i'm a man i'm a man i'm a video man
- Listen, when it comesto romantic relationships,
if it's not a hundred percent in you,
it ain't happening.
And I've never seen
a violation of that statement
where it's like, yeah, it'smostly good and they're this,
and this is like the negotiations.
Well, already you're, it's doomed.
And that doesn't meansomeone has to be perfect,
the relationship has to be perfect.
But it's gotta feel ahundred percent inside.
Like, yes, yes, and yes.
- The following is aconversation with my dear friend,
Andrew Huberman, his fourthtime on this podcast.
It's my birthday.
So this is a specialbirthday episode of sorts.
Andrew flew down to Austin justto wish me a happy birthday,
and we decided to doa podcast last second.
We literally talked for hours beforehand
and a long time after,late into the night.
He's one of my favorite humanbeings, brilliant scientist,
incredible teacher, and a loyal friend.
I'm grateful for Andrew.
I'm grateful for good friends,
for all the support and love I've gotten
over the past few years.
I'm truly grateful for this life.
For the years, the days, the minutes,
the seconds I've gotten to live
on this beautiful earth of ours.
I really don't want to leave just yet.
I think I'd really like to stick around.
I love you all.
This is the "Lex Fridman Podcast."
And now, dear friends,here's Andrew Huberman.
- I'm trying to
run a little bit more.
- Are you losing weight?
- I'm not trying to lose weight,
but I always do the same fitness routine
after like 30 years, basically,
lift three days a week,run three days a week.
But one of the runs is a longrun, one of 'em is medium,
one of 'em is a sprint-type thing.
So what I've decided to dothis year was just extend
the duration for the long run.
And I like being a mobile.
I never wanna be soheavy that I can't move.
Like I wanna be able to go out
and run 10 miles if I have to.
So sometimes I do.
And I wanna be able tosprint if I have to.
So sometimes I do.
And lifting an objects, feels good.
It feels good to train like a lazy bear
and just lift heavy objects.
But I've also startedtraining with lighter weights
and higher repetitions,
and for three month cycles,
and it gives your joints a rest.
And yeah, so probably, you know,
I think it also is interesting to see
how training differentlychanges your cognition.
That's probably hormone-related,
you know, that hormonesdownstream of training heavy
versus hormones downstream oftraining a little bit lighter.
I think my cognition is betterwhen I'm doing more cardio
and when the repetition rangesare a little bit higher,
which is not to say thatpeople who lift heavy are dumb,
but there is a...
'cause there's realvalue in lifting heavy.
- There's a lot of angrypeople listening to
this right now.- No, no, no.
But lifting heavy and thentaking 3 to 5 minutes rest
is far and away a different challenge
than running hard for 90 minutes.
That's a tough thing.
Just like getting in anice bath, people say,
"Oh, well, how is that anydifferent than working out?"
Well, there are a lot of differences,
but one of 'em is thatit's very acute stress,
within one second you're stressed.
So I think subjecting the body to a bunch
of different types ofstressors in space and time
is really valuable.
So yeah, I've beenplaying with the variables
in a pre-systematic way.
- Well, I like long and slow
for, like you said, theimpact it has on my cognition.
- Yeah, the wordlessness of it,
the way it puts you in a,
the way it seems to clean out the clutter.
You know, it can take away that hyperfocus
and put you more in arelaxed focus, for sure.
- Well, for me, it brings the clutter
to the surface at first.
Like, all these thoughts come in there
and then they dissipate.
You know, I've been,
because I got knee barred pretty hard,
that's when somebodytries to break your knee,
you know?- That's Jiu-jitsu.
They try and break your knee?
Oh, so you tap, so they...
- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So it's, you know, hyperextend the knee
at that direction, they gotknee barred pretty hard.
So in ways I don't understand,it kinda hurts to run.
I don't understand what'shappening behind there.
I need to investigate this.
It basically, this, the hamstringing flex,
like curling your leg hurts a little bit.
And that results in this weird, dull,
but sometimes extremely sharppain in the back of the knee.
So I'm working through this, anyway,
but walking doesn't hurt.
So I've been playing aroundwith walking recently,
like for two hours and thinking-
- I love that.- because I know
a lot of like smartpeople throughout history.
I have walked and thought,and you have to like,
you know, play with thingsthat have worked for others.
Not just to exercise,
but to like integrate this very light
kind of prolonged exerciseinto a productive life.
So they do all theirthinking while they walk.
It's like a meditative type of walking.
And it's really interesting.
It really works.
- Yeah, the practice I've beendoing a lot more of lately
is I walk while reading a book,
in the yard, I'll just pace back and forth
or walk in a circle.
- [Lex] Audiobook
or are you talking about-- No, hard copy.
- [Lex] Well, you're just holding-
- I'm holding the book andI'm walking and I'm reading.
And I usually have apen and I'm underlining,
I have this whole system,
like underlining stars,exclamation points,
goes back to university ofwhat things I'll go back to,
which things I export tonotes and that kind of thing.
But from the beginning whenI opened my lab at that time
in San Diego before Imoved back to Stanford,
I would have meetings withmy students or postdocs
by just walking in thefield behind the lab,
you know, and I'd bringmy Bulldog, Costello.
Bulldog Masttif at the time.
And he was a slow walker.
So these were slow walks,
but I can think muchmore clearly that way.
There's a Nobel Prize winning professor
at Columbia University Schoolof Medicine, Richard Axel,
who won the Nobel Prize, co-wonNobel Prize with Linda Buck
for the discovery of themolecular basis of olfaction.
And he walks and voicedictates his papers.
And now with Rev or these other,
maybe there are better ones than Rev,
where you can convert audiofiles into text very quickly
and then edit from there.
So I will often voice dictate first drafts
and things like that.
And I totally agree on the long runs,
the walks, the integratingthat with cognitive work,
harder to do with sprints.
And then the gym, you know,
are you, you weight train?
- Yeah.- You just seem naturally
strong and like thicker jointed.
- (chuckles)- It's true, it's true.
I mean, we did the one very beginner.
'cause I'm a very beginnerof jiu-jitsu class together.
And yeah, as I mentioned then,what if people missed it?
Lex is freakishly strong.
- I think I was borngenetically to hug people.
- [Andrew] Oh, like Costello.
- Yeah, exactly.- You guys have
a certain similarity.
He had wrists, like, you know,
it's like you and Jocko andCostello have these like wrists
and elbows that are super thick, you know,
and then when you look around,you see tremendous variation.
You know, some people have likethe wrist width of a Whippet
or Woody Allen, and thenother people like you or Jocko
or, you know?
There's this one Jocko videoor thing on GQ or something.
Have you seen the comments on Jocko?
These are the best.
- [Lex] No. (chuckles)
- The comments, I lovethe comments on YouTube
'cause occasionally they're funny.
The best is when Jocko was born,
the doctor looked at hisparents and said, it's a man.
(Lex laughs)
- [Lex] It's like ChuckNorris type comments.
- Oh yeah, those are great.
That's what I miss aboutRogan being on YouTube
with the full lengthepisode, oh, that comment.
- So this is technicallya birthday podcast.
What do you love most about getting older?
- It's like, the confirmation
that comes from getting more and more data
that which basically says,
yeah, the first timeyou thought that thing,
it was actually right
because the second, thirdand fourth and fifth time,
it turned out the exact same way.
In other words, there havebeen a few times in my life
where I did not feel easyabout something I felt
a signal from my body, this is not good.
And I didn't trust it early on,
but I knew it was there.
And then two or threebad experiences later,
I'm able to say, ah, every single time
there was a signal from the body
informing my mind, "this is not good."
Now the reverse has also been true
that there've been a number of instances
in which I feel theresort of immediate delight.
And there's this kindof almost astonishingly
simple experience of feelingcomfortable with somebody
or at peace with something,or delighted at an experience.
And it turns out all,
literally all of thoseexperiences and people
turned out to be experiences and people
that are still in my life
and that I still delight in every day.
In other words, what'sgreat about getting older
is that you stop questioning
the signals that come from the,
I think, deeper recesses ofyour nervous system to say,
Hey, this is not good, or hey,this is great, more of this.
Whereas, I think in myteens, my 20s, my 30s,
I'm 40, almost 48, I'll be 48 next month.
I didn't trust, I didn't listen.
I actually put a lot of workinto overriding those signals
and learning to fight through them,
thinking that somehowthat was making me tougher
or somehow that was making me smarter.
When in fact, in the end,
those people that you meet that are,
you know, difficult or you know,
there are other names forit, you know, it's like,
in the end you're like, thatperson's a piece of, you know?
Or this person is amazingand they're really wonderful.
And I felt that from go.
- So you've learned to trust your gut
versus like the influencesof other people's opinions.
- I've learned to trust my gut versus
the forebrain over analysis,overriding the gut.
Other people often in my lifehave had great optics, right?
I've benefited tremendouslyfrom an early age of being
in a large community.
Well, it's been mostly guys,
but I have some close femalefriends and always have as well
who will tell me thatthat's a bad decision
or this person not so good, or be careful,
or they're great, or that's great.
So oftentimes my communityand the people around me
have been more alignedwith the correct choice
than not-- Christian, really?
- Yes- Really?
When you were younger, like,
or like friends, parents and so on?
- I don't recall ever reallylistening to my parents
that much, you know, Igrew up in a, you know,
we don't have to go backto my childhood thing,
but my sense was that-- It's your fault, Andrew.
- Thank you, I learned that recently
in a psilocybin journey.
My first high dose psilocybin journey,
which was-- Welcome back.
- done with a clinician,thank you very much.
Thank you.
I was worried there fora second at one point,
I might not coming back,
but in any event, yeah, Igrew up with some wild kids.
You know, I would sayabout a third of my friends
from childhood are dead or in jail,
about a third have gone on
to do tremendously impressive things.
Start companies, excellent athletes,
academics, scientists and clinicians.
And then about a thirdare living their lives
as kind of more typical.
I just mean, that they arehappy family people with jobs
that they mainly serve thefunction to make money.
They're not sort ofcareer into their career
for career's sake.
But, so some of my friendsearly on gave me some bad ideas,
but most of the time,my bad ideas came from
overriding the signalsthat I knew that my body,
and I would say my body andbrain were telling me to obey.
And now I say body and brain is that
there's this brain region, the insula,
which does many things,
but it represents oursense of internal sensation
and interoception.
And I was talking toPaul Conti about this,
you know, who as you know,I respect tremendously.
I think he's one of thesmartest people I've ever met,
I think for different reasons.
He and Marc Andreessenare some of the like,
smartest people I've ever met.
But Paul's level of insightinto the human psyche
is absolutely astounding.
And he says the oppositeof what most people say
about the brain, which is most people say,
oh, the supercomputer ofthe brain is the forebrain.
It's like a monkey brain
with a extra real estate put on there,
and the forebrain is what makes us human
and gives us our superpowers.
Paul has said,
and he's done a wholeseries on mental health
that's coming out fromour podcast in September.
So this is not an attempt to plug that,
but he'll elaborate on-
- Wait, Paul-- what I'm about to say.
- [Lex] Wait, you'redoing a thing with Paul
with the series?- We already did.
Yeah, so Paul-- Oh, nice.
- Yeah, so Paul Conti shot, we did,
he and I sat down and hedid a four episode series
on mental health.
This is not mental illness, mental health
about how to exploreone's own subconscious,
explore the self build andcultivate the generative drive.
You'll learn more aboutwhat that is from him.
He's far more eloquentand clearer than I am.
And he provides essentially
a set of steps to explore the self
that does not require thatyou work with a therapist.
This is self-explorationthat is rooted in psychiatry,
it's rooted in neuroscience.
And I don't think thisinformation exists anywhere else.
I'm not aware that itexists anywhere else.
And he essentially distills it all down
to one 8 1/2 by 11 sheet,which we provide for people.
And he says there,
I don't want to give too much away
because I would detract fromwhat he does so beautifully,
but if I tried and I wouldn'thave accomplish it anyway.
But he said, "And I believethat the subconscious
is the supercomputer of the brain.
All the stuff working underneathour conscious awareness
that's driving our feelings
and what we think are the decisions
that we've thought through so carefully.
And that only byexploring the subconscious
and understanding it a little bit,
can we actually improveourselves over time."
And I agree.
I think that, so that the mistake
is to think that thinkingcan override it all.
It's a certain style ofintrospection in thinking
that allows us to readthe signals from our body,
read the signals from our brain, integrate
the knowledge that we'recollecting about ourselves
and to use all that in waysthat are really adaptive,
and generative for us.
- What do you think isthere in that subconscious,
what do you think of theJungian shadow, what's there?
- You know, there's this idea,as you're familiar with too,
I'm sure that thisJungian idea that there,
we all have all things inside of us.
That all of us have thecapacity to be evil,
to be good, et cetera,
but that some peopleexpress one or the other
to a greater extent.
But he also mentioned thatthere's a unique category
of people, maybe 2 to 5% of people
that don't just have allthings inside of them,
but they actually spenda lot of time exploring
a lot of those things.
The darker recesses, theshadows, their own shadows.
You know, I'm somebody who's drawn
to goodness and to light, and to joy,
and all those things like anybody else.
But yeah, I think maybe itwas part of how I grew up.
Maybe it was the crowdI was with, maybe...
But then again, you know,
even when I started spendingmore time with academics
and scientists, I mean,
you see shadows in other ways, right?
You see pure ambition with no passion.
I recall a colleague in San Diego
who, it was very clear to me,
did not actually care aboutunderstanding the brain,
but understanding thebrain was just his avenue
to exercise ambition.
And if you gave himsomething else to work on,
he'd work on that, in fact, he did.
He left and he worked on something else.
I realized he has no passion
for understanding the brain, like all,
I assumed all scientists do,certainly why I went into it.
But some people, it's just raw ambition.
It's about winning.
It doesn't even matter what they win.
It's to which to me is crazy.
But I think that's a shadowthat some people explore,
not one I've explored.
I think the shadow partsof us are very important
to come to understand and look,
better to understand themand know that they're there
and work with them than to notacknowledge their presence,
and have them surface in theform of addictions or behaviors
that damage us and other people.
- So one of the processesfor achieving mental health
is to bring those things to the surface.
So fish the subconscious mind.
- Yes, and you know,
Paul describes 10 cupboardsthat one can look into
for exploring the self.
There's the structure of selfand the function of self.
Again, this will all bespelled out in this series
in a lot of detail also interms of its relational aspect
between people, how to pick good partners
and good relations.
It gets really into this froma very different perspective.
Yeah, fascinating stuff.
I was just sitting there, just...
I will say this, that fourepisode series with Paul
is at least to date,the most important work
I've ever been involvedin, in all of my career.
Because it's very clearthat we are not taught
how to explore our subconscious.
And that very few people actuallyunderstand how to do that.
Even most psychiatrists,
he mentioned somethingabout psychiatrists.
You know, if you're acardiothoracic surgeon
or something like that and50% of your patients die,
you're considered a badcardiothoracic surgeon.
But with no disrespect to psychiatrists,
there are some excellentpsychiatrists out there.
There are also a lot of terriblepsychiatrists out there.
Because unless all of those,
all of their patients commitsuicide or half commit suicide,
they can treat for a long timewithout it becoming visible
that they're not so good at their craft.
Now he's superb at his craft.
And I think he would say that,yes, exploring some shadows,
but also just understanding the self.
Like what, you know,really understanding like,
who am I and what's important?
What are my ambitions?
What are my strivings?
Again, I'm lifting from some of the things
that he'll describeexactly how to do this.
People do not spend enough timeaddressing those questions.
And as a consequence,
they discover what residesin their subconscious
through the sometimesbad, hopefully also good,
but manifestations of their actions.
We are driven by this huge 90%
of our real estate that is not visible
to our conscious awareness.
And we need to understand that,
you know, I've talked about this before,
I've done therapy twicea week since I was a kid.
I had to, as a condition ofbeing let back in school,
I continue, I found a wayto either through insurance
or even when I didn't have insurance,
I took an extra job writingfor Thrasher Magazine
when I was a postdoc
so I could pay for therapy at a discount
'cause I didn't makemuch money as a postdoc.
I mean, I think for me,
it's as important as going to the gym.
And people think it's just, oh, you know,
ruminating on problemsor getting, no, no, no.
If you work with somebody really good,
they're forcing you to ask questions
about who you really are,what you really want.
It's not just about support,but there should be support,
there should be rapport,
but then it's also, thereshould be insight, right?
Most people who get therapy,they're getting support.
There's rapport,
but insight is not easy to arrive at.
And a really goodpsychologist or psychiatrist
can help you arrive at deep insights
that transform your entire life.
- Well, sometimes when I lookinside, and I do this often,
you know, exploring who you truly are,
you come to this question,
do I accept once you see parts,
do I accept this or do I fix this?
Is this who you are fundamentally,
and it will always be this way?
Or is this a problem to be fixed?
Like, for example, one of the things,
especially recently,
but in general over timeI've discovered about myself
probably has roots in childhood,
probably has roots in a lot of things,
is I deeply value loyalty
maybe more than the average person.
And so when there's disloyalty,it can be painful to me.
And so this is who I am, andso do I have to relax a bit?
Do I have to fix this part?Or is this who you are?
And there's a million,that's one like little...
- I think loyalty is agood thing to cling to,
provided that when loyalty is broken,
that it doesn't disrupt toomany other areas of your life.
But it spends also on who'sdisrupting that loyalty,
if it's a coworkerversus a romantic partner
versus your exclusive romantic partner,
depending on the structure
of your romantic partner life, you know,
I mean, I have always experienced extreme
joy and feelings of safety,
and trust in my friendships.
Again, mostly male friendships,
but female friendshipstoo, which is only to say
that they were mostly male friendships.
The female friendshipshave also been very loyal.
You know, so getting backstabbed
is not something I'm familiar with.
And yeah, I love being crude up, you know?
- Yeah, yeah, no, forsure and I'm with you,
and you know, you and I are very much
have the same values on this,
but you know, that's one little thing.
And then there's many other things,
like I'm extremely self-critical.
Then you look at my, you know,
I look at myself as, I'mregularly very self-critical,
there's a self-criticalengine in my brain.
And I talked to actually Paul about this,
I think on the podcast quite a bit.
And he's saying, thisis a really bad thing.
Like, you need to fix this.
You need to be able to beregularly very positive
about yourself.
And I kept disagreeing with him.
No, this is like who I am.
And he seems to work,
don't mess with a thing thatseems to be working, it's fine.
Like I oscillate betweenbeing really grateful
and really self-critical.
But then you have to likefigure out what is it,
maybe there's a deeper root thing.
Maybe there's an insecurityin there somewhere
that has to do with childhood
and then you're trying toprove something to somebody
from your childhood, this kind of thing.
- Well, a couple things thatI think are hopefully valuable
for people here.
One is
one way to destroy your life
is to spend time trying to control your
or somebody else's past.
So much of our destructive behavior
and thinking comes from wanting something
that we saw or did, orheard to not be true,
rather than really workingwith that and getting close
to what it really was.
And you know, sometimes thosethings are even traumatic
and we need to really get close to them
and for them to move through us.
And that, you know, thereare a bunch of different ways
to do that with supportfrom others and hopefully,
but sometimes on our own as well.
I don't think we canrewire our deep preferences
and what we find despicable or joyful.
I do think that
it's really a questionof what allows us peace.
Like, can you be at peace with the fact
that you're very self-critical
and enjoy that, get some distance from it,
have a sense of humor about it
or is it driving you in a way
that's keeping you awake at night
and forcing you back to thetable to do work in a way
that feels self-flagellatingand doesn't feel good.
You know, can you get thathumility and awareness
of how you're, you know,of your one's flaws?
And I think that can create, you know,
this word space sounds very new agey,
like get space from it.
It's, you know, you canhave a sense of humor
about how, you know,neurotic, we can all be,
I mean, you know, neurotic isn't actually
a bad term in the classicsense of the psychologists
and psychiatrists, the freudians.
So that, you know, the bestcase is to be neurotic,
to actually see one's ownissues and work with them.
Whereas psychotic is the other way to be,
which is obviously not good.
So I think the question whetheror not to work on something
or to just accept it as part of ourselves,
I think really depends
if we feel like it'sholding us back or not.
And I think you're asking perhapsthe most profound question
about being a human, which is,
you know, what do you do with your body?
What do you do with your mind?
I mean, it's also a question.
We started off talkingabout fitness a little bit.
We just, for whatever reason,
you know, do I need torun an ultra marathon?
I don't feel like I need to.
David Goggins does, and doesa whole lot more than that.
So that for him, that's important.
For me, it's not important to do that.
I don't think he does it justso he can run the ultras.
There's clearly somethingelse in there for him.
And guys like Cam Hanes
and tremendous respect for whatthey do and how they do it.
Does one need to make theirbody more muscular, stronger,
more endurance, more flexibility?
Do you need to read harder books?
Do you need to, I thinkdoing hard things feels good.
I think it, I know it feels good.
I know that the worst I feel,
the worst way to feel iswhen I'm procrastinating
and I don't do something.
And then whenever I dosomething and I complete it,
and I break through thatpoint where it was hard
and then I'm doing it,
at the end, I actuallyfeel like I was infused
with some sort of super chemical.
And who knows if it's probably a cocktail
of endogenously made chemicals.
But I think it is good to do hard things,
but you have to be carefulnot to destroy your body,
your mind in the process.
And I think it's about whetheror not you can achieve peace.
Can you sleep well at night?
Stress isn't bad if youcan sleep well at night.
You can be stressed all day,go, go, go, go, go, go, go,
and it'll optimize your focus.
But can you fall asleep andstay deeply asleep at night?
Being in a hard relationship.
Some people say, youknow, that's not good.
Other people like it.
Can you be at peace in that?
And I think we all, you know,
have different RPM that, you know,
we all kinda idle at different RPM
and some people are big mellow Costellos,
and others are kind of like, you know,
need more friction inorder to feel at peace.
But I think ultimately whatwe want is to feel at peace.
- Yeah, I've been throughsome really low points
over the past couple years and I think
the reason could be boiled down
to the fact that Ihaven't been able to find
a place of peace,
a place or people, or momentsthat give deep inner peace.
Yeah, you know,
and I think you put it really beautifully.
You have to figure out, given who you are,
the various characteristicsof your mind, all the things,
all the contents of the cupboards,
how to get space from it.
And ultimately, one goodrepresentation of that
is to be able to laugh at all of it.
Whatever's going on inside your mind
to be able to step backand just kinda chuckle
at the beauty and theabsurdity of the whole thing.
- Yeah, and keep going.
There's this beautiful, as I mentioned,
it seems like every podcast lately,
I'm a huge Rancid fan,
mostly 'cause I just thinkTim Armstrong's writing
is pure poetry and whether ornot you like the music or not,
you know, and he's written music
for a lot of other people too.
He's not, doesn't advertise that much
'cause he's humble, but-
- [Lex] And that by the way,I went to a show of theirs
like 20 years ago.- Oh yeah?
I'm gonna see them inBoston, September 18th.
I'm literally flying there for,
or I'll take the train up from New York.
I'm gonna meet a friend ofmine named Jim Thiebaud,
who's a big guy whoowns a lot of companies,
the skateboard industry.
We're meeting there likea couple little kids
to go see them play.
Amazing people, amazing music.
- Very intense.- Very intense,
but embodies all the different emotions.
That's why I love it, right?
They have some love songs,they have some hate songs,
they have some, but you know,
going back to what you said,I think there's a song,
the first song on theIndestructible album,
I think there's a,
it's sort of, he's justtalking about like shock
and disbelief of discoveringthings about people
that were close to you,
and, you know, I won't sing it,
but, you know, nor I wouldn't dare.
But there's this one lyricwhere that's really stuck
in my mind for ever sincethat album came out in 2003,
which is, you know, thatnothing's what it seems,
so I just sit here laughing,I'm gonna keep going on.
I can't get distracted.
There is this piece of like,you gotta learn how to push out
the disturbing stuffsometimes and go forward.
And I mean, I remember hearing that lyric
and then writing it down and, you know,
that was a time where myundergraduate advisor,
who was like a mentor and a father to me,
you know, blew his head off in the bathtub
like three weeks before.
And then my graduate advisor,
who I was working for at thattime, who I loved and adored,
was really like a mother to me.
I knew her when she waspregnant with her two kids died
at 50, breast cancer.
And then my postdoc advisor,you know, first day of work
at Stanford as a facultymember sitting across the table
like this from him, had a heartattack right in front of me,
died of pancreatic cancerat the end of 2017.
And I remember just thinking like,
you know, going back to thatsong lyric over and over, like,
and where people would, you know,
I haven't had many betrayals in life.
I've had a few, but just thinking like,
or seeing something or learning something
about something you just,like, you can't believe it.
And I mentioned thatlyric off that first song,
Indestructible on that album
because it's this like, justthe raw emotion of like,
I can't believe this, whatI just saw is so disturbing,
but I have to just keep going forward.
There are certain things thatwe really do need to push,
not just into our periphery,
but often to the gutter and keep going.
And that's a hard thingto learn how to do.
But if you're going to befunctional in life, you have to.
And actually just to get atthis issue of do I change
or do I embrace this aspect of self?
About six months, it was April
of this last year, I did some intense work
around some things that werereally challenging to me.
And I did it alone,
and it may have involved some medicine.
And I expected to get peace through this.
I was like, I'm gonna let go of it,
and I spent 11 hours justgetting more and more frustrated
and angry about this thingthat I was trying to resolve.
And I was so unbelievably disappointed
that I couldn't get that relief.
And I was like, what is this?
Like this is not howthis is supposed to work.
I'm supposed to be feel peace.
The clouds are supposed to lift.
And so a week went by
and then another half week went by,
and then someone whoseopinion I trust very much,
I explained this to them
because I was getting alittle concerned like,
what's going on? Thisis worse, not better.
And they said, "This is very simple.
You have a giant blind spot,
which is your sense of justice, Andrew,
and your sense of anger are linked
like an iron rod andyou need to relax it."
And as they said that, Ifelt the anger dissipate.
And so there was somethingthat I think is, it is true.
I have a very strong sense ofjustice and my sense of anger
then at least, was verystrongly linked to it.
So it's great to have asense of justice, right?
I hate to see people wronged.
I absolutely do.
And I'm human, I'm sure I'vewronged people in my life.
I know I have, they've told me,
I've tried to apologize andreconcile where possible,
still have a lot of work to do.
But where I see injustice,
it draws in my sense of anger in a way
that I think is just eating me up.
And, but it was only in hearing that link
that I wasn't aware of before,
it was in my subconscious, obviously.
Did I feel the relaxation?
It wasn't, there's noamount of plant medicine
or MDMA or any kind of, you know,
chemical you can take that's naturally
just going to dissipatewhat's hard for oneself.
It needs, if one embraces that
or if one chooses to do itthrough just talk therapy
or journaling, orfriends, or introspection,
or all of the above,
there needs to be anawareness of the things
that we're just not aware of.
So I think the answer to your question,
do you embrace or do you fightthese aspects of self is,
I think you get in your subconscious
through good work withsomebody skilled or,
and sometimes that involvesthe tools I just mentioned
in various combinations,and you figure it out.
You figure out if it's serving you.
Obviously, it was not bringing me peace.
It was undermining my sense of justice,
was undermining my sense of peace.
And so in understanding this link be...
Now, I would say that the,
in understanding this linkbetween justice and anger,
now, I think it's alittle bit more of like a,
you know, it's not likea Twizzler stick bendy,
but it's at least, it'snot like an iron rod.
Like, you know, when Isee somebody wronged,
I mean, it used to just like,(puffs) like immediately.
- But you're able to stepback now that's like to me,
the ultimate place to reach is laughter.
- I just sit here laughing.
Exactly, that's the lyric,I like, I can't believe it.
So I just sit here laughing like,
can't get distracted.
Just you at some point,
but the problem I think injust laughing at something,
like that gives you distance.
But the question is,
do you stop engagingwith it at that point?
Like, I experienced this,
I mean, recently, I gotto see how sometimes
I'll see something that's just like, what?
Like this is crazy so I just laugh,
but then I continue to engage in it
and it's taking me off course.
And so there is a place where,
you know, I mean, I realizethis is probably a kid show too,
so I want to keep it, you know, G-rated,
but at some point for certain things,
it makes sense to go, fuck that.
- But also laugh at yourselffor saying fuck that.
- Yeah, and then move on.
So the question is,
do you get stuck or do you move on, right?
- Sure, but like, there'sa lightness of being
that comes with laughter.
I mean, I've gotten...- Sure.
- Like, as you know, I spentthe day with Elon today.
He just gave me this burnt hair.
Do you know what this is?
- [Andrew] I have no idea.
- I'm sure there's actually,
there should be a Hubermanlab episode on this.
It's a cologne that's burnt hair.
- I see.- And it's like
supposedly a really intense smell.
And it is.- Give me a smell.
- [Lex] Do please, it's not gonna leave
your nose.- That's okay.
Well, that's okay, I'll take a gent...
I'll whiff it as if I were whiffing
a chemical in the lab.- You have to actually spray
it on yourself.
'cause I don't know if you can-
- So I'm reading an amazing book
called "An Immense World" by Ed Yong.
He won a Pulitzer for"We Contain Multitudes"
or something like that,
I think is the title of the other book.
And the first chapteris all about olfaction
and the incredible powerthat olfaction has.
That smells terrible.
I don't even-- And it doesn't leave you.
For those listening,
it doesn't quite smell terrible.
It's just intense and it stays with you.
This to me represents
like just laughing atthe absurdity of it all.
- So I have to ask, so youwere rolling jiu-jitsu?
- [Lex] Yeah, we'retraining jiu-jitsu, yeah.
- So is that fight between Elon
and Zuck actually gonna happen?
- I think Elon is a hugebeliever of this idea
of the most entertainingoutcomes is the most likely.
And he almost like,there's almost the sense
that there's not a freewill and the universe
has a kinda deterministicgravitational field pulling
towards the most fun and he'sjust a player in that game.
So from that perspective,
I think it seems like somethinglike that is inevitable.
- Like a little scrap in the parking lot
of a Facebook or something
like that.- Exactly.
- Sorry, Meta.- Yeah.
- But it looks likethey're training for real,
and Zuck has competed right in jiu-jitsu?
- So I think he isapproaching it as a sport.
Elon is approaching it as a spectacle.
And I mean, the way he talks about it,
he's a huge fan of history.
He talks about all thewarriors that have fought
throughout history.
If you look, he wants toreally do it at the Colosseum.
And you know, theColosseum is for 400 years,
there's so many, so muchgreat writing about this.
I think over 400,000 people have died
in the Colosseum, Gladiators.
So this is this historic placethat sheds so much blood,
so much fear, so much anticipationof battle, all of this.
So he loves this kinda spectacle.
And also, the meme of it,
the hilarious absurdity of it,
that two tech CEOs battling it out on sand
in a place where gladiatorsfought to the death
and then bears and lion ate prisoners
as part of the execution process.
- Well, it's also gonna be an instance
where Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk
gets to change bodily fluids.
If they bleed, there's onething's about fighting, you know?
I think it was in that book,
it's a great book "Fighter's Heart,"
where he talks about, youknow, the sort of the intimacy
of sparring.
I only rolled jiu-jitsu with you once,
but there was a periodof time where I boxed
and which I don't recommend.
I got hit, I hit some guysand definitely got hit back.
I'd spar on Wednesday nightswhen I lived on San Diego.
And you know, when you spar with somebody,
even if they hurt you,especially if they hurt you,
you know, you see that person afterwards
and there's an intimacy, right?
It was in that book "Fire'sHeart" where he explains,
you know, you're exchanging bodily fluids
with a stranger, right?
And you're in your primitive mind,
and so there's an intimacythere that persists, so.
- You go together through aprocess of fear, anxiety, like-
- Yeah, when they get you, you nod.
I mean, you watch somebody likecatch somebody if, you know,
not so much in professional fighting,
but if people are sparringthat they catch you,
you acknowledge that they caught you,
like you got me there.
- And on the flip side of that,
so we trained and then afterthat we played Diablo IV.
- [Andrew] I don't know what that is.
I don't play video games, sorry.
- But it's a video game.
So it's like, it's a, you know,
pretty intense combat in the video.
You know, you're fighting like demons and-
- Oh, okay.
The last video game I playedwas Mike Tyson's "Punch Out."
- [Lex] There, you go.
That's pretty close.- I met him recently,
went on his podcast.
- [Lex] You went, wait...
- It hasn't come out yet.- Oh, it hasn't come
out yet, okay.- Yeah.
Yeah, I asked Mike, his kids are great.
They came in and they're super smart kids.
Goodness gracious.
They ask great questions.
I asked Mike what he did withthe piece of a Evander's ear
that he bit off
and said-- Did he remember?
- He's like, gave itback to him. (chuckles)
- [Lex] There you go, sorry about that.
- He sells edibles thatare in the shape of ears
with a little bite out of it.
Yeah, his life has been incredible.
He's intimate.
Yeah, his family are,
you get the sense thatthey're really a great family.
They're really...- Mike Tyson?
That's a heck of a journeyright there of a man.
- Yeah, my now friend, Tim Armstrong,
like I said, lead singerfrom Rancid, he put it best.
He said, you know, thatMike Tyson's life is,
you know, Shakespearean
and you know, down, up, down, up.
And just that the arcsof his life are just like
sort of an only in Americakinda tale too, right?
- So, speaking of Shakespeare,
I've recently gotten to know Neri Oxman,
who's this incredible scientist
that works at the intersectionof nature and engineering.
And she reminded me ofthis Anna Akhmatova line,
this is this great Sovietpoet that I really love
from over a century ago that,
"Each of our lives is aShakespearean drama raised
to the thousand degree."
So I have to ask,
why do you think humans are attracted
to this kind of Shakespearean drama?
Is there some aspectwe've been talking about
the subconscious mind thatpulls us towards the drama,
even though the place ofmental health is peace?
- Yes, and yes.
- Do you have some of that?
- Draw towards drama?
Yeah.
- [Lex] If you look at the empirical data.
- Yes, I mean...
Right, if I look at the empirical data,
I mean, I think aboutwho I chose to work for
as an undergraduate, right?
I was, you know, barelyfinished high school,
finally get to college, barely.
I think...
This is really embarrassingand not something to aspire to,
you know, I was, you know,thrown outta the dorms
for fighting, barely passedmy classes, you know,
the girlfriend and I split up.
I mean, I was living in asquad, got into a big fight.
I was getting in trouble with the law.
Eventually got my acttogether, go back to school,
start working for somebody,
who do I choose to work for?
A guy who's an ex-navyguy who smokes cigarettes
in the fume hood, drinks coffee,
and we're injecting rats with MDMA.
And, you know, I was drawnto like the personality,
his energy, but also, hewas a great scientist.
Worked out a lot on a thermal regulation
in the brain and more,
you know, go to graduateschool, I'm working for somebody
and decide that yeah, doing,working in her laboratory
wasn't quite right for me.
So I'm literally sneakinginto the laboratory next door
and working for the woman next door
because I liked therelationships that she had
to a certain set of questions.
And she was a kind of a quirky person.
And, you know, so drawn to drama,
but drawn to, I like characters.
I like people that have texture.
And I'm not drawn to raw ambition.
I'm drawn to people thatseem to have a real passion
for what they do and a uniqueness to them
that I, you know, youcan kind of, not kind of,
I'll just say how it is.
I can feel their heart for what they do.
And I'm drawn to that, like...
And that can be good.
The same reason I went to workfor Ben Barres as a postdoc,
it wasn't because he wasthe first transgender member
of the National Academy of Sciences.
That was just a feature of who he was.
I loved how he loved Glia.
He would talk about these cells
like they were the most enchanting things
that he'd ever seen in his life.
And I was like, this is likethe biggest nerd I've ever met,
and I love him.
I think I'm drawn to that.
This is another thing thatConti makes elaborates on quite
a bit more in the series onmental health coming out.
But there are different drives within us.
There are aggressive drives,not always for fighting,
but for intense interaction.
I mean, look at Twitter,
look at people clearlyhave an aggressive drive.
There's also a pleasure drive.
Some people also have astrong pleasure drive.
They want to experiencepleasure through food,
through sex, through friendship,
through adventure, you know?
But I think the Shakespeareandrama is the drama
of the different drivesin different ratios
in different people.
I know somebody and she's incredibly kind,
has an extremely high pleasure drive,
loves taking great care ofherself and people around her
through food and through retreats,
and through all these things,
and makes spaces beautifuleverywhere she goes.
And gifts, these things that are
just so unbelievablyfeminine and incredible.
These gifts to people andthe kind and thoughtful
about what they like.
And then, but I would sayvery little aggressive drive
from my read.
And then I know other peoplewho are just have a ton
of aggressive drive andvery little pressure drive.
And I think, so there's this alchemy
that exists where people have these things
in different ratios,and then you blend in,
you know, the differencesin the chromosomes
and differences in hormones,
and differences in personal history,
and what you end up with is a species
that creates incredible recipes of drama,
but also peace, also relieffrom drama, contentment.
I mean, I realize thisisn't the exact topic
of the question,
but someone I know very dearly,
actually an ex-girlfriend ofmine, long-term partner of mine
sent me something recentlyand I think it hit the nail
on the head, which isthat ideally for a man,
they eventually settle wherethey find and feel peace.
Where they feel peaceful,
where they can be themselvesand feel peaceful.
Now, I'm sure there's a equivalent
or mirror image of that for women,
but this particular postthat she sent was about men.
And I totally agree.
And so it isn't always thatwe're seeking friction,
but for periods of our life,we seek friction, drama,
adventure, excitement, fights, you know,
and doing hard, hard things.
And then I think at some point,
I'm certainly coming to thispoint now where it's like,
yeah, that's all great andchecked a lot of boxes,
but had a lot of close calls,
flew really close to the sunon a lot of things with life
and limb, and heart and spirit.
And some of, you know, peopleclose to us didn't make it.
And sometimes not making it means
the career they wanted went off a cliff
or their health went off a cliff,
or their life went off a cliff.
But I think that there'salso the Shakespearean drama
of the characters that exit the play
and are living their liveshappily in the backdrop.
It just doesn't make foras much entertainment.
- That's one other thing that's a benefit,
you could say is thebenefit of getting older
is finding the Shakespeareandrama less appealing
or finding the joy in the peace.
- Yeah, definitely.
I mean, I think that, I thinkthere's real peace with age.
I think the other thing is
this notion of checkingboxes is a real thing,
for me anyway.
I have a morning meditation that I do,
well, I wake up now, I getmy sunlight, I hydrate,
I use the bathroom, I do allthe things that I talk about.
I've started a practice ofprayer in the last year,
which is new-ish for me,
which is, we could talk about it
if you want.- In the morning?
- Yeah.- Can you talk about it
a little bit?- Sure, yeah.
And then I have a meditation that I do
that actually is where I think through
with the different roles that I play.
So like, I start very basic.
I say, you know, okay, I'm an animal.
Like we are like,biologically animals, right?
Human, you know, I'm a man,I'm a scientist, I'm a teacher,
I'm a friend, I'm a brother, I'm a son,
you know, I go throughthis, I have this list
and I think about thedifferent roles that I have
and the roles that I stillwant in my life going forward
that I haven't yet fulfilled.
It just takes me, it'ssort of an inventory
of where I've been, where I'm at,
and where I'm going as they say.
And I don't know why I do it,
but I started doing it this last year,
I think because it helps me understand
just how many differentcontexts I have to exist in
and remind myself that there's still more
that I haven't donethat I'm excited about.
- So within each of those contexts,
there's like things that youwant to kind of accomplish,
to define that.
- Yeah, and I'm ambitious so I think,
you know, I'm a brother.
I have an older sister andI love her tremendously.
And I think like,
I wanna be the bestbrother I can be to her.
Which means maybe a call, maybe just,
you know, we do an annual triptogether for our birthdays.
Our birthdays are close together.
We always go to New York for our birthdays
and we've gone for thelast three, four years,
like really like remindingmyself of that role,
not because I'll forget,
but because I have all these other roles
I'll get pulled into.
I say the first one, I'm an animal
because I have to rememberthat I have a body
that needs care, like any of us.
I need sleep, I need food,I need hydration, I need...
That I'm human, that the brain of a human
is marvelously complex,
but also marvelouslyself-defeating at times.
And so I've been thinkingabout these things
in the context of the different roles.
And the whole thing takesabout four or five minutes.
And I just find it brings mea certain amount of clarity
that then allows me toratchet into the day.
The prayer piece,
yeah, I think I've beenreluctant to talk about until now
because I don't believe inpushing religion on people.
And I think that, and I'm not.
It's a highly individual thing.
And I do believe thatone can be an atheist
and still pray or agnostic and still pray.
But for me, it really cameabout through understanding
that there are certain aspects of myself
that I just couldn't resolve on my own.
And no matter how much therapy,
no matter how much, and Ihaven't done a lot of it,
but no matter how much plant medicine
or other forms of medicine, or exercise,
or podcasting, or science, or friendship,
or any of that, I wasjust not going to resolve.
And so I started this
because someone close to me said,
a male friend said, "Youknow, prayer is powerful."
And I said, "Well, how?"
And he said, "I don't knowhow, but if you can get...
It can allow you to get outside yourself,
let you give up control, andat the same time take control."
I don't even like saying take control.
But the whole notion is that,
and again, forgive me,
but there's no other way to say it.
The whole notion is that,
you know, like God works through us,
whatever God is to you,he, him, her, whatever,
life force, like nature,whatever it is to you, right?
That it works through us.
And so I do a prayer,I'll just describe it,
where I ask, I make an askto help remove my defects,
my character defects.
I pray to God to helpremove my character defects
so that I can show up betterin all the roles of my life
and do good work.
Like to, which for me islearning and teaching.
Learning and teaching.
And so you might say,well, how is that different
than a meditation?
Well, I'm acknowledgingthat there is something
that bigger than me, biggerthan nature as I understand it,
that I cannot understand orcontrol, nor do I want to.
And I'm just giving over to that.
And does that make me less of a scientist?
I sure as hell hope not.
I certainly know, there'sthe head of our neurosciences
at Stanford until recently.
You should talk to him directly about it.
Bill Newsome has talkedabout his religious life.
For me, it's really a wayof getting outside myself
and then understanding how Ifit into this bigger picture.
And the character defectspart is real, right?
I'm a human, I have defects,
like I got a lot of flawsin me, like anybody.
But, and trying to acknowledge them
and asking for help inremoving them, not magically,
but through right action,through my right action.
So I do that every morning.
And I have to say that it'shelped, it's helped a lot.
It's helped me be better to myself,
be better at other people.
I still make mistakes,
but it's becoming abigger part of my life.
And I never thought I'd talk like this,
but I think it's clear to me that
if we don't believe in something,
again, doesn't have to be traditional,
standardized religion,
but if we don't believe insomething bigger than ourselves,
we at some level will self-destruct.
I really think so.
And it's powerful in a waythat all the other stuff,
meditation, all the tools
is not because it's really operating
at a much deeper and bigger level.
And, you know, yeah, I think that's all
I can talk about it,
mostly because I'm still working out,
you know, the scientistsin me wants to understand
how it works, and I wanna understand.
And the point is to just go,
you know, there's you know,
for lack of a better language for it,
there's higher power thanme and what I can control,
I'm giving up control on certain things.
And somehow that restoresa sense of agency
for right action, better action.
- I think perhaps a part ofthat is just the humility
that comes with acknowledgingthere's something bigger
and more powerful than you.
- And you can't control everything.
I mean, that you go throughlife as a hard-driving person,
you know, forward center of mass.
I remember being thatway since I was little.
It's like a new Legos,
I'm like, I'm gonna make all the Legos.
And it was like on the weekends,
you know, learning about medieval weapons
and then giving lectures about it in class
when I was five or six years old,
or learning about tropical fish
and, you know, catalogingall of them at the store,
and then organizing it and making my,
you know, my dad driveme or my mom drive me
to some fish store and thenspending all my time there
until they throw me out,you know, all of that,
but I also remember my entirelife, I would secretly pray.
When things were goodand things weren't good,
but mostly when things were weren't good
'cause it's important to pray,
for me, it's important topray each morning regardless.
But when things weren't right,
I couldn't get make sense of'em, I would secretly pray,
but I felt kind of ashamedof that for whatever reason.
And then it was once incollege, I distinctly remember,
I was having a hard timewith a number of things
and I took a run down to Sands Beach,
it was UC, Santa Barbara.
And I remember I just, I was like,
I don't know if I evenhave the right to do this,
but I'm just praying and I just prayed for
the ability to be asbrutally honest with myself
and with other peopleas I possibly could be
about a particular situationI was in at that time.
I mean, I think now it'sprobably safe to say,
I'd gone off to college 'causeof a high school girlfriend.
We had, essentially, shewas my family, more frankly,
more than my biological family was
at a certain stage of life.
And we'd reached a pointwhere we were diverging
and it was incredibly painful.
It was like losing everything I had.
And it was like, what do I do?
How do I manage this?
Do I, you know, I was ready to quit
and join the fire servicejust to support us
so that we could move forward.
And you know, it was just, but praying,
just saying, I can'tfigure this out on my own.
It's sort of like I can'tfigure this out on my own.
And how frustrating that isthat no number of friends
could tell me, or, and inher wisdom couldn't tell me.
And eventually, it ledme to the right answers.
And she and I are arefriendly friends to this day.
She's happily married with achild and we're on good terms,
but I think, you know, it's a scary thing,
but it's the best thing when you just,
I can't control all this.
And asking for help, Ithink is also the piece.
You're not asking for somemagic hand to come down
and take care of it.
You're asking for the helpto come through you, right?
So that your body is usedto do these right works,
right action.
- Isn't it interestingthat this secret thing
that you're almost embarrassed by,
that you did it as achild is something you,
it's another thing youdo as you get older,
as you realize, like thosethings are part of you,
it's actually a beautiful thing.
- Yeah, a lot of the contentof the podcast is, you know,
deep academic content and wetalk about everything from,
you know, eating disordersto bipolar disorders,
to depression, you know,a lot of different topics,
but the tools or theprotocols as we say, right?
The sunlight viewing and all the rest,
you know, a lot of thatstuff is just stuff
I wish I'd known when Iwas in graduate school.
If I'd known to go outsideevery once in a while
and get some sunlight,not just stay in the lab,
I would've, you know, I might not have hit
like a really tough round of depression
when I was a postdoc andworking twice as hard.
And, you know, when mybody would break down
or I'd get sick a lot, Idon't get sick much anymore.
Occasionally, about onceevery 18 months to two years
maybe I'll get something,
but you know, I used tobreak my foot skateboarding
all the time, I couldn'tunderstand what's wrong
with my body, I'm getting injured,
I can't do what everyone else can.
Now I developed more slowly,I had a long arc of puberty,
but so that was part ofit, I was still developing,
but you know, how toget your body stronger,
how to build endurance?
Like no one told me, theinformation wasn't there.
So a lot of what I put outthere is the information
that I wish I had
because once I had it, I was like, wow!
Like A, this stuff really works.
B, it's grounded in something real.
You know, sometimes certain protocols
are a combination of,you know, animal, human,
and animal, and human studies,sometimes clinical trials,
sometimes there's somemechanistic conjecture
for some, not all, Ialways make clear which.
But in the end,
like figuring out how thingswork so that we can be happier,
healthier, more productive, suffer less,
like reduce the suffering of the world.
And I think that,
well, I'll just say thank you
and for asking about the prayer piece.
Again, I'm not pushing oreven encouraging it on anyone,
I've just found it to betremendously useful for me.
- (sighs) You know, I meanabout prayer in general,
you said information andfiguring out how to get stronger,
healthier, smarter, allthose kinds of things.
A part of me believesthat deeply, you know?
You can gain a lot of knowledgeand wisdom through learning.
But a part of me believesthat all the wisdom I need
was there when I was 11 and 12 years old.
- And then it got cluttered over.
Well, listen, I can't wait foryou and Conti to talk again.
Because when he gets goingabout the subconscious
and the amount of thisthat sits below the surface
like an iceberg and thefact that when we're kids,
we're not obscuring a lot ofthat subconscious as much.
And sometimes that can looka little more primitive.
I mean, that kid that'sdisappointed will let you know,
that kid that's excited will let you know.
And you feel that rawexuberance or that raw dismay.
And I think that as we grow older,
we learn to cover that stuff up.
We wear masks and we haveto, to be functional, right?
I don't think we all wanna go around
just being completely raw.
But as you said, as youget older, you also,
you get to this pointwhere you kind of go,
eh, you know, what are wereally trying to protect anyway?
I mean, I have this theory that,
you know, certainly myexperience has taught me
that a lot of people,
but I'll talk about men
'cause that's what I know best.
Whether or not they show up strong or not,
that they're really afraid of being weak.
Like they're just afraid.
Like sometimes the strength is even a way
to try and not be weak, right?
Which is different than beingstrong for its own sake.
I'm not just talkingabout physical strength,
I'm talking about intellectual strength.
I'm talking about money.
I'm talking about expressing drive.
I've been watching this series
a little bit of "Chimp Empire-"
- Oh, yeah.
- So Chimp Empire is amazing, right?
They have the head chimp,he's not the head chimp,
but the alpha in the group.
And he's getting older.
And so what does he do?
Every once in a while hegoes on these vigor displays.
He goes and he grabs branch.
He starts breaking him andhe starts thrashing 'em,
and he's incredibly strong,
and they're all kind like watching.
I mean, yeah, Iimmediately think of people
like they're deadlifting on Instagram
and I just think, displays a vigor.
This is just the primateshowing that displays a vigor.
Now what's interesting is thathe's doing that specifically
to say, Hey, I still have what it takes
to lead this troop, okay?
Then there're the ones thatare subordinate to him,
but not so far behind-
- It seems to be thatthere's a very clear,
like numerical ranking.
- There is.- Like, it's clear
who's the number two, number three?
- Oh yeah.- I mean, probably-
- Who gets to mate first?
Who gets to eat first?
This exists in other animal societies too,
but Bob Sapolsky would be a great person
to talk about this with
'cause he knows obviously,tremendous amount about it.
And I know just the top contour,
but yeah, so number two,three and four males
are aware that he's doingthese vigor displays,
but they're also aware
because in primate evolution
they got some extra forebraintoo, not as much as us,
but they got some,
and they're aware that thevigor displays are displays that
because they've done them aswell in a different context,
might not just be displays of vigor,
but might also be an insurance policy
against people seeing weakness.
Okay, so now they startusing that prefrontal cortex
to do some interesting things.
So in primate world,
if a male is friendly withanother male wants to affiliate
with him and say, Hey, I'm backing you,
they'll go over and they'llpick off the little parasites
and eat them.
And so the grooming isextremely important.
In fact, if they want to ostracize
or kill one of the members of their troop,
they will just leave it alone.
No one will groom it.
And then there's actually areally disturbing sequence
in that show of then the parasites start
to eat away on their skin.
They get infections, they have issues,
no one will mate with them, no one,
they have other issues aswell and can potentially die.
So the interesting thingis, is number two and three
start to line up astrategy to groom this guy,
but they are actuallythinking about overtaking
the entire troop, setting in a new alpha.
But the current alpha didthat to get where he is.
So he knows that they'redoing this grooming thing,
but they might not besincere about the grooming.
So what does he do?
He takes the whole troopon a raid to another troop
and sees who will fightfor him and who won't.
This is advanced contracting of behavior
for a species thatnormally we don't think of
as sophisticated as us.
So it's very interestingand it gets to something
that I hope we'll have anopportunity to talk about
'cause it's something thatI'm obsessed with lately
is this notion of overt versuscovert contracts, right?
There are overt contracts whereyou exchange work for money
or you exchange any numberof things in an overt way.
But then there are covert contracts.
And those take on a very different form
and always lead to, inmy belief, bad things.
- Well, how much of humanand chimp relationships
are overt versus covert?
- Well, here's one thingthat we know is true.
Dogs and humans,
the dog to humanrelationship is 100% overt.
They don't manipulate you.
Now you could say they doin the sense that they learn
that if they look a certainway or roll on their back,
they get food.
But there's no banking of that behavior
for a future date where thenthey're going to undermine you
and take your position, okay?
So in that sense, dogs canbe a little bit manipulative
in some sense, but.
Now, okay, so overt contract would be,
we both wanna do some work together.
We're gonna make some money.
You get X percentage, I getX percentage, it's overt.
Covert contract, which is,in my opinion, always bad
would be, we're gonnado some work together.
You're gonna get a percentage of money,
I'm gonna get a percentage of money,
could look just like the overt contract,
but secretly, I'm resentfulthat I got the percentage I got.
So what I start doing iscovertly taking something else.
What do I take?
Maybe I take the opportunityto jab you verbally
every once in a while.
Maybe I take theopportunity to show up late.
Maybe I take the opportunity
to get to know one of your coworkers
so that I might starta business with them.
That's covert contracting.
And you see this sometimesin romantic relationships.
One person, we won'tset the male or female
in any direction here and just say,
I'll make you feel powerfulif you make me feel desired.
Okay, great.
There's nothing explicitlywrong about that contract
if they both know and they both agree,
but what if it's, I'll do that,
but I'll have kids withyou so you feel powerful,
you'll have kids withme so I feel desired,
but secretly, I don't want to do that.
Or one person says, I don't wanna do that
or both don't, so what theyend up doing is saying,
okay, so I expect something else.
I expect you to do certain things for me,
or I expect you to payfor certain things for me.
Covert contracts are thesignature of everything bad.
Overt contracts are thesignature of all things good.
And I think about this a lot
because I've seen a lotof examples of this.
Like anyone, weparticipate in these things
whether or not we want to or not.
And the thing that getstransacted the most is,
well, I should say the things
that get transacted the most
are the overt things.
You'll see money, time, sex,
property, whatever ithappens to be, information.
But what ends up happening is that
when people I believe don't feel safe,
they feel threatened in some way,
like they don't feel safein a certain interaction,
what they do is they starttaking something else
while still engaging in the exchange.
And I'll tell you,
if there's one thing abouthuman nature that's bad,
it's that feature.
Why that feature?
Or is it a bug, or a featureas you engineers like to say,
I think it's because we were allocated
a certain extra amountof prefrontal cortex
that makes us moresophisticated than a dog,
more sophisticated than achimpanzee, but they do it too.
And it's because it's often harder
to deal with, in the short-term,
to deal with the realsense of this is scary,
this feels threatening
than it is to play out all the iterations.
It takes a lot of brain work.
You're playing chess andgo simultaneously try
and figure out wherethings are gonna end up,
and we just don't know.
So it's a way I think of creating
a false sense of certainty,
but I'll tell you, covert contracts,
the only certainty isthat it's gonna end badly.
The question is how badly?
Conversely, overtcontracts always end well.
Always, the problem with overt contracts
is that you can't be certainthat the other person
is not engaging in a covert contract.
You can only take responsibilityfor your own contracting.
- Well, one of thechallenges of being human
is looking at another humanbeing and figuring out
the way, their way ofbeing, their behavior,
which of the two types ofcontracts it represents
because they look awfullythe same on the surface.
- That's right.- And one of the challenges
of being human is thedecision we all make is,
are you somebody thattakes a leap of trust
and trust other humans andare willing to take the hurt?
Or you going to be cynical and skeptical,
and avoid most interactions until
they over a long periodof time prove your trust.
- Yeah, I never liked thephrase history repeats itself
when it comes to humans
because it doesn't apply if the people
or the person is actively working
to resolve their own flaws.
I do think that if people are willing
to do dedicated introspective work,
go into their subconscious,
do the hard work, have hard conversations,
and get better at hard conversations,
something that I'm constantlytrying to get better at.
I think people can change,
but they have to want to change.
- It does seem like deep down
we all can kinda tell the difference
between overt and covert.
Like we have a good sense.
I think one of the benefitsof having this characteristic
of mine where I value loyalty,
I've been extremely fortunate
to spend most of my lifein overt relationships.
And I think that createsa really fulfilling life.
- But there's also this thing
that maybe we're in thisportion of the podcast now,
but I've experienced this-- That just brings us
this late at night we're talking
about.- That's right.
Certainly late for me, but I'm two hours,
I came in today on, I'mstill in California.
- And we should also saythat you came here to wish me
a happy birthday.- I did.
I did, and-
- And the podcast is just like
a fun last minute thing I suggested.
- Yeah, some close friendsof yours have arranged
a dinner that I'm reallylooking forward to.
I won't say which night,
but it's the next couple of nights.
You know, your circadian clock
is one of the most robustfeatures of your biology.
I know you can be nocturnalor you can be diurnal.
We know you're mostlynocturnal at certain times
of the year, Lex,
but there're very, veryfew people can get away
with no sleep.
Very few people can get away
with a chaotic sleep wake schedule.
So you have to obey a24-hour aka circadian rhythm
if you wanna remainhealthy of mind and body.
We also have to acknowledge that
it's aging isn't linear, right? So-
- What do you mean?- Well, I mean,
the degree of changebetween years 35 and 40
is not gonna be the degreeof change between 40 and 45.
But I will say this,
I'm 48 and I feel better inevery aspect of my psychology
and biology now than Idid when I was in my 20s.
Sort of quality of thought, time spent,
physically I can do what I did then,
which is probably says moreabout what I could do then
than what I can do now.
But if you keep training, youcan continue to get better.
The key is to not get injured.
And I've never trained super hard.
I've trained hard,
but I've been cautiousto not, for instance,
weight train more than two days in a row.
I do a split, it'sbasically three days a week
and the other days a run,
take one full day-off, take aweek-off every 12 to 16 weeks.
I've not been the guyhurling the heaviest weights
or running the furthest distance,
but I have been the guywho's continuing to do it
when a lot of my friends aretalking about knee injuries.
- Hey!- Talking about (chuckles)
- Hey, hey, hey. (chuckles)- I'm just...
But of course, with sport,
you can't account foreverything the same way
you can with fitness.
And I have to acknowledge that, you know?
Unless one is power lifting, you know,
weightlifting andrunning, you can get hurt,
but it's not like skateboarding where
if you're going for it,you're gonna get hurt.
That's just, you're landing on concrete
and with jiu-jitsu likepeople are trying to hurt you
so that you say stop.
- No, but it-- So with a sport
it's different.
And these days, I don'treally do a sport any longer.
I work out, stay fit.
I used to continue to do sports,
but I kept getting hurt and frankly now,
like a rolled ankle,
I may put out a little smallskateboard part in 2024
because people have been sayingwe wanna see the kick flip.
I'll say, well, I'll do aheel flip instead, but okay.
I might put out a little part
'cause some of the guysthat work on our podcast
are from DC, I think by now,
I should at least do it just to show
like I'm not making itup and I probably will.
But I think doing a sport is different.
That's how you get hurt,
overuse and doing it an actual sport.
And so, you know, hat tip tothose who do an actual sport.
- And that's a difficult decision.
Like a lot of people have to make,
I have to make with jiu-jitsu for example,
like if you just look empirically,
I've trained really hard from all my life
in grappling sports and fighting sports,
and all this kind of stuff.
And I've avoided injury for the most part.
And I would say,
I would attribute that to training a lot.
Sounds counterintuitive,
but training well andsafely, and correctly,
keeping good form, sayingno when I need to say no,
but training a lot andtaking it seriously.
Now when training is kind ofa side, really a side thing,
I find that the injury isbecomes a higher probability.
- But when you're just doingit every once in a while.
- [Lex] Every once in a while.
- Yeah, I think you saidsomething really important.
The saying no, I mean,
the times I have gotten hurt training
is when someone's like,
Hey, let's hop on this workout together
and it becomes, let's challenge each other
to do something outrageous.
Sometimes that can be fun though.
I went up to Cam Hanes's gym
and he does these very highrepetition weight workouts
that are in circuit form.
I was sore for two weeks,
but I learned a lotand didn't get injured.
And yes, we ate bow hunted elk afterwards.
- Nice.
But the injury has been
a really difficultpsychological thing for me
'cause, so I've injuredmy finger, pinky finger,
injured my knee.
- And your kitchen is filled with splints.
- Splints, I'm trying tofigure out, (chuckles)
I'm trying-- It's like,
if you look in Lex's kitchen,
there's some really goodsnacks, I had some right before.
He's very good about keepingcold drinks in the fridge
and all the water has elementin it, which is great.
I love that.
But then there's a whole likehospital's worth of splints.
- Yeah, I'm trying.
I'm trying to figureout, so here's the thing,
a finger like pop out like this, right?
Pinky finger.
I'm trying to figure out howdo I splint in such a way
that I can still program,still play guitar,
but protect this kind of torque motion
that creates a huge amount of pain.
And so-- That's you have
a jiu-jitsu injury.- Jiu-jitsu,
but it's not the kind of...
It's probably more like askateboarding style injury,
which is, it's unexpectedin a silly thing.
- It's the thing that happens in a second.
I didn't break my footdoing anything important.
I'd broke my fifth metatarsalstepping off a curb.
So that's why they're called accidents.
You know, if you get hurtdoing something awesome,
that's a trophy that youhave to work through.
It's part of your payment to the universe.
If you get hurt stepping off a curb
or you know, doing something stupid,
it's called a stupid accident.
- Since we brought up Chimp Empire,
let me ask you about relationships.
I think we've talked about relationships.
- Yeah, I only date Homo sapiens.
- Homo sapiens. (chuckles)
- [Andrew] It's the morning meditation.
- The night is still young.
You are human.
No, but you are also an animal.
Don't sell yourself short.
- No, I always say listen,
any discussion on the Human Lab podcast
about sexual health or anything, I always,
the critical force, consensual,age appropriate context,
appropriate, species appropriate.
- Species appropriate.
Well, can I just tell youabout sexual selection?
I've been watching "Life inColor" with David Attenborough.
I've been watching a lotof nature documentaries,
talking about inner peace,it brings me so much peace
to watch nature at itsworst and at its best.
So Life in Color is theseries on Netflix where
it presents some of the mostcolorful animals on earth
and kinda tells theirstory of how they got there
through natural selection.
So, you know, you have thepeacock with the feathers
and it's just such incredible colors.
Like the peacock has thesetail feathers, the male,
that are like gigantic andthey're super colorful.
And there're these eyes on it,
it's not eyes, it's like eye-like areas.
And they wiggle their asslike to show the tails.
They wiggle the tails.- The eye spots,
they're called.- The eye spots.
Yes, thank you.
You know this probably way better than me.
I'm just quoting it
from David Attenborough.- No, please continue.
- But it's just, I'm watching this
and then the female is asboring-looking as po...
Like she has no colors or nothing,
but she's standing there bored,
just seeing this entire display.
And I'm just wondering likethe entirety of life on earth
or not the entirety, post bacteria,
is like at least in part,
maybe in large part can bedescribed through this process
of natural selection, of sexual selection.
So dudes fighting
and then women selecting,
it seems like it's justthe entirety of that series
shows some incredible birdsand insects, and shrimp.
They're all beautiful and colorful
and just-- Mantis shrimp.
- Mantis shrimp, they'rejust, they're incredible.
And it's all about getting laid.
It's fascinating, like I just...
And there's nothing likewatching that and Chimp Empire
to make you realize, wehumans, that's the same thing.
That's all we're doing.
And all the beautifulvariety, all the bridges
and the buildings, and therockets, and the internet,
all of that is this kind,is at least in part,
this kind of a product ofthis kind of showing off
for each other
and all the wars and all of this, anyway,
it's not what I'm asking,oh, relationships.
- Well, right before youask about relationships,
I think what's clearis that every species,
it seems, animal specieswants to make more of itself
and protect its young.
- Well, to protect itsyoung is non-obvious.
- So not destroy enough ofitself that it can't get more
to reproductive competent age.
I mean, I think that,
you know, we have a natural,
I mean, healthy peoplehave a natural reflex
to protect children.
- Well, I don't know that.- And those, that can't-
- Wait a minute, wait, wait, wait minute.
I've seen enough animalsthat are murdering
the children of some other-
- Sure, there's evensiblicide there're like,
first of all, I just wanna say that
I was delighted in your delightaround animal kingdom stuff
'cause this is a favoritetheme of mine as well.
But there's for instance,some fascinating data on,
for instance, for thosethat grew up on farms,
they'll be familiar with freemartins,
you know about freemartins?
This is, they're cows that havemultiple calves inside them.
And there's a situationin which the calves
will secrete if there'smore than one inside
will secrete chemicals thatwill hormonally castrate
the calf next to them,so they can't reproduce.
So already in the womb they are fighting
for future resources.
That's how early this stuff can start.
So it's chemical warfare inthe womb against the siblings.
Sometimes there's outrightsiblicide, siblings are born,
they kill one another.
This also becomes biblical stories, right?
There are instances of cuttlefish,
beautiful cephalopods like octopuses.
And that is the plural as
we made it clear-- Yeah, it's a meme
on the internet.- Oh yeah?
That became a meme our little discussion
two years ago?- Yeah,
it spread pretty quick.
And now we just resurfaced it.
(Andrew laughing)
- Creating the dismay inyour voice is so amusing.
In any event, that male cuttlefishwill disguise themselves
as female cuttlefish infiltratethe female cuttlefish group
and then mate with them, you know?
All sorts of, you know, types of covert
operations.- There we go.
- [Andrew] So I think that- (chuckles)
- Callbacks.- It's like a drinking game
where every time we say covertcontract in this episode,
you have to take a shot of espresso.
Please don't do that,you'd be dead by the end.
- So actually it's just a small tangent,
it does make me wonder
how much intelligencecovert contracts require.
It seems like not much.
If you can do it in the animal kingdom,
there's some kind of instinctual,
it is based perhaps in like fear.
- Yeah, it could be simple algorithm.
If you know, if there's some ambiguity
about numbers and I'm notwith these guys and you know,
then flip to the alternate strategy.
Actually, I have a story about this
that I think is relevant.
I used to have cuttlefishin my lab in San Diego.
We went and got them froma guy out in the desert.
We put them in the lab, it was amazing.
And they had a postdoc
who was studying pre-capturing cuttlefish,
they have a very ballistic,
extremely rapid strikeand grab of the shrimp.
And we were using high-speed cameras
to characterize all thislooking at binocular.
They normally have their eyeson the side of their head
when they see something they want to eat
the eyes translocate to the front,
which allows 'em stereopsis,depth perception,
allows 'em to strike.
We were doing someunilateral eye removals,
they would miss, et cetera.
Okay, this has to do with eye spots.
This was during agovernment shutdown period
where the ghost shrimpthat they normally feed on,
that we would ship infrom the gulf down here,
weren't available to us.
So we had to get different shrimp.
And what we noticed wasthe cuttlefish normally
would just sneak up on the shrimp.
We learned this by data collection.
And if the shrimp was facing them,
they would do this thingwith their tentacles
of kind of enchanting the shrimp,
and if the shrimp wasn't facingthem, they wouldn't do it
and they would ballisticallygrab it and eat them.
Well, when we got these new shrimp,
the new shrimp had eyespots on their tails.
And then the cuttlefishwould do this kind of attempt
to enchant regardless of theposition of the ghost shrimp.
So what does that mean?
Okay, well, it means thatthere's some sort of algorithm
in the cuttlefish's mind that says,
okay, if you see two spots,
move your tentacles.
So it can be, as you pointed out,
it can be a fairly simple operation,
but it looks diabolical.
It looks cunning, butall it is, is strategy B.
- Yeah, but it's still somehow emerged.
I mean, I don't think thatcalling it an algorithm doesn't,
I feel like-- Well, there's a circuit
there that gets implementedin a certain context,
but that circuit had to evolve.
- You do realize a super intelligent AI
will look at us humans andwe'll say the exact thing.
There's a circuit in there that evolved
to do this algorithm A and algorithm B.
And it's trivial.
And to us humans, it's fancy and beautiful
and write poetry about it,
but it's just surreal.- Because so
we don't understand the subconscious
because they want thatAI algorithm cannot see
into what it can't see.
It doesn't understand the under workings
of what allows all of thisconversation stuff to manifest.
And we can't even see it.
How could AI see it?
Maybe it will, maybe AI will solve
and give us access to our subconscious.
Maybe your AI friend or coach,
like I think Andreessen and others
are arguing it's gonna happenat some point it's gonna say,
Hey, you know, Lex,
you're making decisions latelythat are not good for you,
but it's because of this algorithm
that you picked up in childhood
that if you don't stateyour explicit needs upfront,
you're not gonna get whatyou want, so why do it?
From now on, you needto actually make a list
of every, absolutely, outrageous thing
that you want no matter how outrageous
and communicate that immediately.
And that will work.
- We're talking aboutcuttlefish and sexual selection,
and then we went intosome, where do we go?
And you said you were excited.
- Well, I was excited
where you were just saying whatabout these covert contracts
and animals do them, I thinkis simple contextual engagement
of a neural circuit, whichis not just nerd speak
for saying they do a different strategy.
It's saying that therehas to be a circuit there,
hardwired circuit, maybe learned,
but probably hardwiredthat can be engaged, right?
You can't build neuralmachinery out of, in a moment,
you need to build that circuit over time.
What is building it overtime? You select for it.
The cuttlefish that did not have
that alternate context-driven circuit,
didn't survive when there was a,
when all the shrimp that theynormally disappear in the,
the eye-spotted shrimp showed up
and there were a couplethat had some miswiring,
this is why mutation, right?
X-Men type stuff is real.
They had a mutation thathad some alternate wiring
and that wiring got selected for,
it became a mutation that was adaptive
as opposed to maladaptive.
This is something peopledon't often understand
about genetics is that
it only takes a fewgenerations to devolve a trait,
make it worse,
but it takes a long time toevolve an adaptive trait.
There are exceptions to that,
but most often that's true.
So a species needs a lot of generations.
We are hopefully, stillevolving as a species
and it takes a long time,
but to evolve more adaptive traits.
But doesn't take long todevolve adaptive traits
so that you're getting sicker
or you're not functioning as well.
So choose your mate wisely.
And that's perhaps a goodsegue into sexual selection
of humans.- I could tell
you're good at this.
(Andrew chuckling)
We said why did I bringup sexual selection?
It's relationships, sosexual selection in humans.
I don't think you've donean episode on relationships.
- No, I did an episode on attachment,
but not on relationships.
The series with Conti includesone episode of the four
that's all about relational understanding
and how to select a mate basedon matching of drives and-
- All the demons inside the subconscious?
How to match demons that theydance well together or what?
- And how generative two people are.
- [Lex] What does that mean?
- Means that how, theway he explains it is,
how devoted to creatinggrowth within the context
of the family, the relationship with work.
- Well, lemme ask you about mating rituals
and how to find such a relationship?
I mean, you're really big on friendships,
on the value of friendships.
- I am.
- And that I think extends itself into
one of the deepest kinds offriendships you can have,
which is a romantic relationship.
What mistakes,
successes and wisdom can you impart?
- Well, I've certainly made some mistakes.
I've also made some goodchoices in this realm.
First of all, we have to define
what sort of relationshipwe're talking about.
If one is looking for a life partner,
you know, potentially somebodyto establish family with,
with or without kids, withor without pets, right?
Families can take different forms.
I mean, I certainlyexperienced being a family
in a prior relationshipwhere it was the two of us
and our two dogs.
And it was like, it was family.
Like we had a little family.
I think based on myexperience and based on input
from friends who themselves
have very successful relationships.
I must say, I've got friendswho are in long-term,
monogamous, very happy relationships
where there seems to be a lotof love, a lot of laughter,
a lot of challenge and a lot of growth.
And both people it seemsreally want to be there
and enjoy being there.
- Just to pause on that,
one thing to do, I think, by way of advice
is listen to people who are
in long-term successful relationships.
That's like, it seems dumb,
but like we both know andare friends with Joe Rogan,
who's been in a long-term,really great relationship
and he's been an inspiration to me.
So you take advice from that guy?
- Definitely.
And several members of my podcast team
are in excellent relationships.
I think one of the thingsthat rings true over
and over again in the adviceand in my experience is,
you know, find someonewho's really a great friend.
Like build a really greatfriendship with that person.
Now, obviously, not just a friend
if we're talking romantic relationship,
but, and of course,sex is super important,
but it should be a part ofthat particular relationship
alongside or meshed with the friendship.
Can it be a majority ofthe positive exchange?
I suppose it could,
but I think the friendshippiece is extremely important
because what's required in asuccessful relationship clearly
is joy in being together.
Trust,
a desire to share experience both,
you know, mundane and moreadventurous, support each other,
acceptance, a real, maybe even admiration,
but certainly delight inbeing with the person.
You know, earlier wewere talking about peace,
and I think that that senseof peace comes from knowing
that the person you're in friendship with
or that you're in romanticrelationship or ideally both
'cause let's assume healthy relation,
the best romantic relationship includes
a friendship component with that person.
It's like you just reallydelight in their presence,
even if it's a quiet presence
and you delight in seeingthem delight in things, right?
That's clear.
The trust piece is huge,
you know, and that's where people start,
you know, we don't wannafocus on what works,
not what doesn't work,
but that's where I think people start
engaging these covert contracts.
They're afraid of beingbetrayed, so they betray.
They're afraid of givingup too much vulnerability
so they hide their vulnerabilityor in the worst cases,
they feign vulnerability.
Again, that's a covert contract
that just simply undermines everything,
it becomes one, both one equalstwo minus one to infinity.
Conversely, I think if people
can have really hard conversations,
this is something I'vehad to work really hard on
in recent years that I'mstill working hard on,
but the friendship pieceseems to be the thing
that rises to the topwhen I talk to friends
who are in these great relationships.
It's like they have somuch respect and love,
and joy in being with their friend.
It's the person that they wanna spend
as much of their non-working,
non-platonic friendship time with
and the person they wantto experience things with,
and share things with.
And it sounds so kindacanned and cliche nowadays,
but I think if you step backand examine how most people go
about finding arelationship, sort of like,
oh, like am I attracted, ofcourse, physical attraction
is important and otherforms of attraction too,
and they sort of enterthrough that portal,
which makes sense.
That's the mating dance, right?
That's the peacock situation.
That's hopefully not thecuttlefish situation where the,
(chuckles) but I think that
there seems to be ahistory of people close
to me getting into great relationships
where they were friends for a while first
or maybe didn't sleep together right away.
That they actuallyintentionally deferred on that.
This has not been myhabit or my experience,
you know, I've gone themore I think typical
like, oh, there's anattraction like this person,
there's an interest, youkinda explore all dimensions
of relationship really quickly,
except perhaps the moving inpart and the having kids part,
which ideally because it's a bigger step,
harder to undo withoutmore severe consequences.
But I think, the whole take it slow thing,
I don't think is about gettingto know someone slowly.
I think it's about that physical piece
because that does change thenature of the relationship.
And I think it's because it gets right
into the more hardwiredprimitive circuitry
around our feelings ofsafety, vulnerability,
you know, there's something about
romantic and sexual interactionswhere it's almost like,
it's like assets and liabilities, right?
Where people are trying to figure out
how much to engage theirtime and their energy,
in multiple people, I'mtalking about from both sides,
you know, male, femaleor whatever it sides,
but where it's likeassets and liabilities,
and that's where it starts getting
into those complicatedcontracts early on, I think.
And so maybe that's why ifa really great friendship
and admiration is established first,
even if people are romanticallyand sexually attracted
to one another, then thatpiece can be added in
a little bit later in a way that
really kinda just sealsup the whole thing.
And then who knows,
maybe they spend 90% of theirtime having sex, I don't know,
that's not for me to sayor decide, obviously.
But there's somethingthere about staying out
of a certain amount of
risk of having to engage covert contract
in order to protect oneself.
- But I do think like,
love at first sight, thiskind of idea is in part
realizing very quicklythat you are great friends.
Like I've had that experienceof friendship recently.
It's not really friendship,
but like, oh, you geteach other, with humans,
not in a romantic setting.
- Right, friendship.- Yeah, just friendship,
but not-- Well, but dare I say,
I felt that way about you when we met,
right?- But we also-
- I was like, this dude's cool
and he's smart, and he'sfunny, and he's driven,
and he's giving, and he'sgot an edge, and like,
I wanna learn from him,wanna hang out with him.
Like, I mean, that was thebeginning of our friendship
was essentially, you know,
that set of internal realizations.
- Just keep going, just keep going.
Keep going with compliments.- And a sharp dresser.
- Yeah, yeah, it just looks great.
Shirtless on a horseback, yes.
- No, no, no.
Listen, I mean, despitewhat some people might see
on the internet, it's apurely platonic friendship.
- Somebody said, somebodyasked if Andrew Huberman
has a girlfriend, andsomebody says, I think so.
And the third comment was,
this really like breaks my heart,
like that Lex and Andrew are not an item.
- We are not, we are greatfriends, but we are not an item.
Yeah, it's true, it's official.
I hear over and over again from friends
that have made great choicesand awesome partners,
and have these fantastic relationships
for long periods of time thatseem to continue to thrive.
At least that's what they tell me,
and that's what I observed.
Establish the friendship first
and give it a bit of time before sex.
And so, you know, Ithink that's the feeling.
That's the feeling.
And these are, we'retalking micro-features
and macro-features.
We're talking, you know,
and this isn't about perfection,
it's actually about the imperfections,
which is kind of cool.
I like quirky people, I like characters.
I'll tell you where I've gone badly wrong
and where I see otherpeople going badly wrong.
If there is no rule that saysthat you have to be attracted
to all attractive people,
by any means, it's veryimportant to develop
a sense of taste in romantic attractions.
I believe what you really likein terms of a certain style,
you know, a certain way of being,
and of course, that includessexuality and sex itself,
the verb.
But I think it also includesthere's just general way
of being, you know?
And when you really adore somebody,
you like the way they answer the phone.
And when they don'tanswer the phone that way,
you know, something'soff and you wanna know.
And so I think that
the more you can tune-upyour powers of observation,
not looking for things that you like,
and the more that stuffjust kinda washes over you,
the more likely you are to,quote-unquote, "fall in love."
As a mutual friend of ours said to me,
"You know, listen, when itcomes to romantic relationships,
if it's not a hundred percentin you, it ain't happening."
And I've never seen aviolation of that statement
where it's like, yeah,
it's mostly good andthey're this and this,
like the negotiations.
Well, already, it's doomed.
And that doesn't meansomeone has to be perfect.
The relationship has to be perfect,
but it's gotta feel ahundred percent inside.
Like, yes, yes, and yes.
I think Deisseroth, when hewas on here, your podcast,
mentioned something that, you know, like,
I think the words were you,
or maybe it was in hisbook, I don't recall.
But that, you know, loveis one of these things
that we story into with somebody.
We create this idea ofourselves in the future
and we look at our past time together
and then you, you story into it.
I mean, there are veryfew things like that,
I can't story into, youknow, building flying cars.
I have to actually go do something.
I mean, and love is alsoretroactively constructed.
I mean, anyone who'sgone through a breakup
understands the grief of knowing,
oh, like this is somethingI really shouldn't be in,
for whatever reason,
'cause it only takes one.
If the other persondoesn't want to be in it,
then you shouldn't be in it.
But then missing so many things,
and that's just the attachmentmachinery really at work.
- I have to ask you aquestion that somebody
on our amazing team wanted to ask.
He's happily married,
another like you mentionedincredible relationship.
- Are they good friends?
- They're amazing friends.- There you go.
- But I'm not saying who itis, so I can say some stuff,
which is they, it started outas a great sexual connection.
- Oh, well there you go.
- But then became veryclose friends after that.
- Okay, listening-- There you go.
- So speaking of sex-- Many paths to Rome.
- He has a wonderful son
and he is wanting to have a second kid,
and he wanted to ask thegreat Andrew Huberman,
is there like sexualpositions or any kinda thing
that can help maximize the chance
that they have a girl versus a boy?
'Cause they had a wonderfulboy, they want a girl.
Is there a way to control the gender?
- Well, this has beendebated for a long time
and I did a four and a halfhour episode on fertility.
And the reason I did a fourand a half hour episode
on fertility is that, first of all,
I find it that reproductivebiology be fascinating.
And I wanted a resource for people that
were thinking about orstruggling with having kids
for whatever reason.
And it felt important to me to combine
the male and female componentsin the same episode.
It's all timestamped,
so you don't have tolisten to the whole thing.
We talk about IVF, in vitro fertilization
and we talk about natural pregnancy.
Okay, the data on positionis very interesting.
But let me just say a few things.
There are a few clinics now in particular,
some out of the United Statesthat are spinning down sperm
and finding that they canseparate out fractions
as they're called, you know,
that can spin the spermdown at a given speed
and they'll separate out at different
sort of depths within the test tube
that allow them to pullout the sperm on top
or below and bias the probability
towards male or female births.
It's not perfect.
It's not a hundred percent.
It's a very costly procedure.
It's still very controversial.
Now with in vitro fertilization,
you can extract eggs, you cando introduce a sperm directly
by pipette and it's a process called ICSI
or you can set up a sperm race in a dish.
And if you get a numberof different embryos,
meaning the eggs getfertilized to duplicate
and start form a blastocyst,which is a ball of cells,
early embryo, then you can do karyotyping.
So you can do, look forXX or XY, select the XY,
which then would giverise to a male offspring
and implant that one.
So there is that kind of sex selection.
With respect to position,there's a lot of lore
that, you know, if the woman is on top
or the woman's on the bottom,
or whether or not thepenetration is from behind,
whether or not it's gonnabe male or female offspring.
And frankly, the data arenot great as you can imagine
'cause those would be interestingstudies to run, perhaps.
- But there is studies, there is papers.
- [Andrew] There are some-
- But they're not, I guess.
there's more lore than sciences.
- And there are a lot of other variables
that are hard to control.
So for instance, if it'sejaculation during intermission,
during sex penetration, et cetera,
then you can't measure, for instance,
sperm volume as opposed to when it's IVF,
and they can actuallymeasure how many milliliters,
how many forward motilesperm, it's hard to control
for certain things.
And it just can vary between individuals
and even from one ejaculation to the next.
And, okay, so there's too many variables.
However, the position thing is interesting
in the following way.
And then I'll answerwhether or not you can bias
towards a female.
But as long as we're talking about sexual-
- [Lex] I have other questions
about sexual-- But as long
as we're talking about sexual position.
There are data that support the idea
that in order to increase the probability
of successful fertilization,
that indeed the woman shouldnot stand upright after sex
and should right after theman has ejaculated inside her
and should adjust her pelvis,say 15 degrees upwards.
I mean, you know, someof the fertility experts,
MDs will say, that's crazy, you know,
but others that I sought out,
and not specifically for this answer,
but for researchingthat episode, said that,
yeah, you know what? You're talking about
is trying to get themaximum number of sperm
and it's contained in semen andyes, the semen can leak out.
And so keeping the pelvistilted for about at 15 degrees
for about 15 minutes,
obviously, tilted in the direction
that would have things runningupstream, not downstream,
so to speak.- Yeah, gravity.
- Gravity, it's real,
you know, so for maximizing fertilization,
you know, the doctorsI spoke to just said,
look, given that if peopleare trying to get pregnant,
what is spending 15 minutes on their back,
you know, this sort of thing.
Okay, so then withrespect to female getting
a female offspring or XX,female offspring, selectively,
there is the idea thatas fathers get older,
they're more likely to havedaughters as opposed to sons.
That's a,
from the papers I'veread is a significant,
but still mildly significant result.
So with each passing year,
this person increases the probability
they're gonna have a daughter, not a son.
But look, so that's interesting.
- But the probability differencesare probably tiny as you-
- I mean, it's not, youknow, it's not trivial,
it's not a trivial difference.
But if they want toensure having a daughter,
then they should do IVFand select an XX embryo.
And when you go through IVF,
they genetically screenthem for karyotype,
which is XX, XY.
And they look at mutations,
genotypic mutations for things like,
you know, trisomies and aneuploidies,
all the stuff you don't want.
- But there is a lot of lore if you look
on the internet.- Sure, different foods-
- [Lex] So there are a lot of variables-
- There's a lot of variable,
but there haven't been systematic studies.
So I think probably the best thing to do,
unless they're gonna doIVF is just, you know,
roll the dice and you know,
and I think with eachpassing year they increase
the probability of gettinga female offspring,
but of course, with each passing year,
the egg and sperm quality degrade,
so, you know, get after it soon.
- So I went down a rabbit hole.
There's like sexology,there's journals on sex.
- Sure.
- Okay, so-- And some of them,
some of them, not all quite reputable.
And some of them reallypioneering in the sense that
they've taken on topics that are,
you know, considered,
you know, outside the mainframe of what people talk about,
but they're very important.
We have episodes coming outsoon with, for instance,
the head of male urology, sexual health
and reproductive health atStanford, Michael Eisenberg,
but also, you know,
one with a femaleurologist, sexual health,
reproductive health, Dr. Rena Malik,
who is on, has a quiteactive YouTube presence.
She does these really like dry,
like scientificpresentation, but very nice.
She has a lovely voice and she,
but she'll be talking about, you know,
erections or squirting, or like all this,
like she does like very kindof internet type content,
but she's a legitimate urologist,
reproductive health expert.
And in the podcast, we did talk about
both male and female orgasm.
We talked a lot about sexualfunction, dysfunction.
We talked a lot about pelvic floor.
One interesting factoid is that
only three, only 3% ofsexual dysfunction is
hormonal endocrine in nature.
It's more often relatedto some pelvic floor
or vasculature blood flowrelated, or other issue.
And then when Eisenberg,he came on the podcast,
he said that far less sexual dysfunction
is psychogenic in origin
than people believe that farmore of it is pelvic floor,
neuro and vascular.
So, you know, there are the myths of,
I mean, it's not saying
that psychogenicdysfunction doesn't exist,
but that a lot of sexualdysfunction that people assume
is related to hormones or that is related
to psychogenic issuesare related to vascular
or neural issues.
And the good news is that
there are great remedies for those.
And so both those episodes detail some
of the more salient pointsaround what those remedies are
and could be, I mean, one ofthe kind of, again, factoids,
but it was interesting that, you know,
a lot of people have pelvic floor issues
and they think that their pelvic floors
are quote-unquote, "messed up."
So they go on the internet,
they learn about Kegels, you know,
and it turns out thatsome people need Kegels,
they need to strengthen theirpelvic floor, guess what?
A huge number of people withsexual and urologic dysfunction
have pelvic floors that are too tight
and Kegels are gonna make them far worse.
And they actually need to learnto relax their pelvic floor.
And so seeing a pelvic floorspecialist is important.
I think in the next 5, 10 years,
we're gonna see a dramaticshift towards more discussion
about sexual and reproductive health
in a way that acknowledges that,
yeah, the clitoris comesfrom the same origin tissue
as the penis.
And in many ways, the neuralinnervation of the two,
while clearly different, hassome overlapping features
that you know, that there'sgonna be discussion around
kind of anatomy andhormones, and pelvic floors,
and in a way that's gonna, you know,
erode some of the kind oflike cloaking of these topics
'cause they've beencloaked for a long time
and there's a lot of like,
well, let's just call it what it is,
there's a lot of bullshitout there about what's what.
And now the hormonal issues, by the way,
just to clarify, can impact desire.
So a lot of people who have lack of desire
as opposed to lack of anatomical function,
this could be male or female,
that can originate witheither things like SSRIs,
or hormonal issues.
And so we talk about that as well.
So it's a pretty vast topic.
- Okay, you're one of themost productive people I know.
What's the secret to your productivity?
How do you maximize the numberof productive hours in a day?
You're a scientist, you're a teacher,
you're a very prolific educator.
- Well, thanks for the kind words.
I struggle like everybody else,
but I am pretty relentless about
meeting deadlines.
I miss them sometimes,
but sometimes that means cramming.
Sometimes that means starting early, but-
- Has that been hard, sorry tointerrupt, with the podcast,
there's certain episodes,
I mean, you're like taking justincredibly difficult topics
and you know, there're going to be,
there's going to be a lotof really good scientists
listening to those with a veryskeptical and careful eye.
Like how hard,
do you struggle meetingthat deadline sometimes?
- Yes, so we've pushed out episodes
because I want more time with them.
I also, I haven't advertised this,
but I have another fully tenured professor
that's started checking my podcasts
and helping me find papers.
He's a close friend of mine,
he's an incredibleexpert in neuroplasticity
and that's been helpful.
But I research all my all, Ido all the primary research
for the episodes myself.
Although, my niece has beendoing a summer internship
with me and finding amazing papers.
She did last summer as well,she's really good at it.
Just seek that kid on theinternet and she gets great stuff.
- Can I ask you justgoing on tangents here,
what's the hardest, finding the papers
or understanding what a paper is saying?
- Finding the best papers.
'Cause you have to, you know,read a bunch of reviews,
figure out who's getting cited.
Call people in a field, makesure that this is the stuff.
I mean, you know, I didthis episode recently
on ketamine, about ketamine.
I wasn't on ketamine and you know,
there's this whole debateabout S versus R Ketamine
and S/R Ketamine.
And I called two clinicalexperts at Stanford.
I had a researcher at UCLA help me.
Even then, you know, a fewpeople had gripes about it,
that I don't think theyunderstood a section
that I was perhaps couldhave been clearer about.
But yeah, you're alwaysconcerned that people
either won't get it or I won't be clear.
So the researching is mainlyabout finding the best papers,
and then I'm looking forpapers that establish
a thoroughness of understanding
that are interesting, obviously,
it's fun to get occasionallylook at some of the odder
or more progressivepapers that are, you know,
what's new in a field and then
where there are actionable takeaways
to really export those witha lot of thoughtfulness.
I mean, I think that goingback to the productivity thing,
you know, I do, I getup, I look at the sun.
I don't stare at the sun,but I get my sunshine.
It all starts with areally good night's sleep.
I think that's reallyimportant to understand.
So much so that if I wake upand I don't feel rested enough,
I'll often do a non-sleepdeep rest, yoga nidra,
or go back to sleep fora little bit, get up,
really prioritize one, you know,
the big block of work for thething that I'm researching.
I think a little bit of anxietyand a little bit of concern
about deadline helps.
Turning the phone off helps.
Realizing that those peak hours,
whenever they are for you,
you do not allow those hours to be invaded
unless there's a, you know,a nuclear bomb goes off.
And a nuclear bomb is just a,you know, a phraseology for,
you know, it could be familycrisis, would be, you know,
would be good justification
if there's an emergency, obviously.
But it's all about focus.
It's all about focus in the moment.
It's not even so much abouthow many hours you log.
It's really about focus in the moment.
How much total focus canyou give to something?
And then I like to takewalks and think about things
and sometimes talk aboutthem in my voice recorder.
So I'm just always churningon it all the time.
And then of course,
learning to turn it off andengage with people socially
and, you know, not bepodcasting 24 hours a day
in your head is key.
But I think I lovelearning and researching,
and finding that thosepapers and the information,
and I love teaching it.
And these days I use awhiteboard before I start.
I don't have any notes, no teleprompter.
Then the whiteboard that I used beforehand
is to really sculpt out thedifferent elements and the flow,
get the flow right,and move things around.
The whiteboard is such a valuable tool.
Then take a couple pictures ofthat when I'm happy with it,
put it down on the desk andthese are just bullet points
and then just churn through,and just churn through.
And nothing feels better than,
you know, researchingand sharing information.
And as you did, you know,grew up writing papers
and it's hard.
And I like the friction of a, (grunts)
can't, you know, I wanna getup, wanna use the bathroom.
When I was in college,
I was trying to make up deficiencies
from my lack of attendance in high school.
So much so that I would set a timer.
I wouldn't let myself get upto use the bathroom, even.
Never had an accident,
but I was, you know,
I mean, it was like, I listenedto music, classical music,
Rancid, a few other things.
Some Bob Dylan maybe thrown in there
and just study and just...
And it felt, and then, you know,
hit the two-hour mark and you're in pain,
and then you get up,like use the bathroom.
Like, that felt so good.
There's something about the human brain
that likes these kind of friction points
and working through them
and you just have to work through them.
So yeah, I'm productive
and my life has arrangedaround it and you know,
that's been a bit of a barrierto personal life at times,
but my life's been arranged around it.
I've set up everything so thatI can learn more, teach more,
including, you know, some of my home life.
But I do, you know,still watch Chimp Empire.
Still got time to watch Chimp Empire.
Look, the great Joe Strummer, right, Clash
or my favorite Mescaleros, he said,
this is a famous Strummerquote, "no input, no output."
So you need experience, youneed outside things in order
to foster the process.
But yeah, just noses thegrindstone man, I don't know.
And that's what I'mhappy to do with my life.
I don't think anyone shoulddo that, just because,
but this is how I'm showing up.
And, you know, if youdon't like me, then scroll.
Why do they say swipe left, swipe right?
I don't know.
I'm not on the apps, the dating apps.
So that's the other thingI keep waiting for when
listens to Lex Fridmanpodcast is a check box
on like Hinge or Bumble,or whatever it is.
But I don't even know arethose that are field is,
I don't know what are the apps now?
- Well, I've never used an app,
those foul troublesomehow little information
is provided on apps.
- Well, they're the onesthat are like a stocked lake.
Like Raya, you know?
They sort of like, companieswill actually fill them with,
you know?- Oh, interesting.
- People that look a certain way and-
- Well, soon it'll be filled with AI.
- Oh yeah.
- That's the way you said, oh.
- Oh, that's interesting.- A heartbreak within that.
- Well, you know, I'm guilty
of liking real human interaction.
- Have you tried AI interaction?
(Lex and Andrew chuckling)
- No, but I have a feelingyou're gonna convince me to.
(Lex and Andrew chuckling)
- One day.
Yeah, I've also struggledfinishing projects that are new,
that are something new.
Like for example,
one of the things Ireally struggled finishing
is something that's in Russianthat requires translation
and overdub, and all that kind of stuff.
The other project I'vebeen working on for like,
over at least a year,
off and on, but trying to finish
is something we've talkedabout in the past is,
I'm still on it project onHitler and World War II.
I've written so much about it
and I just don't knowwhy I can't finish it.
I have trouble, like really...
I think I'm terrified beingin front of the camera.
- Like this?
- Like this.- Or solo?
- Well, actually, no, no, no.
Solo, basically.- Well, if you wanna do solo
and seriously, 'cause we'vedone this before, right?
Our clandestine study missions.
I'm happy to sit in thecorner and work on my book
or do something if youwanna, if it feels good-
- Just for the feeling of somebody else.
- Definitely.- What do you,
I mean, how do you...
You don't seem to,
you seem to have been fearless,
to just sit in front ofthe camera by yourself
to do the episode.
- Yeah, it was weird.
I mean, the first year of the podcast,
it just spilled outta me.
It was just, I had all thatstuff I was so excited about.
I've been talking toeveryone and who would listen
and anyone even when, who they'd run away,
I'd keep talking, you know,
before there was ever acamera wasn't on social media.
In 2019, I posted a littlebit, 2020, as you know,
I started going on podcasts.
But yeah, I just...
The zest and delight in this stuff.
I was like, circadian rhythms,
I'm gonna tell you about this stuff.
Just felt like, here's the opportunity
and just let it burst.
And then as we've gotten into topics
that are a little bit furtheraway from my home knowledge,
you know, like I still getsuper excited about it.
It's music in the brainepisode I've been researching
for a while now, I'm just so hyped,
I keep thinking about it.
It's so interesting.
There's so many facets.
Singing versus improvisational,excuse me, music
versus I'm listening tomusic versus learning music.
I mean that, it just goes on and on.
There's just so much,that's so interesting.
I just can't get enough and I think,
I dunno, you put a camera in front of me,
I sort of forget about it andI'm just trying to just teach.
- Yeah, so that's thedifference, that's interesting.
I mean-- Forget the camera.
- Maybe I need to find that joy as well,
but like for me, a lot ofthe joys in the writing,
and the camera, there's something-
- Well, the best lecturers, as you know,
and you're in a phenomenal lecturer,
so you embody this as well.
But when I teach at Stanford,
I was directing thiscourse in neuroanatomy
and neuroscience for medical students.
And I noticed that the bestlecturers would come in
and they're teaching the material
from a place of deep understanding,
but they're also experiencingit as a first-time learner
as at the same time.
So it's just sort ofembodying the delight of it,
but also the authorityover the, not authority,
but the sort of mastery of the material.
And it's really the delight in it
that the students are linking onto it.
And of course, they need and deserve
the best accurate material,
so they have to know whatthey're talking about.
But yeah, just tap intothat energy of learning
and loving it, and peopleare long for the ride.
Or you know, I get accusedof being long-winded,
but, you know, thingsget taken outta context
that leads to greater misunderstanding.
And also I look at,
listen, I come from a lineageof three dead advisors,
three, all three.
So I don't know when thereaper's coming for me.
I'm doing my best tostay alive a long time.
But whether or not it's abullet or a bus, or cancer,
whatever, or just old age, I mean,
I'm trying to get it allout there as best I can.
And if it means you have to hit pause
and come back a day or two later, like,
that seems like areasonable compromise to me.
I'm not gonna go longer than I need to
and I'm trying to shorten them up.
But again, that's kinda how I show up.
It's like Tim Armstrong wouldsay about writing songs.
I asked him, do you write,how often do you write?
Every day?
Every day.
Has Rick ever stopped creating? No.
Has Joe ever stopped preparing for comedy?
Are you ever stopping tothink about world issues
and technology and who you can talk to?
I mean, it seems to meyou've always got a plan,
the insight.
The thing I love aboutyour podcast the most,
to be honest these days, is the surprise
of like, I don't know whothe hell's gonna be there.
It's almost like, I get alittle nervously excited
about when a new episodecomes 'cause I have no idea.
No idea.
And you know, I mean, I have some guesses
based on what you toldme during the break.
I mean, you've got somepeople where it's just like,
whoa! Lex has went there? Awesome.
Can't wait, click.
You know, I think that's really cool.
Like, you're constantly surprising people.
So you're doing it so well.
Like, it's such a high-level.
And I think it's also importantfor people to understand
that what you're doing, Lex,there's no precedent for it.
Sure, there have been interviews before,
there have been podcasts before.
There are discussions before,
but it's not like, how manyof your peers can you look to,
to find out how best todo the content like yours?
Zero.
There's one peer, you.
And so, you know, thatshould give you great peace
and great excitement
because you're a pioneer.
You're literally the tip of the spear.
I don't wanna take an unnecessary tangent,
but I think this might thread together two
of the things that we've beentalking about, which are,
I think of pretty key importance.
One is romantic relationships,
and the other is creativeprocess and the work.
And this again, is somethingI learned from Rick,
but that he and I havegone back and forth on.
And that I think is worthelaborating on, which is,
earlier we were saying,
you know, the bestrelationship is gonna be one
where it brings you peace.
I think peace also can betranslated to, among other things,
lack of distraction.
So when you're with your partner,
can you really focus onthem and the relationship?
Can you not be distracted by things
that you're upset about from their past
or from your past with them or their,
and of course, the sameis true for them, right?
They ideally will feelthat way towards you too,
they can really focus.
Also, when you're not with them,
can you focus on your work?
Can you not be worried aboutwhether or not they're okay?
'Cause you trust that they're an adult
and they can handle thingsor they will reach out
if they need things?
They're gonna communicatetheir needs like an adult,
you know, not creatingmessage just to get attention
and things like that.
Or disappearing, youknow, for that matter.
So peace and focus are intimately related,
and distraction is theenemy of peace and focus.
So there's something there, I believe,
because with people that havethe strong generative drive
and want to, you know,
be productive in theirhome life in the sense
have a rich family life orpartner life, whatever that is.
And in their work life,
you know, the ability toreally drop into the work
and like, okay, you mighthave that sense like,
I hope they're okay or, you know,
need to check my phone or something.
But just know like, we're good.
So peace and focus, I thinkbeing present are so key.
And it's key at every levelof romantic relationship from,
you know, certainly presenceand focus, you know,
everything from sex to listening to,
you know, raising a family,
to tending to the house and in work,
it's absolutely critical.
So I think that those thingsare kind of mirror images
of the same thing.
And they're both importantreflections of the other.
And when you start tojust, you know, when work
is not going well, then thefocus on relationship can suffer
and vice versa.
- And it's crazy how important that is.
How incredibly wonderfulit could be to have
a person in your life that kind of enables
that creative focus.
- Yeah, and you supply the peace and focus
for their endeavors,whatever those might be.
I mean that symmetry there,
because clearly, peoplehave different needs
and the need to just really trust,
you know, like when Lex is working,
he's in his generativemode and I know he's good.
And so then they feel surethey've contributed to that,
but then also what you'redoing is supporting them
in whatever way it happens to be.
And I think that sometimesyou'll see that people
will pair up along creative,creative or musical, musical,
or computer scientists.
But I think, again, goingback to this Conti episode
on relationships is thatthe superficial labels
are less important itseems than just the desire
to create that kind of homelife and relationship together.
And as a consequence, the work mode.
And for some people they'reboth people aren't working.
And sometimes they are.
But I think that's thegood stuff, you know?
And I think that's thebig learning in all of it,
is that the further alongI go with each birthday,
I guarantee you're gonna be like,
what I want is simpler and simpler,
and harder and harder tocreate, but oh, so worth it.
- The inner and the outer peace.
It's been over two years,
I think since Costello passed away.
- [Andrew] It still tears me up.
- You mentioned him still.- I cried about him today,
I cried about him today.- Still?
- It's proportional to the love.
But yeah, I'll cry about itright now if I think about it.
It wasn't putting him down,
it wasn't the act ofhim dying any of that.
Actually, that was a beautiful experience.
I didn't expect it to be,
but it was in my place whenI was living in Topanga
during the pandemic wherewe launched the podcast
and I did it at home.
And he hated the vets, I did it at home.
And it was, he gave outthis huge (deep sigh)
right at the end.
And I could just tell he had been in just
not a lot pain, fortunately,
but he had just been workingso hard just to move at all.
And the craziest thing happened,Lex is, was unbelievable.
I've never had an experience like this.
I expected my heart to break.
And I've felt a broken heart before.
I felt it, frankly, when my parents split,
I felt it when Harry shot himself.
I felt it when Barbara died
and felt it, when, you know,when Ben went, so as well.
And so many friends, likeway too many friends.
I mean, the end of 2017,my friend Aaron King,
Johnny Farer, John Eckelberry,
stomach cancer, suicide, fentanyl.
It's like, whoa! All in a freaking week.
And I just rememberthinking like, what the?
But when Cost...
And it's just heartbreaking,you just carry that.
And it's like, (grunts)
and that's just a short list, you know?
And I don't say that for sob story,
it's just for a guy thatwasn't in the military
or didn't grow up in the inner city,
like it's an unusualnumber of like deaths,
like close people.
When Costello went, thecraziest thing happened.
My heart warmed up, like heated up.
And I wasn't on MDMA andjust the moment he went,
it just went whoosh!
And I was like, what the hell is this?
And it was just like asupernatural experience to me.
I just never had that.
I put my grandfather on the ground,
I was a pallbearer at the funeral.
I've like done that more times than I'd
like to have ever done it.
And it just heated up withCostello and I thought,
what the fuck is this?
And it was almost like, andwe make up these stories
about what it is,
but it was almost likehe was like, all right,
I have to be careful
'cause I will cry hereand I don't want to.
It was almost like, hewas like, all that effort
'cause I had been puttingso much effort into him,
it was like, alright, you get that back.
It was like the giant freaking thank you.
And it was incredible, you know?
And I'm not embarrassed toshed a tear or two about it
if I have to, I was like, holy shit!
Like that's how closeI was to that animal.
- Where do you think,
where do you think you canfind that kind of love again?
- Man, I don't know.
I mean, when, and excuseme for welling up,
but it was just, I mean,it's a freaking dog, right?
I get it.
But for me, it was thefirst real home I ever had.
But when Costello went, it was like,
we had had this home in Topanga.
We had set it up and we're like,
and he was just so happy there.
And I think it just...
I don't know, it was like this weird
like victory slash massive loss.
Like we did it 11 years.
Freaking did everything
to make him as comfortable as possible.
And he was super loyal, beautiful animal,
but also just funny and fun.
And I was like, I did it.
Like, you know,
I gave as much of myselfto this being as a human.
I felt I could withoutmaking it, you know,
like, you know, detractingfrom the rest of my life.
And so I don't know,
when I think about Barbara especially,
I well up and it's hard for me,
but I mean, I talkedto her before she died
and that was a brutal conversation.
Saying goodbye to someone,
especially with kids.
And that was hard.
I think that really flipped aswitch in me where I'm like,
I always knew I wanted kids.
I'd say I want kids, I want a lot of kids.
That flipped a switch in me.
I was like, I want kids.
I want my own kids.
- [Lex] You might be ableto find that kind of love.
- Yeah, I think becauseit was the caretaking,
it wasn't about what hegave me all that time.
And the more I could takecare of him and see him happy,
the better I felt, it's crazy.
And, I don't know.
So I miss him every day, every day.
I miss him every day.
- You got a heart that's so full of love.
I can't wait for you to have kids.
- Thanks man.- For you to be a father.
- Yeah, well,
- I can't wait to say-- when I'm ready for it.
When, you know, when God decidesI'm ready, I'll have 'em.
- And then I will still beat you to it.
As I told you many times before.
- I think you should absolutely have kids.
I mean, look at the people in our life
'cause we're kind of the...
In case you haven't realized it already,
like we're the younger of the podcasters,
but you know, like Joeand Peter, and Segura,
and you know, and the rest, right?
They're like the tribal elders, right?
And we're, you know,
we're not the the youngest in the crew,
but if you look at all thoseguys, they all have kids.
They all adore their kids
and their kids bring tremendousmeaning to their life.
Like we'd be morons if,
you know, if you didn'tgo off and start a family,
I didn't start a family.
And yeah, I think that's the goal.
I mean, I think-
- The kids.- of the goals,
that's one of them.
- Kids not only make themtheir life more joyful
and brings love to their life,
it's also makes 'em more productive,
makes 'em better people, all that.
It's kind of obvious.
- Yeah, I think that'swhat Costello wanted.
I think I have this story inmy head that he was just like,
okay, like take this.
Like you could, yeah.
- And don't fuck this up.
- And don't, (chuckles)
Lord knows, don't fuck this up.
- Andrew, I love you brother.
This is incredible.- Love you too, thank you,
I appreciate you.
- As we will talk oftenon each other's podcast
for many years to come.
- Yes.- Many, many years to come.
- Thank you, thanks for having me on here.
And there are no wordsfor how much I appreciate
your example and yourfriendship, so love you brother.
- I love you too.
Thanks for listening to this conversation
with Andrew Huberman.
To support this podcast,
please check out oursponsors in the description.
And now lemme leave you withsome words from Albert Camu.
"In the midst of winter,
I found there was, withinme, an invincible summer.
And that makes me happy.
For it says that no matter how hard
the world pushes against me, within me,
there's something stronger,
something better, pushing right back."
Thank you for listening andhope to see you next time.
Transcription complète d'Andrew Huberman sur le podcast Lex Friedman | HackerNoon
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