← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Andrew Huberman: OnlyFans Is Hijacking Your Brain - Fake Intimacy, Real Consequences PT 2
01:10:35
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- [00:01]
Tom Bilyeu
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- [00:15]
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- [00:45]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm Tom Bilyeu and this is Impact Theory. Welcome back to part two of my conversation with the one and only Andrew Huberman. If you haven't listened to part one yet, hit pause, go back, check it out. You're going to want to hear everything that we've talked about so far. Let's get right into it.
- [01:00]
Andrew Huberman
I'm curious how you, how you see AI playing into. I'm not an expert in AI, but like for somebody, for instance, who I don't know is interested in creating things, I mean, where aside from just searching in AI, you know, what do you see coming next that people like, you know, people like me and everybody out there don't quite see yet in terms of the next iteration of where we're going to be? Like, everybody's using this.
- [01:25]
Tom Bilyeu
It's easy to think like a sci fi writer. And so that's always the best way, I think, to come at it. I like to remind people right before I make crazy predictions that the only thing I know is that nobody sees the future clearly. It will unfold in a way that is surprising, guaranteed. So everything I'm about to say, I say knowing that I'm going to be wrong. So the only question is, will I be directionally correct? AI is the ultimate pattern recognition machine. And it, it may never become human like, but it is going to extend life radically. It going to be better than us at everything. It'll be a better therapist, it'll be a better husband, it will be a better wife. Like, will be so good because remember, go back. My core thesis is that all of life, full stop, is about manipulating my own brain chemistry in alignment with what evolution wants, which is for me to have kids. To have kids. But as you said, it's easy to hijack that. So AI will be so extraordinarily good at recognizing the patterns that we operate under it will know exactly how to make us feel anger, that's what we wan. Clarity, certainty, laughter, sadness, whatever. The patterns will be so easy for it to replicate. Now this is going to be over time obviously. So I think the thing that maybe surprises everybody, the world will bifurcate. And so on the one hand you're going to have people like me, you go full transhuman, you are thrilled to be able to live out a thousand year life inside of virtual worlds where you are fighting dragons and exploring planets and it will legitimately be unbelievably cool. Then on the other hand you have people that will be deeply religious and will see people that basically become a different kind of entity as an affront to God. There will be violence. And how bad that violence gets will largely be determined by how economically disruptive the switch over to what will inevitably be a post capitalist, post scarcity world. Because one of the big things that I think AI is going to do and just as a reminder to everybody, this won't play out like this. This is merely directional that it will almost certainly drive energy costs to zero. And as soon as you drive energy costs to zero and have a first like run of robotics which are already coming off the line. So this will happen. You have free labor infinitely. And so that means that the only thing you're up against is resources. You could theoretically eventually run out. But given our birth rates are to so terrible, I don't think that's going to be the problem. So you can have anything you want, anytime want and it will so profoundly break our meaning and purpose. Circuitry, which I think are essentially all that matter in a human life that that's where I come back round to oh game development is going to become a whole thing because people will need meaning and purpose, but they'll have everything they need. So how do you create something that is sufficiently difficult, very engaging and enjoyable, but also hard. And it makes you scale and push and all of that. And video games quite literally have optimized themselves perfectly to that endeavor. And the technology is now getting so good that you can, you can create worlds that get bigger and bigger and bigger and more nuanced and complex over the years. There are games now that are being developed for five or six years before they launch. And then there, there's one game called no Man's sky that's in its 10th year post launch, just getting better like there. It's crazy. So now we have to be careful so much of again it's never going to play out like the way that I just described it, I'm going to be as surprised as anybody else. But in terms of, like, what we can understand today, what are the trajectories look like? What are the things we have to worry about. You have to worry about meaning and purpose. You really do have to figure out what does the world look like on the other side of capitalism. Capitalism is the only economic system that works. I'll fight anybody on that one and have started. So it's going to be a fascinating future.
- [05:35]
Andrew Huberman
But Rocky Wild, I want to just offer up a potential model mostly for your thoughts, but it's one that I believe very strongly in and there is some evidence to support this is true, which is the timescales over which we are used to getting reward and linking effort with reward. I've said before on this podcast and others, you know, like, beware of any kind of thing that allows you to engage with it seamlessly without effort. Anything that brings you reward or dopamine without effort, that precedes it even a little bit is very dangerous. It's very likely you're being hijacked. Okay.
- [06:15]
Tom Bilyeu
I think there might be more to that because every time I hear you say that, I think of. I don't know if you know what a souls like game is. Uh, they're absurdly difficult. And there was a guy that did a whole video series about how his dad's first video game ever was. I think it was Dark Souls. But anyway, it was a souls like game. And the caption is, my dad's first game that he ever beat was Dark Souls and it changed him. And the video is pretty cool of this guy, like talking about how many lessons about life that it taught him and how to get better at something that you literally have. He didn't even know how to move in three dimensional space in a video game when he started because he's in his like 60s, if I remember right. So anyway, just. So I look at that and I go, I have a feeling, though, people don't mean that. I don't think you mean games.
- [06:59]
Andrew Huberman
No. Well, it could be games. I think that, you know, could it,
- [07:02]
Tom Bilyeu
like, is there something. This whole fish tank thing.
- [07:05]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- [07:06]
Tom Bilyeu
Where it's like your real thing isn't. Was it easy? Your real thing was, did it give you energy that you carry somewhere else?
- [07:12]
Andrew Huberman
Right. And it was. And it's reasonably hard. Not extremely hard, but it's reasonably hard to put together something that's sustainable, that looks really awesome, that like, esthetically is balanced and the chemistry Is right. It's. It's not easy. You can't just, like, throw a bunch of fish and plants and stuff in. And I've helped with it now, but I've. I've done these for years. And so you have to have an understanding of how this stuff ratchets together. I think that from the time we're very little until the time we die, whenever that is, you know, we're developing this. This sense of. Of reward contingencies. Like, you know, when you're little, you know, your parents play peekaboo, and you get a reward every time the hands open up, right? Then it's sort of object permanence. They know these. You know, these are developmental. Milest is the ball. Can you think the ball is behind there? Oh, the ball is here. Over time, you know, what we call education involves longer and longer paths of effort and waiting before you get the reward. The. Either the surprise. It can be positive, neutral, or negative. You know, any number of things in video games, you know, the sense of varying the duration of effort before you get a reward is very important. This is intermittent reinforcement, right? It's how it keeps you engaged. I. You know, I. I'll be 50 next month, so I. I did a PhD, which took a while. Took me four years, the master's before that. And it was hard. Like, it involved a lot of hard work, and I enjoyed the work, and I published some papers, and I'm very proud of those papers, but those papers took a lot of time. So by time, I finished graduate school because my papers took, on average, a couple of years. From the time I started the first experiment until the time the paper was published, I had sort of a. Like a. A clock in my mind that, like, the. The meaningful rewards come about once every two or three years, not more frequently than that. Now, of course, there are other things I enjoy. I'd go snowboarding, do a good run, or, you know, date with my girlfriend, and I enjoy that. So there are other things, too, but in terms of what. Where I was really putting a ton of, like, you know, mission and purpose, effort, and then when was the outcome? You sold a company, made a lot of money. You put a. You put your heart and soul and a ton of effort into that company. Yeah, you see it on. Yeah, absolutely. And. And so that set you up to be able to do hard things over long periods of time. I think that we develop a kind of core understanding, based on our experience and what we engage in, of how much effort we're willing to put in before we get a reward OnlyFans, I think, is a very predictable, get reward quickly type scenario where people in what we call in train, they start, their circuits start to match to that expectation. So that reading one page of a real book feels like a real haul. Reading a whole chapter of a book feels like a real halt. Reading a whole book feels like a massive expenditure. And in the end, in the age of TikTok, where you're used to getting these dopamine rewards very quickly, it's, it's not just the number, but it's the speed at which we sort of expect novelty. And so one thing that I think it's very clear that like people of our generation, since we're similar in age, we're accustomed to putting in effort over long periods of time without the expectation that the reward should have happened yesterday or the day before. Yeah. The longer period of time over which you can extend your, your, your notion of where effort and reward are linked, kind of the, the time bin, I think the more powerful you are as a human being. I mean, Elon, there's a reason why Elon is the richest person in the world. Yes, he's brilliant. You may disagree with his politics, many people do. But let's, let's be honest, the guy's willing to play the long game. I remember because I was going, I was a postdoc at that time when the Tesla shop opened up in Menlo Park, Palo Alto. And then it disappeared. I remember the early failures of like come and go. I remember seeing those cars, then they kind of disappeared and then, and then now you see them everywhere and now they themselves are a controversial thing. But, you know, and then it's the rock. It's. So he's used to doing quote unquote hard things. But the part about hard things that we don't often think about, that we can teach ourselves, is long bouts of effort over long periods of time leading to some sort of reward that then maybe we export to something else, like the fish tanks. Maybe it's a, it's a degree. Like what's the value of a four year degree? In my opinion, yes, you learn some things, but the more important thing is that you expended effort and it took you four years. So you learn. I can work for four years for something that may or may not actually be of value in today's day and age. I still think it's a value. I am a university professor after all.
- [11:20]
Tom Bilyeu
Let's say you're doing okay.
- [11:21]
Andrew Huberman
I'm doing okay. I mean, not everyone Needs a degree. I think that there are, you know, there are people who are brilliant mechanics and engineers and programmers that did not need to do that. So I don't think it's the universal path for everybody. But this. I do think anyone could do this exercise. They could say, how. Like, how long can I wait while expending effort? How many days, how many weeks? Like, how. How durable am I in terms of investing effort for an outcome that may or may not be certain. It may. It may not be zero. I know it won't be zero, but it's probably not going to be a billion dollars, but it could be. So the value that you got from that intense effort was that in your 20s?
- [11:58]
Tom Bilyeu
We sold in my 30s.
- [12:00]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So I think there's something uniquely valuable about one's 20s and 30s because you're so filled with energy, you're sort of at the optimal end of health. Not when you're a kid, especially for guys.
- [12:12]
Tom Bilyeu
You can just feel there's something different about guys in their 20s and 30s. Like, it is a very special window. Gentlemen, if you can hear my voice right now, do not waste that time.
- [12:20]
Andrew Huberman
It's raw energy.
- [12:21]
Tom Bilyeu
It is just. It is a different game. Like, even now, because I've had employees stay with me for long periods of time. Young men that you're watching them change. And there really is something about that whole the 27 club of musicians that die at 27. There's something that happens right around there, 26, 27, 28, where you start looking at yourself going, did I do it or not? And there's a disillusionment of the childishness with which you looked at the world begins to fade away and you really start to question yourself. And if you don't have defenses against the fact that nothing really matters, truly nothing is either good or bad. But thinking makes it so. Uh, you are just trying to yank the levers in your own brain. But I. The language I use to describe what you're talking about is nature does have a backdoor way of making certain things unpleasant. Even though, like masturbation, I've done my fair share, and it's rad in the moment. And then immediately after, it doesn't feel like sex feels different. It feels more profound. I don't know what other word.
- [13:21]
Andrew Huberman
It's generative.
- [13:22]
Tom Bilyeu
It. That's good.
- [13:23]
Andrew Huberman
Really good. Sex is generative. You get energy from it, even if you're relaxed. Well, you've also done something for the relationship.
- [13:28]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, it feels. It feels ebullient. It's. It it's expansive, it's uplifting in a way that masturbation isn't, even though they both end in orgasm. And so I'm like, nature clearly recognizes the difference. Like it, it. I'm hijacking my reward system with masturbation. I'm hijacking it with sex. But in a way where it's like, ah, yes, this is what I wanted you to do. So I'm going to give you that like extra long term, slow release sense of everything is okay. Not even okay. Everything is good. You're moving in the right direction and
- [14:03]
Andrew Huberman
it reinforces pair bonding. Right. I mean, it brings you closer to the relationship.
- [14:06]
Tom Bilyeu
That feels good. That's what I'm saying.
- [14:08]
Andrew Huberman
That's, that's what I mean.
- [14:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, that slow, really? Because pair bonding, nature could have said, I don't give a fuck. And so like you, you get nothing from that. But it doesn't. It's like, this is rad. I want you to do this.
- [14:19]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, You've done something useful, right? You've done something useful as opposed to. There's useful, there's not useful and then there's net negative. And I think what's missed in these activities where people are, where their dopamine systems are hijacked is they don't see that they're, that they're slowly slipping underwater. Now. I'm not, I'm not a, you know, I'm not for, here for total moral judgment. Right? Like, you know, judgment.
- [14:43]
Tom Bilyeu
I, I don't think you're putting that across.
- [14:45]
Andrew Huberman
And I hope not. I hope not.
- [14:46]
Tom Bilyeu
If I can get you to buy into this. All I'm trying to map for people is there are evolutionarily placed algorithms in your brain. If you do things that it wants, you will get this slow release. Feel good. It's what I call fulfillment. If you do things that are fulfilling and ironically or not, hard work is a part of what I consider to be nature's recipe for fulfillment. If you don't work hard, it won't work. You'll never get fulfillment. Nature needed to make sure you were willing to work hard because life was hard for millennia.
- [15:13]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Even the children, not even the children of very wealthy people who don't have to work hard for their wealth. These are not happy people. Thousand percent the ones that learn the family trade and do that. They, they can be happy people. But you know, I've known a fair number of them that, I mean, you can dissolve a human by giving them too many resources without requiring effort.
- [15:30]
Tom Bilyeu
Preach. We're hitting Pause for a moment. But there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere.
- [15:37]
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- [16:08]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
- [16:12]
Andrew Huberman
And there's something in that. I agree. I think we're totally aligned in this, you know, mid to late 20s and 30s, that if there were a biological clock in men, it would be those years not because of lack of reproductive potential, but lack of generative drive potential because there's a feedback loop on it like I'm approaching 50 and I'm not saying this as a boast. I put a lot of work into the working out and the sunlight and the thing and the researching. And I work a ton. Probably not as much as you, Tom, but a ton and always have. And I feel better now than I did in my 30s, probably because I take better care now. Am I more prone to injury? Probably in these kinds of things. But I'm stronger now. My endurance is better. My, my, like my thought, my thinking process is sharper for sure. And so I don't subscribe to this idea that it's a down, you know, downhill slope provided you put the work in early. Now if somebody is in their mid to late 40s and they're hearing this, I still think you can cap, you can catch some of the wave, but I think it's harder. I really do. And I think that you can do it. But it's very important that you understand that you better have something where you are investing over long periods of time. Now people will, with families will immediately say that thing is called kids. Well and then I say, well, yes, applause to you because you are fulfilling your evolutionary nature. So happy with you or request. Evolutionary request to do this. So they're very happy with you. So I'm not saying that this has to come just from profession. This is. But you know, the things are related because families require resources and so on and so forth.
- [17:38]
Tom Bilyeu
So I always tell people, if you're not going to have kids, you better have a damn good reason. And I don't have kids, but I'm hyper Aware that I have to account for that because it's what nature wants me to do. And so if I'm not going to do it, then I better find what the thing is. It's going to give me meaning and purpose and all of that.
- [17:53]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, no, I think we're totally aligned on this. I mean, I think we are. In contrast to the conversation we had a few years ago when we sat down here, I think we are now in a place where everyone is realizing that social media, wonderful. But has these real traps in it. First we heard about the traps for mostly adolescent girls, Jonathan Haidt's work and so forth. Now we're hearing about the plight of boys and men. And the New York Times just ran this thing about what boys and men need as opposed to what's wrong with them and talked a little bit about what's wrong with them. But now they're entering the discussion about what they need. Right. And you know, how are we going to get functioning members of society that are men to catch up? Well, I think that it's some, you know, the process of learning like long term investment. And it's funny because earlier I was asking you like, what are your thoughts on crypto and investing? This is an area I'm really, you know, wise to. It's kind of the same thing, right. You hear this from Warren Buffett, right. You know that you've got to play the long game, like especially, perhaps especially with crypto, right. You know that thinking you can just get in and make, make a few bucks. You could probably do that, you could flip. But it's very hard to predict. It's very volatile.
- [19:00]
Tom Bilyeu
5% of the wallets make 95% of the money. Good luck.
- [19:03]
Andrew Huberman
Is that right?
- [19:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Like if you don't know how to invest, if you are not doing it around the clock, if you do not have a proven track record, then just be in the market for a very long time, like be broad, assume you know, nothing like, and just play a very long and I'm talking like a 25 year game. Don't, don't try to make your money off of some crazy shitcoin like that. This one breaks my heart economically. We have done the world a lot of dirt and we are forcing them to gamble with assets. Long story that my audience will be very familiar with.
- [19:34]
Andrew Huberman
Huh.
- [19:35]
Tom Bilyeu
But yeah, it's play, play the long game of your toast.
- [19:39]
Andrew Huberman
Do you think that the crypto market and world is starting to resemble some of the onlyfans like contour of kind of like the allure like come hither, you know.
- [19:50]
Tom Bilyeu
No, I think what it is is uh, it, it is hijacking the similar like okay, I know how especially the male brain works. You're trying to get access to females, females respond to resources. So hey, you don't understand why the financial system's broken. But you can feel something's wrong. And so now you just want to get rich as fast as you can because everything's out of reach. Come to this thing and it's hijacking the gambling circuits. So I'm sure like so much of them, you've talked about this. I literally learned this from you. But you nature doesn't reinvent the circuitry, it's just recycling it. So I suppose in that way it is similar to onlyfans, but it's what it attracts is gamblers. I learned this the hard way. So crypto is all about gambling and it's an asset class. So if you know how to do it. Well, I think bitcoin is real in terms of it will function more like a normal asset, like either an equity or gold. We'll see how it plays out in the long run. But it works as. You can think of it like gold, you can think of it like an equity. Either way it's going up in value. But don't try to day trade is basically my punchline there. But the, the get rich quick side of crypto is also very real. And whatever gambling speaks to it speaks to that.
- [21:06]
Andrew Huberman
I have a friend, his name is Ryan Suave and he's an expert in the addiction treatment world, his trauma treatment as well. And he's worked with a lot of different types of addicts. And he told me once that the hardest addiction to break is gambling addiction because in his words, the next one really could change at all. But then he told me something, I just want your reflections on it because I can't wrap my mind around this. He said the crazy thing is after gambling addicts have been at it for a long while and they've gone through their cycles of destruction and often replenishment again and then restruction, they start getting, they say they start getting addicted to losing, which I cannot understand except from the perspective of perhaps it's an opportunity to win again.
- [21:50]
Tom Bilyeu
But is it cutting or that's about the only thing?
- [21:52]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, I mean maybe they're self loathing and to start out with. Or maybe there's some sort of weird inversion of the, of the pain pleasure relationship with dopamine. We know that that pain taps into the dopamine pathway.
- [22:02]
Tom Bilyeu
Maybe they're so hard pressing of pain or actual pain.
- [22:07]
Andrew Huberman
Pain, Actual pain. I mean, so maybe it's that their dopamine is so depleted from kind of winning, losing, winning, losing that they, they now like pain is the only thing that will do it. I don't know. But I think, and I believe him, there's no reason for him to lie to me. And I'm not a gambling addict. I would tell you if I was, but there's. And if I was a gambling addict, I'd probably tell you that if I was a gambling addict, I'd tell you if I was. But, but I'm not. But, but I think that, you know, I do think there's something in that statement that if it's even a tiny bit true, might ratchet back to what we were talking about earlier related to the relationship between porn onlyfans, masturbation. This feeling of shame, this feeling of oh, like what a waste of my time, of my money, of energy. I mean, the shame spiral is a real thing in addicts. It's something that repeats itself over and over again. And this is why they always say, you know, addicts are most susceptible to relapse when they're at their peak of feeling great. And whether they're at their bottom of feeling like absolute garbage.
- [23:06]
Tom Bilyeu
That makes sense.
- [23:07]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So, you know, again, these, these circuitries are, they're, they're, as you pointed out, they're wired for us to progress as a species. And knowing that in order for our species to progress, not everyone has to win and a lot of people can lose sometimes. That's all I need to hear to remind myself that I want to be like in the, in the, in the winning lane.
- [23:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Yes, please.
- [23:30]
Andrew Huberman
You know, and what that requires these days more than anything is not participating in a ton of behavior years. It's so much more nowadays about what you choose to opt out of, you know, and so when David Goggins says, you know, nowadays it's, it's so much easier or even easy. Although I think easier is a perhaps more accurate way to put it to be extraordinary. I think it's really mostly about what you don't do, what you're not doing with your time and energy.
- [23:55]
Tom Bilyeu
And so that's part of it. I'll, as an entrepreneur, I'll say to anybody out there that wants to shine in this era, all you have to do is work like you're from the 80s, like period. Like, I was just, there was another Gen Xer, we were like laughing our asses off at, like. I mean, forgive me for anybody that's had to do it, but it's like, when people are like, I need a mental health day, it's like the fudge. Is that. So I'm not saying mental health is not a real thing. It is. I'm saying you need to have a relationship with your own mind where you are in control. And I find people, like, in the modern era, people just do not know how to get in control of their own minds. That is wild to me. So I don't know if it's just coming up. We had. You're staring at a wall for like 80% of your life. And so you've got to find a way internally to get control of that process, to not be bored out of your mind or whatever, or the way that our parents raise us. I don't know, man. But, like, the work ethic really is rare. Like, and it's just looked at differently.
- [24:50]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, there was a time people will be shocked to hear, but where. If you missed your ex, if you pined for your ex, guess what? You couldn't know what they were doing. You couldn't text them. And thank goodness, because guess what you did? You went out and you did other things. You didn't obsess about the relationship that you had. Like, two years ago, you weren't like, in comm. You weren't like, you know, sussing out what they're doing or wondering if you this or that. Like, you just moved forward. You had no choice but to either stay still or move forward. And I think I love it. Work like it's in the 80s. I have a question. You sold your company for a billion dollars?
- [25:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [25:24]
Andrew Huberman
It's a lot of money. There have been a few instances on X and on Reddit where I've been kind of pulled into a conversation around the Somebody will sell their company for a ton of money and they'll come out publicly and say, you know, I feel suicidal. I don't know what's wrong with me. I'm super unhappy. I mean, everything we've set up until this point perfectly explains why that is. They were on a cycle of striving. That's where the dopamine was coming from. Now they've got the reward and, like, video game is over and they don't know what to do. And they aren't quite at the point where. And of course, as dopamine goes up, which inevitably happens on the day they see all that money in their bank account, it goes down in a proportional decrease you know, below baseline takes some time to come back up. So there's just a matter of time. But then, of course, it's a daunting thing. If it took you. How long did it take you to build? Question.
- [26:13]
Tom Bilyeu
If you count the company before it, which allowed us to fund it, 12 years.
- [26:17]
Andrew Huberman
Okay, so let's go for another 12 years. And yet you did that. So I'm interested. Did you have a kind of postpartum, as they call it, kind of depression?
- [26:25]
Tom Bilyeu
Literally? Not even a little bit.
- [26:26]
Andrew Huberman
So did you celebrate your win?
- [26:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Sort of. The team never would have known what day we sold on because it was. I went to work like normal. My. My wife and I got in a fight over it. Oh, really? Because she's like, okay, what do you want to do now? Because it was like, happened early in the morning. And we had the call where it's like 18 bankers. And confirm, confirm, confirm. Because they're literally going to push a button. It's going to send you a lot of commas and zeros. And so they do it. Boom. Money hits. You're sitting there, refresh, refresh, refresh, refresh. On your banking app. It hits. You're like, holy hell. And we actually took a photo of the moment where it, like, hit, and I've got my fist up in the air and I'm like, oh, my God. Like, we're actually rich. This is wild. And she was like, okay, what are we doing now? I'm like, what are you talking about? I'm going to work. And so she was very surprised. And then when I left Quest, like, left, left last day. Last day was a Monday impact area. I started the next day on Tuesday, so I didn't take a day off. And the reason is because I learned the lesson about money back at the company before that. So we'd started a company called Awareness Tech.
- [27:23]
Andrew Huberman
Okay.
- [27:24]
Tom Bilyeu
And I thought that's what was going to make me rich and ended up being totally miserable. Long story. I end up like, I go in and quit. I'm like, I can't do this anymore. This is like a nightmare. And they pull me back and are like, listen, we're unhappy too, but what are we going to need to do to stay together? And so outline what ends up becoming Quest. And so that becomes the thing that keeps us all together was the thing that we would do. And it wasn't about money. So that was me going, well, I'm never going to do anything again for money because I'm worth $2 million at end the. The time. And I'M so profoundly unhappy. If I was worth $20 million, I wouldn't care. If I was worth a billion dollars, I wouldn't care. I don't. I don't want to feel like this. And so I was like, okay, this is why people tell you that money can't buy happiness. And so it was. Thankfully, I learned that in my late 20s and then didn't get wealthy until my late 30s. So I had figured out, oh, this is a game of meaning and purpose. The only thing that matters is meaning and purpose. Heard. Got it. So I'll never make that mistake. So when we sold the company, I was like, the only thing that matters is pursuit. That is my drug of choice. So when I say I'm ambitious, what I mean is I always want to pursue something gigantic. And the getting it, because now I've got it, the getting it is cool, but it's. That's going to wear off and I'm going to get used to it. We're recording this in a nice fancy house, and we have guests that are staying with us. So I'm seeing it now through their eyes again. And I'm like, oh, that's right, I live in some crazy mansion. But you really doesn't matter. Like, you're going to get numb to anything. And so meaning and purpose is the only thing that's going to see you through. Like working your ass off in service of making progress, which actually is the only thing that matters. Attaining it doesn't. But making progress towards a goal that is what I call honorable. So it serves you and other people. And if you're doing that, life's going to be okay. The second you stop doing that, you, nature is going to reach inside your brain and say, this is not good. Taking a short break. But there's more impact theory after. Stay tuned.
- [29:22]
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Tom Bilyeu
if the listing says heated pool, but
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Vrbo Advertiser
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- [30:23]
Tom Bilyeu
Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it.
- [30:27]
Andrew Huberman
Man, I love it. You managed to avoid one of the biggest traps. I mean I, you know, grew up in Silicon Valley and some friends who've done incredibly well financially with companies and they all report the same low on sale or, or a health issue comes along and they realize that they've been just destroying themselves health wise.
- [30:45]
Tom Bilyeu
They haven't watched enough of your content.
- [30:47]
Andrew Huberman
That's right.
- [30:47]
Tom Bilyeu
I'm not kidding. Because for real, for real, the, the gift you are giving to the world is that people can actually come to understand their biology. And so if I can get people to understand. Look, I know this feels dark when you first think about it, but you're an automata, so these are all just processes that are running. But you feel very much like you're in control. Awesome. It's a great feeling. I'm glad I have it. So I'm not going to abuse that. So then I'm like, I am going to be present in this body feeling the way that this body interfaces with the world. So I need to take that seriously. And so if I know that sex is awesome, but momentary relationships are hard. But the greatest thing that life has to offer you requited love. It's probably the right way to think about it that a family, kids like huge emotional incentives. So not don't do that at your peril. Like you have to be very careful with that. I'm always going to want to pursue no matter how much I achieve. And the way I explained that to people is you'll never have a meal so satisfying that you'll never need to eat again. You'll never have sex so good that you'll never want to have sex again. Right. So you're never going to have an accomplishment so big that you don't want to pursue again. So just meaning and purpose is nature's way of continuing to push you forward and make life worth living. If you don't have that, suddenly life stops being worth living. And the question I used to ask myself all the time was how many billionaires have to commit suicide before I accept that money won't be the answer? And so then it's just like, okay, cool. These are all knowable things. I'm just going to act in accordance.
- [32:18]
Andrew Huberman
I mean, it's remarkable that you're able to see information and make sense of it and apply it. I think a lot of people can see information, make sense of it, and they're less effective at applying it.
- [32:29]
Tom Bilyeu
I mean, I have just suffered more, perhaps. Like, I've been so dumb and suffered so much because of my stupidity that I'm literally just trying to be like, okay, look, I do dumb shit all the time. I would just like to not repeat the dumb stuff.
- [32:44]
Andrew Huberman
Doing dumb shit is part of that SRY gene. Too much like hitting yourself with the rock, then I hit the person and then throwing the rock. I mean, I, I definitely. I think that in building a life, as they say, right. I think what you talk about in terms of meaning and purpose, it's something that if somebody doesn't know exactly what it is, it can feel a little bit overwhelming. Like, how do I find my meaning? How do I find my purpose? And I. I really do believe that it starts with the immediately actionable things that you at least know are not net negative. They can be neutral or they can be positive, but at least they're not net negative. I have this diagram, and I'm almost embarrassed to share it, but I, you know, turning 50, I've been working my ass off for a long time and really enjoying it and loving it and. And I share this only because I think it might be useful to people. I. I realize that I get up in the morning, I do the sunlight, do the hydration. I get some exercise. I take care of myself in the ways I describe on the podcast. But I have this little drawing that keeps me in line and keeps me in healthy pursuit. And it's basically a picture I like to draw. I sometimes put my drawings on Instagram, but maybe I'll put this one someday. It's just basically like a. A giant ball of, like, of razor wire in the middle. And then on the other side, that razor wire is like a road. And I'll have like, you know, like, writing book podcasts, like learning, reading papers, meditation, exercise. Although I like to exercise. So, like, all the things that lie on the other side of this, really, it takes effort to get over there. I think some people think I just, like, wake up and I'm like, I used to be like that in. I used to wake up in the middle of the night and just start working them all back asleep in my 20s and 30s. Now it's a bit more of a battle, you know, And I used to get upset with myself. What. What changed? Well, on either side of that razor wire, I have these, like, two slopes. And on one side is. It literally says, like, numbing out. And on the other side, it just says, like, rage, bait, engagement. And so I actually think that represents my merge of kind of creative real world and. And virtual world nowadays, where I wake up into the world and I know that there's just gonna be a bunch of things that are pulling on me that are like a slippery slope I could fall down. And so it's not enough for me to just say, okay, I'm gonna just go on social media for 10 minutes and that's it. It's not that I'll be on there for three hours. I have self control, but I have to remind myself what my neural circuits are confronted with each day. And I'll tell you, there's nothing like the feeling of getting over that razor wire. Sometimes I feel like I'm literally crawling through it and getting to the other side and completing some work. So that even just like 45 minutes of really solid work, that landscape transforms into a completely different picture where it's just a flat landscape and I can go anywhere I want the rest of the day. And I'm not, you know, exaggerating that. The transformation and what I sort of feel capable of is completely different. I only offer that as, you know, just if people are struggling to be like, yeah, I'm hearing all this, but I'm watching it and I'm not doing anything with it. Like, you. You have to kind of scruff yourself and throw yourself through the razor wire. These days, it's getting harder to work like you did in the 80s, because as you said, one of the benefits of the 80s and 90s was that there wasn't a lot of distraction. You know, you could take a bus ride and read a book or learn or journal or, you know, do math problems or do your homework or whatever the hell it was. Right.
- [35:56]
Tom Bilyeu
And if you complain, people were just like, stop complaining. Get to work. Yeah.
- [36:01]
Andrew Huberman
First.
- [36:01]
Tom Bilyeu
And listen, I get it. Like, there is a certain amount of toxicity that I understand.
- [36:05]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- [36:06]
Tom Bilyeu
But it also made people tougher. Yeah, the thing.
- [36:08]
Andrew Huberman
The thing that I grew up skateboarding, and I wasn't great at it. I mean, I got put on a
- [36:12]
Tom Bilyeu
thousand times worse than you, but, okay,
- [36:14]
Andrew Huberman
well, I got put on a team out of sympathy, so that's how bad it was. But I have a lot of friends in that world, and I'll Tell you, you know, there's this story, real world story, that a few years back, you know, a dad push his daughter didn't want to drop in on the ramp. I think it was his daughter, maybe his son, and he pushed her. And I think he actually got charged with it. With it. Like a, like a charge when I was a kid. And this is kind of like when I was a kid, but this is true. When I was a kid. There's a guy, he's my good friend Gary. I've known him since I was 14. The way you dropped in on a vert rant was you put your tail down and it's scary. It looks over.
- [36:42]
Tom Bilyeu
You look like you're going to die.
- [36:43]
Andrew Huberman
You look like you're going to die. And you potentially could slam really hard. I've seen some broken arms on first attempts and second. And basically Gary would say to me, I'm going to push down to the end of the deck, the thing up on top, and I'm going to push back. And by time I make it back, you've either dropped in or I'm going to push you in.
- [36:57]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Guess what?
- [36:58]
Andrew Huberman
I dropped in on my own. Did I slam? Yes, dude. So there was a different mindset. And I think when we were kids, it sucked to hear our trudge for seven miles in the snow. So we're kind of in that a little bit. We're a little bit in that right now, for sure. And I want to acknowledge that we know we're in that. But the thing that you can't get in your teens and 20s and 30s, you have that drive, but the thing you can't get is how valuable it is to capture the best of what's available to you and to discard the worst of what's available to you. And, like, there's this whole notion like, no one's coming to save you. Like, no one's coming to save you. It took me, you know, I had to be in real states of fear, you know, real states of fear to yank myself out of, of. Of mediocrity. And there was a stage in my life where I was really just like, not. I wasn't doing at all, basically dumb stuff. And so no one's coming to save you. But the best part is when you start saving yourself even a little bit, the sense of agency that comes from that is awesome. And for anyone younger hearing this, I'm just going to tell you that someday you'll be on a microphone telling somebody, like, when you're in your 20s and 30s. So I'm here say that on the threshold of my 50th birthday, you're going to be there too. It happened. I remember when we'd turn and be like, why are these guys talking to us about how hard it was and this and that. But I think that's the only real thing that you can't access when you're young. Youth isn't wasted on the young, you know, like it's kind of what you do with it, you know, it's like it's an opportunity. Someone kicks a soccer ball your way, you can use it or not use it, but you. I love the phrase, it's from Sam Sheridan's book A Fighter's Heart, a book I really love about all the different fighting sports. And he says, you know, you can't have your 20th birthday until you're 19. There's certain things you just have to wait for and there's certain things that just require experience. But the other stuff, it's like you just have to like scruff yourself and get your ass in gear. And that razor wire picture I offer up because it doesn't get easier but to do it. But it gets more and more predictable how to do it. And so it's the same effort every day. There are very few days that are just easy breezy. This notion of flow is kind of an illusion in my mind. Flow comes on the other side of the razor wire.
- [39:05]
Tom Bilyeu
I love that. All right, you've given a ton of advice to people at the individual level. Now, given your closeness certainly to Jay Bhattacharya, how would you advise the current administration? Like, how should we be approaching this so that good ideas get to the broader public? And there's really two people I want to talk to you about. J. Bhattacharya at the NIH and then RFK at the hhs. Like what should these guys be doing?
- [39:29]
Andrew Huberman
Yes. You want to just get into some like non controversial territory?
- [39:32]
Tom Bilyeu
Of course. Let's go all the way to vaccines.
- [39:34]
Andrew Huberman
Sure. So before I do this, I'm, I just want to say very clearly, and I'm not saying this to impress, I'm saying this because I want to make sure that what I'm about to say, people understand my framework. I, you know, I am only here because US tax dollars funded the grants that I worked for my PhD, my postdoc and in my laboratory I was an NIH reviewer for many years. So I reviewed grants, decide what get funded, what didn't get funded. I was a, I was a standing Member and I had grants from the NIH for many years, which means millions of taxpayer dollars helped fund my laboratory to do research. I understand the process of what gets funded and what doesn't get funded and this kind of thing. Okay, Jay and I know each other well. I know Robert less well. I think it's absolutely crucial that there be an audit of the nih. And I think that's what would we be looking for. We're looking at what work is meaningful and what work is derivative. You know, I'm going to get some, some hate from my scientist friends for this, but if you're not doing derivative work, you're not worried about it. Derivative work is work that the NIH traditionally has favored funding very what we would call incremental work. And this is a shame. This has to do with the fact that the grant process became so competitive and that they really wanted to see work already completed before they'd say they'd fund it. So there was this game that scientists have been playing for the last 10, 15 years that no one wants to talk about, but I insist on talking about, which is you would complete the work, then you would submit your grant, show that you could do the work, they'd fund that work, and then you would use the money to do the next thing, repeat. The problem with this model is that it forces fields to move very, very slowly. There's also a process in which it feeds this kind of communities working on similar problems so that everyone can understand everyone else's grants very well. And if you come up with something that's really outside the box of very high potential payoff, There was a lot of discussion around supporting innovation and significance and big outcomes, but those weren't the grants typically getting funded. It was very hard to change fields or do something new. So scientific progress, especially in the neurosciences, has been very slow. There's been a lot of technology development. But if you look at the developments in cell biology and cancer biology in the last, you know, 50 years, you can compare that to neuroscience. Neuroscience got a surge, but progress has been slow in terms of treating disease. Certainly we don't have treatments for most of the major neurologic and psychiatric diseases. So first and foremost, I want J and company to encourage high risk, high potential payoff, not risk in terms of public health risk, but high potential payoff work. What that means is some grants are only going to get funded. Go five years and it'll be nothing, and someone will have up with a completely new proposal. So that's.
- [42:22]
Tom Bilyeu
Where are there areas you want to see them focus cancer, Alzheimer's, psychiatric and neurologic illness.
- [42:27]
Andrew Huberman
After all, it's the National Institutes of Health. Now people will say, well, mouse work isn't the same as human work. Mouse work is, I'll go on record saying, very important for establishing basic mechanisms that then are translated to humans. However, there are a lot of studies that are being done in mouse now and in, you know, models like C. Elegans worms and Drosophila flies that are kind of repeating themes that we've known about for a long time.
- [42:53]
Tom Bilyeu
And you think that's pointless?
- [42:54]
Andrew Huberman
I, I think it's a waste of taxpayer dollars. Given there are finite number of dollars. I think there needs to be a very serious audit of what work is really meaningful. And I'm not saying take people's money away completely. I'm saying you tell people, listen, you got one more year or else you got to propose something radically different. Right, because the taxpayers are no longer interested in government funded arts and crafts. Some work, I'll say this, I don't like saying this, but the truth is some work is phenomenal and is really making great strides to improving human health and treating disease. Some of it is government funded arts and crafts. And I think that the scientists out there, they know who they are. Now there is value in basic research. It doesn't all have to be applied research. I mean, crispr, right, came from discoveries that were essentially from microbiology. So you never really know what's going to, you know, where things can lead. But we're now living in the age where you can make much better hypotheses about what could lead to better fields. I think the other thing that's really important is I do believe, and I'm going to catch a lot of flack for this on X Covid and vaccine controversies aside, we need to maintain or increase the federal budget for research. It's not a huge, huge portion of the federal budget. And believe it or not, both sides of Congress agree on that. It's very unlikely that the federal budget for research will be cut. And then people say, well, I don't want to pay for this stuff. That's meaningless. And it's all with big pharma. Listen, it's not all linked into big Pharma. Most scientists are doing really good work. They're trying to get it right. And most who are doing kind of derivative work that's not very, you know, high potential payoff are doing that because it's been the way traditionally that you get your grant funded. So we need an overhaul where really exciting, high potential payoff work is being supported. That's the number one thing. The number two thing is we need to incentivize young scientists to go into the field. We are losing a generation of scientists. This was true before the new administration because doing science is hard. You don't get rich doing it, and there's a lot of uncertainty in it. So we need to make sure that there's enough grant dollars directed towards younger investigators. So I'm talking about 55 and younger.
- [45:06]
Tom Bilyeu
That's young.
- [45:07]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Or even, you know, because you're finishing your PhD. Typically when you're in your early 30s and then you're your postdoc in your 30s and people are starting their labs in their 40s.
- [45:15]
Grainger Hospital Procurement Advertiser
Whoa.
- [45:16]
Andrew Huberman
Oh, man. You're getting your first R01. Your first big grant. My. I got my first R01. Let's see. I want to make sure I get this right. I got my first R1 at 35.
- [45:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Dude. Genius is a young man's game. How are they dealing with that? Like, when you look at physicists, all of their breakthroughs are in their 20s and early 30s.
- [45:30]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. Physics and math tend to be fields where most of the great discoveries happen early in someone's career. Biology tends to build on itself within laboratories. And. And as people go on and their laboratories get bigger and better funded, they are able to acquire better.
- [45:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Did we see that even before the current, like, grant?
- [45:47]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, yeah. That's always. You know, my former postdoc adviser, Ben Barris, he's dead now, but he used to say, like, no one. These are his words. But he used to say, no one does anything interesting after, you know, at five years, after 10 years, they're kind of like their big discoveries are done, and then they tend to do really great labs, tend to do really great work. But if you really look and you go, is this, like, awesome work? I mean, there are. There are examples like Doudna Lab and CRISPR and things like that, but a lot of labs are just kind of like stamp collecting at that point. They get really good at the grants and papers gain.
- [46:16]
Tom Bilyeu
Right.
- [46:17]
Andrew Huberman
And I'm not cynical about science. I love research science. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's the raw materials for the podcast, after all. You know, fish tanks. But yeah, it's not fish tanks and, you know, but it's not crypto, you know, but no, I'm not into crypto a little bit. But here's the thing. If we can fund higher potential payoff work and we can Support the younger researchers. And several of my graduate students and postdocs now run their own lab. So yes, I'm heavily biased here. I'm not saying that the older investigators need to, like, be turned out to pasture. They have a lot of value to bring to teaching. They have a lot of value to bring to grant review, to paper review. They should be the one doing all the like, boring administrative stuff for which there's no. They'll keep their jobs and get salaries and some of them are spectacular. But they can get private funding. They're going to hate me.
- [47:04]
Tom Bilyeu
Handed you like a big stack of these are the grant applications. Are there like keywords you'd be searching for?
- [47:09]
Andrew Huberman
I would read abstracts and I would look at publications.
- [47:12]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, narrow, narrow it down for me. You're like, so obviously we're going to be in neuroscience, but like, what are the big things? You're like, if we solve that.
- [47:21]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- [47:21]
Tom Bilyeu
Is it Alzheimer's?
- [47:23]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So if I saw a grant that said, you know, you know, in the last round of funding or what I'm proposing is to, is to test a completely new molecule in the context of Alzheimer's. This molecule is found in neurons. This molecule accumulates in Alzheimer's brains. And so Alzheimer's, number one, Alzheimer's is one of the major ones. I would say Parkinson's is another.
- [47:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Is that on the rise?
- [47:45]
Andrew Huberman
Parkinson's is, you know, common enough that, you know, loss of dopaminergic neurons is common enough that you'd want, you want to, you want to be able to treat this. Yeah, it's age associated also. So there's severe and less severe forms, I would say, restoring vision to the blind. A field that was my former field. Huge. I mean, more than 80 million people per year get glaucoma, which is the second leading cause of blindness. Cataract, we can now treat. You can slide out the, the, you know, the occluded lens. You put in a new one. That's been done. I mean, and it's. The eye is, you know, it's more than an engineering problem. It's an engineering slash biology problem. Neural link's working on this paralysis as well. There are other people working on this stuff, but I would say Alzheimer's is a huge one. I do think that the emphasis on metabolic health in the brain is a very interesting idea.
- [48:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Now, I've heard you ask questions. I have no idea what your thesis is on this, but ask questions about the relatedness of parental metabolic health to autism. Is that like autism from where I'm sitting is like the rates are skyrocketing. So hard. 3%. 3%.
- [48:47]
Andrew Huberman
3 out of 100 births.
- [48:49]
Tom Bilyeu
God damn the world.
- [48:52]
Andrew Huberman
Expert in this. Sergio Pasca is an MD at Stanford. He studies this. He's working on treatments and cures for autism. 3%. Now, they vary in severity, right? You have what's called profound autism, people that will always require support. You have people that are kind of on different aspects of the spectrum. You have things like Timothy syndrome, which is associated with heart defects as well. You know, when people say, you know, why are we trying to cure autism? I understand what they're saying.
- [49:13]
Tom Bilyeu
I don't.
- [49:14]
Andrew Huberman
That's crazy, you know, but ask parents, would you rather have your unborn baby be, you know, somebody be an autistic child or non autistic child? You're going to get the answer you expect. Also, we rarely discuss the physical health issues that are associated with autism that are like epilepsy, like heart challenges, like gut microbiome challenges that are very severe in many cases. So, but it's 3%. It's 4 to 1, male to female now, which is that SRY gene confers a susceptibility also. Or it could be that females are protected somehow against whatever it is. You know, Chris Palmer, who perhaps, you know, he's a psychiatrist from Harvard Medical School, he's really been pushing this idea that early inflammation of the brain is always inflammation, excessive inflammation brought about by any number of different things, maybe multiple things, might establish a greater susceptibility to autism and explain some of this. So that's why he talks about metabolic health in the parents.
- [50:13]
Tom Bilyeu
And so speaking of rfk, have we completely debunked the idea of vaccines and autism?
- [50:19]
Andrew Huberman
Okay, so Robert Kennedy wants to reinvestigate. Here's the deal, here's what we know in the published literature. Just stick to that because the rest is really just speculation. Right. Andrew Wakefield was this medical doctor in, in the UK who published papers on the. What he said was a link between vaccines and autism, mmr, measles, mumps, rubella vaccine and autism. There are people who still believe there's a link based on those data. Here's what we know for sure. Those papers were retracted and he lost his medical license for fraudulent. For allegations of fraud. Okay, I didn't go into those papers. I don't, you know, but that. So that's where that stands. There's another group, this is a husband, excuse me, this is a father son group who have also been on this kind of vaccine autism train, who I think the last name is, it's pronounced Meyer. I think it's M E, I, J E R, something like that. And they've also been big proponents of this idea that vaccines are associated with, with autism. Here's the problem with their data. The problem is many of their papers have been shown by others to have flaws in methodology and, or that the review process wasn't carried out the way that standard review was carried out. Now, I'm not saying I didn't go and you know, I'm not the one making those claims. Other people are making those claims. So there's very little belief in those papers from the traditional academic and medical community. And yet those are used often to cite, you know, support for the vaccine autism link. My understanding is that RFK placed one or both of those guys on this sort of vaccine review board. So, you know, that's controversial in its own right.
- [52:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, there are many tense about that. Personally, I don't know how much you want to comment about that.
- [52:06]
Andrew Huberman
Sure. I mean, I think that there have to be balancers for any. Anytime someone has an extreme position, you know, you don't want a panel made up of, you know, diametrically opposed positions, you know, with a big valley in the middle. You also don't want to a bunch of people lumped up on one side that all believe the party line or go against the party line. I think panels of reasonable experts that can really debate things and vote is the way to go. But we have to have thresholds for what we consider good data versus bad data. Now in, in the current situation, we say published is published. Some people say, well, that journal's the great journal Nature Science, right. Other people say, well, Nature and science isn't that, you know, people start arguing about this and, and then you're down in the weeds around, you know, science, sociology. My feeling is, look, there are many papers that point to no lack of direct relationship between vaccines and autism, however. And I just can't in good conscience just say that full stop. So I say, however, if those are really strong data, they'll hold up for another investigation. Now, is that what we want to be spending our federal tax dollars on? Apparently so. Right. He's head of hhs. He gets to decide good data should stand the test of time. So I do think if they're, if they're going to go in and test them again, and apparently they are, it should stand up. It should stand up. How those studies are done, who's reviewing the papers and, you know, how they're interpreted is going to be absolutely critical. So I think it should be an independent review board so people that really know how to look at the data and for which they have no bias one way or the other, that they have no skin in the game. We're not talking about, you know, bringing in Peter Hotez, who's like a real vaccine proponent versus, you know, Malone. Right. Because it's just like. That's like. It's like professional wrestling at this point.
- [53:49]
Tom Bilyeu
That is so well said.
- [53:51]
Andrew Huberman
Like, you know, like we got. They're just. That's not. Both those guys could argue me into the ground that they're more qualified. And I know. I have my opinion, but it's just. They're the wrong people for this situation. We need a bunch of really great cancer biologists. We need some people outside the US and we need people that are open to the possibility, because this is what Palmer has raised, that there may be an inflammation susceptibility to that certain vaccines exacerbate, and that there's a genetic predisposition. Excuse me, to autism that sends things down in a certain trajectory. I have a feeling whatever the answer is, it's going to be far more complex than yes, they cause autism or no, they don't. Okay, now, in terms of Robert's general theme of let's get dyes out of the food. Cool. Like, let's get dyes out of the food. Is. Is that the biggest issue that we're facing? No. I think the highly processed foods are not food. I think they have calories, I think they increase dopamine. I think they provide very few nutrients and they provide little satiety. They are basically the equivalent. The nutritional equivalent of OnlyFans minus the masturbation part. Okay, so they're about as good for our species, I bet.
- [54:55]
Tom Bilyeu
Jerking off when I eat Twinkies, please.
- [54:57]
Andrew Huberman
No, no analysis.
- [54:58]
Tom Bilyeu
I gotta get something out of this.
- [54:59]
Andrew Huberman
No, no. So I think that's hilarious. You know, and we also, you know, I've been looking at this historically. Right. I'm not a nutrition scientist, but. But, you know, if you step back and you look at, you know, what's the history of cuisine in the United States? We're not a country famous for our love of nutritious food. What are the American foods? As American as apple pie, cheeseburgers, corn dogs, hot dogs, fried chicken, milkshakes, pizza. Yeah. And then everything else that we like is like the really high calorie fat and carb combinations with sugar, like croissants, lasagna, like, that's our version of French and Italian food, right? And so, so this is not a country that historically has thought much about high nutrient density relative to calories. And I think that's really the key, high nutrient density relative to calories. So you want your proteins, for me, that's, you know, meat, fish, eggs, chicken, et cetera. You want your quality fats, you want your olive oils, your, some saturated fat from butter, if some is probably fine as long as it's limited. You want your clean starches, right? You know, pasta, rice, these things. But if you go to France, you know, they take great pride in the nutritional value and taste of their food and how satiating it is at a given portion. That's not the United States. We were always about volume and value. And what happened is we stopped moving, we started eating more and we stopped moving. If Ozempic has solved any puzzle, it's the following. Why is everybody so fat? Or you weren't even allowed to say that word a few years ago. Why is everybody so fat? Because they're eating more calories than they burn. We like sat around scratching our heads for years going, I wonder why everyone's getting, they were, we were eating more and moving less. And I'm not being disparaging, right? I mean, obesity is a serious health concern. You can now finally talk about this as a health concern. And the ones that are really like, have been injured the most are these poor kids that were just eating what they were given. You know, they're not, they're not trying to damage themselves. So, and then the problem is that, that adipose fat tissue generates its own hormone signals and then it starts diminishing the, the other hormone systems of the body and depleting, you know, intramuscular fat gets stored. And then now you've got a really sick animal human that you wouldn't, you know, you wouldn't do this to your dog. And we're doing this to ourselves. So I think RFK's emphasis on dyes is, is kind of like tip of the iceberg. I think the key is you can't outlaw things in this country very easily, right? Especially not foods, especially on limited budgets. But I think the real emphasis should be on getting people knowledge about and access to really nutritious food, which includes things like steaks and burgers. It's just like, you know, peel away the sugar filled buns and the, and the cheese and get them eating that and vegetables and fruit and I think we're gonna get there, but not after a lot of pain and suffering. So as you can probably tell I'm very passionate about these issues because people say, you know, the federal budget for research is ridiculous. This all just funds big pharma. No, it doesn't like. No, it doesn't like. That's just, that's a lie. Like the number of grants that are funded by NIH funded labs. These people aren't making a lot of money on pharma. And if they do make a discovery like the discovery of growth hormone a few years ago, yeah, the investigator might get some money, the university gets some money and yeah, the, the, the company makes some money. But like I think we all are grateful that growth hormone exists as a, as a, as a thing that, you know, synthetic growth hormone. So it's not this like diabolical structure that, that we imagine. Big pharma has its issues.
- [58:17]
Tom Bilyeu
I was going to say this, this is where.
- [58:19]
Andrew Huberman
But it's not academia that's the problem. That's why I want to be very clear. And now I, of course I'm biased, right. I'm still a tenured professor at Stanford.
- [58:26]
Tom Bilyeu
I think it's worth like putting your foot down on that, especially because you're from the inside. You're somebody that's earned certainly a lot of credibility by years and you know, year five of putting out good information. But I see. So entering the economic realm, I realized very quickly that like in physics, when you offer a new theory, it better describe the world that I see. So in economics, when you describe like, hey, capitalism works, you better explain then why is so broken right now. And if you cannot explain why somebody can't afford a house, why so many people are like, the American dream is dead. If you can't explain why that's happening, don't come to me with like this thing that I'm supposed to believe works wonders, isn't working.
- [59:09]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah, great, great argument. They're great argument. So going back to the earlier part about what I would tell Jay, why is the NIH kind of broken or been broken? Well, we're not funding young investigators. They're not incentivized. It's meaning it's hard to get money to do really new things. It's very derivative. What's the problem? And I'm going to earn a lot of enemies this way. Right. You know, I have tenure, I'm good. Is too many older investigators. They're not retiring. They're not retiring in Japan. They understand this. They do a forced retirement. Too many. I think it's 65.
- [59:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Wow.
- [59:43]
Andrew Huberman
I could be wrong. But, but there's Real value placed on the young investigators there. So in our system, you have people who are, have like 5, 6, 7, 8 grants. That's a huge number of grants. That's 5, 6, 7, 8 Grants that could fund 5, 6, 7, 8 other laboratories that are starting out. They're taking too much of the funding. And these are the same people who are saying, we need more money because the young investigators aren't going to have any money. They're taking too much. So I don't earn any friends in the older group. But look, I also have this independent life now. So like, they like come at me like, I've seen how this process works. They can run off foundation money, they're tenured, they'll still get a salary. You get more time with your kids and grandkids, spend some time mentoring the younger generation of scientists. We need to peel off that top layer. And yes, some of them are doing spectacular work. And guess what? It's time to go. Because there's only a finite amount of money and those people are eventually going to retire and die. I've watched many of them retire and die. They're going to retire and die. And this next generation, there's a huge trough in terms of their funding. We've got people leaving science in the United States. And if you want to look at, from a monetary perspective, the return on investment to great science done in basic laboratories is enormous. It's like a 20 to 1, 20 to 1. You know, it's, it's variable because not every lab is going to make a, you know, a, like a druggable discovery or a divisible discovery. But when you look at it historically, that's a, that's an underestimate. So. And I'm probably even lower than I should be. I'm going to stay conservative with that. So the problem is too many old scientists not doing much but taking too much of the funding and publishing derivative papers. This is the issue. And, you know, you might get the sense that maybe I've been asked about this and maybe I'm like playing a bit of a role. You bet. You bet I am.
- [61:29]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, you bet.
- [61:30]
Andrew Huberman
And I'm not competing for funding anymore. I don't need their money.
- [61:33]
Tom Bilyeu
So I'm very excited for the huberman. I don't give a arc like that. Well, I'm, I feel like we're at the very beginning today.
- [61:40]
Andrew Huberman
Today was the official story we're unveiling. I told Rob, my producer before coming over here yesterday. We were talking. I said, you know, I feel like I'm at the. I might feel I'm at, like, kind of a maturational threshold. And he goes, oh, yeah. I mean, I. I've done enough. I don't. I'm not all wise. But these are. These are systems in areas that I'm very familiar with. And I think that young scientists are also very afraid of older scientists because they're like, oh, all the promotions, all the elected to the National Academy. Look, in a couple of years, the National Academy of Sciences might not even exist.
- [62:11]
Tom Bilyeu
It's wild.
- [62:12]
Andrew Huberman
Trump might eliminate the aaas, the American Academic America Associated for the Advancement of Science. Science magazine may not exist. So this whole kind of old network is. These things have gone on cycles. Ray Dalio talks about financial and cultural and these macro cycles over 500 years, these happen in science, too. And I've studied those. With a fine tooth comb, I've studied those. And what you see is every few years, a field kind of wakes up because guess what? The veil's pulled back. And they're like, okay, where are all the discoveries? What are we doing wrong? They go, well, it's slow, it's hard. And they go, actually, let's look at the structure of what you've been doing. Revision. And that's going to happen in the next few years. And I think that.
- [62:52]
Tom Bilyeu
And you're here for it. You're clapping.
- [62:54]
Andrew Huberman
I'm here for it. Provided. And I do think Jay has been very, very good about lending his ear to people. This isn't. Jay Bachar is not a radical disruptor. He's somebody that is definitely under, you know, competing pressures. And he's doing his best, but he's listening. And my hope is that he'll do what, you know, at least these two things. He. He says he will, and I'm gonna. I mean, you can bet I'm gonna stay in his ear. And there's a cohort of younger investigators that run labs that are like, yeah, like, we really want to go after big problems. We need the money to do it. And so it's like, old guys and gals, time to step aside. And if they say the same thing about me and podcasting, someday, I'll step aside. There's a time to hang up your cleats.
- [63:36]
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, here's where I will take a different stance. So Eric Weinstein was the first person to introduce him to this idea that the old guard needs to step aside. I'll take a hard pass on that. The new kids need to get so hardcore that they cannot be fucking denied, like, plain and simple podcasting became podcasting because it was young guys that were like, fuck these kids. Like, I'm not. Yeah. With tv. Like, I'm just going to go do my own thing.
- [63:58]
Andrew Huberman
It's like indie music in the 90s, a thousand percent.
- [64:00]
Tom Bilyeu
Like. Like, look it. If you can take over the current system, do it. That's awesome. The infrastructure is already there, but if you can't, you don't just hang your cleats up, cry about it. Like, don't, like, look back in history. It's always the young bucks that are like, cool, I'll find a way around this. We need people to your point, like, we've got to get culture to say, dear young, brilliant mind, I want to celebrate the life out of you when you go do a thing and be successful. That's why I love what you've done in terms of becoming a podcaster. Getting literal global notoriety. Obviously it comes with slings and arrows, but it's incredible, the fact that we get to watch you learn this stuff. You make it available to all of us. And now you're getting to that wisdom part of your career where you also have the director of the NIH in your phone. It's like, that's the. That's a really interesting thing. But it came of you coming up through the, like, way youngins did it. You know what I mean? Like, you're inventing a new path, and you're doing something new and different. So may you never step aside, but may you get outperformed. It's like that. I want something to. I want to be able to fight as hard as I can, and I want a young buck to take it from me. But I'm not gonna give it up. I'm gonna hand it over.
- [65:14]
Andrew Huberman
No, no, no.
- [65:14]
Tom Bilyeu
Try to do my till the day I die.
- [65:16]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. And we're taking good care of ourselves, so they're gonna have to come at us.
- [65:19]
Tom Bilyeu
They're gonna have to fight hard.
- [65:20]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- [65:20]
Tom Bilyeu
But it's like, I'm not gonna pull the ladder up, up. That's where I'm like, all right, you're a dick.
- [65:23]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah.
- [65:24]
Tom Bilyeu
Like, if you're pulling the ladder up and you're trying to handicap the next generation in some way. I couldn't respect myself if I was doing that, but I also wouldn't respect myself if I was like, all right, you just take it on. Yeah, get out of here.
- [65:36]
Andrew Huberman
No, I have no plans to hang up my cleats. I think that, you know, there'll be a natural endpoint at some Point by death or something else. Or I'll pivot to something.
- [65:44]
Tom Bilyeu
I'll speak for myself. I will fade into irrelevance. I have no doubt that they'll just. I'll be so disconnected from culture. It'll just be too different. And so the people that understand me, that grew up like me, they're just gonna die. I mean, this. This is the way of things. I don't have any beef with that, but I'm gonna go down swinging.
- [66:00]
Andrew Huberman
Well, I love documentaries, and I love watching documentaries across fields. And, you know, we talked about the 27 effect. You know, people dying at 27. Like, you want a really beautiful window into kind of, like, the spirit of art and how fame can destroy somebody. And, like, you know, watch, you know, Basquiat about Jean Michel Basquiat or the documentary about him. Or I just recently watched the Future Is Unwritten, which is a free documentary about Joe Strummer and the Clash. The Clash only lasted for five years. Wow. They had that. It's wild. It was a short. And then he went into this long kind of creative desert that lasted almost 12 to 15 years, came back at the end and did three albums that were produced by my friend Tim Armstrong with a band that was not punk. It was Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros. Amazing music. And as Tim said, there's a Three masterpieces. At the end of his career, he seemed to, like, pull together all the aspects of himself, like having grown up in Cairo and all these places at the end. And I watched that, and I was like, oh, this is so interesting, because if you watch other music band documentaries, Grateful Dead or whatever, you'll see that they're these. They're these arcs where people have. It's the initial thing. Like, you watch the Defiant Ones about Beats, you know, and that whole thing with. With Dre. And, like, you see, there's a source of essence energy at the beginning when you're just being you. And then that, like, creates this big wave. And then there's inevitably, like, people fall out because of the excesses or because of the public attention. And then people grapple with kind of, like, trying to find their way. And then the ones that break through that with the knowledge of how the system works, and they still have the energy, and they're not succumbing to the excesses. It's like they're the ones that really rise to. To, like, major power, and you can never really predict where they're going to be. Benevolent power, creative power. So that's why Like, Dre is where he's at. You look at his story versus, like, some of the other guys in nwa, and it's like, whoa. Like, these are very divergent paths, right? Dead, jail destroyed into ignominy versus, like, you know where Dre is at. Right. So. But they all started from the same place. And so you start looking at these two very different genres of music, or you look at, like, a scientific career, like, Oliver Sacks turned public health educator, and you start realizing there's always this kind of, like, raw energy, not really thinking about where it's going to go. Breakthrough, downshift. And then most people dissipate at that point. So the ability to just keep pushing through like you did. You sold Quest. What'd you do the next day? You went back to work. I'm so grateful to my PhD advisor because I didn't have that good sense. And, you know, I'll never forget, I think it was my second paper in graduate school. We published it in science. It's like, you know, less than 1% acceptance rate. My second paper, I'm like, publishing Science magazine, and I was so stoked. And my dad, who's a scientist, was like, just enjoy this feeling, but you can expect a dip afterwards. He somehow understood the dopamine trough. And I went to her, I was like, are we going to throw a party? And she's like, I mean, we could get a pizza or something, but, like, you already had the party. And I was like, what do you mean? She's like, the work was the party. And I was like, okay, no party. Went back in, and we ended up publishing, like, eight or ten papers together. Yeah. Over the next. You know, it took us some years, but. And that was so valuable because I thought, you win, you celebrate.
- [69:01]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [69:02]
Andrew Huberman
And she was like, I mean, we can have a pizza, but, like, why not just go back to the process?
- [69:07]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
- [69:07]
Andrew Huberman
So it, like, really speaks. It's a much. You know, it's a micro level. It wasn't the sale of a billion dollar company, but the lesson was the same for me, so. But, yeah, I'm not. I'm. I'm not gonna pull up the ladder either. I want to see more great podcasters. When Chris Williamson hopped on the scene, I was like, this kid's gonna do awesome. It's weird that I call him a kid. He's like, up here, he's not that much younger than me, but he was on Love island, so we get to tease him a little bit. But I was like, this guy's going to be a Major player. I could just see it. It's like, it's just a parent. And now I've been watching Founders podcast with David Senra. He kind of does around founders and that kind of thing. He's. He nerds out and does these solos and I'm like, the passion that he's putting in it, I'm like, this guy's killing it. Yeah.
- [69:49]
Tom Bilyeu
When you see somebody, that's really just
- [69:50]
Andrew Huberman
the energy like that and it feeds us because it reminds us of, like, how it always. And you're like, yes, there's more of us.
- [69:56]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. You know, it's cool. Yeah, brother. I have so many more things that I could ask you, but I will just. Thank you for coming on. This was absolutely incredible. Thank you so much for your time. This is really, really fun.
- [70:08]
Andrew Huberman
I was great fun for me too. And it's always a pleasure to sit down and to see you. And I'm. I'm in such gratitude for you and, and Lisa and. And just what you've been doing and like, your spirit about it. Like, I don't know if things get you down. If they do, it's not apparent. And you've been a real inspiration for me. You were in this game before I was. And so you're like my kind of like the varsity guy when I was coming up as jv, so. No, it's true. And I learned from you all the time on camera, off camera. So I'm in real gratitude to you.
- [70:38]
Tom Bilyeu
I appreciate it. Well, the next thing I want to do, I want to get you to be a full blown capitalist. So if you want to tell people where they can get some of this incredible Yerba mate, everybody.
- [70:50]
Andrew Huberman
Yeah. So I'm half Argentine. My dad's Argentine. I grew up drinking loose leaf mate, which is stuff out of the gourd. And I always wanted a zero sugar cold brew mate. So I developed and I'm a partial owner. Full disclosure, in Matina, Yerba Mate, they're now on Amazon. Soon they'll be in that big store where everybody shops for healthy stuff and other places. And you can order directly from Matina. It's awesome. It has zero sugar, 120 grams of. Excuse me, 120 milligrams of caffeine. It's all organic. It's got organic ginger juice. It tastes awesome. There are a bunch of flavors like peach and mint and raspberry and mango and. And I love this stuff. I. Full disclosure, I'm a serious caffeine drinker. I drink like up to 800 milligrams of caffeine a day. Most people don't require that, but it's a super clean energy. I love it. And if you, if you give it a try and, and you like it, or if you don't, you know, send me some feedback as a DM on Instagram.
- [71:43]
Tom Bilyeu
But listen, man, I love it. Obviously, I'm a big believer in entrepreneurship and people making incredible products that they really believe in. And to everybody out there watching, he showed up with this today just to let me try some. I didn't even know it was his, so I was like, bro, you gotta start, like, putting this stuff on.
- [72:01]
Andrew Huberman
This wasn't the intended promotional thing.
- [72:03]
Tom Bilyeu
No, but I want to get him wearing T shirts. Like, for real, like, when you make something that you believe in, like, stand 10 toes down, let the world know, like, don't be bashful. I know that people are gonna and complain or whatever, but literally the modern world brought to you by entrepreneurs. And so being bashful about the things that you create, bringing something to market is incredibly difficult. And now the market's going to decide whether it's good or not. But getting it to this point is extremely difficult, very rare, and I'm excited to try it, man, so I hope that it smashes for you.
- [72:30]
Andrew Huberman
Thank you. Well, I hope you like it. And yeah, 90% of the adult population of the world consumes caffeine every day. And I will argue that it's the best, most even clear energy. So I. I love it and I'm excited for caffeine. People will try it. So thank you.
- [72:43]
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, for sure.
- [72:44]
Andrew Huberman
Thanks, man.
- [72:44]
Tom Bilyeu
All right, everybody, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.