This Past Weekend with Theo Von - #585

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00:00:30.360 Today's guest is a neuroscientist. He's a professor. He's a podcaster.

00:00:35.160 He hosts one of the biggest shows in the world called Huberman Lab,

00:00:40.260 where he focuses on helping us to become our best selves and get the most out of our bodies.

00:00:46.960 I believe that he's one of the people who's responsible for bringing health and self-evaluation into the mainstream.

00:00:55.980 I'm grateful for the chance to finally link up today with the one and only Andrew Huberman.

00:01:04.240 Whitney's been amazing to me. Since I moved to L.A.

00:01:24.560 She kind of ushered me in. I didn't really understand L.A.

00:01:28.440 I moved to Topanga during the pandemic, set up there with my bulldog, started doing the podcast in a closet.

00:01:35.120 And she kind of taught me about L.A.

00:01:37.520 And I'd never done anything public-facing.

00:01:39.480 Let's start.

00:01:40.020 You want to just start there?

00:01:40.640 We can talk.

00:01:41.240 Yeah, we can do it.

00:01:42.000 But we can talk.

00:01:42.580 I mean, I think we should mention what a cute baby Henry is.

00:01:45.760 That kid is so cute.

00:01:46.780 Oh, the baby is beautiful, I think.

00:01:48.580 Bring up Henry.

00:01:49.620 Bring up Henry Cummins.

00:01:52.160 I don't even know if it's – has it ever staged?

00:01:54.040 I have no idea if the baby has a front name or last name.

00:01:56.840 I'm pretty sure it's Henry Cummins.

00:01:59.360 Oh, my God.

00:02:00.480 That's beautiful.

00:02:01.040 He is super –

00:02:01.440 Oh, yeah.

00:02:02.060 Look at him.

00:02:02.900 He's got your haircut.

00:02:04.300 Wow.

00:02:04.780 He does, dude.

00:02:05.960 And you can tell he cuts it himself, too.

00:02:08.880 Yeah.

00:02:09.160 He's a – you know, I've met him, and he's just such a good-natured kid.

00:02:13.320 He looks AI right there.

00:02:15.300 He looks like Dermot Kennedy a little as well there.

00:02:18.080 He's – he loves animals, which is great because she's, you know, surrounded herself with animals.

00:02:24.420 Are you trying to attack a resemblance there?

00:02:27.060 I'm just saying the child has a slight resemblance to the remarkable crooner, Dermot Kennedy.

00:02:34.200 And look, whoa, hold on.

00:02:36.460 Whoa, whoa, bro.

00:02:38.120 I'm going to have to call my sponsor, dude.

00:02:42.000 Oh, wow.

00:02:42.860 That's a great photo.

00:02:43.760 That is super cool.

00:02:47.120 Yeah.

00:02:47.960 I think that last shirt says – I think that shirt says single mom.

00:02:52.260 Yeah.

00:02:52.780 Ooh.

00:02:53.260 It's like a rock and roll.

00:02:55.500 Whitney's a punk rocker.

00:02:56.480 We have a lot of friends through the punk rock community.

00:02:58.680 Oh, yeah?

00:02:59.140 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:02:59.680 And she sometimes posts with Chris Cole, who's a guy who grew up watching skateboarding.

00:03:04.200 He's a – I think he's in the Tony Hawk skateboarder game.

00:03:06.420 Is he?

00:03:06.940 Bring him up.

00:03:07.460 Bring up a picture of Chris Cole.

00:03:09.960 I've heard of Nat King Cole, and I've heard of Cole.

00:03:13.680 There he is.

00:03:14.260 Yeah, he's a beast.

00:03:16.480 Famous for doing a tray flip down Wallenberg, which in the Bay Area, Wallenberg School is famous for stair.

00:03:24.740 Huge.

00:03:25.720 So, you know, he's –

00:03:26.600 Wallenberg, it's a staircase?

00:03:27.580 It's a school, and so they call it Wallenberg for – I grew up skateboarding.

00:03:32.100 And there it is.

00:03:32.680 Wallenberg's the third one down there, right?

00:03:34.480 Oh, yeah.

00:03:35.220 So this is like – this is one of the things that made Chris legendary.

00:03:41.580 That – and he always had those silly wristbands on.

00:03:45.480 Not wrist guards, wristbands.

00:03:47.180 But this is a long time ago.

00:03:47.940 That's a lot bigger than it might look.

00:03:50.160 No, it's –

00:03:50.760 And you actually have to – now they build roll-ins, but back then you would push in down the avenues.

00:04:01.000 This is so sick.

00:04:02.080 It's just him trying it over, and it's so cool.

00:04:03.440 Over and over and over.

00:04:04.240 Oh.

00:04:05.880 And you can kind of start – even just watching this, you start to gain the –

00:04:10.720 Oh.

00:04:10.840 There it is.

00:04:11.740 And it's all bolts, as they say.

00:04:13.640 His land's perfect.

00:04:15.960 God, it's just so crazy.

00:04:17.760 How many times – it's just such a little piece of perfection.

00:04:21.940 It's like just such an organized, specific moment, like the point of a pen when they land those things.

00:04:29.640 Super satisfying to watch.

00:04:30.960 It's got to feel incredible.

00:04:32.500 Yeah.

00:04:32.880 Oh, that's amazing.

00:04:33.900 He looks a little bit like your assistant that came in today, too.

00:04:36.520 Oh, yeah.

00:04:36.880 He does look a little bit like Greg.

00:04:38.160 You're right.

00:04:38.920 They have a resemblance.

00:04:40.180 He looks a little bit like Greg, dude.

00:04:42.020 Yeah, and they're friends, so that's interesting.

00:04:44.020 But, yeah, that baby.

00:04:44.980 Oh, my God, I would have loved to have been her son or been – or just had a – yeah, even – I'm glad that – yeah, I'm happy that she has a baby.

00:04:53.060 Well, and she's got that menagerie of animals, like Mona, her pit bull Ridgeback mix, I love.

00:04:59.480 I also – I have a close relationship to her great Dane, Frank.

00:05:03.380 Oh, let me see that –

00:05:04.240 Like, right now, I don't have a dog, so a little while ago, I was like, I need some dog time.

00:05:08.780 So I went over there, and he thinks he's a puppy, and he crawled up on me on the couch.

00:05:13.440 And that's a different one.

00:05:14.620 Frank's gray, but –

00:05:15.540 That one's mixed.

00:05:16.180 There he is.

00:05:16.840 That's probably Frank.

00:05:18.120 And he – and I woke up at 2 in the morning.

00:05:20.660 She had covered us with a blanket on the sofa, and Frank was breathing into my face.

00:05:24.400 And it was a moment, but I love Great Danes because they think they're little dogs, but they're giant dogs.

00:05:32.500 So anyway, never a dull moment at Casa de Cummings.

00:05:36.960 No, she's always had excitement, and she definitely will free an animal if there's even – you know, she'll release a damn animal from anything.

00:05:46.780 Oh, if she hears that there's, like, a dog running around in the street, or – I think this is right.

00:05:52.620 Check me on this.

00:05:53.380 We'll have to ask her.

00:05:54.100 But a while back, I think that she was trying to rescue a giraffe.

00:05:57.540 You know, you get these wealthy people that have exotic animals.

00:06:00.780 They want a giraffe or an elephant or something.

00:06:02.740 So she'll drop everything and, like, go try and rescue a giraffe.

00:06:06.300 She's a real animal lover.

00:06:07.500 She's definitely – who's the guy?

00:06:11.140 William Wordsworth or whatever.

00:06:13.420 Who's – no, who had the animal movie?

00:06:15.440 Dr. Doolittle.

00:06:17.360 She's, like, the female Dr. Doolittle.

00:06:19.280 That's right, and talk to the animals.

00:06:20.540 Yeah.

00:06:21.060 Yeah.

00:06:21.280 Yeah.

00:06:21.620 I would love to see her do a show just for animals, even, like, a live performance just

00:06:26.180 for animals, and see how it goes.

00:06:29.080 But, yeah, she'll pet anything, but I'm glad she's got that beautiful baby over there.

00:06:33.920 Andrew Huberman, good to see you, dude.

00:06:35.780 Great to meet you in person, finally.

00:06:37.460 We've corresponded a little bit, but –

00:06:39.140 You too, man.

00:06:39.720 I'm a big fan, and I heard your name mentioned at the inauguration of the president of the

00:06:44.540 United States, and I went, this is wild.

00:06:47.500 Worlds colliding, right?

00:06:48.600 I think Dana White mentioned Joe Rogan and you at the inauguration of the most powerful

00:06:53.780 person in the world.

00:06:56.180 And – and who else?

00:06:57.400 I'm sorry.

00:06:57.740 The Nelk boys.

00:06:58.900 Well, he mentioned us and the Nelk boys, and then he mentioned and the most powerful person,

00:07:02.900 Joe Rogan.

00:07:03.640 We definitely were, like, just some satellites in the orbit, but it was really sweet of him.

00:07:08.160 I mean, I think you catch Dana White at 2 a.m., you know, and he'll drop some different

00:07:12.420 names and stuff.

00:07:13.500 But, yeah, that was crazy when that happened.

00:07:15.780 I remember my ex-girlfriend's mom just texted me, like, they just mentioned you on the inauguration

00:07:20.180 address or something.

00:07:21.140 And I was like, what is going on that podcasting has become this thing?

00:07:26.340 It's just such a part of the universe, you know?

00:07:28.580 So, what do you think it is, you know?

00:07:32.180 Like, what do you think it is?

00:07:33.980 Because you may even have more of a scientific look at it.

00:07:37.420 Why is podcasting just – it's as common as, like, somebody saying the New York Times

00:07:42.860 five years ago.

00:07:44.380 Yeah, I have a lot of thoughts about this.

00:07:46.360 First of all, it's interesting that we looked at skateboarding earlier.

00:07:48.980 I've been lucky enough to get in on some things in the early phase, not the very earliest,

00:07:53.900 but the early phase, when things were kind of small and there wasn't a lot of money at

00:07:58.520 first, and then things kind of blow up.

00:08:01.020 When I was younger, I got into skateboarding.

00:08:02.460 Every kid in my town played soccer, swam.

00:08:04.420 I got really excited about skateboarding when it was kind of at a low point in terms of,

00:08:08.960 like, there weren't a lot of kids skateboarding.

00:08:11.340 It had gone through a phase of popularity, then it had died in the early 90s.

00:08:14.920 What town was that you're in?

00:08:16.160 I grew up in the South Bay area.

00:08:17.920 So, this is what now is known as South Palo Alto, before the internet.

00:08:21.420 Oh, yeah.

00:08:21.860 So, you know, we worked hard when we were in high school to get a skate park put in.

00:08:26.020 There weren't many skate parks.

00:08:26.960 It was really small.

00:08:27.960 We used to take the 7F bus up to San Francisco, the famed Embarcadero or EMB crowd.

00:08:32.140 This is where people like Rob Dyrdek would show up.

00:08:35.340 Back then, he didn't have his show.

00:08:37.160 Actually, the photographer for my podcast, Blayback, was taking photos of all those guys.

00:08:41.960 A lot of those guys now went on to have, well, Rob Dyrdek's famous, has his own show of

00:08:45.700 Ridiculousness, and has done a bunch of other things.

00:08:47.500 Rob and Big.

00:08:48.200 Tony Hawk, of course, has lasted through all the peaks and valleys of skateboarding.

00:08:52.620 Pretty impressive.

00:08:53.400 You know, so back then, it was really small.

00:08:55.200 I was going to contests where I met Frank Hawk.

00:08:57.900 Tony's dad was kind of running it a little bit like a baseball league.

00:09:00.360 Bring him a picture of Frank Hawk.

00:09:01.080 You never see him, huh?

00:09:01.360 Yeah, Frank and Nancy Hawk.

00:09:02.340 I'll tell you a funny story, actually.

00:09:03.580 When I was 14, I went to a contest at the Linda Vista Boys Club out in the middle of nowhere.

00:09:10.900 And when the contest ended, I was 14.

00:09:13.500 When the contest ended, Frank came around and asked me, and this kid, Billy Waldman, who

00:09:17.660 was like, they called him the demon child.

00:09:19.900 He's kind of a wild one.

00:09:20.780 He was my friend.

00:09:22.360 If you put Billy Waldman demon child, he'll show up.

00:09:24.680 You'll see it in his face.

00:09:25.800 Watch this.

00:09:26.380 Ready?

00:09:27.100 Look, that's what a demon child looks like.

00:09:28.840 He was a good kid, but in any case, what ended up happening was Frank was like, hey,

00:09:34.640 where are you guys going?

00:09:35.940 And we're like, well, we don't know.

00:09:37.080 I was going to take the bus to Lancaster, see my friend Joe Rickerbosch and somehow get

00:09:40.340 home.

00:09:40.880 And he was like, no, no, you guys can't do that.

00:09:42.580 He was like a real protective dad.

00:09:43.820 So he and Nancy Hawk took me in.

00:09:45.920 I got to stay in Tony Hawk's bedroom that night with all the trophies everywhere.

00:09:51.420 And they took me out to dinner and I'll never forget.

00:09:54.660 And this is how I got back in touch with Tony in recent years.

00:09:56.940 They had black coffee after dinner at like 8 p.m.

00:10:00.740 And I'd never seen that.

00:10:01.780 So a few years ago on Instagram, I wrote to Tony and said, hey, you know, your parents

00:10:04.660 took me in when I was a little bit stranded.

00:10:07.120 And if you don't believe me, they drink coffee at 8 30 p.m.

00:10:11.000 After dinner, he wrote back and he goes, no way.

00:10:12.540 You're the only person.

00:10:13.220 The only way to know that is to actually have a meal with them.

00:10:16.380 So anyway, you know, skateboarding back then I got out of it.

00:10:19.260 I wasn't very good.

00:10:20.180 Okay.

00:10:20.500 I got put on a team out of sympathy.

00:10:21.980 I tried, but I kept getting hurt.

00:10:23.680 You say a team.

00:10:24.360 What do you mean?

00:10:24.940 Sponsored?

00:10:25.340 The Dutch drink coffee late at night.

00:10:27.360 Bring that up real quick.

00:10:28.020 Who's drinking coffee very late at night or see if Tony Hawk is Amsterdamian, if he's

00:10:32.800 an Amsterdamian guy.

00:10:33.660 I believe he looks Amsterdamian to me.

00:10:37.020 Tony is like six foot five.

00:10:38.660 I know the Dutch are tall.

00:10:39.960 And his son is tall as well.

00:10:42.860 You can pick a more perfect last name for a professional skateboarder, right?

00:10:46.100 Well, that's another reason I believe that he's all, in addition to his talent, which

00:10:50.180 helped him stand the test of time is such a moniker.

00:10:54.460 There's nothing like that.

00:10:55.260 Tony Hawk.

00:10:55.840 It's totally Tony is the most relatable name in the world.

00:10:58.520 And then just like, who don't want to be that?

00:11:00.820 Tony Hawk is a predominantly British Isles descent.

00:11:03.540 Oh, damn.

00:11:04.320 I was hoping we'd get him in Amsterdam.

00:11:05.560 All right.

00:11:06.080 That's all good.

00:11:07.280 But yeah.

00:11:07.820 So what were you saying, brother?

00:11:08.820 Sorry.

00:11:09.220 No.

00:11:09.520 Um, so got into that early and then it got hurt from a team.

00:11:14.160 Yeah.

00:11:14.480 Yeah.

00:11:14.700 So I got sponsored by a little, uh, company called thunder trucks, spitfire wheels.

00:11:18.040 They put me on as sympathy.

00:11:19.380 I'm, I'm still friends with the team manager from back then.

00:11:22.120 And he'll tell you it was out of sympathy, but I got to see a lot of friends turn pro

00:11:25.940 start companies.

00:11:26.900 Danny way and Colin McKay started DC.

00:11:29.460 Oh yeah.

00:11:30.160 DC, which eventually sold to Quicksilver.

00:11:32.080 They did that also with, uh, Ken block, who was a rally car driver, unfortunately passed

00:11:36.240 away a few years ago.

00:11:37.200 He was the guy that do Jim Kana, all the driving around cities, you know, jump.

00:11:41.220 You haven't seen Jim Kana in San Francisco.

00:11:42.740 Oh man.

00:11:42.920 We're bringing back all the stuff.

00:11:44.520 Well, this is awesome.

00:11:45.260 Pull this up.

00:11:45.860 So if you look at, um, if you look at San Francisco, um, and you say Ken block, this

00:11:51.180 is, I mean, so Ken, unfortunately died in this snowmobile accident a few years ago, but

00:11:55.940 this on YouTube, um, is unbelievable.

00:11:59.620 I would go to the middle of it to really get a sense of.

00:12:03.180 And so they would drive around.

00:12:05.300 They basically just, they shut down big segments of the city.

00:12:09.520 So that's down at the piers.

00:12:11.360 And then all this 119 million views, all this aerial footage, shutting down jump.

00:12:18.240 Why not just jump between two streets in San Francisco?

00:12:20.640 Hell yeah.

00:12:21.360 So that was, this was.

00:12:22.680 Yeah.

00:12:22.880 My friend, Mike Blayback was the one photographing all this for DC.

00:12:26.000 So DC was initially skateboarding, Danny and Colin and Danny's older brother, Damon started

00:12:31.520 DC.

00:12:31.960 It is actually stood for something called drawers clothing, but DC, Danny Colin and DC

00:12:35.800 shoes, right?

00:12:36.420 And then they went snowboarding, rally car, BMX, motocross, monster, you know, monster,

00:12:44.040 rockstar, all that was born out of essentially skateboarding and BMX early on.

00:12:48.060 Then X games took off.

00:12:49.380 So it's kind of like how, you know, in the nineties skateboarding was really small.

00:12:53.840 Then it blew up, then it dies a little bit and it keeps coming back.

00:12:56.020 Now it's in the Olympics.

00:12:56.960 Yeah.

00:12:57.060 Okay.

00:12:57.820 So when I got into neuroscience, cause that's my official job.

00:13:01.960 I'm a professor of neuroscience up at Stanford.

00:13:03.700 I don't currently run my lab anymore.

00:13:05.660 I tooled that down in 2023 so I could focus more on the podcast, but I still teach medical

00:13:09.960 students, graduate students, and undergraduates.

00:13:11.700 Okay.

00:13:11.880 So you're still practicing.

00:13:13.060 Yes.

00:13:13.480 Yeah.

00:13:13.680 And I ran a lab for more than a decade and really got into science when I was in college.

00:13:17.840 I decided, listen, I'm not going to become a professional skateboarder, not a musician.

00:13:21.160 I got to do something with my life.

00:13:22.640 I got into biology and psychology and I started working in a lab.

00:13:26.180 And so even when I got into neuroscience, it was early.

00:13:28.860 There was no such thing called a neuroscience degree or a neuroscientist.

00:13:32.160 There was biology, there was genetics, but there wasn't something official.

00:13:35.500 Then came the decade of the brain and now neuroscience is everywhere.

00:13:38.580 Yeah.

00:13:38.700 You hear about it a lot.

00:13:39.580 Yeah.

00:13:39.980 So when I didn't hear about it 10 years ago, for sure.

00:13:41.800 You did not.

00:13:42.720 And it really drew from people from different fields.

00:13:45.280 And then now we have a better, not complete, but we could talk about a better understanding

00:13:48.940 of lots of different things, memory, addiction, et cetera.

00:13:51.840 When I got into podcasting, I started my podcast in 2021.

00:13:55.400 As we were talking about before, it was just, you know, small closet.

00:13:58.120 I was living in Topanga, kind of self-appointed sabbatical.

00:14:00.960 It was the pandemic.

00:14:01.900 And you had a dog.

00:14:02.440 And my bulldog, bulldog, bulldog, Mastiff, Costello.

00:14:05.340 And he passed away at some point.

00:14:06.820 2021.

00:14:07.140 I had to put him down.

00:14:09.260 I had to do it myself.

00:14:10.860 No.

00:14:11.420 I will at home.

00:14:12.540 I had them come.

00:14:13.100 He hated the vet.

00:14:14.800 You know, I mean, a bulldog's an amazing animal.

00:14:17.080 The contract between a bulldog and owner is very simple.

00:14:19.220 Yeah.

00:14:19.700 They will die for you.

00:14:21.360 And you can feel that.

00:14:22.640 They will die for you.

00:14:24.160 But if your life is not on the line, they're not doing shit at all.

00:14:27.580 Yeah.

00:14:27.820 That's the contract.

00:14:28.720 They will die for you.

00:14:29.360 They also take a nap.

00:14:30.140 There he is.

00:14:30.760 They will also take a nap for you.

00:14:32.040 They will take a nap for you.

00:14:33.040 So he used to just snore.

00:14:34.460 You can hear him snoring in our early episodes and fart.

00:14:37.220 And, you know, that's what they do.

00:14:38.820 But if there was a threat, they don't hesitate.

00:14:42.020 You know, he was skunked something like 27 times because they don't learn.

00:14:46.680 He was stung by bees?

00:14:47.680 No, skunked.

00:14:48.580 Oh, by skunk.

00:14:49.440 Yeah.

00:14:49.540 They always say there are two kinds of dogs, dogs that get skunked once, and then all the

00:14:52.500 other kinds of dogs.

00:14:53.700 But in any case, you know, we started the podcast and we weren't thinking about, oh,

00:14:57.400 we're going to make money with this or it'll be a big podcast.

00:14:59.660 Sat down, put up a couple of cameras and me and, you know, my, what I now call my producer,

00:15:04.420 but my friend Rob Moore just did that.

00:15:06.520 Mike Blayback from DC, because I knew people from skateboarding.

00:15:08.980 He took the photos.

00:15:10.140 And then what happened between 2021 and 2025 is you all, right?

00:15:16.580 Thanks in large part to Joe, right?

00:15:18.480 We could talk about, I have theories about why Joe is the king of podcasting and the biggest

00:15:22.540 media channel on the planet, not just podcasting.

00:15:26.220 What happened was people wanted to hear conversation where it's not scripted and where the ads and

00:15:34.380 commercials are things that people actually use.

00:15:36.580 You know, and, and it went from this little niche community of comedians and people that like to talk

00:15:43.020 about UFC to, you know, Lex Friedman was the one that inspired me to start a podcast.

00:15:48.500 So he was my kind of my brother in crime in terms of-

00:15:52.780 Podcast Eskimo or whatever they call it.

00:15:53.960 Because he was an academic, he is an academic, right?

00:15:56.180 I mean, he, he has a PhD.

00:15:57.620 A lot of people don't know this, but it's Dr.

00:15:59.380 Lex Friedman.

00:16:00.540 So he's not a medical doctor, but he has a PhD and he was the AI computer science guy.

00:16:06.000 And I was the neuroscience guy, but then I'm also very interested in health and health and

00:16:10.060 fitness.

00:16:10.540 But you guys didn't podcast together.

00:16:12.080 No, we've done a few, but-

00:16:13.320 Right, a few episodes together.

00:16:14.100 But we were kind of the science podcast.

00:16:15.700 Right.

00:16:16.080 Oh, for sure.

00:16:16.760 And then it just, you know, the comedians led the way, right?

00:16:19.920 You, Joe, you know-

00:16:22.500 Marc Maron.

00:16:23.120 Marc Maron.

00:16:24.120 And then it just kind of-

00:16:26.480 Pete Holmes.

00:16:27.520 Pete Holmes was a big one early.

00:16:29.340 Remember Pete Holmes was before everybody.

00:16:32.260 Yeah.

00:16:32.380 Pete Holmes was a very early podcast.

00:16:33.880 But no, I, it's definitely gotten where, I think it's nice not having, people are like,

00:16:40.060 you know, sometimes I'll see things, people seem like, oh, this, this group, now you're working

00:16:43.540 with this group or you're working with this group or you've been like,

00:16:46.100 infiltrated by this country or this idea.

00:16:50.860 It's like, no, I don't work for anybody.

00:16:52.360 It's just, I try my best, you know, and-

00:16:55.020 Oh, you do an amazing job because it's so, it's pure.

00:16:58.240 So the parallels I was setting up with skateboarding and neuroscience and then this, I realized at

00:17:03.200 some point, and I, you know, I'll get accused of name dropping, but I'm very blessed to be

00:17:07.060 very close friends with Rick Rubin.

00:17:08.440 I spent a lot of time with Rick, either here when he's in the States or-

00:17:12.060 Fascinating gentleman.

00:17:13.380 Rick Rubin is a, I know almost he's a music producer.

00:17:16.100 Yep.

00:17:16.380 Music producer, you know, he's also produced comedy.

00:17:18.460 He did, he worked with Andrew Dice Clay and he has great stories about that.

00:17:24.660 Oh, I bet he does.

00:17:25.500 You know, and so what's interesting is I talked to Rick about this.

00:17:28.280 I was like, why is podcasting experiencing this surge?

00:17:32.860 The question you asked.

00:17:33.740 And he said, and this is kind of how Rick talks.

00:17:36.060 He, he actually talks like this.

00:17:37.800 He's like, because it's real, you know, people, when they're, when something's early,

00:17:42.780 they're not thinking about how it's going to be received.

00:17:44.700 You're not thinking about whether or not your corporate sponsors are going to be happy.

00:17:47.680 This is why Rick, you know, remember Rick produced.

00:17:51.340 Beastie Boys.

00:17:52.020 LL Cool J.

00:17:53.880 Beastie Boys.

00:17:55.200 Red Hot Chili Peppers.

00:17:56.440 Adele.

00:17:57.480 Kanye.

00:17:58.600 Um, he's doing classical music stuff now country.

00:18:02.080 And he tends to work with people at the beginning and then not necessarily again, maybe on a

00:18:07.560 song or two.

00:18:08.420 And I asked him why.

00:18:09.580 And he's like, because at the beginning they're in what Josh Waitzkin, the great chess player

00:18:13.600 has described as the pre-consciousness phase of creativity.

00:18:16.400 You're not trying to defend a title.

00:18:19.140 You know, you're not trying to defend a title.

00:18:20.780 You're not thinking about how it's going to be received because you really have nothing

00:18:24.300 to compare it to.

00:18:25.160 You have nothing to lose.

00:18:25.780 Yeah, listen, when Chris Cole 360 flipped down Wallenberg, someone was filming it, right?

00:18:31.800 But after he did that, I'm sure that he thought about, God, like, how do I, how do I like supersede

00:18:38.160 that the next time?

00:18:39.120 How do you, but when, when it's the next big thing, you're just thinking about the next

00:18:42.080 thing and there's something really beautiful to that.

00:18:45.080 And that's what people tend to gravitate toward, whether or not it's media, podcasting,

00:18:49.080 skateboarding, motocross.

00:18:50.280 I don't care what it is.

00:18:51.580 We can feel when something's real.

00:18:53.180 In fact, Rick has this great saying, and I love it because one time I saw this whole

00:18:57.720 thing in the media related to somebody I knew, and it turned out that their whole company

00:19:01.280 was just a complete sham.

00:19:02.920 At least that's what the media was claiming.

00:19:05.080 And he said to me, he goes, it's all lies.

00:19:08.860 And I said, yeah, apparently it's all lies.

00:19:10.520 And he said, no, no, no, no.

00:19:11.860 Everything is made up.

00:19:13.280 He said, there's only two things that are true.

00:19:16.240 Nature, like the laws of chemistry, biology, physics, and professional wrestling.

00:19:23.920 He said, because everyone knows professional wrestling is made up.

00:19:27.600 Right.

00:19:27.720 And Rick watches 12 hours a week of professional wrestling.

00:19:30.940 Oh my God.

00:19:31.500 And when I go and see him and we watch professional wrestling, I'm like, why do you, why do you

00:19:35.100 watch so much professional wrestling?

00:19:36.540 And he said, you know, it relaxes me.

00:19:38.480 And also you can see all the theater of life there.

00:19:42.140 And he also likes that people don't actually get hurt, but you're also wondering, wait,

00:19:46.160 was that really part of the act?

00:19:47.820 Yeah.

00:19:48.100 And when you look at politics or you look at the world, you know, a lot of it's made up

00:19:53.220 like Bitcoin's on a run today.

00:19:54.800 Everyone's excited.

00:19:55.640 It broke 109 or 110.

00:19:57.500 I mean, great, but Bitcoin's made up.

00:20:00.380 Right.

00:20:00.620 I mean, it's value is dependent on people's kind of perceived value of it.

00:20:05.560 Right.

00:20:05.840 And so he's right.

00:20:07.420 Everything basically is made up.

00:20:09.900 And so when you capture something that's real to a person, like a song and the way they

00:20:15.460 sing it, and they're not comparing it to the way they sang it last time.

00:20:18.680 They're not thinking about whether or not their tour is bigger than the other big tour

00:20:21.460 that's out there.

00:20:22.400 There's something that I think really resonates with people.

00:20:24.680 And we just go, wow, like that's, you know, I, I see it as like, that's the human spirit

00:20:29.060 in action.

00:20:29.640 It's really beautiful.

00:20:30.940 Yeah.

00:20:31.280 It's like seeing a duck, like a little duck, try to take it, learn to fly or whatever,

00:20:34.600 you know, that's the funnest part.

00:20:36.120 Once you see a duck flying, you're like, oh, it's fine.

00:20:38.760 You know, it can fly.

00:20:40.180 That's great.

00:20:40.720 Or whatever.

00:20:41.080 It looks cool.

00:20:41.760 Still beautiful.

00:20:42.700 But seeing that duck, give those, give those tries and take that shot out of the nest or

00:20:46.800 whatever.

00:20:46.960 That's kind of like the funnest part, you know?

00:20:49.060 Well, and the, I think that's the beauty of childhood, right?

00:20:51.880 You know, is, is everything's new.

00:20:53.600 Oh yeah.

00:20:54.260 You know, it's, and you know, this is actually a, an interesting segue to dopamine because, you know,

00:20:59.220 dopamine is triggered by a bunch of things, but mostly by anticipation of something.

00:21:04.840 Okay.

00:21:05.260 Right.

00:21:05.560 So let me think about that.

00:21:06.540 So dopamine is, when people say dopamine, cause you hear it all the time, right?

00:21:10.260 Dopamine hits, dopamine hits.

00:21:11.680 Right.

00:21:11.960 You hear about dopamine or give it, you know, you're getting dopamine out of that.

00:21:15.560 You're, so what is it?

00:21:16.800 It's a, it's something that's in your body naturally.

00:21:20.300 Okay.

00:21:20.800 So, and where is it hidden in your body behind your ears?

00:21:23.340 Yeah, basically.

00:21:24.940 So real quick lesson in dopamine.

00:21:27.180 Dopamine is a neurochemical.

00:21:29.060 Some people call it neurotransmitter, neuromodulator.

00:21:30.920 Let's just say it's a chemical.

00:21:31.920 Okay.

00:21:31.960 It's a chemical.

00:21:33.000 So it's a liquid.

00:21:34.260 It's a, yeah.

00:21:35.060 Basically it's released from neurons, neurons are nerve cells, and it's going to bind to

00:21:40.640 the next, it's going to park in a parking spot.

00:21:42.180 We call a receptor on the next nerve cell and trigger the activity of that nerve cell.

00:21:46.320 Nerve cells communicate through electricity and chemicals.

00:21:49.040 The chemicals stimulate electricity.

00:21:50.780 Okay.

00:21:51.100 And neurons can make the next neuron more active.

00:21:54.240 They can make the next neuron less active.

00:21:57.760 So this is important.

00:21:58.480 In fact, a good kind of mechanical example is if you flex your bicep, you are inhibiting,

00:22:03.460 you are preventing the neurons that flex your tricep.

00:22:07.240 They are antagonistic muscles.

00:22:09.220 Got it.

00:22:09.360 And as just kind of a parallel where we can get to, when you, for instance, smell something

00:22:16.040 you like, it's what's called an appetitive response.

00:22:21.080 It's kind of appetite that inhibits the repulsion response.

00:22:25.840 I see.

00:22:26.200 When you smell vomit or something really putrid, you tend to retract and it tends to shut down

00:22:32.200 at the same time, the circuits that would bring you closer to something.

00:22:35.600 So it's, you know, every circuit in the brain is like that.

00:22:38.120 There's a push and a pull, an accelerator and a brake.

00:22:40.400 And if you do want it, it limits the other.

00:22:42.560 Yeah.

00:22:42.740 Think of it like a seesaw.

00:22:43.680 One goes up, the other goes down.

00:22:44.740 Got it.

00:22:45.260 You know, everything from, if you step on a pin, you move your foot up and guess what?

00:22:48.800 What happens?

00:22:49.340 Your other leg automatically extends.

00:22:52.000 Yeah.

00:22:52.400 Okay.

00:22:52.660 This is called the monosynaptic stretch reflex.

00:22:55.100 If you touch a fish on the side, there's a big old neuron, giant neuron called the Maudner

00:22:59.860 neuron.

00:23:00.180 And what does the fish do?

00:23:01.220 It heads in the opposite direction.

00:23:03.340 This is just a, you know, these circuits have been selected for because the dumb fish that

00:23:08.280 went toward the thing that touched it probably got eaten.

00:23:10.840 So all these responses are hardwired responses.

00:23:15.140 This chemical dopamine exists in a couple different places in your brain.

00:23:18.380 It has several roles.

00:23:19.800 The most important ones to know about are that it's involved in generating movement.

00:23:24.100 People with Parkinson's lose the neurons that create dopamine.

00:23:28.160 Okay.

00:23:28.640 In an area called the substantia nigra, if you were to cut open a human brain, you'd see

00:23:32.540 two dark areas at the bottom of the brain.

00:23:35.540 And in Latin, nigra, dark, black, is down at the bottom of the brain.

00:23:39.320 Oh, yeah.

00:23:39.600 And those are the neurons that degenerate.

00:23:41.620 And there's a picture of it, but maybe we can find, it's really impressive.

00:23:44.540 You can see even without a microscope, if you just say, I don't know if you said like

00:23:47.760 actual brain tissue or something.

00:23:51.140 There you go.

00:23:51.900 Look, so see that first, that first one, look at that.

00:23:55.020 That's probably without any staining.

00:23:57.360 You're just looking at the brain with no microscope.

00:23:59.280 In Parkinson's, those degenerate.

00:24:01.180 You can see it on the right.

00:24:02.300 And what happens is when there, so dopamine is critical for movement.

00:24:05.920 And it's important to keep that in mind because the other thing that dopamine does is it's

00:24:10.160 involved in a set of brain circuits that are involved in motivation.

00:24:14.360 So if you think about any animal, human, dog, rat, cat, monkey, bat, that animal has three

00:24:21.580 choices for movement.

00:24:22.880 You can move towards something, you can stay still, or you can move backward.

00:24:27.100 Right.

00:24:27.760 Dopamine is involved in motivation, not reward.

00:24:31.300 So when you, like what's something that you really enjoy doing?

00:24:35.500 Making quesadillas.

00:24:36.880 Making quesadillas.

00:24:37.620 When you get the ingredients and you put them out, your dopamine is starting to rise.

00:24:44.300 Yeah, I'm feeling it.

00:24:44.760 Okay.

00:24:45.140 If you're, if you're somebody who likes gambling, it's on the way to Vegas.

00:24:49.860 You're walking in, you're getting your chips.

00:24:51.900 It's the feel of the chips.

00:24:52.920 The dopamine's going up.

00:24:54.280 Okay.

00:24:54.760 This is a hardwired set of circuits that were designed to have us do things that were

00:24:59.880 adaptive.

00:25:00.460 So dopamine starts to rise in anticipation of food when we're hungry.

00:25:03.720 Cold when we're hot, heat when we're cold, sex when we're horny.

00:25:08.900 Right.

00:25:09.460 Right.

00:25:10.220 And it's going to be involved in anything that we think is going to bring a feeling or

00:25:15.900 a resource.

00:25:16.760 So a lot of dopamine is based on perception?

00:25:19.840 Absolutely.

00:25:20.520 You nailed it.

00:25:21.160 Wow.

00:25:21.460 In fact, in fact, whether or not we're talking about Bitcoin, US dollars, likes on Instagram

00:25:27.740 or X, followers, views, or any of that, the currency is dopamine.

00:25:36.080 Got it.

00:25:36.480 There's one currency of motivation.

00:25:39.020 So dopamine is about wanting and craving, not about having.

00:25:42.420 Then something happens.

00:25:43.760 You make the case.

00:25:44.520 Okay.

00:25:44.720 Hold on.

00:25:44.960 Let me slow it down just real quick.

00:25:46.060 I understand that because sometimes it's hard for me.

00:25:48.220 So I know it might be hard for some of our listeners, but so the dopamine is, is based

00:25:52.300 on the motivation.

00:25:53.260 So it's not about like the fact that when I'm sitting there and I'm making my quesadilla,

00:25:57.740 like that's the, that's the dopamine is like knowing that I'm going to get the quesadilla

00:26:02.100 soon.

00:26:02.940 That's dopamine.

00:26:04.060 But then when I actually get the quesadilla, what?

00:26:06.440 Okay.

00:26:06.860 So it depends on the quesadilla.

00:26:08.480 Let's, let's go with three different scenarios.

00:26:10.620 Okay.

00:26:11.140 And we could change out quesadilla here for jackpot at the casino, sex, winning a UFC fight

00:26:18.380 or winning the bet on the UFC fight.

00:26:20.540 Being nervous about asking a girl out and then actually doing it.

00:26:23.260 Comedy when you move to crowd work and you're like, this feels like I'm out on a tight

00:26:26.880 rope.

00:26:27.060 Yeah.

00:26:27.400 Yeah.

00:26:27.520 Okay.

00:26:27.940 Yeah.

00:26:28.580 So any of those things, anything where there's a potential payoff, then something happens.

00:26:34.540 Let's, let's use the quesadilla example.

00:26:36.060 Cause it's, it's straightforward.

00:26:38.260 You have the quesadilla and it's pretty good.

00:26:41.300 Tastes like the quesadilla you usually make.

00:26:43.800 Okay.

00:26:44.240 What happens?

00:26:45.060 Your dopamine starts dropping.

00:26:46.600 Yeah.

00:26:46.940 Not a lot, but you're okay.

00:26:48.780 Yeah.

00:26:49.080 It starts dropping.

00:26:50.760 Let's say just by way of example, you eat four quesadillas each time.

00:26:56.200 It's going to be a little bit less dopamine from the actual eating of the quesadilla.

00:27:00.800 Yeah.

00:27:00.900 The second quesadilla, you can barely even taste it sometimes.

00:27:03.200 Let's say you bite into the quesadilla and it's like, oh, this tastes weird.

00:27:08.440 Like there's something off here.

00:27:10.520 Dopamine plummets.

00:27:11.780 So how much dopamine you get depends on the anticipation minus what you actually get.

00:27:18.680 Something called reward prediction error.

00:27:20.400 But the language doesn't really matter.

00:27:21.580 That's a bunch of nerd speak for when an experience is worse than you expected, your dopamine drops

00:27:26.660 below where it started.

00:27:29.240 Wow.

00:27:29.720 When an experience is better than you expected, surprise, it's way above where you started

00:27:37.380 and it stays up there for a while.

00:27:39.560 So the dopamine system loves surprise.

00:27:42.200 Now, all of this is related to learning.

00:27:44.120 This is an ancient system designed for you to learn where are the payoffs?

00:27:49.160 Where's the water?

00:27:50.020 Where's the food?

00:27:50.780 Where are the mates?

00:27:51.600 Where's the money?

00:27:52.320 Where's the resources?

00:27:53.740 These are ancient circuits that we are doing non-ancient things with.

00:27:57.560 And so, for instance, if you do tour, you do comedy tours, right?

00:28:02.280 When you do your comedy tours and like you really nail it one night, like really nail

00:28:07.140 it, it does two things.

00:28:08.280 It raises your baseline level of dopamine.

00:28:10.540 So the next time you go out, you have confidence, right?

00:28:13.180 You're still feeling that, but it also raises the threshold for dopamine, right?

00:28:18.220 Now it's harder to get dopamine.

00:28:20.900 You can't have the same experiences that you had prior to that really killer night and get

00:28:26.000 the same amount of dopamine that you used to.

00:28:28.580 We hope you're enjoying your Air Canada flight.

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00:33:21.520 And when you think about dopamine, the most important thing to think about is how quickly

00:33:26.440 does it go up, how quickly and how far does it go down?

00:33:30.680 Because every time it goes up, it goes down.

00:33:32.920 Why?

00:33:33.380 Because remember earlier, we were saying everything is like a seesaw.

00:33:35.800 If you feel motivated, there is, and this is so important for people to understand, especially

00:33:40.120 people with compulsions, addictions, and this kind of thing.

00:33:43.240 The better it feels, the lower you're going to feel afterwards, and the longer it will take

00:33:48.040 you to get back to baseline.

00:33:49.420 So the drug of all drugs for this to really nail home dopamine as a concept.

00:33:55.480 Sex or what?

00:33:57.360 Well, behavioral, behaviorally sex, you're, you're right.

00:34:01.100 So, and people have behavior addictions, process addictions, methamphetamine.

00:34:06.260 If you were going to look at what creates the biggest rise in dopamine, the fastest.

00:34:10.500 So it's dopamine over time.

00:34:12.560 Okay.

00:34:13.040 Because listen, when you write jokes or, you know, when I'm, you know, reading papers,

00:34:17.760 I love reading science papers.

00:34:19.240 I'm like mining for papers.

00:34:20.520 Every once in a while, I'll take a little break and I'm super into cephalopods, octopuses.

00:34:24.300 I'm building an octopus tank at home right now.

00:34:26.300 So that's kind of my, my indulgence is, is octopus.

00:34:29.320 You know, it's a little bit of dopamine, right?

00:34:31.740 Methamphetamine is a huge rapid increase in dopamine.

00:34:35.800 Then what happened?

00:34:36.660 How much do we get off that?

00:34:37.680 Bring it up.

00:34:38.120 I just want to see what is it.

00:34:39.220 So it's, it's, it's how fast it occurs.

00:34:41.680 It occurs within minutes.

00:34:43.360 This is why crack cocaine was so much more addictive than, than snorted cocaine, right?

00:34:47.460 It was the speed at, with, with which it hits the system.

00:34:50.740 How much dopamine does an activity release?

00:34:53.380 Baseline is a hundred percent.

00:34:54.540 Food is 150%.

00:34:56.340 So an 50% increase.

00:34:57.960 Video games, 175%, sex, 200.

00:35:01.060 I disagree with sex, by the way.

00:35:02.480 I think it depends on, you know, if, if you're, and people should know this, if you live with

00:35:06.600 somebody and you guys are having sex a lot and you've known each other a long time, there's

00:35:10.320 a lot of the reason why people are like looking for novelty in their relationship, et cetera.

00:35:14.640 I'm not trying to be salacious here, but new sexual partner is probably about 400, 500%.

00:35:20.060 Yeah.

00:35:20.380 And, and I think most people would not dispute that cocaine goes to 450% amphetamine, 1000%.

00:35:28.300 Methamphetamine, 1300%.

00:35:32.260 That meth, that meth, that methyl group increases the speed.

00:35:37.540 That speed increases dopamine.

00:35:40.020 So it's almost to say it could, it could potentially almost be kind of the same, but the speed at

00:35:43.920 which it happens is so much greater that it intensifies it so much.

00:35:46.660 That's right.

00:35:47.040 And remember that the brain is thinking in terms of approach, pause, or retract.

00:35:51.440 So when there's a ton of dopamine, listen, anyone on cocaine or methamphetamine, everything's

00:35:55.840 a good idea to them.

00:35:57.000 Oh yeah.

00:35:57.560 Anything.

00:35:58.120 Right.

00:35:58.440 And then you think about cannabis.

00:36:00.100 Cannabis has its own discussion, its own effects, but very different system and tends

00:36:04.540 to make people pretty happy with right where they are.

00:36:06.960 The opioids tends to make people overly happy with right where they are.

00:36:10.940 They tend to be a motivated, not motivated.

00:36:13.180 So dopamine in this context, what happens is then dopamine drops below baseline after

00:36:19.260 a drug or porn, or even, you know, somebody's, you know, let's say they make the huge mistake

00:36:25.260 of like going outside their marriage to a prostitute or something.

00:36:27.980 It's the anticipation, the fear, the excitement, boom.

00:36:30.480 Then it drops below baseline.

00:36:32.040 And now here's the real rub.

00:36:34.060 In order to get back to baseline, most people, when they're in that trough, what do they

00:36:39.480 do?

00:36:39.680 They use more, but each time they use while they're in that trough, when dopamine is low,

00:36:44.400 this is the key thing.

00:36:45.220 When dopamine is low, no matter how much you do of that substance, no matter how much you

00:36:51.020 engage in that behavior, that dopamine is going to have less and less of an effect.

00:36:55.400 And it's not even going to get you above baseline.

00:36:57.600 Wow.

00:36:57.880 You have to wait.

00:36:59.740 The period of abstinence is when these circuits return to normal.

00:37:03.600 And with the exception of alcohol, where people can die from rapid withdrawal, this is why

00:37:07.940 every addiction recovery program has a period of abstinence.

00:37:11.660 They don't tell you to kind of taper off cocaine.

00:37:14.720 Right.

00:37:14.940 They're like, listen, this has got to stop.

00:37:16.880 And then when people relapse, the problem is they get, you know, no pun intended, they

00:37:21.640 get a bump, but that dopamine level is not where it used to be.

00:37:26.420 And they're constantly, quote unquote, chasing the dragon or whatever you want to call it.

00:37:30.600 So, you know, these dopamine circuits evolved for a good reason to drive us toward adaptive

00:37:35.000 behaviors.

00:37:35.720 But listen, I have friends in the tech sector, in the finance sector.

00:37:38.780 You see this in the finance guys.

00:37:41.260 It's often finance guys.

00:37:42.340 They're doing Adderall.

00:37:43.320 They're day trading.

00:37:44.380 They're night trading.

00:37:45.020 You know, their friends are making a ton of money.

00:37:46.720 And we also have the social comparison thing.

00:37:48.880 So I'm not going to say that social media hijacks all of this, but let's just say, and I love

00:37:54.780 social media.

00:37:55.280 I'm on Instagram and X.

00:37:56.340 I teach there.

00:37:56.980 I learn there.

00:37:58.140 Love your content.

00:37:59.080 Love Segura's content.

00:38:00.060 Rogan.

00:38:00.300 You know, I'm learning there.

00:38:01.140 Tim Dillon, right?

00:38:01.920 Like I'm, I love it.

00:38:03.460 Yeah.

00:38:03.680 But there are elements of this where if you find yourself on social media, but you're

00:38:09.720 kind of like, what am I doing here?

00:38:10.980 Like, this is like, nothing's happening here.

00:38:13.640 You are in a dopamine trough.

00:38:15.520 You're in a trough.

00:38:16.120 So we've already gotten your high.

00:38:17.540 You've gotten it.

00:38:18.120 And we hear dopamine hits.

00:38:19.760 If it were really dopamine hits, you'd be going, whoa.

00:38:22.380 Yeah.

00:38:22.900 Amazing.

00:38:23.540 Cool.

00:38:23.840 No, that happens now and again.

00:38:25.660 But what's happening is the threshold for what really draws you in is getting higher

00:38:30.480 and higher.

00:38:31.040 Which goes to show why when it comes sometimes to like sex addiction and pornography addiction

00:38:35.060 that people's, what the, the kink that they need or the thing they need to see gets

00:38:39.500 more out there because they have to just to even get back to the baseline, they have

00:38:45.120 to, uh, they, they've got to find more.

00:38:48.080 They need a higher arc.

00:38:49.820 Definitely.

00:38:50.240 Um, I had a couple of questions.

00:38:51.520 Sorry.

00:38:52.140 No, no.

00:38:52.480 And say where you're at.

00:38:54.120 Can you, can you distill dopamine?

00:38:56.760 Like, is there, is it manufacturable dopamine?

00:39:01.120 There are things.

00:39:02.160 Yes.

00:39:02.660 So there are things that are precursors to dopamine and things that stimulate the release

00:39:07.240 of dopamine.

00:39:08.360 So, uh, things that stimulate the release of dopamine, the amino acid L-tyrosine.

00:39:13.440 Okay.

00:39:14.620 It's found in hard cheeses like Parmesan cheese, believe it or not.

00:39:18.840 Some people think they're a little bit addicted to cheese in some ways.

00:39:22.040 Oh, they do?

00:39:22.600 Some people think that.

00:39:23.420 Yeah.

00:39:23.820 It's a, uh, L-tyrosine is a supplement as well.

00:39:26.460 Ooh, L-tyrosine.

00:39:27.680 He sounds like he's from Rome, huh?

00:39:29.480 There's a, there's a very interesting, um, hairy little bean.

00:39:35.660 No joke.

00:39:36.300 This is a hairy little bean called macuna purines.

00:39:38.620 He's going to say something else.

00:39:39.760 Macuna purines.

00:39:41.460 Macuna purines?

00:39:42.580 Macuna purines.

00:39:43.900 This is a velvety bean.

00:39:45.620 If you just put velvet bean L-dopa, it is 99% L-dopa, which is the precursor.

00:39:52.040 Ooh.

00:39:52.460 It gets converted to dopamine.

00:39:54.160 I'll take L-8 ball of it.

00:39:55.700 Remember that movie, Awakenings, where people were frozen?

00:39:58.920 Yes.

00:39:59.620 With Robert De Niro.

00:40:00.740 That's right.

00:40:01.320 And Robin Williams.

00:40:02.340 Yes.

00:40:02.760 Robin Williams.

00:40:03.840 And they gave those patients.

00:40:05.240 It was a true story.

00:40:06.380 It's based on a story by the neurologist writer, Oliver Sacks.

00:40:10.060 And they gave those people L-dopa.

00:40:12.840 That velvety little bean is L-dopa.

00:40:15.500 So you say, can you manufacture it?

00:40:16.640 You can take the thing that is the precursor.

00:40:18.460 Now, if you do that, you'll feel dopaminergic, as neuroscientists say.

00:40:23.820 You'll be like buzzed.

00:40:25.820 You'll be energized.

00:40:27.120 Like Shakira.

00:40:29.700 Absolutely.

00:40:30.800 And then-

00:40:31.160 But yeah, vibed up.

00:40:32.020 And then you'll feel the drop.

00:40:33.460 So-

00:40:33.860 And then you'll feel that.

00:40:34.240 And then methamphetamine stimulates the release, as we saw.

00:40:36.720 Cocaine stimulates release behaviors.

00:40:38.220 Listen, I don't want to demonize dopamine.

00:40:40.760 No, not at all.

00:40:41.320 Dopamine is, you know, I'm sure I had a surge of dopamine walking in here today.

00:40:45.080 I'm a fan of your show.

00:40:46.200 I had a surge of dopamine when I saw you.

00:40:47.660 I was excited, nervous about it.

00:40:48.980 And then it happened.

00:40:50.460 And hopefully I will, the reward prediction error won't be less than you anticipated.

00:40:55.100 That's my goal.

00:40:56.060 It's already fascinating.

00:40:57.460 So I think that, you know, can you manufacture it?

00:41:00.000 Well, there are things that can stimulate its release.

00:41:02.440 Now, what's beautiful, what's really beautiful is when I usually, I think usually it happens

00:41:07.960 when you're a teen.

00:41:09.000 For me, it was 19 when I discovered biology.

00:41:11.720 You know, wasn't good at skateboarding.

00:41:13.400 Wasn't bad, but, you know, I liked running and working out, but I never thought about

00:41:16.460 becoming a professional athlete.

00:41:18.260 And then I discovered learning and biology.

00:41:21.120 And I thought, wow, this is something that I'm highly motivated to do.

00:41:25.200 I didn't really understand dopamine then.

00:41:27.040 We didn't know that much about it, but I'm motivated to do it.

00:41:29.600 So there's dopamine from doing it.

00:41:31.260 It brings me resources at first degrees and knowledge later, you know, the ability to buy

00:41:36.200 a house, right?

00:41:37.120 Um, so much of my life is built around the work that I did like a maniac really between

00:41:42.300 the age of 19 and I'm 49 now just working nonstop.

00:41:45.520 And so there's functional dopamine and pretty soon you start weaving it in like, oh, I can

00:41:50.000 also rest and have some recreation and that's giving me dopamine.

00:41:52.740 So our lives are built around this molecule we call dopamine.

00:41:55.900 And so the ways that you can manage it, almost orchestrate dopamine to use it to your advantage.

00:42:00.300 It's very usable.

00:42:01.300 I think the thing to remember the following dopamine is not about the pursuit of pleasure.

00:42:09.300 It's about the pleasure of pursuit.

00:42:11.740 It's about motivation.

00:42:13.180 The other thing to remember about dopamine is it can, if it's increased very dramatically

00:42:18.840 and very fast, it can drive addiction.

00:42:21.880 And I define addiction as a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure.

00:42:26.660 A great life is where many, many things bring you pleasure.

00:42:29.160 And then the, perhaps the most important thing for people, especially if they're concerned

00:42:33.200 about porn, gambling, internet use, or whatever, even if they're not a full-blown addict, they're

00:42:38.440 just kind of feeling like a slave to everything going on that, you know, just everything, highly

00:42:44.000 processed foods, all of that is that any high amount of dopamine that comes to you without

00:42:50.000 effort before it will eventually destroy you or bring you close to destruction.

00:42:55.700 So something that just feels so good that you, that all you had to do was open a package.

00:43:00.120 All you had to do was take a pill or open a website or open a website.

00:43:03.860 That is the slippery slope.

00:43:06.260 And if we think more in terms of, you know, yeah, Pandora's box doesn't really have a key

00:43:10.820 on it, huh?

00:43:11.220 Yeah.

00:43:11.340 Like I, I listen, I'm not a huge UFC fan, but I'd, I've been to a few fights and it's

00:43:15.540 fun.

00:43:16.020 And I see you guys down there in the front row and this kind of thing.

00:43:18.940 Look, someday I imagine given my friend set and given my interests, maybe I'll just buy a ticket

00:43:23.960 and it'd be a great thrill, right?

00:43:25.720 But if I were a kid and I suddenly were just planted there every single night, guess what?

00:43:30.660 You move one row back, it's going to feel like bad seating, you know?

00:43:33.980 And it's, this is why the children of very wealthy people, unless your father is like

00:43:39.040 a Warren Buffett who insists that you actually work and this kind of thing.

00:43:42.500 Yeah.

00:43:42.840 The children of very wealthy people often destroy their lives.

00:43:46.600 You know, they destroy their lives because they haven't had to work to have all this stuff.

00:43:50.700 And there's this huge cushion below them.

00:43:53.540 In fact, my graduate advisor, she's almost swimming and dope and they're almost in the

00:43:57.360 hot tub, but they never been in the pool.

00:43:58.860 And then they're exactly.

00:43:59.880 And then they're, and then they're down below baseline.

00:44:02.020 And then it takes more and more and more.

00:44:04.420 You know, that show.

00:44:05.340 Is that genetic then?

00:44:06.240 Sorry to interrupt you, but is that genetic that your baseline level for dopamine?

00:44:10.680 Is that genetic?

00:44:12.040 No, this is all behaviorally driven.

00:44:15.000 And you know, I'm not saying parents.

00:44:16.320 So you said it's all behaviorally driven.

00:44:17.880 All behaviorally driven.

00:44:18.620 I'm saying, yeah, say if like you had a, like, you know, your father was an addict

00:44:22.080 or somebody, and then it could, the, to the next generation have that same, like need

00:44:26.340 to get back to that baseline and it could be inherited type of thing.

00:44:29.060 Well, there, okay.

00:44:29.560 So there are certain addictions that appear to have some genetic component, but it's

00:44:36.720 confounded.

00:44:37.320 As we say, it's mixed up with the behavioral stuff around that.

00:44:39.840 Like for instance, the probability of somebody becoming a severe alcoholic, they now call it

00:44:43.920 alcohol use disorder.

00:44:44.920 And I'm, I'm not trying to be irreverent, but I just call it alcoholism.

00:44:48.740 Alcoholism.

00:44:49.140 Yeah.

00:44:49.300 Okay.

00:44:49.780 Yeah.

00:44:50.200 I'm going to, I'm going to try and stay out of the lanes of political.

00:44:52.940 We've all got it in here.

00:44:53.820 So great.

00:44:54.620 So the probability that somebody will become an alcoholic greatly increases if their first

00:45:01.640 drink, just their first sip comes before age 13.

00:45:05.640 Okay.

00:45:06.000 Now, some parents think, Hey, listen, if my kid has a beer when they're eight and 10,

00:45:10.540 then they won't have this, you know, kind of mysterious feeling around alcohol.

00:45:13.460 That's one theory, but we know on good statistics that drinking before the age of 13 greatly

00:45:19.480 increases the probability of becoming an alcoholic.

00:45:21.340 So now you can imagine in which households will that happen?

00:45:24.260 Well, where they're trying to normalize high alcohol intake.

00:45:26.780 So it can be both genetic and circumstantial.

00:45:30.080 But do some countries in suffer with the higher alcoholism rates then?

00:45:33.100 Yes.

00:45:33.620 Yes.

00:45:33.800 Even European ones?

00:45:34.660 Northern European countries, especially in the winter.

00:45:36.700 I have Northern European relatives.

00:45:37.980 I'll tell you in the winter, they can drink up there and it's dark and, and, you know,

00:45:42.240 alcohol is a depressant.

00:45:43.260 There's also about 8% of people have a gene variant that when they drink, they don't feel

00:45:50.520 the same sedative type quality to alcohol.

00:45:54.200 When, when you drink, the first thing that happens for everybody is your prefrontal cortex.

00:45:57.720 This is like the part of your brain right behind your forehead.

00:45:59.820 It's the part that sets context.

00:46:02.160 Like what's, what's appropriate in different places.

00:46:04.360 Oh yeah.

00:46:04.940 It inhibits you.

00:46:06.380 Everybody gets a little more talkative, right?

00:46:08.380 Everyone's talking, talking, talking, but then you drink more and people are starting

00:46:11.260 to pass out on the couch and people are slurring their words.

00:46:13.620 About 8% of people get a dopamine surge and an energy increase from alcohol with increasing

00:46:20.800 alcohol intake.

00:46:21.680 These are the people, remember, uh, oh, so you're in your twenties and there's that guy

00:46:25.060 and he's still awake at like three in the morning.

00:46:26.960 He's in the kitchen.

00:46:27.480 And he's bumping around, he's in the cupboard and you see him the next morning and he's

00:46:31.200 like, Hey, and you're like, we were passed out, blacked out, drunk.

00:46:35.540 He's doing laundry or whatever.

00:46:36.820 He's just like, Hey, let's go running.

00:46:38.380 Yeah.

00:46:38.580 He's doing, yeah.

00:46:39.160 Make it a lemonade or whatever.

00:46:40.300 So that's a genetic predisposition.

00:46:42.680 Wow.

00:46:43.060 And so, but is that a positive one?

00:46:45.480 It sounds like it is kind of, well, it's probably adaptive in some, you know, they've got,

00:46:50.500 you got the cursor on Russia.

00:46:51.600 I mean, listen, I'm friends with Lex Friedman and I mean, that kid can drink compared to

00:46:54.800 me.

00:46:55.040 Oh, dude.

00:46:55.920 Yeah.

00:46:56.160 He definitely.

00:46:56.420 I don't drink.

00:46:56.980 I, I, I had my last sip in 2019.

00:46:59.240 Amen.

00:46:59.680 Well, and Lex has the depression to show it, man.

00:47:01.520 He's got that emo side of him that takes over him.

00:47:03.360 You know, he's definitely, I think he just put something out again on X.

00:47:06.320 I mean, it's perfect.

00:47:07.200 No, I love Lex.

00:47:08.840 Cause he, there's this transparency about him to me that is, um, remarkably human, you know,

00:47:15.180 of like this, like ever hopeful, talented, but also very like honest, uh, he's just so

00:47:22.440 like, he just said, I'm an introvert who hides from the world often way too much.

00:47:25.220 One thing I wish I did more is call and text my friends.

00:47:27.600 I think about them often and feel lucky to know them, but experience a strange anxiety

00:47:31.280 that prevents me from texting and calling silly introvert introvert brain wants to pull

00:47:36.080 me into isolation and darkness.

00:47:37.920 Then again, once I hang out with said friends, it's like we've been talking every day.

00:47:41.560 So maybe there's no problem.

00:47:42.500 And it's just how dude friendships are.

00:47:44.580 BSC thoughts brought to you by brain on six shots.

00:47:47.800 That's perfect.

00:47:49.060 And I think, uh, you know, with less octane, you know, I won't claim that he posted that

00:47:52.820 because, because of me, but I'd been texting for like three weeks now and it's just crickets.

00:47:57.500 And then I'll get something back that just says here.

00:48:00.240 Yeah.

00:48:01.220 And you just learn with him over time.

00:48:03.280 That's just, you know, that's just that.

00:48:04.760 Well, that's Russian communication.

00:48:06.260 I mean, it can take five generations to get a hug out of somebody, you know, it's like

00:48:10.080 I love the Russians.

00:48:10.880 Oh, they're unbelievable.

00:48:11.800 And they, you know, a lot of them had carried stone dolls as children.

00:48:14.580 Like imagine if your doll, your baby doll is made of stone.

00:48:17.140 It's like that's your whole concept of the world is going to be so different.

00:48:19.980 Bring up stone dolls.

00:48:21.140 Bring back that chart up again.

00:48:22.680 I want to see what they were doing over there.

00:48:24.560 Alcoholism by country.

00:48:25.960 Um, United States, 13.9%.

00:48:29.660 Um, Canada, only 8%.

00:48:32.860 UK, 8.7%.

00:48:35.840 And what's the darkest one over there?

00:48:37.360 It's Russian.

00:48:37.880 What's it at?

00:48:38.320 20.9%.

00:48:39.500 Hell yeah.

00:48:40.020 It's cold and bleak.

00:48:41.140 Oh yeah.

00:48:41.900 You got to be fucking brain dead over there.

00:48:43.920 North Korea is lowest, but, but we don't really know what's going on in North Korea.

00:48:46.420 No, we don't know.

00:48:47.060 This is just a fun chart, but it's also exciting to just make.

00:48:50.240 That's one place I never want to visit.

00:48:52.120 Be reminded that the Russians live like that.

00:48:53.740 I want to ask you about this, about, um, so one of the big things that I think is a,

00:48:59.540 is a huge problem that's about to happen in the world is, um, uh, pornography addiction,

00:49:06.260 right?

00:49:06.840 I think it's, I believe it's humongous.

00:49:08.700 I believe it's bigger than alcoholism.

00:49:09.940 I believe it's like the wave of it that we're, we're starting to see like people really suffering

00:49:15.240 from it.

00:49:15.620 I think it's one of the reasons why there's a lot of divorce.

00:49:18.900 Um, what do you see like neuroscientifically?

00:49:23.740 Uh, about how we can, how people can start to manage that.

00:49:27.440 And then even just what you just talked about, about dopamine, it's like, I think it's helping

00:49:32.240 people realize with that, that it's like such a hole that you're getting into.

00:49:35.740 No, uh, no, whatever that thing is called.

00:49:39.440 No pun intended.

00:49:40.940 Um, how does that, how can people start to cut that off for themselves?

00:49:45.060 Is there anything they can do manage, like, or do they have to get help if they believe

00:49:49.180 that they're suffering from like pornography or, uh, sexual addiction?

00:49:54.020 Yeah.

00:49:54.340 Uh, super important questions.

00:49:56.680 Um, so glad you're raising this because, you know, it's, it's interesting if you look at

00:50:01.100 the research on pornography and sexual behavior generally, right.

00:50:05.400 What you'll find mostly in the academic studies of those areas is kind of an attempt to, to

00:50:12.980 normalize a lot of behavior.

00:50:14.920 There are reasons for that.

00:50:16.360 Some pseudo political, some, um, just kind of the way those studies were done for a long

00:50:20.700 time.

00:50:21.220 But it's really important to emphasize that it takes a while for science to catch up

00:50:25.940 to culture.

00:50:27.100 Okay.

00:50:27.520 It takes a while for science to catch up to culture.

00:50:29.180 Yeah, it takes, and the reason is not because scientists are lazy or they're uninterested

00:50:33.040 is that doing science well takes a long time.

00:50:36.340 Look, I've run studies in my lab on animals, on humans, clinical trials.

00:50:39.980 It takes a long time, like three, four years sometimes to get a really good study done.

00:50:46.060 Meanwhile, life is happening.

00:50:48.160 And in the last, in the last five years, especially there's been an exponential growth of the amount

00:50:55.000 of pornography available online, the different formats, right?

00:50:57.840 Only fans, um, you, you know, all the different sites that people can go to free paid AI and

00:51:05.660 within each of those, there's also been a huge amplification of the, of what's called

00:51:09.640 like high intensity porn.

00:51:10.840 What's high intensity porn?

00:51:11.880 It's more than two people.

00:51:13.220 It's, um, BDSM.

00:51:15.240 Now BDSM is its own discussion that maybe we could talk about at some point, you know,

00:51:19.380 just separately about this merge of pain and pleasure that the reason I'll just, the, the

00:51:24.420 punchline, um, is that dopamine is also increased by what we call the cessation of pain.

00:51:31.320 When pain starts and then stops, you get an amplified dopamine surge.

00:51:35.420 So a lot of people are watching or engaging in what we would call violent porn, right?

00:51:41.300 And we're as primate species, humans, we have an empathy.

00:51:45.360 So when people are watching pornography, they're obviously not experiencing the same things.

00:51:49.700 Exactly.

00:51:50.220 Those people are doing and experiencing, but they're tuning into it, right?

00:51:54.060 They're getting to it.

00:51:54.840 And we can only speculate as to what they're doing to themselves, right?

00:51:57.680 Typically when we're talking about porn, let's just be direct that we're also talking about

00:52:00.620 masturbation, right?

00:52:02.240 Typically when we're talking about watching video porn, sometimes it's women, most often

00:52:06.880 it's men by a huge majority.

00:52:09.800 Oh yeah.

00:52:09.940 The men are the one watching it.

00:52:10.920 Yeah.

00:52:11.200 Although, you know, years ago I had a, had a girlfriend, a woman I was dating very seriously

00:52:14.800 and she confessed to me that prior to our relationship, she had developed a porn compulsion.

00:52:20.660 It wasn't an addiction.

00:52:22.720 You know, an addiction again is a progressive narrowing of the things that bring you pleasure.

00:52:26.040 It hadn't taken her to the point where it was destructive, but she had the wisdom to

00:52:30.420 cut herself off from it early on.

00:52:32.460 Okay.

00:52:32.900 So it does happen with women, but it's much more frequent with men.

00:52:35.800 So here's the thing.

00:52:37.100 And we can think of pornography now as like the methamphetamine of pornography compared

00:52:44.200 to the pornography of, you know, we always hear about, oh, you know, like when I was

00:52:47.440 growing up, the playboy or, or, you know, that, the thing when I was a kid, like I'll

00:52:51.560 confess as first, didn't know I was going to do a confession, but they had those like

00:52:55.080 sex education books where they were like sketch drawings and pencil.

00:52:58.500 Oh yeah.

00:52:58.860 Bring them up.

00:52:59.380 And I, you know, when I was, you know, probably 14, 13, I was like, this is awesome.

00:53:05.200 Yeah.

00:53:05.400 You know, this was awesome, but it was about, you know, teaching you basically about sex.

00:53:10.980 It was teaching you about body parts.

00:53:12.320 And that was, you know, for sure, pencil drawings.

00:53:16.160 I can't believe we're looking this up.

00:53:17.360 No, it's interesting.

00:53:17.980 Cause I think a lot of people, if you do a pencil drawings, uh, who knows what kind

00:53:23.240 of freaky stuff's going to jump up here.

00:53:25.320 No, we have a blocker on.

00:53:26.380 I'm pretty sure.

00:53:27.980 Yeah.

00:53:28.500 There we go.

00:53:29.500 There we go.

00:53:30.040 So yeah.

00:53:30.960 Yeah.

00:53:31.800 See human loving.

00:53:33.000 This is very different than today's porn.

00:53:34.560 Sex and Hugh.

00:53:35.600 I love how they used to call it a human loving.

00:53:37.960 Human loving.

00:53:38.340 That's nice though.

00:53:39.400 There's something, at least it makes more sense.

00:53:41.440 It puts even your head into something, you know, instead of like a Brittany's butt world

00:53:46.800 or whatever, you know, which takes it to a whole different deal.

00:53:49.400 And there was no discussion whatsoever of elements of pain or BDSM or power play.

00:53:53.340 There you go.

00:53:54.220 You know?

00:53:54.780 Yeah.

00:53:55.560 Yeah.

00:53:55.800 I mean, you know, for a heterosexual young male, the fact that they put her naked facing

00:54:01.160 us as opposed to the guy on the other side, you're like, okay, cool.

00:54:03.980 But you know, the other thing about pornography is that it in a young brain, this, this is very

00:54:09.560 important.

00:54:10.220 And it relates to everything we're talking about today from about age zero to 25.

00:54:14.520 Your brain is incredibly plastic.

00:54:16.920 It's modified by experience just by being in those experiences.

00:54:19.900 When you say plastic, you mean it's more like it's not solid yet?

00:54:23.220 That's right.

00:54:23.600 You can literally wire neurons, plasticity, wire neurons to other neurons very readily.

00:54:28.840 I mean, this was known for a long time, but it was really formalized by my scientific

00:54:32.700 great grandparents, David Hubel and Torsten Weasel.

00:54:34.820 They won a Nobel prize for showing that if you take a cat, a monkey, or a kid, and you

00:54:41.600 close one eyelid for just a few hours each day, the brain becomes blind to visual input

00:54:48.560 through that eye.

00:54:49.300 Once you open the eye up, unless you do something else, like close the other eye in order to

00:54:53.840 reverse that plasticity.

00:54:55.380 However, if today I just said, yeah, that's how fast and permanent it is, unless you do

00:54:59.300 something to reverse it.

00:55:00.660 But if I did that same thing to you now or me now, there'd be no brain change.

00:55:04.580 You close your eye, obviously you can't see through a closed eye, pop open the eyelid

00:55:07.540 later, you see just fine.

00:55:09.260 So we know that from until about age 25, the brain just modifies itself based on experience.

00:55:15.260 So if you're doing cocaine, amphetamine, or let's just stay with this example, you're

00:55:19.280 watching high intensity, violent porn with more than two people, right?

00:55:24.200 You know, we forget that every time you add another person, you know, it's two women and

00:55:27.160 one guy, or it's, you know, what's this woman on X?

00:55:30.420 I mean, I have to say it makes, it gives me an aversive response.

00:55:34.280 Yeah.

00:55:34.600 Which I think is the healthy response.

00:55:36.380 Every time she announces, I think she's like sleeping with a hundred and a thousand people.

00:55:40.900 And listen, she's obviously in control of her own life.

00:55:43.960 Yeah, she's sleeping with the Western Conference right now.

00:55:44.800 I think I just saw the other day.

00:55:45.820 I don't know what her, Barbarate, is it Barbarate Blues?

00:55:48.820 Bonnie Blue.

00:55:49.720 Body Blue.

00:55:51.000 Yeah.

00:55:51.140 Bonnie.

00:55:51.620 Bonnie Blue.

00:55:52.560 This is like methamphetamine with heroin.

00:55:54.680 And you know, you get the picture.

00:55:56.320 It's starting to layer in all these different things.

00:55:59.440 And so the young, you think about the young male brain in particular, young female brain

00:56:04.680 watching this stuff.

00:56:06.000 And it's not just setting a behavioral expectation, because we always hear about that.

00:56:09.660 You know, they think sex is like that and it's not.

00:56:12.300 It's setting this incredibly high threshold for what they consider stimulating.

00:56:17.620 Not just stimulating sexually, but stimulating mentally.

00:56:20.960 Oh yeah.

00:56:21.480 I mean.

00:56:21.760 I mean, it's crazy.

00:56:22.760 It's like, you know, listen, I like playing cards every once in a while.

00:56:25.640 So you go play a card game with your friends, be like the first time you play cards, you

00:56:31.180 got a million bucks, you know, you're, or you're back there in the high state, you're

00:56:34.800 in like the Dana White room, right?

00:56:36.180 Like I know, like when I see sometimes his gambling hands, right?

00:56:38.700 He's, you know, but he can afford to play.

00:56:41.240 Right.

00:56:41.580 And he also knows where that fits into the rest of his life.

00:56:45.400 But you think about a kid, you know, you have a chance to win a, you know, a million

00:56:50.420 dollars.

00:56:51.020 Actually, there's this scene in that movie, that show, remember Succession?

00:56:54.660 Yes.

00:56:55.780 A show that it's all about dopamine.

00:56:57.660 This family of rich brats who are completely corrupt.

00:57:01.320 Everything's about more, more, more dopamine has been called in a, in a book, I forget

00:57:06.060 the author, the molecule of more.

00:57:07.740 It's all about wanting more.

00:57:08.800 And there's this dreadfully sad scene where they go out to play a, I think it was like

00:57:13.080 a baseball game or something.

00:57:14.100 And they bring their, uh, their garden help and they take the kid and they say, Hey, if

00:57:18.840 you can hit a home run, these people's kids, people are clearly, and they say, if you

00:57:22.700 hit a home run, you have a million dollars and you see the anticipation, this would transform

00:57:26.800 these kids and their parents' life.

00:57:28.660 And then he doesn't get the million dollars.

00:57:31.140 And they give him like some watch that's probably worth $25,000.

00:57:34.080 This is dopamine reward prediction error in a, in a nutshell, had they given him the watch,

00:57:41.760 the family probably would have been pretty thrilled.

00:57:43.680 They could sell it.

00:57:44.240 They could use it.

00:57:45.280 Had they not been involved in the game, their dopamine is the same as when they go home at

00:57:49.940 night, but they had a chance at a million dollars.

00:57:53.360 And when they didn't get that, it drops them below baseline.

00:57:56.980 And then you see the kid that evening, like sitting around his apartment, just completely

00:58:00.840 despondent with the watch sitting there as if it was worth nothing.

00:58:05.000 That's dopamine.

00:58:06.240 And when you think about pornography, that's what young people are being exposed to.

00:58:11.020 So their first sexual experiences, not only are quite different.

00:58:14.960 Remember pornography is about, obviously people are getting aroused by watching other people

00:58:21.380 have sex, you know, I don't know what kind of sex people are having out there, but in

00:58:25.140 my experience, you know, the whole, the whole business of sex and learning how to have great

00:58:29.080 sex is about learning to be in the, in the experience with somebody.

00:58:32.960 And it's a communication, it's an ongoing communication.

00:58:34.980 And it's about being in the experience, being present, not watching someone else have

00:58:39.800 sex.

00:58:40.260 Oh yeah.

00:58:40.740 I was thinking the other day, watching some other dude, like have sex with a woman.

00:58:45.740 It's kind of, I don't even know if it's homo or erotic.

00:58:48.740 I don't know what it is.

00:58:49.660 It's definitely when you really, when you take a step back from it, it's a little bizarre.

00:58:54.200 It's definitely intrusive.

00:58:55.540 Right.

00:58:56.260 But for surely it alters the way that you think about things.

00:58:58.860 I mean, I know in my own life, I got exposed to pornography real early.

00:59:01.940 I would bike across town and get a little look at some pornos.

00:59:05.120 Perfectly normal behavior for a young male.

00:59:07.060 Pretty normal.

00:59:07.520 I was breaking into houses to fricking, you know, get it.

00:59:11.020 I had friends like you growing up.

00:59:12.740 Where did you grow up?

00:59:14.440 Louisiana.

00:59:15.140 I had friends growing up.

00:59:16.120 I mean, in the, in South, South Bay, Palo Alto was pretty tame.

00:59:18.600 But when we, when I started getting into the skateboard thing, you know, we drew from kids

00:59:22.260 from all over.

00:59:22.880 And listen, I'm very grateful for that early exposure.

00:59:25.400 Oh yeah.

00:59:25.660 It's easy to jerk off to, if you get some good graffiti out there.

00:59:27.780 Oh no, I meant early exposure to kids that from all walks of life.

00:59:30.560 But I knew kids like you breaking into houses.

00:59:32.020 Oh dude.

00:59:32.520 Yeah.

00:59:32.740 I remember.

00:59:33.320 Yeah.

00:59:33.500 It would be crazy.

00:59:34.200 You would like, you know, yeah.

00:59:36.080 Just like breaking it in.

00:59:37.580 Just like, yeah, we made some poor choices.

00:59:39.720 But I think the fact that, um, here's one thing I noticed for myself.

00:59:44.640 Right.

00:59:45.080 So, well, I had like a lot of dis, like I had kind of a disorder, I guess, where like I had

00:59:50.700 some intimacy issues where I couldn't.

00:59:52.780 Um, I'd had like some issues, like just like probably with my mom from growing up of not

00:59:58.640 having a connection.

00:59:59.760 And so if a woman, if I got around a woman, I got very nervous.

01:00:02.900 Right.

01:00:03.240 It was like a very extremely nervous.

01:00:07.120 Right.

01:00:07.480 So I think it made it like, once I saw pornography, I was like, okay, well, here's a way that I

01:00:12.060 can be near a woman or near as a female where I can, uh, have some form of intimacy without

01:00:20.260 having to have a real person there.

01:00:21.840 So that for one, for me was, um, it was okay.

01:00:25.380 It made sense that it, that that's how I adapted to it as a kid or how I understood it as a

01:00:30.160 kid.

01:00:30.300 It makes sense.

01:00:31.500 Uh, but as an adult, it didn't help me at a certain point.

01:00:34.580 Um, and then the secondary part for me was, uh, you know, you would just see, you would

01:00:40.960 see sex like an images or scenes or a way a camera set up.

01:00:44.300 And so then that's how you start to think of, of intimacy.

01:00:48.320 It's like, you know, it's like, okay, well, we have to do this scene.

01:00:51.680 You know, it's not like you would stage things around your room or anything.

01:00:54.200 You didn't have any cameras or anything, but you would just like, you thought of each

01:00:57.860 thing as like a scene or a scenario.

01:01:00.340 So, um, yeah, you're not out there shooting baskets.

01:01:02.940 You're trying to like recreate the NBA final, you know, and that's a lot, that's a lot of

01:01:07.420 pressure.

01:01:07.860 You know, so it was a ton of pressure.

01:01:09.680 So it was like, and you almost couldn't even, yeah, there was no real connection.

01:01:14.320 So that for me was a real cul-de-sac of like trying to figure out how to evolve like, um,

01:01:21.540 intimately, you know, and, and, and, and it's, it's, some of that's taken a long time to get

01:01:26.740 through and different, like, uh, class, like not classes, but like ayahuasca really helped

01:01:32.960 me a lot.

01:01:33.760 Different medicines helped a lot with like just unbinding all that anxiety.

01:01:38.800 That was just like this young person who just, uh, didn't know how to relate to females,

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01:05:41.980 Yeah, I think it's a really important conversation.

01:05:44.740 If I may.

01:05:45.400 Yeah, it's huge.

01:05:46.340 Listen, like I said, I'm 49 now, but you know, I am forever grateful to my first girlfriend.

01:05:53.260 I was a virgin when she and I started sleeping together.

01:05:55.380 She had slept with this other guy.

01:05:56.460 All I knew about him was he was like some buff football player.

01:05:59.280 I'm like the skinny skateboard kid.

01:06:00.760 Oh, dude, my first girlfriend slept with a dude before me who wore a cape, dude.

01:06:04.920 A fucking...

01:06:05.700 You wore a cape?

01:06:09.480 Yeah.

01:06:10.440 Like, fuck, dude.

01:06:11.560 What the heck?

01:06:12.360 Yeah, listen, I mean, I remember going into that like any young male thinking like, my

01:06:17.740 goodness, you know, this is like, there's a lot of pressure.

01:06:20.900 And one of the things I'm so grateful to her for is, you know, we were able to talk a bit.

01:06:28.920 At first, no, you know, it was just like, you just want it to go perfect, right?

01:06:32.600 You just want it to go perfect.

01:06:33.480 And I will say one of the huge mistakes people make, maybe we can save some people, some men

01:06:39.080 and women, young men and women, some serious stress.

01:06:41.700 One of the huge mistakes people make is to try and take that edge off with alcohol.

01:06:46.700 First of all, it starts to really muddy all the consent stuff.

01:06:50.580 So you're already like, you're already playing with fire, right?

01:06:53.500 Because, you know, when people are inebriated, there's all, they're not in their right mind.

01:06:57.560 Yeah.

01:06:57.980 So the other thing is that by chemically removing that stress, you, many people come to depend

01:07:06.840 on those chemicals to relax and they don't learn the skills, right?

01:07:11.020 Because I always joke, you know, now it's not a joke.

01:07:13.260 It's serious.

01:07:13.680 You know, nowadays, like every young male who wants to like get a little bit, you know,

01:07:16.960 jacked is like, should I take TRT?

01:07:18.780 And I'm like, dude, you're 25.

01:07:21.080 You're already filled with testosterone.

01:07:23.320 They're like, yeah, but you know, and you're like, learn how to train, learn how to eat.

01:07:26.980 And when you're in your late forties, talk to a doctor, freeze some sperm, because it's

01:07:30.900 going to shut down your sperm production.

01:07:32.180 Maybe then, but like just chill.

01:07:34.220 And in the same way, it's like, I think there's immense pressure.

01:07:37.260 There's also something that's happening now that I hear about a lot, which is from the

01:07:42.420 beginning of time, women have talked to one another.

01:07:44.920 Okay.

01:07:45.820 I had the-

01:07:46.880 Oh yeah.

01:07:47.280 Chatty Cathy.

01:07:48.140 You heard of that term?

01:07:48.880 No.

01:07:49.460 Is that what it's called?

01:07:50.320 Yeah.

01:07:50.480 It's a famous term.

01:07:51.320 Who brought it up?

01:07:52.240 Let's get to the bottom of that term really quick because people have heard it a lot and

01:07:56.260 you don't know where it really started.

01:07:58.020 Do we know that the phrase chatty Cathy originally came from the name of popular talking doll manufactured

01:08:02.880 by Mattel in the 1960s?

01:08:05.100 The doll's pull string mechanism played pre-recorded phrases when the string was activated.

01:08:10.160 Like, you don't make any money or you get your own dinner.

01:08:14.820 I made those up.

01:08:15.820 But damn, Cathy's a vibe.

01:08:17.520 Look at her.

01:08:17.960 She had a buck tooth, a little buck tooth there.

01:08:20.260 Yeah.

01:08:20.580 Back when you get a good British gal.

01:08:22.300 But go on.

01:08:22.780 Was there anything left on that information?

01:08:24.840 Over time, the term chatty Cathy became a common idiom to describe someone who is especially

01:08:29.720 talkative and I'm just joking, ladies, but, uh, but that's interesting where that came

01:08:33.160 from.

01:08:33.320 I never knew.

01:08:33.800 Always heard that.

01:08:34.480 I never heard that term.

01:08:35.780 Um, you know, so I had the great benefit and the, uh, disadvantage as well of having

01:08:41.460 a sister, right?

01:08:42.300 Okay.

01:08:42.760 Having a sister is great because you don't think women are weird.

01:08:45.160 Like I grew up with a girl living next door to me, my sister who shared a bathroom,

01:08:49.160 all that.

01:08:49.980 But I also heard the way her and her friends talk about boys.

01:08:53.460 And so from a young age, I was like, man, I can't make a mistake on a first date.

01:08:58.160 I got to do everything perfect because it's going to be the rundown.

01:09:02.520 But back then there was no social media.

01:09:05.080 Now young guys tell me they are terrified to go out on dates because let's say they do

01:09:12.760 something wrong.

01:09:13.620 Let's say they're less than perfect.

01:09:15.560 They are very concerned.

01:09:16.740 It's going to end up on some site and they're going to be shamed.

01:09:19.300 And I'll tell you, I do think, and of course I take the male perspective because that's

01:09:22.780 the only body I've ever lived in.

01:09:24.140 Um, but I do think that a lot of the complaints about, you know, young, you know, there are

01:09:30.360 no men today, young, young males, like in the twenties and thirties, you know, a lot of

01:09:34.700 these guys are terrified because they feel like everything's potentially going to become

01:09:38.720 public, positive or negative.

01:09:40.540 And I hear a lot from young males about the pornography question about all this.

01:09:44.880 And I, I like, there's one kid that I've kind of mentored over time.

01:09:47.720 I've known since he was a little kid and now he's in his twenties and he's doing great

01:09:50.700 in life, but he's had his, um, his challenges.

01:09:53.220 And he, I'll tell you, it's really interesting.

01:09:57.320 He said to me, he goes, look, you know, it's hard, good looking kid.

01:10:01.280 He's right now he's working construction.

01:10:03.560 He's, he's doing great.

01:10:04.740 And he said, look, it's hard to find someone who just kind of want to keep your relationship

01:10:09.600 just the two of you.

01:10:10.480 But he did, he, he had a girlfriend and she wasn't the one.

01:10:13.580 So he found one and they have a closed container.

01:10:16.880 They call it, you know, it was like the new, new language or something.

01:10:19.980 And he's like, man, it's awesome.

01:10:22.560 And he's like, you know, if I'm nervous about something related to intimacy, we talk about

01:10:26.720 it.

01:10:26.940 It turns out she's nervous too.

01:10:28.160 And he feels super safe.

01:10:29.760 And, but he had to literally anti that up because where he went to school, I won't

01:10:34.900 say where he went to school.

01:10:35.620 Cause he'll murder, he'll murder me.

01:10:37.820 But you know, it's, it's like the opposite Arizona state, right?

01:10:41.000 Cause there, there's all this stuff about people talking behind the scenes and then posting

01:10:44.720 it to the internet.

01:10:45.360 And that's enough.

01:10:46.320 And so that drives guys more into the, the loneliness and isolation of porn and substance

01:10:52.880 abuse.

01:10:53.420 And so I'm not blaming women here.

01:10:54.980 I'm not blaming men here.

01:10:55.840 I'm just saying that when it comes to intimacy, everybody's nervous about that.

01:10:59.960 Right.

01:11:00.300 When I was a kid, there was like Dr.

01:11:01.360 Ruth and there were those books.

01:11:02.560 And then you had this thing called experience and you'd have to, well, that went well, that

01:11:06.420 went less well, that went really well.

01:11:08.300 And then over time you learn how to have the communication and enjoy yourself in it.

01:11:13.380 Yeah.

01:11:13.800 Now, but it's hard.

01:11:14.700 It's difficult.

01:11:15.440 Now you can have a thing where it's like, say you go out on a date with a girl and then

01:11:19.260 they could make a video like, oh, this guy tried to kiss me.

01:11:22.080 What a lose.

01:11:22.720 Just like, but I guess guys could do that too.

01:11:24.880 But just, just the risk of that on either side, it's like, then that wins, you know,

01:11:30.660 it's like, how many times are we going to let technology defeat what just means being

01:11:38.600 human?

01:11:39.080 Right.

01:11:39.440 And like, and at what point do we start to choose?

01:11:42.000 Like, Hey, I'm going to make a moral, like a choice for myself and whoever I'm going to

01:11:45.580 date with.

01:11:45.860 Maybe I have a talk with them first or something like, you know, but it's like every time it's

01:11:50.680 like technology is the one that seems to like take away like things that used to be so real

01:11:56.100 to us.

01:11:56.620 Yeah.

01:11:57.000 Because then you're both in a cave, you're both just masturbating or whatever.

01:11:59.960 And you're both like brokenhearted in a, in some semblance, it seems like, is that

01:12:03.700 crazy to say that?

01:12:04.640 No, I don't think so at all.

01:12:06.300 I mean, listen, text messages, I hate telling people this, but like everything you text is

01:12:11.140 potentially public.

01:12:12.100 I don't care if you're a public facing AKA famous person or not.

01:12:15.780 And that terrifies people at the same time, you know, there can be great intimacy through

01:12:20.760 writing.

01:12:21.420 You know, my first girlfriend, I wrote each other letters for years, for years.

01:12:24.900 I still have letters from girlfriends.

01:12:26.920 You know, I cherish those.

01:12:28.360 I don't break them out too often.

01:12:29.500 If you have a new girlfriend, you basically, you got to hide those away pretty carefully,

01:12:32.040 but I assume anyone I date's got those, you know, from their former relationships and

01:12:36.540 I'm not bothered by that.

01:12:37.660 I mean, that's part of it to go get them out, but I agree, man.

01:12:40.220 I get nervous because sometimes like for a date or something, I would like to do, well,

01:12:44.480 let's do a Zoom call or something first, because it's like, you know, especially if we live

01:12:50.220 a little bit away from each other, let's see if we even talk well or something.

01:12:52.740 But then you're worried like, well, is somebody recording this or what's going on?

01:12:55.820 Yes.

01:12:56.200 They're recording it.

01:12:57.000 Yeah.

01:12:57.180 I'm just kidding.

01:12:57.780 I mean, listen, well, the old stereotype was girls feared getting slut shamed.

01:13:04.280 Right.

01:13:04.560 Guys feared getting dork shamed, like loser shamed.

01:13:08.940 Yeah.

01:13:09.680 Right.

01:13:10.340 Big, you know, it's been said by the evolutionary biologists.

01:13:13.660 Donnie's a loser, dude.

01:13:15.200 And they speculate a lot, but the evolutionary biologists will say, you know, woman's greatest

01:13:20.960 fear is violence from a man.

01:13:23.240 Man's greatest fear is being laughed at by a woman.

01:13:26.000 Oh God.

01:13:26.740 Right.

01:13:27.540 Right.

01:13:28.200 Exactly.

01:13:28.880 And so there's this battle nowadays.

01:13:31.160 I'm glad we're talking about this because there's this kind of unspoken battle between

01:13:34.120 the masculine and feminine forces.

01:13:35.660 Well, it's just funny that you say that because I just realized that the majority of my childhood

01:13:39.640 was some woman.

01:13:40.540 I don't even know who it was laughing in the distance in my head.

01:13:43.260 Oh man.

01:13:44.180 Well, and like, especially when I got in a perbity and that kind of ton of time.

01:13:47.820 But well, and there's nothing that feels better than, you know, feeling like you can deeply

01:13:52.400 satisfy your partner and they're devoted to you and you're devoted to them.

01:13:55.380 It's a wonderful, I mean, that's the stuff that, you know, love and marriages and families

01:13:58.820 and to be direct, great sex are made of, right?

01:14:02.520 But this is one of the most important conversations to our audience because I think this is the

01:14:06.140 thing that's, it's killed, you know, relationships are falling up.

01:14:09.660 It's like, if we don't, if this doesn't get fixed now, it's going to be, I think it's, you

01:14:15.820 know, societies can change and end really fast, especially with like technology now.

01:14:20.960 Um, to me, it's, it's just like, we're at a crucial moment for relationships.

01:14:26.800 I totally agree.

01:14:27.480 I mean, you know, young guys approach me a lot about the porn thing about concern about

01:14:31.160 like, are they going to be shamed on one of these sites if they, you know, do something

01:14:35.120 wrong or, or, and I'm not talking about like wrong, like they were forceful.

01:14:38.820 I'm talking about wrong.

01:14:39.360 Like they, they made a mistake or they said something dumb or, you know, I think a lot

01:14:43.620 of one, Nick, didn't you have a site you're pulling up?

01:14:45.820 This is one right here.

01:14:46.780 Are we dating the same guy?

01:14:47.840 Women turned to Facebook to uncover cheating and violence.

01:14:51.680 Experts say use of groups to warn others about dangerous men is indictment on government's

01:14:56.300 failure to keep women safe.

01:14:58.320 This is from the guardian.

01:14:59.160 So it's obviously very pro the groups, but there's negative consequences like people being

01:15:03.640 reported just for dating multiple women that they're not exclusive with and stuff like

01:15:07.300 that.

01:15:07.620 But it's also, it's very pro who you said.

01:15:10.000 The guardian is very pro the app as like an empowerment for women, the way they can stay

01:15:14.240 safe.

01:15:14.700 Yeah.

01:15:15.080 Well, I think apps that protect people against violence are great.

01:15:18.580 I think that, you know, if you look at the data on infidelity in and out of marriage,

01:15:24.020 it's equally distributed between men and women.

01:15:26.280 Okay.

01:15:26.860 So there's no, there's no men cheat more than women.

01:15:30.020 It's, it's, it's clearly equally distributed.

01:15:31.920 So the data play that over and over again, you look at divorce data, but you just look at

01:15:36.600 self-report data, all different forms of data collection that really orient towards

01:15:40.900 honesty because people lie all the time and studies and statistics point to that.

01:15:46.360 I think that, you know, the, the most important thing really, if we're talking about forming

01:15:51.820 intimacy, whether or not sexual intimacy, emotional intimacy, or both is that people feel that

01:15:57.020 their communications are vaulted between them, right?

01:16:00.440 What does vaulted mean?

01:16:01.280 Vaulted means it's just between them.

01:16:02.760 What happened, what, what, what's exchanged between them stays, stays between that.

01:16:07.020 That's intimacy in its own, right?

01:16:08.260 Is it that it's something here?

01:16:09.620 It's, it's between us, right?

01:16:11.040 That's right.

01:16:11.480 I mean, I, you know, I have a half joking solution to this, but I'm only half joking.

01:16:17.560 Oh yeah, for sure.

01:16:18.500 And, and I should say, I've had some great relationships and I've had some not great

01:16:24.360 relationships, right?

01:16:25.240 Um, I'm on great terms with most all of my ex-girlfriends, you know, and I'm so grateful

01:16:32.280 to, especially one from about, it was a long relationship, about seven years where she really

01:16:38.560 taught me how to like have the uncomfortable conversation.

01:16:41.840 And, and I'm still learning, right?

01:16:43.980 Um, and we're still good friends, but I'll, I'll tell you one of the solutions to this.

01:16:49.960 Men, find a good lesbian friend.

01:16:53.580 You want to really understand where you're strong, where you're weak, and you want to

01:16:58.500 learn to just kind of relax around women, be around a woman that you have no chance of

01:17:04.060 sleeping with.

01:17:04.580 That buddy oyster, bro.

01:17:05.420 You know, I have a couple of lesbian friends and I'll tell you, I've always had a couple

01:17:08.580 of lesbian friends.

01:17:09.420 I'm, I'm convinced lesbians are going to save us all.

01:17:11.700 God, I got to get one.

01:17:12.760 They are, you know, you know what I'm saying?

01:17:14.200 Yeah.

01:17:14.400 And, and you got to get it out of your head that you're going to sleep with them.

01:17:16.980 Yes.

01:17:17.260 Because these are what we call platinum star lesbians.

01:17:19.100 They are interested in women and women.

01:17:20.300 Oh yeah.

01:17:20.540 I'm talking chicken of Westbrook, Jersey.

01:17:22.580 So, and they, it's interesting because they have an amazing perspective on men.

01:17:27.140 That's from a women's perspective.

01:17:29.220 And they also have an amazing perspective on women.

01:17:32.600 They can say things like, she's crazy.

01:17:35.920 Andrew, you date her, you're going to be in pain.

01:17:38.820 And they can also say things like, she seems pretty cool.

01:17:41.360 I would date her, except she's not into women.

01:17:44.060 And you, that's good.

01:17:45.240 Women can see things in women that men can't see.

01:17:47.260 Men can see things in men that obviously women can't see.

01:17:49.780 I mean, I grew up in a big pack of guys, like I only hit bullseyes when it comes to assessment

01:17:55.520 of friends and business partners, men and women.

01:17:58.320 But you know, with men, I can just tell he's a sociopath.

01:18:00.660 He's cool.

01:18:01.440 He's not cool.

01:18:02.100 I can just tell it's like a sixth sense.

01:18:03.980 The other thing, you know, across the sexes, you know, a macaque monkey blindfolded on LSD.

01:18:11.700 LSD has better optics.

01:18:13.300 And I don't think I'm alone in that, right?

01:18:15.440 Because we get stirred.

01:18:16.520 It's not all about the anticipation of sex.

01:18:18.860 It's that the styles of communication are different.

01:18:21.040 The way that stories and information is turned into things by one sex.

01:18:24.480 It's like a whole different world.

01:18:26.840 Lesbians normalize all of this and they're extremely direct.

01:18:31.400 And some of my best friends are lesbians.

01:18:33.160 I love them to death.

01:18:35.120 I would.

01:18:35.640 We got to get some damn lesbians over here.

01:18:37.460 Lesbians are going to save us all.

01:18:38.760 Yeah, I love that.

01:18:39.820 That would be a great musical.

01:18:41.900 Lesbians are going to save us all.

01:18:43.560 And I believe that I would love to see that.

01:18:46.980 And I think that, yeah, I think there is this, you know, for a while there, people were like gays and gays and, you know, don't be gay and that kind of stuff.

01:18:57.400 Probably like 50 years ago, that was like a thing, you know.

01:18:59.720 And then, but now I think one of the, one of the neat things about gay folks is there are that they have like a special recipe, you know, that's built into them.

01:19:12.480 Well, gay men have it worked out.

01:19:12.900 Like I have a good friend I've known since childhood.

01:19:14.700 It was wild because he basically slept with like more women than any of us in high school.

01:19:18.640 He's a gay gentleman?

01:19:19.480 He ended up being gay.

01:19:20.300 Wow.

01:19:20.580 Went off to college.

01:19:21.540 He's as, he's as gay as could be.

01:19:23.780 And, you know, and the communication he's explained, like the communication in the gay community, gay male community.

01:19:30.260 I don't, you know, well, it's just very direct, right?

01:19:32.600 People ask for sex if they want it.

01:19:33.740 They say no, if they don't want to.

01:19:34.800 Want lunch?

01:19:35.460 Want to come?

01:19:36.280 Yeah.

01:19:36.480 I mean, it's a, it is straight up.

01:19:39.000 I mean, the stereotype is it matches.

01:19:40.600 There are some married gay couples, obviously monogamous, et cetera, but it aligns with all the, the male stereotypes of promiscuous, multiple partners.

01:19:50.160 That's, that's the, that's the kind of stereotype, right?

01:19:51.880 But, um, you know, the grill and come, that'd be, that'd be my team, dude.

01:19:57.060 If you had a gay flag football team in college, dude, uh, for the, uh, for, at the, um, rec center grill and come.

01:20:05.100 You want to hear some, some wild data on homosexuality and hormones.

01:20:09.360 Okay.

01:20:09.480 So years ago when I was a graduate student at Berkeley, I was part of a study.

01:20:12.840 I wasn't the main author that looked at finger length ratios and homosexuality in men and women

01:20:18.940 and how much testosterone was in utero.

01:20:22.220 Now I don't want anyone to freak out and just start staring at their fingers, but because it has to be measured correctly.

01:20:27.960 All right.

01:20:28.200 All right.

01:20:28.560 So, so if you hold, if you hold up your right hand, like I'm holding up my right hand, my ring finger here is a little bit longer than my pointer finger.

01:20:38.180 Okay.

01:20:38.400 Which one's a ring finger?

01:20:39.700 Yeah.

01:20:40.040 So, uh, but turn it the other way around for me.

01:20:43.140 Yeah.

01:20:43.480 Okay.

01:20:43.700 So your ring finger is a little bit longer than your pointer finger.

01:20:46.640 Yeah.

01:20:47.060 Okay.

01:20:47.380 That is the typical heterosexual male pattern.

01:20:50.860 Okay.

01:20:51.100 Now people are going to be like, this is bullshit.

01:20:52.740 Listen, this has been replicated more than five times in humans.

01:20:55.780 Okay.

01:20:56.200 So on the right hand, and, and you don't know this, sometimes they look a little more equal.

01:21:00.760 What is replicated five generations?

01:21:02.140 Five different studies have repeated this and it holds up every single time.

01:21:05.200 So, and, and if sometimes you have to measure from that first crease on the palm side, but if we were to measure it, yeah.

01:21:11.360 So, so this, this pointer finger is smaller than the ring finger.

01:21:15.220 Okay.

01:21:15.340 It's called the D2 to D4 ratio.

01:21:17.180 Scientists are super nerdy.

01:21:18.920 Okay.

01:21:19.440 Turns out that if you look at gay men, men that identify as gay, there, there, there are very few men that identify as bisexual actually, but if you look at gay, gay men, that difference is much more pronounced, much bigger.

01:21:34.100 They have a hyper male pattern.

01:21:36.380 Now it can't be due to behavior, right?

01:21:40.140 You could say, well, they're having sex with a lot more people.

01:21:42.320 Sex increases testosterone.

01:21:43.640 No, it's directly related to how much testosterone you were exposed to in utero when you were in your mommy's belly.

01:21:51.260 Now.

01:21:52.020 Can you get exposed to testosterone in your mom's belly if someone ejaculates into the mom?

01:21:56.240 That hasn't been looked at, but I don't think so.

01:21:59.600 There's a lot to talk about.

01:22:01.080 So yeah, you can put that hand down.

01:22:02.320 So, so gay, gay men have a hyper male pattern that the index finger, excuse me, the pointer finger tends to be relatively shorter than the ring finger.

01:22:13.120 So the pointer finger is shorter than the ring finger.

01:22:15.940 Yeah.

01:22:16.420 Yeah.

01:22:16.640 On the right hand.

01:22:17.520 Good.

01:22:17.600 On the right hand is where it's, there you go.

01:22:19.180 See?

01:22:19.480 So, yep.

01:22:20.240 Yeah.

01:22:20.980 Yeah.

01:22:21.160 There you go.

01:22:21.560 Ooh, fuck.

01:22:22.540 Okay.

01:22:23.060 So it's close.

01:22:24.000 Well, no, no.

01:22:24.520 There's, it's a very small difference in everyone, but in, but in gay men, it tends to be much greater now.

01:22:30.000 So in the gay men, the pointer fingers is a little bit more shorter than the ring finger.

01:22:34.400 Wow.

01:22:34.660 Correct.

01:22:35.040 And we're not talking about absolute.

01:22:36.280 We're talking about the ratio.

01:22:38.000 Okay.

01:22:38.100 Now check this out.

01:22:39.260 Now check it out.

01:22:41.020 Lesbians tend to have the same pattern as heterosexual men, which is not to say they are men, right?

01:22:49.560 Believe me, I got lesbian friends.

01:22:51.060 They are women.

01:22:51.840 A lot of people, when they hear lesbian, they think of like a sort of cartoon stereotype of a lesbian.

01:22:56.800 They're a lot.

01:22:57.460 Trust me.

01:22:58.060 There are a lot of different lesbians.

01:22:59.160 Actually, my lesbian friends recently have been trying to school me on how you spot a lesbian.

01:23:03.420 It turns out there's all sorts of interesting things that the lesbian community is not supposed to give away these secrets.

01:23:08.840 It's kind of like magicians, you know, but let's just say like number of rings and stuff is our like interesting correlates.

01:23:14.240 Okay.

01:23:15.900 Love the lesbian community.

01:23:17.160 Yeah, we got to find some good lesbians, man, in the future.

01:23:19.800 So here's what's wild.

01:23:21.020 Yeah.

01:23:21.520 The more older brothers a guy has, the more testosterone he's exposed to in utero and the higher probability it is that he'll be gay.

01:23:29.920 Wow.

01:23:30.980 Now, that's not always the case.

01:23:32.260 It doesn't mean you have five older brothers, you'll be gay, but much higher probability of being gay if you have more older brothers.

01:23:38.280 With each older brother, the probability of a male baby growing up into a gay man increases significantly.

01:23:45.800 Gosh.

01:23:46.160 Okay, super interesting.

01:23:47.740 Now, all of this is interesting because it shows that there's what we call organizational effects of hormones in utero.

01:23:54.420 None of this can be because of behavior.

01:23:55.960 In fact, these differences are present at birth.

01:23:58.400 Okay.

01:23:58.720 Okay.

01:23:59.020 And then, of course, the question I asked when I was on the study is if I would chop off my index finger, does my testosterone go up?

01:24:03.660 The answer is no.

01:24:04.520 So, you know, so when we think about like partner selection, like, you know, heterosexual, homosexual, you know, I think years ago it was thought that this was, you know, there were still people that thought this was a behavioral choice.

01:24:17.460 Listen, newsflash, this is clearly a biological phenomenon.

01:24:22.540 Okay.

01:24:22.660 None of this, clearly, like, you know, and I understand that, but there's, but there's, of course, also flexibility.

01:24:27.940 You could imagine that some people, because of experience, decide that they're going to, you know, bat for the other team.

01:24:33.800 Oh, for sure.

01:24:34.760 A lot of my gay friends are like, it's not a choice, right?

01:24:36.840 It's just like, it's who you are.

01:24:38.920 And I'm like, well, why, after you've had a drink, are you trying to get me to choose it?

01:24:43.460 That's a thing for me.

01:24:44.420 That's a very good point.

01:24:45.040 It's like reverse psychology.

01:24:46.000 They're trying to trick you or something.

01:24:47.700 Wiener trick.

01:24:48.740 That's interesting.

01:24:50.160 My lesbian friends have never tried to convince me to be a lesbian.

01:24:53.980 But the.

01:24:54.680 But I don't blame gay dudes if they, because I think the ultimate, the ultimate thing you can get as a gay dude is a straight dude.

01:25:00.660 Do you know?

01:25:01.240 That's the hot shit.

01:25:02.140 Well, okay, so in the, I can't speak for lesbians, but my close lesbian friends tell me that also, yeah, like flipping somebody.

01:25:08.460 Yeah.

01:25:08.720 And that for them is like considered a trophy, right?

01:25:11.380 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:25:12.580 But, you know, so the last sort of study in this.

01:25:15.900 Like catching a big foot or whatever.

01:25:17.480 There's a neuroscientist by the name of Simon LeVay who years ago looked in the brain for brain differences between gay and straight men.

01:25:25.900 And he found one, there's a little area of the hypothalamus called the interstitial nucleus of the anterior hypothalamus area four that is different in size between gay men and straight men.

01:25:37.100 And, you know, it's hard to argue that that comes from behavior.

01:25:40.720 It could have.

01:25:41.740 The problem with that study is they got the brains from deceased AIDS patients and AIDS is a known neurodegenerative condition.

01:25:50.380 So, you know, there's no perfect study of any of this.

01:25:52.660 I don't know how we got into this, but I think basically we're talking about lesbians are going to save us all.

01:25:56.860 But, you know, one thing that I think is so important about the work you do, and seriously, one of the reasons I wanted to come here today is because you're normalizing conversations about addiction, porn, sex, intimacy.

01:26:13.860 You know, you asked why, I think you answered your question earlier.

01:26:16.780 Why is podcasting so big and important now?

01:26:19.640 Because you're not going to get this kind of conversation on a legacy news channel.

01:26:23.260 They're going to bring in somebody who is like the expert, and they're going to talk about things from the perspective of never having done them.

01:26:28.900 They're not going to reveal anything about themselves.

01:26:30.880 And here we are kind of, you know, like, you know, brushing up against the barbed wire of some of these topics in an effort to really talk about them, because this is what a lot of people are struggling with.

01:26:40.320 Yeah.

01:26:40.580 Some of that intimacy disorder stuff was a nightmare for me because when I was in my 20s, I was so nervous around women that I like a lot of times I had erectile dysfunction, you know.

01:26:51.580 Could you talk to your partner about it?

01:26:54.780 Back then, it was probably taboo, right?

01:26:57.160 Oh, yeah.

01:26:58.060 No, I think I just felt defeated, you know.

01:27:00.480 It felt very much like, damn, something's wrong with me.

01:27:03.120 I don't know what's wrong with me, you know.

01:27:05.760 And it was like, I remember I had, it's funny because kind of with like my first girlfriend, I didn't really have it.

01:27:15.500 And then it started to happen.

01:27:18.980 And then the same thing happened with my second girlfriend.

01:27:21.400 And then after that, once I kind of got into like age 23, it was, or like 24, it was like a problem for a long time.

01:27:29.620 So it was like a bug in your brain.

01:27:31.000 Oh, yeah.

01:27:31.340 So once it was like, I knew it was there, then it was like always this thing.

01:27:34.420 So, oh, fuck, I can't even, I forgot about all these nightmare times where you'd be on a date and you'd be like, how's this date going?

01:27:42.160 And then like, are we going to get like intimate and what's going to happen?

01:27:46.020 And I would like, you know, I remember like, I would eat like, you know, those gas station wiener pills, like, you know, like black attack 40 or whatever.

01:27:56.140 I've seen them on the camera.

01:27:56.680 No, they don't work, dude.

01:27:57.880 I think they're all just caffeine and stimulants.

01:28:00.400 Oh, bro.

01:28:00.880 Can't be good.

01:28:02.000 Can't be good.

01:28:02.600 One of them, I took, yeah, just zoom in on to some of those.

01:28:06.240 No, that's Dayquil.

01:28:07.400 I mean, that's not going to help anybody.

01:28:09.180 Yeah.

01:28:09.720 Triple green, Rhino 87, Macho Man, white black guy.

01:28:15.660 That's a crazy name for one.

01:28:17.140 Wait, what?

01:28:17.780 Yeah, I made that up.

01:28:18.640 Okay.

01:28:18.960 I didn't see that there.

01:28:19.840 I thought I have a visual defect or something.

01:28:22.140 Oh, yeah.

01:28:23.420 Body beast or whatever.

01:28:24.720 King Kong.

01:28:25.060 But nowadays, a lot of this has worked out because, you know, the drug Tadalafil, also known as Cialis,

01:28:31.040 was developed as a way to increase blood flow to the prostate.

01:28:35.000 By the way, every male 35 or older, this was suggested by the director of male sexual health at Stanford School of Medicine, Mike Eisenberg.

01:28:42.820 So I'm not just pulling this out of nowhere.

01:28:44.620 Every male 35 or older should probably be on a low dose, 2.5 to 5 milligrams of Tadalafil in the evening.

01:28:53.020 It's very inexpensive.

01:28:54.000 It does require a prescription.

01:28:55.180 Why?

01:28:55.500 Because the prostate needs blood flow.

01:28:58.100 And it also serves, you know, it has this pro-erectile function, right?

01:29:02.200 And of course, one has to do all the other things correctly.

01:29:04.860 You've got to be sleeping, exercising, et cetera.

01:29:06.720 Also, a lot of guys think they should be doing Kegels, you know, that thing where you're like,

01:29:09.520 that actually will tighten your pelvic floor and block blood flow to the penis and make erection more difficult.

01:29:15.760 Hadn't been doing it.

01:29:16.460 Yeah.

01:29:16.720 So they did, you know, a lot of this stuff wasn't taught.

01:29:19.300 Yeah.

01:29:19.500 I remember I would take some of them so much sometime.

01:29:21.700 I remember one time I was trying to like perform, like have sex with this gal or something.

01:29:27.520 And my, I'd taken some of those wiener pills.

01:29:29.840 My nose just started bleeding.

01:29:31.740 Oh no.

01:29:32.300 All over this woman.

01:29:33.720 And I was like, what is happening?

01:29:35.020 Did she freak out?

01:29:35.880 Huh?

01:29:36.100 I don't know.

01:29:36.760 It was in Miami.

01:29:37.440 Everybody, we had like a belly full of crab or whatever, but it was like this nice crab

01:29:40.760 place, but it was like, and my nose just, it was just like, that was crazy.

01:29:44.800 But it just became this crazy dance in my head where it was like wiener pills, trying to be

01:29:51.700 normal, like trying to calm down, like put an ice in my shirt, just all these things to

01:29:56.920 like chill, like just be able to be normal for a sex.

01:30:00.700 That shit was a nightmare.

01:30:02.500 Yeah.

01:30:02.880 I mean, it was a nightmare.

01:30:04.160 And then you're stuck in this universe where that is becomes like your whole battle.

01:30:09.200 And then you get afraid to even talk to girls sometimes or relate to them.

01:30:12.080 Cause you're like, well, what, you know, if I take a girl down this road and it's not

01:30:16.300 able to work out, then who am I?

01:30:18.420 Then where am I at?

01:30:19.400 You know?

01:30:19.820 Yeah.

01:30:20.180 And then imagine that, but layered on top of that is the fear of being shamed by, listen,

01:30:26.100 I don't know that I, you know, I'm just going to bring it up.

01:30:28.660 I don't know the specifics, but I remember hearing a few years ago, there was a comedian

01:30:33.000 who was like shamed for being bad in bed or something.

01:30:35.980 Was this like a, and that was one of the first kind of, it was, he was kind of canceled for

01:30:39.360 being bad in bed.

01:30:40.780 Wasn't that, that was, all right, well, and listen, if there was like coercive stuff or

01:30:45.060 whatever, I don't know, but I wasn't there, obviously, obviously you didn't read the article

01:30:48.280 either, but I think, you know, you layer on top the fear of being shamed.

01:30:52.820 Right.

01:30:53.480 And all of a sudden, you know, like you're talking about like collapsing a young male's

01:30:58.620 existence.

01:30:58.960 I mean, you know, I think, yeah, I, like I said, for the fourth time, I'm forgive me

01:31:04.200 for repeating myself, 49.

01:31:05.480 So I.

01:31:06.340 You look young, man.

01:31:07.320 Thanks, man.

01:31:07.720 I feel good.

01:31:08.260 Well, listen, I quit drinking.

01:31:09.260 I never drank that much, but also I've been doing things that I love.

01:31:12.000 I was going to say that one of the things that'll keep you young is dopamine.

01:31:15.040 Really?

01:31:15.280 Not from pharmacology, but being in pursuit of things that you love.

01:31:19.700 Positive anticipation.

01:31:20.800 But I think that let's go into that in just a second, but let's finish out this.

01:31:23.760 Yeah.

01:31:23.880 What you were saying.

01:31:24.500 Yeah.

01:31:24.700 I think that, you know, I benefited tremendously from being open with that first girlfriend.

01:31:35.020 Yes.

01:31:35.680 That first girlfriend just saying, Hey, like, you know, like she had this like buff boyfriend

01:31:42.600 in another school, but actually it was wild because he ended up killing himself.

01:31:46.780 And that was years later.

01:31:48.860 And I remember thinking this guy was like the football hero, right?

01:31:51.880 He ended up committing suicide.

01:31:53.280 And I remember thinking, wow, I thought in my mind, he was like, couldn't be outdone.

01:31:58.000 Right.

01:31:58.600 And so talking to her, I remember her just saying like, first she said something like we were

01:32:03.480 kids, right?

01:32:03.920 We were like 16, you know, she said, you know, you're, you're wonderful.

01:32:07.800 And I remember thinking like, I don't want to be called wonderful.

01:32:09.740 Like I'm trying to get good at this thing.

01:32:11.540 Yeah.

01:32:11.760 Right.

01:32:12.120 And I think if I've learned anything, like if I could send like a, like all points bulletin

01:32:16.580 out, it's like everything we know about the erectile response is that it's what we call

01:32:21.800 parasympathetic.

01:32:22.720 It comes from the relaxation response.

01:32:24.640 Orgasm is related to, it's almost like a stress of sorts.

01:32:27.420 It's pleasurable, but high arousal.

01:32:29.400 Yeah.

01:32:29.700 The key to all of it is a lot of exhales, a lot of nasal breathing, and just slow the whole

01:32:36.900 thing down, slow the whole thing down that you, you, you know, later, once you're comfortable

01:32:43.320 with somebody, if you got like five minutes and you're going to like go for the, the quickie

01:32:46.520 thing in the kitchen before you leave to work.

01:32:48.080 Okay.

01:32:48.380 That's a, that's a whole program.

01:32:50.700 Right.

01:32:51.040 Okay.

01:32:51.640 That's like that, uh, that guy, lethal shooter on Instagram, the guy can make a basket from

01:32:56.060 anywhere.

01:32:56.360 Like he worked up to that.

01:32:57.740 Right.

01:32:58.140 The, uh, what you're trying to do is slow down the whole thing, like, and get into sensation.

01:33:05.240 You got to get out of your head.

01:33:06.400 Yes.

01:33:06.700 Now it's one thing to say, get out of your head.

01:33:08.360 It's another to do it.

01:33:09.520 So the whole process there starts with just only going so far as then you communicate

01:33:15.020 with the person, slow down.

01:33:15.920 These things have a real beauty to them because when people start entering that dance and

01:33:21.620 communicating well with one another, all of a sudden, like the magic of biology takes

01:33:27.280 over.

01:33:27.580 God, yeah.

01:33:28.140 And then someone thinks, oh, well now it's going to go back.

01:33:30.040 Then you just kind of restart and do the whole thing.

01:33:32.380 And nowadays I think young males go quickly.

01:33:34.700 They're like, I'm going to take 20 milligrams.

01:33:35.840 It's a dowel, fill this out.

01:33:37.160 Listen, that probably would help, but learning how to do this, this thing that we call intimacy,

01:33:42.160 right?

01:33:43.060 I mean, intimacy is a lot of things, but knowing that what's happening there is between the

01:33:47.260 two of you.

01:33:47.820 And that also means you guys, cause you know, there's also been a long history of men talking

01:33:52.580 about all the women they slept with.

01:33:53.840 And then that doesn't feel good necessarily to other women, you know?

01:33:58.020 So the real, the art of intimacy is something that we've lost.

01:34:02.380 And listen, I'm not saying that all sexes has this element, you know, sometimes people

01:34:06.400 just want to get together and get raw.

01:34:07.820 Like, but that's, that's a, you know, that's an advanced skill that you may or may not want

01:34:12.020 to engage in.

01:34:12.760 Right.

01:34:13.100 And I think that slowing the whole thing down, like, Hey, we're going to be together

01:34:17.940 in bed four times before we ever actually have intercourse.

01:34:21.240 Like that's weird to look at you while I say that, but you know what I'm talking about?

01:34:24.620 No, hell no.

01:34:25.400 It would have been great.

01:34:26.000 See, it, this is the kind of thing that can transform, not only avoids problems, but

01:34:31.700 can transform your notion of like, what's possible in relationship, slow, slow, slow,

01:34:38.540 slow.

01:34:39.060 And then once that intimacy is set, then there can be some, you know, more adventurous

01:34:44.820 exploration at speed.

01:34:46.300 But you know, it's all about, it's all about slowing that thing down, slowing the whole process

01:34:53.260 down.

01:34:53.600 Yeah, dude, I remember, Oh dude, I remember this fricking, my girlfriend at the time, I

01:35:01.140 was like, I thought I couldn't get an erection.

01:35:03.600 Right.

01:35:03.740 So I had her call me a different name.

01:35:05.080 Like we're making out.

01:35:06.200 That was your, that was your solution.

01:35:07.520 Well, this dude, Robert in our, in our grade was getting mad erections.

01:35:10.280 Everybody was saying, and I'd be like, call me.

01:35:12.060 And I, Oh, this is so embarrassing, but I'd be like, call me Robert, call me Robert.

01:35:17.080 And it didn't fucking help.

01:35:18.860 And she's like, it was just the most embarrassed.

01:35:20.720 That shit was super embarrassing, dude.

01:35:22.300 Cause even if I was Robert, I couldn't even get an erection at the time.

01:35:24.900 So that was horrible.

01:35:25.980 Trying to think of what else happened.

01:35:27.280 Dude.

01:35:27.440 Oh, I've gone.

01:35:27.980 I mean, you know, over the years I've gone, you know, down the gamut of all of it, like

01:35:31.580 hiring escorts or, um, you know, thinking like, Oh, we need more than one part.

01:35:37.660 Like all that, like just thinking like all these things would change it, you know, drugs,

01:35:42.340 alcohol, like all these different things to like trying to fine tune how I would feel.

01:35:48.060 Okay.

01:35:48.380 I think even just to be in like a conversation, like just to be like an intimate conversation,

01:35:55.120 like, Oh, I wished I would have from the beginning been like, just with a girl I've been, Hey,

01:35:59.580 like this is what's going on and this is how I'm feeling.

01:36:01.780 And this is what's popping, you know, and like, and even made it cool or whatever.

01:36:05.600 And it would have brought us closer together.

01:36:07.380 But instead I took this huge bypass of like things that I thought would like, I thought

01:36:12.740 that intimacy was just a, um, one man show.

01:36:17.440 Well, that, yeah, it's so important what you're saying that it was all your responsibility.

01:36:21.700 Does that make any sense or not?

01:36:22.460 Yeah.

01:36:22.620 Listen, newsflash men and women, there are women who are great in bed and there are women

01:36:27.300 who are not great in bed.

01:36:28.760 Oh yeah.

01:36:29.120 You know, there are great lovers who are women.

01:36:31.880 There are not great lovers.

01:36:33.060 I'll tell you what makes a great female lover.

01:36:35.160 Yeah.

01:36:35.460 Somebody who can relax and enjoy herself.

01:36:37.940 And part of that is the communication and also somebody who's tuned into what works for

01:36:43.220 you.

01:36:43.560 You know, it took me a long time.

01:36:44.860 Cause I, listen, I think all young men deal with this, right?

01:36:47.260 You want to perform well.

01:36:48.480 And it's interesting.

01:36:49.340 You mentioned Robert and I mentioned this other guy that sadly eventually killed himself,

01:36:52.680 but every young male knows the experience of there's like this satellite male.

01:36:57.240 You're holding yourself up against this image and an idea, right?

01:37:00.620 This image and idea that's very dangerous thinking.

01:37:03.240 You know what I think?

01:37:04.080 I think that every male should understand that at some point you're the satellite male,

01:37:09.220 you're the satellite male.

01:37:11.420 So you got to get out of that kind of thinking and understand that like, like dancing, like

01:37:17.840 athletics, like it takes time to get good at you need reps and you need reps under conditions

01:37:22.900 where you can learn.

01:37:23.840 You know, I think, you know, it sounds like you put the pressure on yourself to be like

01:37:27.820 a sexual athlete from go and like, you got to learn layups, no pun intended.

01:37:33.280 You got to learn the, your free throws.

01:37:34.840 You got to learn lay downs, but I look at all that pornography.

01:37:37.140 That's what it was.

01:37:38.100 I've been looking at all that porno, you know, and it got me all bent out.

01:37:41.340 Yeah.

01:37:41.640 It's like, if you want to play basketball, you don't go look at lethal shooters, Instagram

01:37:45.300 and go, I'm going to do that tomorrow.

01:37:47.320 Yeah.

01:37:47.580 I mean, he built up to that, you know?

01:37:49.900 So I think we're using an analogy here and metaphor, but it's just so important that this

01:37:55.660 guy is like, he's just like that.

01:38:01.420 And I'll tell you, no, it's reps, it's reps, reps, reps.

01:38:04.580 He did a live one night that I caught really late at night when I was in New York.

01:38:08.960 He's, he can visually measure the angle the ball has to go in.

01:38:12.620 He's not shooting.

01:38:13.560 He is shooting for the basket, but he's trying to put the ball in a cone of a particular angle.

01:38:18.860 He's looking above the basket at the, at the angle.

01:38:21.540 He needs to sink that thing.

01:38:22.500 He'll put a gummy bear into a 16 ounce bottle from across a court.

01:38:26.300 Damn.

01:38:26.760 And then he yells at you for, for doubting him.

01:38:29.500 Well, I love that.

01:38:30.360 What's he doing here?

01:38:31.140 Oh, he's, what do they call that game?

01:38:33.660 Game, uh, cornhole or what a weird name for a game.

01:38:37.400 Yeah.

01:38:37.780 You wonder how it started.

01:38:39.200 Boom.

01:38:39.740 Look at this guy.

01:38:40.920 Beanbag.

01:38:41.460 And he goes, I understand it now.

01:38:43.120 So yeah, he's really good.

01:38:45.180 That man, lethal shooter right there.

01:38:47.220 Yeah.

01:38:47.560 He reps, he worked up to that and he didn't work up to it by picking up a basketball,

01:38:52.380 metaphorically speaking and saying, okay, I got to make this or else my life is destroyed

01:38:55.980 and people are going to be talking about it.

01:38:57.240 Yeah.

01:38:57.400 So I think there has to be a private world, an intimate world where people can explore

01:39:02.380 in a healthy way, communicate in a healthy way and know it's between them.

01:39:05.780 And then you get to this beautiful vista with intimacy where you're like, I love this or

01:39:12.480 I love that.

01:39:13.280 And, you know, I mean, uh, and it brings people together.

01:39:16.040 Oh, I mean, listen, I mean, I want to be respectful to, you know, my former partners, but you know,

01:39:21.420 it's one of these things where you go like, wow, like I really, I really learned something

01:39:25.500 from that person.

01:39:26.220 Now, of course, as a man, you also have to have an ego intact enough to know she learned

01:39:30.060 a few things from somebody else too, right?

01:39:32.020 Unless you, unless it's a first relationship, right?

01:39:34.120 This notion that you're the only person that's ever been there is quite rare.

01:39:38.060 And part of being a grown male is accepting that.

01:39:40.680 And frankly, you know, different, different strokes for different folks, you know, but I

01:39:45.620 think you got to understand, like, we're all, we're all here because either in a dish

01:39:50.380 or in a human sperm met egg, okay, this drive that's dopamine driven to reproduce and sex,

01:39:56.420 the reason those things are so closely woven is, and that drives so much a culture and behavior

01:40:01.200 and shame and addiction and pleasure and all this stuff is because it's why we're here.

01:40:06.440 Like, right.

01:40:07.920 I mean, this is, this is, this is everything.

01:40:10.020 And, you know, now Elon and other people are talking about how the, you know, the, the

01:40:13.660 replacement rate for humans is way, way down because we have birth control and people

01:40:17.400 aren't having sex as much.

01:40:18.520 I mean, it is possible that humans fail to replace themselves as a species, you know?

01:40:24.600 And then you got guys like him who are trying to make up for that deficit.

01:40:27.620 Oh yeah.

01:40:28.060 He's popping off, dude.

01:40:29.220 He's got like what, like 14 kids or something.

01:40:31.080 He'll knock up a fucking parking meter.

01:40:32.940 You don't give a damn boy.

01:40:34.960 He's the only dude who put, yeah, he put definitely he'll, he'll get it.

01:40:38.920 I want to pivot a little bit.

01:40:40.340 I saw an, there's, we're starting to see stuff.

01:40:43.440 Like I've been, I've been noticing recently these articles about measles.

01:40:47.380 Have you seen this stuff?

01:40:48.520 Hitting the airwaves.

01:40:50.400 Is that realistic?

01:40:51.920 It just starts to seem, if you can see one of them, Nick and bring it up.

01:40:57.180 Person may have spread measles at Shakira concert in MetLife stadium.

01:41:01.480 Health officials say, right.

01:41:03.180 This just seems like a person who attended a Shakira concert at MetLife stadium on May 15th

01:41:08.320 was infected with measles and may have spread the highly contagious virus at the event.

01:41:12.460 Health officials say this almost reads like the beginning of a movie, right?

01:41:16.160 Like highly contagious, infected spread at a concert.

01:41:21.440 So it makes it super scary, right?

01:41:23.080 All these, but like all the viruses tend to spread more quickly indoors.

01:41:27.060 Measles can live in an airspace for up to two hours and it's highly transmissible,

01:41:30.820 especially amongst the unvaccinated.

01:41:32.680 So this is an article.

01:41:34.460 What's this in?

01:41:36.220 This is North Jersey.com, which is owned by USA Today.

01:41:39.200 Okay.

01:41:39.600 Okay.

01:41:39.940 Conventional media.

01:41:40.960 So, so I'm just like, what is going on here?

01:41:43.000 Are we, are they just trying to see another thing that will stick to society?

01:41:47.340 What do you, as a scientist, what do you even think when you read something like this?

01:41:51.400 Okay.

01:41:52.460 Super important, specific and general question you're asking.

01:41:56.200 First question as a scientist, I would ask is what was the frequency of people with measles

01:42:01.840 coming into the hospital before there was a focus on measles?

01:42:05.160 Got it.

01:42:05.420 Like two years ago, before the discussion about measles and vaccines was as prominent,

01:42:09.960 at least measles vaccines, right?

01:42:11.180 Back then it was all about COVID vaccines.

01:42:12.720 But so I'd say how, you know, if we were to look in the medical history,

01:42:16.140 because hospitals keep records, you know, in the, this was in East Rutherford.

01:42:21.160 Okay.

01:42:21.300 So in New Jersey, I have relatives in New Jersey, how many measles cases were identified

01:42:25.560 in the last 10 years?

01:42:29.180 Right.

01:42:29.460 And what percentage of those reported having been in a public place prior?

01:42:34.300 That's what I'd want to know, because that will tell you whether or not this is the

01:42:37.860 media amplifying.

01:42:38.760 Here we go.

01:42:40.600 Texas outbreak drives up early U.S. measles cases in early 2025.

01:42:44.120 Number of measles cases reported in the U.S. per year.

01:42:47.280 Yeah.

01:42:47.420 Well, we hear about these things like bird flu.

01:42:49.400 Remember a few years back, it was monkeypox?

01:42:51.840 Yeah.

01:42:52.400 Monkeypox.

01:42:52.860 We don't hear about monkeypox anymore.

01:42:54.560 That was like monkeypox is coming for us.

01:42:56.980 Yeah.

01:42:57.220 Every, every, every couple of months, there's something that pops off like this.

01:42:59.800 Every few months, it's like hoof mouth syndrome or canary baby, you know.

01:43:04.560 There are cases of measles that can be very detrimental, but there's an episode of the

01:43:08.560 Brady Bunch.

01:43:09.180 Do you remember this episode of the Brady Bunch where they all get measles?

01:43:12.240 And then at the end, Alice walks in and she's got the spots and she's goes, I've got measles

01:43:16.540 too.

01:43:17.400 You know, when I was a kid, I had the chickenpox.

01:43:18.760 Now I'm not trying to make light of the measles, right?

01:43:20.960 Like any infectious disease, there's inflammation of the body and brain.

01:43:25.420 There are cases where these diseases cause serious long-term effects.

01:43:28.620 And then there are cases where it has less of an effect.

01:43:31.900 The most important thing to understand for me would be what are the real statistics of

01:43:36.740 like, is measles becoming more frequent?

01:43:38.800 Is that tied to the shift?

01:43:40.740 Because let's face it, regardless of where you stand on the issue of vaccination, people

01:43:44.300 are now taking a look again at vaccination.

01:43:47.540 The vaccine schedules have expanded, right?

01:43:50.140 You know, I'm part of the medical community.

01:43:51.680 I'm an employee of Stanford School of Medicine.

01:43:53.340 And I, I would say I fall more just full disclosure into the more conventional standpoint

01:43:58.300 of, of this.

01:43:59.360 I want to be really clear because of, I do believe that there are certain vaccinations

01:44:04.700 that are highly beneficial.

01:44:06.860 I also think there are a number of vaccinations that for public health reasons should be explored

01:44:13.820 further.

01:44:14.440 If for no other reason to discover that, yes, we were right or no, we were wrong.

01:44:18.920 I, it's just critically important.

01:44:20.640 I mean, you know, I think any good, any self-respecting scientists would say, those are the data.

01:44:26.080 Let's look again.

01:44:26.900 Now there's this real twist in the data around the autism vaccine thing.

01:44:31.600 That's very, that's really unfortunate.

01:44:34.540 And this is one of the reasons why this is such a hot button issue is that the guy,

01:44:37.300 Andrew Wakefield, who originally tried to tie the vaccine to autism, he was found guilty

01:44:43.260 of fraud.

01:44:44.240 Okay.

01:44:44.480 Now I wasn't involved in the papers of the case, but like that puts a twist in everything

01:44:48.500 because-

01:44:48.900 Did he go to jail?

01:44:49.560 I believe he did, or he at least lost his medical license.

01:44:53.560 Okay.

01:44:53.840 There have been other instances, you know, of scientific fraud, but that one in particular

01:44:58.820 caused the entire field to assume he was completely wrong about everything.

01:45:03.100 And now there are folks like Robert Kennedy, who is like him or not, is our head of HHS.

01:45:07.780 Okay.

01:45:07.940 I actually know Robert.

01:45:09.220 I actually, I'm going to host Jay Bhattacharya, who is my colleague at Stanford on the, he's

01:45:13.420 the head of NIH.

01:45:14.300 And so I think right now there's a, there's here, what were the consequences?

01:45:18.300 Andrew Wakefield did not go to prison, although he was found guilty of serious professional

01:45:21.560 misconduct by the UK general medical council and was struck off the medical register, effectively

01:45:25.840 ending his career as a physician.

01:45:26.800 There was no record or evidence that he was ever criminally prosecuted or in prison for

01:45:30.120 his actions related to the fraudulent 1998 Lancet study linking the MMR vaccine to autism.

01:45:35.560 The sanctions against him were professional and civil, not criminal.

01:45:39.280 So an important thing that must be done.

01:45:42.000 I know this issue is, you know, I'm going to catch hate either way.

01:45:45.120 What's a hot issue right now?

01:45:46.200 It's a super hot issue.

01:45:47.080 Listen, as a parent, can you imagine you have a kid and your kid seems for all measures,

01:45:53.100 perfectly healthy, has some treatment vaccine or a pill or a trip to, you know, the supermarket

01:45:59.740 and that kid fundamentally changes their behavior afterwards.

01:46:03.200 You know, the one thing we know is, you know, this is also a deep hypothalamic circuit.

01:46:07.980 As we say, there is a hardwired circuit for mothers, especially, you know, dads can be protective,

01:46:13.060 but mothers to protect their young.

01:46:14.940 So, you know, when the moms are pissed off and curious, they are unrelenting and no amount of

01:46:22.880 discussion about that was resolved because the Wakefield thing was gone is going to satisfy them.

01:46:26.740 So my, my personal take is run the studies you need to run, make sure they're run properly from

01:46:34.740 with an unbiased look at all of this.

01:46:37.120 So important because the thing about vaccines and autism is really a microcosm for a much larger

01:46:42.040 theme about how much can we trust the medical community?

01:46:44.220 And listen, I know scientists.

01:46:46.160 I was weaned in this.

01:46:47.060 My dad's a scientist.

01:46:47.940 Like most scientists, like 99.9% of scientists want to get things right.

01:46:53.040 We are in the business of trying to untease the secrets of nature and do good things with them.

01:46:59.060 Okay.

01:46:59.660 And yet there are those that will manipulate the system.

01:47:04.760 No one goes into science to get rich.

01:47:06.740 They go into biotech to get rich, but you don't become a bench scientist at a university to get rich.

01:47:10.920 Trust me.

01:47:11.320 But how can those scientists be manipulated as a group?

01:47:13.660 Like when you look back at like, how can that happen?

01:47:16.000 Like, is there, is it journals that are compromised?

01:47:18.440 Is it the medical industry that gets compromised?

01:47:20.520 But how do you have like a whole, you know?

01:47:22.800 Sure.

01:47:23.580 So I'll try and keep this relatively succinct.

01:47:26.700 This is a whole landscape and it's something that is like really deep and important to me as a science communicator, health communicator who has friends on both sides, you know, of these debates.

01:47:36.800 The most important thing to understand is scientists are trying to figure out the truth.

01:47:41.280 They are also human and they're highly incentivized to advance their careers.

01:47:46.500 One of the things that I've observed in science is not people making up data.

01:47:52.000 That's exceedingly rare.

01:47:53.420 But scientists sometimes when they don't get the answer they want in an experiment, they'll come up with reasons for why that experiment probably wasn't run right.

01:48:03.200 And maybe we should discard the data.

01:48:04.700 Okay.

01:48:04.760 Let's say that one time when they don't get.

01:48:06.520 When they don't get the answer they want, they will come up with reasons why, oh, that antibody wasn't as fresh or, you know, the conditions weren't right.

01:48:13.800 And they will start to steer the data, steer the, I have observed that.

01:48:19.100 Okay.

01:48:19.340 Okay.

01:48:19.580 I've observed that a lot in my career, sadly.

01:48:23.020 Far less common are people outright making up data, what we call fudging data, just like making up numbers.

01:48:29.120 There's a famous case in nanotechnology of this kid whose last name was Sean.

01:48:32.740 He was like a wonder kid in the sense that he had like, it's very hard to publish papers in science or nature.

01:48:37.260 This is like the Super Bowl rings of science.

01:48:39.900 I've had a couple in nature, a couple in science, and I feel immensely blessed for that.

01:48:44.200 Sean was publishing 12 papers a year in nature and science.

01:48:47.620 Wow.

01:48:48.040 And at some point people start looking more closely at their data.

01:48:53.060 Okay.

01:48:53.500 And what happened?

01:48:55.080 They saw that the random noise plots, random should be random, right?

01:48:59.520 You don't need to be a scientist or a genius to understand that random should be random.

01:49:02.540 He was so lazy that he was replotting the random noise in two different experiments.

01:49:08.280 You can't get the same random noise in two different experiments.

01:49:11.100 So there are bad apples like him.

01:49:12.940 He's gone now, but most scientists are trying to get it right.

01:49:16.700 And yet there's this thing that we have to constantly check ourselves on.

01:49:20.640 This is why you have to, what we call blind the data.

01:49:22.740 You look at it, not knowing what condition you're looking at.

01:49:24.780 This is why replication is so key.

01:49:26.320 And the big problem in science, and I do think this new administration cares about this.

01:49:30.680 It's hard to get a job as a professor for replicating work.

01:49:37.220 Everyone wants to see the new thing.

01:49:38.740 So a PhD student comes into my lab.

01:49:40.480 They want to study something.

01:49:41.380 We rarely say, oh, let's go do what someone else did and make sure they're right.

01:49:44.560 No, you pick something new.

01:49:45.820 So a lot of mistakes have passed get kind of baked into the field.

01:49:49.620 And this is what happened in the Alzheimer's field.

01:49:51.540 This is why, you know, one mistake, which probably was somebody outright fudging as well, making

01:49:57.380 stuff up, kind of get woven into the lineage.

01:49:59.680 Then other papers get published more easily.

01:50:01.320 And then lo and behold, 25 years later, we said, we don't have a single good treatment

01:50:04.720 for Alzheimer's.

01:50:05.400 Best thing you can do is get good sleep.

01:50:06.820 There's a little study out today about creatine maybe helping, but we're just nipping around

01:50:10.280 the corners of this extremely important problem.

01:50:13.280 I must say, and this is not for political correctness.

01:50:17.000 Listen, I'm a tenured professor at Stanford.

01:50:18.500 So I don't have to worry about quote unquote losing my job.

01:50:21.100 I mean, there are ways you can lose your job even with tenure, but I just want to say

01:50:24.320 with all the bad things about science, the Wakefield thing, the Alzheimer's thing, the

01:50:30.180 replication crisis, the lack of incentive for people to replicate work, I do have to say

01:50:35.480 something very important.

01:50:37.780 There are so many treatments for diseases that exist nowadays that we take for granted that

01:50:43.780 were born out of basic research.

01:50:45.780 Scientists in a lab, just trying to figure things out without the idea of a treatment

01:50:49.060 someday.

01:50:49.520 My scientific great grandparents, I mentioned them earlier, David Hubel and Torrance and

01:50:53.220 Weasel did that experiment of closing one eye in a kitty cat and monkey showed that the

01:50:58.220 brain is immensely plastic that gave birth, excuse me, that gave birth to an entire field of

01:51:02.420 the molecules involved and the hormones involved and why it shuts down with age, how to open

01:51:06.820 plasticity in adulthood.

01:51:08.160 In many ways, it's given rise to this whole field of psychedelics for the treatment of brain

01:51:12.660 disorders in order to reopen plasticity.

01:51:16.820 They did not do those experiments thinking there would be any medical application, but

01:51:21.080 we now know as compared to the seventies, when a kid has a lazy eye or a cataract or what we

01:51:26.540 call strabismus or any of that, we now know to get in and treat those eye diseases early

01:51:31.340 while the brain is still plastic.

01:51:33.340 Their work has saved the vision.

01:51:36.180 In other words, has prevented blindness of countless people around the world.

01:51:40.280 And there's this whole initiative in places overseas to remove cataracts, save vision.

01:51:45.100 So I can give you a million, not a million, I can give you thousands of examples of that.

01:51:50.160 Immunotherapies for cancer, neuroplasticity, the incredible work being done on psilocybin

01:51:55.480 for depression, MDMA, which hopefully will be approved by the FDA soon for the treatment

01:52:00.280 of PTSD.

01:52:01.380 Incredible 70%, seven, zero remission rates.

01:52:05.120 The understanding of that drug, methylene dioxy, methamphetamines, methamphetamine with a little

01:52:09.820 twist.

01:52:10.700 Okay.

01:52:11.100 The understanding of that was born out of serious scientists slaving away in their labs

01:52:16.360 for very little pay because they love discovery.

01:52:20.920 And I, I'm not saying that to, to, to just, you know, kind of say, oh, all scientists are

01:52:25.440 great, but I think we have to be very careful.

01:52:27.920 The replication crisis is real.

01:52:29.720 We need to take another look at all issues related to public health.

01:52:32.580 You can tell I'm very passionate about this.

01:52:34.100 Yeah.

01:52:34.360 I listen, I text Bobby all the time.

01:52:36.140 Yeah.

01:52:36.500 I'm like, listen, man, we got to look at this.

01:52:38.220 We got to look at, and you know what?

01:52:39.480 We can't allow ourselves to go too far in one direction or the other.

01:52:42.760 I say, let's not waste any time.

01:52:46.060 Let's take a look at all these vaccines again, and great controlled studies.

01:52:48.920 Yeah.

01:52:48.940 What do we lose by looking at them?

01:52:50.120 Nothing.

01:52:50.440 But I'll tell you to say what I'm saying here, like I'm, I'm going to, this will be cut

01:52:56.060 and clipped and contorted.

01:52:58.300 You know, I'm just going to come out with it.

01:52:59.700 Trad medias.

01:53:00.560 You know, the moment I started showing up on Rogan and listen, I think Joe Rogan has done

01:53:04.540 tremendous amount of good for science communication.

01:53:07.080 Matt Walker, me, David Sinclair, other people on there, physicists, you know, but then the

01:53:12.080 adjacency to anyone who's asking these larger questions puts you in the bullseye of, oh, you

01:53:17.540 know, he, you know, Andrew's a science denier, flat earth or whatever.

01:53:21.300 No, I believe that any solid field should be subject to self-scrutiny and outside scrutiny.

01:53:28.060 Yeah.

01:53:28.240 And this is why, listen, I've published a number of papers and we all, I always say, listen,

01:53:32.140 I'm happy to be wrong for the right reasons.

01:53:34.360 Like we were trying our damnedest to get it right.

01:53:36.760 You can't be wrong for the wrong reasons, like making shit up.

01:53:39.920 You make a mistake, you correct yourself.

01:53:41.880 It's called being an adult.

01:53:42.940 And you can tell that like my, this gets my energy going because I will tell you,

01:53:47.540 I am very concerned about the future of science in this country, either way, because we've

01:53:51.660 got to split right down the middle and there's all this finger pointing and somebody, hopefully

01:53:56.300 Jay Bhattacharya, our new director of the NIH, God willing, he's going to bridge this gap.

01:54:02.020 I'm trying to do what I can behind the scenes to really get people talking because there's

01:54:06.020 so much shit talking behind the, you know, I hate them and I hate them.

01:54:09.900 But listen, we all got to live in this world.

01:54:12.040 Forgive me for going on a monologue.

01:54:13.560 But I'm telling you, I'm glad we need, we need to take a hard look at ourselves and

01:54:19.360 we really, really need to, whatever we explore, we need to explore it properly.

01:54:23.620 But scientists are good people, man.

01:54:25.820 And I don't make my living doing science anymore.

01:54:28.040 So I can say that with no bias.

01:54:29.640 They're good people.

01:54:30.880 99.9% of them.

01:54:32.500 And then the, and those bad apples, excuse my language, but fuck them.

01:54:35.780 Oh, for sure.

01:54:36.360 Because they ruin it all for everybody.

01:54:38.840 Oh, yeah.

01:54:39.840 Well, and it also leads to impairment.

01:54:42.180 It leads to disease.

01:54:42.960 It leads to, you know, atrocities that happen to people.

01:54:46.900 And it's for usually for the sake of profit.

01:54:49.060 Do you believe that big pharma would lobby against certain tests being done or residual

01:54:59.060 testing, re-examination of, of, of past findings, et cetera, in order to keep things a certain

01:55:06.680 way?

01:55:07.240 Okay.

01:55:07.560 So does that make sense?

01:55:09.280 Yeah, absolutely.

01:55:10.000 So two things about big pharma.

01:55:11.300 First of all, I don't have any direct links to big pharma.

01:55:14.400 You know, people think, cause I'm at Stanford, I've been accused of being part of MK ultra.

01:55:18.320 I don't even know what that is, but sounds scary.

01:55:20.160 You know, I don't know, dude.

01:55:21.160 What's MK ultra fucking lost.

01:55:22.720 I've been told, I've been told I'm a CIA plant MK ultra.

01:55:26.320 I mean, that stuff is crazy.

01:55:27.480 Oh dude.

01:55:27.760 Somebody told me I went to the middle East or something.

01:55:29.800 Somebody said I was working for something, Bangladesh or something.

01:55:32.480 I was like, dude, I don't, I've never had anybody ask me to do anything.

01:55:36.760 I wasn't even born.

01:55:37.640 I wasn't even born.

01:55:38.720 I was born in 75.

01:55:39.980 Yeah.

01:55:40.280 Well, so, so big pharma, look, they're a business.

01:55:43.860 Okay.

01:55:44.340 So there are drugs like SSRIs where, which we will say have been not so helpful for the

01:55:51.180 treatment of depression for most people.

01:55:53.560 But guess what?

01:55:54.580 SSRIs are tremendously helpful for people with OCD.

01:55:57.360 Real OCD is a condition where the compulsion, the behavior makes the obsession worse.

01:56:02.100 Imagine a mosquito bite.

01:56:03.160 Every time you scratch it, itch is worse and worse and worse.

01:56:06.600 Destroys lives.

01:56:07.480 SSRIs have helped those people a lot.

01:56:09.940 The drug companies are highly incentivized to keep drugs out of generic so that the prices

01:56:14.400 come down.

01:56:15.100 They do a game.

01:56:16.500 I know this because I was involved in exploring drugs for eye disease years ago.

01:56:19.680 And I would learn from these companies.

01:56:21.240 If you can have a drug that goes through all the research and development costs millions

01:56:25.720 of dollars.

01:56:26.340 And then as you say for the treatment of a heart condition, if you can bypass the need

01:56:31.060 to do all the safety studies, because you discovered that that drug is now also useful

01:56:34.360 for say preserving vision and macular degeneration or glaucoma or diabetes, whatever you save yourself

01:56:41.180 a lot of money, same drug.

01:56:42.600 You maintain the patent and you can't have generic competitors.

01:56:45.800 So drug companies, I don't think people talk about this enough are highly incentivized to

01:56:49.440 not discover new drugs, but rather to continue with the same drugs and find new uses for

01:56:54.080 the same drugs.

01:56:55.000 Wow.

01:56:55.400 That's rarely talked about.

01:56:56.720 That's a serious problem.

01:56:58.480 The other thing about drug companies.

01:56:59.960 Because the negative side effect of that is what?

01:57:01.440 That something gets kind of shoehorned in and working for something, but the.

01:57:04.880 Very expensive drugs for everybody.

01:57:06.900 Because if you look at the difference between like there are these new sleep medications

01:57:10.080 called the Doras.

01:57:10.980 They shut down the wakefulness system as opposed to making you sleepy.

01:57:13.780 They have a lot less abuse potential.

01:57:15.260 They're like $300 a month.

01:57:16.840 And as long as they can maintain the patent on that, there won't be the generic version

01:57:20.380 because it probably costs the profit margins on these things are huge because they're

01:57:24.460 trying to cover the research and development they did there.

01:57:27.160 You know, so that's just one example, but the drug companies are incentivized.

01:57:31.340 Yeah.

01:57:31.720 The Doras I've tried them.

01:57:33.500 I felt, I felt lousy.

01:57:34.740 And is that like, um, uh, ambient or whatever?

01:57:38.700 No.

01:57:39.120 So ambient is a problem because it can give you memory issues.

01:57:41.780 This works through something that's called the hypocretinorexin system.

01:57:44.580 It was discovered in narcoleptic dogs in the basement of Stanford, believe it or not.

01:57:48.940 There's all sorts of cool stuff there, but, but the drug companies are, are a concern in

01:57:54.160 one sense, which is that look, dopamine, as we learned is involved in movement.

01:57:58.240 It's involved in reward.

01:58:00.000 Schizophrenics take drugs to block dopamine.

01:58:01.700 And if you see someone on the street corner nowadays, it's complicated with fentanyl,

01:58:06.420 but you see the person kind of writhing.

01:58:07.940 It's called tardive dyskinesia.

01:58:09.500 That's because it, those drugs, the, and the neuroleptics, as we call them, reduce the

01:58:13.940 auditory hallucinations.

01:58:15.060 They relieve a lot of those symptoms of schizophrenia, but it also hits dopamine in the spinal system,

01:58:20.740 the motor system.

01:58:21.640 And then they have these motor side effects.

01:58:22.940 So there are, the problem is most pharmaceuticals have side effects because most chemicals like

01:58:30.100 dopamine, serotonin, acetylcholine, they're in multiple places in the brain, not just the

01:58:35.000 area that you're concerned about repairing.

01:58:37.260 So, you know, I'm not super anti big pharma, but I will say I am very pro self-directed healthcare.

01:58:44.940 That's why I'm, you know, a big part of my initiative with the podcast is get people getting

01:58:48.640 sunlight in their eyes in the evening, get some sunlight in your eyes in the after, in the

01:58:51.900 morning, excuse me, sunlight in your eyes in the morning, you know, hydrate, exercise,

01:58:55.940 get on a normal circadian rhythm.

01:58:57.300 One of the most important things for mental health is bright mornings and days, dark nights.

01:59:04.320 And how do you get on that circadian rhythm, man?

01:59:05.840 That's something that I've struggled with.

01:59:07.260 I think my circadian rhythm is God, it's a, I'm going to turn into a cicada.

01:59:10.920 Well, we got to get you some of the red lens glasses.

01:59:13.040 I'm not doing a promotional here, but getting the screens dim or wearing red lens glasses in

01:59:16.940 the evening to block the blue and green lights.

01:59:19.140 But how do you even set up a circadian rhythm?

01:59:20.860 Bright light in the morning.

01:59:22.580 If you wake up and the sun's out, get outside, take that brimmed hat off, take the sunglasses

01:59:26.860 off, look in the direction of the sun.

01:59:29.080 You don't have to force yourself to get five to 15 minutes of sunlight, drink your coffee,

01:59:33.420 get some exercise, maybe even do like a hundred jumping jacks, get your system going.

01:59:37.140 Very simple way to put this as early in the day.

01:59:39.020 You want movement, caffeine, hydration, sunlight.

01:59:42.560 If you can't get sunlight, you get bright light from like an artificial light.

01:59:45.480 You can get a 10,000 lux light on Amazon for like a hundred bucks.

01:59:48.360 I have no relationship to any of those companies, get your morning kind of going.

01:59:52.780 You know, it's hard to be Jocko Willink.

01:59:54.780 It's hard, but you got to kind of force a little bit of that on yourself.

01:59:58.420 And then in the afternoon, taper off the caffeine, dim the screens, lower your heart rate, do some

02:00:04.740 long exhale breathing.

02:00:05.800 You know, just take it down a notch.

02:00:09.080 And over about three days of doing that, what you'll find is I start to wake up in anticipation

02:00:14.260 of the day.

02:00:15.020 You're, you have this circadian rhythm that learns, well, I'm going to be active in a few

02:00:19.080 hours.

02:00:19.340 And you start waking up in the morning at a particular time, that whole phenomenon, you

02:00:23.620 set your clock for 7 a.m. and you wake up at 6 59, your brain is clocking time.

02:00:28.220 So does that mean you need to go to bed at like 8 p.m. for a week to get your circadian rhythm

02:00:32.020 set?

02:00:32.340 Or what's the truth?

02:00:33.140 Everyone's slightly different, different chronotypes.

02:00:35.440 So I do best, for instance, I know if I had total control going to bed sometime between

02:00:39.320 10 and 11 p.m. and I wake up around 6 a.m.

02:00:44.200 Okay.

02:00:44.640 Yes, I can go to bed at 9 and wake up at 4, but I can't stick to that schedule very long.

02:00:48.980 My system just genetically is not wired for it.

02:00:51.440 Some people are real night owls.

02:00:52.980 They do best going to sleep at 2 a.m. and waking up at 10.

02:00:55.620 They just feel better.

02:00:57.200 Try a couple of different schedules for at least three days.

02:00:59.700 And then wherever you feel kind of most yourself, kind of like, you know, for me, going to

02:01:04.160 bed by 10.30 and waking up by 6 is kind of a natural antidepressant.

02:01:07.980 When I sleep in and go to bed late, I start feeling off.

02:01:11.300 Then I start abusing caffeine because I love caffeine.

02:01:14.320 Love, love, love caffeine.

02:01:15.500 Oh, yeah.

02:01:15.880 And I'm a big fan of caffeine.

02:01:17.240 I like it, baby.

02:01:18.040 But then I start abusing it.

02:01:19.300 I start taking too much.

02:01:20.460 And then, you know, and then it, you know, potentially can drift into other stimulants.

02:01:24.080 Oh, yeah.

02:01:24.500 You know, and then you're, then you're a mess.

02:01:26.260 So, but, you know, some people do really well going to bed at 8.30 and waking up at

02:01:30.400 4 a.m.

02:01:30.980 But look, the world is not really wired for that.

02:01:34.920 If you're going to have any kind of social life.

02:01:36.740 Like Mark Wahlberg or something.

02:01:38.280 He's always has things like, I wake up at three.

02:01:40.260 Well, him and, and Ari Emanuel from WME.

02:01:43.700 Like, yeah, those guys are like the 4 a.m. club.

02:01:45.700 They're like texting each other and like up.

02:01:47.360 Yeah, I get texts from Ari every once in a while.

02:01:48.960 He's like, man, up early.

02:01:50.200 He's hyperbaric chamber.

02:01:50.860 But he's, he, I mean, he's got like 12 cylinders.

02:01:53.960 That guy is like, go, go, go, go, go, go.

02:01:55.880 And listen, some people need more sleep than others.

02:01:57.700 I do great on six or six and a half.

02:01:59.700 When I sleep eight, I actually feel more groggy.

02:02:02.220 Ooh.

02:02:02.860 So if you get your schedule right, you don't need quite as much sleep.

02:02:06.080 But before I came out here today, I did a half hour.

02:02:08.580 What I call, it used to be called yoga nidra.

02:02:11.500 It's non-sleep deep rest, NSDR.

02:02:13.420 You just do long exhale breathing.

02:02:14.900 You listen to a script.

02:02:15.680 You relax your body.

02:02:16.860 The data show you come out of that with your dopamine level, 60%.

02:02:20.840 Higher than you went into it.

02:02:22.360 It replenishes your, your vigor.

02:02:24.200 Yoga nidra.

02:02:24.840 Yeah.

02:02:25.040 Well, yoga nidra or NSDR, non-sleep deep rest.

02:02:27.760 And these are zero cost tools, right?

02:02:29.460 Got it.

02:02:30.020 So how many milligrams of caffeine are you taking a day?

02:02:33.000 Are you usually taking a day?

02:02:34.060 Are you ready for this?

02:02:34.720 Yeah.

02:02:36.500 All right.

02:02:36.820 A normal cup of coffee would be about 200 milligrams of strong coffee.

02:02:40.500 I consume about 800 milligrams of caffeine a day.

02:02:44.060 I drink, I'm half Argentine.

02:02:45.640 So I drink, I drink, I drink yerba mate.

02:02:48.180 Oh yeah.

02:02:48.780 A cold brew zero sugar yerba mate, or I drink yerba mate out the gourd.

02:02:52.760 If you're going to drink yerba mate, don't get the, don't get the sugary kind.

02:02:56.440 Nope.

02:02:56.740 Get the loose leaf.

02:02:57.740 No, we, I have a yerba mate brand.

02:02:59.380 It's not that one.

02:02:59.960 You can get that yerba homie.

02:03:00.560 Ours is Matina, which is, I'm not going to do a promotional here, but the point here

02:03:04.700 is that if you like energy drinks, you like yerba mate, you like coffee, I'm like more

02:03:09.500 power to you.

02:03:10.300 So there's 200 in a cup of coffee?

02:03:11.860 Yeah.

02:03:12.340 Okay.

02:03:12.540 Yeah.

02:03:12.680 And what's in one of these?

02:03:14.020 Oh, what's it was?

02:03:14.700 200 milligrams.

02:03:15.640 So there was actually a study just published on taurine that everyone's worried about,

02:03:18.280 but that study was in vitro.

02:03:19.700 I need to see a lot of data.

02:03:20.760 There's a lot of data actually that taurine is beneficial for the heart and it has kind

02:03:24.960 of an anti-aging thing.

02:03:25.960 It's in, you know, a lot of energy drinks.

02:03:27.800 Yeah.

02:03:27.980 It's like a lysine and a taurine.

02:03:29.460 Um, I love caffeine.

02:03:32.020 I mean, man, caffeine and nicotine.

02:03:34.860 I right now I'm kind of easing back on it.

02:03:37.700 The delivery mechanism, man, you don't want to smoke vape, dip or snuff.

02:03:40.820 You get cancer.

02:03:41.840 People go, oh, vaping is not bad.

02:03:44.240 Popcorn lung is real.

02:03:45.620 People hate me for saying that vaping is bad.

02:03:47.820 Not as bad as smoking.

02:03:49.300 Vaping ain't good for you.

02:03:50.660 And what flavor is the worst flavor?

02:03:51.440 Any flavor?

02:03:52.420 It's all bad for you, man.

02:03:53.740 But the gums and the pouches provided it's a low dose.

02:03:58.720 It's very habit forming, but you know, three to six milligrams or something on occasion.

02:04:02.980 This is the problem.

02:04:03.740 People go to pretty soon.

02:04:04.700 They're doing a whole canister a day.

02:04:06.520 Oh yeah.

02:04:07.060 But I got a buddy got a fucking mouthful of my buddy, like damn cotton-eyed Joe over

02:04:11.720 there.

02:04:12.560 Nicotine is a very interesting, um, drug because it's a stimulant, but it relaxes you too.

02:04:17.920 But it does call cause, excuse me, vasoconstriction.

02:04:21.180 And that's not good for all the stuff we were talking about earlier.

02:04:24.400 You want blood flow to the brain and to your extremities, you know?

02:04:28.460 And so some nicotine early in the day, little bit, no big deal with caffeine to get work

02:04:35.200 done.

02:04:35.420 Remember effort that precedes dopamine in constructive areas of life, writing, comedy, podcasting,

02:04:41.580 school, sports, socializing in healthy ways.

02:04:45.140 Like this is good.

02:04:46.400 Can you get just as much dopamine from doing those positive things as you can from doing

02:04:50.040 things that we would consider, you know, that all sometimes add a level of a disappointment

02:04:55.640 or shame and maybe shame is not the word I want to use.

02:04:59.940 Yes, you can.

02:05:00.860 It just, you need to be more determined and focused on it.

02:05:06.180 You know, remember it's how quickly the dopamine comes in with porn and methamphetamine, cocaine,

02:05:11.440 and all of that.

02:05:13.580 It's how quickly gambling raises dopamine.

02:05:16.880 You know, the stuff we're talking about work, focus, learning, all that it's, it's work.

02:05:21.660 I mean, it's, it's hard work, but the effort that precedes dopamine is a completely different

02:05:25.680 beast because you're in control and it doesn't put you in the trough.

02:05:29.320 But I did see a, you know, I guess we don't call them tweets now.

02:05:32.200 What do we call them?

02:05:32.820 On X, some guy made a billion dollars.

02:05:35.340 And a couple of weeks later, he said, I don't know what's going on, but I feel like I'm

02:05:39.460 suicidally depressed.

02:05:40.980 And I just said, that's dopamine.

02:05:42.720 He got the reward.

02:05:44.500 And what he misses is the hunt.

02:05:46.800 You have to stay in the hunt.

02:05:48.740 This is like the will to live is the hunt for new things.

02:05:52.200 Ah, the will to live.

02:05:53.800 31 year old guy who sells his startup for 100 million shares, why he is depressed and how

02:05:59.320 to think about your career and life.

02:06:02.240 I sold my company, MVMT.

02:06:04.600 I know that company that made watches, right?

02:06:07.140 A few years ago for a lot of money and thought all my problems would be solved.

02:06:10.180 I made my life really cushy and comfortable.

02:06:12.900 I, uh, optimize for being as stress-free as possible.

02:06:16.180 I play video games when I want.

02:06:17.300 I wake up when I want and really have no reason to get out of bed if I don't want to.

02:06:21.220 I always thought this was a dream that I'd be happy forever.

02:06:23.940 I realized I'm in an incredibly unique situation and wanted to share some things I've learned

02:06:27.960 and I'm still working through.

02:06:30.840 I mean, for you, you know, and forgive me, I've been monologuing a bit.

02:06:34.600 Cause I just want to make sure I blast through some of this info that hopefully people can

02:06:38.040 make to use, but I, you know, for you, right, you've got the podcast, you do your comedy

02:06:43.660 tours, you know, I'm not a comedian, but I love going to see live comedy.

02:06:47.440 Oh yeah.

02:06:47.660 It's fun.

02:06:48.060 And I just have to imagine that staying busy in pursuit has got to be super important to

02:06:55.380 your overall wellbeing.

02:06:56.720 What's funny you say that.

02:06:57.760 I think it's like, yeah, I didn't know that I liked to work really, you know?

02:07:02.720 I mean, I knew that I was persistent maybe, and I liked comedy, but then like, as other

02:07:07.980 things have started to arise and like learning the podcast and then you're running a business

02:07:12.400 and then, you know, I, I like to work, you know, I really enjoy it.

02:07:16.920 I think I'm probably competitive in some ways.

02:07:20.220 Do you have a, you don't, I'm not going to ask you to tell us, but do you have a couple

02:07:23.800 of comedians in your mind that like, you're like, I can, I can best that.

02:07:27.520 Or is it besting against yourself?

02:07:28.980 Oh no.

02:07:29.500 I think it's just, can you still make yourself laugh?

02:07:31.920 That's my thing.

02:07:32.940 Is that what's your writing?

02:07:34.080 I'm very curious about this.

02:07:35.200 What's your writing process?

02:07:36.480 Oh, I'll talk to somebody.

02:07:37.460 Usually I'm telling, I'm trying to talk with a gal and entertain her or talk with one of

02:07:41.140 my buddies and entertain them.

02:07:42.460 And there's something that'll get said.

02:07:44.020 That's just kind of like, oh, that's perfect, man.

02:07:47.560 So that's kind of how I'll do it.

02:07:48.880 And then I'll put it on a stage from there, you know, and I'll record my sets and, and

02:07:54.100 I've started to put some of them into like chat GPT or AI.

02:07:56.520 So it can like show me what was new during this one or the last one and learn little intricacies

02:08:00.700 and things like that.

02:08:01.620 Things that worked and things that changed.

02:08:03.460 Do you get ideas in your dreams?

02:08:05.120 Do you ever wake up laughing?

02:08:06.500 Ayahuasca.

02:08:07.020 I've gotten ideas.

02:08:07.920 I've gotten, um, I got like some good bits.

02:08:10.820 Uh, how often are you doing?

02:08:13.180 Uh, maybe every 18 months.

02:08:15.140 I'm kind of do again to do something like that.

02:08:17.040 I want to talk to this guy, Brian Hubbard, I believe is his name who does the Ibogaine.

02:08:21.520 He talks about Ibogaine.

02:08:22.340 I've been very, I'm not, uh, I can't take any credit for that project, but my colleague

02:08:26.700 at Stanford, Nolan Williams, triple board certified psychiatrist and neurologist.

02:08:30.260 He's the one running the brain imaging of the veterans that Brian has been, um, bringing

02:08:35.320 down to Mexico to do the Ibogaine DMT work.

02:08:37.840 Wow.

02:08:38.240 And Nolan has discovered there are these changes in brain areas like the insula, which are

02:08:42.860 involved in kind of self-reflection, bottle, self-body relationship, all sorts of things.

02:08:48.280 The data from those studies are incredible.

02:08:51.640 I mean, these tier one operators, you know, which is code for have to be ready in 24 hours

02:08:56.040 to go overseas and kill a high risk, high consequence work.

02:08:59.980 The number of those guys I've talked to that were dependent on alcohol, drugs, and other

02:09:04.940 substances that go down there and do it once or twice and never even feel the desire to

02:09:11.080 use again.

02:09:11.820 It's just striking.

02:09:13.100 Yeah.

02:09:13.200 The Ibogaine sounds amazing.

02:09:14.680 I also hear it's terrifying.

02:09:16.440 A couple of those guys told me and they, and they have a high bar for this.

02:09:19.680 A couple of those guys have told me it is the most terrifying experience of their entire

02:09:23.600 life, but also brought them the most amount of peace.

02:09:25.980 Well, it's 22 hour psychedelic journey followed by DMT.

02:09:30.500 Are you asleep during it?

02:09:31.880 No, you're awake.

02:09:32.600 And what I hear is that you don't hallucinate when your eyes are open, but when you close

02:09:36.680 your eyes, you get high definition recall of previous experiences, but you have agency.

02:09:41.200 You can act differently in there and rewire.

02:09:43.620 I've never done it.

02:09:44.540 I'm very curious to you.

02:09:45.300 I've never done ayahuasca.

02:09:46.140 I have had some incredibly beneficial clinical experiences with MDMA and with psilocybin and

02:09:54.480 it's just complete.

02:09:55.220 I was, you know, I don't encourage kids to do it, but you need a really good practitioner.

02:09:59.140 You have to find a way to do it legally and there are ways, but man, it is a game changer.

02:10:03.860 A lot of bootleg stuff going on out there, but I do think that, yeah, it's like getting

02:10:06.720 back to nature, getting back to the roots and literally you're getting back to the roots

02:10:10.020 of like what will, uh, what can reorganize.

02:10:13.900 I think the nature inside of us, it gets so rattled by us maneuvering it and existing

02:10:19.080 in the world.

02:10:19.640 I don't know how we manage to damage our own nature so much over time.

02:10:23.040 Well, maybe it's, uh, instead of saying, uh, lesbians will save us all it's, uh, lesbians

02:10:26.840 and psychedelics will save us all.

02:10:28.720 That's kind of my new campaign.

02:10:30.860 I mean, dude, look at this guy right here.

02:10:32.900 Yeah, that, that's Rick Rubin.

02:10:34.880 That's, you know, I was saying earlier, you know, that's me when it comes to, uh, being

02:10:38.140 able to see clearly along certain, uh, dimensions of life, but that's when you come to rely on

02:10:42.960 good friends and, uh, and you do your, you do your work, your, uh, inner journey work and

02:10:47.560 figure it out.

02:10:48.560 Yeah.

02:10:49.000 Yeah.

02:10:49.400 I mean, I think it's fascinating.

02:10:50.540 And I think just the fact that we can get a copy of that, this thing is awesome, man.

02:10:55.400 How'd y'all get that?

02:10:57.100 Just chat GPT.

02:10:58.540 Oh, it's so great.

02:10:59.740 Cock a monkey blindfolded on LSD.

02:11:02.040 Yeah.

02:11:02.280 Sometimes I've looked at decisions I've made in my life and go, you know, I pretty much

02:11:07.140 had the clarity that that guy right there had.

02:11:09.700 Yeah.

02:11:10.240 And, uh, but in other areas of my life, like the decision to go into skateboarding and leave

02:11:14.300 the decision to pursue science and then podcasting and, you know, my life's a dream, man.

02:11:19.360 Yeah.

02:11:20.020 Like, I can't tell you, like, you know, people will think I'm just trying to puff you up,

02:11:24.440 but like to be sitting here talking to you, I'm a fan to be able to explore ideas and to

02:11:30.760 learn from such a diverse array of people.

02:11:33.160 Like I love talking to scientists, but I love talking to comedians and creatives.

02:11:38.240 And like my childhood hero became one of my best friends because he heard the podcast

02:11:44.180 and he's-

02:11:44.880 Really?

02:11:45.060 Yeah.

02:11:45.800 My, I mean, it's kind of embarrassing to say, but Tim Armstrong, the singer for Rancid and

02:11:49.440 the Transplants, he has that band with Rob Astin and Travis Barker.

02:11:53.340 I mean, Tim's like my hero and we've become very good friends.

02:11:56.820 He's a, he's a, he's a real life poet.

02:11:59.160 He's an incredible musician.

02:12:00.420 He's produced a ton of music for others.

02:12:02.100 He's a very, you know, soft-spoken, he's, he's a true music producer and performer.

02:12:10.580 That's fascinating.

02:12:11.280 And he, we became, he's one of my best friends.

02:12:13.660 That's like me and David Spade.

02:12:14.740 I just can't even believe that we're buddies and then I get to like ask him about stuff

02:12:18.440 or even listen to him tell jokes over dinner.

02:12:20.220 Like, yeah, sometimes things like that, like not to name drop, but yeah, it just blows

02:12:25.040 your mind.

02:12:25.500 Some of the people you'll get to come across, you know?

02:12:27.660 Well, and for people listening, I, I, you know, I have to say like, I used to watch and,

02:12:33.400 you know, watch things and read and listen to podcasts and like, I wanted to be part of

02:12:37.320 it, but like being myself and that's really the key.

02:12:40.980 Rick always says this.

02:12:41.840 He's like the way to succeed in any genre that you're interested in is to be you because

02:12:45.800 no one's done that yet.

02:12:46.720 The moment you try and be like the, the other guy, you know, or the other gal is when it

02:12:51.960 falls flat, right?

02:12:53.120 The reason Tony Hawk's Tony Hawk is because he's a pioneer and he just kept going.

02:12:56.780 There's only one of him, you know, and, and there are others in skateboarding and others

02:13:00.800 in podcasting, but like, like it's like that trust in, in self.

02:13:05.600 You just have to, if you just show up you and do your personal work too, I do think, you

02:13:10.780 know, journaling, meditation, working out, maybe psychedelics like you.

02:13:14.500 Yeah.

02:13:14.920 Like you, and you just show that you just show up you.

02:13:17.120 So like, you know, I think we got the answer to your initial question.

02:13:20.400 Why is podcasting what it is?

02:13:21.880 Is because like, we just show up.

02:13:22.960 We didn't have a, we didn't have a template.

02:13:24.800 There's no script, nothing.

02:13:26.520 We just show up.

02:13:27.280 Just a couple of guys in their closets, man.

02:13:28.720 We're talking about finger lengths and lesbians and monkeys on LSD and measles vaccine and

02:13:33.540 some of the biggest issues in public health.

02:13:35.200 And, and, you know, your name was mentioned in, in, in a moment of praise at the inauguration

02:13:41.860 of the president of the United States.

02:13:43.660 Yeah.

02:13:44.280 That's crazy.

02:13:45.020 We are living.

02:13:46.020 I don't think we're living in a simulation.

02:13:47.440 I think what's so fucking awesome about this life is it's real.

02:13:51.360 Not that it's fake.

02:13:52.480 It's all the, it's all the shit that's real.

02:13:54.320 It blows my mind.

02:13:56.060 And just, I think what you, what you, what you can be called upon to be a part of, you

02:14:00.040 know, and taking agency, having some more agency.

02:14:03.060 The biggest thing I noticed in my life is how do I get to know myself better and get to

02:14:07.380 utilize myself better?

02:14:08.800 And not just for me, but for like, uh, and really to listen to God better.

02:14:12.440 How do I learn to have a relationship with something that's bigger than me so that I

02:14:16.640 can get better direction, you know, and better, um, and better peace at times, because God's

02:14:21.980 not just there for direction.

02:14:22.940 I believe, I believe that he's also there, uh, for reflection and for rest, you know,

02:14:28.740 and just to be able to, you know, I don't know.

02:14:31.940 Do you pray every day?

02:14:33.500 I pray every day.

02:14:34.240 Yeah.

02:14:34.380 Me too.

02:14:35.100 I'm, I'm a scientist, but I'm a believer.

02:14:37.040 You know, I've always believed in God and I used to hide praying because I grew up in

02:14:42.100 a complicated home religiously for different.

02:14:44.420 We've got a real mixed family, but also like the, the attitudes about religion, very mixed,

02:14:48.520 some very positive, some not positive.

02:14:51.040 But a few years ago, a friend of mine who was a former tier one operator and he's run some

02:14:54.760 of my security stuff.

02:14:55.640 Like he encouraged me to start reading the Bible and I was like, wow, there's so much

02:14:59.800 wisdom here.

02:15:00.580 And then he encouraged me to start praying and it's, I know people are going to, some

02:15:04.840 people roll their eyes.

02:15:05.640 Some people will be like, get it.

02:15:06.660 I mean, when you start praying before sleeping in the morning, yeah, I prayed right before

02:15:11.600 I came in here in the bathroom.

02:15:12.980 I literally get on my knees and pray before anything important this morning at night.

02:15:17.180 And you know, people, how can you be a scientist and believe in, in God?

02:15:20.740 And it's like, well, easy, because as a scientist, you learn that like,

02:15:25.400 even as a, let's just say a vision scientist, there are animals that can see parts of the

02:15:30.820 visual spectrum that we can't see.

02:15:32.880 UV light, infrared light, pit vipers can see it.

02:15:35.520 Mosquitoes see things we don't see.

02:15:37.100 So the moment you start just thinking, wait, our human brain can understand and make sense

02:15:41.860 of certain things, but not others through logic and reasoning and emotion.

02:15:46.660 You go, well, there's this, not just possibility of an entire set of energies out there that

02:15:51.920 we're not aware of.

02:15:52.720 It's absolutely certain.

02:15:54.280 And then you go, well, that's a big leap to the idea that there's a guy or, you know,

02:15:58.120 and his son is the, you know, is, you know, is, is Christ and Christ was resurrected.

02:16:03.500 But when you start reading the stories and you start like looking at our real world experience,

02:16:08.280 you go, you know, so much of this makes sense.

02:16:11.080 And it doesn't make nature and science any less interesting.

02:16:14.500 It makes it more interesting.

02:16:16.320 It makes it more important.

02:16:18.480 It's like, we're here, I believe that we're here to like access that energy, allow it come

02:16:25.860 through us.

02:16:27.080 I don't, I don't think like we podcast, I think energy comes through us and we podcast.

02:16:31.380 Oh, I think the funnest thing sometimes is like getting an idea.

02:16:34.140 Cause I'm like, this didn't come from me.

02:16:36.320 Right.

02:16:36.960 What the hell am I doing?

02:16:37.900 I'm just like something out here that's trying to position myself to be the best receptor.

02:16:41.860 It's almost like when you're trying to like put those dog ears out for a television or

02:16:45.560 whatever, like an old black and white TV and you're trying to pick up the signal.

02:16:48.940 It's like, I'm just trying to best get myself in situation to, to, to receive a decent signal.

02:16:54.280 Do you believe, sorry to yesterday, I was in a conversation with a Stanford and Harvard

02:16:58.440 trained psychiatrist, one of the smartest people I know.

02:17:00.620 And he said to me, he said, you know, he's him talking, he said, you know, I believe in

02:17:05.080 miracles.

02:17:05.620 He's like, there are miracles.

02:17:07.920 And I was like, really?

02:17:08.880 And he explained a case of a patient, like there is no way this person should still be

02:17:13.520 alive, let alone flourishing as they are.

02:17:15.640 The number of things that had to organize for that to work out.

02:17:18.860 And, um, you know, so I'm kind of obsessed these days with like this notion of miracles.

02:17:23.080 Oh, I love that.

02:17:23.880 Have you considered, cause we, we will sometimes interview people who have had a miracle experience

02:17:27.500 happen to them.

02:17:28.180 And it's really fascinating sometimes just to hear some of their stories.

02:17:30.920 It's, it's something I would like to do more.

02:17:32.900 Um, one of the things I want to do is just, I want to come over to your pod, man.

02:17:35.980 Next time I'm in town and, um, and we can do this again sometime.

02:17:38.920 We, I feel like we only got to talk about a few things, but that's perfect.

02:17:41.260 It'll give us more stuff to talk about in the future.

02:17:43.480 And, um, just thank you, Andrew, for just being a good voice.

02:17:46.080 You have a lot to say and you share information well.

02:17:48.540 And it's like, I think we're at a time where people just need to have information that isn't

02:17:52.460 compromised by like a bank or an advertiser that's telling someone they have to speak a

02:17:57.520 certain way, you know, unless it's an advertisement where you're reading for

02:17:59.880 Takovas or for, uh, liquid IV or something, you know, but, uh, yeah, thank you for all

02:18:04.740 your commitment to, uh, sharing information with us, man.

02:18:07.700 Thank you.

02:18:08.240 Yeah.

02:18:08.420 And thanks for spending time with us today.

02:18:09.760 Thanks for having me on.

02:18:10.800 And I want to say, you know, the, the, uh, universal love that I see out there for you

02:18:15.220 is not a coincidence.

02:18:16.320 You know, it's, it's so interesting.

02:18:18.260 Like people can't put you in a box and I, and I love that because there's so much pressure

02:18:22.860 to like put people in a box and, and people really, people really feel your heart in everything

02:18:28.860 you do.

02:18:29.560 And it, in part, it's the vulnerability.

02:18:31.260 It's also when you, when you say like the hell with that and really stretch your wings

02:18:35.440 the way you've developed this incredible expertise at the various things you do, comedy

02:18:39.740 and others.

02:18:40.140 So, you know, I'm very grateful to be here today.

02:18:42.220 I'm a fan and you just have the love of so many people and it's not an accident,

02:18:46.120 man.

02:18:46.480 You're, you're, you're a real leader and, uh, appreciate you.

02:18:49.860 Uh, that's very nice of you to say, man.

02:18:51.800 I appreciate it.

02:18:52.480 Thank you very much.

02:18:53.220 That's a very, uh, thoughtful thing to say.

02:18:55.820 And, um, yeah, thank you for being here today.

02:18:57.660 And I, I, I look forward to seeing you out in Malibu.

02:18:59.580 Yeah.

02:18:59.720 Let's do it again on the HLP.

02:19:01.560 Amen.

02:19:02.060 Now I'm just floating on the breeze and I feel I'm falling like these leaves.

02:19:08.160 I must be cornerstone.

02:19:11.380 Oh, but when I reach that ground, I'll share this peace of mind I found.

02:19:18.800 I can feel it in my bones, but it's gonna take...

02:19:25.380 Um, yeah, I'm pretty avenging it.

02:19:30.160 I can feel it in my bones and it's gonna be...

This Past Weekend with Theo Von - May 27, 2025

#585 - Andrew Huberman

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