Transcription complète d'Andrew Huberman sur le podcast Lex Friedman

- 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,