really got you. You read a bunch of stuff, you kept writing and writing and writing and writing, and thank you for doing all that. Let's land this and bring it home. What is it about this story that really speaks to you?
Bridget Todd
I think the story speaks to me for a lot of reasons. I think the response, it demonstrates how siloed and how charged everything is that you can't even deal with this story on its merits or pick out the pieces that you might think, oh, well, that could be something that the only way that people who are detractors of it can engage with it is as a hit job. Two, this is so, maybe so petty, but, like, it bums me out that this is what the podcast space looks like sometimes. That it's like, it's such a space where through marketing and a certain kind of language and appeal, people can really build huge, powerful platforms that maybe when you look a little closer, are not so great and maybe look even closer. Maybe they're a little bit dangerous. And so I think that's my main takeaway is that I think that we all deserve good content, like, if you care about what you put in your body. Part of that, I think, is that we deserve, like, good information, and we deserve good information from people who are not liars. And it sounds like from reading this piece that Huberman might be somebody who is so invested in personal myth making and brand building and enrichment that he might be someone who is at risk for their platform causing some harm. And I think we got to look out for that.
Mike
Yeah, totally agree.
Bridget Todd
Well, Mike, you were in the document, my research document, when you saw it, it was five pages long. And then when you clicked in this morning, you were like, oh, it's 11 pages now. I could have kept going. Thank you for diving into all of this with me and listeners. I want to hear your thoughts. Are you a Huberman husband or a someone a follower of Daddy Huberman. That's what they call him on TikTok. I want to know you can hit us up@helloangoday.com.
Mike
Yeah, I'm also so curious. If you listen to our show and you also listen to Huberman's show, we would love to hear your take. I know that there's a lot of good people who get a lot of value out of his content and so would just love to hear your take about this. Please let us know.
Bridget Todd
Agreed. Hit us up.
Mike
Thanks for having me, Bridget.
Bridget Todd
Thanks, Mike. Got a story about an interesting thing in tech or just want to say hi. You can reach us@helloangodi.com you can also find transcripts for today's episode@tangodi.com there are no girls on the Internet was created by me, Bridget Todd. It's a production of iHeartRadio and unbossed creative. Jonathan Strickland is our Executive producer. Tari Harris Larson is our producer and sound Engineer. Michael Amato is our contributing producer. I'm your host, Bridget Dodd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review us on Apple Podcasts. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Bridget Todd
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Podcast: There Are No Girls on the Internet
Host: Bridget Todd
Date: February 6, 2026
This episode delves into the recent controversies surrounding popular wellness and science podcasters, focusing on the fallout at CBS after the Jeffrey Epstein files revealed damning correspondence involving Dr. Peter Attia, and, by association, questioning the integrity of Dr. Andrew Huberman. Host Bridget Todd and producer Mike revisit a prior deep dive into Huberman’s rise as a “wellness guru,” examining how wellness culture—especially that which targets men—intersects with masculinity, ethics, and the credibility of science communicators. Drawing from the bombshell New York Magazine exposé of Huberman’s personal life, the conversation explores why mainstream platforms elevate figures like Huberman and why their inevitable scandals shouldn’t be surprising.
"He’s the prototype of the American beefy male...the dissonance between how he looks and what he knows is compelling...Enchanted, we’re easy to hustle. Essentially, he’s the worst of us."
— Bridget Todd quoting Maria Alex Beach (14:09)
“Anybody who positions themselves...as a person who has the answer...it's absolutely appropriate to scrutinize their words, their message, and the extent to which their personal values live up to what they are publicly espousing.”
— Mike (19:45)
“If you are someone who is showing up in relationships in a certain kind of way...technology is something you have to be extra special careful about. And it sounds like he was not extra special careful about it.”
— Bridget Todd on how Huberman was found out (41:27)
“For a scientist to shill for nutritional supplements that...have a dubious, dubious evidence behind them...it casts a doubt over everything else they say, or at least it should.”
— Mike (57:53)
“Inside the walls of academia, there are guardrails. On a podcast, however, anything goes. And the credibility of academia goes a long way to lend authority to supplement endorsements.”
— Jonathan Jerry, quoted by Bridget (63:40)
“Pseudoscience presents unsubstantiated conclusions, but it can be incredibly hard to distinguish from conclusive evidence. It contains grains of truth, but those grains of truth are exaggerated...Huberman fills his podcast with confident displays of pseudoscience topped with the appeal to authority he garners by regularly repeating his academic credentials to gain your trust.”
— Dr. Andrea Love, quoted by Bridget (67:06)
“If you are a podcaster who supports your work via ads, listeners are not listening to that show for free. They are kind of paying for it via their attention with the ads. And so I really hate that claim that, like, it's a free podcast.”
— Bridget Todd (57:33)
"I think we're kind of in a golden age of the snake oil salesman who can use digital mediums like podcasts or social media to demonstrate that they have it all figured out, that they had the kind of life that is aspirational that you would want to live."
— Bridget Todd (83:11)
The episode urges skepticism toward media-anointed “gurus,” especially those who navigate science, wellness, and masculinity with a blend of charisma, anecdote, and dubious commercial endorsements. It cautions listeners to look past the marketing toward the deeper implications of whose values we adopt and what we risk when trusting individuals who may not live up to their own espoused standards.
Listener Call to Action:
Bridget invites feedback, especially from those who consider themselves fans of Huberman, to share their perspectives (103:23).