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Andrew Huberman: Focus, Stress, Relationships, and Friendship | Lex Fridman Podcast #277


small model | large model

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If you get into the sauna the way I just described,
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not the two hours a day, but 30 minutes,
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twice a week or three times per week,
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you reduce the likelihood of dying
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of a cardiovascular event by 27%.
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If you do it four or more times per week,
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you reduce the probability of dying by 50%.
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Is there any scientific evidence
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that being naked is beneficial in the sauna?
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Well, in certain contexts, it leads to childbirth.
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Okay, well, I'll have to read up on that.
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I think Dorothy Parker said,
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the cure for boredom is curiosity.
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There is no cure for curiosity.
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The following is a conversation with Andrew Huberman,
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his third time on this podcast.
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He's a brilliant neuroscientist at Stanford University
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and the host of one of the best,
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the best, if you ask me,
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health and science podcasts in the world
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called Huberman Lab Podcast.
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Check him out on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
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Most importantly, Andrew is a great human being
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and has quickly become a great friend.
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This is the Lex Riebman Podcast.
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To support it, please check out our sponsors
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in the description.
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And now, dear friends, here's Andrew Huberman.
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We meet again, my friend.
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We should talk on each other's podcast once a year.
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I think we should make a deal.
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I was just talking to the guys,
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this is a show called Louie, I don't know if you know it.
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And yeah, with Louie CK.
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And there's this thing called Bang Bang,
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which people that are probably watching
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know exactly what I'm talking about.
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It's this worst possible thing you can do
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in terms of meals, which is you go to a restaurant,
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do a full meal, and then you go to another restaurant
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and do a full meal and you pet me.
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You, exactly.
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So they go Mexican, Italian, sushi, pizza, barbecue,
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IHOP, that one is disgusting.
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This kind of thing reminds me of the joy of food.
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Last time we were hanging out,
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we went to see Joe Do Comedy
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and then we went to eat Russian food.
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And it was a particularly fun experience
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to go to a Russian restaurant.
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I was the only person there that didn't speak Russian
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and eat Russian food with you.
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And because I felt walking in, they trusted you.
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They didn't trust me.
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Yeah, the funny thing about the people there,
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they were talking to you in Russian
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and then they refused to sort of switch to English,
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even though they understood you speak no Russian.
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This is Russian House in Austin, by the way.
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Anyway, by way of question, what's the worst or the best,
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depending on your perspective, cheap meal?
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Let's call it a pigging out meal,
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but it could be a cheap meal that you've ever had
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or you want to have that's like on the bucket list
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or something that's in the past,
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where you did something like a Bang Bang,
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which is like, you're talking about
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multiple thousands of calories
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that you just feel horrible about yourself
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but you still keep eating because it's delicious,
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but also great company.
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Something about the atmosphere is just right.
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Screw the diet, screw all the things,
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like you should be doing,
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but just throw it all out the window.
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I've done that several times.
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Yeah, I don't do this anymore,
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but the entire time I was a postdoc, so five years,
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and the entire time I was a pretenured professor,
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so five years, so I basically followed
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the Tim Ferriss slow carb diet,
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which is, people can look it up, but it worked really well.
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It was basically some good animal proteins,
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fish and meat and things like that.
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Why slow carb?
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Because slow carb is like low glycemic stuff,
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it's mostly lentils and beans and things and vegetables,
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no dairy, no, anyway, but then one day.
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Is pasta in there?
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Sorry to interrupt.
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No, no pasta.
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So it wasn't low carb, but it was low glycemic carb.
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And I did that and it worked terrifically well
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just for energy levels,
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cause I want to be able to train and work.
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And then one day a week,
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you're supposed to go full cheat day.
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And so I would do what used to be 12 hours,
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but then it became 24,
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you can start to redefine what the day is.
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And I would, and that was when Costello was pretty young
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and we would do it together.
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So I would get pizzas and croissants and donuts,
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and I would just do the full thing.
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And by the end of the day,
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you don't want to look at an item of food.
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You're just repulsed by food.
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The only modification I made was the next day,
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I would fast completely,
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just to avoid the gastric distress of eating anything.
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And so I would do them on Sundays
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and then Mondays I'd fast all day.
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And then by Tuesday, I felt pretty good again,
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but Sunday and Monday,
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or you just feel like you're sliding down the slope
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of just blood sugar disaster.
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Terrible idea or a good idea?
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You know, at the time I enjoyed it.
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I love donuts, croissants, all that kind of stuff.
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What's interesting is after stopping that whole protocol,
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now I just try and eat well each day.
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Protocol.
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It's really a protocol.
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Now I basically, I do a pseudo intermittent fasting.
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I'm not really strict, but I'll start at eating around 11,
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eat my first meal around 11,
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I usually train in the morning,
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eat my last bite of food somewhere around eight or nine,
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and I'm not super strict.
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I might have some berries or something late at night.
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Three meals, two meals?
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Two meals.
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And then maybe a little bit of snacking on some nuts
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or something in the middle.
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Ever fast, 24 hour?
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Never done a long fast,
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except when I was doing the cheat days.
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And then, and actually there are a couple different ways
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to do cheat days that were fun.
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Like if you were in a new city,
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you could try all the restaurants that you wanted.
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Yeah, and I think Tim and our mutual friend,
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John Romanello did a,
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I think it was like a cheat day marathon where they did,
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you know, marathon's 26.3 miles.
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They went to 26.3 different locations in New York.
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They put it on a map and I never took it to that extreme,
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but.
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Wait, wait, wait.
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Over how many days?
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One day.
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That was their cheat day.
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Why?
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Just cause they were, you know.
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Just a little bit of something at each place.
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Yeah, exactly.
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I mean, there are things that guys do in their thirties
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that you just shouldn't do in your forties.
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I can say that cause I'm in my forties.
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And now I just try and eat well most days.
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And what's interesting is about 12 to 14 months ago,
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I completely lost all appetite for sweets.
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I don't know what happened.
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I still love savory food.
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So meat and butter and cheese,
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and I love vegetables too.
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I love fruit also, but lost all appetite.
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So if you put a donut in front of me or ice cream
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or something like that, I just,
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it's almost aversive to me and I don't know what happened.
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I don't know what changed.
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It's probably a scientific explanation.
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Sure.
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It has to do maybe with habit.
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Neuron loss, dementia.
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Yeah.
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The sugar, the desire for that rush maybe is gone
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from your soul.
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So what was the most delicious things, croissant donuts?
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Is there a thing that?
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There's a place in Portland.
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I don't know if it's still open called Little T's Bakery.
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And they have croissants that easily rival
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the croissants in Paris.
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People make a lot of the pastry in Paris,
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but it's really the bread in Paris that's amazing.
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We lived there when I was a kid and we did a sabbatical
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there and you know, there they do the baguette,
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morning bake and afternoon bake.
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And there's nothing like the bread in Paris or the people,
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you know, and, but if you're in the Pacific Northwest,
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you know, you can find amazing croissants there.
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What do you do with the croissant?
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What do you do with the bread?
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Butter or is it just?
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I actually used to, I don't eat them anymore.
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I don't have much of an appetite for them,
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even though they're not a sweet food,
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but I'm always putting butter on the croissant.
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Butter on the butter croissant.
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No jam.
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I would never adulterate my croissant.
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I have to actually be honest about this
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because people talk about steak and they talk about bread
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with the butter.
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I feel like butter is cheating.
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I feel like you're disrespecting the fundamental food
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by adding butter.
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Cause butter, it's like, it's like,
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it's like a elite version of ketchup.
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You're.
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Well there we diverge because for me,
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bread is just a vehicle for butter.
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A cracker is just a vehicle for cheese.
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Oh, so that's just the,
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the cracker and the bread is just texture.
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It's just that people look at you funny
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if you, if you just eat the butter straight,
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which occasionally I do.
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I got it.
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So I put a little piece of bread underneath it,
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not because I'm low carb, strictly low carb,
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but just because otherwise you get some funny looks.
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That's like pasta is a vehicle for pasta sauce.
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It's interesting, but like Indian non bread,
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you have, you have the bread.
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I've had a lot of soul searching
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on which part of Indian is, brings me so much joy.
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Is it the bread or is it all the sauces
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that come with the bread?
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Well, there we diverge again,
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because for whatever reason, no disrespect to anyone,
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but Indian food doesn't appeal to me.
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Well, you're a lucky man
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because the number of calories in that food,
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it sneaks like non bread.
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I don't know how non bread is made,
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but I think it's just soaked in oil
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and it just very intensely,
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like the density of calories is very, very high.
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For me, barbecue, I would say is probably the,
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that's good.
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Anytime I'm in Austin, I start thinking about barbecue.
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I do love, you know, I do love meat.
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My dad's Argentine.
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I mean, I love steak.
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I love meat.
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I mean, Argentina chorizo sausage
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is an appetizer before you have steak.
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It's meat on top of meat.
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And it's not just, you know, it's not just the men, right?
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You see women, sometimes very petite women
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eating steaks that are bigger than their skull size.
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You know, slowly, they eat very slowly there.
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And they all eat dessert too, which is interesting.
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And they generally do the sort of one meal per day
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and do that kind of real flexibly.
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That's how I think about it.
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Cause I often eat one meal a day,
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especially when I'm traveling.
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It feels like a cheap meal because it allows,
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it gives you a bit of more freedom
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to just lose yourself in the quantity of the food.
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I did the three day fast and I ate chicken breast,
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like literally chicken breast with nothing else,
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just grilled.
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And it was the most delicious piece of meat I've ever eaten.
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And that, and that gives you,
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the problem is when you fast the three days,
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you really can't pig out.
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You really shouldn't.
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Your stomach will shrink in size already.
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Your gut microbiome is almost completely
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depleted by fasting.
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A lot of people think, oh,
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cleanses and fasts are great for the microbiome.
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They quash your microbiome.
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However, when you start eating again,
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the microbiome comes back better
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than it was before your fast.
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For people who don't know, Sergey and Todd are on the call.
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They're kind of pulling stuff up.
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They just pulled up Phelps with the,
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I forget how many calories he was eating, 10,000.
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You know what's interesting?
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There's some, some cool physiology around this.
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The reason he needed to eat so much
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is not that he was burning that many calories
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in pure movement.
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It's that when you do exercise in water,
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even if it's warm water,
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the heat transfer in water is greater.
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So you burn far more calories.
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And again, here, I'm admittedly lifting that
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from knowledge that was passed on to me by Tim Ferriss.
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I didn't, so, but I checked it out
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and it's absolutely true.
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So if you exercise in water,
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even if it's not really cold water,
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your caloric needs go way up,
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which is why you get out of the pool
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and you're often really hungry.
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And for fans of the Human Lab podcast,
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and if you're not a fan,
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what are you doing with your life?
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You would probably chuckle at the fact
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that Andrew just cited his sources,
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even on that statement,
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because you're so good at,
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I don't know how your memory works,
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but the only person whose memory
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is better than Joe Rogan is yours.
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But my colleagues joke,
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you know, PubMed sort of scrolls through my mind.
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Also in science, as you know,
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attribution is so baked into what we do.
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And I think that it's interesting
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because now spending a lot of time on social media,
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attribution is not as common.
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And, but in academia, you learn really early on
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that if you give a talk about your data
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and you cite all these amazing sources,
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all it does is make you look better, right?
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Whereas in social media and elsewhere
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in the business sector,
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it's almost like citing other people,
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people feel as if it's going to take away
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some of the credit.
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All it does is place you in the company
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of people that do really nice work.
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So I have tremendous,
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and I have genuine and tremendous respect for Tim.
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He's been about 10 years ahead
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on a huge number of health related things
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and other things and extremely kind person,
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very thoughtful person.
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So it's also just a pleasure to shine light
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on other people.
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Yeah, well, I actually, to push back,
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I know there's a culture of if you write a paper,
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standing on the shoulders of giants is a powerful thing,
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but there's also a culture of not giving credit
link |
00:12:19.320
to the strongest idea in your paper.
link |
00:12:21.320
And instead say it's kind of, or imply that it's original.
link |
00:12:24.860
There is a culture of kind of not celebrating others.
link |
00:12:28.480
I think people get most competitive in all walks of life,
link |
00:12:33.160
but especially in science when they're,
link |
00:12:35.400
the closer they get in the exact thing they work on.
link |
00:12:39.000
And so there's this dance,
link |
00:12:41.040
you know, there's a few researchers
link |
00:12:43.040
in each of the individual little things that you work on.
link |
00:12:46.160
If you're studying a particular kind of ant,
link |
00:12:48.000
you know that other asshole
link |
00:12:50.120
that also is studying that particular ant,
link |
00:12:52.560
and then you're not going to often give credit
link |
00:12:56.080
for the brilliant ideas that that other researcher is doing.
link |
00:12:59.700
And I think one of the things you've discovered
link |
00:13:01.880
and just as part of your nature,
link |
00:13:04.280
which is why it's really great that you have an audience
link |
00:13:08.520
and you inspire others to do the same,
link |
00:13:09.800
is you celebrate that other ant studier.
link |
00:13:12.660
It's great and everybody wins, it raises all boats.
link |
00:13:16.780
But that initial instinct to be like,
link |
00:13:19.820
what is it in Borat?
link |
00:13:21.120
Like my neighbor gets a toaster, I get a bigger toaster.
link |
00:13:27.040
Yeah, that mindset to, you know,
link |
00:13:28.240
it's not that I'm not competitive in certain domains,
link |
00:13:31.280
but yeah, I get great pleasure
link |
00:13:33.760
from sharing things that I find.
link |
00:13:37.160
And I think that, you know, at the end of the day,
link |
00:13:40.940
you're as strong as your community
link |
00:13:43.640
and you can build a wonderful community
link |
00:13:45.920
just by pointing out things that you love.
link |
00:13:48.760
Like these are all just loves.
link |
00:13:49.880
I see a paper and I love it.
link |
00:13:51.600
Only rarely do I think, oh, I wish we had done that.
link |
00:13:54.080
I usually think, fantastic,
link |
00:13:55.320
now I can just focus on something else
link |
00:13:56.680
because they checked off that box.
link |
00:13:59.320
And by the way, you mentioned PubMed and barbecue.
link |
00:14:02.000
I should mention that I got a chance to hang out
link |
00:14:04.160
with Rick Rubin, thanks to you.
link |
00:14:06.120
He's a friend of yours and you made the connection.
link |
00:14:07.940
That was a huge gift to my spirit, I guess.
link |
00:14:11.160
He's a truly, truly special human being.
link |
00:14:13.160
And there's a lot I could say
link |
00:14:15.560
about why he's a special human being.
link |
00:14:17.440
I'd love to learn how you met him,
link |
00:14:19.640
but I should also just mention on the PubMed thing,
link |
00:14:23.560
it was so interesting talking to him about music
link |
00:14:27.320
and both on the podcast and privately
link |
00:14:31.000
and just listening to music together.
link |
00:14:32.780
Because when you mention a song,
link |
00:14:36.000
he does this thing where he like closes his eyes
link |
00:14:39.960
and he finds that song in the album that we're talking about
link |
00:14:44.120
and he steps through the album.
link |
00:14:45.880
You could see the brain like stepping
link |
00:14:47.840
through individual songs to find that song in the album.
link |
00:14:51.200
And there's that kind of lookup process.
link |
00:14:53.080
And then he puts himself mentally in that space
link |
00:14:55.320
of like, okay, this is, you know, whatever the album is.
link |
00:14:59.800
And not just the ones he produced,
link |
00:15:01.520
but all of these in the encyclopedia of music.
link |
00:15:04.940
And it's so interesting.
link |
00:15:06.480
It also, the thing I really love about him
link |
00:15:10.160
is something like a calmness that radiates from him.
link |
00:15:13.520
That it's okay to close your eyes and place yourself
link |
00:15:16.680
in the place where that album was recorded,
link |
00:15:20.540
in the feeling of that album and like that silence.
link |
00:15:24.540
Let's go there, let's go there together.
link |
00:15:26.640
It's like Alice in Wonderland and we'll go there together.
link |
00:15:28.680
You do a good Rick Rubin, minus the beard.
link |
00:15:31.160
Minus the beard.
link |
00:15:32.000
His beard is epic, right?
link |
00:15:33.720
You can't fake a beard like that, you know.
link |
00:15:35.900
How'd you guys meet?
link |
00:15:37.240
Yeah, well, Rick, I'm very blessed to consider a close friend.
link |
00:15:42.240
Rick and I got introduced through a common friend
link |
00:15:45.840
during the pandemic.
link |
00:15:47.320
And we started doing some FaceTime together
link |
00:15:49.660
and just talking about things related to science and health.
link |
00:15:52.000
And I'm not a musician, I have no musical ability or talent.
link |
00:15:56.020
I have a good ability to memorize lyrics
link |
00:15:58.200
and I love lyrics and I love poetry.
link |
00:16:00.280
So I asked him a lot of questions about musicians
link |
00:16:02.740
that I happen to love that he's worked with and knows.
link |
00:16:05.420
And so he would give me stories about musicians
link |
00:16:07.840
and I would talk to him about health.
link |
00:16:10.140
And then eventually we formed a friendship
link |
00:16:12.040
where we would talk about any number
link |
00:16:13.340
of different topics in life.
link |
00:16:15.560
And then we started spending time together in person
link |
00:16:18.720
when he was in town or nearby.
link |
00:16:21.100
And as you now know, you know, Rick,
link |
00:16:26.360
in addition to all his incredible accomplishments,
link |
00:16:28.520
has an incredible understanding
link |
00:16:31.240
of how to get the brain and body into state, right?
link |
00:16:36.640
And as you pointed out, he's willing to do the things
link |
00:16:40.800
that allow him to help these incredible artists
link |
00:16:43.560
get into the best state to do their craft.
link |
00:16:46.960
And so if he needs to sit there and be quiet
link |
00:16:49.660
with his eyes closed for a minute or two or more,
link |
00:16:53.600
he'll do that.
link |
00:16:54.880
He has routines to allow himself to get into state.
link |
00:16:57.960
And it's really inspired me to think about states of mind
link |
00:17:01.200
as something that, you know, we'd all love
link |
00:17:02.680
to just flip the switch and say,
link |
00:17:04.160
we're focused or we're creative,
link |
00:17:05.640
but to actually ratchet through the challenging steps
link |
00:17:09.960
in order to do that and to figure out
link |
00:17:11.280
what one needs to do on a regular basis
link |
00:17:14.360
to get into a proper state.
link |
00:17:16.400
It's not just gonna come from a cup of coffee,
link |
00:17:19.360
you know, a lamp of a particular wavelength or something.
link |
00:17:22.640
It's gonna be those things,
link |
00:17:23.620
but it's also going to be really teaching oneself
link |
00:17:26.680
how to get into proper state.
link |
00:17:28.480
Yeah, you did an episode on hypnosis.
link |
00:17:30.120
Do you think it's a kind of self hypnosis?
link |
00:17:32.600
Yes, I do.
link |
00:17:33.920
Because hypnosis is a, you limit the context,
link |
00:17:38.160
you're very alert and you're very calm.
link |
00:17:41.400
And he has a number of these different practices.
link |
00:17:44.360
And so we would talk about those.
link |
00:17:45.640
And then we also have enjoyed a lot of discussions
link |
00:17:48.480
about deep neuroscience.
link |
00:17:50.220
In fact, I introduced Rick to a friend of mine
link |
00:17:52.760
who's a neurosurgeon and neuroscientist
link |
00:17:54.920
and they've become friendly.
link |
00:17:56.320
You know, Rick is one of these people
link |
00:17:57.520
that he sort of defies definition, incredibly kind,
link |
00:18:00.680
incredibly private person too.
link |
00:18:02.160
So, you know, I'm being respectful of that.
link |
00:18:04.000
But, and then of course he's a fan of your podcast.
link |
00:18:07.520
And so when I learned that,
link |
00:18:09.040
I just made natural sense to introduce you.
link |
00:18:11.900
And I know he really enjoyed meeting you.
link |
00:18:13.780
And we talk about you a lot.
link |
00:18:15.440
And of course, in a positive light, you know,
link |
00:18:17.600
I think his dedication to getting into these states of mind
link |
00:18:21.880
and his willingness to do that
link |
00:18:22.920
has completely transformed my routines around life.
link |
00:18:26.400
Like for instance,
link |
00:18:27.240
before doing a very long podcast recording,
link |
00:18:29.360
the solo ones, which often take me several hours or more,
link |
00:18:32.280
six hours to record, sometimes more, sometimes less.
link |
00:18:35.300
I realized that there's a certain brain state
link |
00:18:37.440
associated with that.
link |
00:18:38.320
So I have to really limit the kind of interactions I have
link |
00:18:41.040
for the two hours before.
link |
00:18:42.520
I actually walk and talk out loud through my neighborhood.
link |
00:18:45.680
People think I'm crazy,
link |
00:18:46.960
but I live in a neighborhood
link |
00:18:47.920
where there are a lot of crazy creatives anyway.
link |
00:18:50.880
So.
link |
00:18:51.720
Are you saying you're not crazy?
link |
00:18:52.560
Well, at least not institutionally defined as crazy yet.
link |
00:18:57.920
But, you know, getting into state of mind
link |
00:19:00.760
is something that we'd all just imagine we flip the switch,
link |
00:19:02.840
but Rick really convinced me,
link |
00:19:04.080
you have to do the work to do the work.
link |
00:19:06.680
Can you maybe linger on that,
link |
00:19:09.440
elucidate a little bit more of your process
link |
00:19:11.200
of how you get in that space?
link |
00:19:12.880
That's really interesting.
link |
00:19:14.040
Cause I have to admit,
link |
00:19:16.600
I do everything last minute before a podcast.
link |
00:19:19.240
I don't know.
link |
00:19:21.320
Like there's a lot of anxiety because like whatever,
link |
00:19:24.160
if I have to pack, if I have to set up stuff,
link |
00:19:27.120
you were luckily a few minutes,
link |
00:19:29.040
you showed up a few minutes later.
link |
00:19:30.520
Which for an academic is right on time.
link |
00:19:32.080
Right on time.
link |
00:19:33.280
But the stress is immense.
link |
00:19:36.040
And on top of that,
link |
00:19:38.080
you look at like a situation with Rick Rubin,
link |
00:19:41.560
is I had to set up microphones in front of him
link |
00:19:44.760
and just that stress, the anxiety.
link |
00:19:47.000
He knows a lot about microphones.
link |
00:19:48.320
What did he say?
link |
00:19:49.160
Which I really loved.
link |
00:19:50.180
He's like, how close do you like the microphone to be?
link |
00:19:56.000
It's like.
link |
00:19:56.840
That's a very Rick Rubin kind of thing, right?
link |
00:19:59.120
That the details really matter.
link |
00:20:01.620
The details really matter,
link |
00:20:03.600
right down to your relationship to the microphone, right?
link |
00:20:07.600
Distance and whether or not it brings out the timbre
link |
00:20:09.660
in your voice.
link |
00:20:10.500
But of course that's what he does.
link |
00:20:11.320
He produces music.
link |
00:20:12.160
But he also said like, you know, he is the professional.
link |
00:20:15.880
He said, how close do you like it to be?
link |
00:20:20.320
And he said it with a gentleness
link |
00:20:22.440
where I had like an existential crisis.
link |
00:20:24.820
Where I don't, I don't know.
link |
00:20:27.660
He gave me so much like, wow.
link |
00:20:30.120
Like he made me feel like an artist.
link |
00:20:31.960
Like that the microphone distance
link |
00:20:35.040
is a decision you're supposed to make.
link |
00:20:37.320
Well, I have to say, and this has actually come up
link |
00:20:39.400
in some of our conversations about you.
link |
00:20:41.440
I mean, you are, you are an artist.
link |
00:20:42.920
And actually Joe Rogan,
link |
00:20:44.800
once I heard him talking about podcasting
link |
00:20:46.960
and the fact that he's always trying to get better at it,
link |
00:20:48.960
you know, and he described podcasting at one moment
link |
00:20:50.960
as an art, right?
link |
00:20:52.500
And it is, it's a certain medium of communication
link |
00:20:55.600
and there's a cadence and a rhythm that when it's working,
link |
00:20:59.400
it really can facilitate the transfer of information.
link |
00:21:01.920
When it's not, it doesn't.
link |
00:21:03.220
I mean, obviously Joe just being himself
link |
00:21:05.720
has tapped into that cadence that allows
link |
00:21:08.800
and it's made so many people excited to hear him talk.
link |
00:21:11.840
Well, in his case and in general,
link |
00:21:13.200
I think part of the art is refusing the world
link |
00:21:17.880
as you get a bigger audience, change who you are.
link |
00:21:21.120
There's one quote that I've seen out there where he says,
link |
00:21:23.180
you know, I'm like the, talking about himself, he says,
link |
00:21:25.600
you know, I'm like the fish that got through the net.
link |
00:21:27.540
There's no stage version of me, right?
link |
00:21:29.760
How he is in person is how he is, you know,
link |
00:21:33.240
out in the world.
link |
00:21:34.080
And of course there's nuance to his life, right?
link |
00:21:36.460
And his different relationships, of course, but it's true.
link |
00:21:40.200
I mean, we've had the, you know,
link |
00:21:41.760
the great fortune of spending time with him
link |
00:21:43.720
out away from the microphones, so to speak.
link |
00:21:46.860
Joe is Joe.
link |
00:21:48.160
So can you speak to your, that process you mentioned,
link |
00:21:51.120
the walking and the talking to yourself?
link |
00:21:52.720
Cause that's fascinating.
link |
00:21:53.560
Yeah, I try and do a couple of things.
link |
00:21:57.600
First of all, when I was a kid,
link |
00:21:59.100
I had a little bit of a grunting tick.
link |
00:22:01.360
When I was five or six,
link |
00:22:03.220
I would feel this buildup of tension in my throat
link |
00:22:06.680
and I would do this grunting tick.
link |
00:22:07.700
If I get very tired, I start to do it still.
link |
00:22:10.280
We actually know that this is related
link |
00:22:11.800
to these basal ganglia circuits for go, no go.
link |
00:22:14.120
You've got an accelerator and a brake basically
link |
00:22:16.160
in your neural circuitry and kids with Tourette's and OCD,
link |
00:22:21.220
the brake doesn't work quite as well.
link |
00:22:23.360
And so one thing that happens is if I wake up
link |
00:22:25.080
in the morning and especially if I'm well rested,
link |
00:22:27.880
well, if I'm not well rested, I do a hypnosis
link |
00:22:30.120
or yoga nidra in order to recover my sleep.
link |
00:22:32.240
That works really well.
link |
00:22:33.080
But then once I'm into the process of preparing the podcast,
link |
00:22:36.800
I've already gone through my notes.
link |
00:22:37.940
I know what I want to say more or less
link |
00:22:39.480
in a kind of general contour.
link |
00:22:40.840
And then I take a walk and I try to, so no phone with me.
link |
00:22:45.480
And I try to assess whether or not my energy is too high
link |
00:22:49.920
or too low for podcasting.
link |
00:22:52.140
Because when you podcast, as you know,
link |
00:22:54.160
you have to punch out a lot of material,
link |
00:22:55.920
but then there's times when you really need to slow down
link |
00:22:57.660
and emphasize and articulate.
link |
00:22:59.600
And so what I do, I've never revealed this.
link |
00:23:04.160
What I do actually is I will recite the lyrics of songs
link |
00:23:08.000
for about 10 minutes, songs I love while I walk out loud.
link |
00:23:12.480
It calms you and focuses you, what does it do for you?
link |
00:23:14.480
I think it gets my vocal cords warmed up and it also.
link |
00:23:19.760
Do you sing or speak them?
link |
00:23:21.120
I often sing them and fortunately nobody hears.
link |
00:23:25.600
And as I do this, I start to evaluate
link |
00:23:28.880
whether or not I'm straining to get the words out
link |
00:23:30.920
or whether or not I'm straining to make them slow enough
link |
00:23:34.960
so that I can articulate them.
link |
00:23:37.240
So there are days when I have so much energy
link |
00:23:39.800
that I'm trying to speak faster than I should
link |
00:23:44.460
in order to articulate properly.
link |
00:23:46.080
There are other days when I'm tired
link |
00:23:47.380
and I can't sort of keep up with my thoughts.
link |
00:23:49.520
And so what I try and do is assess that
link |
00:23:51.480
and then adjust the transmission, the RPM, so to speak.
link |
00:23:55.260
For instance, I can speak very quickly
link |
00:23:56.560
and then I can slow down.
link |
00:23:57.860
So I can change the cadence of my voice.
link |
00:23:59.680
And when you teach in the classroom,
link |
00:24:01.520
you learn as you know,
link |
00:24:02.940
cause you're an excellent teacher,
link |
00:24:03.920
I've watched your lectures in the classroom.
link |
00:24:05.800
As you teach in the classroom, when you want to slow down,
link |
00:24:09.480
every teacher knows you turn to the whiteboard or chalkboard
link |
00:24:11.880
and you start writing, right?
link |
00:24:13.040
It gives you a break.
link |
00:24:14.240
And then you turn around and you fire back
link |
00:24:16.220
the kind of machine gun fire of information.
link |
00:24:19.040
And then you slow down or you underline something.
link |
00:24:20.920
When you podcast, you don't have that opportunity, right?
link |
00:24:24.600
There are no visuals in my podcast.
link |
00:24:26.340
So what I try and do is always get my voice warmed up
link |
00:24:31.560
and make sure that I'm thinking and speaking
link |
00:24:33.720
at approximately the same rate.
link |
00:24:36.040
And then I also do this thing of as I put my vision
link |
00:24:38.920
into panoramic vision when I walk, which is very calming.
link |
00:24:42.680
And then I actually start to remind myself
link |
00:24:46.040
of the purpose of podcasting.
link |
00:24:47.520
This sounds very mission statementy,
link |
00:24:49.480
but you asked what I do.
link |
00:24:51.480
I remind myself first and foremost
link |
00:24:54.820
that what I want to communicate,
link |
00:24:56.160
what I want to come through is the beauty
link |
00:24:57.920
and utility of biology.
link |
00:25:00.160
And I only feel comfortable saying the word beauty
link |
00:25:02.980
publicly now about science things thanks to you,
link |
00:25:06.360
because I think.
link |
00:25:07.600
Love and beauty.
link |
00:25:09.000
Yeah, love and beauty.
link |
00:25:10.840
Dr. Andrew Huberman.
link |
00:25:11.840
Love and beauty, but also darkness and hatred.
link |
00:25:14.760
And if you're talking about the Lex Friedman podcast,
link |
00:25:17.200
you have to adjust,
link |
00:25:18.040
you have to address the shadow also, the shadow side.
link |
00:25:21.100
But I think about the,
link |
00:25:22.360
I want to communicate the beauty and utility of biology.
link |
00:25:26.360
And then I check my emotional state.
link |
00:25:29.960
I want to make sure that I'm not angry about anything.
link |
00:25:33.840
And certainly if I am that I'm going to set it aside
link |
00:25:35.640
for the podcast,
link |
00:25:36.480
because that's not a place for my,
link |
00:25:38.600
whatever I might be dealing with.
link |
00:25:40.260
I also really start to feel into the parts of the research
link |
00:25:43.460
and the papers I found that I really love,
link |
00:25:45.620
because that's the part of me that I like the most frankly.
link |
00:25:52.060
And on the podcast, if there's a paper,
link |
00:25:54.760
like for instance, we have a paper, excuse me,
link |
00:25:56.740
a podcast coming out soon about heat as a tool,
link |
00:26:01.040
sauna, but some other things.
link |
00:26:02.320
And in researching this,
link |
00:26:03.680
I learned so much about these heat shock proteins
link |
00:26:07.440
and the use of sauna in Finland
link |
00:26:09.960
for increasing growth hormone,
link |
00:26:11.080
but also for the treatment of mental illness.
link |
00:26:12.960
And I realized I fell in love with this literature.
link |
00:26:15.160
It's just a beautiful literature.
link |
00:26:17.000
These people are true pioneers for doing this work.
link |
00:26:19.020
Now everyone's in the sauna, but this was 20 years ago.
link |
00:26:21.740
The way the experiments were done were amazing
link |
00:26:23.840
with all these Finnish people with thermocouples up there,
link |
00:26:26.800
rectum to measure temperature, swimming in pools.
link |
00:26:29.480
It's hilarious and great.
link |
00:26:30.680
And so I start to think about, and I think,
link |
00:26:33.880
I just start to really access my love of the work.
link |
00:26:36.660
And then when we finally sit down,
link |
00:26:39.180
meaning my producer Rob and I and record,
link |
00:26:42.440
I just sort of want to just bask in sharing it.
link |
00:26:46.200
Just like the little version of me when I was six or seven,
link |
00:26:48.760
I used to spend all weekend reading the encyclopedia,
link |
00:26:51.120
Guinness Book of World Records,
link |
00:26:53.020
making my mother drive me places to introduce me to,
link |
00:26:55.960
I had this obsession with trapping animals
link |
00:26:57.720
when I was a kid, meet these people.
link |
00:26:58.880
And then on Monday, I would insist on giving a lecture
link |
00:27:02.100
in class, which as a little kid.
link |
00:27:03.640
So that's basically what it is.
link |
00:27:04.720
I just try and access that childlike energy.
link |
00:27:07.920
And so I want to be clear.
link |
00:27:09.960
The goal is always to make the information interesting,
link |
00:27:13.120
clear and actionable.
link |
00:27:15.640
And if it's also surprising, then that's a bonus.
link |
00:27:18.720
But that's basically the process.
link |
00:27:19.920
But yeah, I'm singing and talking and getting into state.
link |
00:27:24.640
And I used to feel very sheepish about sharing any of this.
link |
00:27:27.920
This is the first time I've ever shared it out loud,
link |
00:27:29.780
but Rick was the one who encouraged me
link |
00:27:32.000
to find a process that works
link |
00:27:34.640
and continue to develop that process
link |
00:27:36.840
and not let anything get near that process.
link |
00:27:39.600
People in my personal life know this.
link |
00:27:41.640
And when it's time, it's like,
link |
00:27:43.000
I don't care what else is going on,
link |
00:27:44.960
I'm moving into that brain state.
link |
00:27:47.240
And there's probably a process like that
link |
00:27:48.640
for anything that you do in life that you take seriously.
link |
00:27:51.900
So the people that have perfected this is athletes.
link |
00:27:55.120
Like if Olympic level athletes,
link |
00:27:56.640
they have to have a process like this.
link |
00:27:58.360
You know what, I think Tiger Woods actually
link |
00:27:59.720
was taught self hypnosis quite young
link |
00:28:03.760
and use self hypnosis often during his tournaments,
link |
00:28:07.760
sometimes to great success and other times less so.
link |
00:28:11.420
Is there other places in life that you use
link |
00:28:16.360
kind of a protocol, like a mental protocol to get ready?
link |
00:28:20.480
Many of the best areas of life
link |
00:28:22.440
are their own form of hypnosis, right?
link |
00:28:25.240
True.
link |
00:28:26.080
You know that you're in hypnosis,
link |
00:28:27.040
if for instance, you're in a movie and something happens
link |
00:28:29.220
and you feel the emotional lift
link |
00:28:30.560
without being self conscious about it.
link |
00:28:32.880
Yes, I think that one thing that we've tried to do
link |
00:28:38.440
in our house is around meal times to try and set a state
link |
00:28:42.800
that food isn't just something
link |
00:28:44.000
that we just throw down our throats.
link |
00:28:46.440
And I'm fortunate that my partner cooks really well.
link |
00:28:49.300
And so I try and give her the space to do that.
link |
00:28:52.400
And that's the whole thing of her getting into state.
link |
00:28:55.280
And then.
link |
00:28:56.120
For the cooking.
link |
00:28:56.960
For the cooking.
link |
00:28:57.780
The preparation of all the.
link |
00:28:58.620
I can just see it.
link |
00:28:59.460
I just see the way she approaches the whole thing
link |
00:29:01.240
and the pleasure in serving it.
link |
00:29:03.160
And I'm an eater, not a cooker.
link |
00:29:05.800
But.
link |
00:29:06.640
Both are important roles.
link |
00:29:08.000
You could be a very good eater.
link |
00:29:09.560
Like there's something about,
link |
00:29:11.200
is there anything better in this world than that feeling?
link |
00:29:14.680
Especially if it's a family, getting around a table.
link |
00:29:18.560
Just the warmth of that.
link |
00:29:20.500
I don't know.
link |
00:29:21.340
It's like the cold outside of the cruel world
link |
00:29:27.120
cannot touch you in this place that you've returned to.
link |
00:29:29.840
And if.
link |
00:29:31.640
I mean.
link |
00:29:32.480
Did you grow up eating meals as a family?
link |
00:29:34.640
Yeah, yeah.
link |
00:29:35.480
I mean.
link |
00:29:36.320
No television?
link |
00:29:37.880
No.
link |
00:29:38.720
I didn't really have television period outside of meals.
link |
00:29:44.400
So most of my time was spent, you know,
link |
00:29:48.280
like a stray cat outdoors, just running around,
link |
00:29:53.080
playing soccer.
link |
00:29:53.920
I imagine you in this like dirt or concrete lot
link |
00:29:56.960
between two very high rise buildings playing soccer
link |
00:30:00.280
in like athletic gear that you only see in Eastern Europe.
link |
00:30:04.480
You know how like you come to the States
link |
00:30:05.800
and people wear their athletic gear.
link |
00:30:07.200
You go to Europe and you see, maybe it's the soccer culture,
link |
00:30:10.880
but you see athletic gear
link |
00:30:12.240
that you just don't see anywhere else.
link |
00:30:14.160
That's interesting.
link |
00:30:15.000
I mean, I grew up pretty poor.
link |
00:30:17.000
So first of all, I was always wearing my brother's,
link |
00:30:20.760
who's an older brother, brother's clothes.
link |
00:30:23.600
And they were like old, like my favorite things
link |
00:30:29.440
were American things that I didn't understand.
link |
00:30:31.960
It would be like a Pepsi shirt or something.
link |
00:30:34.280
And it was just, that was the gear.
link |
00:30:36.560
And it was like too large for me,
link |
00:30:38.040
but I thought I was the coolest person ever
link |
00:30:40.200
just wearing this fancy like Kanye like type of fashion.
link |
00:30:44.800
Yeah, there's something about,
link |
00:30:45.640
I feel like in Eastern Europe,
link |
00:30:47.720
they wear athletic gear where like the guys like zip up.
link |
00:30:50.080
Yeah, no, that's like fancy stuff.
link |
00:30:52.080
That's if you like, those are the cool kids.
link |
00:30:54.480
I see, I see.
link |
00:30:55.960
Like the cool soccer players, football players
link |
00:30:58.640
that like they were in a league of some kind.
link |
00:31:02.400
So they would get uniforms or like, or they somehow,
link |
00:31:06.880
I always thought anyone who had anything nice
link |
00:31:10.360
had to do something really bad to get it.
link |
00:31:13.040
That was my way, view of the world.
link |
00:31:15.680
Because like, I guess I didn't understand
link |
00:31:20.360
how it's possible to be rich.
link |
00:31:22.360
Cause most of us were surrounded by people who are poor
link |
00:31:25.280
and that life is beautiful and simple.
link |
00:31:26.800
And it's like, why do you escape that life?
link |
00:31:28.840
But you still admire the cool,
link |
00:31:30.960
like when we got McDonald's, it was like,
link |
00:31:35.680
what kind of world does this place come from?
link |
00:31:39.960
Like who invented this?
link |
00:31:42.600
This is a fascinating view from a child's perspective
link |
00:31:45.520
of like, of capitalism essentially.
link |
00:31:47.720
Yeah, but the fact that you ate dinner together
link |
00:31:49.920
is really interesting.
link |
00:31:51.400
My parents divorced when I was an adolescent.
link |
00:31:53.520
So then there was a total fracture of any family structure.
link |
00:31:56.560
But prior to that, we ate dinner together every night.
link |
00:31:58.880
I was expected to know how to use my knife and fork.
link |
00:32:00.880
And it was like a very structured thing.
link |
00:32:05.920
I don't know if kids do that now.
link |
00:32:09.080
If I ever have kids, they're gonna do that.
link |
00:32:11.200
And certainly, actually on the way over here,
link |
00:32:13.680
I was thinking, I was like, I really want a lot of kids.
link |
00:32:16.720
I want like a whole litter.
link |
00:32:18.320
And I was thinking, if Lex has kids and I have kids,
link |
00:32:21.600
then we can like pit them against each other with jujitsu.
link |
00:32:25.200
This is my chance at redemption.
link |
00:32:28.680
It's the law game.
link |
00:32:30.400
They'll all wanna be engineers or physicists.
link |
00:32:33.120
They won't wanna be biologists.
link |
00:32:35.840
But in all seriousness, I look forward to the day
link |
00:32:38.360
that our kids play together.
link |
00:32:41.360
Yeah, I think there's something,
link |
00:32:43.480
so the family dinner, the ritual of the family dinner,
link |
00:32:47.200
but also the special occasion dinners,
link |
00:32:49.160
like where there's a little bit more preparation,
link |
00:32:51.920
a little bit more cooking,
link |
00:32:53.760
whether it's on the weekend or for some holiday.
link |
00:32:57.000
In Russia, it was a thing that actually
link |
00:32:59.600
I find completely missing for the most part.
link |
00:33:02.800
In America is there was neighbors.
link |
00:33:04.800
There was a, you broke the walls
link |
00:33:08.360
between families much more commonly.
link |
00:33:11.080
Like there would be kinda regular characters,
link |
00:33:13.800
like a sitcom almost.
link |
00:33:15.120
If you watch the sitcom, it's never just the family.
link |
00:33:17.600
There's always like other characters that.
link |
00:33:19.200
Just bursting in the door.
link |
00:33:20.120
Bursting in the door.
link |
00:33:20.960
I'm gonna start doing that here,
link |
00:33:22.120
just to make you feel at home.
link |
00:33:22.960
Just start showing up at your studio.
link |
00:33:24.680
I know where you live.
link |
00:33:25.640
I think people wanna respect,
link |
00:33:27.520
like Michael Malice lives next door to me.
link |
00:33:30.720
And I think people wanna respect each other's privacy
link |
00:33:33.760
or something like that.
link |
00:33:34.600
And I think we all get super busy.
link |
00:33:37.400
And it's kind of work
link |
00:33:42.400
to do this dinner together.
link |
00:33:46.080
Or if you see it as a thing that needs to be scheduled,
link |
00:33:49.760
it's work.
link |
00:33:50.600
We get busy.
link |
00:33:51.440
There's a lot of stuff going on.
link |
00:33:52.280
But if it's part of a ritual, a part of the culture,
link |
00:33:55.520
all of those walls get broken down.
link |
00:33:58.560
And then you realize like that's,
link |
00:34:00.160
like later looking back, those are the things you miss.
link |
00:34:03.120
Like that's what life is about.
link |
00:34:04.880
Like all the stupid stuff you're doing
link |
00:34:06.360
in terms of career or whatever,
link |
00:34:08.160
all the busy things, those don't matter.
link |
00:34:10.080
What matters is the people.
link |
00:34:12.240
In academia, this changed in the last few years, of course.
link |
00:34:17.080
But one of the great joys was professors will stop by
link |
00:34:20.800
your office or your lab.
link |
00:34:21.640
Nobody set up an appointment.
link |
00:34:23.560
There was a guy when I was a professor in San Diego,
link |
00:34:25.480
a guy named Harvey Cartney,
link |
00:34:26.400
he's a member of the National Academies,
link |
00:34:28.440
truly the world's expert in the evolution of vision
link |
00:34:31.320
and evolution of brains generally.
link |
00:34:33.720
And he would show up in my lab
link |
00:34:35.320
and he would just start talking to the students in postdocs.
link |
00:34:37.880
And I mean, a pure encyclopedia.
link |
00:34:42.600
And then at some point you'd say,
link |
00:34:43.840
hey, Harvey, I gotta go.
link |
00:34:45.080
And you'd have, you'd kick him out, right?
link |
00:34:46.640
Or this guy, he's a physicist, David Klinefield,
link |
00:34:49.600
who's, same way.
link |
00:34:50.920
Actually, David Klinefield is an interesting one.
link |
00:34:53.040
A student of his went on to create
link |
00:34:55.800
the Beavis and Butthead cartoon.
link |
00:34:57.400
And one of them is David, he's a physics professor.
link |
00:34:59.360
Now people can look him up.
link |
00:35:01.000
And David's one of those guys who just walk into your office
link |
00:35:03.320
and you just sit down and you just start talking to you.
link |
00:35:05.400
And so there's a kind of a family field.
link |
00:35:07.360
It's like Cheers or Seinfeld or one of those shows
link |
00:35:09.800
where somebody just walks in.
link |
00:35:10.880
And yeah, I think you and I both share a love
link |
00:35:13.720
of the community around things.
link |
00:35:14.960
And podcasting is a little bit more isolated.
link |
00:35:17.720
I should say for the guest episodes,
link |
00:35:19.600
the preparation is completely different
link |
00:35:21.320
because it's more conversational.
link |
00:35:22.960
And so there, I don't do any of this business
link |
00:35:24.560
of putting myself into state.
link |
00:35:26.280
I just try and make sure that the guest is taken care of.
link |
00:35:30.080
And I do list out the questions I'm gonna ask before,
link |
00:35:32.920
but those actually really like the interview episodes
link |
00:35:35.440
far more than I like doing the solo ones.
link |
00:35:37.920
Just psychologically I mean.
link |
00:35:39.160
I just like learning from someone directly
link |
00:35:41.520
because you asking an expert about something,
link |
00:35:44.080
like sitting here with you when we recorded the podcast
link |
00:35:46.680
where you were a guest on the Huberman Lab podcast.
link |
00:35:48.560
And for the first time, and finally,
link |
00:35:51.480
someone was explaining to me the difference
link |
00:35:53.200
between machine learning, artificial intelligence
link |
00:35:55.160
and all these other things.
link |
00:35:56.440
You know, and I've finally forgiven you
link |
00:35:58.040
for making me cry about Costello on camera,
link |
00:36:02.400
because it helped me move through it.
link |
00:36:03.560
But in all seriousness, the interview ones
link |
00:36:06.160
are a sheer pleasure.
link |
00:36:08.560
The solo ones I really enjoy, but they're work.
link |
00:36:12.600
Sometimes I think like I'm gonna sweat
link |
00:36:14.120
a little blood prepping for them.
link |
00:36:16.120
Well, it's interesting because I do think prepping
link |
00:36:18.480
for interviews, having a similar process
link |
00:36:21.160
might be also very valuable.
link |
00:36:23.000
Like I have to think about that
link |
00:36:26.280
because I think when you do a conversation
link |
00:36:31.200
for several hours, especially when it's a high stakes one.
link |
00:36:35.000
So it's not like you and I know,
link |
00:36:36.720
it's more like it's just chatting and so on.
link |
00:36:38.560
The world order isn't gonna shift according to it.
link |
00:36:40.720
Although you never know, knowing you will probably
link |
00:36:43.320
be into some pretty controversial topics in a few minutes.
link |
00:36:46.000
You like to ride the edge more than I do.
link |
00:36:48.080
There are a number of topics that I just completely avoid.
link |
00:36:50.360
And my response to those is always that
link |
00:36:52.560
I have a lot of opinions about that,
link |
00:36:54.080
but not a lot to say, you know.
link |
00:36:55.800
But whereas you've become far braver
link |
00:37:00.720
in terms of the topics you'll encounter
link |
00:37:02.800
and some of your guests have been a bit controversial.
link |
00:37:06.200
Some of them are people that a lot of people don't like.
link |
00:37:11.080
And you've been willing to just sit down
link |
00:37:13.760
and maybe it's the jujitsu thing.
link |
00:37:16.240
I don't know, it is tricky.
link |
00:37:18.080
One of my goals for this year is to talk to people
link |
00:37:20.840
that a lot of people really don't like.
link |
00:37:24.520
Are you gonna share with us?
link |
00:37:26.200
And here I am.
link |
00:37:27.040
People that are in prison, major political leaders
link |
00:37:34.280
have been thinking a lot about how to talk
link |
00:37:37.000
to really difficult, controversial figures,
link |
00:37:41.280
but find together something with them
link |
00:37:45.160
that's deeply honest about their nature,
link |
00:37:47.680
about the ideas they have about the world.
link |
00:37:54.280
Reveal something real.
link |
00:37:56.600
And some people, you have to be very careful,
link |
00:37:59.440
some people are very good at hiding the real inside them,
link |
00:38:03.560
even from themselves.
link |
00:38:05.240
That's something I think about a lot.
link |
00:38:06.600
I think about dictators of the past
link |
00:38:08.320
and I put myself in the mindset,
link |
00:38:09.960
well, how do you reveal something real
link |
00:38:12.720
about this person to themselves?
link |
00:38:14.720
I think that to me, and you kind of spoke to that,
link |
00:38:17.640
but a great conversation is one where
link |
00:38:22.640
both of you discover something new.
link |
00:38:28.840
So I love that too, that's my favorite thing
link |
00:38:31.280
what you mentioned, which is allowing your curiosity
link |
00:38:33.640
and ask all kinds of questions and get excited
link |
00:38:35.520
and to learn from an expert.
link |
00:38:37.240
But also to push them to discover something
link |
00:38:40.520
about themselves, about their ideas together.
link |
00:38:44.320
And then that discovery, and sometimes it's like,
link |
00:38:48.840
we don't see it in the moment, but the audience hears it.
link |
00:38:55.440
It's weird to say, I would compare it to
link |
00:38:58.240
when you're a musician and you're playing
link |
00:38:59.520
with other musicians, you lose yourself in the moment.
link |
00:39:02.080
Yeah, it's all, it's like, it's working right.
link |
00:39:04.360
It's working, but you don't really see the big picture
link |
00:39:09.800
impact of what it's working right actually feels like.
link |
00:39:13.760
And that's where the audience could see that.
link |
00:39:17.680
If you talk to somebody evil,
link |
00:39:22.920
for me as an interviewer, I have to empathize
link |
00:39:26.560
with that person.
link |
00:39:27.560
If I want to understand, I have to put myself
link |
00:39:29.840
in that mind space, and to put yourself in that mindset,
link |
00:39:32.920
you really have to understand the evil inside of you.
link |
00:39:38.560
Like you can't just think if somebody's in power
link |
00:39:41.360
and has used that power to abuse others,
link |
00:39:45.200
you can't just be a, I personally,
link |
00:39:48.160
a person who seeks to understand.
link |
00:39:49.960
You can't just be a journalist asking generic questions.
link |
00:39:52.920
You have to put yourself in a place
link |
00:39:55.840
where you're somebody who's given a lot of power
link |
00:39:58.480
and slowly you start to abuse that power.
link |
00:40:01.320
And what does that person become?
link |
00:40:03.280
Who are you?
link |
00:40:04.520
I have to plug myself into those moments in my life
link |
00:40:07.200
in the past where I've been angry at something
link |
00:40:11.000
and where I've been cruel because I was angry.
link |
00:40:14.560
In little ways, but then you magnify them at scale
link |
00:40:17.560
and I have to go there and that's very human.
link |
00:40:21.000
And then I have to look at another person
link |
00:40:23.000
from across the table for me and understand,
link |
00:40:25.200
well, you're there too.
link |
00:40:26.800
And then you had more opportunity to do truly cruel things.
link |
00:40:31.320
And then where, like I have to plug myself
link |
00:40:36.440
into places where I've been, I can imagine I can go,
link |
00:40:39.600
where I was cruel to others and was unaware of it.
link |
00:40:43.240
So I was in a mind space where I was thinking
link |
00:40:45.720
that I'm doing good and I was doing not good.
link |
00:40:48.200
Again, I've never gotten the opportunity
link |
00:40:50.280
to do any of those things at large scale,
link |
00:40:52.480
but all of us have done it at a small scale.
link |
00:40:54.840
And I plug myself into that and then we're here,
link |
00:40:58.760
we're to, if it's somebody who's in prison,
link |
00:41:01.480
if it's somebody who's a dictator,
link |
00:41:03.400
we're in that space where evil is,
link |
00:41:07.040
all of us have the capacity to do that evil
link |
00:41:09.560
and I have to imagine myself being able to do that evil.
link |
00:41:13.480
And then we're here together in that dark, dark place.
link |
00:41:17.920
And then if it's just right,
link |
00:41:20.000
something real can actually come,
link |
00:41:21.800
something from that person's childhood,
link |
00:41:23.960
maybe awakening to a realization
link |
00:41:27.640
that I thought it was a good person and I'm not.
link |
00:41:30.800
And that only happens when you truly empathize.
link |
00:41:34.880
Those moments of discovery are beautiful,
link |
00:41:36.960
but they also happen in science.
link |
00:41:38.720
When you just have a conversation and you realize,
link |
00:41:42.360
I feel like talking to Stephen Wolfram,
link |
00:41:44.000
I feel like we constantly realize
link |
00:41:46.080
beautiful things together.
link |
00:41:48.040
On this element of evil and sociopathy,
link |
00:41:52.240
that Jung had this notion that we have all things inside us
link |
00:41:57.760
and that we all have the capacity to be good or evil,
link |
00:42:00.800
et cetera, but I have the good fortune
link |
00:42:05.160
of working with somebody who has deep understanding
link |
00:42:08.040
of psychiatry, but also psychoanalysis
link |
00:42:10.200
and Jungian theory.
link |
00:42:11.720
And he said to me recently, he said,
link |
00:42:15.040
whether or not all people have all things inside them
link |
00:42:17.960
is still debated in the psychology community
link |
00:42:20.400
and in the neuroscience community.
link |
00:42:22.840
And as a matter of philosophy,
link |
00:42:24.440
but there are certain people, not many,
link |
00:42:28.240
but there are certain people
link |
00:42:29.960
for whom they've actually lived out many versions
link |
00:42:33.280
of their possible selves in the first person.
link |
00:42:37.040
And so those are unique individuals.
link |
00:42:38.760
Then even if they tapped into these things,
link |
00:42:41.280
as you mentioned, at a more minor level,
link |
00:42:44.440
as opposed to impacting people negatively at scale.
link |
00:42:49.000
So being able to access those different parts of oneself
link |
00:42:51.440
is key and you've been willing to step into that.
link |
00:42:54.120
My podcast is not one in which we get down to those matters.
link |
00:42:57.480
Yet, yet.
link |
00:42:59.120
You never know, we might do an episode
link |
00:43:00.560
on narcissism and sociopathy.
link |
00:43:02.840
The other thing that I took away from a conversation
link |
00:43:04.960
with a friend, he was a lot of years in special operations
link |
00:43:08.480
in the intelligence community.
link |
00:43:09.520
He said, if you look at somebody's past,
link |
00:43:13.280
at some point you will come to understand
link |
00:43:16.280
some pretty good reasons as to why they became who they are,
link |
00:43:19.520
but you have to draw the, his words,
link |
00:43:21.720
the red line someplace.
link |
00:43:23.320
And what he was referring to was the fact
link |
00:43:25.040
that certain people, at least in the eyes
link |
00:43:26.920
of certain communities deserve to be eliminated
link |
00:43:30.240
as a consequence of their actions, right?
link |
00:43:33.200
Regardless of what drove them to those actions.
link |
00:43:35.160
So it gets right down to the line
link |
00:43:36.800
between nature, nurture, neuroscience,
link |
00:43:40.800
and the law and justice.
link |
00:43:43.880
Complicated, complicated themes.
link |
00:43:45.720
I can think of a number of people
link |
00:43:47.040
that I would love to hear you interview.
link |
00:43:49.240
And here I'm not revealing the reasons why,
link |
00:43:51.920
but except for the fact that I think
link |
00:43:53.520
you would be uniquely suited to bring out
link |
00:43:56.040
the important components of the conversation
link |
00:43:58.480
that other people have not been able to do,
link |
00:44:02.600
which for instance, Liz Holmes,
link |
00:44:04.840
this is one of the most mysterious
link |
00:44:08.520
and yet disliked people on the planet.
link |
00:44:13.640
She's sort of synonymous with deception.
link |
00:44:17.280
I don't know if there've been any real interviews
link |
00:44:20.200
of her since the whole thing.
link |
00:44:22.920
I haven't followed that case.
link |
00:44:23.920
I listened to the book and I followed it a little bit
link |
00:44:27.240
because it was happening in my hometown, right?
link |
00:44:29.400
Theranos was right up the road.
link |
00:44:31.000
The building's still there.
link |
00:44:32.280
It's interesting.
link |
00:44:33.120
It's some of the most premier real estate
link |
00:44:34.600
in Silicon Valley, but nobody wants it.
link |
00:44:36.920
It's sort of like, it's very hard to sell a home
link |
00:44:38.480
where somebody committed suicide or committed a murder,
link |
00:44:41.080
even if it's a beautiful home.
link |
00:44:42.560
It sort of feel like the Theranos building is that building.
link |
00:44:46.040
So that would be a really interesting interview.
link |
00:44:48.520
I would love to hear that interview.
link |
00:44:50.560
One of the most interesting dark human beings in science.
link |
00:44:55.760
Yeah, and then there'll even be people that say,
link |
00:44:58.600
was it even science, right?
link |
00:44:59.720
It might've all been deception.
link |
00:45:01.120
It might've been one part deception,
link |
00:45:02.360
one part goal setting mixed in with,
link |
00:45:05.520
clearly that there were so many factors
link |
00:45:08.580
impacting what happened.
link |
00:45:10.760
I think the big difference between Theranos and that story
link |
00:45:15.000
and some of the other stories about Silicon Valley
link |
00:45:17.520
where people promised a lot more than they could deliver
link |
00:45:19.900
is they were promising things that were directly related
link |
00:45:22.720
to health and healthcare.
link |
00:45:23.720
People were taking blood tests with the understanding
link |
00:45:26.960
that the data they were getting was important,
link |
00:45:29.280
information about sexually transmitted diseases
link |
00:45:31.200
and other diseases and making real world decisions
link |
00:45:33.400
on the basis of that.
link |
00:45:34.480
Whereas if you remember when the iPhone first came out
link |
00:45:37.240
and Steve Jobs was still alive
link |
00:45:38.760
and the phones were dropping calls
link |
00:45:40.600
if you held it in a particular way.
link |
00:45:41.940
And his response was a little flip.
link |
00:45:43.480
He said, hey folks, it's a phone
link |
00:45:45.920
as if like don't get so worked up.
link |
00:45:47.720
But people held them understandably to a very high standard.
link |
00:45:51.040
She sort of, it seemed, and I don't know,
link |
00:45:54.080
cause I certainly wasn't there,
link |
00:45:55.360
seemed like she sort of adopted this idea
link |
00:45:57.820
that you could get it wrong a bunch of times
link |
00:45:59.360
before you get it right.
link |
00:46:00.960
Except if the allegations are true.
link |
00:46:02.720
And I think she was found guilty, I believe,
link |
00:46:05.760
on a number of counts.
link |
00:46:07.120
That a number of the things that they were doing
link |
00:46:09.080
were impacting real world decision making.
link |
00:46:11.880
So Steve's point about the phone, it's just a phone.
link |
00:46:14.560
Well, it depends on the call.
link |
00:46:15.400
If you're calling 911, then it's not just a phone, right?
link |
00:46:19.360
But in the case of blood tests and disease,
link |
00:46:22.160
that's serious.
link |
00:46:23.000
I think that the Theranos case was super interesting to me
link |
00:46:24.960
because of the number of people from major universities
link |
00:46:27.600
and from government that both trusted her
link |
00:46:31.400
and the number of people who did not trust her
link |
00:46:34.360
and yet either didn't speak up or no one listened to them.
link |
00:46:37.320
It was only in the forensic version of it
link |
00:46:39.700
that everyone said, oh yeah, I knew that she was lying,
link |
00:46:42.440
et cetera, et cetera.
link |
00:46:43.280
They were lying to multiple people involved
link |
00:46:45.320
in those lies apparently.
link |
00:46:46.680
But I have a deep interest in the neuroscience
link |
00:46:49.120
of narcissism, sociopathy,
link |
00:46:51.520
and some of the darker aspects of the mind.
link |
00:46:54.000
So yeah, maybe someday.
link |
00:46:55.480
Maybe we'll do a podcast together.
link |
00:46:57.080
I mean, like in the kind of early 90s version of talk shows
link |
00:47:00.400
where we darken the lights and we do it together,
link |
00:47:02.680
you can use your voice
link |
00:47:03.520
because your voice is much more sinister sounding than mine.
link |
00:47:06.840
Good cop, bad cop.
link |
00:47:08.800
Well, it'd be interesting from a scientific perspective
link |
00:47:11.440
of somebody who is a sociopath or a psychopath,
link |
00:47:16.780
how to reveal something real about them.
link |
00:47:20.200
I think that requires not just,
link |
00:47:24.480
well, I don't know what that requires.
link |
00:47:26.520
That requires the same skill
link |
00:47:27.920
that it takes to be a good therapist.
link |
00:47:31.620
Right, and some therapists won't work with sociopaths
link |
00:47:35.140
because they don't feel any progress can be made.
link |
00:47:38.420
Some therapists will work with sociopaths
link |
00:47:40.400
because for the wealthy ones,
link |
00:47:41.960
they often, they want their money.
link |
00:47:44.900
I think most therapists are good and benevolent,
link |
00:47:47.360
but there's some that will do it
link |
00:47:48.320
just the same way lawyers will work with criminals
link |
00:47:50.480
knowing they're criminals, right?
link |
00:47:53.440
Oftentimes because they're criminals.
link |
00:47:55.320
There are certain domains of psychiatry
link |
00:47:57.000
that are more tractable than others, right?
link |
00:47:59.760
Borderlines are interesting.
link |
00:48:00.720
I should just mention
link |
00:48:01.560
because they have this phenomenon of splitting.
link |
00:48:03.860
So in the world of psychology,
link |
00:48:05.740
the idea is that being neurotic is actually the goal.
link |
00:48:09.960
The idea that you could be, you know,
link |
00:48:12.360
feel something and then work a lot to overcome it
link |
00:48:15.100
or have some sort of defense mechanism in place,
link |
00:48:18.760
but that's not destructive.
link |
00:48:20.340
That's actually a pretty healthy state to be in.
link |
00:48:22.560
It's provided it's not destructive.
link |
00:48:25.380
Psychotic is truly delusional thinking about reality.
link |
00:48:29.800
And the idea is that borderlines split,
link |
00:48:33.120
intermittently split between psychotic and neurotic.
link |
00:48:37.340
That's why it was called,
link |
00:48:38.180
there's beautiful work by Melanie Klein that describes this,
link |
00:48:41.000
which I'm just now kind of delving into.
link |
00:48:42.980
But, you know, so the borderline is the person who is like,
link |
00:48:46.020
I love you, I love you, I love you,
link |
00:48:47.520
and then truly feels as if they hate you
link |
00:48:49.720
and you become the bad object.
link |
00:48:51.320
So borderlines are challenging for psychologists
link |
00:48:54.580
because of the splitting, right?
link |
00:48:57.500
Schizophrenics are challenging
link |
00:48:58.780
because of the detachment from reality.
link |
00:49:02.940
And narcissists are challenging
link |
00:49:05.120
because they're often so charming
link |
00:49:07.620
that even the therapists are charmed.
link |
00:49:10.060
I believe you mentioned Karl Deisseroth.
link |
00:49:12.280
We'll talk about him.
link |
00:49:13.120
He was definitely not a narcissist.
link |
00:49:14.460
He's one of the more humble people, but he is brilliant.
link |
00:49:16.420
Thanks again to you.
link |
00:49:17.900
You've connected us.
link |
00:49:19.420
I had the pleasure of having a conversation with him.
link |
00:49:22.820
You had a conversation with him.
link |
00:49:23.900
I really enjoyed it on the podcast.
link |
00:49:25.660
You guys come from the same science, from the same place,
link |
00:49:29.740
maybe different journeys, fascinating.
link |
00:49:31.500
And levels.
link |
00:49:32.340
We were postdocs together.
link |
00:49:33.940
Karl is truly the Michael Jordan, the Wayne Gretzky,
link |
00:49:37.860
five children, amazing marriage to it.
link |
00:49:40.420
Also an amazing scientist.
link |
00:49:41.940
His wife, Michelle Monge,
link |
00:49:42.940
is in our neurology department at Stanford.
link |
00:49:44.940
An incredible thinker, writer, very kind person, humble.
link |
00:49:51.500
Speaking of getting into state,
link |
00:49:52.740
sorry, Karl, I'm gonna out you on this,
link |
00:49:54.300
but Karl, despite being at the highest levels
link |
00:49:58.340
of science and engineering and a practicing psychiatrist,
link |
00:50:02.300
his office is literally a coat closet
link |
00:50:06.200
with a small table lamp.
link |
00:50:07.900
When you meet with Karl, if you manage to meet with him,
link |
00:50:10.220
because he's very hard to get to,
link |
00:50:12.300
you walk in, you sit down
link |
00:50:13.700
as if you're going through some interrogation
link |
00:50:15.700
and some spy novel.
link |
00:50:18.100
And he'll ask you, what are you most excited about lately?
link |
00:50:22.100
And I've got 11 minutes or something.
link |
00:50:23.980
And that's a meeting with Karl, because he's that busy.
link |
00:50:27.040
But he doesn't have the office with the pictures of the kids
link |
00:50:29.300
and the thing and all that.
link |
00:50:30.800
All that is kept elsewhere.
link |
00:50:32.540
So in order to get, I asked him
link |
00:50:34.420
why he work in this office, right?
link |
00:50:36.020
You work on light and channels of light,
link |
00:50:38.060
things related to light of all things.
link |
00:50:39.820
Here you are in this dark room.
link |
00:50:40.740
And he said, well, this is what gets me
link |
00:50:41.940
into the state of mind to be able to do what I want to do.
link |
00:50:44.260
Very Rick Rubin ish, not at all the same person,
link |
00:50:48.860
but very similar in that he's figured out
link |
00:50:50.600
the physical space he needs in order to get
link |
00:50:52.380
into the optimal state to do the work he needs to do
link |
00:50:54.540
in this lifetime.
link |
00:50:55.460
And it's very unusual, right?
link |
00:50:57.460
If I don't have a window, I kind of freak out.
link |
00:50:59.340
I can do it here for a while.
link |
00:51:00.540
We're in this black cube here, floating in space, of course.
link |
00:51:05.380
But I find that amazing that these people
link |
00:51:08.900
that are operating in this super high level
link |
00:51:10.820
are willing to actually deprive themselves
link |
00:51:12.580
of a lot of conditions.
link |
00:51:14.040
They're not sitting there with the secretary coming in
link |
00:51:16.580
offering them espresso every five minutes and things that,
link |
00:51:19.100
no, no, no, that's New York Neuroscience.
link |
00:51:21.940
The New York Neuroscience Mafia is kind of famous
link |
00:51:23.980
for having all the tickets to the opera and this and that.
link |
00:51:28.160
And they enjoy lifestyle a lot.
link |
00:51:30.180
The New York Neuroscience Mafia.
link |
00:51:31.500
Oh, there is one, there definitely is one.
link |
00:51:32.980
They know who they are.
link |
00:51:34.380
They know who they are.
link |
00:51:35.220
People don't know, Andrew Huberman is from the West Coast
link |
00:51:38.940
and now he's just starting wars with the Neuroscience Mafia.
link |
00:51:41.620
Well, they do amazing science.
link |
00:51:42.660
They think, they love their lifestyle and that's wonderful,
link |
00:51:45.520
but the culture is very different.
link |
00:51:48.380
Carl and I think Silicon Valley in general
link |
00:51:50.560
kind of prides itself on this kind of monk like assesism,
link |
00:51:55.300
right?
link |
00:51:56.140
But at the individual scale,
link |
00:51:57.820
be deliberate about controlling the environment.
link |
00:51:59.700
I think about that with the conversations too.
link |
00:52:01.860
I haven't been deliberate about that either
link |
00:52:04.160
in terms of controlling the space you're in.
link |
00:52:07.460
Visually, yes, black curtains, all those kinds of things.
link |
00:52:10.680
There is nothing like the Lex Friedman podcast studio.
link |
00:52:14.820
First of all, when you do them remotely,
link |
00:52:17.180
I always feel like I'm in a witness relocation program.
link |
00:52:20.620
You only get the coordinates at the last moment
link |
00:52:23.140
and you always get the sense that there are people
link |
00:52:26.260
behind the walls that are recording things.
link |
00:52:30.140
Well, there's something about creating a feeling.
link |
00:52:32.620
I have a sense that there's a robot over there.
link |
00:52:34.460
There's several throughout this place.
link |
00:52:36.580
And I think part of that,
link |
00:52:42.860
part of creating a feeling would be having the robots
link |
00:52:46.220
constantly moving around and having a mind of their own
link |
00:52:49.960
because that would most closely put guests
link |
00:52:54.660
and other humans that I interact with into a place
link |
00:52:58.080
that's closest to my mind
link |
00:53:01.460
because it's such an engineering mind
link |
00:53:03.940
and one where when things come to life,
link |
00:53:06.500
it's a beautiful place to be.
link |
00:53:08.460
And whatever that is, that could be like art,
link |
00:53:10.700
but to me, robots are art.
link |
00:53:12.620
And so I'm thinking about that both for me and for guests.
link |
00:53:17.300
And I'm also thinking about the difficult guests
link |
00:53:19.900
just to return to, you said, Elizabeth Holmes.
link |
00:53:22.540
One person, maybe a couple of things I want to say.
link |
00:53:26.460
One person I think I would like to talk to is
link |
00:53:32.800
Ghislaine Maxwell.
link |
00:53:34.300
I always get afraid right before you reveal
link |
00:53:36.380
these kinds of things.
link |
00:53:37.220
And now I know why I get afraid.
link |
00:53:39.020
Yeah, I mean, again, assuming that she did the things
link |
00:53:42.220
that people claim she did, they're despicable, right?
link |
00:53:45.900
I mean, these were underage children, right?
link |
00:53:48.020
There's just no version of the story
link |
00:53:50.500
where she did the things she was accused of doing
link |
00:53:54.580
and is still a quote unquote good person.
link |
00:53:56.600
There's just, in my mind, right?
link |
00:53:59.260
And yet I think there is tremendous interest
link |
00:54:01.780
in understanding like what led her to do all that.
link |
00:54:05.980
So at least for some people.
link |
00:54:07.300
Let me say a couple of things.
link |
00:54:08.180
So one is at a high level, let me say that she believes
link |
00:54:14.860
or her current story is that she's the victim.
link |
00:54:18.900
Of who?
link |
00:54:20.060
Jeffrey Epstein.
link |
00:54:21.020
Oh my.
link |
00:54:23.160
I think I'll just leave that there as is.
link |
00:54:26.780
So these are ideas that you're facing.
link |
00:54:31.380
The nature of truth and the nature of the human mind
link |
00:54:34.700
is what it is and this is, imagine folks,
link |
00:54:38.940
if you went into a room with a person that says that,
link |
00:54:43.060
what do you do next?
link |
00:54:45.200
Let me also say that I never or rarely,
link |
00:54:51.100
let me say not say never, I rarely mention names
link |
00:54:54.500
that I'm interested in talking to
link |
00:54:57.240
without having made significant progress
link |
00:55:00.880
in already securing that interview.
link |
00:55:03.180
So people sometimes ask me about Vladimir Zelensky
link |
00:55:07.640
and Vladimir Putin.
link |
00:55:09.700
I do not bring them up lightly in terms of their being
link |
00:55:15.800
a path to an actual conversation.
link |
00:55:17.220
That said, something I regret but I'm not sure
link |
00:55:20.140
I know what to do with it.
link |
00:55:23.740
But in the case of all the people I just mentioned,
link |
00:55:27.380
I haven't been preparing for those conversations.
link |
00:55:30.540
I only start really preparing seriously
link |
00:55:35.100
when it's confirmed because it's such a heavy burden.
link |
00:55:40.340
And one of the things I regret in having mentioned
link |
00:55:44.300
a conversation with Vladimir Putin
link |
00:55:47.260
before the war in Ukraine broke out in the past few years
link |
00:55:51.220
is that I would mention it very loosely, very casually.
link |
00:55:55.780
And without having really deeply put myself into a place
link |
00:56:01.380
that I'm ready to talk to him.
link |
00:56:02.940
And that's a tricky thing because then the internet,
link |
00:56:08.500
the audience in general, and just me,
link |
00:56:11.640
when I listen back to my dumb self,
link |
00:56:14.380
think, well, why are you speaking so lightly
link |
00:56:16.280
about these topics?
link |
00:56:17.740
Well, I know you've had a longstanding interest
link |
00:56:19.540
in talking to him.
link |
00:56:21.620
I think now, well, I don't understand
link |
00:56:27.120
how I would sit down and have a conversation
link |
00:56:31.200
with somebody like that,
link |
00:56:32.140
but that's not in the range of my skill sets.
link |
00:56:36.380
Or like maybe not in the range of things
link |
00:56:39.940
that you're drawn to somehow.
link |
00:56:41.980
Not so much.
link |
00:56:42.820
I mean, I would watch that episode with great interest.
link |
00:56:47.380
Well, you did an episode recently with this guy
link |
00:56:49.700
who was a former cyber criminal turned state side, right?
link |
00:56:53.940
I think he works for the government now.
link |
00:56:55.220
And there was a segment in there.
link |
00:56:57.360
Remind me his name?
link |
00:56:58.200
Brett Johnson.
link |
00:56:59.040
Brett Johnson.
link |
00:56:59.860
There was a segment in there where he talked about
link |
00:57:02.260
stealing a lifetime's worth of collected coins
link |
00:57:06.140
from some elderly woman.
link |
00:57:08.780
And this was everything she had.
link |
00:57:10.220
And then he openly admitted that he felt no remorse,
link |
00:57:15.660
which is the way he described is purely sociopathic.
link |
00:57:18.540
And then of course we learned that he grew up in a family
link |
00:57:20.660
where criminal behavior was very common.
link |
00:57:23.140
It was kind of embedded into his notions
link |
00:57:25.820
of what typical behaviors were.
link |
00:57:27.700
And I found myself somewhat conflicted,
link |
00:57:30.580
but also hung up on this idea that,
link |
00:57:33.540
I mean, he had behaved as a sociopath
link |
00:57:38.420
or in a sociopathic way.
link |
00:57:39.960
And it created an internal conflict
link |
00:57:42.580
because he's quite charming guest
link |
00:57:44.020
and his stories are terrific.
link |
00:57:45.860
Especially I really enjoyed his discussions
link |
00:57:49.180
about how he would go out and do all these things
link |
00:57:52.740
out of a desire to please his girlfriend.
link |
00:57:56.460
So he was in service to other people,
link |
00:57:58.280
despite being sociopathic,
link |
00:57:59.420
he could say he was in service to them as a way to extract.
link |
00:58:01.780
Gets very complicated.
link |
00:58:03.260
I think is the reason I went into science
link |
00:58:05.140
is that at some level,
link |
00:58:07.340
it's more about facts than it is opinions and judgments.
link |
00:58:10.500
And I don't know that I have the ability
link |
00:58:12.100
to suspend judgment away from the kind of
link |
00:58:16.540
top level contours of my initial reaction to like,
link |
00:58:20.300
if it's true, like the Ghislaine Maxwell's
link |
00:58:22.420
and the Liz Holmes and the other sociopaths
link |
00:58:25.340
is one of just kind of revulsion and repulsion.
link |
00:58:28.220
But that could also reflect the fact
link |
00:58:29.740
that I'm not as neurologically sophisticated
link |
00:58:33.660
as somebody that can spin all the plates of empathy,
link |
00:58:38.660
forgiveness, but also holding people accountable
link |
00:58:44.140
at the same time.
link |
00:58:44.980
That's work.
link |
00:58:45.820
That takes, if you think about it,
link |
00:58:46.820
that's three four brain circuits having to work in parallel.
link |
00:58:50.700
That's the difference between chess or a game of go
link |
00:58:52.700
and a game of checkers.
link |
00:58:53.540
I guess I'm playing checkers and you're playing chess.
link |
00:58:56.020
No, so one is actually holding in your mind
link |
00:58:58.500
and two is the raw skill of conversation.
link |
00:59:01.160
You're very, just having listened to your interviews,
link |
00:59:04.020
you're very good at conversation,
link |
00:59:05.620
but the skill of conversation is really tricky.
link |
00:59:08.940
I'm not being self deprecating.
link |
00:59:10.300
I'm being just objective.
link |
00:59:12.060
I'm not good at conversation.
link |
00:59:15.540
I'm working very hard, getting better at it.
link |
00:59:18.780
I'm speaking not about just podcasting.
link |
00:59:22.660
I'm speaking just normal life.
link |
00:59:25.380
I have anxiety from social interaction.
link |
00:59:30.260
I...
link |
00:59:31.100
Do you really?
link |
00:59:31.940
A huge amount, yeah, yeah.
link |
00:59:33.060
So this is interesting because I never detect that in you.
link |
00:59:37.260
Ever.
link |
00:59:38.100
And I think there are people that we both know
link |
00:59:40.660
that have said to me that they too feel anxious
link |
00:59:45.180
and yet your voice is steady.
link |
00:59:49.500
I don't see any perspiration.
link |
00:59:51.460
Oh yeah.
link |
00:59:52.740
You appear incredibly calm.
link |
00:59:54.060
I'm scared shitless.
link |
00:59:55.380
I was scared shitless with Rick Rubin.
link |
00:59:57.500
Rick Rubin is, when you first meet him,
link |
01:00:00.940
is intimidatingly calm.
link |
01:00:03.300
But as you get to know him a bit,
link |
01:00:04.540
you realize that the kindness
link |
01:00:07.340
and the generosity that you sense is real.
link |
01:00:11.420
But yeah, I would never in a million years
link |
01:00:14.660
have guessed that you get anxious in conversation.
link |
01:00:16.740
Can I just make another quick comment?
link |
01:00:19.100
This may come off entertaining to you, Andrew.
link |
01:00:22.380
Maybe you've already gotten the same.
link |
01:00:24.260
But having mentioned Vladimir Putin, Vladimir Zelensky,
link |
01:00:31.260
Ghislaine Maxwell, there is a natural question.
link |
01:00:37.260
How does Lex have access to these people?
link |
01:00:43.260
Who does he work for?
link |
01:00:45.540
Like how does he...
link |
01:00:48.060
Or who works for him.
link |
01:00:49.420
Who works for him.
link |
01:00:50.580
Right.
link |
01:00:51.420
What does he have on others?
link |
01:00:52.940
This, I'm actually, I ask myself,
link |
01:00:55.780
when I look in the mirror,
link |
01:00:57.820
just somebody who kind of enjoys conspiracy theories,
link |
01:01:01.980
I want to ask the same question.
link |
01:01:03.300
Like, well, I usually ask in the following way,
link |
01:01:05.500
like, how the fuck am I so lucky?
link |
01:01:07.220
Like, who am I being, am I a robot
link |
01:01:11.100
being controlled by somebody else?
link |
01:01:12.540
Or like, how is this my life right now?
link |
01:01:16.340
What is happening?
link |
01:01:17.180
It really does feel like a simulation.
link |
01:01:18.780
So let me just speak to several things.
link |
01:01:22.060
First of all, I have no boss.
link |
01:01:25.300
I know of nor am I controlled
link |
01:01:29.180
by any intelligence agencies of any nation.
link |
01:01:32.460
We're going to get you a dog, Lex.
link |
01:01:34.940
So that I could talk to.
link |
01:01:37.140
I'm scared of getting a dog
link |
01:01:38.420
because I would fall in love so deeply, I think.
link |
01:01:41.580
Next time I'm bringing a puppy.
link |
01:01:43.700
I'm just going to bring a puppy
link |
01:01:44.540
and I'm going to leave it here.
link |
01:01:46.900
And then you'll never see me again.
link |
01:01:48.540
I mean, I love dogs so much.
link |
01:01:50.300
But I was also surprised and maybe,
link |
01:01:55.740
I have never talked to an intelligence agency,
link |
01:02:00.540
which is very interesting to me.
link |
01:02:02.380
Like, I haven't.
link |
01:02:03.500
That you're aware of.
link |
01:02:05.060
Cause they're very good at communicating.
link |
01:02:07.780
Right.
link |
01:02:08.620
But I've been very suspicious on this exact point.
link |
01:02:10.980
That's the downside of kind of being an introvert,
link |
01:02:15.500
having anxiety about social interaction,
link |
01:02:17.460
but then having so much love thrown your way
link |
01:02:20.180
because we connect over podcasts.
link |
01:02:21.860
Podcasts have a powerful way of connecting people.
link |
01:02:24.540
So people come with you with love that I really love.
link |
01:02:28.220
I appreciate, but I wonder like exactly this question,
link |
01:02:32.220
like why is this person with a Russian accent talking to me
link |
01:02:37.380
and showing me so much love?
link |
01:02:39.180
Well, because, sorry to interrupt you again,
link |
01:02:41.100
but it's what we do.
link |
01:02:44.100
And it's a sign of interest, by the way, too.
link |
01:02:46.340
Sometimes. Sometimes.
link |
01:02:47.620
Yeah, I have a colleague at Stanford
link |
01:02:49.020
and she said, you know, interruption 75% of the time
link |
01:02:53.260
is a sign of real interest in what the person is saying,
link |
01:02:55.740
if nothing else.
link |
01:02:57.540
Well, you're very lovable.
link |
01:03:00.740
Well, that, that, but,
link |
01:03:01.660
I mean, I learned about a hedgehog in the fog from you.
link |
01:03:04.460
Yeah.
link |
01:03:05.300
You know, when I learned, you know, you're very lovable.
link |
01:03:07.940
People love you because you're lovable.
link |
01:03:09.700
I love, love.
link |
01:03:10.540
Okay. So 100%.
link |
01:03:12.460
And it's, I mean, especially here in Austin, Texas,
link |
01:03:14.780
people are so, so amazing.
link |
01:03:17.060
I go just hugs and just, ah, I love people.
link |
01:03:19.780
Do you want a family?
link |
01:03:20.740
Or are you eventually?
link |
01:03:21.580
100%.
link |
01:03:22.420
I mean, you're, I take what you said as a challenge
link |
01:03:26.140
in terms of having a family with kids
link |
01:03:28.860
and they do jiu jitsu and obviously defeat you
link |
01:03:32.220
and make you miserable for your failures as a father
link |
01:03:37.220
because you couldn't.
link |
01:03:39.540
But you're gonna be a great dad.
link |
01:03:40.900
Build up an army of good jiu jitsu people.
link |
01:03:43.060
But yes, I would love a family.
link |
01:03:44.820
I would love to have children.
link |
01:03:47.100
But I just want to finish that point
link |
01:03:49.580
because I'm nervous about it.
link |
01:03:50.580
I'm nervous about the way people perceive.
link |
01:03:52.780
What you're seeing is a Forrest Gump type character.
link |
01:03:54.940
Like what, who I am, I seem to be,
link |
01:03:58.100
and this is how like the world seems to work,
link |
01:04:00.700
is you just try, you try to be yourself.
link |
01:04:03.420
Like you try to find yourself.
link |
01:04:05.540
That's maybe the better way to say it.
link |
01:04:07.220
And just be that.
link |
01:04:10.740
Be kind to people.
link |
01:04:12.620
Work your ass off.
link |
01:04:14.580
And say F you to anybody that wants to control you
link |
01:04:19.460
or to tell you what to do.
link |
01:04:21.460
Just be free.
link |
01:04:22.700
And then put love out there in the world.
link |
01:04:24.500
And doors open.
link |
01:04:25.380
This karma thing seems to work.
link |
01:04:28.780
Like how the hell, my friends as you know,
link |
01:04:32.820
how the hell did I get a chance to eat barbecue
link |
01:04:35.620
with Rick Rubin, right?
link |
01:04:37.060
Like doors.
link |
01:04:38.180
You guys had a barbecue?
link |
01:04:39.020
Yeah, I had barbecue.
link |
01:04:40.380
He, right, of course I did.
link |
01:04:42.420
He's from New York.
link |
01:04:43.260
Any New Yorker that I know has very high standards for food
link |
01:04:46.900
because bad restaurants don't last long in New York.
link |
01:04:49.300
And barbecue counts as?
link |
01:04:50.780
Oh yeah.
link |
01:04:51.620
Oh yeah, Texas barbecue.
link |
01:04:52.860
Well, you know, I would also add that you,
link |
01:04:56.780
whether or not you realize it or not,
link |
01:04:57.900
you took tremendous risk.
link |
01:04:59.460
I mean, we come from the same original community,
link |
01:05:01.260
which is academic science, right?
link |
01:05:03.220
And to be at MIT and to start posting lectures online
link |
01:05:07.620
is risky, right?
link |
01:05:09.460
To, you know, I was third or fourth man in
link |
01:05:12.700
in terms of podcasting as an academic.
link |
01:05:14.620
Cause you had gone on Rogan many times,
link |
01:05:16.980
David Sinclair had gone on there.
link |
01:05:18.500
You know, especially before the pandemic,
link |
01:05:22.580
you just didn't see many academics and scientists
link |
01:05:24.340
talking in a public facing way.
link |
01:05:26.900
So you took tremendous risk, right?
link |
01:05:29.020
You took tremendous risk
link |
01:05:30.180
always wearing that jacket and tie, right?
link |
01:05:33.380
The only time I haven't seen you in that truly
link |
01:05:35.020
is when we rolled jujitsu, which is,
link |
01:05:36.820
and I hear I'm being generous to myself saying
link |
01:05:38.420
I rolled jujitsu when basically you choked me out
link |
01:05:40.300
in front of hundreds of people.
link |
01:05:41.140
Thank you for doing that.
link |
01:05:41.980
It was, it was great fun.
link |
01:05:44.700
And I...
link |
01:05:45.780
Thank you for doing that.
link |
01:05:46.700
To have a beginner's mind is a beautiful thing.
link |
01:05:48.620
I have admittedly, I have not been taking the classes,
link |
01:05:51.260
but I'm going to, I truly am.
link |
01:05:54.060
Especially there's a small chance I might find myself
link |
01:05:56.620
in Austin a bit more often in the near future.
link |
01:05:59.420
But the...
link |
01:06:00.380
Well, if you're out in San Francisco,
link |
01:06:01.620
you should train with Mark Zuckerberg.
link |
01:06:02.860
He just started, so there you go.
link |
01:06:04.220
Oh yeah?
link |
01:06:05.060
You guys can...
link |
01:06:05.900
Interesting.
link |
01:06:07.940
Sure.
link |
01:06:09.180
I mean, he's actually,
link |
01:06:10.540
I mean, people listen to an episode,
link |
01:06:12.380
perhaps he's a fascinating human being too.
link |
01:06:14.140
I listened to it, it was great.
link |
01:06:15.820
You took tremendous risk as an academic to do what you did.
link |
01:06:19.740
So I do believe that when one takes intelligent risk,
link |
01:06:24.140
because you can die or can crash your career,
link |
01:06:26.300
you can do all sorts of self destructive
link |
01:06:28.820
or destructive things when taking risks.
link |
01:06:31.180
You took risks and they paid off, right?
link |
01:06:33.460
And you take different risks at different stages,
link |
01:06:35.220
but I don't throw around the word admiration lightly.
link |
01:06:38.940
I mean, I admire that you were in this classroom at MIT.
link |
01:06:41.500
You're like, I'm gonna film this and put it online.
link |
01:06:44.460
One of your early interviews is with Ido Portal,
link |
01:06:47.020
who's very hard to get to.
link |
01:06:49.140
I've communicated with Ido a few times.
link |
01:06:50.820
You should definitely talk to him.
link |
01:06:51.740
I can't wait to talk to him.
link |
01:06:53.020
I'm dying to talk to him.
link |
01:06:54.180
I was supposed to do some course teaching with him
link |
01:06:57.460
right before the pandemic hit,
link |
01:06:58.740
and then it got canceled because he couldn't travel,
link |
01:07:00.700
but getting to him is exceedingly challenging.
link |
01:07:02.980
So you do have this incredible ability to get to people
link |
01:07:06.380
and for them to trust you and know you.
link |
01:07:09.900
And I think it's through your authenticity.
link |
01:07:12.380
And I think it's the fact that you're willing to go places
link |
01:07:15.060
where people haven't been before.
link |
01:07:16.780
You know, this is, what's the saying about pioneers?
link |
01:07:19.540
How do you spot the pioneers?
link |
01:07:20.860
They're the people with the arrows in their backs.
link |
01:07:23.060
You know, so that's the, you know, yeah.
link |
01:07:26.260
And that's actually a quote that I lifted
link |
01:07:28.220
from Terry Siknowski, who's a, you know.
link |
01:07:30.820
You should talk to Terry.
link |
01:07:34.340
He's a computational neuroscientist
link |
01:07:37.620
down at the Salk Institute,
link |
01:07:39.460
Howard Hughes investigator, et cetera.
link |
01:07:40.820
But so, you know, taking risks
link |
01:07:43.420
that other people have not taken is, that's a real thing.
link |
01:07:48.300
And to do it with integrity and rigor, that's a real thing.
link |
01:07:53.220
And so, yeah, I'm complimenting you
link |
01:07:55.180
and I hope it lands and lands deeply.
link |
01:07:57.980
But I also hope that people will hear that
link |
01:07:59.460
and understand that it's one thing
link |
01:08:01.700
to do what other people are already doing boldly.
link |
01:08:06.380
It's a whole other thing to launch an entire art form
link |
01:08:10.540
or venue and you did that.
link |
01:08:12.860
And you didn't write a book, hopefully you will someday,
link |
01:08:15.580
but you didn't go write a book.
link |
01:08:16.540
A lot of academics have written books.
link |
01:08:18.460
You went online.
link |
01:08:19.940
Jordan Peterson, another controversial character.
link |
01:08:22.020
He did it too, all those lectures that he filmed.
link |
01:08:24.420
And then it's led to this other thing.
link |
01:08:26.060
So, you know, there's karma.
link |
01:08:30.180
And then there's also having the spine
link |
01:08:32.780
to just put it all on the line
link |
01:08:34.740
and do something for which there is no prior example
link |
01:08:38.860
to hold onto while you go through those headwinds.
link |
01:08:43.020
The really fascinating thing,
link |
01:08:44.100
and actually a lot of people tell me about you,
link |
01:08:46.500
Andrew Huberman, like the reach of a podcast
link |
01:08:51.500
is really fascinating.
link |
01:08:53.020
It's not the numbers of people listen.
link |
01:08:56.100
I don't know if that's important at all.
link |
01:08:59.420
Is what's important is like the depth of connection
link |
01:09:02.460
you have with certain people.
link |
01:09:04.180
It really moves them.
link |
01:09:05.420
Like a great, and like they really get you.
link |
01:09:08.540
So there's a lot of big Andrew Huberman fans
link |
01:09:11.220
that really get you.
link |
01:09:12.620
It's not just the science.
link |
01:09:13.940
It's the stuff between the lines.
link |
01:09:15.860
It's Costello.
link |
01:09:16.900
It's the whole picture of a scientist
link |
01:09:18.980
that finds beauty in biology and reveals it.
link |
01:09:22.100
And they love you for it.
link |
01:09:23.300
You know, because it was on television at the time,
link |
01:09:28.220
I followed that Amanda Knox story pretty carefully.
link |
01:09:31.660
And I don't watch television,
link |
01:09:33.260
but whenever I would travel,
link |
01:09:34.740
if there was a TV on the airplane,
link |
01:09:37.140
I would find myself getting wrapped into things
link |
01:09:39.380
like locked up abroad, you know, like,
link |
01:09:42.220
and these things where they would make you terrified
link |
01:09:44.100
to travel anywhere, let alone commit a crime overseas.
link |
01:09:47.220
You know, the scenes of some of these prisons
link |
01:09:49.540
are so dramatic.
link |
01:09:50.580
And, you know, I mean, her case got a ton of interest.
link |
01:09:52.500
And then I, you know, she went and then was a student
link |
01:09:55.620
at the University of Washington
link |
01:09:57.220
and has talked quite openly about, you know,
link |
01:09:59.660
how she was treated and how people assume guilt
link |
01:10:02.620
and, you know, and eventually, you know,
link |
01:10:04.140
she was exonerated and, you know,
link |
01:10:05.940
we can only go by what we know what the law determined,
link |
01:10:08.460
but, you know, these are people that
link |
01:10:11.420
the world is fascinated by.
link |
01:10:13.580
I would, I'm guessing about a third of people
link |
01:10:15.540
have already decided this person is despicable.
link |
01:10:18.220
Why would you ever give them an audience?
link |
01:10:20.540
About a third of people I think are open to,
link |
01:10:24.140
or at least interested in learning more about them.
link |
01:10:27.100
And then I think the remaining third,
link |
01:10:29.180
kind of the third that the category that I put myself in,
link |
01:10:32.820
which is what can I learn about people and myself,
link |
01:10:37.940
even in my revulsion, right?
link |
01:10:41.100
What can I learn?
link |
01:10:42.540
Yeah, what can I learn about myself
link |
01:10:44.180
from listening to this conversation
link |
01:10:45.700
with somebody that I like to think,
link |
01:10:48.220
I'm not talking about Amanda here,
link |
01:10:49.300
I'm talking about the other people that you're talking about
link |
01:10:50.740
that I don't, I can't relate to, right?
link |
01:10:54.500
Hearing conversations with and about people
link |
01:10:57.300
that you cannot relate to is informative.
link |
01:10:59.740
Otherwise, your whole mind literally becomes insular.
link |
01:11:03.660
Well, there's an interesting thing I also had to,
link |
01:11:07.260
ever since the war in Ukraine broke out,
link |
01:11:09.620
one of the questions I was asking myself,
link |
01:11:13.420
and this is not to be dramatic,
link |
01:11:15.180
it's just a very simple, honest question
link |
01:11:17.740
that I think a lot of journalists
link |
01:11:19.180
that operate in the war zone,
link |
01:11:21.060
or documentary filmmakers
link |
01:11:22.780
that ever since they got a chance to meet,
link |
01:11:24.740
have to be honest with themselves,
link |
01:11:27.300
are you willing to put at risk your life for things you do?
link |
01:11:34.860
What are you willing to die for?
link |
01:11:36.020
Yeah, what are you willing to die for?
link |
01:11:37.460
It sounds very dramatic, but whenever risk goes up,
link |
01:11:44.140
I mean, I don't know, you asked that
link |
01:11:46.060
if you wanna take a trip out to space
link |
01:11:48.740
on a commercial space flight,
link |
01:11:51.300
you have to, are you willing to die for this journey?
link |
01:11:56.220
Now, the odds, they're really small.
link |
01:11:58.020
I just watched Apollo 13 again.
link |
01:12:00.180
Great movie.
link |
01:12:01.300
I'm not going to space.
link |
01:12:02.780
I'm not going to space.
link |
01:12:05.660
Afraid of heights?
link |
01:12:06.580
No, I'm not afraid of heights.
link |
01:12:08.420
I just, it feels like a terrible place to die.
link |
01:12:13.820
Well, first of all, death anywhere is not great.
link |
01:12:17.020
Yeah, although, I have a song teed up in my phone.
link |
01:12:21.500
If the plane starts to go down,
link |
01:12:24.260
I'm gonna spend the last few.
link |
01:12:25.540
It's a rare song.
link |
01:12:26.420
Nobody knows it.
link |
01:12:27.260
It's a song off a B track of my favorite band,
link |
01:12:29.780
which is Rancid.
link |
01:12:30.620
It's a song called The Sentence.
link |
01:12:32.020
And nobody, and I love it.
link |
01:12:34.060
And I listen to it almost every day.
link |
01:12:36.340
Rancid, The Sentence, it's called The Sentence?
link |
01:12:38.180
The band is called Rancid, famous band, relatively.
link |
01:12:41.700
Love those guys, love their music.
link |
01:12:43.220
And the song is The Sentence.
link |
01:12:44.700
You can only find it on like a B side or outtake.
link |
01:12:46.900
And it's, if you don't know how to decipher
link |
01:12:49.860
Tim Armstrong's voice,
link |
01:12:50.900
then you probably won't understand the lyrics.
link |
01:12:52.460
But because it's sung very, very fast.
link |
01:12:55.340
But if the plane ever goes,
link |
01:12:56.420
anytime there's turbulence,
link |
01:12:57.380
I put that thing in, I put the headphones in.
link |
01:12:59.020
I'm like, well, you know, if it's time, it's time.
link |
01:13:01.060
I'm gonna go out like this.
link |
01:13:02.340
I don't wanna drift off into the galaxy,
link |
01:13:04.180
just slowly asphyxiating and freezing to death.
link |
01:13:06.420
That sounds horrible.
link |
01:13:08.060
Just like I wouldn't wanna drown or burn.
link |
01:13:09.500
But on a plane is okay?
link |
01:13:10.860
Well, on a plane, I mean, like,
link |
01:13:11.820
if the thing starts going down
link |
01:13:13.060
and there's truly nothing you can do,
link |
01:13:15.100
you might as well at least listen to your favorite song.
link |
01:13:17.180
Yeah, true, true.
link |
01:13:18.140
I'll probably go with The Pixies,
link |
01:13:19.220
Where's My Mind, like from Fight Club.
link |
01:13:21.500
And just the calmness, just sit back,
link |
01:13:23.580
like the musicians playing at the Titanic.
link |
01:13:26.340
I didn't know you were a Pixies fan.
link |
01:13:27.420
I'm gonna have to.
link |
01:13:28.260
Not so much a Pixies fan.
link |
01:13:29.740
Actually, I should say that I just,
link |
01:13:32.660
that was the, Where's My Mind was the chosen song
link |
01:13:35.980
for Fight Club at the end when the buildings
link |
01:13:39.660
are coming down or something like that.
link |
01:13:41.900
So that there's certain songs that just fit just right
link |
01:13:46.820
for the collapse of human civilization
link |
01:13:49.140
and you're calmly appreciating, like,
link |
01:13:54.220
that that's just it.
link |
01:13:55.500
This is how absurd this life is at any moment it can end.
link |
01:13:58.100
And this is it.
link |
01:14:01.380
I love how we both have death and demise soundtracks.
link |
01:14:05.460
It's just a question when you're an academic,
link |
01:14:08.420
doesn't come up often.
link |
01:14:10.460
Right, well.
link |
01:14:11.300
Yeah, there are some academics that are bold and brave.
link |
01:14:15.940
It's not a phenotype.
link |
01:14:17.980
Being bold and brave in the physical world
link |
01:14:19.700
is not a common phenotype of academics.
link |
01:14:22.100
I mean, the great neurologist, one of my,
link |
01:14:24.260
I don't have many heroes, but Oliver Sacks is a true hero.
link |
01:14:27.780
I mean, people think of him as a writer,
link |
01:14:30.340
but he was foremost a neurologist
link |
01:14:32.140
and he took tremendous pushback from the neurology community
link |
01:14:36.660
for doing his books and his articles.
link |
01:14:39.020
He has a great biography called On the Move.
link |
01:14:40.940
There's a wonderful documentary
link |
01:14:42.100
that just came out about him.
link |
01:14:42.980
He died in 2015.
link |
01:14:44.660
I'm actually kind of a collector of his things,
link |
01:14:50.100
but he, tremendous, but he was accused of horrible things
link |
01:14:53.900
until the movie Awakenings came out
link |
01:14:56.260
with De Niro and Robin Williams.
link |
01:14:58.020
Amazing movie, by the way, people don't,
link |
01:15:00.100
they seem to not say great things about the movie.
link |
01:15:02.260
I love that movie.
link |
01:15:03.100
It was amazing.
link |
01:15:04.140
And it was only once he became famous from that movie
link |
01:15:08.460
that his more academic work started
link |
01:15:11.260
to receive any kind of attention
link |
01:15:12.940
and he was invited back to Columbia and NYU.
link |
01:15:15.380
You know, the New York Neuroscience Mafia is a real thing.
link |
01:15:18.140
And yes, you know who you are.
link |
01:15:20.140
And some of them are actually coming on the broadcast.
link |
01:15:22.580
They are...
link |
01:15:25.340
I think we talked offline about this.
link |
01:15:26.900
We should start a mafia to fight off
link |
01:15:30.060
whatever's going on in the East Coast.
link |
01:15:31.620
Although I'm still at MIT, so I don't know how that works,
link |
01:15:33.980
but Boston is different than New York.
link |
01:15:36.020
Yeah, so I have tremendous respect
link |
01:15:37.420
for science done in New York.
link |
01:15:38.780
Don't get me wrong.
link |
01:15:39.620
They are excellent scientists.
link |
01:15:41.220
It's just a very different culture than on the West Coast.
link |
01:15:44.500
And the personalities, the personalities...
link |
01:15:46.780
Tremendous respect for the mob.
link |
01:15:48.900
Well, and the personalities are a bit more grandiose.
link |
01:15:53.700
However, because of some of the shift
link |
01:15:56.260
in science culture in the last few years,
link |
01:15:59.300
things around scandals and things of that sort,
link |
01:16:03.580
they've been forced to tamp down some of their personality
link |
01:16:07.180
or at least their outspoken personality.
link |
01:16:09.380
And I actually think it's revealed something
link |
01:16:11.140
really important and useful in science,
link |
01:16:12.740
which is it used to be the case
link |
01:16:15.180
you could really inject your personality into what you do.
link |
01:16:19.540
Richard Feynman is a good example.
link |
01:16:21.900
If he did today what he did then,
link |
01:16:25.060
bongo drumming on the roof of Caltech naked,
link |
01:16:28.660
working out theorems in strip clubs and things of that,
link |
01:16:31.620
he would have lost his job in moments.
link |
01:16:35.500
So that kind of behavior isn't celebrated anymore.
link |
01:16:37.740
It's actually punished.
link |
01:16:39.460
And I'm only half kidding
link |
01:16:40.540
about this New York neuroscience mafia,
link |
01:16:42.260
but because I now exist in multiple realms,
link |
01:16:44.140
I can say these sorts of things.
link |
01:16:45.220
And I, again, admiration and respect,
link |
01:16:47.340
but I will say that I think it's important
link |
01:16:50.460
that people in science and kids that are curious
link |
01:16:53.380
about science understand that you can have any personality
link |
01:16:58.060
provided that you're ethical and respectful in science
link |
01:17:01.220
and do well, right?
link |
01:17:03.020
There are true bench scientists
link |
01:17:05.500
that just want to be at the bench.
link |
01:17:07.060
There are people that just want to be in their office.
link |
01:17:08.580
There are people that really enjoy public speaking.
link |
01:17:11.580
And there are people that love meetings
link |
01:17:12.980
and there are people that hate crowds.
link |
01:17:14.220
And so there's a place for everybody,
link |
01:17:16.140
truly a place for everybody in science.
link |
01:17:19.020
I would like to be able to shine light
link |
01:17:21.300
on the fact that there are,
link |
01:17:23.180
you can have a shy personality, an outgoing personality,
link |
01:17:27.580
and you can, all of those can be,
link |
01:17:30.740
have excellent careers in science,
link |
01:17:32.420
but you have to find the community in place
link |
01:17:34.140
that's right for you.
link |
01:17:34.980
One reason I like Stanford
link |
01:17:36.580
is that Stanford is very much about the future.
link |
01:17:39.620
We have Nobel prize winners,
link |
01:17:40.980
we have field medal winners and all that stuff,
link |
01:17:43.020
and their names are on walls
link |
01:17:44.260
and we acknowledge their great works.
link |
01:17:46.100
But most of what you hear about in the halls of Stanford
link |
01:17:49.060
is about what's happening now and what could happen next.
link |
01:17:52.420
It's really about the future.
link |
01:17:53.980
Whereas when I've spent time at other institutions
link |
01:17:55.940
not to be named, you hear that,
link |
01:17:58.340
but there's a lot of kind of recycling and regurgitation
link |
01:18:02.060
of how wonderful people are
link |
01:18:03.620
based on things they did previously.
link |
01:18:05.820
And the students at Stanford, because of Silicon Valley,
link |
01:18:09.260
sure, they have respect for Nobel prizes,
link |
01:18:10.980
they're delighted to be learning from
link |
01:18:12.140
and surrounded by all these great minds,
link |
01:18:14.140
but they're mostly interested
link |
01:18:15.460
in what they are gonna create.
link |
01:18:17.660
And so I kind of, not kind of,
link |
01:18:19.980
I really like the shift toward possibility
link |
01:18:23.260
as opposed to things that are steeped in tradition.
link |
01:18:26.420
You know, I've never been to high table dinner at Oxford,
link |
01:18:28.660
I'm sure it's a wonderful experience.
link |
01:18:30.540
I'm also not sure what purpose it serves for the world,
link |
01:18:35.140
but I've never been,
link |
01:18:36.260
and so I don't know what the conversations are,
link |
01:18:37.740
and so maybe I'm, you know, speaking out of line here.
link |
01:18:40.860
And then now I'm definitely not getting invited.
link |
01:18:43.060
No, you're definitely getting invited.
link |
01:18:44.860
But yeah, I'm with you,
link |
01:18:45.740
the culture's picked the right ones for you.
link |
01:18:48.180
That's why I like MIT, the spirit of it.
link |
01:18:51.980
To me, it's not about the past or the future,
link |
01:18:55.140
it's about just tinkering and having fun,
link |
01:18:58.180
building cool stuff.
link |
01:18:59.500
Like the big ambitious projects, it's there.
link |
01:19:03.500
I mean, it may be more in the biology and the health side,
link |
01:19:06.620
but like the engineering side,
link |
01:19:08.740
it doesn't matter if this has any impact,
link |
01:19:10.780
let us build the coolest thing the world has ever built.
link |
01:19:13.780
Well, whenever I'm in Kendall Square,
link |
01:19:16.580
I've seen, they have those buildings there
link |
01:19:18.780
that actually tilt toward the ground.
link |
01:19:20.380
These are these, the architecture of MIT
link |
01:19:22.460
is also really impressive.
link |
01:19:24.060
Yeah, this, he pulled up,
link |
01:19:25.500
Sergei just pulled up Yilmaz tweet.
link |
01:19:27.380
I'm inspired by curiosity.
link |
01:19:28.820
That is what drives me.
link |
01:19:30.180
So let us expand the scope and scale of consciousness
link |
01:19:32.980
so that we may aspire to understand the universe.
link |
01:19:35.700
Those are like three tweets in one,
link |
01:19:37.220
but curiosity, yeah, yeah, curiosity for its own sake.
link |
01:19:41.700
What's that saying?
link |
01:19:43.620
I think Dorothy Parker said,
link |
01:19:46.260
the cure for boredom is curiosity.
link |
01:19:48.580
There is no cure for curiosity.
link |
01:19:51.460
And you need to celebrate.
link |
01:19:52.580
So let me just briefly mention
link |
01:19:54.900
to my lovely friends at MIT
link |
01:20:00.580
to celebrate different weirdness,
link |
01:20:03.220
to celebrate the weird characters.
link |
01:20:06.020
I've, I sometimes get loving pressure
link |
01:20:10.780
from my lovely friends at MIT
link |
01:20:15.020
to tone down the weirdness a bit.
link |
01:20:18.580
Really?
link |
01:20:19.420
Even from MIT?
link |
01:20:20.460
I'm very fortunate to have a lot of leverage
link |
01:20:24.980
to where I have completely resist the pressure,
link |
01:20:29.140
but I'm very sure that there's young faculty
link |
01:20:32.500
that with that subtle pressure would...
link |
01:20:37.340
Dissolve them into a puddle of tears.
link |
01:20:39.860
Not, no, no.
link |
01:20:40.700
Oh, they're from Boston, excuse me.
link |
01:20:41.860
From Boston, that's right.
link |
01:20:42.900
They're tougher than that.
link |
01:20:43.740
That's right, but it's a slight nudging
link |
01:20:45.820
towards conformity that I think ultimately destroys,
link |
01:20:51.340
or at least lessens the power of the kind of science
link |
01:20:56.660
that you can do when you encourage diversity.
link |
01:21:00.220
Diversity in all of its forms,
link |
01:21:02.420
including the weirdness of ideas,
link |
01:21:04.220
the out of the box thinkers,
link |
01:21:05.820
including the flamboyant behavior online,
link |
01:21:10.260
how you choose to educate, how you choose to inspire.
link |
01:21:13.860
People talk about freedom of speech,
link |
01:21:15.260
but it's not just freedom of speech
link |
01:21:17.820
to say controversial things.
link |
01:21:20.320
It's also freedom of speech to be weird.
link |
01:21:23.140
If you're, for some reason, fascinated in...
link |
01:21:27.060
You look at Elon Musk.
link |
01:21:28.100
He talks about sex a lot.
link |
01:21:29.660
Let the guy put sex memes up.
link |
01:21:31.740
Who cares?
link |
01:21:33.060
I mean, I feel like Elon can do basically whatever he wants.
link |
01:21:36.400
Right, there's no pressure,
link |
01:21:37.640
but there's a bunch of Elons in the academic world.
link |
01:21:40.380
There's a bunch of Elons.
link |
01:21:42.440
No, actually, sorry.
link |
01:21:43.480
Let me backtrack, because the man deserves props.
link |
01:21:47.100
Right, he's unparalleled.
link |
01:21:48.780
He's a CEO of major companies.
link |
01:21:50.480
You better believe there's pressure
link |
01:21:53.260
to behave more like a CEO,
link |
01:21:55.000
as opposed to a giggling schoolboy
link |
01:21:57.660
who's posting memes throughout the night.
link |
01:22:00.140
But that is him.
link |
01:22:02.060
And that freedom, that's what freedom looks like.
link |
01:22:06.060
I talk to a lot of CEOs,
link |
01:22:08.100
and a lot of them feel like caged birds
link |
01:22:13.940
who have long ago forgotten how to sing, quite honestly.
link |
01:22:17.740
Like, there's like shareholders,
link |
01:22:20.740
and they come up with excuses for themselves.
link |
01:22:22.660
Here's why I have to be this way, you have to understand.
link |
01:22:25.660
So on, there's PR, there's marketing people,
link |
01:22:27.820
there's lawyers, there's all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:22:30.300
But the final result is the authenticity is suffocated.
link |
01:22:35.080
The beautiful weirdness of a CEO,
link |
01:22:38.460
of a leader, of a creator, of a scientist, all that,
link |
01:22:41.660
that's all gone.
link |
01:22:45.060
Well, Steve Jobs wouldn't have kept his job
link |
01:22:49.100
in acting the way he did in his 20s and 30s
link |
01:22:52.100
in today's climate.
link |
01:22:53.540
But he probably would have updated his protocols,
link |
01:22:57.200
so to speak. A little bit,
link |
01:22:58.040
but maybe.
link |
01:22:59.740
You know, you're screaming at employees.
link |
01:23:01.100
I mean, these are anecdotes, right?
link |
01:23:02.940
I call them anecdata,
link |
01:23:04.440
because people treat them as data,
link |
01:23:05.780
but they're really just anecdotes.
link |
01:23:07.160
We don't know, I wasn't there.
link |
01:23:09.700
But, you know, I like the idea of authenticity
link |
01:23:14.300
without oversharing, right?
link |
01:23:16.500
You're very authentic, but there are aspects to your life
link |
01:23:19.620
that I'm aware of that your audiences will never be aware of,
link |
01:23:22.340
and there are aspects of your life
link |
01:23:23.280
that I'll never be aware of.
link |
01:23:24.380
And so you're still authentic, but.
link |
01:23:26.540
Yeah, wait, which ones are you aware of?
link |
01:23:29.500
People are gonna wonder, like,
link |
01:23:30.620
what is, is he up in sex dungeon?
link |
01:23:32.860
What is this?
link |
01:23:33.700
No, no, no, no.
link |
01:23:35.380
But interesting choice of examples.
link |
01:23:39.300
No, but I think that, you know,
link |
01:23:42.220
people lose the careers on the basis
link |
01:23:44.940
of the movement of their thumbs, right?
link |
01:23:47.460
I mean, the chair of psychiatry at Columbia
link |
01:23:50.360
recently lost his position based on a response to a tweet.
link |
01:23:55.380
People can look that up.
link |
01:23:56.220
This is one of the most famous psychiatry departments
link |
01:23:58.260
in the world.
link |
01:23:59.240
And he put something out there
link |
01:24:01.000
that was very insensitive, frankly.
link |
01:24:03.060
And everyone that I talked to about it was like,
link |
01:24:06.300
gosh, that was very, very insensitive,
link |
01:24:09.060
not thoughtful at all.
link |
01:24:10.080
And he lost his job, right?
link |
01:24:11.940
Or at least had to step down.
link |
01:24:12.960
I don't know the specifics.
link |
01:24:14.260
So, you know, I think I read someplace
link |
01:24:18.680
that more than half of the job loss due to online behavior
link |
01:24:22.700
is because people were trying to be funny, right?
link |
01:24:25.940
I mean, not everyone can pull off what Tim Dillon.
link |
01:24:29.760
Oh, and by the way, congratulations.
link |
01:24:30.980
I heard that you and Tim just got married.
link |
01:24:32.500
Yeah, I saw that too.
link |
01:24:33.340
No, no, we didn't just get married.
link |
01:24:34.180
Engaged.
link |
01:24:35.000
He proposed.
link |
01:24:35.840
Yeah, got it, got it, got it.
link |
01:24:36.680
And I said, yes.
link |
01:24:37.580
Right.
link |
01:24:38.420
So some people can get away.
link |
01:24:40.380
Oh, yeah.
link |
01:24:41.220
Thank you.
link |
01:24:42.040
Thank you, Sergey.
link |
01:24:42.880
Has that ready to go.
link |
01:24:43.720
See those 13.3 thousand likes?
link |
01:24:46.140
One of those is mine.
link |
01:24:48.140
So for people who are not aware,
link |
01:24:49.760
one of the days in April tweeted that Tim Dillon
link |
01:24:52.980
asked me to get married and I said, yes.
link |
01:24:55.180
I think Tim said, the wedding will be on 6th Street
link |
01:24:59.380
in Austin, bring all of your weapons,
link |
01:25:01.280
which of course is totally inappropriate.
link |
01:25:03.320
This is, I was like PG funny,
link |
01:25:08.900
and he's goes rated R funny right away.
link |
01:25:12.620
But that said, I mean, if there's anyone
link |
01:25:17.180
I would like to get married with,
link |
01:25:19.380
it's that guy and we would do it in Austin
link |
01:25:21.340
and it would be epic.
link |
01:25:24.460
It would be like the wedding from November rain, one of the,
link |
01:25:31.500
Mr. and Mrs.
link |
01:25:32.540
Oh, wow.
link |
01:25:33.380
Oh, Mr. and Mr., I apologize.
link |
01:25:34.340
Wow, yeah, and you broke tradition with the jacket color.
link |
01:25:38.820
So it sounds to me that you are a free speech absolutist.
link |
01:25:42.780
I think freedom is really important
link |
01:25:44.540
and that includes letting people who are hateful,
link |
01:25:48.460
letting people who are controversial
link |
01:25:51.220
have a voice on platforms.
link |
01:25:53.140
But it becomes, I'm not sure what exactly to think
link |
01:25:57.140
because I also treasure the quiet voices
link |
01:26:03.380
in the back of the room.
link |
01:26:05.540
And sometimes the assholes silence those voices,
link |
01:26:10.620
meaning by being loud and obnoxious and so on,
link |
01:26:14.300
it pushes away the thoughtful people.
link |
01:26:16.460
So I'm also a fan of creating communities.
link |
01:26:19.340
Like you should be able to let people kind of
link |
01:26:23.980
build a community that's positive, that's loving,
link |
01:26:27.580
or that's constantly trolling, or that's super hateful.
link |
01:26:33.940
All those communities should have a place in the world.
link |
01:26:37.100
But like the thing I've noticed is that
link |
01:26:41.980
hate can destroy, a community full of hate
link |
01:26:44.860
can destroy a community full of love
link |
01:26:46.820
easier than a community full of love
link |
01:26:49.540
can overtake one with hate.
link |
01:26:51.020
And so you have to kind of, I don't know exactly how,
link |
01:26:54.020
but create digital mechanisms that discourage
link |
01:26:58.760
the collision of these communities.
link |
01:27:00.340
They should all have a platform and ability to speak
link |
01:27:03.900
to a large audience, but you have to be careful
link |
01:27:06.880
to protect that like little flame of connection
link |
01:27:11.540
that people have.
link |
01:27:12.380
Yeah, that's good, the goodness, it sounds like, I mean,
link |
01:27:17.140
yeah, I think in any great city like New York,
link |
01:27:20.220
which I love, by the way, you wanna have a symphony
link |
01:27:24.020
in an opera house and you want some punk rock shows
link |
01:27:26.100
happening on the Lower East Side, you want all of that.
link |
01:27:29.540
You just don't necessarily want them to overlap.
link |
01:27:32.180
In terms of social media and then podcasts and engagement,
link |
01:27:36.060
one thing that I decided very early on
link |
01:27:38.600
is was to encourage comments and feedback, et cetera.
link |
01:27:41.260
But I have in my mind what I call classroom rules.
link |
01:27:44.980
You've taught in the university
link |
01:27:46.180
and then you teach in the university
link |
01:27:48.040
and you establish a certain etiquette within the classroom
link |
01:27:51.580
of the kinds of questions that you'll tolerate, right?
link |
01:27:54.140
So there's always the student that's gonna ask a question,
link |
01:27:56.300
which is basically a 10 minute monologue
link |
01:27:58.340
about their experience that really isn't a question
link |
01:28:00.100
that pertains to a lot of people.
link |
01:28:01.540
So you politely discourage that kind of question
link |
01:28:04.580
and you encourage the kinds of questions
link |
01:28:05.820
that are likely to be in the minds of many other students.
link |
01:28:08.180
It's just more efficient that way.
link |
01:28:09.500
Or not politely, which is more, you know,
link |
01:28:12.740
I try and respond to comments and I try and respond,
link |
01:28:15.160
but also, you know, there's this,
link |
01:28:16.460
also this really interesting question.
link |
01:28:17.820
Now, if you block people or restrict people,
link |
01:28:20.620
people think that you're somehow afraid
link |
01:28:22.080
of the information that they're posting,
link |
01:28:23.780
but that's often not the case.
link |
01:28:25.580
I'm not in the habit of blocking
link |
01:28:26.740
or restricting too many people.
link |
01:28:27.820
Occasionally we've had to do it
link |
01:28:29.380
only because of how other people are being treated
link |
01:28:31.420
in the comment section.
link |
01:28:32.900
What I can take and what I think other people deserve to take
link |
01:28:35.300
are two completely different things.
link |
01:28:37.100
David Goggins, right, who we both know well,
link |
01:28:40.020
I don't know if he still does this,
link |
01:28:40.920
but a few years ago, he posted something like,
link |
01:28:42.940
if people ask him, when do you sleep?
link |
01:28:45.900
He would just block them.
link |
01:28:48.060
Because it wasn't consistent with what he was trying to say.
link |
01:28:49.920
Of course he sleeps, but it's, you know,
link |
01:28:51.640
he's trying to get a particular message out.
link |
01:28:53.300
I think people should just understand
link |
01:28:54.600
that everybody's page is their own to moderate, right?
link |
01:28:59.500
Just like in a classroom, there are certain rules,
link |
01:29:02.020
of course, of institution,
link |
01:29:03.280
but then you establish the etiquette
link |
01:29:05.140
within the context of the kind of class.
link |
01:29:06.660
You know, a class about personality psychology
link |
01:29:09.160
or the psychology of love,
link |
01:29:11.380
you're gonna have a very different range of conversations
link |
01:29:14.920
than, you know, a class on, you know,
link |
01:29:17.860
memory and physiology.
link |
01:29:20.140
So I think social media is a great place for conversation,
link |
01:29:25.320
but it's not necessarily a great place
link |
01:29:26.880
for every kind of conversation.
link |
01:29:28.460
Yeah, and I also just say that people that do get blocked,
link |
01:29:31.540
I never, this is something I do very deliberately,
link |
01:29:35.260
blocked or ignored.
link |
01:29:37.180
I never think poorly of them.
link |
01:29:38.980
I actually explicitly think,
link |
01:29:41.980
if there's somebody that's like saying
link |
01:29:44.120
hateful things about me or whatever,
link |
01:29:45.780
I always think positive thoughts.
link |
01:29:47.540
It's not some kind of weird guru thing,
link |
01:29:49.680
but just actually found that as a hack.
link |
01:29:52.140
I think well of them,
link |
01:29:53.720
and that allows me to never think of them again.
link |
01:29:56.700
Like I send them my love,
link |
01:29:58.220
and like I think this is a like fascinating human being
link |
01:30:01.200
with a fascinating story.
link |
01:30:02.820
I would love to have time to actually learn
link |
01:30:04.620
about their story, but there's not enough time in the world.
link |
01:30:07.140
And I just think well of them and then I move on
link |
01:30:09.660
and enjoy a delicious meal with people that are close to me
link |
01:30:13.460
and I love and so on and just, and move on.
link |
01:30:16.660
And then never adding to the negativity of like,
link |
01:30:19.340
just even in the privacy of my own mind,
link |
01:30:21.520
thinking a hateful thought towards them,
link |
01:30:23.700
it serves no purpose whatsoever.
link |
01:30:25.500
Yeah, I love that about you.
link |
01:30:27.080
And I know that what you just said to be true,
link |
01:30:29.540
one of the, I think more toxic things in life
link |
01:30:33.940
is what's called, you know, a vacuative projection.
link |
01:30:37.780
When people feel something and they try and evacuate it
link |
01:30:40.260
and project it onto somebody else.
link |
01:30:41.500
Projection is fascinating, right?
link |
01:30:43.220
What you essentially just said is that
link |
01:30:44.620
you don't accept projections.
link |
01:30:46.700
And in fact, you transmute them
link |
01:30:49.020
to put it in the language of the Buddhist, you know,
link |
01:30:51.320
you transmute it into positivity.
link |
01:30:53.300
And in that way, you truly neutralize it and transmute it.
link |
01:30:58.540
I think that if people were better understood
link |
01:31:02.900
when they were experiencing
link |
01:31:04.340
or observing a vacuative projection,
link |
01:31:08.400
the world would be a much healthier and happier place.
link |
01:31:11.580
But it requires a certain stable internal rudder.
link |
01:31:14.780
And, you know, when we're tired or sick or angry,
link |
01:31:18.300
you know, we're hungry, excessively hungry.
link |
01:31:21.460
All of us are less good at it.
link |
01:31:23.460
I've been positively struck by the nature
link |
01:31:25.580
of most of the interactions, not just feedback,
link |
01:31:28.580
but my favorite thing as an educator in the classroom,
link |
01:31:32.340
but also on social media.
link |
01:31:33.440
My absolute favorite thing is when the comments
link |
01:31:36.340
about other people's comments are positively reinforcing.
link |
01:31:39.660
So you see people having conversations within the comments
link |
01:31:42.940
and you realize this is like, if you, as an educator,
link |
01:31:45.060
again, you know, it's fun to teach
link |
01:31:47.020
and it's fun to talk to the students,
link |
01:31:48.520
but the real pleasure is in walking by a small group
link |
01:31:51.740
of students on campus and hearing them talking
link |
01:31:54.220
about the material, that just fills me with joy.
link |
01:31:58.380
And because what it means is that the ideas are reverberating
link |
01:32:02.700
in their nervous systems and will eventually wick out
link |
01:32:05.020
to others.
link |
01:32:06.260
So it's not just about feedback,
link |
01:32:07.700
it's about a venue for parsing information.
link |
01:32:11.120
So you actually posted that we're gonna talk on Instagram
link |
01:32:13.700
and I collected a bunch of the questions,
link |
01:32:15.460
which reminds me of, I have to mention Mike Jones
link |
01:32:21.040
and a question he asked, but also a gift he gave
link |
01:32:24.780
quite a while ago, if it's okay.
link |
01:32:26.860
But first, a quick bathroom break.
link |
01:32:29.140
Yes.
link |
01:32:30.460
We're looking at an Instagram page of Mike Jones,
link |
01:32:33.180
Knife and Tool, you should check it out.
link |
01:32:35.580
He, Andrew gave me a gift from him,
link |
01:32:39.480
that is a badass butcher knife.
link |
01:32:44.260
Yours is the earth, da, da, da,
link |
01:32:46.660
is from If by Richard Kipling.
link |
01:32:48.820
Yeah, the story of this knife is kind of interesting,
link |
01:32:52.020
perhaps, to people where it was,
link |
01:32:53.740
I was coming out here to Austin to meet with Lex
link |
01:32:56.100
and it was his birthday.
link |
01:32:57.900
I wanna get him a gift, but I didn't know what to get him.
link |
01:33:00.140
And I contacted this guy, Mike Jones,
link |
01:33:02.460
that I learned about through Joe Rogan.
link |
01:33:04.480
Cause the first, remember in the old days of Joe Rogan,
link |
01:33:08.380
when you go on the episode afterwards,
link |
01:33:09.920
you take a picture with an object.
link |
01:33:11.660
So it was like Elon with a flamethrower
link |
01:33:13.780
or people would have the ax.
link |
01:33:14.760
I picked up this Bushwhacker hatchet thing.
link |
01:33:18.820
And I was like, I love this thing.
link |
01:33:21.100
And Joe said, oh yeah, you should check out
link |
01:33:22.700
Mike Jones's work, he does these beautiful knives.
link |
01:33:25.500
And so then I heard your episode with Joe
link |
01:33:29.180
and you recited a poem at the end.
link |
01:33:31.140
It was right after your grandmother died.
link |
01:33:33.320
And there's a line in that poem from If
link |
01:33:36.880
that Mike engraved on that knife for you.
link |
01:33:39.540
So he makes these by hand.
link |
01:33:41.740
I love, the old days, before the podcast and all that.
link |
01:33:47.980
That's the first appearance.
link |
01:33:48.820
That was the first time on there.
link |
01:33:50.620
And it was a lot of fun in the old studio in Los Angeles.
link |
01:33:55.380
And yeah, Mike makes these beautiful knives.
link |
01:33:59.180
And I have this, I just have a great admiration
link |
01:34:02.340
for crafts people.
link |
01:34:04.540
So, do you use it?
link |
01:34:06.260
Do you cut your one meal a day steaks with it?
link |
01:34:08.540
I feel.
link |
01:34:10.140
Are you taking it with you on your travels?
link |
01:34:11.660
Exactly.
link |
01:34:12.820
I actually used to keep it on the table,
link |
01:34:15.260
but I thought it really intimidates guests.
link |
01:34:18.340
A little bit.
link |
01:34:19.280
But like.
link |
01:34:20.120
You can put it on their side.
link |
01:34:20.940
Yeah, right.
link |
01:34:21.900
It's like, oops.
link |
01:34:22.780
It's trust, right?
link |
01:34:24.980
What's the story?
link |
01:34:26.300
I mean, yeah.
link |
01:34:27.460
But it's, cause it's not,
link |
01:34:30.620
it's quite bad ass if I may say.
link |
01:34:33.580
So the craftsmanship is obvious, but also it is a knife.
link |
01:34:37.860
It's got some like Dexter like qualities to it.
link |
01:34:40.140
Yeah.
link |
01:34:40.980
It looks like it's designed to cleave through a limb.
link |
01:34:43.660
If I had like a family or something where people,
link |
01:34:46.040
there's nothing about this place that softens your kind
link |
01:34:49.940
of sense that this person might not murder me.
link |
01:34:54.620
Let's put it differently.
link |
01:34:56.780
This place could use a woman's touch.
link |
01:34:58.900
That's one way to put it.
link |
01:35:00.820
If it's okay, let me,
link |
01:35:01.820
because it is a poem I go to often actually.
link |
01:35:09.140
You mentioned reciting some lyrics
link |
01:35:10.760
and I'm actually gonna go back to that at some point
link |
01:35:13.260
to get a few songs that touch you.
link |
01:35:17.380
But this is one of the things I go to often.
link |
01:35:21.480
I'll read it to remind myself.
link |
01:35:23.200
It's advice from a father to son.
link |
01:35:27.940
And it's a kind of mantra that it's just nice to live by.
link |
01:35:31.100
So if it's okay with me,
link |
01:35:31.940
just use this opportunity one more time.
link |
01:35:34.260
Read If by Roger Kipling.
link |
01:35:36.520
If you can keep your head when all about you
link |
01:35:38.820
are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
link |
01:35:41.540
if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
link |
01:35:44.300
but make allowance for their doubting too,
link |
01:35:47.020
if you can wait to not be tired by waiting
link |
01:35:49.940
or being lied about don't deal in lies
link |
01:35:53.020
or being hated don't give way to hating
link |
01:35:55.940
and yet don't look too good nor talk too wise.
link |
01:35:59.740
If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
link |
01:36:02.740
if you can think and not make thoughts your aim,
link |
01:36:05.860
if you can meet with triumph and disaster
link |
01:36:08.300
and treat those two imposters just the same,
link |
01:36:11.420
if you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
link |
01:36:14.180
twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools
link |
01:36:17.020
or watch the things you gave your life to broken
link |
01:36:20.660
and stoop and build them up with worn out tools,
link |
01:36:24.420
if you can make one heap of all your winnings
link |
01:36:26.980
and risk it all on one turn of pitch and toss
link |
01:36:30.740
and lose and start again at your beginnings
link |
01:36:34.180
and never breathe a word about your loss,
link |
01:36:37.180
if you can force your heart to nerve and sinew
link |
01:36:40.000
to serve your turn long after they're gone
link |
01:36:42.940
and so hold on when there's nothing in you
link |
01:36:46.220
except the will which says to them, hold on.
link |
01:36:49.300
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
link |
01:36:53.240
I like this one, and walk with kings
link |
01:36:55.680
nor lose the common touch, if neither foes
link |
01:36:58.600
nor loving friends can hurt you,
link |
01:37:00.680
if all men count with you but none too much,
link |
01:37:05.580
if you can fill the unforgiving minute
link |
01:37:07.980
with 60 seconds worth of distance run,
link |
01:37:12.200
yours is the earth and everything that's in it
link |
01:37:15.680
and which is more, you'll be a man, my son.
link |
01:37:19.080
Thank you, Andrew, thank you, thank you, Mike,
link |
01:37:20.920
for the knife, it's a, I don't know.
link |
01:37:23.560
It's an important poem.
link |
01:37:24.880
And engraved in it, yeah, it's yours.
link |
01:37:28.080
Yours is the earth and everything that's in it.
link |
01:37:31.320
We toiled over what to engrave,
link |
01:37:34.160
and then finally I just said, Mike,
link |
01:37:36.320
just pick something that speaks to you,
link |
01:37:38.860
you're the craftsman, and so he selected that.
link |
01:37:41.120
There's certain ways to pull yourself in that book.
link |
01:37:42.920
Actually, Karl Deisseroth, he wrote the book Projections.
link |
01:37:47.920
One of my favorite, first of all,
link |
01:37:50.080
just as you said, incredible writer.
link |
01:37:53.080
Just, I mean, if you wrote fiction,
link |
01:37:57.900
if you wrote those kinds of things,
link |
01:37:59.000
I'm curious to see where he goes with his writing.
link |
01:38:01.600
It's very interesting.
link |
01:38:02.440
I think that book took him 10 years to write,
link |
01:38:04.880
which is vindication for me and for you
link |
01:38:06.520
because we're both supposed to write books
link |
01:38:07.860
and we haven't done it.
link |
01:38:10.680
Yeah, I mean, in some sense,
link |
01:38:13.600
your first book will have decades in it, right?
link |
01:38:20.700
Even if you just take a half a year to write it.
link |
01:38:24.840
It's like the first book, like the first album for a musician,
link |
01:38:27.300
I mean, it's a journey.
link |
01:38:30.360
But he uses poems and quotes in there really well.
link |
01:38:35.140
It's a beautiful book.
link |
01:38:36.040
It's a dreamy book.
link |
01:38:36.860
I think when people hear that it's a book about neuroscience,
link |
01:38:39.560
they think they're gonna get a textbook
link |
01:38:41.240
or a protocols book or something, it's nothing like that.
link |
01:38:44.200
But it really is a deep dive into the mind
link |
01:38:46.500
of the psychiatrist and the researcher
link |
01:38:48.140
and so much feeling and compassion.
link |
01:38:50.600
I love that you love poetry.
link |
01:38:51.880
I mean, I didn't know that until I saw you
link |
01:38:53.480
on Rogan Read If and I'm not a very rabid consumer of poetry
link |
01:39:00.760
but I'm a big Wendell Berry fan.
link |
01:39:05.640
And I try and read a poem once every few days.
link |
01:39:10.640
Also, I think if is a tough act to follow.
link |
01:39:13.400
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
link |
01:39:14.760
I mean, that's the richness and the, I mean,
link |
01:39:18.320
you said every third line in there is something
link |
01:39:21.480
that you would consider your life well lived
link |
01:39:25.440
if you said that, right?
link |
01:39:27.760
What about the preparation for the solo podcast?
link |
01:39:31.440
You said you listen to certain songs,
link |
01:39:34.120
you sing or recite the lyrics to certain songs.
link |
01:39:37.200
Is there ones that kind of come to mind
link |
01:39:39.320
that are interesting?
link |
01:39:40.680
Um, yeah, I've always been very lyrics driven
link |
01:39:43.640
and I don't understand music.
link |
01:39:45.400
I've talked to Rick about this.
link |
01:39:46.600
I think I've talked to you about this a little bit.
link |
01:39:47.720
I don't really understand, I mean,
link |
01:39:50.840
I can hear music and like it,
link |
01:39:53.920
but I don't really understand the structure of it.
link |
01:39:56.580
But lyrics make a lot of sense to me.
link |
01:39:57.420
But does it touch your soul, music, or is it the lyrics?
link |
01:40:00.400
It's the lyrics, it's not the instrumentals.
link |
01:40:02.280
So I'm a huge Joe Strummer fan
link |
01:40:04.080
and I'm gonna lose punk points for saying this
link |
01:40:05.880
but I'm not a Clash fan.
link |
01:40:07.320
Oh, okay.
link |
01:40:08.280
So he obviously is best known for the Clash.
link |
01:40:10.240
Most Clash songs start off great
link |
01:40:12.640
and then after about 30 seconds, at least in my mind,
link |
01:40:15.520
just kind of disintegrate into a bunch of mush.
link |
01:40:17.840
Whereas Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros,
link |
01:40:21.100
which is what he did as an adult,
link |
01:40:23.320
as a later and some of his solo work,
link |
01:40:25.880
he actually, Rick produced some work
link |
01:40:28.000
that he did with Johnny Cash.
link |
01:40:30.240
Rick pulled Johnny Cash out of,
link |
01:40:31.920
essentially out of retirement
link |
01:40:33.060
and had him do his albums before he died.
link |
01:40:35.920
And so anything that Strummer did,
link |
01:40:38.720
there's a favorite song of mine by Strummer,
link |
01:40:40.920
it's called Burning Lights.
link |
01:40:43.040
You can find it, there is an album now
link |
01:40:44.680
where you can find it or Tennessee Rain
link |
01:40:46.360
or some of these things that he did,
link |
01:40:47.320
which are a little bit more folky, so not really punk.
link |
01:40:49.920
So I love that song.
link |
01:40:52.160
Bunch of songs by Rancid that I love.
link |
01:40:54.440
Yeah, Rancid is great.
link |
01:40:55.880
And then if I listen to instrumentals,
link |
01:40:57.920
I do, I'll listen to classical piano.
link |
01:41:01.800
Some dreams are made for children.
link |
01:41:04.400
But it's not gonna sound good as a poem.
link |
01:41:06.080
They can play the, people can play the song.
link |
01:41:07.720
Play the song, okay.
link |
01:41:08.720
Yeah, so I'll, I mean, cause it has to be something,
link |
01:41:12.880
Joe's voice is what makes the song.
link |
01:41:14.880
Got it.
link |
01:41:15.880
Joe's voice is what makes the song.
link |
01:41:17.120
But yeah, that song Burning Lights
link |
01:41:18.760
from I Hired a Contract Killer.
link |
01:41:21.800
I don't know, the licks are pretty good.
link |
01:41:23.080
They're pretty good.
link |
01:41:23.920
I mean, Joe is an amazing writer, right?
link |
01:41:25.480
I'm also a big Bob Dylan fan.
link |
01:41:27.920
Glenn Gould for classical piano.
link |
01:41:30.040
He was at Asperger's, and actually I think
link |
01:41:33.360
you can hear him grunting, he had a Tourette's like tick.
link |
01:41:36.800
And I learned about Glenn Gould from Oliver Sacks.
link |
01:41:40.640
So I'll listen to any number of things.
link |
01:41:42.080
It depends on my mood.
link |
01:41:43.040
If I'm feeling a little more tired
link |
01:41:44.200
and I need to be amped up,
link |
01:41:45.680
I'll listen to something that's a little louder and faster.
link |
01:41:48.040
If I'm feeling kind of keyed up
link |
01:41:49.560
and I need to bring the cadence down a little bit,
link |
01:41:53.080
then I'll listen to something a little mellower, poppier.
link |
01:41:55.880
I love bands like, yeah, I'm a big fan
link |
01:42:00.120
of this British pop band called James.
link |
01:42:02.880
There's like 20 bands named James.
link |
01:42:04.760
But this one, you know, and again,
link |
01:42:06.360
I lose punk points for saying that, but they're amazing.
link |
01:42:09.320
And best luck.
link |
01:42:10.160
I think you've accumulated enough points
link |
01:42:11.320
where you can afford to lose a few.
link |
01:42:13.760
Yeah.
link |
01:42:15.120
But in any case, yeah, music and poetry are,
link |
01:42:18.800
they're the subconscious, right?
link |
01:42:21.880
I mean, if you think about a Bob Dylan song
link |
01:42:23.600
or a really good Strummer song or a poem
link |
01:42:25.960
that the words don't mean anything when read linearly,
link |
01:42:29.080
but they make you feel something,
link |
01:42:30.660
they're tapping into the subconscious.
link |
01:42:32.880
That's really what they're doing.
link |
01:42:34.120
They're pulling on neural threads of emotion
link |
01:42:38.440
based on either timbre or cadence
link |
01:42:41.280
or something that's independent of the word structure.
link |
01:42:45.480
And that to me is the beauty of music and poetry.
link |
01:42:48.640
I often say Johnny Cash's version, Hurt,
link |
01:42:51.720
that I say would be my favorite song ever.
link |
01:42:55.040
Well, he did a Nine Inch Nails song.
link |
01:42:56.680
He did, he covered.
link |
01:42:57.520
I think Rick produced that.
link |
01:42:58.840
Pretty sure he produced that.
link |
01:42:59.680
He produced it.
link |
01:43:01.080
I mean, he did, like Rick produced the,
link |
01:43:04.120
he pulled Johnny Cash out from a dark place
link |
01:43:08.000
to produce something that, I mean,
link |
01:43:11.040
when you look back as one of the great things ever in music,
link |
01:43:15.440
which are these like haunting covers
link |
01:43:19.320
of certain songs and originals.
link |
01:43:21.960
Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer did a version
link |
01:43:25.160
of Redemption song together that Rick produced,
link |
01:43:30.040
which is on loop in my house sometimes,
link |
01:43:33.800
for hours and hours.
link |
01:43:35.560
That song is fascinating.
link |
01:43:37.000
Bob Marley's song.
link |
01:43:38.720
Song by Johnny Cash and Joe Strummer.
link |
01:43:41.200
You know, sometimes I think what it would be
link |
01:43:43.200
to be a fly on the wall when these guys were doing this.
link |
01:43:46.120
These songs of freedom.
link |
01:43:48.520
There's certain songs where you're like,
link |
01:43:51.140
it elicits an emotion that's unlike anything else.
link |
01:43:58.660
I mean, I was trying to figure that out with Rick, too.
link |
01:44:01.980
Like, there's certain songs that make you wanna pull out
link |
01:44:04.620
over to the side of the road and just weep
link |
01:44:07.340
or just get inspired to just get shit done
link |
01:44:11.660
or all of those kinds of things.
link |
01:44:13.260
Remember your family, the people you've lost,
link |
01:44:16.620
all that kind of stuff.
link |
01:44:17.460
When you hurt, I hurt myself today
link |
01:44:20.980
to see if I still feel.
link |
01:44:22.940
There's certain songs that I've loved so much
link |
01:44:26.080
that I actually won't play them during a relationship
link |
01:44:29.380
until the relationship passes a certain duration
link |
01:44:32.660
because if you start sharing in those experiences
link |
01:44:35.560
with somebody and it starts to become associated
link |
01:44:38.020
with the relationship, you braiding it in
link |
01:44:40.180
with the dopamine of love and that relationship ends,
link |
01:44:43.860
the song is forever tainted.
link |
01:44:45.480
There are certain songs that I will never play
link |
01:44:47.220
in the company of anybody else.
link |
01:44:49.260
They're mine.
link |
01:44:50.620
I just, it's too risky to give those up.
link |
01:44:54.980
And you know, and I think that.
link |
01:44:58.900
And there's like levels.
link |
01:45:00.700
There are levels, right, exactly.
link |
01:45:04.020
We'll leave it at that.
link |
01:45:05.820
Yeah, and the interesting thing about this kind
link |
01:45:10.020
of preparing for the solo episode,
link |
01:45:14.060
just interacting with Rick about that process
link |
01:45:17.140
of preparation and because you mentioned with interviews.
link |
01:45:23.420
By the way, are you do solo, solo?
link |
01:45:25.140
Are you the only one in the room or?
link |
01:45:26.900
No, well, it used to be Rob, my producer,
link |
01:45:30.180
who I should say, you know, he's really the person
link |
01:45:33.900
behind the podcast.
link |
01:45:35.540
I mean, first of all, we're equal partners.
link |
01:45:37.540
You're just a pretty face.
link |
01:45:40.180
We're just, and I'm aging, man.
link |
01:45:41.900
Not to say I love him.
link |
01:45:43.340
I actually really, I like aging.
link |
01:45:45.500
It's weird.
link |
01:45:46.340
I'm like friends with David Sinclair
link |
01:45:47.900
and it's all about not aging.
link |
01:45:49.540
I don't wanna live past 90, 95.
link |
01:45:52.540
I'm just trying to get as much done as I can
link |
01:45:54.340
in this short life and do it right
link |
01:45:56.020
and with integrity and heart and accuracy, you know.
link |
01:46:00.820
And you like the stages.
link |
01:46:02.460
Oh yeah, if you read Erickson's stages of development,
link |
01:46:05.340
you realize that every stage of life
link |
01:46:08.620
is a set of neural circuits trying to resolve a problem.
link |
01:46:12.140
And if you're gonna try and avoid that progression
link |
01:46:16.140
sure, you might live longer, but you know,
link |
01:46:19.820
it's sort of like saying like,
link |
01:46:21.140
do you wanna go win the high school jujitsu championship?
link |
01:46:25.380
No, you graduated high school a long time ago, right?
link |
01:46:28.540
So I actually look forward to the future,
link |
01:46:32.140
even if it means that I'm starting to shift.
link |
01:46:34.980
I think that my biology will shift.
link |
01:46:37.060
Oh, you know, I'll fight that.
link |
01:46:37.900
I try and take good care of myself,
link |
01:46:39.140
but I don't wanna get sick.
link |
01:46:41.140
I don't wanna suffer, who does?
link |
01:46:43.060
But I'm embracing this whole developmental arc.
link |
01:46:46.580
I mean, we're not children and then adults.
link |
01:46:49.780
Our entire life is one long developmental arc.
link |
01:46:52.820
And if you fail to embrace that,
link |
01:46:54.780
you fail to extract the richness
link |
01:46:56.420
of what it is to be a human being.
link |
01:46:58.620
So in any event, I record Rob is in the room.
link |
01:47:05.780
I'll sometimes stop and ask him for feedback
link |
01:47:08.060
if I feel like something's not landing right.
link |
01:47:09.740
So he gives, if it's clear, he'll let me know.
link |
01:47:11.580
If it's not clear, he'll let me know.
link |
01:47:12.820
Excuse me.
link |
01:47:13.660
And then, you know, Costello used to be in the room.
link |
01:47:15.580
The early days of the podcast, which weren't that long ago,
link |
01:47:19.300
he's snoring at my feet and farting
link |
01:47:22.180
and smelling up the room.
link |
01:47:23.180
And we're all just kind of like gasping for air.
link |
01:47:24.980
He's a bulldog.
link |
01:47:25.820
That's what they do.
link |
01:47:26.860
With him gone, it changed.
link |
01:47:28.900
You know, the whole thing changed.
link |
01:47:30.180
There will be another dog soon.
link |
01:47:32.700
And as you know, I've been moving
link |
01:47:35.300
through that grief process,
link |
01:47:36.540
but having him there gave me a levity that I miss.
link |
01:47:41.540
But in my mind, he's still there.
link |
01:47:43.100
Yeah, he's still there.
link |
01:47:43.940
Yeah, he's still there.
link |
01:47:44.900
So, and you know, in time there'll be another dog
link |
01:47:47.740
and who knows, you know, maybe there'll be a dog
link |
01:47:49.780
and a couple of infants running around,
link |
01:47:51.300
but that would be more distracting.
link |
01:47:52.820
So, but it's, there's no podcast that exists
link |
01:47:58.020
just because of the podcaster.
link |
01:47:59.540
This is true for Joe, this is true for your podcast,
link |
01:48:01.820
for me, that there's, it's not just a staff
link |
01:48:03.860
of people to post stuff.
link |
01:48:05.220
That's just the top level contour.
link |
01:48:07.060
There's the constant feedback and iteration
link |
01:48:09.220
of what you want it to become
link |
01:48:11.620
and trying to hold on to something
link |
01:48:14.540
that's essential along the way.
link |
01:48:16.540
Cause everything has to evolve,
link |
01:48:17.620
but you can't lose the essence of something.
link |
01:48:20.460
Anytime a company or brand or a course
link |
01:48:24.100
or a scientist has done that, it just ends up terrible.
link |
01:48:27.820
It just is a, you know, it becomes
link |
01:48:29.180
like a Senator version of itself.
link |
01:48:31.380
So to Rick is very, the power of the people in the room
link |
01:48:35.660
is great to inspire and to destroy.
link |
01:48:39.700
So you have to be extremely careful
link |
01:48:42.140
with the selection of people that are in the room.
link |
01:48:44.460
To me, I never really thought of it that way.
link |
01:48:46.540
I thought only positive things can happen.
link |
01:48:50.980
Oh, by adding people in the room?
link |
01:48:51.900
By adding people in the room.
link |
01:48:52.740
Oh, I think if there were an audience in the room for,
link |
01:48:55.300
well, you know what, someday I'd love
link |
01:48:56.540
to do a live podcast with you.
link |
01:48:59.420
I saw you doing like a couple of live things,
link |
01:49:01.980
which is great that you're paving the way there to try.
link |
01:49:04.380
Well, we did one, I went up to University
link |
01:49:06.140
of British Columbia and did a lecture on a college campus.
link |
01:49:11.700
And one of the more gratifying things that happened
link |
01:49:13.780
is this kid, he's in his early twenties, I think,
link |
01:49:16.060
stood up and said, you know,
link |
01:49:17.580
I've never been on a college campus.
link |
01:49:19.740
I didn't think I could go onto a college campus.
link |
01:49:22.140
And that still rings in my mind.
link |
01:49:23.500
Whoever you are out there, that meant so much to me.
link |
01:49:25.340
Cause I was like, yes, there was something about that to me.
link |
01:49:27.740
I was like, okay, this, it made sense to come all the way
link |
01:49:30.300
up here and do this in person.
link |
01:49:31.620
Cause you can get out to a lot more people online.
link |
01:49:34.700
Public speaking events,
link |
01:49:35.660
it's not like it's that lucrative or anything.
link |
01:49:37.580
I mean, unless you're whatever,
link |
01:49:39.300
you're a famous celebrity or politician or something,
link |
01:49:41.780
I'm sure there are people that do well with it,
link |
01:49:43.120
but that's not what it's about for us.
link |
01:49:44.700
It's really about being able to connect with people
link |
01:49:47.260
in a different venue and for interactions like that.
link |
01:49:50.740
I don't know how many of them we will do,
link |
01:49:53.700
but I'm curious to see how it goes,
link |
01:49:55.500
but I'd love to do a podcast with you.
link |
01:49:57.940
Is it energizing? My fear is the fear of the introvert
link |
01:50:03.780
is that I don't know if I can handle so much love
link |
01:50:08.020
and fascinating people all around.
link |
01:50:11.940
It's like, I don't know.
link |
01:50:14.020
Well, we'll invite a few haters too.
link |
01:50:16.180
Well, yes, but I love the haters too, but I don't know.
link |
01:50:19.900
It makes me nervous.
link |
01:50:20.860
Cause Jordan Peterson is currently on tour.
link |
01:50:23.140
I got a chance to hang out with him.
link |
01:50:24.460
Oh right, he does a lot of live speaking.
link |
01:50:28.180
Yeah, he's now on tour where he does like every other day.
link |
01:50:33.300
But he doesn't have any small kids at home anymore.
link |
01:50:35.460
So you can't do that.
link |
01:50:36.580
So yeah, you should do it before you have a fan.
link |
01:50:38.180
It's also exhausting.
link |
01:50:39.020
I mean, I'm just speaking from an athlete perspective,
link |
01:50:42.380
like if you're Mick Jagger with the Rolling Stones,
link |
01:50:45.980
it's just physically, I mean, you have to speak potentially
link |
01:50:50.980
for two hours, then off stage, like hanging out with people.
link |
01:50:56.620
It's a lot of hours.
link |
01:50:58.460
It's a lot of hours to stay focused,
link |
01:51:00.020
to keep finding your place of like calmness and excitement.
link |
01:51:04.460
Well, and you're staying in hotels,
link |
01:51:05.700
your circadian rhythm is disrupted.
link |
01:51:07.540
You're not getting your like cold and sauna
link |
01:51:09.420
and your workout every day.
link |
01:51:10.380
Your food isn't optimal.
link |
01:51:12.780
I think done in patches, I could enjoy it
link |
01:51:15.620
because it's fun to meet people from different places.
link |
01:51:17.220
I'm doing a public lecture in Copenhagen
link |
01:51:19.900
for the Lundbeck Foundation in June, June 3rd.
link |
01:51:22.820
And that one is particularly gratifying for me
link |
01:51:25.020
because the Lundbeck Foundation is an academic foundation.
link |
01:51:27.580
So the fact that, and then so when they invited,
link |
01:51:29.500
I asked, do you want me to talk about what my lab does
link |
01:51:31.740
or do you want me to talk about the stuff on the podcast?
link |
01:51:33.580
They're like, no, no, not your lab.
link |
01:51:35.500
We want to hear about this, like health stuff
link |
01:51:37.460
and the stuff that we cover on the podcast.
link |
01:51:39.380
So that was amusing to me and tells me that things
link |
01:51:43.300
are changing now.
link |
01:51:44.140
I think 2020 and 2021 revealed a lot of things
link |
01:51:47.180
about people to ourselves.
link |
01:51:50.060
But one thing that it made very clear
link |
01:51:52.020
is that there's an enormous appetite for tools
link |
01:51:55.700
for mental and physical health,
link |
01:51:56.740
but also understanding about science
link |
01:51:58.100
and how science is done.
link |
01:51:59.580
So thanks to you, again, I'm not saying this to flatter you.
link |
01:52:02.420
It's true gratitude.
link |
01:52:03.740
There's now a runway for scientists to talk to people.
link |
01:52:07.300
I mean, you had the, I always forget this guy's name,
link |
01:52:09.060
the virus guy from Columbia.
link |
01:52:10.940
It's a wrecking yellow.
link |
01:52:12.140
Yeah, amazing, right?
link |
01:52:13.340
I mean, forgetting the controversy around all the stuff
link |
01:52:16.460
of 2020, 21.
link |
01:52:17.500
I mean, he is an encyclopedia of all things virology.
link |
01:52:21.860
Yeah, people should listen to his podcast
link |
01:52:24.460
this week in virology.
link |
01:52:25.660
He's also an incredible lecturer and educator.
link |
01:52:28.140
It's fascinating.
link |
01:52:30.340
It's fascinating when people take again that leap
link |
01:52:33.580
of putting all that education online.
link |
01:52:36.060
That's non controversial at all.
link |
01:52:39.220
It's like everybody there, people should go listen to him
link |
01:52:43.300
for the most part in terms of, at his best, at least.
link |
01:52:47.580
There's no politics in it.
link |
01:52:48.780
There's none of that.
link |
01:52:50.140
No, he's a virus jockey.
link |
01:52:51.660
He likes playing around with bacteria and viruses and.
link |
01:52:55.700
But that said, molecular biology.
link |
01:52:57.820
We all say stuff carelessly all the time.
link |
01:53:00.480
So he gets in a bit of trouble on some of the things
link |
01:53:02.700
you've said about like dismissing lab leak theory.
link |
01:53:06.500
Like, there's no way.
link |
01:53:07.940
He dismisses that.
link |
01:53:08.780
Yeah, but not, he's not making,
link |
01:53:10.940
like folks, there's a difference when you say stuff
link |
01:53:16.580
like off the cuff and when you say stuff
link |
01:53:20.820
that's like courts your principles
link |
01:53:22.340
and you've thought about it for a very long time.
link |
01:53:25.060
You talking for hours, for hundreds of hours
link |
01:53:28.340
and you can just say stuff.
link |
01:53:29.660
You could just say your opinions.
link |
01:53:32.860
Will Smith slapped.
link |
01:53:34.780
I was wondering, okay, wait,
link |
01:53:36.020
how long have we been recording?
link |
01:53:37.180
I was wondering how long it was gonna take us
link |
01:53:38.580
before someone talked about Ukraine.
link |
01:53:40.300
No, no, Will Smith.
link |
01:53:41.340
I was wondering whether or not we'd make it the end.
link |
01:53:43.240
I had it planned.
link |
01:53:45.020
I was literally in the back of my mind.
link |
01:53:46.940
I had it planned that at the end,
link |
01:53:48.420
if we didn't talk about the Will Smith, Chris Rock thing,
link |
01:53:50.860
that I was gonna say, it's amazing.
link |
01:53:52.920
This is the first conversation to happen
link |
01:53:54.580
in a long time where it wasn't mentioned.
link |
01:53:58.040
Oh, no.
link |
01:53:59.460
No, do not pull it up.
link |
01:54:01.020
We don't need to see it.
link |
01:54:01.860
We don't need to see it.
link |
01:54:02.680
Here we go.
link |
01:54:03.520
It revealed some interesting things
link |
01:54:04.340
about human beings, impulse control and lack thereof.
link |
01:54:08.900
But, you know, oh my goodness.
link |
01:54:11.760
Chris Rock has a material for the rest of his career.
link |
01:54:13.940
Yeah, I think he's not short on material.
link |
01:54:16.620
But I do, see, if I knew what I wanted to tweet,
link |
01:54:21.140
if I knew you a lot to just slap comedians,
link |
01:54:23.620
my conversation with Tim Dillon
link |
01:54:25.020
would have gone very differently.
link |
01:54:27.140
People just being humans.
link |
01:54:29.220
There's so much fascinating human nature on display there.
link |
01:54:33.260
It's also, in terms of it becoming a topic
link |
01:54:37.460
that a lot of people are talking about
link |
01:54:39.380
versus the war in Ukraine, for example,
link |
01:54:41.020
is also fascinating to watch,
link |
01:54:42.280
like just these kind of news cycles moving through.
link |
01:54:46.180
I think, if I may, I'm sorry to interrupt,
link |
01:54:48.140
but, you know, anytime we observe something very limbic,
link |
01:54:53.020
very emotional, you know,
link |
01:54:55.260
we generally can empathize somewhat, right?
link |
01:54:59.660
We all know what it's like to feel angry.
link |
01:55:00.980
We all know what it's like to feel ashamed.
link |
01:55:02.260
We all know what it's like to feel shocked.
link |
01:55:04.500
Images of war are, for most people, very hard to relate to.
link |
01:55:09.380
We see it, it's, you know, there are these images
link |
01:55:12.460
and they're very traumatic and challenging
link |
01:55:15.260
to look at at times,
link |
01:55:16.100
and yet most people have no idea
link |
01:55:17.500
what it feels like to be shot at
link |
01:55:19.780
or what it feels like to have your home destroyed
link |
01:55:21.660
or what it feels like to be an aggressor in that way.
link |
01:55:26.260
So it's very, so I think that people naturally orient
link |
01:55:29.180
towards things that feel familiar to them,
link |
01:55:31.780
even though the circumstances are different.
link |
01:55:33.540
And people also forget, they look at these celebrities,
link |
01:55:37.780
that's just like looking at criticism of Will Smith,
link |
01:55:39.900
you forget that they're human too.
link |
01:55:43.220
That's one of the most surprising things for me,
link |
01:55:45.580
having done this podcast and met celebrities
link |
01:55:48.300
and stuff like that.
link |
01:55:50.020
They're human, they're all human.
link |
01:55:52.020
And that's inspiring to me,
link |
01:55:53.140
like some of these great folks that have won Nobel Prizes
link |
01:55:55.980
and built some cool things,
link |
01:55:57.460
they're just human, like the rest of us.
link |
01:55:59.460
Well, and if you look at actors and actresses,
link |
01:56:01.420
I mean, there's some amazing ones, right?
link |
01:56:03.060
And who also do well in the outside life,
link |
01:56:05.260
but their careers were built on the business
link |
01:56:09.740
of pretending to be other people.
link |
01:56:12.900
And that's got to distort maybe positively,
link |
01:56:16.460
but also just let's be honest,
link |
01:56:19.020
what it is that the neuroplasticity there,
link |
01:56:21.020
the changes in the areas of the brain
link |
01:56:22.860
that represent personality have to be quite different
link |
01:56:25.420
for somebody who pretends to be
link |
01:56:26.700
lots of different personalities and gets paid for it.
link |
01:56:28.940
You're working the reward system
link |
01:56:30.820
into the system of self identity.
link |
01:56:33.260
And you have to imagine that that can really
link |
01:56:38.500
contort somebody's neurology
link |
01:56:41.220
in ways that maybe they are not as,
link |
01:56:43.780
maybe they are not in touch with reality
link |
01:56:45.860
in the same way that we are.
link |
01:56:47.060
Remember earlier we were talking about
link |
01:56:47.940
neurotic versus psychotic.
link |
01:56:50.300
They may be more borderline
link |
01:56:53.140
in their kind of ground state than we think.
link |
01:56:56.100
And so I'm actually impressed anytime there's a celebrity
link |
01:56:58.260
who doesn't have a messed up life.
link |
01:57:00.540
I'm like, oh wow, finally somebody who's managed
link |
01:57:02.900
to maintain some semblance,
link |
01:57:05.860
at least from the outside, of normalcy.
link |
01:57:08.260
So first of all, I can empathize
link |
01:57:11.300
with the actions that Will Smith did, right?
link |
01:57:14.140
They're not, I think they're kind of,
link |
01:57:16.500
not kind of, they're just shitty.
link |
01:57:18.540
You should probably talk privately, man to man,
link |
01:57:21.580
not, because otherwise it's like a dramatic display.
link |
01:57:24.660
It's almost like you are a fake, you're acting.
link |
01:57:27.980
Well, there are all these questions, right?
link |
01:57:29.740
I mean, obviously it was aggressive at some level.
link |
01:57:33.140
There's this question of whether or not it was impulsive.
link |
01:57:36.180
I think most people feel yes.
link |
01:57:37.380
There's a question, there was the protective nature of it
link |
01:57:39.540
because he was doing it to, you know,
link |
01:57:42.220
apparently in defense.
link |
01:57:43.940
But then there's also the context,
link |
01:57:47.180
he lost touch with the context, right?
link |
01:57:50.620
Whereas Chris Rock basically gets,
link |
01:57:53.700
there's the possible critique that he went too far.
link |
01:57:56.740
That's gonna be in the eye of the beholder.
link |
01:57:59.140
But then, and depending on how you view comedy and jokes,
link |
01:58:01.620
but then there's also the fact that he took that slap
link |
01:58:04.100
and then just snapped right back,
link |
01:58:05.220
so much so that people thought maybe it was fake.
link |
01:58:07.500
He also waited with his hands behind his back.
link |
01:58:10.020
That's just natural, he likes to stand like that.
link |
01:58:12.260
I mean, I got to a little bit of a story here
link |
01:58:18.260
to connect to what Chris Rock did.
link |
01:58:22.740
Like I wish, what Chris Rock did in terms of just
link |
01:58:27.260
taking the slap and keep going,
link |
01:58:28.540
first of all, just props for somebody
link |
01:58:30.720
that's able to maintain cool in that situation
link |
01:58:33.740
for the most part.
link |
01:58:35.220
I think I like watched it once.
link |
01:58:36.900
You only have to be alive on this planet
link |
01:58:39.300
to see it, you can't avoid seeing it.
link |
01:58:42.060
I wish at that afterwards, he would sort of say something
link |
01:58:47.860
loving and kind to Will Smith and his wife
link |
01:58:52.460
and then hit him real hard, lean into the joke.
link |
01:58:56.180
But I think in hockey, they call it taking a number.
link |
01:59:00.100
I have a friend who plays hockey and there's this idea
link |
01:59:01.700
that if someone checks you really badly in one game,
link |
01:59:04.500
you don't go and check them again,
link |
01:59:06.260
you don't get into a fight.
link |
01:59:07.240
But three games later, you blade them in the shin.
link |
01:59:14.700
The ability to defer and to handle it
link |
01:59:18.220
in whatever fashion one feels is appropriate.
link |
01:59:20.260
They're probably also friends and all those kinds of things
link |
01:59:22.540
that they respect each other, so he probably didn't,
link |
01:59:25.900
but there's a comedian instinct.
link |
01:59:27.740
I saw this, I was at an open mic here in Texas.
link |
01:59:33.300
I won't say where, there's many open mics.
link |
01:59:35.620
Have you gone to a few of these?
link |
01:59:36.460
These are pretty good.
link |
01:59:37.460
No, so there is more sort of rougher kind of.
link |
01:59:44.180
Yeah, you've been hanging out in West Texas lately.
link |
01:59:47.420
Austin's too tame for Lex, so he's headed to West Texas.
link |
01:59:50.540
Exactly, I put on a cowboy hat
link |
01:59:53.180
and instantly I became a cowboy.
link |
01:59:54.700
I've been talking like a cowboy.
link |
01:59:56.580
I mean, I belong out there in the desert.
link |
01:59:58.940
He's gone from eating meat and athletic greens
link |
02:00:02.180
to rattlesnakes, rattlesnake jerky.
link |
02:00:03.980
Exactly.
link |
02:00:04.940
No, there was a, open mic is late at night
link |
02:00:08.460
and I was one of the only people in the audience.
link |
02:00:11.100
There's a couple of drunk folks, a few drunk folks.
link |
02:00:15.340
One of them was a couple, like bikers with helmets and so on,
link |
02:00:22.620
a guy and a girl.
link |
02:00:23.500
And then the comedian, the open mic comedian,
link |
02:00:28.740
did a joke about people who wear helmets.
link |
02:00:31.780
I don't know if it was on purpose or not,
link |
02:00:33.340
but he did the joke.
link |
02:00:34.780
And then the guy about women who wear helmets.
link |
02:00:38.980
And the guy, it's this exact same situation.
link |
02:00:41.780
The guy stood up, walked up to him.
link |
02:00:44.180
There was no slap.
link |
02:00:45.020
It's so interesting,
link |
02:00:45.860
because this happened before the Will Smith thing.
link |
02:00:47.940
So he walked up to the comedian
link |
02:00:51.180
and said, I think he pointed his finger down
link |
02:00:59.300
and told him to stop or something like that.
link |
02:01:01.380
And then sat down.
link |
02:01:02.900
This is an audience of like six people.
link |
02:01:05.540
And at midnight around then, there's nobody,
link |
02:01:09.140
no security, nothing.
link |
02:01:10.460
In Texas.
link |
02:01:11.300
In Texas.
link |
02:01:12.140
Which implies.
link |
02:01:12.980
And then this guy was the energy drunk,
link |
02:01:16.220
but also a biker and what he felt his lady
link |
02:01:23.100
was now attacked by the comedian, right?
link |
02:01:25.660
With his words.
link |
02:01:27.940
And the comedian was a kind of out of shape, small guy.
link |
02:01:32.900
So he's not threatening at all and probably in trouble.
link |
02:01:37.180
And the comedian, after he sat down,
link |
02:01:39.220
he looked a little bit scared.
link |
02:01:41.340
He paced back and forth.
link |
02:01:43.620
And then he did the joke again.
link |
02:01:47.580
Wow.
link |
02:01:48.660
And I was sitting and I started,
link |
02:01:50.820
I leaned back and I just did this like,
link |
02:01:55.140
because that is comedy.
link |
02:01:56.980
And the guy was getting angrier and angrier.
link |
02:02:00.620
And he just sat there.
link |
02:02:02.500
And the comedian went on for a couple more minutes
link |
02:02:06.100
and then did another bad joke,
link |
02:02:09.300
but another joke about him.
link |
02:02:10.660
It's just like, he leaned into it.
link |
02:02:12.700
If you go to a small comedy club, open mic or otherwise,
link |
02:02:15.820
you're in the shooting gallery.
link |
02:02:17.220
Like you're basically there teed up as a pin to get it.
link |
02:02:21.900
We went and saw Andrew Scholls in San Francisco.
link |
02:02:24.340
In San Francisco?
link |
02:02:25.180
Yeah, it was hilarious.
link |
02:02:26.380
It was amazing.
link |
02:02:27.220
I mean, he's just masterful in his ability
link |
02:02:30.020
to command an audience.
link |
02:02:32.500
But I felt for the people up front,
link |
02:02:34.380
but no sympathy either because you buy tickets
link |
02:02:37.420
to sit up front at a Scholls show, you're gonna get it.
link |
02:02:41.460
But he was very loving.
link |
02:02:43.140
Yeah, and funny.
link |
02:02:44.660
First of all, funny.
link |
02:02:46.100
The funniness really helps you.
link |
02:02:48.300
But the ethic of the comedian is like that fearlessness.
link |
02:02:52.820
What I really liked is like the danger,
link |
02:02:57.540
there's risk to comedy and there's also consequences.
link |
02:03:00.700
Have you watched that show?
link |
02:03:02.300
What is it?
link |
02:03:03.140
The Marvelous Miss Maisel show?
link |
02:03:04.580
It's really good.
link |
02:03:05.820
I watched a few of them.
link |
02:03:07.740
Guilty pleasure there.
link |
02:03:09.100
She plays a comic in the, I think it's mid 1960s in New York.
link |
02:03:14.940
And there's a character that somewhat resembles Lenny Bruce.
link |
02:03:18.940
It's sort of meant to be Lenny Bruce.
link |
02:03:21.220
And they're always getting arrested and this kind of thing.
link |
02:03:24.260
I think I learned about it from Joe.
link |
02:03:25.620
Anyway, the writing is great.
link |
02:03:27.180
It's very funny.
link |
02:03:29.260
But yeah, comedy is designed to push boundaries, right?
link |
02:03:32.460
And to say the thing that other people aren't,
link |
02:03:36.940
feel they can't say.
link |
02:03:38.180
Not something in science, right?
link |
02:03:39.460
Science you're supposed to,
link |
02:03:40.460
etiquette is a big part of how you communicate ideas.
link |
02:03:43.340
It's about constraining communication.
link |
02:03:46.300
This is something, I mean, I confess on the podcast,
link |
02:03:48.420
in the goals of making it clear, interesting,
link |
02:03:52.500
surprising and actionable,
link |
02:03:54.500
you have to constrain the amount
link |
02:03:57.100
and the style of information.
link |
02:03:58.420
Otherwise it becomes something else altogether, right?
link |
02:04:02.780
I saw Sandra Perchay, Google CEO,
link |
02:04:05.460
said that he likes the thing you mentioned,
link |
02:04:08.620
not the yoga nidra, but the NSDR,
link |
02:04:11.940
non sleep deep rest podcast over meditation.
link |
02:04:15.900
I don't know if you saw that.
link |
02:04:16.940
Yeah, I saw that, yeah.
link |
02:04:18.380
Yeah.
link |
02:04:19.460
Why?
link |
02:04:20.300
What do you think that is?
link |
02:04:21.140
What do you think the difference is?
link |
02:04:22.500
Yeah, so non sleep deep rest, NSDR is an acronym
link |
02:04:25.460
that I coined because it encompasses a lot of practices
link |
02:04:28.420
that are not meditation per se,
link |
02:04:31.180
but that bring the brain and body
link |
02:04:32.780
into a state of relaxation and focus.
link |
02:04:34.940
So hypnosis is one variant of NSDR.
link |
02:04:37.100
There are other variants of NSDR.
link |
02:04:38.580
You can just look these up and you'll find them.
link |
02:04:40.620
And I think that they've caught on
link |
02:04:42.460
and that the CEO of Google is an avid practitioner of NSDR
link |
02:04:49.620
because it has this amazing ability
link |
02:04:51.580
to reset your energy levels and focus.
link |
02:04:53.980
Whereas with meditation, many people find meditation hard.
link |
02:04:57.420
And part of the reason they find it hard
link |
02:04:58.900
is that it requires focus.
link |
02:05:00.980
NSDR is a state which is very calm and relaxing.
link |
02:05:04.380
You don't have to work too hard.
link |
02:05:05.580
You're just listening to a script,
link |
02:05:06.820
whereas most forms of meditation, not all,
link |
02:05:08.980
but most forms of meditation involve cranking up
link |
02:05:11.860
the activity in your prefrontal cortex
link |
02:05:14.180
and trying to see your thoughts
link |
02:05:16.620
as opposed to thinking your thoughts
link |
02:05:18.020
or focus on your breath,
link |
02:05:20.180
but then third personing yourself in some respect
link |
02:05:23.300
and that's work.
link |
02:05:24.140
And so many people who meditate quite intensely
link |
02:05:26.540
feel more exhausted.
link |
02:05:28.180
Now that doesn't mean that meditation
link |
02:05:30.140
doesn't have any utility,
link |
02:05:31.580
but it's distinctly different than NSDR.
link |
02:05:33.900
And I think that people are working,
link |
02:05:35.460
certainly the CEO of Google I have to imagine
link |
02:05:37.260
is working very hard and using his forebrain.
link |
02:05:39.500
If he's going to have 20 or 30 minutes to take a break,
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02:05:42.260
he should, and I think this is what he's doing,
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02:05:44.420
he should go out for a jog and not listen to anything
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02:05:46.940
and just kind of let his mind wander
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02:05:48.780
or sit there in a chair and just zone out or do NSDR.
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02:05:52.340
The problem is people are not that good at shifting states.
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02:05:57.540
We are all actually pretty good at,
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02:05:59.300
even people with severe ADHD,
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02:06:01.820
we had an episode about this,
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02:06:03.460
can become hyper focused on things that they actually enjoy
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02:06:07.260
because dope and most of the drugs designed to treat ADHD
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02:06:10.460
are drugs that increase the levels of dopamine.
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02:06:12.660
So when you like something,
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02:06:13.500
there's dopamine release and you can focus.
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02:06:15.300
It's when you don't like something that's hard to focus,
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02:06:17.140
shifting states is hard.
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02:06:18.860
I'm sure you've experienced this.
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02:06:19.900
If you've ever been in deep research or podcasting,
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02:06:22.180
podcasting, and then all of a sudden you go for a run,
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02:06:24.580
you probably spend the first third of that run thinking.
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02:06:27.140
And then in the middle third,
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02:06:28.420
you're kind of that thinking is fractured a bit.
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02:06:30.900
And then in the final third
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02:06:32.100
is where you finally get to relax
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02:06:34.300
because the brain doesn't shift states very quickly.
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02:06:37.100
We can go from sleep to wakefulness quickly.
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02:06:39.140
We can go from wakefulness to sleep quickly,
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02:06:41.700
but we don't shift between different states of consciousness
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02:06:45.020
like a step function, except in rare cases, right?
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02:06:49.420
Fear is one.
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02:06:50.420
All of a sudden we hear an explosion right now,
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02:06:51.980
it's a step function.
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02:06:52.860
We're in fear or we're in alertness, right?
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02:06:56.740
A heightened state of alertness.
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02:06:57.980
But NSDR is terrific at allowing people
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02:07:01.020
to learn to shift their state.
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02:07:03.060
And I actually would venture to argue that
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02:07:07.420
part of the value of meditation and exercise
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02:07:09.900
is the actual state that you get into
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02:07:11.460
in deep meditation or exercise,
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02:07:13.420
but just as valuable is the transition
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02:07:16.180
that you have to take yourself through
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02:07:17.700
from one state of mind to the other and then back again.
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02:07:20.940
When I look, David Goggins, he always seems to come up
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02:07:23.980
because he represents so many important things,
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02:07:25.980
drive, determination, override of emotional state,
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02:07:29.660
going from being a 300 pound plus person
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02:07:31.620
to a fit person through,
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02:07:32.820
he's never revealed anything substantial
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02:07:35.620
about what he ate or what he didn't eat.
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02:07:36.780
He basically says like, listen, run a lot, eat less, right?
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02:07:40.980
But what's remarkable is so much of what he says
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02:07:44.060
is about those transitions,
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02:07:46.300
about taking oneself from a state of I don't want to
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02:07:48.980
to scruffing oneself and like you're gonna do it anyway.
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02:07:52.220
And then being able to carry that into regular life,
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02:07:55.460
so to speak.
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02:07:56.420
So I think that NSDR is immensely powerful.
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02:08:00.140
It's zero cost.
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02:08:01.260
And one of the reasons I'm such a fan of people doing it
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02:08:04.660
is that most people don't stick to a meditation practice.
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02:08:08.220
There are also been a few cases
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02:08:09.380
you might find this interesting.
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02:08:10.300
There's a book by Scott Carney.
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02:08:11.940
I forget what it's called.
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02:08:13.100
I think it's called the transcendence trap or something.
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02:08:15.220
I'm gonna have that title wrong,
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02:08:16.220
but there have been a fair number of cases of people
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02:08:20.100
that go and do very extensive meditation,
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02:08:22.580
silent meditation retreats,
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02:08:24.500
who then return to normal life and end up killing themselves.
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02:08:28.060
There are states of mind inside of extended meditations
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02:08:31.340
or silent meditations that are very beneficial.
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02:08:34.020
And I'm certainly not suggesting people don't meditate,
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02:08:37.020
but I know at least one person who came back
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02:08:39.060
from one of these long extended meditation retreats
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02:08:41.140
and wasn't able to shift their state back
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02:08:43.740
into one that was functional in regular life.
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02:08:45.700
And that book includes a very dramatic story.
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02:08:47.620
I don't wanna give it away in case people
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02:08:50.300
check out the book,
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02:08:51.140
but Scott told the story to me directly once,
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02:08:53.540
where someone feels they've reached enlightenment
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02:08:58.140
and then commit suicide.
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02:09:00.500
So these very unusual brain states
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02:09:03.100
are potentially hazardous if people can't return from them.
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02:09:07.260
So it's nice to focus not on those brain states,
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02:09:11.060
but instead on the shifting.
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02:09:12.580
Right, this morning I woke up a little bit earlier
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02:09:15.300
than I would have liked.
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02:09:16.140
I use this reverie app that's research backed,
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02:09:18.860
REVRI.com.
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02:09:20.620
There's a free version of it or you can try it for free.
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02:09:23.400
So I feel comfortable.
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02:09:24.240
That's for hypnosis?
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02:09:25.060
For hypnosis.
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02:09:25.900
And I do a self hypnosis to put me back into sleep.
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02:09:29.140
And if I can't sleep,
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02:09:29.980
you just put me into a state of deep relaxation.
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02:09:31.540
I would put hypnosis under the category of NSDR,
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02:09:35.300
yoga nidra under the category of NSDR.
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02:09:37.220
There are now some NSDR scripts online
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02:09:39.500
if you just go to YouTube that you can just listen to.
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02:09:42.100
Do you like those?
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02:09:43.140
I do, yeah.
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02:09:43.980
I think the one from made for is quite good.
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02:09:45.340
I have an affiliation with them, but it's free.