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what were you just teaching me about mouth breathing and how it changes the shape of the face now so I arrived carrying a copy of the book Jaws a hidden epidemic this is not Jaws the shark uh this book was written by my colleagues at Stamford sandre Khan and Paul Erick and it has an introduction by Jared Diamond who won a Pitzer for gun stms and steel and a forward by the great Robert spolski also a colleague of mine at Stanford so four Heavy Hitters on this book just to credential it first um this book centers around a couple of Core Concepts but the first being that people and in particular children who overuse mouth breathing as opposed to nasal breathing have changes in the structure of the face that well to be quite direct makes them far more unattractive than if they were to mouth breathe it also discusses the chewing of Foods as essential to mouth and face development Sandra KH is an expert in cranial facial function and structure um and the fact that if your parents and you did things right you should be able to place your your entire tongue on the roof of your mouth with your mouth closed now I can’t do that okay so when you with teeth closed tongue in the roof of your mouth I can but I still feel the back of my teeth a bit um so yeah okay um but the so that’s the second point that we want to chew heart chewing Foods is essential to tooth and mouth and face development um these days many children slurp their food many adults slurp their Foods um many adults are eating like babies and of course babies before they develop their mature teeth and even when they before they get all over their teeth in need to obviously breast milk and um you know pudding like Foods okay but so that’s the second point so nasal breathing good mouth breathing bad for cranial facial development chewing hard Foods chewing a lot on both sides of the mouth great for cranial facial development oral development tooth development and tooth Health which by the way are correlated with a number of other things like cardiovascular health and metabolic Health very interesting links there and then the third point is that uh the the book argues that the entire field of orthodontia things like um braces things like headgear things like retainers are the byproduct of poor um breathing and let’s just say uh overc consumption of soft foods in place of hard Foods uh behavior and so there’s this guy who’s from your side of the pond Mew the Mew method um of restoring normal crano facial development the book is choco block full of impressive photos of before and afters impressive because in some cases you’ll see kids that were um mouth breathers or were eating a lot of soft foods and then they recovered their behavior so to speak and became nose breathers of course we have to mouth breathe when we’re exercising really hard or when we’re eating or speaking we’re going to mouth breathe but at rest we should nasal breathe is the argument and that greatly improves cranofacial um Aesthetics and the good news is this stuff is modifiable across the lifespan and um and so the book isn’t arguing for anyone to purchase anything you don’t need a jawser sizer I’m saying that explicitly because they took clips of me talking about this and and and productized it and I had nothing to do with that so hopefully you’ll keep this in the episode and they even admitted they were breaking the law and he said we don’t care we’re going to continue to do it so sales to sales man yeah but now those those you know to to the credit of of um products for um exercising the jaw sure there are muscles of the jaw that caning CH the aesthetic but using food to do that eat tough food is if you don’t have a sufficiently tough diet I guess you could it but it’s explain to me the mechanics of how the difference in whether you breathe through your nose or breathe through your mouth changes the shape of your face and head yeah well and it goes beyond that if you breathe through your mouth as opposed to your nose the first of all you bring in less oxygen than you would so you’re you’re limiting you’re effectively putting yourself into a state of apnea right which is bad during sleep and guess what it’s bad during waking States also you’re getting less oxygen to your brain bad the sinuses you know we hear my sinuses are clogged or my sin the sinuses wish I had brought a skull with with me because one of the most impressive things about a skull human skull being no exception is that the sinuses are literally these little uh tubes or channels through which fluid and air can move and the sinuses even though they are essentially the created by the fissures between different bones so like there’re this two two or three different bones that are interdigitated and create these tunnels they’re actually fairly plastic in the sense that they can be modified in terms of their shape and and so people will say well I have a deviated septum guess what you should try and emphasize breathing through both nostrils as a in order to UND deviate your septum now if someone has a broken nose or something that’s really structurally abnormal they may need corrective surgery but purely through n deliberate nasal breathing so it could be mouth taping at night but also just deliberately nasal breathing during most of your cardiovascular training unless you need to really you know hit the gas in which case mouth breathe is going to help dilate the sinuses and lead to better air flow which makes nasal breathing easier the other thing is that nasal breathing we know um well first of all there’s a nasal microbiome there’s also an oral microbiome but the nasal microbiome is particularly well suited to um scrub or capture and destroy viruses bacteria and even some fungal infections so in other words when you’re breathing in through your mouth you’re more susceptible to infections this is important heading into winter as well um so there are a number of I mean we could talk about this for hours but the point is nasal breathe when you can um kids especially but adults as well chewing foods that require you know eating foods that require some chewing and really working at it and chewing away um they have some impressive images in this uh book of kids that were twins that were raised separately one by a group that eats a lot of um let’s just say tougher foods that require chewing versus one that’s slurping their food and I mean one kid is literally incredibly attractive perfect denature with no orthodonture or D or you know regular dentistry in the other kid is teeth is like SN they have the like the horsey smile even though they’ve got the same genetic predisposition right it’s not a perfect experiment because there are other factors as well and you know none of this is um the For Better or Worse none of this is really amenable to kind of in laboratory type stuff um so as these are naturally occurring experiments as we say um there are also some very impressive images in the book or we could say depressing of kids that were pretty attractive as kids and then there there’s an example of a kid who got a pet hamster he was allergic to the hamster he switch as a consequence he becomes a mouth breather and then that the characteristic um change in the face when one overdoes mouth breathing is that the chin start to move back recesses toward the um toward the neck and that the rest of the face go out but also the eyes become droopy um and but as you say why would the eyes be affected it’s not just musculature what’s happening is there’s um less use of literally the the sinuses in the upper towards the upper mandible and up towards the eyes because if you ever had a sinus in infection it’s painful up here in your forehead and around the eyes so again it’s pretty straightforward no products required chew chew your food well chew on both sides of your mouth um especially if you’re a young person but even if you’re not um be a nasal breather really chew at your food try and this probably also has benefits in terms of limiting um unessential or low low nutrient density calories you know slurping your food all the time I mean I love drink your calories man I love a good Greek yogurt you know but um but drinking an excess of calories is probably not good and and eat like an adult I would say you know one of the things is I I don’t know like to me growing up snack food was something that kids um indulged in you know on once you hit 18 or so you know eat like an adult like I’m still wait I’m still waiting to to learn that lesson you mentioned spolski that I had him on the show recently yeah what do you think most people misunderstand about stress obviously he’s contributed an awful lot to this and you’ve thought about this too yeah what do you think people don’t understand fully about stress the findings that I think are overlooked tremendously are the following experiment um there’s an experiment in animals where a rat is given the opportunity to run on a treadmill and rats and and rodents of all kind love kinds love running on treadmills you know they’re these interesting um we’ll see who catches this fly first yeah I’m ready man the uh I think um you know there’s even a study from hoppy hofstra’s Lab at at Harvard that showed that if you put a Wheels running Wheels in fields that rodents will run there in the middle of the night and run on them that’s how insanely uh obsessed with running they’re just entic they want to go there’s something rewarding about it for them but in any event it lowers their blood pressure it leads to Inc improvements in a number of metrics that you expect and you see the same thing in humans right who run on a treadmill or run Outdoors or Swim cardiovascular exercise okay well um spolski um and I love to talk about a an experiment where they took two different cages with animals one is running voluntarily but then that running wheel is Tethered to a running wheel in another cage that encloses an animal forces it to run every time the other one runs so forced exercise versus voluntary exercise and the takeaway is very straightforward voluntary exercise leads to all sorts of improvements in health metrics resting heart rate blood pressure blood glucose um resting blood glucose Etc waking blood glucose um the animal that’s forced to exercise you see the opposite right so it’s not exercise per se it’s something about being forced to exercise is causes um decrements in a number of Health metrics and you see the same thing in humans so what’s Wild is my colleague Dr Ali Crum Department of psychology at Stanford um has done these beautiful experiments on mindset and belief these are not Placebo effects and what she’s shown in in a just absolutely spectacular way is that if people watch a short video about all the ways in which stress can really diminish your health well then indeed stress diminishes their health whereas if a separate group watches an a factual also five minute also factual tutorial on all the ways that stress can enhance performance by harnessing your ability to focus memory formation Etc all of which is true that’s indeed what you see can I give you my favorite one that I learned about over the last year yes so the Boston Marathon bombing uh 2012 about 10 years ago 2016 maybe anyway at Boston Marathon bombing a study was done comparing people who had been at the actual Marathon while the bomb had gone off and people who had watched 90 minutes or more of news coverage about it and the people who watched 90 minutes or more of news coverage about it showed a greater stress response than the people who’d literally lived through it interesting interesting yeah the the um the the mindset and belief effects are are absolutely extraordinary and and very real right I mean I think you know um recently I’ve been reading and researching a lot about and did a podcast on tenacity and willpower and um there was this idea early on from Bal meister and colleagues that willpower is a limited resource some of ego depletion ego depletion um it was controversial um they showed that you know replenishing glucose in between hard tasks could restore willpower they showed that uh was it juries or judges that were low in blood glucose were more likely to give harsher sentences stuff like this yeah it it sort of wicked out to a number of naturalistic situations and it made good sense and then my colleague Carol DW also in the psychology department at Stanford um most famously known for her work on mind growth mindset did an experiment in which they um essentially asked whether or not tenacity and willpower are limited in terms of being a some sort of resource and also whether or not it was somehow linked to glucose availability fuel uh in the brain and body and found that if people thought or were told that mind that excuse me willpower was a limited resource that’s indeed what they observed experimentally but that if they were taught or were told that will power is unlimited and and divorced from glucose levels well then that’s exactly what you saw you’re say you’re saying that learning about ego depletion and believing that willpower is a limited resource is an information Hazard that is self-fulfilling uh potentially now now now now bow Meister you know showed um himself to be you know pretty determined um when and countered the the uh the dck counter by showing that if indeed if there’s a hard task followed by a hard task then your beliefs about willpower um Can impact your performance on the second task so D the AKA DW is right but that if you have a hard task hard task and then another hard task so back to back to back tasks or more which is a lot of what life is like well then it seems that the W that the willpower is a limited resource and glucose supporting will willpower Theory holds up a bit better what have you come to believe about the difference between willpower and motivation and discipline how how do kind of all of these fit together in your mind yeah so Willow and tenacity um are related to motivation but they’re not quite the same I think we should think of U motivation as a um as the verb state that moves us from um let’s just say apathy to tenacity okay so it’s it’s it’s the verb function that moves us along that Continuum a apathy at one end U tenacity and willpower strong um exertion of willpower at the other end um one of the most interesting structures in the entire nervous system is one that gets very little coverage unfortunately um in fact most neuroscientists aren’t aware of what its function is and it’s called the amcc which is the anterior mid singulate cortex you have one on each side of the brain the name isn’t really important but we want to you know to to the credit of the of the structure we should name it the amcc the amcc receives inputs from a lot of interesting brain areas related to reward related to autonomic function so how alert or sleepy we are to prediction to prediction error it’s a hub for many many inputs and outputs hormone systems Etc beautiful experiments done by my colleague Joe parvy at Stanford have shown that if you stimulate this brain area tiny little brain area in a human they immediately feel as if some challenge is impending and they’re going to meet that challenge it’s a forward Center of mass against challenge response this has been seen in independent subjects they do controls where they then tell them they’re stimulating but they’re not actually stimulating and they’re like I don’t feel anything you can turn on and off tenacity and willpower so there’s literally a hub for this now here’s where it gets really interesting I’m going to list off a bunch of peer-reviewed published results in Rapid sequence and I’m happy to uh point out the the um substantiation for this or the references okay individuals that are dieting or resisting some sort of tempting behavior and are successful in doing that the size and activity in their amcc goes up over time and the structure gets bigger dieters who fail flat or downward trajectory of the size and activation of the amcc this can be taken too far individuals with anorexia nervosa the most deadly of all psychiatric disorders where a dep self-deprivation of food activates excessive reward there’s this kind of loop of reward their AMC’s are significantly greater size than others so there’s you know this can be taken too far superagers which is a bit of a misnomer because these individuals are people who maintain healthy cognitive function similar to people in their 20s and 30s into their 70s 80s and 90s their amcc maintains or increases in size into their later years typical agers the size of we always hear that you lose brain mass across your lifespan well most of it is from the amcc and beautifully and this is two of my favorite results that really bring this around to a protocol or a takeaway if people are given an easy task the amcc isn’t activated if they’re given a hard task in particular a hard task physical or cognitive that they really don’t want to do the amcc levels of activity go through the roof and here’s what’s really cool they gave aging let’s you know people age 60 to 79 the task of adding three hours extra per week of cardiovascular exercise now that’s a lot right three 1 hour they call them aerobic classes but getting their heart rate up to about 65 70% of of Maximum so it’s getting into like Zone 3ish area yeah people can look up zone three but you nailed it zone three the size of their amcc increased across that six-month protocol and offset the normal age related decline in this in this brain area in terms of its size the theory that’s starting to emerge is that the amcc isn’t just about tenacity and willpower to push through hard things that it may actually be related to one’s will to live one’s will to continue living and I think this is these are some of the most important results by the way I didn’t participate in any of the research that I just described I spent a lot of time with that literature but I think it’s so important I mean we hear about the amydala the hippocampus the prefrontal cortex all of very important brain structures but um if nothing else hopefully this conversation put the amcc on the map the one that literally could create your will to live is the one that’s being overlooked a little bit and and it can be and what’s interesting about this structure is that it’s involved in generating tenacity and willpower for all things not just for one situation and what’s really wonderful I think about the the research literature on this is It’s So Clear what we need to do we need to do th let’s say like me you you’re a person who enjoys weightlifting and you love running I love those two activities well guess what those activities even if they’re hard like a hard run that I’m really enjoying or some hard sets in the gym not going to increase the size or activity of the amcc people love to over um romanticize the utility of those final two reps sure okay pushing to failure great you know running hard till you’re lungs burn great but if you enjoy that you’re not increasing your amount of tenacity and willpower at least according to the research data what’s going to do it is doing something what I call Micro sucks or macro sucks you know and so micro sucks could be all the little things that you don’t want during to do during the day macro sucks could be the larger things but of course you don’t want to do things that are going to damage you psychologically or physically of course of course but everyone I believe would benefit from um picking a few micro sucks are some of your micro sucks or macro sucks that you could sprinkle throughout the day okay so on a household maintenance level um you know I I maintain a very clean home I I I’m constantly throwing things away as well but there are a few things like once I exceed a certain number of dishes in the sink it becomes this okay I’ll I’ll load the dishwasher later type thing like a micro suck for me be like especially if something’s been in there for a while and it’s kind of gross and you got to like work through it and of course I try and put each dish away as as I you know dirty them up but um so little things the things like that the I really don’t want to deal with that right now that’s the kind of thing those harder tasks where you have to breach some barrier some resistance to put it into you know Steven pressfield language or um our friend David goggin right you know this idea that one has to callous the mind I mean David said that right he’s probably got an hypertrophied amcc that’s bigger than most people’s probably and and the the beauty of having a a an amcc that’s highly you know available for Activation is that you know through the micro and the macro sucks of the day you you have this thing it’s like an engine that you can devote to other things so then you can devote the amcc to other endeavors I have this thing I called email anxiety and it’s when my unread inbox reaches three figures or more and that’s when it just it kind of follows me around like a poltergeist throughout the day and that that AB absolutely for me that’s probably a macro suck you know to get through that it’s probably 3 to 4 hours a lot of it scheduling when’s this guest coming on I need to speak to this partner we go blah blah blah um so yeah I feel that um what else subjective right I mean what’s a what sucks is subc someone else might emails yeah someone might and and I think that um you know you’ve talked a lot on your show with various guests about you know when we’re in too much comfort uh are we’re not meeting our goals I love deadlines for that reason um I I love deadlines I love pressure I think I think Parkinson’s LW is as close to a thermodynamic of productivity as we can get do you know what I mean like when you have a deadline you will meet it right if you do not have a deadline you will Manana Manana until forever that’s right and some people I think um preload the deadline by procrastinating and then that’s what you know gets their activation energy to a level where they can they can engage so I’ve started thinking about this a lot lately you know I love running but it’s interesting I I like to finish it my driveway and I live on a hill and um actually this morning I was out for a run and the gate at the end of the Colac is my sort of designated stop point so it actually sucked to do the last you know 20 meters um this morning so there I probably got a little bit of amcc activation because everything was the number of negotiations I went through when I turned up my street at the end of this run whether or not I was going to run this extra 20 merss was ridiculous I mean the human brain know struggling to not do this extra 20 merss it was so silly so it’s got to it’s got to hurt a little bit again you don’t want to damage yourself but I think in the context of um for instance cognitive learning getting to the point where you finish something and then forcing yourself to do one little extra bit there at the end so you know I I I’m not looking for any credit for it but I I want to be very clear that the scientific literature doesn’t call these things micr sucks I call them micros sucks um and I S put that out there just to make it um clear as to what we’re refering do you know Nick bear I don’t in Austin he’s a athlete and yeah yeah like a hybrid athl a larger guy but he runs really fast does bodybuilding shows does powerlifting also runs to be clear I know that large guys run fast but um typically they don’t run uh fast for 20 miles correct and he does that’s accurate um he his little uh catchphrase is go one more and it’s interesting what you’re saying here is it’s not just about the completion of the thing that you’re doing because a lot of the time the thing that you choose to do even the thing that’s difficult is done under your own Val mhm don’t get me wrong if you do a difficult crossfit workout Fran whatever 2159 of thrusters and pull-ups it is aw it’s hell right there’s literally a name for what your throat feels like once you finish called Fran cof that people get from having taken their heart rate as High spasing um that taste of metal in the back of your throat but what what people are doing that although they’re doing something that’s difficult it’s like volitionally difficult and it’s within their domain of enjoyment and what you’re saying here is that what we’re looking to just push ourselves a little bit past that it’s like an unnecessary amount of Challenge and I think that go one more makes quite a nice uh reminder for us with the micro sucker the macro suck let’s push ourselves just a little bit beyond where we would have got our sense of satisfaction because presumably you get the dopamine I’ve completed the task [ __ ] yeah and then it’s like and then I do just that tiny little bit more to to bring in other news this episode is brought to you by Mar health I wanted to get my blood work done here in America Amica I’d been told by people like Dr hubman that it’s important for me to do to work out what’s going on inside of my body but I didn’t know where to go after a ton of research I found out that Mar health is the best and most comprehensive when I started working with them my testosterone was $495 which is low normal not where I wanted it to be now 6 months later it is6 and I’m not on trt that is what happens when you work with a proper comprehensive blood panel company who genuinely knows what they’re doing with Mar Health it’s like having someone in your corner that is a properly trained clinician who knows EX L what’s happening inside of your body and can give you personalized diet supplementation training and pharmaceutical recommendations plus organize it all it is a One-Stop shop for your health you can get the exact same medical panel and oversight that I got by going to the link in the description below or heading to Marik health.com slod wisdom and using the code modern wisdom a checkout for 10% off that’s MK health.com slod wisdom and modern wisdom a checkout one person that I think’s been really interesting from this side you’re good friends with Tom seura yeah or we’re related we’re cousins you’re kidding me no no no we’re cousins I can see it now uh his commitment to Fitness has been pretty fascinating for me to see and he’s kind of treating his body like an athlete to facilitate his chosen pursuit of Comedy I think even Bert is trying to sort his sort of health and fitness out one step at a time too Bert’s the control experiment like there’s if if the experiment is about willpower tenacity and discipline Tom is the is the is the is the active condition and Bert is the control but I I’m seeing more and more people now especially performers that aren’t using that aren’t within the realm of physical fitness really starting to understand if I want to perform outside of this I need to think like an athlete I need to be looking at my hydration I mean Tom had his trainer travel with him on the road for months yeah yeah Tom’s really serious about his craft as is Bert they just have different approaches and when it comes to Fitness I by the way I noce Bert is training he’s working out I’ve been trying to get Bert to quit drinking alcohol for a while um not because I’m the um Arbiter of of of who should do what I ne I never tell people what to do by the way provide information people can do what they want I’m a Live and Let Live I want to be very clear about that um but it’s out of uh care and affection for for Bert that um you know excessive alcohol consumption over long periods of time bad I mean we can keep that one pretty brief so but bird is working out but Tom I know um because we talk and I spent some time with him that uh he trains he trains hard and he sees it as integral with his with his writing with his ability to show up for his family and business Etc I mean you I think we’re finally approaching a time in human history where uh we accept at the level of you know the scientific Community all the way through to Wellness and just generally that the brain and body are are intimately linked at the level of what you you know if you want to improve your body um do something for your mind if you want to improve Pro your mind do something for your body and and it’s so clear now what we all need to do I mean we we can get into the details but at a macro level it’s clear that we should all be getting that 150 to 200 minutes of zone two per week or walking a lot if you live in a big city you’re probably getting that but then also getting your heart rate up to you know max heart rate once a week doing some Sprint type stuff on in whatever format is safe for your body some people it’s swimming some people it’s rowing some people it’s running for me it’s running but you know not everyone enjoys running or can do it and then everyone should be doing at least sets of resistance training per muscle group per week minimum hard sets to failure okay maybe maybe not close to failure yeah probably and it’s especially the groups that have been um let’s just say averse to weight training right typically women El older folks although now more women weight trained because they understand that in the absence of a lot of injected or prescription anabolic hormones they’re not going to get um enormous that’s the funniest thing for me that’s Fally died I think right that that concept that you know if one lifts weights that they’re going to be get become bulky do you realize to all of the women who are out there that are concerned about lifting weights because they’re going to get too bulky do you know how hard I’ve worked to try and desperately become bulky for 15 years like I’ve worked really really difficult hoping that one day I’ll become bulky and there is I think it’s dissipating a lot now but there was for a long time this fear that I would do a couple of bicep curs and you’re going to look like the Incredible Hulk it’s like right me and my friends have really really prayed for that to happen forever uh you do not need to be concerned it’s not going to creep up on you and one day you’re gonna wake up and be this sort of vascular Beast right um a couple things about that I mean from a longevity standpoint we know that maintaining healthy nerve to muscle function neuromuscular Junctions is one of the things that resistance exercise does and it’s highly correlated with cognitive function into older age um and for those people I guess going back to our earlier conversation we’ll probably do this a few times in the course of of of this episode but um the thing you want to do the least that’s actually the thing that where you stand to build up your amcc the most so for me that would be language learning or learning of musical instruments two two things that I love music and um but I I just it’s just so hard for me so it it sits there on the Shelf as a possible way to activate the amcc but in terms of actual uh resistance training resistance training has an interesting property that I haven’t heard discussed before um that pertains to men and women who do it um which is unlike cardiovascular training during a resistance training bout because of the blood flow to the muscle that so-called pump you get a little window into what the potential progress would look like that pump dissipates post-workout and then if if you allow sufficient rest and nutrition Etc you’ll get a hypertrophy response but it’s so unlike other forms of exercise like if I go to a yoga class and I stretch or I’m doing some movement I get to that limit where I’m quaking and I fall over it’s very different than getting a picture of just how flexible I will be the next time and then losing that until I adapt with running your lungs sometimes your throat burns as you pointed out and that’s showing you your limit and of course then there’s an adaptation response that then allows you to perform at that level without the burning in the next time right if you allow sufficient recovery but with weight training it’s kind of interesting the whole pump thing was never something that I really drew me to weight training very much but it’s interesting because you get a glimpse into what the the progress might look like and so for I would say for anyone who’s wored about getting too big unless your pump is bigger than you want to be you’re not going to get that right and so you actually get a window into um how much potential size increase you’re going to create but it’s so different than other forms of exercise in that way it’s like what other thing in life like if you took a language class and you’re like oh I’m going to learn Japanese and you go and during the class you actually become fluent for a moment then it’s taken away and then you adapt and become fluent so it’s it’s a very special form of exercise that that offers some unique um gifts to us as incentives for going back but look as I say this I realize some people hate resistance training they love running some people hate running um they love resistance training some people I realize hate exercise yeah but if you hate exercise you should do it anyway amcc and you’re getting the amcc so going back to what you think might be happening to someone like Tom who is a like a cognitive athlete right but largely the Physical Realm comedians apart from I guess until Joe which is part of the beginning of like the comedian bro bro LIF Revolution before him it wasn’t exactly like I wasn’t looking to comedians as being the Vanguard of health and fitness and stuff like I mean look at balushi right I mean he was the he was the epitome of lack of health and sadly died right what talk to me about what would be happening to the brain of somebody like Tom who pivots from being maybe 40 pounds overweight I don’t know how big he got it is at his biggest but lost a good bit of weight and it wasn’t just losing weight it was then gaining muscle so Dr Gabrielle lion world like muscle cented medicine he’s going to benefit from that the insulin sensitivity there’ll be like some physiological changes but talk to me for the people who are cognitive athletes what’s going to happen in someone like Tom’s mind when he changes his body yeah so improve blood flow to the brain I mean the brain is most metabolically demanding organ in the entire body it consumes a ton of glucose if you eat carbohydrates yes it can run on ketones but blood flow through arteries veins and capillaries to the neurons of the brain is is it’s Inseparable from COG function so when you improve blood flow to the brain you improve cognitive function period when you restrict blood flow to the brain even at a at a micro level you impair cognitive function uh in addition to that um we know that several forms of age- related cognitive decline and dementia are considered nowadays some people will even call it type 3 diabetes although that’s a controversial term diabetes of the brain this is why a number of people who have Alzheimer’s go on ketogenic diets and get some degree of relief it’s not that it by the way it’s not a cure for Alzheimer’s but some people do better when they switch the major fuel source for the brain but in the case of Tom as an example but someone who gets into exercising regularly both resistance training and cardiovascular training you’re getting improved blood flow you’re getting far less inflammation of the brain inflammation is cognitive depleting uh reducing inflammation cognitive enhancing we always that’s absolutely true across the board right in animal studies and humans in addition to that there are a lot of bloodborne factors two of which I’ll just highlight now just for sake of time only too first of all when we do cardio that it positively impact brain health and memory in particular so when we do loadbearing cardiovascular exercise so running uh as opposed to swimming um anything where where the skeletal system is is under some load there’s a hormone that’s literally secreted from bone I know we don’t normally think of Bones as endocrine organs called osteocalcin osteocalcin is released from the bone under these loadbearing conditions it can cross the bloodb brain barrier and we know that it plays an active role in promoting not just new cell production but because that’s a more minor component of neuroplasticity but um enhancement of nerve health and function in the hippocampus which is an area that’s instrumental for the formation of new memories so there’s something about movement of the body that signals to the brain ah we’re you know we’re moving you you actually need to maintain or perhaps even enhance your ability to remember things and this probably is an evolutionary conserved circuit that exists we know it exists in mice as well so that’s one one example the other is that my colleague at Stan Stanford Tony Weiss Corey um is best known for these um young blood experiments where they’ll take the blood or plasma from a young rodent and put it into an aged or demented rodent and see improvements in cognitive function and outside the United States there are some clinics by the way I’m not recommending people do this that have shown improvements in cognitive function or even offsetting of of Alzheimer’s and natur related cognitive decline this has led to the idea of like vampires and baby blood and this Drome yeah Dr it’s which is all crazy in conspiracy I’m go on record saying that but there’s a recent paper that also from Tony’s lab showing that if in animals that exercise regularly if you take their blood or plasma and you supply that blood or plasma to aged or cognitively deficient animals they their cognition or their cognitive ability improve so there’s something about blood of the exercised body that enriches the brain it could be many different growth factors it could be bdnf brain derive neutrophic Factor it could be things like igf-1 insulin light growth factor it’s probably going to be a cocktail of different things um as well as osteocalcin and so what we want to think about is that when we exercise and that’s a broad statement exercise or word rather cardiovascular resistance training it creates a a cocktail that then crosses into the bloodb brain barrier that then creates a millu of General growth health or at least maintenance of of cognitive tissue that’s there so Tom’s incredibly sharp and of course comedy requires not just memory but also writing of new jokes right he’s he’s got to do Netflix specials for a long time and I actually went and saw him in Aspen a small venue I flew out there to see him because I wanted to see him in a small venue because in small venues is where Comics often work out their new material and I mean just you know to me it was just astonishing like to see the number of different thought threads and thing that makes Tom’s comedy so wonderful and other people like Richard prior did this exceptionally well too is that he can switch personas very fast so he’s doing his voice then he switches to his son’s voice then switches back and the speed and precision with which he does that very agile makes it seem we forget that they’re very agile and then we we’ve he creates a a panel of characters and then wipes that board away right he’s the only guy up there wipes that board away and then creates a panel of new characters and so I mean that requires a lot of De like cognitive dexterity so exercise is absolutely one of the best ways to improve brain function over time and in addition to that you know there’s been so much interest in you know should we do crossword puzzles should we you know why is it that some people maintain cognitive function I think what’s very clear to me based on all that literature is that it’s not one specific thing crossword puzzles or social engagement or exercise it’s all of those things but let’s not forget the superagers the people who are constantly trying things that are difficult that are pressuring themselves a bit to do things that are difficult those people are offsetting as far as we know all of the major shrinkage of these brain structures that normally would shrink as people age so we have a lot of control but it does require effort and I’ll tell you there’s never going to be a pillar injection it whether or not it’s OIC or something like it but for the brain there’s just no there’s no way there’s no way that you’re ever going to recapitulate learning and effort um and yes it requires time but it’s it’s so clear I mean I don’t know how many more papers in preclinical models and in humans one needs to see before they finally just you know bite the bullet and go and lift weights lift weights and run or and do cardiovascular training it can’t be one or the other you know the the The Stereotype of like the the big let’s just say big guy who’s dumb you know I I don’t think it’s entirely um I mean you meet some big big folks that are smart right but there is something in the kind of broad correlations of people who you know R people who tend to only do cardiovascular training you know maybe it’s it’s a selection bias like they the people who are already Avid readers or more kind of intellectual leanings maybe get more involved in tennis swimming running type Sports rowing because of the schools they went to or whatever but people who just lift weights it does seem as if over time I don’t know maybe dererk would tell us their neck is getting too big they have sleep apnea it it they they don’t seem as sharp and they’re often mouth breathers look at the really big guys in the gym they’re often not strong not just between sets not just after hard sets they’re I think they’re also they’re asfixia themselves in sleep we know this yeah um and then you look at Runners and the people that have the kind of like the really spelt and and and they um and sure they might maintain cognitive function but their bodies are very vulnerable to injury and they always seem to be complaining about what hurts you know there like my friends who do a lot of extended training unless it’s David goggin who doesn’t seem have the circuit for complaining um at least certainly not online um yeah they always seem to be complaining about about injuries so I think a combination of resistance training cardiovascular training is let’s just face it like you can’t do one and not the other if you want to be healthy all around healthy of heart healthy of body healthy of Mind cognition um improved or or at least maintained as we age you got to do both we’ll get back to talking to Andre in one minute but first I need to tell you about element element contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio of sodium potassium and magnesium that will help to regulate your appetite curb cravings and optimize your brain 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think your episode that you released last year yeah back end of last summer yeah I think that really opened a lot of people’s eyes to some of the risks of alcohol I’ve been kind of flying the flag of it as a a tool for productivity for quite a while to avoid alcohol yeah that I think when you entirely or or do do you drink at all uh I’ve brought it back into my life now but I did six months sober three times and then a thousand days without alcohol too um but yeah I’m seeing right now a huge push back against un seen unintentional drinking and I think that yeah your episode last year opened a lot of people’s eyes to it thanks I mean again I I don’t tell people what to do I give them the facts so they can make the best decisions for them I mean it’s very clear that unless you’re an alcoholic and provided you’re an adult that you know two drinks per week maximum um is about the upper threshold Beyond which you’re going to start getting some health called that’s called a warm-up to a warm-up in England yeah so I you know I’ve never been a big drinker I don’t drink um I I’m lucky that it’s not something that’s that’s a strong draw for me I you know I have friends that are recovered alcoholics um and you know their lives are so much better as a function of being sober but for non-alcoholics I mean I think everyone should just know the uh the health risks especially women where the risks for breast cancer and other types of cancers are are elevated so very much and what was interesting uh to me about the response to that episode is that I think many people took it my the impression I got was that many people took it as permission to finally stop drinking or drink less because they didn’t enjoy drinking and as you so you know beautifully put out on social media you know drinking is one of the few activities that if you don’t partake people assume or accuse you of having a problem and it’s just wild I mean like why would that be and I think that I think it also make once actually I was out to dinner with a colleague years ago and I declined drinking that even I was just talking to the the visiting speaker and um she said God that’s so boring and I well first of all I don’t have a problem saying what’s on my mind without alcohol right I don’t have I don’t have a excessive gabic inhibition um so I’ll say what I want to say um you know as uh as best I can but you know I think drinkers don’t like people who don’t drink because it takes the fun out of it for them because there is this idea that’s you know prolific on college campuses like if everyone’s drunk that somehow like the entire like Vibe of the party is going to take on a new new flavor and frankly I remember I went to a college UC Santa Barbara where at the time people drank a ton a ton discovered alcoholics you right um and I used to go to parties sometimes I look around I thinking like everyone here is just blasted like if anything happened were you drinking did you drink in college yeah I drank in college but not that often I I had a habit and I don’t recommend this I had a habit of going out about once a month and I would tie on you know absolutely infrequent but binge yeah I never you know I my tolerance to alcohol was always such that I would get drunk quickly and then sober up really fast so I was drinking late into the night um but then I’d sober up really fast now of course we know the sleep you get after even one drink is vastly diminished every single person that’s got a aura or a whoop strap or something is feeling you right now um and I think that alcohol to me um never felt good I never liked it and it was a recipe for you know there was a lot of fights there was a lot of you know there were a lot of bad stuff happens when people are drinking too much drunk driving to say nothing of poor decision making I mean I to me it just feels like there’s so there are so many better ways to have a good time that that that alcohol isn’t necessary but I do understand that it’s a big part of many cultures and I do understand that for many people it’s so part and parcel with um relaxing and with festivities and with with feeling comfortable and with drawing a boundary between the normal day and the rest of the day that’s interesting there’s a ritualistic aspect to it yeah there’s a sort of it divides the day in an interesting way so I’m not judgmental of it I but um for me I mean I’ll go to a party where people are drinking and just hang out I’m perfectly good dude I’ve stood on the door of a thousand club nights in my career right as a club promoter and I can promise you for the people that are thinking I like the sound of this justification this excuse that I don’t need to drink anymore Dr hubman has said said that you know maybe it’s not for you maybe it’s not as enjoyable nothing good happens in nightclubs after 1: in the morning I am patient zero I have the I Am the Doctor of late night parties okay like that’s one of my expertise nothing good happens in the nightclub it’s this sort of messy sloppy fights and kissing people you shouldn’t and and and stumbling all over the place and stuff if you go out and you don’t drink and you go home at 1: in the morning I think you probably get to capture about 80% of the enjoyment of the event that you would have done had you have drank pre-drinks gone out done the whole thing and I got a bit of push I got quite a bit of push back from a a sobriety Community a few years ago I did this thousand days sober as a club promoter which was I guess like a kind of a big deal in some regards for like pushing the sobriety Community forward but I was never doing it because I had a problem I was doing it because it gave me more consist consistency and more time and more money to spend on things that I cared about so it was a a productivity tool like like the pomodora technique right or going to bed on time or something and um they had a little bit of a problem they had a big problem with the fact that I said there is something to the enjoyment of drinking on a night out I think anybody that says alcohol has no role in improving the quality of a night out ever just hasn’t been on enough good nights out right there there are ways that it can improve kind of loosens people up it can reduce their inhibitions if you want to go and dance you know you’re dancing at a rave or or at a festival which I think there’s one going on quite close to here um if you’re there it’s really great but if alcohol wasn’t so widely distributed I think people would ask a lot more questions it’s like you can’t see the wood for the trees right you you don’t question it it’s such a it’s baked into the the fabric of of just human life every single time that I take a like a macro do but low of psilocybin one where I can still function what is what is um 75 75 to one gr of so that’s about it’s a little less than half of the macro therapeutic dose for for intractable depression which is something like 2.2 grams or so so you can still hold a conversation depending on what strain you’ve got but every single time that I do it without fail a thought comes into my mind which is why does anyone drink alcohol why does anybody do it because I’ll go to bed my HRV my recover is fine the next day maybe I’m a little bit tired like I’ve had a lot of like activation I’ve been super energetic very little hangover on the evening I don’t do stupid things it makes me want to say nice things to all of my friends my thoughts are sharper than they were before sometimes they’re silly but they’re sharper and then you compare it with alcohol and it’s this kind of sloppy muddy very unile it’s it’s just I I I totally get what you mean when you’ve taken a little bit of time away from it and you look at it in the harsh light of day the effect that alcohol gives you just aren’t that enjoyable and it’s been folded into people’s lives through tradition and through just anchoring bias and continuation yeah and marketing you know the idea that like someone can quote unquote hold their liquor is such like a it’s been um made synonymous with you know masculine ideals it’s like I mean it’s it’s kind of crazy because we know it also it crushes testosterone levels what’s interesting is that um you know I I forget who said this but you know there’s a very different picture of a young drunk versus an old drunk you know someone who’s been just drinking for too many years it’s not a pretty picture SS they become infantile they become really infantile and um you know again I’m I’m not the anti-alcohol Crusader we did I did that episode not expecting much of a response actually um that shows just how out of uh out of touch sometimes I can be I think just to reiterate it man I think it gave people the excuse MH what you did is you gave people the justification you legitimized them it’s like the best bucks tell you something that you already know it was like they everyone always lots of people always had an idea I probably shouldn’t be drinking maybe I don’t enjoy it that much maybe these aren’t my friends they’re just my drinking Partners maybe I don’t like the way that I feel the next day maybe my life could be better if I stopped drinking there’s the justification well I’m happy to hear that for those folks you know now that the information is out there I’ve um I was accused several times uh on Twitter SLX of um taking all the fun out of parties in the at least in the Bay Area but I’ll tell you I grew up in the Bay Area the good parties ended a long time ago but they still exist you know I mean I think there you know and when I say other ways to have fun I don’t mean like oh everyone should sit around and do math or read Neuroscience although for me that’s fun um you know I think I think in a broader sense I think there’s a shift nowadays that people really think about you know how to engage socially in ways that are interesting I mean perhaps it’s a again a sampling bias because of the topics that I cover and who talks to me but like in the Bay Area there are these Russian Bas in New York there’re spy 88 by the way they don’t pay me to say this but I like to go this uh Russian B down in Wall Street you go there and you know got hot saunas and cold plunge and people are you know young people are there enjoying themselves and they actually serve alcohol so they’ll have sometimes they’ll do like little gimlets of of vodka or something there and so you know people sometimes that’s part of the tradition the most Russian thing that I can think of shot of vodka whilst hot right so that and you know and they’ve got theories as to how that can help and listen I think some of those Traditions can really be wonderful but you know people are starting to combine socializing with health promoting protocols and you know going out and eating good food together like eating really wonderful food um with the social component the you know I I’ll go into the grave talking about getting morning sunlight something that maybe we should talk a little bit more about and as people like roll their eyes I’ll just say there’s this incredible study now just out in nature um mental health published about 80 that has 85,000 85,000 subjects showing that the ratio of getting a lot of sunlight during the day to getting minimal artificial light exposure at night it really sets the tone of your overall system and is and is associated with brain and body that is and is associated with better mental health outcomes across the board and the inverse right if you’re getting too much artificial light at night or not enough sunlight or both is associated with everything bad Elevate depression anxiety Etc now I do believe people should get out and have a good time don’t avoid the bright lights of a city or a club have a great time like dancing socializing those are great reasons to stay up too late and get minimal sleep or sleep in the next day great reasons so every once in a while sure 20% of your life you’re going to do that and probably some percentage of time is also going to be raising kids so you’re up because you have to to keep keep them alive which is important to our species so thank you but I think people you know forget that yes you can go outside and get morning sunlight and which I highly recommend people do that as as most people know but I mean so many benefits on mood and mental health and improved sleep that you just and it’s completely zero cost you know but I often get accused of okay well but what if you have kids like how do you do this well you take the kids with you because guess what they need it too you you take them outside you eat breakfast outside or at least facing a window indoors it’s not going to be as good as having the window open or being outdoors but even if the sun’s on the other side of your apartment building I mean these things have an outsize positive effect on health and I’ll wager both upper limbs anyway uh that many many many of the mental health issu that we see nowadays in young people and in adults is the consequence of disrupted circadian rhythms because of a lot of time in a two-dimensional screen space which I’m not condemning I spend time on and put out most of my content on social media and YouTube Apple Spotify right um and in addition to that to the lights are too bright at night and they’re not getting enough sunlight during the day and an important thing to understand about our circadian Health you know circadian system in health is that throughout in the morning and throughout the day your eyes are less sensitive to light and you need more of it in order to get what you need okay broadly speaking and at night your eyes are far more sensitive to artificial lighting and you need far less of it in order to disrupt your circadian system in bad ways disrupt your mental health now does that mean you have to walk around with sunglasses at night and you know Dim All the Lights in your house well no but you could afford to dim them a little bit um you could afford to switch to the red light function on your phone there’s actually a triple click red light light function on every phone that um maybe I’ll pass the the the throughput of what to do to your phone it’s which allows you to El functions on on iPhone I mine goes to mine goes to gray scale when I do that yeah you can yeah so you can have it switch to grayscale or to purely red uh you know liin at the Blu is a trick that my friend Rick Ruben taught me I was like oh this is great you know you don’t you know you don’t necessarily have to purchase blue blocker glasses or anything like that we’ll get back to talking to Andrew in one minute but first I need to tell you about mudwater mudwater is a coffee alternative that tastes like chai and cacao had a baby it’s got four functional mushrooms and with only a fraction the caffeine as a cup of coffee you will get all of the natural energy without the Jitters or crash each ingredient was added for a purpose cacao and chai for a hint of coffee and hot chocolate likee flavor lion’s mane for Focus ceps to promote Natural Energy and both Chara and re sheet to support a healthy immune system plus it’s Whole 30 approved 100% USDA organic certified nonong GMO gluten-free vegan and kosher so if you are looking for a delicious Al alternative to your morning coffee this is a great place to start right now you can get $20 off your first order plus a whole box of good stuff including Crea and a free fror by going to the link in the description below or heading to Mud wt.com mowis that’s mudw tr.com slod wisdom so there are a bunch of little things that we can do that make a vast Improvement in the way that our biology and psychology function and it it’s amazing when you start to think about how most people exist now it’s too dim not enough light for them during the day especially not enough sunlight and then it’s too bright for them at night and they’re also living mostly in a two-dimensional world of screens what’s what’s the problem with the two-dimensional thing well the you know the we have an epidemic of myopia of nearsightedness and it’s been shown in a bunch of different clinical trials now the first couple of them that were attacked like most studies something comes out then it gets attacked then there’s a retaliation study Etc um that kids that spend two hours or more out ofd doors per day have a far lower incidence of myopia nearsightedness and even if they’re on iPads and and books and computers there’s something about far viewing about viewing things further than three or four feet away from us on a frequent for a significant portion of our day doesn’t mean you have to be staring off into the Horizon but as OPP poos a near viewing where you’re looking at something within about four feet of oneself this distance that we’re sitting across from one another is about probably about four and a half five feet um it’s not quite far viewing but you think about watch people’s behavior look at how they go through the day they’re spending most of their time looking at things about a foot to a foot and a half away and as a consequence the eyeball gets longer this is a wellestablished fact in animal models and humans and then the visual image isn’t focused onto the retina the light sensing portion at the back of the eye the image Falls in front of the Rea so-called nearsightedness right it’s falling too near to the lens okay there are other some people claim that nearsightedness has to do with the actual perceptual changes but in any event so fortunately that the eyeball actually can change in length so viewing things further away can actually especially early in life allow the eyeball to adjust its shape amazing just like the sinuses these there’s plasticity of a lot of different organs and so the point is that we need to get out and view things at a distance if you’re walking down the street looking at your phone you’re you’re degrading the functioning of your visual system well I told you I I think I texted you before I did it I got laser eye surgery a month ago oh yeah so you got the lasic yes great and that’s so the lasic just to you know EDP was to actually change the shape of the eyeball somewhat um in order to make it more perfect optically um in a way that for many people allows them to not have to wear corrective lenses of any kind yeah I can see everything I can see your ancestral trauma and and and full works now at 100 yards um your vision is super sharp now correct oh it’s 2015 what was the was the surgery painful it’s very interesting so um I actually videoed it I haven’t put it up because it’s kind of it’s probably pretty uncomfortable for people to watch um that’s never stopped you before that’s true so um they numb both of your eyes using numbing drops okay and then they come over the top with a kind of a large box on an arm they rest the valve of the front of this box on the eyeball itself and then suck the eyeball onto the actual valve so that it can’t move they then use one laser to create a flap in the cornea which is at the uh precise distance based on all of the tests that they did in the days prior to that they then take it off mhm you you’re still lying back you have to keep looking at a green light that’s above you the uh surgeon will lift the flap the front flap of the cornea up yeah using a kind of a soft pair of tweezers yeah the laser will then come in behind now the opened part of the cornea do the corrective surgery the flap will then get replaced uh and and it needs to be very very very precise so that any slight nudge I actually had to go and get the uh I had to get my flap rifted uh a couple of days later on my left eye because a tiny tiny tiny little bit of oil from the top of my eyelid had been caught underneath the flap and it was causing a flaring of bright lights and um so I had to go back and actually get the flap rifted get this the flap that they make can still be rifted up to three years later amazing it’s fascinating um and yeah had it done on both eyes couple of one day of recovery it feels very gritty for the people that are concerned about whether or not it’s it’s going to like hurt them and my recovery period was one day and I was able to I recorded a Podcast 48 hours in Bright Lights 48 Hours afterwards was it an expensive procedure 4 grand GBP so five grand uh USD not a trivial sum not a trivial sum but also given that it’s literally how you navigate the world sure uh and I was squinting a lot I was squinting at screens to have read the text I was using really large text the only reason I found out about this is because I went in for a checkup and they got me to do my eye test and the lady turned and said yeah you um you legally can’t drive without glasses and I was like what are you talking about my vision’s my vision’s great like my vision’s always been like this but she got me to do the thing and I thought yeah it shouldn’t be I should be able to read those huge letters that are only 20 feet away from me shouldn’t I and uh sure enough after this corrective surgery 2015 Vision everything’s razor sharp um the only considerations that I would say are nighttime viewing of Bright Lights specifically uh street lights cars coming toward you you get a little bit of flaring around them um and that’s because it’s now passing through not just one piece of material but there is a second cut um that supposedly dissipates a little bit over time but uh I am flying the flag for uh Laser Eye Treatment man it’s it’s been a complete Game Changer my pickle ball game’s improved which is obviously what was most important um everything’s it’s really really good and I’m I’m very very impressed and thank you to my surgeon for doing it yeah so that this little flap did they tell you how big the flap is I can just show you the video I can show you the video once we finish up uh interesting um thanks for sharing that yeah I think it’s an interesting procedure and um we did an episode with our chair of Opthalmology Jeff Goldberg and um he was a proponent of it for people that are you know I T I texted you to make sure that like the opthalmologist guy with all of the dudes that know it like am I all right to do this Jeff’s amazing actually we we trained in the same lab he was a graduate student I was a postto then he ended up in Miami and then we converged in San Diego Then he moved to Stanford I moved to Stanford so I we sort of he’ll argue I was tracking him I’ll argue he was tracking me but um he’s my chairman so I’ll just say I was tracking him um but very very smart guy and and I think yeah getting keeping your eyes healthy is key this actually comes back to light um so there’s some really beautiful data of Glenn Jeff’s laboratory at University College London I’ve known Glenn for more than 20 years he’s a spectacular Vision scientist um showing that exposure to artificial red light you know there’s a lot of the you know like the ju and these other red lights that are out there cozy and these other red light systems which by the way I don’t have any Financial relationship to um you know the idea that red light could somehow enhance different functions of our tissues or preserve different functions of our tissues people think it’s really biohacking like oh this is you know people under red lights but you know there was a Nobel Prize given for the use of long wavelength light for the treatment of Lupus like almost a 100 years ago so the idea of phototherapy Is Not A New Concept but people love to to kind of push it into the realm of of um biohacking broides but it’s not um red light therapy has been shown to have some positive outcomes for treatment of acne for scar healing and wound healing uh red light is long wavelength light which can penetrate further through tissues than short wavelength light so that’s sort of the argument there is that when you look at red light or red light is placed on shown on the skin some of it is actually getting into the deeper layers of the dermis how deep it’s questionable some people argue that they can even get into the the blood supply if you know it’s like on the wrist or something in any event Glenn’s lab has shown two really important findings and the first one they’ve shown twice in separate studies and this is all in humans the first result is that if people look at red light for two or three minutes once or twice a week in particular early in the day it can offset some age related vision loss how well the photo receptors at the back of the eye are some of the most metabolically uh consum metabolically active in um let’s just say energy consuming cells of the entire nervous system which is saying a lot because the nervous system is the most metabolically cons consuming or metabolically excuse me active organ and so as a consequence these really active cells create a lot of so-called reactive oxygen species and that impacts the negatively impacts functions of mitochondria so viewing red light seems to restore some of the mitochondrial function by limiting reactive oxygen species in the photo receptors and offsetting and they’ve shown this some not all but some age related vision loss presumably you’re not talking about looking at one of these red light panels because these things are like a a [ __ ] like flat it’s it’s hu it’s so bright I am I actually am referring to that but you want to do it at a distance that’s comfortable so several feet right those panels for the people that don’t know these things are inide they even provide you with uh like yeah like the stuff for the for the suned goes with them yeah so you don’t want to do this for more than a couple minutes and you do want to Blink and you do and probably through ey eyelids closed if your eyelids are thin enough and it’s bright enough it can probably get in nonetheless but let let me very very clear um well I’ll tell you the other result and then I’ll tell you why you don’t need necessarily need a red light um the other result which is more recent and is still under review so I want to be very clear but the the data look interesting um to say the least is that there’s this old Theory like old theory that the French have really expounded that you know eating food Outdoors is metabolized differently than eating food indoors which sounds crazy right I mean at some level and yet this study shows that if people do this red light viewing while eating or in the minutes just after eating for just a few minutes that the postmeal blood glucose level sever is significantly dampened which is a good thing right you don’t want big elevations in blood glucose or excessive elevations in blood glucose now that all sounds a little bit at the edge of what we consider you know valid uh or reasonable and yet if you think about sunlight sunlight is full spectrum light so this isn’t saying you need to run out and buy a red light this is if you get outside and get your morning sunlight yes it’s going to set your circadian rhythm for elevated mood focus and alertness during the day improve sleep at night but in addition that you’re getting red light to your eyes early in the day you’re you absolutely you’re getting red light to your eyes now in very densely overcast days say in the UK or elsewhere it’s not you’re going to really filter out the the clouds are going to the light the joy the will to live and um and as a consequence some people choose to supplement their light with these red light devices um but this idea that the French and others have have argued and I’m sure as I say the French said it then you know the French will nod and everyone else will say no it’s like it was us first or us also it’s probably multiple uh people history groups throughout history but it does seem that there’s something different about the way that food is metabolized if under different lighting conditions which sounds crazy and I I can already hear Lane Norton stomping in with his you know B basically yeah Lane Lane’s brain sort of has like Pub met ideas I I I think it’s great by the way lane we love you um and I love his his um his uh sort of um adherence to PubMed IDs but you know these are published studies I’ll send along you can tell me what you think Lane but um the point being that there still needs to be more work on this right but it’s always nice when some nicely controlled studies done by wellestablished Laboratories that people in a field trust like Glenn’s lab um start seeing things once or twice over in multiple studies um that really work well with what we know from kind of naturalistic conditions for instance they Hunters people that are adventurers that are whose job depends on them being able to see into the distance Cameron Haynes yeah cam Haynes these people maintain Vision well into their older age nerds like me who spend too much time in front of a book or a screen who spend most of their time and have for many years looking at things down I mean for years I looked at things down a microscope that was where most of my life was down looking down the microscope but also reading things at close distance well you know it makes sense that the eyeball would lengthen you end up with near sidess I do wear corrective lenses um at night especially if I’m driving at night I’ve really work hard to try to not succumb to the need for corrective lenses because I’m trying to keep my vision health good and when I Rel I don’t want to become reliant on it but but you know at night I have to wear corrective lenses yeah talking about the red light stuff have you heard of huberman husbands do you know what this is yeah um unfortunately well I I should say that the most unfortunate thing about the huberman husbands post is that it was about is that it was taken by certain media Outlets to implify the idea that the audience of my podcast is just male when in fact it’s 50% male female at least in the listenership YouTube skews male but we knew that anyway um but the listenership is 50% male 50% female and the hubman husbands thing um was really about how a woman was saying that she thinks she’s the huberman husband because she does all these different things that but they got taken from that for the people that don’t know that the meta meme around huberman husbands which you can search on Tik Tok right now is that the hot new thing that all of the wives want out there is a husband who’s into red light therapy and he does coal plunges and he does Sauna treatments and stuff so I I wondered see guys I’m trying to help you out look dude I I wondered how you feel of a bunch of guys potentially cosplaying as Andrew huberman in the bedroom like the price of long sleeve black shirts has gone through the roof you now have people fully Ling as you maybe they’re they’re telling them telling their wife that they didn’t get enough sunlight in their eyes as dirty talk in the bedroom I’m not sure I wondered how it feels to have this Army of Andrew huberman from wish now existing on on the internet so so we covered the amcc it means interior mid singulate cortex but I confess even though I know that I don’t know what cosplay is and I don’t know what laring is cosplay is dressing up it’s it happens at um a lot of conventions someone will go as Anakin Skywalker or Pikachu or whatever and Ling his life for sexual titilation sometimes but not always uh so this is sort of like a this is the this is like the action hero um variation on furries kind of yeah okay f is more Lex’s domain precisely yeah we know we know that well uh and then we know that but we don’t know it well fortunately liveaction role playing Ling so that again is this kind of I’m saying there are potentially there is potentially a market out there if a guy is struggling in the dating world to take the aesthetic get fully hubber and pilled and then there is a a huge potential demand amongst the wives out there okay so um this is news to me um one thing that’s come up recently in discussions with some traditional media Outlets but but also just generally right is you know to what extent is all this focus on health um you know does that change something about masculine feminine Dynamics like like the traditional um stereotype of men was that they’re tough enough to not need to engage in any self-care right they don’t need sleep they can drink a lot of liquor they’ll eat when there’s food they’ll eat whatever they don’t like going to the doctor right this this like runs very countercurrent to the kinds of things I talk about my podcast like hey get up in the morning get some sunlight right uh lift weights run um and I should point out that n none of what I’ve talked about with exercise ever of course there’s an aesthetic component right limiting body fat to some extent right not having excessive body fat um you know resistance training as we know is an incredible way to adjust this one’s Aesthetics if they feel like their proportions aren’t where they want or you know by the way guys train your neck uh clearly Chris does um I mean nothing looks more ridiculous than like wide shoulder and a little and a head with a Little Neck neck I mean it’s well it’s just it’s crazy because this is proportionally you see it and you’re like this is it’s the it’s the male equivalent of the BBL if you have like a I’m teaching you I’m so happy that I get to teach you this is sort of like class for me I’ve got cospl make sure you’ve got your notes so this is the Brazilian butt lift it’s kind of like the bum equivalent of a boob job and they have an implants for the glutes I think that they actually take fat from elsewhere in the body uh and then put it into the it’s the uh risk the uh surgery risk of this is really quite high they just do like hip thrusters or something isn’t there that there’s um that takes too long there’s the Brett contrerus glute guy yeah yeah yeah he’s very popular because he he puts glut on people but but they actually put them on themselves cuz they’re the ones doing the work I think the doctor technically puts it on them but yeah and it kind of looks because there’s no Associated leg development with the glute development it’s kind of like if you put two basketballs on upturned baseball bats so you have like a the leg and then you have like ridiculous it’s I’ve seen some I went to Miami for the first time a few months ago and I saw one that kind of terrified me it looked like a bag of cats from behind in a set of leggings uh you like you could kind of see sort of Paws coming out like this it moves poorly poorly finished I would say moves it just it wasn’t wasn’t good anyway my point being uh neck for guys need to have it proportional to the shoulders yeah it I mean yeah Sor I’m sorry taking digs that people that don’t train their neck it’s also life insurance right um I had an accident a few years ago where I fell off a second story roof and I walked away from it because I’ve long done neck training because I injured my neck when I was younger and um even if you don’t do fight Sports I don’t do fight Sports but um wouldn’t be uh aligned with my my role needing my brain um and I got nothing against people that do fight sports but that’s a choice that I’ve I’ve actively made not to do them anymore um but neck training is is really important for what’s the at20 of neck training what what’s are the biggest mve as for improving your neck oh well first of all I’ll tell you in a moment um but I think that you know remember that your neck is your upper spine so people are big on training their abs you know for for spine stability and lower back hopefully as well for spine stability the midthoracic regions as well but you know it’s your upper spine and and you want it strong and you um you’ll get much stronger in other things as well everything’s better people’s posture is far better when they train their neck it actually changes the tone of people’s voice and I had a guest on my podcast Dr Eddie Chang who’s our chair of neurosurgery at UCSF I’ve known him since we were kids um he’s phenomenally smart and in Creative guy and I’ve asked him about this offline you know why is it that neck training does that well you know the voice change that occurs in boys when they um when they develop and go through puberty is a thickening of the vocal cords that’s Androgen dependent I have this weird mutation I’ve talked about this a little bit but maybe not um that on a program as broad as this that I actually have the same voice I always had from when I was a little kid my voice never actually changed I have a so I have an androgen receptor uh alteration okay um so fortunately for me like doesn’t cause any other issues but this was my voice when I was 5 years old how terrifying yeah they called me froggy yeah it was kind of a joke I like the kid on The Little Rascals that was froggy in any case but for most people they hit puberty and then their voice changes because of a thickening of the vocal cords but obviously I had some early Androgen exposure um that was clear because I also had hair on my Adams Apple when I was like four years old so there was some early Androgen exposure not going to [ __ ] with that four-year-old no I was I was a kind kid until I was a teenager and then I eventually angry teenager I went through it but you know I was I was kind nonetheless but in any event um when you train your neck actually um it it does improve posture and it actually changes the tamber of your voice somewhat um but for people who speak a lot for a living podcasters singers actors Etc lawyers and lawyers seem to talk a lot um you don’t want to do a lot of really heavy neck training because it actually changes the way that your jaw moves and the way that you speak and you know you and I especially like my solo podcast that sometimes take me 11 hours to record and um so you want to maintain health the air flow through through this region right um but the best way to develop a strong neck safely is to unfortunately stay away from Bridges which you know wrestling coaches love to give you can the discs can can be injur you can you can cause dysfunction of the discs and then the pain comes on in a moment and then you’re you’re you’re hosed um best thing to do is take a plate and start really light lie on a bench stabilize yourself by putting one arm down okay so you want to close the chain so to speak if you can get a foot down as well and then put that plate you know probably start with a five or a 10 pound plate wrapped in a towel so you don’t end up with an imprint of the five or 10 on the side of your head or face and then you’re you’re just going to go from neutral position which is your head you know essentially straight up and down but you’re lying on your side to just you know uh about maybe 30 or 45 degrees you AR like really cinch into it and you want to keep this is important keep your tongue on the roof of your mouth your jaw shut so that your jaw are moving around because some people do neck work and then they’ll get clicking of the jaw they get pain in the ear there’s I’ve spent a long time with skulls and I can tell you human skulls and other skulls by virtue of my work in neuroscience and dissecting stuff and I have kind of obsession with cranial facial stuff as well and you know there’s a lot of musculature and ligaments of the the skull that have to be contended with so tongue on the roof of your mouth and you’re just going to you know nasal breathe and you’re not going to failure you’re not training really heavy higher reps in the you know 10 to 25 repetition range three sets yeah three sets and then the other side and then you know rather than doing a lot of forward neck workor which people are already doing because they’re doing a lot of phone reading and shaping themselves like a c you want to lie on your stomach and put a plate on the back of your head and get into that you know the neck extension straight back but not pinching or wrenching your head back movements like where you’re creating some torsion up into the sides like this is a little more dangerous I don’t recommend um the person who has great tutorials on this and many other things as well as Jeff Cavalier athl X has a great neck tutorial may you could link to that’s where I learned it over time I worked up to from a 10 pound plate I I can do five or six reps on each side with a 45 lb plate you’re kidding me you put a 45 that’s 20 kilos for the anglicans list yeah so I’ll do that and I don’t say that to be tough or anything but the idea for me is to just have a really strong um neck so that also for pressing movements and pulling movements you’ll get much stronger there well listen the bar has now been set for the fledgling huberman husbands out there they know that the neck training is a important part black shirt neck training bit of a beard well well the Black Train well to be clear and women should probably train their neck as well but lighter you know um for aesthetic reasons um and if they want to have a bigger neck they can do that but I think most women don’t want their neck this is one muscle er group that does tend to grow pretty quickly um is that right it does it does and and then the other thing and this looks ridiculous but that Fighters know is very useful is that there’s the kiss the sky thing where they’ll actually look up and you know and you’ll feel it in the deeper muscles of the neck wow so that kind of thing is again you know some people use that towel for this stuff if they don’t have access to weights but neck work is really key just like ab work is key just like lower back work is key just like tib work is key knees over toes guy you know love his content Ben’s amazing so these smaller muscle groups are not going to be the Mainstay of any workout but they become so important when you’re thinking about longevity because they are the muscle groups that tend to cause if not train shin splints kink in the neck the kink in the neck is obviously uh not a technical term but pain in the neck the turning in the shower after doing heavy pressing and then like you’re out your neck you can’t turn your head the lower back pain sciatica often lower spine stabilization issues I I really think Jeff cavaliere has some of the best zeroc cost content on this that’s uh I’ve followed his content for years and you know if you put in for instance sciatic a low back pain he has diagnostic tools there that really help you establish whether or not it’s truly lower back pain or it’s a medial glute issue and gives you the proper things to do and neck is just one piece of the equation getting back to huberman husbands um it that yeah I chuckled the first time I saw it I I think it was a little frustrating to me because I thought wait there are a lot of women that do these protocols too our Protocols are Mo we have had some male hormone Health episodes some female hormone Health episodes but in general we’re just talking about stuff that’s applicable to everybody but listen um I don’t control the internet um I don’t make the rules out there and you know and then traditional media Amplified the huberman husbands piece through a couple of Articles and the next thing you know that that’s black shirt I should just say um is because uh I try and as we’ve talked about before I don’t want T My Tattoos to distract I got a lot of them um I want to focus on content and teaching and people hearing the content and um and the black shirt is something I did long before I had a podcast that’s cu the great Joe Strummer singer for The Clash escalero wore a black button-down shirt while he would do full shows and he’ be soaking wet it was like the punkest thing I ever saw that he was like doing full shows like belting it out and longle in long sleeve black shirt and he was just literally the shirt was like stuck to his body and I was just saying like not only is he an amazing humanitarian writer poet singer for The Clash creative miss him he’s gone but he’s still here through music right as they say and he um you know he’s just so Punk he’s just up there in his 40s or late 40s and and soaking wet and I’m thinking like that guy like he’s got he’s got it figured out I’m you know so anyway and I like the black shirt what can I say well get back to talking to Andre in one minute but first I need to tell you about ag1 ag1 is a product that I’ve been using every single day for over 3 years now Dr huberman himself is a massive fan because it is the most comprehensive foundational daily nutrition supplement on the market my digestion is so much better since I’ve started using ag1 and I genuinely can’t remember what life used to be like but when I stop using it I do not like the way that my body feels since 2010 ag1 has led the foundational nutrition Revolution continually in their formula to create better smarter ways to elevate your health ag1 is the supplement I trust to provide the support that my body needs every single day and that’s why they’ve been a partner for so long if you want to take ownership of your health it starts with ag1 you can get all of this with your first purchase a free your supply of vitamin D five free travel packs free pots shakers and that 90-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to drink a1.com wisdom that’s drink AG g1.com wisdom How concerned do you think we should be about vaping spoke about alcohol it seems like there’s this uh big Vape is on Netflix at the moment it’s uh a documentary about the rise of jeel and um I’m only one episode in but it seems like vaping is now catching an awful lot of attention what how concerned do you think we should be about vaping yeah sorry I’m just taking a note here I take notes during our podcast um highly intense it totally makes sense um just the things I can go back to um we should be very concerned so when it comes to smoking or vaping there’s the thing that’s being consumed the the thing that people are trying to bring put in their bloodstream nicotine cannabis Etc and let’s just set those aside I’ve done episodes on nicotine and cannabis and um they have their application they also have their problems vaping is ter terrible because of the other chemicals that delivers to the lungs it’s also very clear and we haven’t released this episode yet but I talked to a female hormone doc from Austin and Natalie Crawford OBGYN you know vaping is associated with disruptions in egg health and what they call Egg quality can create certain mutations in eggs um and serious endocrine issues in women okay um personally I find it disgusting like I just find it like I don’t do it but when I see people vaping like to me and listen I used to when growing up I I I quit smoking a long time ago but I used to smoke a bit of nicotine growing up remember I was I was a wild one but that’s not why I did it I just I you know nicotine works for me as a drug and I don’t do it anymore um but vaping is so addictive it’s a mutagen it mutates the genes of cells it mutates the genes of rapidly dividing cells most so breast cancers ovarian canc aners egg quality you know sperm are constantly turning over so you know people always say no well I Vape all the time and I got so and so pregnant or whatever you know wiess I have a perfectly healthy kid that kid might have been much healthier and also the kid’s not grown up yet like introduce me to the kid later I wish for that kid I pray for them but um that they’re healthy as can be but it is so clear that you’re introducing a t a laundry list of toxins to the lungs and they’re getting into the bloodstream and there are a number of them that cross the blood brain barrier and once they cross the blood brain barrier those neurons by virtue of the fact that neurons don’t turn over across the lifespan you born with the ones you’re going to die with you might add a few across your LIF spin but you’re mostly born with the ones that you’re going to die with well they’re going to Harbor those chemicals and those particulates and you know yes our we have grandparents that smoked and lived to be 90 but you know those are generally the outliers so I I can’t find one good reason why people should Vape if they if people want nicotine in their system that badly and here I’m not recommending that they would be much better off relying on a troch or a patch y um whatever or even toothpicks are or you know or injectable I know people I’m not going to out any inject nicotine oh I’m not going to out anyone here but I I know um people in our podcast community that rely on nicotine injections for mental Clarity that is so hardcore yeah I don’t it it causes um elevation in blood pressure it causes um basoc constriction but it also will robustly increase focus and attention any smoker what will tell you nicoe you’re starting to see some companies that offer things like NAD infusions also offer subcutaneous or or um nicotine injections going back to the or patch or gum yeah smoking for a very long time everyone knows huge Campaign which I think was pretty effective actually at kind of discouraging people from smoking or at least making them aware about the do do you remember how they got kids to stop smoking they told them for years it was bad for their health that didn’t work they told them um that it was putting money in the pockets of these like uh of like these old cackling white guys that were like rubbing their hands in in the in up in the boardroom and making a ton of money and then it became the rebellious thing to quit smoking that was the effective campaign I think about this all the time that there was a big push to uh both disincentivize and make more different smoke uh make more difficult smoking you got to go outside there’s the smoking area I remember I worked in clubs for one year before the smoking ban came in yeah in the UK and then people had to go outside you know just friction friction friction all the way down and then vaping came in and vaping is way more enjoyable of an experience than smoking ever was you you can have a higher dose of nicotine that tastes you know enjoyable bubblegum flavor and raspberry unicorn dust and whatever whatever unicorn I know uh and it’s not going to stink the house out you know you don’t have any of the externalities of that so I wonder whether we have ended up in a net benefit or net cost for public health from switching from smoking to vaping yeah there’s an analog here with you know katum and opioids you know if you really want to we just got put ourselves under attack by even bringing up the topic but I did it intentionally um you know there are things like smoking and opioid addiction which are it’s unequivocal it’s just terrible right it crushes lives destroys lives um yes there are those rare individuals who smoked their whole life lived into their 90s and okay but they are outliers um so the question is did is vaping allowing fewer people to smoke and therefore for improving their health maybe if they’re hellbent on getting that nicotine or cannabis into their system and they’re CH opting not to smoke and they’re going to vape instead then maybe we have to be objective and say okay if there are absolutely intent on on getting it in through some inhalation device vaping is probably better but we don’t know that for sure we actually don’t know that and then since I brought it up and I really put the Target on myself with this one you know I I did a post about katum which is over the counter um people will say it’s not an opioid it Taps the opioid system it Taps other systems as well and a number of people have indeed um managed to get themselves off of opioids using katum as a bit of a bridge kind of like the methadone heroin thing um but the katum advocacy groups are really growing strong right now because um there is the possibility that katum will be made illegal in the not too distant future and there is the reality that some people who were never opioid addicts have taken katum and then get addicted to katum and then people start arguing is it real addiction is it habit forming Etc so I think the next year or so is going to be an interesting time for dialogue about katum I have a couple of guests coming on my podcast maybe um you’ll do it as well and I’d love that if you would there’s one thing by the way folks that’s so great about the podcast space unlike other professions we love it when one topic or one guest shows up on multiple podcasts because it it actually doesn’t hurt any of us and you’ve sent me in the last few months You’ sent me uh Paul kti uh you’ve sent me Rick Rubin it’s and everyone’s got a different Flex right the conversation you’re going to have with Rick or Paul is going to be way different to the one that I’m going to have which is going to be way different to the one that Joe’s going to have yeah it’s it’s a it’s a very different thing than academic science than journalism of other kinds the idea it’s it’s a no scoop they you know like in Academia or or journalism they say oh you know who got the scoop you know that or you got scooped someone else put it out first and you know in in um in podcasting it’s it’s quite the opposite so I think the katom versus Ian the katum topics can be really interesting and important to cover but I think look my vote is to not Vape I think um I’m just shocked at how many people vape and first of all it it’s actually be not unlike cigarette smoking it’s expensive that’s not the main reason people avoid it but it it’s a significant expense when you add it up across the year it’s clearly addictive there’s no question about it it’s clearly detrimental to lung function and then people like how it makes their brain feel and they think that if they’re already pretty active Physically Active then they can offset some of that and they probably can but um I think in the next five years or so we’re just going to see a slew of studies showing that vaping is just bad for us especially for the developing brain because it’s bringing in at a very rapid rate high potency nicotine and high potency cannabis and you know from mony’s work and we know my colleague at Stanford that that the the slope of that increase in dopamine and epinephrine adrenaline and acetylcholine is so important the sharper that slope the faster the rise the more addictive potential these compounds have and so it’s so far and away different than the kind of dopamine or epinephrine or acetylcholine increase that one sees with exercise or with cold plunges or with um with sex or with these other things know could addicted justed the poal itess something like vaping here’s my stance on it that I I understand maybe of the two evils vaping is less of an evil than traditional smoking would be but I think the enjoyability the accessibility the fact that it isn’t as stigmatized all of that I think that it wouldn’t surprise me if more people are now going to vape than ever previously smoked and even if the difference between the two is is that vaping is better that the total area are under the curve of Public Health degradation I think that I think that we’ve netted a loss overall for vaping and um you know I see dude I I I go to a comedy show and I find myself going and getting an Esco bar before and I’m like what like why is it it’s just habit what is it it’s like a like just a disposable VAP you do vape I do it if I go to a comedy show and I’m not drinking and I’m tired so there’s like a certain little decision tree that go through I’ll do it maybe once a month something like that what do you vape whatever whatever disposable unpronouncable horse [ __ ] is available what in my friend nitin or cannabis nicotine nicotine um we’re in California so people talk about cannabis pretty here um interesting yeah I think rapid onset of these neuromodulators in the brain concerns me um it’s just it’s just so different also with with with behaviors you can titrate right you know people say well video games cause a huge increase in doing okay fine but you can limit the total amount of time that you engage you um I think with with substances even though you can control dose or number of of what do they call it on it’s not going to be like a to on the vape pen what is it it’s going to be like a like a draw I don’t know I don’t know the language vaping laring cosplay I’ve got that you know I’m teaching you everything today everything I need to know this is good because I’m going to be able to navigate the internet better talking about the internet how worry to you about how technology is impacting people’s ability to focus adult ADHD is clearly upon us it’s just clear and so very I’m I’m very concerned you think that that’s induced or or facilitated or worsened by technology like tell me tell me what’s going on in the brain If how is technology able to make such a a dramatic change yeah I think if we let’s turn it on its head I’m not changing your question because I don’t like when people do that to me um answer what you want no sometimes I’ll ask your question on my podcast and people they’re like I’m gonna give you a different question answer that one I was like okay like I’m gonna answer your question a different way the the circuits in the brain that are required for setting and maintaining Focus are inhibited by the process of deliberately shifting one’s Focus over and over and over throughout the day in other words um if ever there was a physical activity that could undermine your cardiovascular exercise you know like I mean it turns out not to be the case but you know there was this idea a few years ago that if you sit a lot during the day it doesn’t matter how much you exercise it’s not going to make a difference that’s not true right exercise still helps but we also know that moving and standing standing and S you know standing up and sitting down quite a lot throughout the day getting as much you know little walks and things like that is extremely beneficial and can amplify the already known positive effects of exercise okay well when it comes to focus I mean much of what our schooling is about growing up is not just the content that we’re taught but our ability to sit still and pay attention to keep the body still and to focus to some extent keep the body still um some people gesticulate more the Italians and the you know in certain Arab countries and things like that and um other people are far more still and we could get back to this about body Stillness a little bit later because there’s some emerging ideas on that that are worth touching on but the point is that if one is constantly moving their attention from one thing to the next it undermines the ility of all the circuitry in the brain that’s responsible for prolonged Focus now I partake in social media so do you but the scroll function is a practice of Shifting Focus while maintaining gaze in one location right normally we would shift focus by looking here by looking there I mean just for try this for 30 minutes tomorrow folks listening to this take 30 minutes of your day and decide you’re that you’re only going to exist in the three-dimensional world meaning you’re not going to look at screens for 30 minutes okay obviously screens your phone has a depth to it but you know what I’m talking about you’ll notice that your attention is Shifting all the time you’re looking at brick wall then there’s this and there’s you but but it’s all harnessed by some sort of conceptual goal or physical goal trying to get here finish a conversation complete an answer to a question that’s all within a tunnel of of of motivation when you’re on your phone and scrolling and I think scrolling itself is the major issue when you’re scrolling you’re essentially putting into new context after new context after new context and the brain has to adjust to all of that and the way that the brain works in addition to controlling heartbeat and anomic function Etc is think about sort of like a like a I I don’t want to diss it but I went I took my sister sister I see the Harry Potter play u recently in New York and um while I wasn’t a big fan of the the script at all was this the um Half Blood something what was it called yeah it was the the what is it the like the first child yeah yeah yeah me me Jordan Peterson and Douglas Murray got thrown out Neely got thrown out of that during Co I’ve got to tell you the story once you’re done it’s one of the phenomenal thing that I saw so you went to go and see Ito I took my sister likes theater and we go to New York each year for her birthday and um I took her to this show um and I wasn’t a big fan of the script to be honest um I only read one of the Harry Potter books liked it but then abandoned it but she she really likes the Harry Potter stories um I wasn’t a fan of the script that’s just my uninformed opinion but the effects were spectacular okay and one of the things that occurred to me they had this Library there where the books are alive and as I was watching this I realized that’s very much how the brain works that for instance when you walk into a room it’s a new context and it would be the same as if you were walking through a library and let’s say you you go to a um soccer European football game and you sit down and all of a sudden the your brain calls up all these books about European soccer and your favorite team is right there and then you open that and then all of a sudden um you’re looking at that something about your favorite team what’s your favorite team Newcastle Newcastle okay and then with unbeknownst to you unbeknownst to you this is the important part the books all around you not the one you’re looking at are now changing to the competitors and the history of that team but also who’s the um the directly antagonistic rival team suland Sunderland Sunderland okay there it is baby okay so that the way the brain works it’s calling up context so that it makes it very easy to flp to a discussion about a particular rivalry in a particular year and a particular match and a particular point and player that’s focus focus is not about maintaining a single tunnel of cognition focus is about calling to mind all these additional contextually relevant batches of information that you might need and you know the reason I the analogy of the Harry Potter Library is that it’s a dynamic Library so the moment we’re done here and we walk out yes some of the the books so to speak of the of this conversation will linger with us but whatever we’re focused on next whatever goal directed Behavior we have making it to dinner or through traffic or wherever we’re going will call up a new library now some people might say well duh of course it works that way but it’s not duh because it’s very Dynamic now social media is the opposite of that it’s one library next account another library next account another library next account another Library another Library another library and the brain is calling up all these different libraries in Rapid succession so when I look like I’ll be honest the the selected choice of things to click on tells me a lot about what I’ve been clicking on right that I mean obviously the algorithm isself I confess and I’m really embarrassed to say but not so embarrassed that I won’t reveal that what I find now on that gallery of things to select are street fights so beatdowns and really adorable strange animals or cute animals I love the Flora and Fa duality of Andrew hberman right and not the Cy bar like if ever there was an uninteresting animal it’s the cppy bar however yes the raccoon accounts are delightful to me the the the nature is metal account is very cool that there’s an extensive community of capy bar enthusiasts on in which you’re a member of no I I’ve actively avoided capu accounts um you’re a big octopus guy though I like seop pods I like cuttlefish my lab used to work on cuttlefish um and octopuses um octop and octopuses it’s octopuses I’ve been taught for so long that it’s octopus it’s octopuses and and actually this is the most hang on this is is gon to kill me because there was a meme about this because we did a live okay so I know too much about this because I used to my lab used to work on seop pods which are one they’re which are the category mollusk include cuttlefish um and octopuses and so it’s octopuses is the correct plural and this is the this is the most like groundbreaking piece of information that we’ve got so far today moreover the great Oliver Sachs who’s now unfortunately dead is a a neurologist and popular writer about the brain function the man who mistook his wife for his hat Etc a real hero of mine um talked about this that you know it’s also platypuses and that he wrote about you can look this up he wrote about traveling to a Australia and then going to the far north where they have a breeding program to reestablish the platypuses and that the location of the bleeding the breeding program excuse me is um literally the plat puser wow yeah yeah Oliver sax wrote about this so I’ve long been interested in the Platypus as an interesting animal they’re very inter octop octopus octopuses um yeah that’s okay you know many it’s a revolution so does that mean that the plural is the of or that the location where they breed octopuses is the octopusy I hope so I want to go there yeah well according to Oliver Sachs this is the correct nomenclature and he’s the neurologist expert in seapods so we can return to this at some point um I’m sure people will put in the comments where we’re right where we’re wrong AB either way they will have gone out and researched and learned and that’s what the that’s what we’re here for I want to show you I want to show you this video um we can put it up on the screen just press play on the middle of that and uh and let me know what you think right so the for those listening who aren’t watching this is an image of a kid flipping back and forth between a iPad and a phone um with Incredible dexterity this is a family out to dinner and the kids are watching screens there’s another kid without any phone in his hands crying um attempting to swipe the phone that is not in his hand as if um as if scratching at a an itch but not successfully and a kid actually tapping a screen in their sleep yeah yes this indeed we are in the up thank you um what do you think’s going on now yeah um and thanks for getting me out of the animal fights conversation um the uh what’s happening is very clear which is that you know the brain the human brain is an incredible Oregon because it’s a map of our experience it has certain parts that are hardwire that govern our our heart rate and control of our heart rate control of our breathing um immune uh certain immune functions and on and on but then a vast percentage of our of the human brain is is open Real Estate that um is designated as one function or another depending on what happens to you during development so we know this for sure my scientific great-grandparents won the Nobel Prize for this David hu and Tor and weasel that what you see during development really between the ages of birth and about age 14 mainly but certainly extending longer creates a set of modules or Maps within the brain that allow you to predict what’s going to happen in the future so if kids are growing up doing a lot of swiping Behavior this remember we’re in the first time in human history where people have written with their thumbs also right texting um there are entirely different maps of how language is encoded uh motor I should say how motor functions and language interact um you know in the past meaning for tens of thousands of years if not longer gesticulating Accord and speech and grunting and shouting and pointing it’s one of the primary modes of communication it’s not surprising therefore that the representation of the hands and the digits which is a nerd speak for fingers is right next to the areas of the brain they’re responsible for generating language and speech and language so we now have the ability to speak with our thumbs so so to speak no pun intended by texting we now have the ability to see many different contextual Landscapes as we talked about before by swiping typically up sometimes down typically up right so the up swipe is become you know as uh perhaps as hard not as mapped into the brain as the wave hi you see what do you say to babies you know hi people try and get their attention get them to go wide-eyed smile hi you know they do peek-aboo these kind of people been doing this for a very long time now the swipe function is one of the ways in which human beings engage in the world it’s almost it’s not as fundamental as opening one’s mouth to eat but it’s pretty close so the the brain has just adapted to this but there’s real estate set aside for whatever your experience was and so what you’re seeing there is just kids very Adept at doing this because it’s always a trade-off hubon visel in part won the Nobel Prize for showing that plasticity of the brain in of the brain for one particular sensory experience or function say swiping or the ability to switch back and forth between multiple screens is always always at the expense of some other potential function you can’t do everything so when children are inculcating that particular habit there is the Thomas Soul quote like there are no Solutions only tradeoffs right uh yeah I I think I’ve got written on my whiteboard on my fridge at the moment uh the five most common deathbed regrets and it’s things like I wish that I’d not worked as much I wish I’d let myself be happy I wish I’d stayed in touch with my friends um it will be unbelievably surprising to me if in 40 years time I wish I’d spent less time on my phone isn’t on there I would bet pretty much everything that I have that that that would probably appear on average on people’s five top deathbed regrets I wish I’d spent less time on my phone and we can see this happening in front of us and the best way that you can tell that this is going to continue to happen is that you can reflect on what you did over the last week and one of the most common things that you wish that you’d done less of over the last week was shouldn’t I I got I got captured I I did a couple of YouTube holes or Tik Tok Scrolls or Instagram whatevers and you know that this is happening in the micro spread that across a lifetime you know I think that very much we’re going to look back at this and hopefully there is some kind of solution maybe it’s neuralink maybe know we have a way that we can kind of ethically engage with technology and get the communication and the stimulation and the exploration of different ideas and communities uh but yeah right now kind of feels a little bit like um maybe a little bit like when cigarettes first came out like your doctor smokes camels you know like we didn’t nobody knew what the bad effects of this were they didn’t know long-term what it was going to cause and dude that video I really wanted to show it to you because you taught me I I was I think correctly or incorrectly categorizing people’s phone use as an addiction and I think that you said it’s much more like a compulsion right and that is a child that’s asleep or nearly asleep prot like compulsively scrolling through that film yeah because a compulsion uh does not the ex an obsession is mental this is the classic definition of compulsion is a behavior but the compulsion in classic OCD doesn’t relieve the obsession it actually exacerbates it the payoff lack of so you’re you’re not it’s sort of like an itch that you scratch and it just get it itches more right and there is something like that with social I don’t want to say social media but with phone scrolling now that said I mean you know you know of my waking hours most of it is spent foraging for organizing or dispersing information and much of that is done on the phone or computer y but I do read books you know hard books uh meaning physical books I brought you one today thank you um I like audiobooks too I I listen to a lot of podcasts I watch your YouTube videos so I learn when I’m on the internet but yeah occasionally it’s the uh you know well I learned from nature as metal but but I haven’t learned anything from the raccoon post um nothing of substance anyway except that they’re very like they’re very like C cute and very um they do that thing when they scoop scoop food up like this and they they wash food in my pool now I moved to a place I’m renting a place that has a pool I’ve never had a pool before I’ve skateboarding a lot of empty pools but I’ve never had one that had water in it so and they come through in the night it’s raccoon Olympics in the middle of the night and they’re coming through they make a ton of noise and then they’re washing their food and it’s pretty cute the first time you see it but once they wake you up the third or fourth time then raccoons you’re trying to yeah so you know I haven’t learned much from that uh from the raccoon videos certainly the fight videos haven’t really taught me anything about self-defense or or anything useful except how you know just kind of cruel people can be so I’m trying to change the algorithm by by clicking on other things but it seems pretty slow to change I got to tell you this it’s got me on I’ve never been into Star Wars I’ve seen some of the movies or whatever but I’ve never been into it for some reason it started delivering me short content about Star Wars law like who would have won between Darth Vader and dark Maul and all like who was more powerful as a Jedi master and all this stuff and I’ve never been interested in this and yet it’s created in me the desire to actually be like well yeah like would Master Yoda have won however many eons ago if he was at full power when the the the Sith was and I don’t even know what I’m talking about but it’s like created in me this thing the interesting thing that you’re talking about there is that there’s um when you’re foraging you spend enough time on the internet and you do find something that gives you that oh wow I never knew about that before and it’s that um sort of needle in a hay stack that you’re looking through and that trigger of wow I found so I can talk about it on a podcast this is really interesting to me that is the carrot I think that gets dangled for for very many people who want to feel better about their social media use and think well okay yeah you know I wasted 90 minutes but I did get that thing out of it I read that substack post or right I found this new person that I really care about uh you know the variable schedule reward of uh intellectual satis faction is also in there right it’s not just the shock sure it’s not just the cute yeah for me is that you know PubMed library of the only guy who thinks that PubMed is variable schedule reward I remember when PubMed first came out as as a like a very searchable dat datab base and and some of the journals later became electronic and now they’re all available electronic and I could not believe I was so excited because I used to go to the library and I have to pay with put money on the card and Xerox copy and stuff but also in the library I love liaries and I’d spend so much time when I was a a student and graduate student and you’d find something and it’s was like I’d look around like did anyone like did you see that you see that but since I was a little kid I was discovering stuff in books and then talking about it to everybody even if they didn’t want to hear and so I was professing from a young age in class on Mondays and things so so for me it’s hardwired into my system by now and I think that I I do think that social media holds certain gems I think we’re think talking about like mining for gems of social interaction too you know I’ve gotten to know some people through through social media where it’s really enriched my life I’ve reconnected with some people yep and it’s really enriched my life it’s allowed me to connect the dots um going backward in ways I hadn’t anticipated and I think going forward if you’re asking about the kids in the video that you showed me or you talking about adults or anyone it’s the the the success is largely going to be determined by who has the most self-discipline I really do now it’s always been the case but I don’t think it’s ever been the case to the extent that it is now so this is why I’m such a fan of taking some space from all action this is actually something I learned from Rick Ruben um you know I’m fortunate to call him a close friend we we communicate pretty much every day and I went and spend a week with him abroad this summer it was the worst time to travel and I decided to go over to where he was in Europe and just spend the week with him we had no plan and um uh first of all on the over there there was nothing to watch on the plane but there was this Tom Petty documentary and I turn it on I’m not a huge Tom Petty fan but it was interesting enough and then Rick Rick is in the documentary and he’s in the documentary lying down doing the interview typical like typical meaning unusual for most people typical because it’s unusual for Rick to be lying down um and I thought okay so get there I I know his family well and I love them and and it was really wonderful it was beautiful it’s a beautiful part of Europe but you know I noticed so we had this habit of of we would tread water in the pool and listen to podcast in the morning um and there’s a wonderful podcast by the way uh that uh we should all be aware of I think is a history of rock and roll in 500 songs by Andrew hickey super nerdy it’s like a getting a like a graduate degree in rock and roll it talks about the music but also what’s happening in like organized crime how it impacted record sales very contextual very cool I’m very into that lately and I’m in and this show on Netflix have you seen Spy Ops yes which is very good right because it’s not just like shoot them up type stuff it’s it’s really about how spy operations uh let me put this way it can teach you a lot about history International history and and um geopolitical history um so um I go over there and we do some Treading Water listening to um podcast I learn about this history of of rock and roll in 500 songs podcasts um we talk about a little bit and then I noticed that you know Rick has a practice I hope he doesn’t mind me sharing this um because I’m about to um you know Rick has a practice he has many practices but one of them is he’ll spend a good amount of time you just sitting and thinking or lying down and thinking and I it didn’t occur to me at the time but later after I returned I thought back to our first guest episode of my podcast I host a guy named Carl di Roth who’s probably the the finest bioengineer on the planet he’s also a fully active clinician psychiatrist he’s got five children he’s one of these phenoms you know that seems to be able to do everything he’s a true genius um he went to school with uh medical school with petera and Paul Conti they were all in the same class yeah um and I know him very well he’s a colleague of mine at Stanford and um and everyone knows he’s he’s a super he’s a super he’s like the Michael Jordan of Neuroscience um except he’s still active um and that is not a statement about personality just in terms of of successful hit rate and Carl described a practice that he does after he puts his kids to sleep of where he sits deliberately sits completely still and forces himself to think in complete sentences and this set off a light in my head when I realized Rick does a form of this and Carl does a form of this if you read the new Elon Musk book they talk about Elon doing a form of this the Great Richard feineman physicist Nobel Prize winner talked about going into flotation tanks and doing a form of this Einstein did a form of this so what are we talking about so I’m a neuroscientist but I’m certainly not as smart as any of those guys what we’re talking about is body still mind active now I’ve become in increasingly curious about psychedelic therapies um one of which is and by the way only in a clinical context Etc legality Etc not in kids Etc but the practice is essentially um macard doil ayin but with the eye mask on completely still mind very active Okay contrast that to a different Behavior SL protocol that I’m very familiar with which is I like to do long runs or rocks on Sunday body very active mind not directed at anything in particular sometimes I’ll do it without a book or podcast sometimes I do it with a combination of both many people talk about swimming or in the shower or um cycling some sort of rhythmic movement drumming the great Joe Strummer was really big on campfires he you know I was going to mention this earlier but I’ll mention it now that as an alternative to alcohol consumption get your friends together around a five Fire by the way the Fire Light the light from fire does not disrupt the Circadian system this has actually been shown candle light Moonlight fire light as bright as it is it’s just very low Lux so that’s where great things happen independent of alcohol right around a campfire that’s it goes way back in our lineage so there are these two states of mind and body that I find fascinating to the point of being intriguing to the point of having modified what I do now because they the they’re the inverse of one another body completely still or close to completely still mind very active could be wasil cybin but that’s not the protocol I’m recommending I’m talking about some very very smart extremely accomplished people who all did the same thing the other is body very active mind isn’t still but is not deliberately um channeled to any particular linear kind of story or something like that there’s a state in sleep where our body is literally paralyzed and the brain is extremely active it’s called rapid eye mov movement sleep so I’m sort of raising a flag for this potential protocol practice I don’t have any peer-reviewed science to support what I’m about to say but I have enough examples of extremely accomplished people now in front of me to realize that there’s something special about divorcing mind and body function temporarily deliberately sitting there and just thinking and recently I had a conversation with the great Paul kti and the addition of the words the great in front of him are appropriate here he’s I I believe based on my observation of his clinical work and and uh intellectual Acumen that he’s the finest psychiatrist of our age clearly integrating from so many backgrounds has worked with a ton of interesting people coming on the podcast in December amazing I and he’s just phenomenal right um not just about trauma but about everything personality types narcissism gaslighting I mean people throw those terms around like crazy proba will tell you what it actually means okay what those terms actually mean but the ability to think and to access the unconscious Paul refers to the unconscious as the supercomputer of the brain for the UN the unconscious mind and the conscious mind are always in a dialogue but here’s the theory here’s the the hypothesis that when we bring our body into states of Stillness in REM sleep in these deliberate states that I just described that these other people actively engage in and have for a long time that the unconscious mind can start to take over a larger percentage of that conversation and we have access to new ideas new ways of structuring thought Etc and I don’t think one requires psilocybin to do it but I do think that is one Avenue into it reliable um that’s reliable it also carries certain hazards right uh because it’s it’s like being put on a mental rocket ship to some extent it’s not like DMT but um very little control over where one’s cognition goes although there is some in there um anyway I just wanted to throw this up on the wall because it’s always fun to talk about new things and kind of what’s coming what I think is coming next I think if I were to make a prediction I think in the next two years you’re not just going to hear about meditation non-sleep deep rest um something I’m a big fan of Yoga Nidra hypnosis but also whatever we want to call this you’ll probably come up with a better name than I can body still mind active states to access different aspects of our unconscious and cognition and I must say that we do this with the phone sorry I just uh because I realized you were about to say something and when you speak you say interesting things and I learned cosplay laring don’t put those ones as the most interesting oh no you say many no there’s no well in terms of new terms new terms New Castle yeah Sun sorry those weren’t the most Concepts I but I’m learning is the point I wasn’t I wasn’t being sarcastic um that when you we sit and we’re just scrolling yeah we’re we’re we’re more or less body still mind active but guess what none of it’s coming from within it’s all coming from the outside so whether or not it’s Sil cybin in the eye mask or or Carl sitting there eyes closed deliberately still thinking or Fineman in the in the salt equilibration chamber you know the the float flotation tank or or Rick lying there thinking whatever it is he happens to be thinking whatever amazing album he’s going to now you know help produce more Einstein I mean you know we can think of the phone and the scrolling as as lending itself to less ability to focus in ADH but just the real the real insult to humanity for me the real cost is what about all the creative imagination of things that come from inside that could be generated by by people in that time so I I’m I’ve started doing a practice of 20 minutes a day of just sitting and eyes closed typically sometimes it’s right as I wake up but usually it’s not and just trying to think about certain topics and hold those Topics in a kind of a linear way or sometimes just letting stuff geyser up H anyway um some people might think of this as like completely um wacko Woo new AG stuff but the list of names I I read off there people that do that and have been doing this for a long time and attribute this practice as one of the major sources of their best ideas is a a non-trivial list when I think about that there’s a few different ways that are slightly similar uh the number of people who’ve had great ideas whilst walking and attribute an awful lot of their success to walking in things you’re talking body still mind active but it’s like body mostly it’s not exactly or or perhaps there is a unique way to access this too maybe it’s a different channel to a different brain State maybe it’s a different channel to the same brain State like I love doing long rocks and long runs on Sunday that’s my goal on Sunday get out as much as possible into the nature and just move in some sort of repetitive way like a mu all throwing on a ruck sack cuz petera got me into that um sometimes it’s with other people sometimes alone sometimes I listen to a podcast sometimes I don’t sometimes in audiobook sometimes I don’t but something about about motor repetition uh so this is not sets and Reps this is not restacking the play this is you know minimum amount of cognition required freeing up mental space to do other things yeah could be on the row so again I think different people do it differently I’ve been hanging around with a lot of musicians lately um I’ve become good friends with one of my favorite musicians songwriters Tim Armstrong lead singer for rancid transplants he and Travis Barker did transplants and you know it’s it um and you know it’s clear that musicians especially drummers but other musicians well they’re always in a rhythm in their head there actually Tim and I the other day we we went someplace and we walked out he’s like did you hear that like did you hear what he’s like you didn’t hear that I was like what he’s like you know they had the news on and the radio on and this you know he’s so tuned into the audio environment I’m not right I’m not that audio um oriented more visually oriented but you know people who have an internal Rhythm that they’re they’re they’re they’re noodling on something in their head I mean this is this is the substrate of creative work right and I and again the phone isn’t evil but the moment you’re taking in sensory input from that includes things that have already been creative excuse me created you’re yeah you could argue that those are the macronutrients that you’re going to combine for your own creative thing the gems in the internet so studies scientific studies for me or interesting things on YouTube but there’s also just the raw materials of creative work that come from limiting sensory input and just going inside self generating it yes so I’ve been thinking one of the things that people want a lot more of I think is focus attention productivity as someone who values the work output that you do productivity as a word is quite nefarious quite nebulous quite sort of ephemeral how have you come to think about the concept of productivity and its constituent Parts have you got any tools any strategies tactics that you use to kind of drop yourself into a productive State and stay there yeah so I do all the things that I um profess um you know at the level the basics morning sunlight non-sleep deep rest if I didn’t get enough sleep um physiological size when I need to bring my level of autonomic arousal AKA stress down these are all things I’ve talked about um three days a week of cardiovascular training three days a week of resistance training one day a week of deliberate cold deliberate heat minimum uh usually on the day after leg day um I do all that stuff um and it creates a structure and yes it takes some time and a lot of that stuff can be comi combined excuse me with consumption of podcasts and audiobooks at the same time and social time um but for me the process of writing and I’m working on a book now but also just the creative process has been greatly enhanced and productivity overall by setting in this 20 minute period where I force myself to just stop and have deliberate thoughts that are within a single context I don’t let my mind wander so it’s very different than maybe the psilocybin Journey where feels it sounds to me a little bit like active meditation or kind of like narrative meditation in a way you know you’re forcing your mind to come back to the you’re not just allowing yourself to Branch off onto a current onto a new thought okay here I am this is the trunk of the tree and I’m going to try and follow this trunk as high as I can uh what about you know you’re sitting down at the desk you have the research to do the emails to write the whatever what have you got tactically in terms of a priming or a structure for that specific situation yeah I use handwritten sticky notes and I’ll put the thing that I’m supposed to do and I’ll keep looking at it because I’m amazed at how often my mind will FP to other things so it’s like oh I have to transfer some money to somebody that I owe them or I have to pay that bill or have to I mean the number of excuses that leap to mind is outrageous for everybody unless we’re under deadline fear or extremely rare but you know High motivational States because we just simply love it so I give myself five minutes or so to break into the work or 5 to 10 minutes I don’t expect full focus in that first 5 to 10 minutes but here’s what I tell myself because I know from 30 plus years of experience the feeling that I’m going to get after I complete something having like really had to push against the grain to force my attention back to that thing the feeling of having accomplished even a you know one hour bout of work is so incredibly rewarding for me and the feeling of having done basically nothing is such an incredible sense of disappointment and lack of life like such a like Vitality drain for me um I’m not as hard on myself as I gather some people out there are like David Goggins talks about his selft talk and how he can be very hard on himself at times but U mine isn’t like that but I know how great it’s going to feel when I get to the so you’re projecting forward the reward that you’re going to feel and trying to bring that into the now that’s very smart I’ve got written on my I’ve got two uh two fridge whiteboards uh the other is what would you tomorrow want you today to do right and that to me is the it’s like a Panacea for avoiding bad decisions uh you know because you live with the story that you tell yourself about the decision for way longer than the enjoyment or lack of of the decision there is a cookie on the table I promised myself I wouldn’t eat it and I make a decision about whether or not I eat the cookie there is either enjoyment or reward enjoyment in eating it or reward of uh satisfaction of discipline for not eating it that happens now but what’s really important is the story that I tell myself tomorrow about being the sort of person that is an cookie eater or is not a cookie eater and I think that that framing that we place around the present moment largely determines our experience of it and I find myself trying to live for future Chris more and the more that I do that the better that my life seems to get there are very few situations in which I make a decision today that I tomorrow would have wanted me to that turn out to be the wrong decision and um that projecting forward how am I going to feel in future this is difficult now uh uh Rick Hansen you know neurons that fire together why together like can you sit with some of the satisfaction after you’ve done something that’s good can you maybe even bring that forward a little bit give yourself a little oh yeah that’s how it’s going to do uh yeah one other thing that I’ve just been so fascinated by recently uh you have been a big proponent and I think have really helped people in getting sunlight in the eyes early on let’s get ourselves outside walk I think you taught me about the lateral eye movement can downregulate the amydala response all stuff that I’d found on my own just through doing a morning walk and then again like with the alcohol thing gets legitimated through the science you know it’s something that I did found it myself and then I’m like ah this wasn’t just Bro Science or some weird Quirk of my physiology this was actually something that can be shown up in the literature too ran Doris from the flow research Collective has the flow morning routine have you seen this from him I haven’t but I know ran Ran’s an absolute Monster uh his morning routine developed with Steven carler to get yourself into flow specifically for deep work and writing is to begin working within 90 seconds of waking because the state of flow and the state of sleep are not far away from each other in terms of brain frequency Delta and sort of Lial State yeah I I haven’t seen that yet but I I’ll check it out I I am a big believer in the moment you wake up if you were dreaming keep your eyes closed and keep your body completely still also similarly if you wake up from a nightmare and you don’t and you want to forget about that nightmare you need to move your body there’s something about body movement that discards the prior cognitive map it’s like it clears the library we talking about the the dynamic Harry potterish Library I don’t want to give too much credit to Harry Potter certainly not to that play but one thing that I’ll I’ll just about the productivity piece before um reflect on this further the um because something you said really really struck a chord with me you know I can project to the Future me but that’s not exactly how I do it what I’m I just know because I’m so familiar with it the feeling that I get having actually accomplished some small percentage to large percentage of what I was set out to do feels so unbelievably rewarding to me and I know that it also enhances the social interactions I’ll have it’s it’s like a feeling of self-satisfaction that transcends to an ability to show up with more clarity of mind I’m one of the the problems for me in terms of productivity is I’m very strongly affiliative I’m very fortunate to have a lot of close friends so if I get a text message from someone I feel compelled to write them back not out of responsibility because if it’s someone I’m close with I love that person like I love my family but I I love my friends I love my co-workers colleagues at the podcast I mean it’s it extends and this has to do with my up bring in the fact that my non-biological family became my family before I sort of reconnected with my actual family in a really deep way but um the one exception be my sister and I were were were you know tight tight uh the the whole time but the for me you know a text coming isn’t isn’t a distraction like that’s the that’s the good stuff in life that’s one of the reasons I’m there so I have this practice sometimes of imagining that my um my crew right as the kids say we’re I’m pretty crewed up these days um which is great CU it wasn’t always the case they want me to like Forge off to where I need to go and collect the gems and come up with the ideas that are going to be the next post the next podcast the next scientific study they want that I tell myself they want that for me like they’re cheering me on because I know I’m cheering them on some are musicians some do other things um I’m cheering them on I want them to know like I’m here and I want you to go get the stuff and do your thing and so I imagine that there doing that for me and I turn my phones off and there’s some anxiety in doing that I’ll put it in the car sometimes because it’s not that I’m I need to neurotically check the phone because I don’t feel safe if I don’t hear from them like I love these people and I don’t want them to feel as if I’m not available that’s really how it is for me but I know that and I think uh someone said it and I forget the quote so forgive me but you know if you’re going to create anything of value in this life you’re going even if it’s with other people you’re going to have to be willing to to be on your own for a bit to forage on your own to take walks alone and then return to people to your tribe so to speak and share with them what you’ve learned or maybe even just show up with whatever energy shift has occurred while you were off um doing your thing and so you know the phones the phones are a wonderful tool but I think over the years I I lost the ability to uh be truly on my own and dropped into work um and it’s something I’ve recovered a lot in the last few years um by telling myself that indeed they want me to do that and indeed I show up so much better to all the relationships in my life if I’ve done some real satisfied with a good day’s work yeah s you know just that you know got over that that barrier of resistance you know the the Steven pressfield thing of resistance that I wrestled with resistance and won I think we should all want people to win and I also um and I confess I’m going to lose some uh friends with this but I have variable latency in terms of my text replies sometimes it’s a day sometimes it’s an hour sometimes a minute sometimes it’s a month I love being on a plane and scrolling through old textas like hey how’s it going missed this and people like that was a month ago yeah it was and you know I’ve been busy you know and and you know emergencies are dealt with but it happens what’s happening in the brain and body when we procrastinate oh um yeah so procrastination is super interesting there actually some data that Adam Grant shared with me recently that people who procrastinate actually have um tend to be have access to certain creative states that non-pr inators don’t because they have to justifying the procrastination Crow that’s a dangerous line to go yeah procrastination I mean I mean what the origins of procrastination are are complicated and varied um to to really say a single concise statement um as to what procrastination is but the way to overcome procrastination is to do something harder than the hard thing that you’re putting off that’s very clear do something harder don’t go clean your like suddenly if people want to do their their taxes clean their room clean the garage organize the gym whatever when they don’t want to write a chapter in their book but you have to pick something that’s worse than writing the chapter in your book and do that for 5 minutes that’s the way that the the dopamine reward system works and some of these stress systems work um what would be an example give me give me a tactical example of this okay I need to write a chapter on focus and um and tools for Focus for my book I’m finding I’m doing everything but doing that let’s just set it kind of a fun example um I’ll do anything but that okay so then you have to find something worse than that so for me worse than that is anything involving a spreadsheet just the idea of a spreadsheet gives me hives so I would force myself to do five to 10 minutes of like like really like establishing a spreadsheet of my expenses and taxes related to I don’t know some segment of my work life I mean I can’t think of anything worse in that moment that doesn’t involve physical or psychological damage so doing that and then you’ll see it will make writing that book chapter very accessible it’s a down it’s a downhill cruise from there but people find themselves doing all these things that they would normally want to put off as a way to avoid doing the harder things so it’s it’s about understanding that what is difficult and what you want to put off or do is a dynamic hierarchy I think uh you can think of it as Dynamic subordination um you know I don’t know if that’s bother borrowed from cosplay or from uh military or BDSM I I don’t know I heard it someplace um but all the places that you M for information most frequently no it’s raccoons and street fights no none of those none of those communities are communities that I I know very much about but um I was saying it factiously but um but the point being do something harder than the thing you’re trying to avoid now some people really like deliberate cold exposure for that reason because you know and here I’m going to really if I’ve taken heat for no pun intended for the deliberate cold exposure thing now I’m really going to get behind it for the following reason people who are really into exercise of various kinds but not deliberate cold exposure love to push back on people that do posts about deliberate C oh that’s not doing anything it’s not much metabolic lift okay but let’s really step back and be honest with ourselves the adrenaline the the the the pattern of adrenaline release over time from deliberate cold exposure is something that’s very hard to recreate safely with other endeavors you know sure a hard workout is going to spike your adrenaline and dopamine also but is it going to spike it the way that deliberate cold exposure is no also the amount of a of a mental barrier that one has to get over in a moment not there’s no like three warm-up sets like walk on the treadmill pre-workout show me the pre-cold plun drink that makes it easier okay it’s called willpower yeah okay and now some people come to love deliberate cold exposure but that’s usually for how they feel afterwards so I think there is so much utility to deliberate cold exposure now do people have to do it no but deliberate cold shower deliberate ice bath deliberate cold plunge is a is a world apart from all the other self-imposed stressors because of the speed of onset of the stress yeah yeah it’s even even more so than a sauna that’s right you get into a sauner and it takes time for you to heat up it takes time for you to get uncom I mean it so it’s a very potent tool because of the amplitude and the timing of adrenaline that it creates what else what else in the uh procrastination dissolving tool kit so we’ve got do something that is harder than the thing that you’re trying to get away from if you can do cold exposure that’s kind of cool if you’re like I got to sit down and do this I find myself for 10 minutes kind of fluffing about trying to do stuff I go upstairs I have a cold shower okay that was way more miserable than this is going to be if it’s miserable if you like it then no but if it’s way more miserable then that’s the thing to do pick the miserable thing um I mean sometimes it’ll leave me like hard conversation you didn’t want to have um some people are you know certain hard conversations are are harder than others easier than others but you know in business I’ve never had a hard time having hard convers slaying all sorts of demons in an attempt to get away from their procrastination right here one of the things that I really wanted to talk about uh was the Peril of over optimization I think that before we knew about all of these science based tools everyone had an excuse not to be optimized right and now we’re all educated about this stuff and I think that a lot of people feel guilt they can feel guilt because the gap between how effective they are and how effective they could be is felt between them so given that you spend an awful lot of time thinking about the tools that people can use how can someone get over this this guilt of lack of not being where they should be with getting all of the things dialed in well guilt is rarely an effective um emotion although sometimes guilt and shame can really help us make significant change um you know the word optimization and optimize I think needs clear definition and I’m not suggesting that you you are the one that said this but a lot of people think it means being perfect all the time optimization is something that we need to look at in the context of the moment the hour the day the week right um if you have a viral infection or you’re sick or you’re tired or jet lagged optimization is whatever you can do to manage the basic five of you know sunlight sleep nutrition exercise relationships work productivity that you can so it’s a about it’s it’s a it’s a verb function it’s not a state to be in like floating around optimized um it’s optimization the verb is a process that we’re continually in I mean people who are raising kids are exceedingly busy raising kids and they’re trying to optimize raising the kids and hopefully taking care of their health as well so I think people see or hear the long list of science informed protocols that I talk about and think oh my goodness how am I supposed to do all of that that’s why I keep coming back to the basics right look a little bit of sunlight is better than none a little bit dimming the lights a little bit is better than you know keeping them on a full blast at night um you know making you know eating a few fewer uh heavily processed foods that’re highly palatable is better than you know and not doing that right but um and there are certain people who have immense amounts of self-discipline I mean one thing that’s and they’re going to do all the things I mean one thing that’s absolutely clear is that there’s a pattern of people discovering things that make them feel much better and then a need to tell everyone about it and that’s that creates a bit of a divide for people one thing that I’ve tried to do is to say yes I do these tools I do these protocols but um I’m not just sympathetic but I you know empathize with the fact that sometimes things happen travel kids illness you get into an argument with a with a significant other you know or at work or you’re just feeling off you know and so um you know it’s important to try and do these things on average is my belief and to be you know with oneself when the time calls for it and then there’s other times when you just Scruff yourself and say like enough of this like enough huberman like it’s time to sit down and write this thing I don’t care if you phone is ringy or not I don’t care if you want to or not and you build up your amcc while you’re doing it right you know that the if ever there was a carrot for the hard for doing the hard thing it’s that amcc activation that makes your amcc larger which makes your willpower more accessible in the future so it’s not that I’m unsympathetic to people who are like wow this just feels like a lot but we also have to remember um that we should all I think as a species be and individual and indiv as individual excuse me be striving to do better each day um better than yesterday in on the backdrop of what we happen to be dealing with today I I really really do I mean last week I had a great week up until Thursday and then something happened Thursday it was a purely professional thing and it was like everything got derailed I literally didn’t sleep that night very rare for me very rare and I was and it’s interesting the pattern that emerged I did some reflecting on later after this event passed which was there’s always this moment where we’re like where we don’t want to do damage control where we’re thinking gosh if I just hadn’t done that or if that person just hadn’t done that you you’re trying to control of the past so there’s that moment and I’ve learned you have to let that process take place unless you have the amazing abilities of a you know of a special op tier one special operations person who seems to be able to just live in the moment by the way those guys I know a lot of them very close to them tremendous respect for them but a lot of them have trouble when they return from that kind of landscape where well that’s done you got to focus on the next thing because real life involves sometimes ruminating over the thing that happened and just living in that space of I wish that hadn’t happened yeah now you try and compress that to be a limited amount of time and then you get to okay damage control and Damage Control sucks because there’s the opportunity cost of all the other things that you’re not doing while you’re doing damage control so you know the human animal including me needs to accept that there are certain things that we just aren’t going to get perfect um and I hate doing damage control like everybody does but I probably hate it a little bit more and under those conditions I just think okay you know what this isn’t 72 hours lost this is an opportunity to learn and indeed we came out of this situation better had then we not gone into it but I’ll tell you that realization didn’t arrive until Sunday and I was pretty upset on Friday and I’m not a bad mood guy I’m not a moody guy I don’t get headaches I don’t get stomach I’m not moody people don’t grade on me even people with very different opinions and things I’m like Live and Let Live kind like my Bulldog Costello so I guess to to answer your question very directly here at the end I think optimization is not about removing all negative emotion or physical States optimization is about working with what’s right in front of you with the understanding that the human brain and its capacity to think about the past the present or the future in some combination sometimes occasionally the anchor is still stuck in the sand a few hours or days back back or years back and we have to accept that as part of our normal neural functioning and psychological functioning and and try and get um you know and try and get unored and and move forward but that when we’re in those moments you know we have to know that we’re in them and one of the most useful tools that for this was given to me by a podcast guest the episode hasn’t come out yet Dr Lisa Feldman Barrett who’s done a lot on the neurobiology of emotions and psychology of emotions and you know she said and it’s so powerful anytime you feel a high activation state of any kind you should stop because what it’s what’s happening is it’s revealing to you something very important and if you don’t stop to think about why I’m so upset or why I’m so happy you’re going to miss an important lesson so this could be positive states too anytime you feel like you’re getting above eight out of 10 or seven and a half out of 10 on some scale of internal arousal for good or bad reasons you want to reflect what is the lesson do gosh I really love this person I love this interaction I love this aspect of my job so that’s going to inform the next job I take because I don’t love the rest of the job or this really sucks and there’s a lesson and I learned a very important lesson in that last Thursday but I didn’t realize it until late Saturday but I remember on Thursday this thing hit and I was pissed I don’t get pissed very often but I was pissed and I remember hearing Lisa’s voice in my head and thinking okay what is this revealing to me Strategic Learning opportunity three days later I had in my journal and I still have in my journal I have many journals but I have one that’s permanent that kind of is the distilled out things that kind of rise to the top as truths for me and it revealed to me that I care oh so very much about certain things to the point where they’re not about my career they’re really about my my life my quality of life and that small cluster of things is something that now I protect inside I’m stealing Paul K’s language here but inside the castle walls of what I consider important like I brought some things in that I think before I wasn’t Reckless with but I didn’t realize it would be like if you have a prized horse or child and you’re letting them play outside the castle walls and you know they Marauders out there but all of a sudden one takes a a a you know an arrow through the heart and you’re like and it’s a huge loss well what do you do with your other horses or children you bring them inside the castle walls right but you it would be a shame to have to have that experience in order to recognize how important they are to you but there were certain things that I was just not protecting and now I feel so secure I also feel like I gained a huge lesson so do so the the short list here is when it when the [ __ ] storm hits to put it in scientific nomenclature know that you you’re going to be focused on this for a while accept that as quickly as you can but understand that accepting that itself is its own hard process B pay attention to those states of high arousal there are lessons there even if this is good stuff even if this great stuff the love of your life you’re now getting engaged there’s lessons that there’s things to be gleaned that you’ll want to go back to later and then three or four days later go back to those things and examine them from some different perspectives because I think they’re huge lessons in these high arousal States whether or not it’s high arousal because of terrible things or high arousal because of good things and I think having a process for moving through that is something I didn’t have and I’m still learning to cultivate and you know gosh if you wish that you hadn’t spent as much time on the phone or other people’s wish they haven’t spent as much time on the phone I wish I had known a or had a process for dealing with things that happened to me or that I created um that were unfortunate for myself or others they created for me a process of moving through that that semi structure that accepts that you’re giving up some degree of control but that there’s the opportunity to regain control and establish lessons that you never ever would be able to access purely retroactively yeah that’s kind of like Alchemy like taking something which is you know objectively a pretty crap situation and turning it into something which is really really useful there was a a quote that stuck with me that you tweeted last year or maybe you just taught it to me I can’t remember advice I got early in my career don’t over engage in any controversy unless you are willing to stake your entire reputation on it rather keep focused on discovering new things and creating or else you become known for the controversy and nothing else there is no going back right yeah this um isn’t about avoiding being cancelled because I think some people might translate it to mean that which is why I say it’s not about that it’s about you know we’re given this enormous um privilege to communicate our thoughts very fast now through social media and whether or not you have a big following small following or no following it is still a privilege and it’s something that I’ve learned to really think through and guard and protect as an asset right that we have and I’ve I’ve thought about this from the beginning of posting on things online um and set up certain rules for myself uh for instance I try to ensure that 90% of my posts are really for the pure benefit of the the audience and not for my own entertainment occasionally I’ll see something and I’ll have a one of these like you know I’ll see something animal post or something like oh that’s so cool or the other day I saw something on a on an X account about you know bumblebees that sleep inside of flowers and it was really cool about how they look at polarized light and stuff but I just was really tickled by this fact I thought other people might be as well but it was more for my own entertainment frankly but 90% of what I put out there I’m really trying to think will people benefit from this will they learn from it not are they going to be interested in it but are are they going to learn from it will it get them thinking or doing something beneficial to their mental health or physical health Lord knows I’ve been attacked for you know saying hey this is an interesting study about deliberate cold exposure and then people are like oh it’s underpowered and you know it’s a marginal effect and you know and I love this because I come from the field of science it’s sort of funny to turn people loose on a paper where because you know you’re going to get a range of opinions because no two people read the same paper the same way and everyone would like to say that they are the Arbiter of truth and how to read papers which just makes me chuckle normally those people have not published very many papers themselves it’s sort of this inverse relationship but nonetheless I like to put things out there that stimulate thinking uh positive thinking I don’t like controversy for sake of controversy but you and I have colleagues in the podcast space and there are many people in who are public facing who see a current event and they just say what they think and you know what more power to them but it is an I will say it is a distractor from a larger message that they likely have if they have one at all but and and you see this and it’s not that they go down what happens is they they take their audience that has been built around a certain set of topics and suddenly they’re talking about current events I guess what I’m basically saying is I don’t talk about current events yeah you’ve never as far as I’m aware you’ve never commented on politics you’ve never made any no I actually this is I’ve um politics came to around to me in an interesting way I’ll just share this because it’s it’s exactly how it happened Rogan had Robert Kennedy Jr on his podcast okay and I um liked the post and I commented and the comment was the following I said I hope all um I I hope all presidential candidates go on long form podcasts because I happen to believe that it’s a great way to get to know candidates plural [ __ ] no so didn’t someone edit your Wikipedia page okay so in this so this is interesting so I got calls from colleagues of mine at Stanford I got L literally calls and texts I got calls from major media Outlets asking whether or not I’m a RFK supporter antivaxer to which I said I don’t know how you concluded that okay that’s certainly not my stance right my politics are my politics but but there was a huge leap from and I said and I in my comment I said you know I I look forward to listening and I hope all the candidates go on long form podcast I also see Robert in the gym and it always looks like he’s training hard he trains hard he’s in good condition yeah he wears jeans which I don’t understand when he trains but anyway but he trains hard odd Choice odd choice but it free free country so so so be it so was I commenting on the content of the of his podcast no was I commment you proba had even listened to it yet I hadn’t listened to it yet so but was interesting was in the subsequent days I got an onslaught of kind of assumptions or presumptions really what they were and then yes my I mean this isn’t about maybe this is the time I I’ve published over 70 perer reviewed articles that are indexed on PubMed um you know many of which had secondary sources in time and and other major Outlets that covered the the findings for their relevance to the general public at the time this is around 2016 mostly but in the subsequent years as well that was scraped from my Wikipedia scraped from Wikipedia you mean like scrub removed from well my research contributions are not there on Wikipedia anymore Still Still and um and then it was there were assertions that I was an antivaxer there were assertions that um that I was supporting certain uh political agendas and and so on and then the the page was locked by the editorial staff I’ve had Communications with the founders of Wikipedia who the page has been adjusted somewhat um but not none of my research has been put back I I actually am at this point I I think it’s sort of interesting because it’s such it’s more actually it’s kind of fortunate that it happened in the sense that it’s more telling about how the kind of editorializing around Wikipedia exists then this is really not about me I’m I’m telling this this anecdote um as a way to sort of reveal what was my experience makes very clear that um you know now it includes some some positive some NE is about the podcast that’s fine we we cover supplements some people are and promote supplements in certain contexts mostly behavioral tools but supplements too and so I’m perfectly fine with that being included because that’s true um but it was very interesting to see how um when I the the way that sort of people will pick up the ball and run with things yeah and um and it’s and it’s it’s been super useful for me to understand this because what it’s allowed me to do at first it was like Hey like what’s this about then tried to figure it out then I went you know straight to the top in terms of trying to understand and I realized it’s like okay what do I really love doing I love forging for information that can benefit people’s mental health and physical health I love organizing that information I love dispersing that information to the best of my abilities and um and those are the things that make me happy and those are the things that um seem to resonate with a certain number of people those are also some of the same things that seem to irritate a certain number of people and and I love doing it and so what I’m going to do is just return to doing that and I learned a lot about the landscape of online information in the process very formative experience it seems very formative and as an academic you know all the my papers are on PubMed there’s no unless a paper is retracted or corrected there’s no removing things from the library you Google Scholar will just be kind of Lo like no one’s going in there my H index is fixed and it’s not to be very clear I want to be very clear uh because I don’t want to contradict the the very thing that I opened up the question which is this is not this is not something I wanted to like die on the sword of right but it it it really alerted me to the fact that so much of the information that’s on the on the internet um has been massaged in a particular direction based on presumptions so one of the reasons I’m taking this opportunity to talk about this is not to counter major Media news outlets they’re just trying to make a living for it’s kind of interesting they have a lot of the same advertisers that my podcast does you know I don’t advertise fendy bags but um but you know they use advertisers we we use them it makes it free to everybody um a consequence but I think that it’s really important for people to realize that this question of like what can we who can we trust what can we trust we all have to learn to be good scientists and foragers of information and and and the macro for me is that hopefully people are learning to forge for information better as a consequence of understanding that like yeah no one person holds the truth this is not Mount Olympus right so I think the interesting thing one of the reasons why you might have seen an outsized response to this is people aren’t used to you being in anything right like the the the biggest conspiracy that Andre hubman is going to be a part of is like some new study on sunlight in the eyes or something it’s like is the where’s the P value and stuff it’s like it’s it’s like it’s not uh accessible to the nor plunge Mafia precisely yeah there is by the way a cold plunge Mafia who are they yeah well I’m I’m not going to talk about it’s like uh what’s it called the Saros you’ve got the Brotherhood you’ve made a blood I probably shouldn’t have said that you can keep it in but it’s a pretty it’s it’s a strong group let’s just say politically socially financially power I understand why people are nervous about the cold plune it’s me too so lots and lots of people online um get known for their expertise within one area and then start to think to themselves well why why shouldn’t the world know about my opinion on the Ukraine conflict like I’ve got lots of things to say and everybody thinks that it’s very very valuable so maybe I should contribute to what we should do about climate change or what we what we think should happen in the next election and I think that you know to your credit you’ve done a really good job because you will have opinions you’ve just chosen not to share them presumably right and I vote yeah so but you’ve chosen not to do that and I think that it’s almost like uh the sensitivity dial was turned up so much it’s like where’s the first ever so we knew we knew it was the tattoos and the beard we always knew that that guy was like a like an RFK or you know what I mean and any opportunity for somebody to jump on this right so this is something that I’ve been kind of noticing in myself somebody asked me this I’m doing these live shows at the moment so I know that you do live shows great I want to come to one of your live shows we we’re not doing La I’ll find you a date live shows are so different than podcast and I I learned what is your uh arousal State before you step on stage oh I mean I have a whole pro set of protocols we talk about would you would you send me them sure yeah I would love I spend the whole day basically in a rhythm and I talk to only a limited number of people and I’ve got a rhythm in my head and I’m I’m in uh nsdr hypnosis part of the day I’ve send and receive a few texts of Rick my friend Tim Armstrong my friend Jim Theo I touch base with my team I do prayer I’m I’m like I’m in an altered state and I need all the help I’m looking forward to theoc I’ve got my tour my first UK and Island Tour is happening in November and then I’m going to Dubai we got a huge 2000 person show in Dubai then we’re going to do uh Canada and the US anyway um I got asked recently I’m doing work in progress shows like a comedian for these so I’m doing 40 person shows at East Austin comedy club all of the profits go to charity I wanted to work out my material right before I went on stage even though it’s not it’s not comedy stuff um but I wanted to to do it and it’s been really really useful because I’ve been able to what I shouldn’t really open with that story it’s not so we can move that a bit later it’s a bit heavy it’s a whatever whatever a lot of thoughts about this yeah um so somebody asked me at one of these shows what some of the Unseen prices are that you pay for um building a platform of this size and what I realized was both you and I just like doing the shows that we do like I love I there is nothing that I would prefer to do at 4:23 p.m. on a Friday afternoon than sit down and have this conversation there is nothing that I would rather do right and if you do that for long enough you end up accumulating the size of an audience that carries with it responsibility that you didn’t ask for it didn’t ask to have my like and comment on my friend Joe’s Instagram post scrutinized by mainstream media and trended across of Twitter not only that I had colleagues calling the saying not what is happening to you but literally what happened to you right isn’t that awesome but the same week that we published a clinical trial so it was not as if like my scientific career so it was pretty interesting I actually had very fruitful conversations with those people I I know what I eventually figured out what the uh answer is to the the question you asked before U which is still in in this vein which is here here’s the thing there’s a certain segment in fact a very large segment of listenership viewership and media that want to see you and me and other people do what they would do in a given circumstance for instance why didn’t you counter soand so when they said blank yep why didn’t you stand up for this group when you had the opportunity in that situation whe they’re basically saying is they wish they had had the opportunity and they’re angry that you’re not tip of the spear for them in circumstances that they don’t have access to y i get it but one one thing that uh I learned early on by observation is that a sense of justice and a sense of strong opinion about certain things is incredibly important I mean that that runs in my family but you have to know when Justice needs to line up with action or when Justice is time to walk away when you’re not the best suited for something the other thing that and I have to say Joe Rogan is the best at what I’m about to describe and I admire it so much first of all I’ll go on record saying that I think Joe Rogan has been clearly net positive for science bringing about lots of different conversations about tons of topics let’s just leave the vaccine thing aside for the moment but sleep the the the Cosmos on a limpy right um Peter AA and on and on okay it’s very clear whether or not he’s aware of it or not that he’s not going to be leveraged by anybody no one’s going to come on to show it he’s he can’t he doesn’t allow himself to be used right so when someone gets upset that you’re not taking a stand that they would take they’re upset that they can’t use you to reach their ends and you know I have many flaws like anybody but maybe a few extra I really do and um but one but but included in that extensive list of flaws is not the capacity to be used it just is not I have strong opinions and there’s time for justice and action along particular lines and I prefer to do that not using my social media platform or podcast platform in part because there’s a tremendous number of things that I want to learn about and teach about guests I want to have on to educate as many people as possible so I’m not being political or diplomatic I’m being extremely strategic I’m saying I’m not going to be used to achieve somebody else’s end I want to that’s basically what it is and so I’m I think very hard about like the things I want to take on and they’re mostly about helping people regulate circadian rhythm stress sleep Eating Disorders depression understanding of self through a mental health series addiction sleep you know I said sleep multiple times um and on and on and the other stuff is really barbed wire you can get snagged on it and stuck there and then you’re tossed up against the barbed wire and you’re fighting and you’re bleeding out and guess what a bunch of really great stuff is happening so that you could be focusing on I often I always that’s really what it is I always think about how much of some of the smartest minds of Our Generation time has been taken up arguing over pick your topical issue headline of the moment like what what else could have been achieved if these people who outside of the uh myopia and and like catastrophe that is most of Pop Culture headline stuff are phenomenal thinkers and yet they have a it’s like the Kryptonite that there’s something that pulls them away and I want I want to rip them back in my thumbs start buzzing you know there’s the premotor circuits that get me wanting to put something how often do you how often do you um uh type and delete does that happen much three times a day you’re kidding no but not because of political reasons but um or sensitivity issues but um yeah about three times a day there are a lot of posts that just don’t go up because I’m like it’s not going to land right I don’t touch on current events I mean our friend Lex Freedman covers a lot of current events um and gets right in the middle I mean he likes to he’ll travel to current events yeah you know he’ll land himself in in in dangerous territories I think also something that’s really helped me I had great scientific advisers and mentors coming up I also I I understand the limits of having one brain and one personality and one history and I have a council of people that I refer to often it’s funny I brought my notebook today which I’m always carrying around one of these little notebooks I’m writing on cards and things and in the front of this notebook is a list of names I didn’t think we’d get into this at all today but you a list of names of people that I I look at this list the Council of hean right there it is who who’s in the well I’m not I’ll give you a non-exhaustive but accurate list I mean it includes Rick Rubin close friend Peter AA close friend it includes Joe Strummer Oliver Sachs both of whom are dead and who I never met but I’ve consumed their writings and I know people close to them and I have stories about them it’s got a couple people whose names I’m not going to going to disclose um there there are a few others here that maybe my dead advisers all three of them my dog Costello had a he couldn’t be he he was so stubborn you could not get him to do something he didn’t want to do it was like he would he you couldn’t move him and he always was right about the things he didn’t want to do he had an incredible sense of of understanding about his his environment uh my sisters on here and then you know my team who isn’t aren’t just my team but Rob Mike Ian Martin Gary Greg like Sarah they’re they’re here right so these are like anytime I’m going to put something into the world I look at this list and I think like okay I don’t need uh unanimity but like what would they say about this and because I don’t need to text them most times nine times out of 10 I know infer it just by knowing them absolutely this is this is something I really I really wanted to kind of touch on because you’ve gone and there are others on that list so for those that I didn’t include it’s like a um I want to be jimo right um yeah Joe’s on here it’s like you’re doing an awards ceremony yeah Lex is on here I mean you know so I mean it’s just so clear to me that my brain can’t do it right all the time and I need to call on people alive and dead like known and that I haven’t known to to help me and you know it feels sort of corny to talk about but if there’s one thing I’ve tried to do with the podcast it’s to normalize some of the conversations around things like anxiety stress Sexual Health we’ve been doing a lot about hormone sexual health for women and men communication um you know normalize some of the discussion around these practices that that to some people might seem kind of hokey but to me I mean this list isn’t like three out of 10 in terms of the potency scale of like my productivity and feelings of of safety in life so that I can go do my best work it’s like 11 out of 10 yeah 11 out of 10 um and it’s the kind of thing where most of these people don’t even know no one knows they’re on their list until on this list until now um but I’ve always had this list in different forms and it’s updated over the years when I was a kid I mean growing up by a hero listen to him every day of my life from 13 on Tim Armstrong lead singer for rans Operation Ivy transplants you like literally every day and through some magical Stroke of Luck we become very close friends so he was guiding me all along but he’s about he’s 10 years older than I am he has deep he’s extremely smart extremely smart and he has deep understanding of human dynamics and how to be in the world while trying to do creative work now he’s a musician not a scientist but his level of curiosity intellect memory I mean it’s it like it doesn’t just it for years it inspired me but now like I’ll text or called him I did that last week like hey I this is a tough situation really help me I called a few other people too but he’s on this list and he has been since I was 13 how Wild is that it turns out you know never meet your Heroes right well it turns out this hero ended up like wildly exceeding my my expectations in the positive direction you do know that there’s someone listening to this there’s probably millions of people listening to this at least not thousands to whom you’re that person right that you they have this parasocial relationship with you even if you didn’t ask for it even parasocial I like that it’s almost like Paranormal but parasocial that’s the write that down get it in there along with whatever it was cosplay and we’ve got a good list and huba husbands huba dad um I’m really fascinated by what’s what it’s been like to be a relatively unknown academic working in the annals just doing your thing doing your research to now as a byproduct of a passion to share science based tools for people now being sort of Thrust out into the public what’s the felt sense of this rapid increase in exposure and scrutiny and fame being like um so I love to tell you that it’s disorienting but um truly by virtue of feeling very aligned with the work and purpose of the work that I’m doing I feel like I’m at least in terms of my daily activities and where my mind is at I’m exactly where I for the first time I’m like exactly where I I feel like I’m exactly where I belong not because I’m known and that the podcast has achieved this uh recognition for which I’m very grateful and humbled by but because I love forging for organizing and dispensing information so 95% of my cognitive powers are set toward like the episode I’m preparing for next week or the week after and I have to like literally pull in my impulse to now take off on a tangent about my use of toe spacers to fix this like imbalance because of like foot health and like I’ll I’ll go there that’s the thing but like it’s all getting teed up I I prepare for podcasts I someone asked how long it takes me and I realize in total because I start so many months ahead somewhere between very low end the lowest ever would have been 12 but it’s typically more like 150 to two hours of preparation and I love every fraking second of it and so for me it feels great because it allows me to do what I’m doing now in terms of being public facing I mean I’m a pretty introverted person I love close Dynamics you know if I think for a second about meaning one-on-one Dynamics and small group dynamics small parties at my house and things I’m comfortable crowds but I’m not interested in in being in them per se but if I think for a second about how many people are going to listen to something I’ll just I don’t know I don’t think about it because best not to do it um you know it’s changed my life dramatically and and mostly for the positive um in positive ways you know getting filmed while you’re in the gym is um funny because you know I always have like If Ever I need to use perfect form like no really need to you know I’m the guy on The Tib ra machine that’s the real that’s the real Scandal it’s not that you liked a Joe and RFK post it’s the fact that you can’t do preacher curs with perfect temper oh I’m full I’m a full range emotion guy I’m a full range emotion guy um but I am the guy on The Tib machine every day um not every day but any day I’m in the gym um yeah getting filmed when you’re not aware that you’re getting filmed some security breaches in that not directly towards me but towards members of my family and community that those have been annoying but that goes with the territory and have been mostly lucky 99% of interactions are immensely positive when people come over and say hello I I enjoy it it’s you know I don’t always have a lot of time so there those kinds of things but I’m somebody who’s genuinely curious about other people so in those interactions like I want to learn about them um I already know about me I want to learn about them I I’ve always been genuinely curious about other people this isn’t a line like I I’ve been friends with the garbage man the janitor the um you know my dentists like you know well there I’ve got stuff in my mouth so I can’t it’s a one-way conversation but um you know learning about people I think allows one to also deliver information in a way that’s more accessible to people this is something that I’m I would guess I would go as far as to say that the level of Fame and recognition that I have now is about as like goldilock Zone as it’s as it’s possible to get it’s maybe once every 10 to 15 minutes if I’m walking in a crowded area somewhere and it’ll be a 10 minute convers a 10-sec conversation of hi mate really love the podcast that or like the Amazon Prime delivery driver shouted out of the window the day and those are the people that that that allow us to do what we do right like like I’m so grateful that people are interested in the kinds of information that you put out and that I put out I mean I look at them I I look at anyone I interact with as the students in my classroom the same way I would the way I manage my comment section on social media classroom rules you can say whatever you want to me but don’t be don’t be uncool to other people and or I’m going to block you why it’s not I can’t take it listen I grew up in skateboarding I grew up in Academia The Hazing process in those communities very different was intense it was physical psychological emotional torture at times and so you develop a very thick skin I mean skateboarding if you do something and you don’t make it look right or something’s a little off like you’re going to own that reputation for years and so that’s your new nickname yeah you you have to have your I I’m not going to say it the way I’d say it back then but like I mean you have to have every your kit has to be right everything has to be right and yet you have to try things and so it’s you know learning to work through the narrow constraints of of social media is nothing compared to trying to come up through Academia where people say oh nice nice great to see you and then they kill your papers or grants behind your back it’s a game of backstabbing now they put reviewers on on names on paper so it conditioned me for it I will say this I’m very grateful that all this happened in my 40s my mid-40s I started the podcast when I was 45 I’m 48 now it’s been years why why why that timing I just think about the young brain the 20s 30s you know so much of of our identity has formed earlier in life but we’re still trying to figure out who we are I know exactly who I am I’m the guy that since age five has been Gathering organizing and disseminating information I like lots of different kinds of people I like Misfits and runts and winner and like and you know and jocks and punkers and hippies and I have gay friends and straight friends like Live and Let I love it all that’s why I oriented towards skateboarding and punk rock because it was like all the Styles all the hair styles I mean people think of like just like bullet belts and Mohawks no then you got your peace punks you your vegan punks you got all this like and I have my thing what I liked but I love the variety because I love the Flora and Fauna of life I don’t love raccoons or cppy bars per se but I love how they fit into the animal kingdom and I I have an obsession with animals and weird animals and seapods and the octopuses and the you know uh the platypuses and and all of it and so for me like being on social media I get to step back and look at all of it but I’m not going to let anyone decide who I am or who I’m not like I’m the guy who was wearing black shirts before my colleague David felim will tell you this he’s a professor at e sand Cruz he once tweeted he was like he always wore the black shirt and I was like yes it’s true I didn’t change it all I didn’t feel like I had to modify myself I know you know I always tried hold the door for people I I I tried am I perfect no um so it’s changed things a lot um and yet it hasn’t changed me at all I love it Dr Andrew hubman ladies and gentlemen dude I really appreciate you very much appreciate the support that you’ve given me over the last year when I’ve needed to text you and I’ve needed a little bits in pieces it really does mean a lot to me so what can people expect remainder of 2023 what have you got coming up okay well I can tell you um but first can can I just please just take a moment say thank you um for this opportunity thanks for the kind words I will say something very important about you which is that you know coming up in the various Sports I did skateboarding and science I have a really good eye for the the person like I’m gonna put my money on that person to be at the top at some point down the line it’s interesting because um I’m not talented at many things I’m proficient at certain things I work really hard truly um if I have any inborn abilities it’s my memory is always been sharp but loving the thing you’re learning helps early on when I saw your content it created some sense in Me based on how you were delivering it the passion the honesty behind it and the ways in which you were like moving through and trying to figure it out that I was like this guy’s going to be like at the top and I I was I was right in that your Ascent trajectory predicts that like I I mean okay there’s still room for Upward trajectory great but you know every once in a while someone comes along where like he just loves what he does it’s so clear that he’s meant to do this like you love and I think it has a lot to do with the genuiness with which you invite on and meet your guests like you’re not going to put someone on because they’re going to get clicks you’re you’re going to invite people on because you really want to talk to them and that that’s very clear and I think I know that resonates with people so I’ve been truly an avid consumer of your content from go and it’s been awesome to see your ascent and I’m sure that this is just the beginning so I want to say thank you thank you you know thank you and and I I look forward to deepening our friendship um and that’s a real thing because early on when Lex and I became friends through podcasting at some point I realized I was like we need to hang out without these microphones in front of us I went out to Austin for two weeks we just hung out we just hung out it’s also where he did the Jiu-Jitsu thing where he choked so got me there I get you back Lex but not with jiu-jitsu psychological Jiu-Jitsu but I hope we get the chance to spend time and I really just want to say what whatever you’re doing keep going because it’s awesome and it’s clear that you’re really working hard in your craft and I’m really excited about the lives and we can talk about that thank you rest of 2023 I’m going to try and finish this book that I’ve been procrastinating on for a few years now it’s mainly going to be a book of protocols so it’s very straightforward as to what to do it’s kind of the what to do stuff not so much story I think there’s a need for that or so you know that’s going to that’s going to break the world when that thing comes out well I’m putting my heart and soul into it I got I got an idea of completion date and then publication prale should probably be February and and it should come out end of 24 y so and I’m putting everything I’ve got into that book um while still podcasting we’re going to do a series we’ve done these guest series we did one with Dr Andy Galpin on Fitness we did one on Mental Health with Dr Paul Conti we’re going to do one with Dr Matthew Walker on sleep and one with Dr Anna lmy on addiction and dopamine soon so that the guest series um are are that going forward and then you know there were times when we thought okay we need to do something else like do we need an app do we and we’ve really taken a step back we’re just like we’re just going to keep searching for organizing and dispensing information mainly in the form of the Monday podcast occasion of these guest series we do have a premium channel that generates Revenue that is directed toward scientific studies talk too much about this but a significant portion of that has been put to philanthropy to Laboratories working on eating disorders on Mind Body States on intermittent fasting didn’t you didn’t you recently uh redo your website isn’t yoursite more searchable so if you go to hubman lab.com the engineers have done a great job where it’s highly searchable now it take you to specific time stamps you could even say like dopamine procrastination it’ll take you to that particular time stamp and I think as the AI tools get better um there’ll be more things like that but really it’s going to just be more of the same live shows any more live shows this year we’ve got live shows coming up in Australia so the first one in Sydney sold out the opera house one sold out but there’s another one being announced soon and then there’s a Melbourne and Brisbane where should people go if they want to sign up for that uh it’s hubman lab.com tour to get tickets um and those are fun and they’re very different than the podcast and but you know I’m not I joked a a few months back with uh traditional media I wasn’t joking that you know I might run for office someday like from what I’ve seen of the experience of politics like I want to retract that statement I have zero minus one interest in running for office um but I have every interest in just continuing to to indulge this this Obsession slash uh Delight that I get from learning and teaching and and sharing information so like yeah that’s the plan and um keep the main thing the main thing man yeah that’s the thing you know and I never know like I come from a long line of academic advisers that all died early like I hope I’ll live a long time but I don’t know if it’s going to be canc or a bullet or a boss that’s going to take me out or old age I have no idea so I’m just you I’m just leaning into this as hard as I can hell yeah I appreciate you man thank you for today I appreciate you thanks so much Chris thank you very much for tuning in if you enjoyed that episode with Dr hubman you will love my episode with Dr Peter AA which you can check out right here go on press it